#it’s not that . i’m terrible at stem or anything . just . circumstances <3

[robininthelabyrinth]

Associates - Part 5 - ao3, pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4

“So,” Jiang Cheng said, rolling the jar of wine between his hands. “Who wants to put money on all our reconciliations being part of one of Nie Huaisang’s schemes?”

“Me,” Wei Wuxian said at once.

“Hey,” Nie Huaisang protested. “Jiang-xiong! Wei-xiong! How mean! Not everything I do is a scheme!”

“I will bet as well,” Lan Wangji said.

Nie Huaisang turned to him at once. “Lan Zhan. You traitor!”

“Be careful,” Lan Xichen said mildly. “He might bite you.”

Now it was Lan Wangji’s turn to turn to glare.

“No, no, unfair!” Wei Wuxian laughed. “He’s not allowed to bite anyone but me anymore!”

“Ugh, must you always –”

“I really didn’t scheme!” Nie Huaisang interrupted Jiang Cheng, waving his hands around. “I didn’t! Lan Zhan was the one who approached me, remember? I didn’t even know that he was acting as both Sect Leader and Chief Cultivator until he told me, and I certainly wouldn’t have counted on him coming to me for help – no one ever comes to me for help!”

“Clearly an oversight on all our parts, Nie-xiong,” Wei Wuxian said. “Anyway, who would’ve thought you’d take one little offhand remark from me so personally? Me, of all people! I never mean anything I say!”

Nie Huaisang huffed and reached for his fan, only for Lan Wangji to catch his hand mid-gesture and return it to his wine jar.

“I’m not a child in need of pacification, you know,” he informed Lan Wangji, but picked up the jar instead.

Lan Wangji looked satisfied.

“What was your plan, then?” Jiang Cheng asked, drinking from his own jar. “I mean, for after you were done – Jin Guangyao gone, your brother avenged…”

“Well, assuming I survived –”

“Weren’t you?”

“I was going up against san-ge; I wasn’t taking anything for granted! He might have been a terrible person, but he was ridiculously efficient.”

Nods all around. Even Lan Xichen mostly looked nostalgic rather than heartbroken.  

“Anyway, I didn’t have one,” Nie Huaisang said, then looked at all of their disbelieving looks. “I didn’t! I already told you that I didn’t do it for power or anything…maybe I’d get married and have some kids to pass on the family line, I don’t know.”

“I don’t know,” Wei Wuxian said solemnly to Jiang Cheng, who nodded back just as solemnly. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know –”

“Wei-xiong, I am going to throw this jar in your face.”

“Lan Zhan will catch it,” Wei Wuxian cackled.

“He probably will, too,” Nie Huaisang said, flopping down dramatically on the table. “Er-ge, Jiang-xiong, they’re teaming up on me!”

“Oh no,” Lan Xichen said dryly. “Whatever shall we do.”

Jiang Cheng muffled a snort.

“I never really had life goals,” Nie Huaisang said, drawing sad circles on the table with a finger. “I just want to have a good time. I want to paint, and read books, and spend time with friends…trust me, this whole –” He waved a hand at them. “– reconstituted friendship thing took me as much by surprise as everyone else. I fully expected to die alone if anyone ever found out that I was involved, which of course Wei-xiong did almost at once –”

“Well, I am a genius,” Wei Wuxian bragged.

“He also wasn’t very subtle towards the end there.”

“In short,” Nie Huaisang concluded, ignoring them all and sitting back up. “Blame Lan Zhan if you want to blame anyone.”

“I took the first step,” Lan Wangji said placidly. “You took the next five.”

“I did not – hmm. Okay, maybe I did.”

“I knew you were scheming!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed. “Just how much of it did you plan?”

“Sometimes things just happen, Jiang-xiong!”

“Not when it’s you, they don’t!”

“They do!” Nie Huaisang pouted. “I know you all think of me as a planner, but really, most of the time, I just try to see what’s the best way to use whatever circumstances I end up in. Or do you think it would’ve taken me as long as it did?”

“Didn’t Chifeng-zun used to say the same thing?” Wei Wuxian said nostalgically. “I feel like I remember him saying something like that.”

“He did,” Lan Xichen said. “‘All you can be is prepared: a plan will only last until execution, and after that it’s just a question of who can better react to the circumstances at hand.’”

“Nie-xiong would be a good general,” Lan Wangji opined.

“Lan Zhan, you take that back.”

“Mm. No.”

“You brat. You think you’re the only one who bites? I’ll bite you.”

“No biting my future husband,” Wei Wuxian said. “No one else gets to bite him, just me. It’s going to be in our vows.”

“It had better not be,” Jiang Cheng said. “I will break out Zidian if I have to.”

“Oh, like that’s a real threat. You break out Zidian every time the wind changes.”

“Wei Wuxian! You -!”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a Lan Zhan original, actually,” Nie Huaisang said thoughtfully.

Jiang Cheng looked at Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji looked back, not denying it.

“…I hate you. Personally.”

“Mm. Mutual.”

“Can we get back to the subject of Nie-xiong and his marvelous military prowess?” Wei Wuxian interjected, possibly having learned the benefit of stemming explosions rather than causing them during the period of time he spent dead.

“Can we not?” Nie Huaisang whined.

“I don’t know,” Lan Xichen said thoughtfully. “Getting me out of seclusion was an organized charge worth of any military campaign.”

“Well, someone had to do it!”

“I’m pretty sure you set me up deliberately so that I’d talk to Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng said.

“…you were going to do that anyway! I just gave you an excuse!”

“You convinced me to go after Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said. “And presented me with the most effective way to do that.”

“I…!” Nie Huaisang opened and closed his mouth, then groaned and put his forehead down on the table a second time. “I didn’t mean to scheme! Really!”

Everyone laughed at him.

“Well, you don’t need to worry. I’m all schemed out now,” he said pitifully. “No more schemes for me.”

“That may be a problem,” Lan Wangji said. “Scheming will be helpful when you become Chief Cultivator.”

Nie Huaisang shot up from the table. “When I what now?!”

“I have decided that the role should be rotated between the Great Sects,” Lan Wangji said. “To encourage inter-sect unity and to avoid power accruing into any single sect’s hands in the future.”

“You just want to have more free time to roll in the sheets with your husband!”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“Is shamelessness infectious?” Jiang Cheng asked Lan Xichen. “Wei Wuxian hasn’t been back all that long, and Hanguang-jun’s face is now as thick as a wall.”

“I’m sure it isn’t,” Lan Xichen replied. “Otherwise, wouldn’t you have been the first victim?”

“I don’t want to be Chief Cultivator!” Nie Huaisang shouted. “I don’t! I’m all full up! I’m running my own sect now, too – you can’t do this to me!”

“Get help,” Lan Wangji said. “As I did.”

“Merciless! Lan Zhan, you’re just absolutely merciless!”

Jiang Cheng snickered. “It’s no more than you deserve,” he told Nie Huaisang, picking up his wine and taking another sip.

Nie Huaisang turned and glared back at him. “Brave talk from the person who’s going to be helping me.”

Jiang Cheng choked.

“Did you miss the part where Lan Zhan said he was going to rotate the assignment?” Nie Huaisang asked maliciously. “Clearly it’s better to start getting you up to speed right away…”

“You did rather walk into that,” Lan Xiche remarked to Jiang Cheng, who glared at him.

“I didn’t agree to that!” he snapped.

“Who else am I going to ask?” Nie Huaisang asked, leaning back. “Lan Zhan and Wei-xiong are going to be in bed, er-ge’s already helping me run my sect –”

“Wait,” Lan Xichen said. “I’m what? When did I agree to that?”

“About the same time Jiang-xiong agreed to become the next Chief Cultivator,” Nie Huaisang said cheerfully. “Besides, I’m your favorite younger brother besides Lan Zhan, don’t deny it!”

“I don’t have -”

“Anyway, it’s good practice! It’ll take both of you to help Jin Ling manage when it’s his turn, won’t it?”

“All three of you,” Wei Wuxian put in. “That brat’s a trouble magnet. Do you know what happened at his last night hunt?”

“Oh we all know what happened at his last night-hunt,” Jiang Cheng grumbled. “How did something that simple get that out of hand?”

“Well, Jiang-xiong,” Nie Huaisang said, smirking at Wei Wuxian. “According to the Lan sect rules, it’s undoubtedly something to do with the people he associates with.”

“It is,” Lan Wangji said before Jiang Cheng could respond. “His uncles.”

Jiang Cheng opened his mouth to retort, then frowned and looked at Wei Wuxian, who also frowned.

“Wait,” he said, clearly thinking about it. “Jiang Cheng and I are his uncles from jiejie’s side, and Mo Xuanyu was also from his father’s side, and Lan-da-ge was sworn brothers with Jin Guangyao, which by some token makes him also an uncle…”

“And since Lan Zhan is er-ge’s brother, that makes him an uncle, too,” Nie Huaisang said. “Plus theoretically the same is true for me, through my da-ge.”

“…that’s a lot of uncles.”

“It is,” Nie Huaisang said, starting to grin wildly. “Clearly we should start an...association!”

#mdzs #nie huaisang #lan wangji #lan xichen #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #my fic #my fics #associates

[eintsein]

Impostor Syndrome: What it is and how to deal with it

There may be times when you feel like a fraud, like at any moment people will find out that you have no clue what you’re doing and you don’t deserve any of your achievements. You think that you’re unworthy of praise, that you only succeeded out of luck.

This is known as Impostor Syndrome, and around 70% of people have struggled with it in their lives. The problem arises when high achievers fail to internalize their success, i.e. when you attribute your success not to your own abilities but rather to external factors.

Some say that impostor syndrome could be linked to traits like anxiety or neuroticism. Impostor syndrome has also been commonly attributed to behavioral causes like childhood experiences, e.g. being labeled as “the smart one” or “the talented one”.

Another huge factor is how well you think you fit into a certain group, e.g. impostor syndrome is common among people of a racial/ethnic/cultural minority, women in STEM, and international students at US universities.

Dr. Pauline R. Clance was the first to design a scale to measure impostor syndrome based on six factors

The impostor cycle, where someone is given an achievement-related task and they either (a) overprepare or (b) procrastinate

The need to be special/the best

Superhuman characteristics

Fear of failure

Denial of ability and discounting praise

Feeling fear and guilt about success

There are different types of impostors, as categorized by Dr. Valerie Young, an expert on impostor syndrome (note that these categories aren’t mutually exclusive):

I’ve personally dealt with the first two types. I’m fairly certain I can attribute being ‘the genius’ to childhood/adolescent circumstance: I’ve been known as ‘the smart one’ throughout elementary school and high school - every time I made a mistake, it was met with a chorus of ‘wahh jo made a mistake...’ Even last month when I had a mini-reunion with some of my high school friends, one of them said something along the lines of “I like when Jo makes mistakes because it reminds me that she’s human, too.” I can definitely say I’ve overcome that now because, you know, college - everyone’s as smart or smarter than you and works pretty hard.

Being ‘the expert’ is still something I’m still trying to overcome. Last spring when I was applying to internships, I only dared to apply to those where I met 100% of the requirements. I’ve been coding for like 4 years but I constantly think I’m incompetent. It once got up to the point where I literally took 3 similar courses to assure myself that I actually do know how to do full-stack web programming. I still struggle to draw the line between relearning something because I don’t think I really know it, versus learning something for the expansion of knowledge.

How do I deal with it?

Firstly acknowledge that you have impostor-related thoughts Awareness is the first step to changing how you think and how you act.

How does impostor syndrome look like in a school/college setting? Examples include

You refrain from asking questions because you think other students/TAs/the professor will think you’re dumb;

You don’t respond to questions even though you kind of know the answer but you always think your answers aren’t right enough or that they’re simply wrong;

You don’t participate in discussions because you feel that you won’t add any value; or

You prevent yourself from having an opinion because you feel like you have no right to have one.

Reframe your thoughts

Think of their possible effects Do these thoughts help or hinder me? Will anything useful come out of thinking this? Acknowledge that not speaking up may mean slowing your team down or depriving your classmates of potentially valuable insights.

Separate fact from feeling Are they factual or simply a misinterpretation of my environment?

Differentiate feelings of fraudulence from feeling like an outsider Does my work show that I’m incompetent or is the fact that I’m the only female in a team of males/POC in a team of Caucasians make me think I’m inferior?

Stop comparing yourself to other people You might think something along the lines of “there are already so many people who can do what I do but so much better, so what’s the point in even trying?” However, remember that these people were once where you were, and taking even the smallest of actions could help you get to where they are.

Be more forgiving with yourself

Rethink perfection Not everything has to be perfect. Even if you have high standards, not achieving those standards doesn’t make you any less worthy.

Reframe mistakes and identify areas of improvement It’s okay to be wrong or not to know everything. Think of mistakes as learning opportunities and indicators of gaps in your knowledge/understanding of something, as opposed to a negative measure of your self-worth. Being wrong doesn’t mean you’re fake; it just means you have more to learn.

For example, previously I would only answer a question in class if I was at least 90% sure that was the correct answer. That’s a high threshold, and I don’t think it’s very useful for helping me learn and grow. Over the course of a year, I’ve managed to lower that down to I’d say around 60% (50% with coffee lmao).

Collect positive experience

Remember and reflect on praises Think about the efforts you exerted to help you achieve something and the positive responses you garnered when you finally achieved it. Remind yourself of the words of encouragement other people have told you, no matter how small. You could even keep a folder/document/journal to look back on when you feel like a fraud.

Heck, sometimes I feel like my posts aren’t useful or my designs are terrible, but then you guys tell me such kind things and I think, maybe I’m not as bad as I thought.

However, while it’s good to remember the good words people have said, don’t work just for the sake of praise. Focus on the value of the work itself and not the validation that comes from it.

Focus on providing value

Focus on what you can say Instead of thinking about what you don’t know, focus on what you do know and what you can say. Even if what you say isn’t entirely correct or relevant, it’ll get others around you thinking.

Remind yourself that holding back is like robbing the world of your ideas There’s always some value in your words, even if you don’t initially think so. How that value affects the world or other people may differ. For example, when you put forward an idea/thought in a discussion, it could be that

If there were parts that were incorrect, other people might have had the same misconception and are more than happy for the clarification;

Again, if there were parts that weren’t correct, they might not have had the same misconception but now realize that there is a way in which the subject can be misinterpreted, thus allowing them to have a more comprehensive understanding of the subject; and/or

It’ll stimulate further thinking and discussion and raise more questions, especially if other people wouldn’t normally think what you just thought. Then other people could bounce off your idea and form an equally great one.

Take action You won’t feel as much of a fraud if you’re doing something that brings you a little closer to achieving your goals or that adds value to your work.

However, be careful not to overwork yourself. Every time you start doing something, pause and think: is this really important to my progress or am I just trying to prove myself?

Instead of working on too many things, do something outside your comfort zone each day no matter how small. Once you do this, focus on quality (your growth) instead of quantity (the number of things you do).

Also, for those of you who fall into the ‘expert’ category, this also means practicing just-in-time learning, i.e. learning things when you need it, not just to comfort yourself.

I hope that was helpful, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions/comments/suggestions :)

#mine #eintsein #mymp #studyblr #studyspo #study hard #productivity #school #health #college #high school #organization #mental health #impostor syndrome #philosophy #masterpost #areistotle #academla #studyblrmasterposts #hey sareena

[multicolouredbeanbag]

pt 3 sorting characters into hogwarts houses

Part 1    Part 2

Tl;dr: April Stevens is a Hufflepuff who projects Slytherin; at her core she is a loyalist and she values community, even though her definition of a community has become GREATLY limited due to… reasons.

so here’s the thing. April looks like a Slytherin. She talks like a Slytherin. She walks like a Slytherin. But I don’t think she actually IS a Slytherin.

Today I defend the idea that April Stevens is actually a Hufflepuff (primary, ie. her motivations/values) and a Ravenclaw secondary (methods/tactics). I absolutely love this character even tho she is a lil mean, and I think that viewing her through this framework does justice to her complexities/core of who she is.

I mention the primary/secondary sorting hats system in Part 1 so feel free to google that or read my other analyses first.

Spoilers below:

Let’s talk about April’s secondary first, which addresses the HOW of person. How they approach situations, how they problem solve.

HP canon often posits Ravenclaws as the “intelligent” character, and while April IS very smart, that’s not why I consider her a Ravenclaw.

April is a HUGE planner and collector of information. She likes to be prepared because it gives her control over a situation. She’s an excellent strategizer. She’s less comfortable with improvising without having some tools/contingency plans to draw from, so when she’s stressed, she has a tendency to fall back on the tools that she’s brought with her (in contrast to Sterling, who absolutely thrives in improvisation)

My first example is the debate tournament - as team captain, she’s in it to win it. Her strategy of choice is to prepare detailed dossiers on all the other team captains. This works well enough for her, until opponent debater Craig pulls a move she couldn’t anticipate (using his own research against her), and she falls to pieces. Still, she takes some time, gathers herself again, and pressures Sterling to use the dossier on Craig to take him down (contingency plan).

Other examples:

Asked Sterling to debate her when deciding whether to come out or not - girl RUNS on logic

April’s approach to school is very organized/planning based, she’s also kind of a major nerd OBVIOUSLY, so this is a more conventional representation of her Ravenclaw-ness

S1E1, she snatches the condom wrapper but retreats with the information probably for processing purposes. She makes a plan - use threat of exposure to blackmail Sterling into giving her the fellowship position, and doesn’t deviate from it, even when the plan fails. Sterling has to save her from that situation ultimately.

This is a little more vague, but I’m thinking about how April comes off as a rigid, somewhat inflexible character. She’s not very easily persuaded to change her behavior (this, of course, makes so much sense! When you think about being gay in the south like? Her reluctance to come out is completely understandable) which contrasts very severely against Sterling’s expressive fluidity. April is a lot more static, and part of that is because it’s difficult for her to thrive when it’s an area that she hasn’t had the opportunity to prepare/plan/study.

Now for the much more interesting and complicated part, April’s PRIMARY.

Again, the Primary is all about WHY someone does something. Their motivations and values. I argue that April Stevens is a true Hufflepuff because she places utmost importance on community.

The HP canon defining qualities of being Hufflepuff are patience and loyalty. It’s the fair and inclusive house. However, it would be reductive to suggest that all Hufflepuffs are friendly, warm individuals. They are bonded together not by their shared amity, but by their value of people and groups—community.

April’s “community” on the show is unfortunately tied to her family and the Christian community. She fears not belonging (bc homophobia) so she overcompensates by conforming aggressively (see, Straight-Straight alliance S1E1).

The episode that really sold this analysis for me was S1E7, when April and Sterling had a number of conversations about April’s dad.

April: “My dad used to call my family a team. And I worked so hard to be the very best version of myself because Team Stevens wins. Teams Stevens is perfect, except that it’s not.”

With these words, we get some insight into why she’s so intense and high-achieving and obsessive all the time. It’s not so much because she wants to win for herself, it’s more the fact that she’s part of a team. She does her part for the team by excelling everywhere she thinks it counts, and of course her underlying gayness contributes to her NEED to be perfect. In practice, it comes off as personal ambition, which is why April seems, at least on the surface, pretty slytherin-y. In reality, it must be more about compensating for something she feels she lacks. Team Stevens can’t be perfect if they’re ostracized by the community due to their (only?) child being gay, so of course she has to keep it to herself, and she has to be the best on all other counts so no one can ever touch them.

Another example, S1E6, at the tournament April says, “You know what’s going on with my family right now; we have become the black sheep of the entire community. I needed a win!” She projects her personal problems onto external academic goals.

This framework of achievement as a prerequisite of community, flawed as it is, seemed to be working for her, at least up until her dad was arrested for attacking a prostitute. In a conversation with Sterl, back when April was trying to steal the fellowship title:

S: Why are you doing this? Is it because of what’s going on with your family?

A: What John did is his problem.

S: He’s still your dad.

A: I don’t care. He beat up a prostitute! I’m not a fan of sex workers but they deserve to be safe!

She obviously feels confused and hurt that her dad lied to her and was violent to women, which is something she cannot stand. For a while, she drops her father like a hot potato, throwing away his letters from jail and ignoring his calls. Hufflepuffs value people—fair is fair.

But she kind of still supports him at the end anyway, when he comes home (s1E10). She must be feeling so conflicted when this happens. Dad is a part of family (established community) therefore she has to support him. Dad possibly hurt someone, but then he did get cleared of his charges. April is essentially making a choice between Dad and Sterling, established community vs. possible (in fact PROBABLE) community alienation.

Hufflepuff and Slytherins are both loyalists because they both care about people—Hufflepuff because they’re people, Slytherin because they’re THEIR people. For all intents and purposes, by S1E10, Sterling is one of April’s “people.” So how does April choose? She goes with the established community, which is really to say she chooses culture and tradition.

April has spent her entire life locking away a significant part of herself for the sake of her family and more generally, her religious community. In S1E8/S1E9, April is almost convinced to come out—FOR Sterling. She probably would have gone through with it were it not for her dad showing up the next episode. April obviously has (justified) reservations about coming out because it’s honestly pretty dangerous to be out in the south, and these circumstances haven’t changed just because she found a girl that she likes. But she is reluctantly on board because Sterling would have been there to take the leap with her… at this point, April had expanded her definition of community to include Sterling, and for a moment Sterling’s optimism had broken past April’s defenses. Then her dad comes back, and April realizes that she has to make a choice even though this choice hurts them both terribly—Sterling is after all, one person, and what is one person in the face of boundless historical tradition and family values?

Hufflepuff morality tends to be influenced by external inputs, while Slytherin morality tends to come from the internal, the gut. Hufflepuffs can and will ignore their internal feelings when they contradict with the needs of the community. Slytherins are less easily swayed by external influences if they are sure they are right.

April has shrunk down her loyalties to a more manageable level (truly, a very LIMITED circle), but still prioritizes fairness and loyalty and of course, second chances. It’s partly why she’s open to reconnecting with her father. Maintaining these loyalties comes at the cost of her relationship with Sterling, but this is something April is willing to do: self-sacrifice for (greater) community.

Just to take a step back, April and Sterling’s relationship back in 5th grade is just… fascinating. In S1E6, we find out that April’s whole grudge against Sterling comes from when Sterling “gave her away” to another group at recess. An odd event that they both remember differently, and who can say what really happened? All we know is that April’s animosity comes from this perceived slight— the abandonment by someone she once trusted and considered part of her community. It’s very telling that their rivalry stems from this particular moment, the fracturing of a loyalty, as opposed anything else.

April: “the past is the past, we’re all adults here” but alsooo April, >:’(

Another example: at the tournament, when April is trying to convince Sterling to use the dirt on Craig to secure their win.

S: I don’t know if I can stoop that low.

A: He did it to me!

April’s first instinct was a quid pro quo, you attack me, my group will attack you. Which is why she is so offended that Sterling refuses to take the shot, because in April’s mind, it’s only fair. This exchange supports the idea that April considers community first, ambition second.

I like to think that April hides her vulnerable side, her honest hopes and dreams, behind her external perfectionism and ambition. I like to think that she cares a lot, that she’s a prickly, distrustful, kind of Hufflepuff who craves validation because she thinks it’s a substitute for connection. And I would like to see her find that type of community, that she and EVERYBODY deserves: love that doesn’t contain (in her words) “a post condition that we follow their rules for love.”

#teenage bounty hunters #tbh #april stevens #sterling wesley #stepril #devon hales #character analysis #hp houses #ok but if the tbh characters actually did go to hogwarts april would HUNDO P be in slytherin #it's alllll about the choice #gotta live up to the clearly elite pureblood upbringing that she would have #an abrasive intense gal trying her best #I LOVE APRIL STEVENS and devon if ur reading this? love u too #y'all i'm not religious but is it obvious who I project onto? #if u read the tags #thank u

[mikaa-mina]

At Garden’s Edge- Chapter 1: Repeat Offender

“Oh dear.”

Fretfully Aziraphale stared down at the... well. It was a plant, certainly, but he hadn’t the faintest clue what kind of plant it was due to the circumstances in which he had acquired it. (The circumstances Aziraphale had acquired this plant were as follows: Shortly after killing the second plant, he returned to the plant shop thinking it was merely unwell and was promptly thoroughly embarrassed when informed, no, it most certainly was dead. In a bit of a, not-panic, as it were, he got another plant. Not for anything as silly as wanting to prove to the owner that he could in fact keep a plant alive. That would just be silly. All the same, with the embarrassment ringing in his ears, he didn’t quite hear what kind of plant he had scooped up to buy and, theoretically, keep alive.)

All the same, it was green, it grew, and was in a pot. Or. Rather. It had been green and it had been growing, only now it was rather a bit.... brown, and somewhat on the crumbly side. He didn’t think it had been crumbly when he bought it. And that had only been, what, a week ago?

Oh. Plants needed to be watered, didn’t they? Or at least, plants that weren’t catuses did. Catstuses? Cacti? Oh, well, regardless, this was rather leafy, er, had been rather leafy and not covered in spines so, a plant but not a cactus. Thus, it needed watering. Probably.

When was the last time he’d watered it?

....Had he watered it?

Ever?

“Oh dear...” No wonder it was brown. And before it had been just the loveliest shade of green too. Well, at least he knew what the problem was now.

A quick search of his book-laden shop produced no results but in the back room he found one of his many misplaced mugs and filled it with water from the tiny old sink back there.

Making his way back through the maze of books he nearly passed by the spot of crumbling brown. It blended in fairly well with all of his old leather-bound books, quite the opposite of it’s supposed purpose. Or, well, rather the excuse he’d given when buying the poor thing.

‘Just needed a pop of color in the shop’, he’d scrambled to say, ‘it’d liven the place up’, he’d continued on with the lie turned not-quite-a-lie.

He stared down at the plant with a frown. Right. What was it that Crowley fellow did to make his plants so perfect and verdant? A bit unconventional, Aziraphale thought, but then, it did seem to have surprisingly good results. Or maybe it didn’t. Aziraphale wouldn’t know, didn’t know, he knew next to nothing about plants.

He watched the plant, gave it a moment to let the water sink in as was only polite, then adopted his best stern glare. Hands on his hips, lips pursed in displeasure, he looked down at the plant from above.

“Alright.” He said sternly, searching his mind for the right words and a harsh tone, “you’d best... you’d best buck up, you hear? I’m most displeased with all this brown.”

His glare wobbled.

A brown stick- stem?- thing on it crumbled off to join the other dead bits in the pot looking so terribly dejected and unhappy.

The worried frown broke through Aziraphale’s glare and he stepped up closer to the pot feeling absolutely horrid about its poor state. “Oh, oh I’m sorry my dear. I’m sure you’re doing your best.” He hovered over the plant, unsure and twisting his pinky ring around his finger, “why don’t I give you a day, hmm? Let the water soak in and I’m sure you’ll be fit as a fiddle tomorrow! Or, er, fit as a.... as a plant I suppose. A healthy plant!”

He stared at it but alas the plant did nothing.

“Right.” He took a step away but his eyes kept darting back to the plant. He really did not want to show up at Crowley’s flower shop again with a dead plant. Another dead plant. The third dead plant.

He twisted the ring around his pinky finger.

Right.

Okay.

He drew himself up, all five feet and ten inches of himself, and instructed the plant firmly, “I expect you to grow better by tomorrow or I’ll be very displeased.”

A stern nod and then he left it. To hopefully consider his words and, er, buck up, as it were.

Tomorrow came and found Aziraphale properly embarrassed and recounting the whole sordid tale to Crowley, a man who was finding far too much delight in his troubles.

“And I did what you said to try but- well...” he gestured to the brown and crumbling plant as it if was explanation enough.

It was.

“I can’t get it to grow no matter what I do.”

Finally he looked back up at Crowley, the most unusual flower shop owner he had ever met, and found him biting his lip to keep from laughing. At him.

Aziraphale scowled.

“Are you quite through?”

Crowley’s grin only widened, the edges twitching with badly concealed mirth as he fought to keep his laughter back. “Sorry, sorry,” he managed at last, laughter tracing the edges of his entirely unapologetic words like fizz crackling in pop, “it’s just- well- it- it can’t feel shame if it’s dead Aziraphale.”

“Oh.” Meaning shaming it into growing better would do nothing.

A laugh slipped through Crowley’s pursed lips and Aziraphale groaned, “really Crowley? Must you? Whatever is so funny about me killing another plant?”

The man shrugged, unable to keep his amusement off his face. Aziraphale was sure if he could see the man’s eyes that they’d be shining with laughter. “I’ve never seen someone- er, uh, hm,” he seemed to suddenly break off to chew his words in a rather sudden change of mind, “Well, hey, at least this one lasted longer.”

Aziraphale wished he wouldn’t wear those large dark sunglasses all the time, it was rather hard to decipher his expressions with just the rest of his face. Eyes were always so expressive, even with just the way they could crinkle at the edges, darken, or flicker away. They were extremely helpful in reading people in general, giving insight into sudden changes like the one that happened just now.

Crowley’s head dipped down as he looked at the plant before he glanced away only to do a double take. His eyebrows rose slowly as he leaned in towards the plant, hands drifting to settle on either side of the pot.

“How often did you say you watered it again?”

Bugger.

“I didn’t. Say, that is.”

Crowley’s head tilted up to look at him. Aziraphale twisted his ring.

“Aziraphale...” Oh he did not like the way he drew out his name. He drew it out slowly, with a budding hint of fiendish delight, like he’d caught Aziraphale with his hand in the cookie jar which was absurd because they were both adults and furthermore it should not have sent a little shiver through him- “did you even water this plant at all?”

“Of course I did!”

Crowley’s eyebrows rose high above the sunglasses in disbelief as he glanced between Aziraphale and the dead plant. A smirk slithered its way across his lips, his snake bite piercings glinting in the shop lights like a warning, like the flash of fangs before the bite, like-

“Before it was dead?” he challenged knowingly.

Aziraphale pursed his lips and looked elsewhere, refusing to give Crowley the satisfaction of a surrender.

Crowley laughed anyways, a sharp bright thing that startled his heart into skipping a beat. His cheeks flushed in mortification. Three dead plants, really? Three.

“If you’re quite through,” Aziraphale chanced a quick glance at the rather unprofessional shop owner dressed in a black leather jacket and piercings who was apparently still struggling not to laugh further at his customer. In the customer's face! Honestly! It was a wonder he got any business at all with customer service like this; it was probably a good thing he was so endearing or Aziraphale wouldn’t have come back. What with his laugh, sense of humor and-

“How about I suggest a plant for you this time?”

Considering the last three plants were chosen rather spotty criteria, that was probably... for the best. Especially since said criteria had been, at the moment of choosing, the following: 1. Whatever plant was closest to him that was also 2. appealing looking and 3. colorful, as to comply with his first lie as to why he was there.

(Said lie was told in a moment of panic when he had dropped by the flower shop without fully realizing that’s where his feet had taken him to. This wouldn’t have been cause for alarm if not for the fact of their first meeting and also that once asked if there was anything Crowley could help him with he came upon the realization that he had been thinking of him since their first meeting and couldn’t for the life of him think of what to say. He’d meant to say something companionable, like picking up on their conversation about plays, but ended up empty headed and dumbly pointing at the first colorful plant he saw and excusing it as “needing a pop of color in the shop” to “liven it up”. After all, it was a flower shop, so surely it was normal for people to pop by looking for plants? That wouldn’t be odd. Right? Right.)

“Oh alright,” he said, giving in as if he were doing Crowley the favor of letting him choose instead of the other way around.

As a reward he was granted a glimpse at one of those flash-paper grins Crowley seemed to have when he felt particularly victorious. Which was a bit ridiculous given that choosing a plant for Aziraphale had been what spurred it but it was bright and nearly so infectious that Aziraphale was fighting back a grin.

Crowley turned on the spot, spinning slowly and casting appraising eyes across the shop like a general looking for his best soldier. Or at least, the one that could best stand up for the current mission.

Oh dear. The mission was surviving Aziraphale’s care wasn’t it?

“Ah, ones with no pollen if you could, my dear.” The stuff got absolutely everywhere and he-

“Right, don’t want to damage your books, yeah. I remember. Said you ran a book evaluation shop right?” Crowley was still scanning the room looking for the perfect plant so he missed the way Aziraphale lit up at his casual remembrance of his pride and joy.

He knew he rather tended to, ah, “go on and on” about it as it were and that most people found it dreadfully boring. As a result he tended to try and avoid talking about it, so he knows he only brought it up once, maybe twice, in the four times he’s met with Crowley. He hadn’t wanted to bore the first interesting conversational partner he’d had in a while and also having that bored, glazed over, checked out look aimed at his pride and joy stung more than just a bit.

So. That Crowley had bothered to remember and then even bring it up in conversation was... strangely touching.

Crowley glanced at him and at once Aziraphale realized he’s been lost in his head a few moments too long.

“Correct my dear,” he cut himself off out of habit from adding ‘and restoration’ and cleared his throat to rid it of the surprise in his voice only to undo all of that with his next unexpected words, “I’m surprised you remembered honestly.”

Crowley actually tuned all the way around to face him for that, both eyebrows raised dramatically over his sunglasses as to not be missed.

“What? Why not? ‘Course I remember, don’t have that bad of a memory.”

“Well, it’s just,” he fidgeted with his ring, “I’m surprised to care about my owning a bunch of dusty books.”

Crowley made a few interesting, if confusing, noises in the back of his throat before stumbling his way into actual words, “wha- gah- don’t, don’t say that about them Aziraphale, it’s obvious you love them-”

“Love?!” he spluttered flushing in mortification, “I would hardly-”

Crowley stilled from his anxious fluttering about and gave Aziraphale a crooked tilt of a smile. He was surprised to find it a bit... tender.

“Aziraphale. You near light up the room when you talk about your books and your shop.”

“I-”

Firmly, but gently, “you do.” A cough and Crowley turned away but not before Aziraphale caught the pink high on his cheeks. “Anyways, it’s fine. I like seeing you light up- I mean! Uh, smile- ack- i- guh-” his shoulders hunched up a bit, “whatever. Just- talk about it all you want. I get it.”

And standing there, in the middle of a veritable greenhouse sanctuary of plants, of flowers, of things oft thought of as trivial, or pretty but not worth much, of the things Crowley so clearly loved and prided himself on, Aziraphale realized he did get it. And more than just that, more than just sympathizing/empathizing with him, he wanted Aziraphale to talk about his shop, his work, the things he took pride and joy in.

A little stunned, a little touched, awed, the soft “oh” slipped out all on its own.

Crowley grumbled a bit, but with his back to Aziraphale he could see very clearly how the tips of his ears were pinking. “Right. So. Uh. Talk about your books all you want.”

Aziraphale smiled.

“All right.”

Crowley stilled, then chanced turning halfway towards him with a glance before pretending to inspect a nearby plant. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

A blink and you’ll miss it flash of a smile before, “right. Plants then.” And without another word on the subject he stalked off towards his chosen victim across the shop, looking all the word for a predator on a mission. The image was only broken by his constant, lovely, rambling of what kind of plant it was, how to care for it, and how this one should be up to snuff and wouldn’t dare disappoint either of them. Aziraphale politely pretended not to hear his soft hissed threat to the plant of “would it?” but he couldn’t quite hide his smile quick enough before Crowley turned around. They both faltered for a moment, something hovering in the shop, new and fragile; It seemed tight, strung like a tightrope. Tense but not hard.

Crowley spluttered into the ending of his plant ramble before pushing the potted plant into Aziraphale’s hands almost a touch rushed. “Right. Snake plant, remember. Sturdy, beautiful, shouldn’t give you any trouble.” There was a stink eye aimed at the plant of all things, “No direct sunlight, shouldn’t have to water it all that often.” Here the stink eye at the plant morphed into a glint aimed at Aziraphale, Crowley’s mouth doing a crooked slant of a teasing grin as he finished with, “About once every two to three weeks instead of days. That sound doable?”

A nervous return smile and Aziraphale managed a, “yes. Quite.” as he fought to keep the bubble of embarrassment in his chest from popping.

The grin wobbled a touch into smile territory before Crowley coughed and looked elsewhere for a moment. “Right. So. Any questions and you can call me. Er. The shop. Me at the shop.”

Aziraphale smiled. “Sounds jolly good.”

“Jolly good?”

“Oh, don’t make fun.”

“Never,” the grin seemed to slip onto Crowley’s face of it’s own accord, “you just have the oddest way of talking.”

“Crowley.”

“Oh I didn’t mean that as a bad thing, honest!” He held up his hands placatingly, eyes dancing with delight, “It’s very you.”

Aziraphale wasn’t sure whether he was meant to take that as a compliment or insult. He decided it didn’t matter how it was meant and that he’d take it as a compliment regardless. “Well. Thank you I suppose.”

Crowley didn’t laugh, though it seemed to be a near thing as he fought back a grin rather dismally. “Sure thing, Aziraphale.”

-

  Nine Days Later

Crowley stared down at the terribly drooping and definitely dead snake plant with total horrified amazement.

“I-wha.... how?!”

Sheepishly Aziraphale began making his excuses but Crowley wasn’t even listening to him, instead he was muttering under his breath to himself about counting days and how ‘these things practically thrived with neglect! So how?!’

Aziraphale let his excuses trail off, clearly he wasn’t being listened to anyways, and the hot flush of embarrassment climbing up his cheeks was taking all his willpower to keep down anyhow. It had been nine days. A record but still.

“But-i-you-” Crowley’s stuttering stopped suddenly as he peered even closer at the plant, his face nearly in the plant, eyebrows scrunched down while his critical eyes surely picked out the details of the plant’s death. Then his eyebrows shot up in surprise before a low groan escaped the man, a hand reaching up into his hair to run through it but instead stopping to grip it tightly in frustration as he looked at Aziraphale, flabbergasted.

“First you can’t remember to water the plant, ever!- and then- and then I give you a plant you’re not supposed to water for 2 weeks and you-you waterboard it to death!”

“It looked parched!”

“It- it- parched?!” repeated Crowley, incredulous.

“Yes!”

“I-it-gah!” he seemed to be having problems with speaking, stuttering and stumbling over half formed words before finally landing on a slightly helpless, “I don’t even know what to say.”

“Then perhaps,” Aziraphale started primly, “if you can’t think of anything nice to say then you shouldn’t say anything at all.” A pause where Crowley’s mouth fell open in astonishment, filling Aziraphale with a sort of delighted glee, and then he added, “and then perhaps when you’re done with that you can sell me another plant. A... sturdier plant.”

Crowley tilted his head back and laughed, bright and sharp.

“Sturdier he says. Yeah, yeah alright, I can do that.”

He was still grinning when he led the way back through the isles of plants.

-

You can also read this on Archive of Our Own! :DD

#Good Omens #Good Omens Fanfiction #Crowley #Aziraphale #Ineffable Husbands #Just Ineffable #Human AU #Flower shop AU #Humor #Romance #Comedy #Multi Chapter Fic #At Garden's Edge #My Writing #Good Omens fic #Gomens fic

[aion-rsa]

How The Mandalorian Gave Fans a Different Kind of Star Wars Story

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This Star Wars: The Mandalorian article contains spoilers.

Technically, Disney+’s The Mandalorian is part of the biggest franchise on earth. But it doesn’t always feel that way.

True, it’s a Star Wars property, and it rarely lets you forget that fact. The show is rife with references to the films and animated series that have come before it and it enjoys padding out existing lore in ways that only the most hardcore of fans will care about—or possibly even notice. (Did you remember there was a krayt dragon skeleton in A New Hope? Be honest.)

The Mandalorian isn’t a story that requires a tremendous amount of Star Wars knowledge to follow or enjoy. And that’s because its central tale is one that follows rules and patterns we’ve all seen before. A mix of tropes from classic spaghetti westerns and samurai adventures, the show offers a broad look at life on the edge of the galaxy that exists well beyond the world of Jedi Knights, Sith warriors, and space princesses. And its tale of a lone bounty hunter and the supercute Force-wielding toddler he is charged with protecting is proof positive that there is space for every kind of story in this franchise. (As well as every kind of fan.)

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

In a universe that has become increasingly dense and self-contained, The Mandalorian still manages to feel like a breath of fresh air. Sure, its second season finale includes a surprise appearance by Luke Skywalker, because no property in this universe can apparently escape that family and their seemingly never-ending daddy issues, but the Disney+ series doesn’t seem concerned with him as anything other than a vehicle to further the story of Din Djarin, a good man who is trying to do right – by his faith, by his people, by the tiny creature whose life has suddenly become intertwined with his own.

Though the eponymous Mandalorian has run across a bevy of characters that have made longtime fans shriek with delight (Boba Fett, Bo-Katan, Ahsoka Tano, Luke himself), and the series ties in rather neatly with other franchise properties like The Clone Wars and Rebels, it still understands that its greatest strengths stem from its smaller stakes, more realistic worldbuilding, and the emotional connection between two vastly different creatures.

The Mandalorian isn’t an epic adventure, a space opera about the future of the galaxy as we understand it, or a tragedy about a single family’s apparent inability to keep from making the same mistakes from one generation to the next. It’s a story that’s deliberately limited in its scope and modest in its ambitions and, at the end of the day, the show itself is all the stronger for these choices. 

In comparison to other Star Wars properties, The Mandalorian’s story is almost painfully straightforward, if perhaps a little bit darker in places than we’re maybe used to in this universe thus far. Set in the galaxy’s Outer Rim following the fall of the Galactic Empire, it generally deals with characters – including its own lead – who are not terribly complicated people. Their lives are simpler, rougher, and more focused on the everyday challenges of living than the Jedi and characters like them that populate the films. 

Even the Mandalorian himself is simultaneously an avatar and a real person, and we get to know him as much through his struggles as his successes. He is, after all, the most reluctant of saviors. Yet, as many lone warriors before him, he is also a man with a code, and he holds tight to it, even in the lawless outskirts of the galaxy. 

Occasionally Mando will have to rescue someone or must join forces with an uneasy partner in order to kill a monster or pull off a heist. But no matter how that particular adventure goes, by the end of the hour, he’s back on his path and moving toward his next goal. The show doesn’t really have “arcs” so much as stories that occasionally take place over an episode or two—see the transport of the Frog Lady back to her partner that begins in “The Passenger” and ends in the subsequent installment—and its most dramatic set pieces generally rely on Mando fighting something, ranging from a furious mudhorn to ravenous, gross ice spiders.

In the world of genre storytelling, serialized stories with twisty plots and puzzle-box mysteries are all the rage right now. Just look at shows like Westworld, a drama that—as much as I love it—spends much of its time tying itself into complex narrative knots it doesn’t really know how to get out of. So, a show like The Mandalorian, with its linear narrative, clear-eyed storytelling, and refreshingly basic plots suddenly feels like a revelation.

And maybe it is.

Read more

TV

The Mandalorian Season 3 Predictions: What to Expect

By John Saavedra

Books

What Star Wars: The High Republic Reveals About the Galaxy Before the Movies

By Megan Crouse

The fact is, there’s still real value in a simple story about a man doing his best, no matter what circumstances he finds himself in. Maybe we’ve forgotten that fact in a television landscape that’s conditioned us to always be looking for a trick or a surprise reveal, but The Mandalorian’s largely straightforward narrative proves that it doesn’t have to be that way. And the show is as satisfying as any series that requires complex fan theories to enjoy or in-depth explainers to fully understand. 

The explainers are nice, don’t get me wrong, but in all honesty, the show is doing just fine introducing existing canon characters like Ahsoka to new audiences on its own. You don’t need to have watched Rebels to enjoy her presence here, but if you have, the satisfaction is all the greater. Truly, we don’t give The Mandalorian enough credit for the delicate balance it strikes in the age old struggle between storytelling and fanservice. It’s a difficult thing, and the show walks a fine line both carefully and well.

Even the appearance of Luke, probably the ultimate moment in Star Wars pandering, exists not for its own sake so much as it does to advance the series’ main relationship – that between Din and young Grogu. (If you didn’t get a little emotional watching them say goodbye to one another, then you have no heart, I’m sorry.)  

There’s little of the narrative baggage that usually comes along with a Skywalker arriving on the scene here – it doesn’t appear that anyone else even knows who he is beyond the fact that he is a Jedi – and though he’s meant to teach Grogu the ways of the Force, there’s no real indication we’ll see Luke again. After all, he has to start off down the path that leads him to The Last Jedi, and Grogu will  undoubtedly return to his Mandalorian’s side at some point in the not too distant future. Disney knows where its money is, after all. And it’s not in Pedro Pascal merch, much as we all love him. 

The Mandalorian’s  first season occasionally drew criticism for what naysayers deemed a “flimsy” or “barely there” plot, but this underestimates the power inherent in the series’ simple framework. Not only is it an emotional balm for those of us who are, quite frankly, tired of hour-long installments that require a significant amount of work to understand, it actually serves an important narrative purpose. The slower pace and simpler story allow us to get to know Mando and his culture, and gives the Star Wars universe a chance to take a minute and breathe.

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The Skywalker films are so full of big, potentially galaxy ending stakes and consequences that we as viewers get little time to simply take the universe in on its own terms – let alone get to know the people that inhabit it. We’re usually too busy worrying about how it all ties back to the family at the story’s center or the Jedi they serve. 

The Mandalorian has shown us what the Star Wars world outside of all the Skywalker drama looks like – even though it briefly includes one of them – and it lets us take our time to gawk at its sketchy bars, enjoy its colorful characters, and travel through run-down desolate towns at a slower pace. It’s allowed us to invest in the emotional connection between a lonely man and a lost creature who may be the last of its kind. And quaint though all that might seem, it’s certainly turned out to be a journey worth taking.

The post How The Mandalorian Gave Fans a Different Kind of Star Wars Story appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[worddevdealswithml]

Failed Step 1 (And 2 (And 3))

Chapter 24: Dear

The handwriting was… off.  Kagami’s handwriting, as she’d learned, was thin, and precise, all sharp corners and careful lines.

This…  This wasn’t, exactly.  The writing looked like she had been… Tired?  It seemed like she hadn’t been as composed as usual.  There was a faint, brownish smudge, that looked like it could have been long-dried blood.

‘Dear Kagami,

How dare you try to imply that I have anything less than the utmost ability to stomach unpleasant things when I need to.  If I didn’t, I would never have even considered stepping into your house, and I definitely wouldn’t have been willing to dance with you.  If you really want to remind yourself what I’m capable of withstanding, then by all means, I’ll grab my foil and drag you a bit closer to losing to me at fencing, too.

In fact, I think you already know how much I can put up with, since I can only imagine that your refusal to fight me stems from the fear that sooner or later, I would surpass you.

And just so we’re clear, I would.

-C. Bourgeois’

--

‘Dear Chloe,

I’m not surprised that you took offense to an insult I didn’t make.  I didn’t say or imply that you couldn’t put up with difficulties outside of your food. If you took offense at the idea, I can only assume that it’s because of your own self-doubt.

As for why I refuse to fight you, I assure you, it’s not because I believe you would ‘surpass me.’  In reality, it’s because you are beneath me, and I see no reason to humor you by allowing you into my house.  What would I gain by fighting you, except for a pointless drain on my time?  How much would I improve by fighting a girl who had only been fencing for a few months, when I have been fighting since I was a child?

More to the point, even if I could find some gain in fighting you, it would be vastly overshadowed by the option of facing off against any number of far stronger opponents, who would actually challenge me.

-Tsurugi, Kagami’

--

Kagami was in… a bit of a state, when she got home, and the reason, as always, was Chloe.

In the past few days, presumably since Kagami’s letter had arrived, she’d seemed practically incapable of doing anything but staring daggers at her. It seemed like every time she stepped out of a classroom, she only needed to tilt her head, and there, in the corner of her vision, would be Chloe.

Kagami had enjoyed it.  The idea of Chloe staring at her with all the fury she could muster was… satisfying.

And then…

--

She’d been in her car on the way home, earlier today, when she’d found the article that Chloe had been unable to miss when she’d gotten home on New Year’s.  By some terrible twist of fate, it had been on her recommended page.

She’d seen the picture, read the title, and almost hadn’t comprehended what she’d been looking at.

She’d clicked, in almost horrified fascination, and…

She hadn’t felt anything as she’d read the article, nor, indeed, as she’d clicked the ‘back’ button.  She had stared, numbly, at her computer screen until her fingers, seemingly by themselves, clicked into the search bar and typed ‘Kagami Tsurugi Chloe Bourgeois.’

The top result was the article she’d just read, followed by a few more just like it.  None of them, when she’d read through them, seemed to have any particular basis in reality, and all of them, without fail, showed that same picture from the moment just after midnight, when…

That was when the numbness had vanished, with all the subtlety of a battering ram punching directly into her stomach.

She didn’t know if she’d purposefully forgotten about what she’d been thinking, or whether it had simply been lost in all the excitement, but it was back now.

She’d been about to kiss Chloe.

As the thought appeared in her mind with an ease that suggested it had just been buried, her face had almost instantly flushed, bright red, and she’d pulled herself back into the corner, in the hopes that her driver would have less of a chance of looking at her.

She had stared at her phone, hoping that somehow it would turn out that she’d just misread something on her phone, which had put the idea in her head, or…

She’d been about to kiss Chloe.

The thought had pounded in her head like a heartbeat, or a headache, and even as she’d carefully kept her motion composed on the way back to her room, she couldn’t quite lift her eyes from the ground, for fear of someone catching sight of her face, or, perhaps out of shame at the fact that she had so little control over her own thoughts.

She shut the door behind her, and, not even looking around, dropped into her chair.

--

She leaned back in her chair, the heels of her hands pressed into her forehead, hoping that somehow, she could force the thought to resolve itself into something else.

But nothing happened.

Seconds passed, and then minutes, and she finally opened her eyes again, and…

There was no apt description for what she felt when she saw the envelope on her desk, unless it be the existential dread that most people would treat an eldritch abomination with.

She stared, and, for a long second, her mind seemed frozen, whether by terror or something else, she didn’t know.

Finally, with a shaking hand, she reached out, and slipped a thumb under the flap of paper holding it shut, barely even wincing as the paper cut her enough to draw blood.

Slowly, she extracted the letter.

 ‘Dear Kagami,

Who, exactly, says I’m not a challenge?  I’ve hit you.  You know, for a fact, that I’ve hit you.  So please, tell me where exactly you get the nerve to talk about me like I’m some easy win.

I would have expected you would have learned by now that treating me like anything less than your biggest threat is not an option. Ignoring me is not an option.  If you think that the New Year’s Ball was a one-time thing, then you’re even dumber than I thought.

You’re going to lose this fight, Kagami.  Maybe when your back’s to the wall, you’ll understand that.

I’m going to find out.

-C. Bourgeois’

 ‘If you think that the New Year’s Ball was a one-time thing…’

‘You’re going to lose this fight…’

Kagami knew, of course, that on some level, Chloe had no idea what exactly was going on inside her head, but right now, it felt like her mockery was jabbing at something deeper than usual, and the idea…

She felt sick.

--

The first thing Chloe noticed as she picked up the envelope was… It wasn’t quite right.  That was to say, the fold of paper that was meant to hold it in place was… less perfect than usual?

It was improperly sealed, was the point.

She opened it, and, extracting the letter inside, almost thought that this must have been from someone else.

The handwriting was… off.  Kagami’s handwriting, as she’d learned, was thin, and precise, all sharp corners and careful lines.

This…  This wasn’t, exactly.  The writing looked like she had been… Tired?  It seemed like she hadn’t been as composed as usual.  There was a faint, brownish smudge, that looked like it could have been long-dried blood.

Chloe would almost have thought that this wasn’t Kagami’s writing, yet, at the bottom, it was still her name.

She looked back at the top, and started reading.

 ‘My Dear Chloe,

Where has Queen Bee been when the heroes needed help? Why have they only called on her when they can’t afford to leave even the smallest asset off the table?  I believe it’s for the same reason that you are incapable of acknowledging even the slightest possibility that you’re anything less than a goddess in human form.  You truly believe you’re better than anyone else, and it makes you think that setbacks are coincidences, and successes are natural.

You have not won.  You will never win, and your assertions about being my biggest threat are, to use your favorite word, ridiculous.  You are far more of a nuisance than you are a threat, and in large part, the reason you are annoying is that you completely refuse to accept your circumstances.

You say that I’ll ‘understand’ when my back’s to the wall.  You have no idea what you’re talking about.  If you continue to force my hand, I’ll put your back to the wall, and teach you a lesson that might finally shatter your pride for good.

Kagami’

 Chloe’s brow furrowed, as she scanned down the letter.

Parts of it seemed familiar, like things that Kagami would have said anyway, but parts of it…

Take the handwriting, for example.  Kagami didn’t underline things.  Her handwriting should have been better.

And the bit about Queen Bee…  She could be offended about it in a minute, but right now, it was just weird.  Kagami had never brought it up, and…

It felt like Kagami had grabbed whatever she could find and just flung it at Chloe.

She put the letter down.

She’d seen Kagami today, right?  She’d seemed… Normal?  Of course, it was hard to tell, since she was always so expressionless, and, of course, it was the 24th, so she had that tournament tomorrow, but still, if anything, she’d seemed less inclined than usual to return Chloe’s stare.

That didn’t seem right, if she was really that angry over the letter.

So…  What?

Chloe scanned the letter again.

Again.

And…

She’d almost missed it, eyes focused on the words below, full of fury.

At the very top…

‘My Dear Chloe.’

She stared at the paper.

That…

Chloe furrowed her brows, and went to pull out one of Kagami’s older letters.

‘My Dear Chloe.’

There was something strange about that.  It was at odds with the rest of the letter, and it didn’t match the others she’d sent.

‘My Dear Chloe.’

It was…

When she’d said just, ‘Dear Chloe,’ it had seemed perfunctory. That was just the way that polite people started letters.  Anybody would have ignored it, but… ‘My.’

The rest of the letter seemed to fade into a blur, as she stared at the top of the letter.

It…  If she hadn’t known better…

It was clearly meant as a… a condescending insult.  ‘My dear’ was the kind of thing you’d call a child, wasn’t it?

Yeah…

Yeah, that was it.

This was just another insult.

Well…  Chloe knew how to handle insults.

Now… she just needed some paper.

#ML #Miraculous Ladybug #ML fanfic #Miraculous Fanfic #Failed Step 1 #Chloegami #Chlogami #Chloe Bourgeois #Kagami Tsurugi

[sundaynightnovels]

Novel Prep

Wasn’t tagged by anyone, but decided to give this a go!

Rules: Answer the questions and then tag as many writers as there are questions answered (or as many as you can) to spread the positivity! Even if these questions are not explicitly brought up in the novel, they are still good to keep in mind when writing.

I’m doing this for my current WIP, like all things out of season. 

FIRST LOOK

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

A gatekeeper is tasked with the responsibility of finding out the reason behind rebellious stirrings in the afterlife 

OR

Even after having passed away, death isn’t easy. Souls have to grapple with the reasons on why they cannot seem to move on, while enduring the persistence of ‘life’ after dying.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

One book with a companion novel.

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

A little bleak throughout.

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

Well it’s not other stories per se but concepts. There’s a German concept that I learnt in university called Vergangenheitsbewältigung about post-WWII anxieties, which is basically about needing to understand the past in order to make sense of the future.  There’s also a concept in Hong Kong filmmaking in the 1990s that stem from the uncertainties of the future regarding the British handover of HK to China, which talks about HK’s existence as a city of transients, whereby sudden interest in HK’s culture and identity takes place only because there’s a threat of it disappearing. There’s a recent 2015 HK film called 10 Years that tackles these anxieties through a series of short films about a dystopia HK in the year 2025, after HK has officially become a part of China. (I think the reading I had to do for this was called ‘Culture in a Space of Disappearance’, if anyone’s interested!) The first concept is what drives the main plot of the book, while the second concept doesn’t really play out in my story itself, but was just an interesting concept that got me thinking of the setting of the book as a transient port where the souls were never meant to settle down in, but had to because of circumstances. 

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

I’m terrible at moodboards (don’t know how to begin them) so... I don’t really have any so far, even though I have vague images in my mind. I’ll try to make one someday??? but no promises! 

MAIN CHARACTER

6. Who is your protagonist?

I guess it’s Shou. (this is my first time introducing this character and look how casually i’m bringing them up HAHA)

7. Who is their closest ally?

Zhen, I suppose. She was the first person he’s ever met who took him in and brought him back to society, so yeah. 

8. Who is their enemy?

It’s the same for everyone in the story really -- themselves. 

9. What do they want more than anything?

He really wants to figure out why they can’t move on (honestly, I’ve already given away the entire plot as to why in my response above). 

10. Why can’t they have it?

Because he doesn’t know??? HAHAHA. Most of the other characters have figured it out, but he takes a little longer. It’s also generally because no one’s telling him anything.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

This is more of a humour point actually, but that he is more observant / analytic than he really is.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

He’s rather tall and pretty-looking, with long hair and an angular jawline. People mistake him as a girl from the back.

PLOT POINTS

13. What is the internal conflict?

He can’t seem to remember his own past.

14. What is the external conflict?

That he’s still stuck in the afterlife tumbling around and trying to move on.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

It’s already happened. 

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

HA there are really no plot twists in my story. It’s just an introspective study.

17. Do you know how it ends?

Yeah. But there’s the companion novels -- which will be a series of stories about the actual pasts of the characters -- that I haven’t really thought through.

BITS AND BOBS

18. What is the theme?

Friendship and family and acceptance and understanding and (dun dun dun) the past. The terrifying past.

19. What is a reoccurring symbol?

Water / water-like substances, twilight, spring, winter, things like that.

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description)

A fantastical setting of an afterlife. It’s just a pretty plain, rather old town that has some modern devices (courtesy of whoever’s motivated enough to invent them when they’ve already passed on).

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

I have the first draft down, but it needs extensive editing.

22. What excited you about this story?

THE JOKES THAT I GET TO WRITE!! Like seriously, okay so Shou is this major goofball of a character. Because he’s been isolated for so long (I really feel like I need to explain the context better...) he’s used to overthinking everything and entertaining himself and so when he’s reintroduced back into society, he’s dramatic as HELL and overthinks too much and jumps from one thought to another pretty quickly. Most of his inner thoughts are just monologues and deep thinking that are actually just really ridiculous and lame.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

I try not to read back on what I’ve previous written, and just keep on going!!

I don’t really know much people here, so I’ll just tag some random tumblrs / people that I’ve spoken to so far! @monstrouswrites @cawolters @things-waiting-to-be-written @storyteller-kaelo @jarrickdexum1991 @stuffy-lana @pens-swords-stuff && whoever else who wants to do this!

#writeblr #writing tags #novel prep #like all things out of season #WIP #tags

[mildlincrs]

hello everyone! i was planning on publishing this a few months ago, but i’ve had a busy summer. better late than never:’) i published a similar post last year regarding my freshman experience and i wanted to continue that series with a post about my sophomore year, which i found to be much more stressing and difficult. keep in mind that everyone’s high school experiences will vary, whether it’s because of the nature of the school or circumstances that have nothing to do with school. the rest of the post is under the cut:)

my sophomore experience

as i mentioned, i found that my sophomore year was much more taxing than freshman year. my mental health deteriorated considerably and i found myself with a lot on my plate. my grades dipped - i struggled in most of my stem classes, which can be attributed to both bad mental health and bad teachers, but also the lack of work ethic. my work habits suffered along with my mental health, and i would constantly avoid and put off assignments - not because i was trying to, but because i felt so mentally exhausted and stressed that i couldn’t bring myself to work on anything at all.  i'd spend hours at a time doing absolutely nothing because i'd be stressing myself out of working, i'd shut down and numb myself to the point where i couldn't do anything.

towards the end of 2nd semester, i felt a little better - i started seeing a therapist, and though we stopped seeing them (money), it helped a lot and my mental health improved - i managed to pass all of my classes! even the stem ones! even though i. still didn’t really try at the end because i didn’t care enough about getting rlly high grades. tbh i stopped caring more than i should have, which i intend to change this year.

the only thing that really kept me going was my continued involvement in extracurriculars and support from my friends. my marching band season was extremely difficult - the show we performed and competed with was harder than my freshman year show, but the payoff was incredibly worth it at competitions. i continued to be involved in urban dance at my high school, and i’m so glad i did - being more inclined towards the arts gives me an outlet for me to express my feelings and pent-up thoughts, and i know that no matter what, music and dance will be there for me.

as i mentioned, my friends really helped me through the school year. a few of my closest friends (from marching band/band) saw me at some of my lowest points, and had they not been there to help me get back up again, things would be very different than they are now. their willingness to listen to me and support me is something i’m truly thankful for. 

overall - sophomore year was not the best. if anything, the bad times outweighed the good, and i’m really hoping for junior year to be a little better. a lot of people talk about how junior year is the most difficult year, but i personally found the freshman-sophomore transition to be a lot harder. my classes were not necessarily hard, and my teachers were actually all pretty good! except for chemistry though:// chemistry was the class that i found interesting but. lost all interest in later on as my teacher didn’t really teach anything which was great.

advice

1. don’t let yourself slack off

it’s so easy to think that you can just relax after you’ve finished freshman year. the push to be successful never stops. be careful that you don’t let yourself become complacent, especially if you’re taking more difficult classes (i.e. ap classes). if you have an established study routine, stick to it. if you have a consistent sleep schedule, stick to it. it’s harder than it seems to remain disciplined, but it’s necessary.

2. stay healthy!

hydrate! eat food! get sleep! there was a point during 1st/2nd semester where i literally wouldn’t eat for days in a row. it’s a wonder i didn’t become terribly sick, but my grades and mental health suffered from that and i’m still trying to recover from that. it’s incredibly important that you maintain your physical health, and it actually makes it easier to take care of your mental health, too. getting sleep is also. super important. i was literally falling asleep in classes on a daily basis, and while it was very comforting that i could do that, it didn’t help when i was trying to study/do work for those classes.

3. don’t get worked up over grades, but don’t get complacent about them, either

it’s literally human nature to be imperfect. you’re meant to make mistakes. it’s okay if you make mistakes - what’s more important is how you recover from them. your ability to rebound from failure is what will help you in the long run. my marching band director constantly reminds us that success is built from failure, and to be okay with the process of getting better and achieving success - but it’s also important to remember that you are responsible for actively ensuring that you’re doing what’s necessary for you to do well. additionally - your GPA does not define you. it’s sad that it really does mean a lot for colleges, but let yourself relax sometimes - studying all the time is going to be less attractive than someone presenting a high school career that’s much more involved in things outside of school.

4. surround yourself with good people

don’t take friendships for granted. my friends helped me through so many things last school year, and we’ve become so much closer. i know that we’ll always have each others’ backs regardless of what happens, which is one of the best feelings to have. i genuinely love and appreciate my friends so much? wow

best of luck to those entering sophomore year! remember that you are stronger than you believe, and even if you encounter bad times, there’s always going to be a light at the end of the tunnel no matter how difficult it is to get through. feel free to send me an ask or message me with any questions! i’m rooting for you:)

#mmp #tip #studyblr #studying #school #studyspo #high school #studyquill #tbhstudying #bookmrk #focusign #obsidianstudy #masterpost #advice #study tips #heysareena #mp #cmpsbls #somestudy #mine

[kiruuuuu]

Yet more Montagne/Bandit in which Bandit turns into a hissy cat and goes mountain climbing (thank you @zer0kaji 💝) because @magehir requested Bandit being jealous. This is a two-parter, with the second part coming (heh) either tomorrow or the day after! (Rating T, humour/fluff, ~2.3k words)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

.

Montagne is talking to Fuze.

It’s a bit like looking into a mirror and Bandit decidedly doesn’t like what he’s seeing: the Uzbek’s resting bitch face not moving an inch as the tall Frenchman cheerily chews his ear off, both of them eating lunch away from everyone else at the end of one of the tables in the canteen, away from both the GIGN and the Spetsnaz, oddly enough. Normally, all the Russians stick together like mutated glue in that it can drink, hurl insults and laugh deafeningly, so seeing only one of them is decidedly strange. A little like spotting a lone porkling in the wild, even with the authenticity of a threat attached to it: the looming danger of its mother bursting out of the nearest shrub to smash faces. Still, Tachanka’s booming voice is directed at only two of his boys today.

He sits down and watches the odd couple suspiciously while pretending to be interested in whatever lame story Blitz is trying to tell him right now, nodding and huffing at the correct moments yet his gaze unwaveringly fixed on a vaguely uncomfortable-looking Fuze opposite of a smiling Montagne. It’s probably how Bandit looked in the beginning whenever the Frenchman (his lover, he corrects himself, still stunned at this reality, and barely manages to suppress a cringe when his brain helpfully supplies: his boyfriend) initiated a conversation with him: pained, disbelieving, sometimes even annoyed. He knows now it mostly stemmed from embarrassment upon Montagne knowing about some of his weaknesses while all Bandit had heard about his tall colleague was praise upon praise, so there was a certain power imbalance with which he was far from alright. It didn’t matter that Montagne didn’t know any details, him simply choosing to keep him company because he sensed Bandit needed it was enough.

So now he’s squinting at Fuze. Because he looks exactly like Bandit used to and hey, where did he end up? In Montagne’s bed. Faint nausea rolls over him and destroys what little appetite he initially had and with it gone, nothing keeps him at the table anymore. Ignoring Blitz’ questions as he wordlessly gets up to leave, he squeezes in past Montagne, drags his chair unnecessarily close and presses his side against his lover’s while fixing Fuze with a cool gaze which is returned just as coldly. “Hey”, he says and does his best not to sound bitchy right away because he’s not, definitely isn’t, merely curious, “what are you two talking about?”

Montagne remains blissfully oblivious to the glare the other two are exchanging and answers readily with a self-deprecating chuckle: “I was just telling him of my days as a piano player and before you ask, no, I never really got any good at it.”

Oh. Bandit didn’t even know he used to play the piano. But now Fuze knows and he even knew before him and his eyes narrow further. “Interesting”, he says neutrally, “I wanna get a soda, want to come with me?”

Under all other circumstances, Montagne would jump up immediately at the mere mention of soda – it’s his guilty pleasure (well, one of them, since Bandit supposes he counts as one) and he’s enthusiastic about doing anything as long as it can be done in Bandit’s presence… only right now, he hesitates. Throws a questioning glance to Fuze who looks like he literally couldn’t care any less about them leaving. “I’m not done eating though, can’t you -”

“No. Let’s go.” And as Bandit rises, basically dragging Montagne with him, he thinks he sees Fuze’s lips twitch.

.

“Why are you talking to Fuze?”, Bandit demands to know once they’ve arrived at the vending machine stocked with a wide variety of unhealthy, fizzy drinks which make Bandit’s stomach hurt and his belches smell terrible.

“Didn’t you hear? He had a fight with Alexsandr yesterday and it was so bad they’re not on speaking terms right now. And since the other two basically worship the ground Alex walks on -”

“That still doesn’t answer my question”, he insists, much to Montagne’s surprise. Bandit rarely pries and hardly ever shows any interest in other people’s personal affairs.

“I didn’t want to leave him sitting all alone. Alex is not going to get mad at me for it and everyone deserves some company, don’t you think?”

This is when it hits him. Montagne is a fucking bleeding heart. He sees stray dogs and adopts them, just like he adopts stray operators apparently – this explains why there was a phase in which Montagne hung around with Mute, right in the beginning when the young Englishman made next to no attempts to befriend anyone.

Another revelation dawns on him. Does this mean -

“Am I a fucking charity case?”, he wants to know disgustedly. “Is that what this is?”

Montagne seems thoroughly confused now which is understandable as Bandit might potentially be jumping to conclusions faster than Montagne can watch. “Dom, please, what are you talking about?” Trying to put it into words would make him seem not only insane but also bitter, so he decides not to elaborate despite the nagging feeling gnawing at him. He mutely turns to the machine, punches a number in without looking and shoves a few coins into the slot, only to be graced with a can dropping filled with stuff he can’t stand. Worst of all, Montagne knows this. For a few seconds, Bandit tries to make the soda spontaneously combust with the force of a dark look alone while Montagne probably regards him with this stupid fucking look he often gets when he thinks Bandit is being unreasonable and he is not, thank you very much, far from it because what if it’s all over once Montagne deems him integrated enough, just like he did with Mute once he befriended the disaster that is the rest of his team, and Bandit’s hands are getting cold now from holding the can and all he wants to do is punch Fuze’s ugly face in.

“Talk to me”, Montagne asks softly in that tone of voice which conveys he’s not going to judge and Bandit hates it because he never does. He doesn’t judge. He never discards Bandit’s mood swings as unreasonable or immature.

“Why do you like me?”

The words leave his mouth faster than he can scold himself for even thinking them yet they hit their mark, smooth Montagne’s expression because now he knows what he’s dealing with and can react accordingly. Regardless, his answer is not very reassuring: “I don’t know.”

“Wow”, Bandit replies sarcastically. Way to fill him with confidence.

“I wasn’t finished.” Smiling, Montagne mercilessly exploits his weakspot by reaching up to lightly scratch his beard, card his fingers through the coarse hairs and reduces Bandit to an almost-drooling mess in seconds. “I don’t have a simple answer for you, I’m afraid, but I just know that I do. Every room feels different to me when you’re in it. Watching you fall asleep next to me, on me, in my arms, has become the highlight of my day. And I’m happy about every second I get to spend with you. I can’t put into words why, though.”

Bandit blinks at him, pleasant sensations washing over him and making both his anger and his worry disappear effortlessly. He tries finding an answer for himself, why exactly he adores this man in front of him so much, yet only comes up with an earth-shattering feeling of deep-seated affection with which he’s afflicted in moments like these. Because you’re you, he thinks and leans into the gentle strokes over his cheek. “This is unfair”, he mumbles, making Montagne snicker and pull him into a quick hug he allows only because they’re half-hidden behind the vending machine. “You can have my fucking soda if you want it.”

“Gladly”, Montagne replies, amused, takes it and holds Bandit’s hand until it’s warmed up.

.

Montagne is talking to Fuze. Again.

They’ve just finished their physical training for the day, jumped, climbed and crawled their way through an obstacle course, ran until their muscles were on fire and even had to swim. Bandit doesn’t mind the exertion as it more often than not allows him to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep later yet he can’t deny he’s starting to feel his age – especially when he watches Rook ace the course with ease. He used to be very agile and extremely good at running but lost his touch a little (and if that isn’t ironic because running is most of what he seems to do these days), often lying to himself about picking up jogging again despite never following through. Right now, he’s comfortably exhausted and looking forward to maybe trading massages with Montagne, possibly dozing off to his broad hands kneading his shoulders and the thought alone makes a fluttery feeling rise in him.

Then he spots them, off to the side, Fuze actually having taken off his shirt and wiping his sweat off with a towel while Montagne talks at him with an oblivious friendliness – seemingly unaware of the way the Uzbek displays the muscles on his strong frame. But Bandit notices. Oh does he notice. He storms over with a scowl and just barely resists colliding with Montagne, keeping the momentum going and simply dragging him off.

“- more flexible, I’d suggest stretching regularly as it does indeed help”, the Frenchman finishes his sentence just as Bandit arrives and what. What kind of topic -

“Are you talking about how Fuze can’t even scratch his own back without dislocating half of his limbs?”, he butts in, shooting Fuze a dark look and earning a vaguely pained one from Montagne in return.

“Not everyone can be a lanky piece of shit like you”, Fuze replies politely.

“Being thin doesn’t have anything to do with being flexible”, Montagne interjects but stops talking as soon as Bandit starts bending his body to prove a point, reaching over his shoulder with one arm and around his back with the other, effortlessly hooking his fingers together. He does not miss Montagne’s intrigued expression and preens under his gaze, shows off a few more things and ignores Fuze’s growing amusement.

“Seems like those yoga lessons really paid off. Though you don’t seem all that enlightened to me.”

“You shut your whore mouth”, Bandit hisses and doesn’t manage to get the reactions he’s hoped for as Fuze is starting to grin now and Montagne looks almost shocked.

“Dom, if you’re tired, maybe you should call it a day”, he suggests hesitantly and it’s very clear he’s trying to keep the conversation civil.

A thought occurs to him and instead of protesting vehemently, he nods. “You’re right, I’m absolutely knackered, I can barely stand. Oh God am I tired. How am I even still awake?” He leans against his lover with enough force to make him take a step back, then swoons dramatically to which Montagne, as expected, puts his arms around him. “I don’t think I can actually make it back to my room. How about you carry me instead? Would you do me the favour? Otherwise I’ll probably faint on the way.”

Concern bleeds into Montagne’s confusion and he agrees, probably wondering why Bandit won’t allow him to hold his hand in public but carrying him is somehow okay, and so Bandit climbs on him, hugs him tightly and wraps his legs around his waist possessively. After a friendly goodbye, Montagne makes his way towards their quarters and Bandit can’t help but glare at Fuze over his boyfriend’s shoulder and give him the finger.

Fuze just snorts and rolls his eyes as if Bandit was a rebelling teenager.

.

“Why are you still talking to Fuze?”, he wants to know later in bed and no, he’s not pouting, he’s above that.

Montagne rolls onto his side, props himself up on one elbow and smiles down at him like the benevolent being he is, even reaches out with his other hand and lets it wander over Bandit’s chest, his warm palm travelling over his ribs, his abdomen and his sides, unknowingly making something further down twitch hopefully. Despite Bandit trying to push his hand lower through mere thought, it never dips into his underwear. “I enjoy his company. He’s gruff on the outside and may favour questionable methods, but he’s a good man.”

“He’s a fucking asshole”, Bandit objects and realises too late. Once again, he’s being mirrored and he doesn’t like it in the least. “Look, I have nothing against you talking to him -”

“It appears that you do.” Montagne is still smiling, still stroking over his skin. “You don’t need to be friends with him, I don’t expect you to.”

Is that what Montagne thinks is going on? He frowns and scoots a bit closer, stretches towards the tall man with the soft eyes and lets his own fall shut when they lock lips. It helps but ultimately does little to soothe the worry eating at him, even when Montagne leans over him, a comforting weight against his body and their kiss slow and intimate. He resolves to kill Fuze should he ever ask to borrow Montagne’s jacket.

He purrs into his lover’s mouth when he’s pulled closer, his dick (which has been hard ever since they went to bed, always is, always hopes for Montagne’s touch, for more) jumping enthusiastically at the gesture but when he pushes his hands under Montagne’s shirt, he’s stopped with a touch to his wrists. “I don’t want to tire you out”, Montagne murmurs and kisses his cheek, “if you can’t even walk back to your room, you should sleep as soon as possible.”

Now Bandit is pouting, the scowl on his face fierce even when they’ve found a comfortable position to sleep in because in his head, he’s cursing Fuze colourfully. Even when he knows he basically played himself.

#rainbow six siege #montagne #bandit #montagne/bandit #fanfic #protection mountain #we have this hc that monty adopts all the special cases #please imagine bandit fuze and lion all fighting for his attention #this triggered magehir's second hand embarrassment #and I'm so proud

[julyshewrites]

What makes a love story really great? Here’s what I’ve learned so far...

It’s all in the Proof of Love!

I’ve been really diving more into studying the structure of stories, especially love stories. It’s my favorite genre – not just as a stand alone, but because you see it paired with other genres all the time. My favorite story guru, Steven Pressfield’s editor Shawn Coyne (author of The Story Grid), says that if you had to pick one genre to learn how to write, choose Romance, for this exact reason. Romance is not limited to the women’s section in the bookstore. Romance is EVERYWHERE.

So… what makes a love story so good that it fills your daydreams, puts your heart to flutter, or as we call it, gives us “the feels”?

Well, to start, a love story typically has 3 pillars:

1- The Lovers Meet (Inciting Incident of your plot) 2- The Lovers Breakup (Midpoint) 3- The Lovers Reunite (Resolution)

Sounds simple, but I’ve read (and written) plenty of romances that follow these pillars, yet still fall short of being anything close to a good love story. They feel cliche and melodramatic.

Love stories like these fall flat because they lack a crucial element in between the the breakup and the ending that if nailed right, drives that cupid’s arrow right in our heart and gives us the satisfaction we crave.

This crucial element is called the Proof of Love scene.

Really then, when writing your story, you should have 4 elements:

1- The Lovers Meet (Inciting Incident) 2- The Lovers Breakup (Midpoint) 3- Proof of Love (Climax) 4- The Lovers Reunite (Resolution)

What then is a “Proof of Love” scene?

Well, it is simply what it says – it’s when one of the lovers proves their love to the other. When we think of typical romances, it’s the “run through the airport to profess your love” scene. But those can be cliche, right? 

The romances that really get us are the ones that have a proof of love that is so powerful, we know that the couple is truly, deeply in love and committed. 

I think of two examples. First, the classic Pride and Prejudice. The ultimate proof of love is when Elizabeth finds out that Mr. Darcy orchestrated her sister’s marriage to his enemy, and by doing so rescues Elizabeth (and her family) from being tainted by the scandal her sister created by running away with a rogue. There were other things Mr. Darcy did along the way that started to soften Elizabeth towards him (which I’ll discuss here later), but that event was the clincher – where she realizes that Mr. Darcy absolutely loves her, and she loves him just as much.

Another example is from The Notebook. It’s at the end, where we see that Noah tells Allie their love story day after day, year after year, only to gain a few seconds of her remembering him. Even when she forgets again and pushes him away, he is there by her side. We understand that no matter how many times Allie forgets Noah, he will never forget, and will return the next day and tell her the story again, even till the very end of their lives. Sniff

Why are these proof of loves scenes so powerful? How can we emulate them?

In order to have a powerful proof of love scene there are a couple ingredients you need:

1- A breakup scene where it’s almost impossible for the lovers to reunite 2- A sacrifice made without any expectation of return of affection

Let’s talk about the second ingredient first – SACRIFICE. 

Loving someone without any expectation is Unconditional Love.

This is someone loving us because they love us, without any selfish motives. It is what we all truly crave in life, and why love stories are so powerful. Don’t we all just wish that someone would see us and love us for who we are? That we don’t have to do anything to be worthy of that love other than being our true selves, flaws and all?

This is what Darcy does for Elizabeth. He really doesn’t think that Elizabeth will ever talk to him again, much less like him, but he goes out of his way to help her. He does it at the cost of his dignity, having to work with his enemy Mr. Wickham, whom he hoped to never have to deal with in his life ever again. He bends over backwards to fix the situation. And, he does all of it as anonymously as he can, making Elizabeth’s uncle take the credit, and asking that her aunt and uncle keep his role from Elizabeth. Now, that is proof of love!

Noah’s proof of love to Allie, although different in its expression, still has that same ingredient of sacrifice without expectation. He has gone to live with her in the nursing home, even though he is perfectly able to take care of himself. He doesn’t know when, or if, Allie will ever remember him. Now, he has hope, but that is different from expectation. Hope is still unsure. Expectation is demanding. But for Noah, no matter if Allie remembers him or not, he shows his children (and us), that that doesn’t matter. He will be by her side regardless. He loves her so much, and she doesn’t even remember him. What a powerful statement about unconditional love!

Now, let’s go back to the first ingredient – the BREAKUP!

No proof of love scene can work without first having a gut-wrenching, how-will-they-ever-get-back-together breakup scene.

The lovers must breakup, and not just temporarily. They must be so broken up that we can’t see how they could possibly repair their relationship and reunite.

This is a hard one, and also something that we as writers often don’t push far enough (myself included!). Here are some ways the breakup scene falls flat:

– The lovers breakup, but only for a short time (I’m looking at you 50 Shades of Gray/50 Shades Darker – 3 days?? Really??).  – Or they break up, but it’s all just a simple misunderstanding, that can be solved with a conversation. This one can work when that misunderstanding is done like in Pride and Prejudice (I’ll talk more on that in a second), but often its done where the misunderstanding is pretty simple.  – Or, they break up because of circumstances, but those circumstances are easily overcome. 

These are just a few examples, but you have probably seen more yourself. There’s just that meh feeling when it comes to the breakup. 

In other words, you really can’t go half-ass on your breakup.

Let’s talk about the Pride and Prejudice breakup. Their’s is a doozy. Their’s is based on misunderstanding, but oh what misunderstandings abound! Their misunderstandings stem from deep personal flaws, rooted also in their positions in society. Their misunderstandings comes from being on two complete sides of the spectrum. Plus, their personal flaws prevent them from even wanting to understand the other side and thinking they each are 100% right in their own views. We can almost see this clash coming, because we know they have been building their own views all along, so that argument they have is the culmination for all that. It’s not just that they’ve gotten along the whole time, and one simple situation created a misunderstanding that can easily be cleared up with a conversation. No, this misunderstanding is rooted deep in their souls.

And when they have their blow-up argument, Darcy has a lot to account for – treating Elizabeth and all her friends and family like dirt and even preventing her sister from marrying someone she loves because he feels it’s beneath his friend. What a jerk! I wouldn’t want to marry him either. Of course, Elizabeth is no angel herself. Although her family’s poor, it’s not that so much that as their terrible behavior in public, and Elizabeth’s fairly blind eye to admitting it. It’s her own haughtiness at thinking that she’s better than those snobby rich people, and her tendency to also judge people right away. With all that between them, and now their real feelings out in the open to each other, how on earth will they overcome that?

Well, they do, slowly but surely, but it takes some real work. Darcy’s proof of love culminates in the service he does to help Elizabeth’s sister marry Wickham, but it begins to build by the other changes he makes. Darcy tries to show he’s really a nice guy. Not just fake show it, but really be it. He even helps Jane get back with Bingley, and admits he was wrong. The proof of his love is in the pudding of action (and remember actions develop character).

The Notebook is a little trickier. We have a really good breakup scene in the middle of the movie (can you figure out why it’s a powerful breakup?). But, we also have that true, how-will-they-ever-get-back-together scene coupled with the proof of love. It’s because Allie has Alzheimers. How do you overcome that? You can’t, really. The only way Noah can try is to be a consistent presence in Allie’s life, and the last comfort of being in each other’s arms as they die. Okay, here’s my heart now. <X3 ;;o;;

So, to make your love story really great, let’s focus on these 3 pillars instead:

1- The Lovers Meet 2- The Lovers Breakup (and make it a good one!) 3- The Proof of Love (knowing the Lovers Reunite will fall naturally out of that)

If you can nail those you’ll be giving your readers “the feels” right and left! It’s something I’m slowly but surely working on myself. 

Whew! So that’s a lot to cover I know, but my hope is that by diving deep into these concepts our stories will be better for it. Romance it up!

#love story #romance story #romance writing #writing tips #story grid #story conventions #how to write #writing process #what i've learned

[maliciouslycreative]

Title: Life Is Not A Piece Of Cake (Unless You’re Fucking Dean Winchester)

Written for: @rosemoonweaver‘s fic-o-ween

Rating: T

Words: 4911

Ships: Castiel/Inias, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Castiel/Inias/Dean Winchester

Characters: Castiel, Inias, Dean Winchester, Claire Novak, Jody Mills,

Tags: food, baking, alcohol, accidents, enemies to friends to lovers, grumpy Castiel, enemies to friends to lovers, graphic depictions of culinary mishaps,

Prompt: Character A is in charge of bringing snacks for their child’s “fall festival” at the school/daycare/activity (such as scouts or soccer or whatever). It would be easy to just pick up soft cookies and a bag of candy at the store, but last year their archrival carved a cake to look like a real pumpkin and they’ve been insufferable about it ever since. Character A decides to make their own special fall treats for the kids and it’s definitely going to be better than their rivals. The only problem? They’re a disaster in the kitchen.

Summary: Castiel hates Dean Winchester. Not only is the man frustratingly perfect he can bake amazing cakes that look like they belong on one of those cooking shows. This year Castiel's going to show Dean up. He's going to bake the best desserts for his daughter's Girl Scout party and Dean is going to be so impressed. Only Castiel is a disaster in the kitchen. 

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12774135

Under normal circumstances Castiel supposes that he and Dean Winchester could have been friends. However these are not normal circumstances. Last year Dean walked in with that fucking perfect cake shaped like a jack-o-lantern. Castiel probably would have enjoyed the cake too if it hadn’t shamed the cookies he’d brought from the nearby bakery. Yah the kids loved the cookies but the fact remained that Castiel had not baked them with his own two hands. And despite being devastatingly handsome and frustratingly friendly Dean was also apparently gifted in the baking department.

As if those few tidbits about Dean’s life aren’t frustrating enough it seems that every new piece of information Castiel learns paints Dean as even more of Disney Prince. He’s a widower and owns his own business. He put his little brother through law school. Although many of the single mothers both of the Girl Scouts and of the kids at school are constantly asking Dean out he politely declines them. He’s just so frustratingly kind. And handsome. Way too handsome for a single father who works full time. Castiel is married and shares the responsibility of raising his daughter with an amazing husband and he still feels like he hasn’t slept a full night in over a decade. His daughter's only 7.

Earlier that fall when Castiel had run into Jody Mills he’d probably looked like a man possessed when he all but begged her to schedule him and Dean to both bring treats to the Halloween party. The Girl Scout troop leader had eyed him warily but when he’d volunteered to do extra work for every Girl Scout cookie drive she’d agreed. Who was she to refuse free help.

Now he has a plan and he’s going to show Dean up. He’s been working on it all year. His husband thinks he’s being a bit too serious about this but what does Inias know? Dean is just so aggravatingly perfect at everything and all Castiel wants to do is knock him down a peg.

It’s just after 10 on Saturday morning and Castiel has everything he needs set out on the kitchen table or chilling in the fridge. He has the recipes printed out on different coloured sheets (so he doesn’t mix them up) and he’s got some nice soothing death metal to listen to (to give him energy to conquer this day).

He’s got this.

“What is daddy doing?” Claire asks.

Her and Inias are at the front door, getting ready to have a day out. They’re going to do some shopping, have some lunch and watch a movie at the theatre. Castiel laments a little that he’s not going with them but the thought of Dean’s face when he sees the treats Castiel is making is enough to make up for it.

“He’s making treats for your Girl Scout Halloween party.” Inias says.

“But daddy is a terrible cook! Shouldn’t we help him?” Claire asks. Castiel smiles at his daughter’s concern.  

Inias chuckles softly and Castiel can just barely hear the sounds of the two of them getting the rest of their outerwear on. “Sometimes adults need to to do things they aren’t very good at.”

“But if you’re not very good at something shouldn’t you ask for help?” Castiel can hear the worry seeping into Claire’s voice even from the other room.

“He wants to try to do this on his own to prove that he can.” Inias says.

“What if he burns down the house?” Claire sounds increasingly worried about the situation.

Inias lets out a bark of laughter. “I'm sure he won’t burn down the house. He might burn all the food but the house will be fine.”

“Phew! What a relief. If he burns all the food can we help daddy make new stuff?”

“We sure will, sweetie. Now put on your mitts, we gotta get to the mall.”

There’s a hurried chorus of I love yous and good luck wishes and then Inias and Claire are out the front door and driving away.

Traitors. They’re both fucking traitors and don’t think Castiel will succeed at this baking. Well he’s going to show them. And that asshole Dean Winchester.

Castiel’s got this.

He decides to start with the Rice Krispie squares, mostly because they seem like the easiest but also because he made sure to buy the gluten free kind so that Krissy Chambers could eat them.

He takes the appropriate saucepan and sets it on the stove and turns on the element. He carefully reads over the instructions one more time while he waits for the pot to heat up. It seems simple enough, melt the butter and marshmallows, put in some red and yellow food colouring, mix with Rice Krispies, and then form into little balls.

He holds a hand over the saucepan and well it seems hot so he unwraps the butter and droops it in. Realising that he’s forgotten his music he puts down his spoon and goes to fiddle with his MP3 player and dock. The butter’s on low heat, he’s got time. He’s just gotten Amon Amarth’s Fate of Norns album playing when he smells it. He can’t have been away from the stove from more than a few minutes but holy shit it smells like burning.

He stares down at the bubbling yellow and black mass in the saucepan and wonders where he went wrong. He quickly pulls the pan off, puts it in the sink and turns the faucet on to hopefully drown it and stop it from burning further. His next step is to open all the windows. God it stinks. It’s like that time his Aunt Becky started the oven on fire when she tried to roast chestnuts. Fuck he can’t become Aunt Becky.

He looks at the dial on the stove and holy shit it’s turned to high. Castiel takes a couple deep breaths and counts to 10 to calm himself. It’s just a minor setback. it’s only some butter. He can still do this. Maybe he should check YouTube though just in case.

After watching an embarrassing amount of videos on melting butter he’s pretty sure he’s got this now. When he gets back to the kitchen the first order of business is to fix the music. Amon Amarth is fantastic but it’s apparent that Castiel is going to war. He clicks through menus on his MP3 player until he gets to Sabaton and selects their “The Art of War” album.

“Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or ruin.” The first few chords of Ghost Division begin playing and Castiel relaxes.

“Alright Castiel, let’s pay attention and make sure we don’t lead our self to ruin.”

He grabs a new saucepan and places it on the now cooled element. He puts the butter in and turns the element on to low heat. He quickly grabs the other ingredients he’ll need for the Rice Krispie squares and stands above the saucepan, dutifully watching it, spoon at the ready to stir it the second it starts to melt.  

It’s slow going but Castiel pushes down his impatience with his overwhelming desire to succeed. And succeed he does. By the time he’s got the last little orange Rice Krispie ball laid out on wax paper he’s feeling pretty proud. Sure none of them are perfect but real pumpkins aren’t perfect either. He grabs the bowl of green Mike and Ikes and goes around sticking one in the top of each pumpkin to symbolise a stem.

They’re perfect.

With one victory behind him Castiel cleans up and turns to his next task: home made candy corn. This one seems simple enough, just make the dough, separate into 3 colours then roll them together and cut into little triangles.

The heating of the sugar, corn syrup, and water goes well. He sends a silent thank you to all the YouTube videos he watched earlier. He’s now painfully aware of how closely he has to watch anything on the stove top. He adds the vanilla and dry ingredients and carefully stirs them to perfection. He even uses that candy thermometer that Inias insisted they buy (spoiler alert: it was very helpful).

The rest of the candy corn making is rather uneventful though time consuming. When he’s done Castiel has what seems like hundreds of little triangles laid out on parchment paper on his dining room table he finally allows himself to smile. He did awesome. He probably wouldn’t have noticed something was wrong if he didn’t happen to spot the tub of store bought candy corn in the living room. Just to make sure that he hasn’t made them too large he grabs the tub and brings it over to compare sizes.  The sizes are fine however with steadily mounting dread he discovers that he’s put the colours in the wrong order. The store bought ones are orange at the base, yellow in the middle and white at the tip. Castiel’s have orange in the middle.

“Son of a bitch.” He mutters as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. He googles pictures of candy corn and fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck the orange is never in the middle.

“I hate everything.”

Feeling defeated Castiel grabs his hoodie and keys and heads outside to his car. Apparently he forgot one necessary ingredient.

The drive to the liquor store is short and uneventful. The parking lot is a zoo because it’s the Saturday before Halloween. For years Castiel has never really understood the obsession most housewives have with wine. But now… he is going to get some fucking wine and enjoy himself.

When he gets into the liquor store itself it’s even busier than he anticipated. He takes a quick glance around and spots the wine section near the back. He carefully maneuvers his way through the store to stand in front of the huge wall of wine. He frowns. There’s a lot more wine than he thought there would be. Honestly he’s not a wine drinker. Most of what he drank when he was younger was whatever his friends ordered for him. Now that he really thinks about it he never even really liked wine.

He glances down the aisle to see if there’s someone that might have a suggestion. The only other people in the aisle are a frazzled looking middle aged woman who is loading boxes of wine into her shopping cart and a hipster guy with a man bun. Nope.

Slowly he backs out of the aisle and starts glancing around. Surely something else will catch his eye. After a moment he sees it: a beacon of hope, a giant display of Mike’s Hard Lemonade which encourages you to build your own 4 pack.

“Thank God” Castiel mutters as he hurries over to the display.

There are far too many choices but he quickly grabs a black cherry, strawberry, cranberry, and peach lemonade and makes his way to the front. The line ups are long and Castiel is seriously considering his life choices. If he’d just stayed home and started on the cupcakes he could have a batch in the oven already. An image of the candy corn flashes through his mind though and he grits his teeth.

Normally Castiel is immune to the products that are specifically to make you buy them on impulse. However, how could one not be enticed by individual shots named “Chocolate Buttery Nipple” Castiel grabs the shots and grimaces. He’s already commuted to this so what the hell, why not.

By the time he gets home it’s been nearly half an hour. He puts the lemonades in the fridge and cracks open one of the shots. “Here goes nothing.” He downs the shot and makes a face. God it’s sweet but not completely unpleasant.

The next order of business is to get the music playing again. This time he opts for Sabaton’s The Last Stand. Between the alcohol and the first few chords of Sparta he’s starting to relax slightly. Maybe the rest of this won’t be a total disaster.

At least he’d anticipated that he’d be feeling a little desperate at this point so he’d opted to use a mix for his cupcakes instead of doing them from scratch. His fate now is all in Betty Crocker’s hands.

He grabs the box and heads over to the oven to preheat it. Putting all the ingredients in the bowl is rather uneventful and honestly Castiel is feeling pretty good about it. Well, that’s until he looks at the mixer. Honestly the last thing Castiel wanted to use is the mixer but after doing a lot of reading about cakes he has come to the conclusion that he probably should use the mixer. Sure he’s watched Inias use it plenty of times. It seems simple enough. Put the bowl on the stand, lower the mixer arm, turn it on and set a timer. Easy, right?

He sets the bowl on the base then lowers the beaters into the dough. He holds his breath as he turns the mixer on. Nothing goes wrong. He lets out the breath and smiles. Maybe he can do this.

He manages to get the cupcakes into the oven with little incident. He may have dribbled a tiny bit of batter on the floor but he easily finds it all with his sock.

Now barefoot he stares at his final project with apprehension. This is simultaneously the easiest and hardest task. Sure the dough for the sugar cookies is already made (since it needed to chill overnight in the fridge) but now comes the hard part of rolling out and baking the cookies. Like most other baking he’s watched Inias make cookies countless times but he now realises that he never paid attention.

First things first, he grabs one of the lemonades from the fridge and takes a long swig. “Castiel James Novak, you are a grown ass man and you can do this.”

He takes part of the ball of dough and plops it on the table. He grabs the rolling pin and presses down and well that’s not right. The dough is both stuck to the table and rolling pin. He frowns.

“Listen here you fucking dough,” he futilely tries to pull the dough off the table but god damn it it’s really stuck, “I’m going to fucking make you into fucking cookies and you’re going to fucking cooperate because my daughter deserves nice fucking cookies.” He grabs a spatula from the drawer and begins trying to scrape the dough off the table and back into the bowl.

When the table is as clean as he can get it without washing it he grabs the recipe to see if it can shed any light on the situation. Flour. He needs to flour the table and the rolling pin. Why is baking so complicated? There’s already fucking flour in the dough. Why does he need to put more flour on the table?

Castiel drains the rest of his lemonade and grabs a second one from the fridge. He’s about to attempt the cookies again when the timer goes off for the cupcakes. He pulls the cupcakes out of the oven and pokes them with a toothpick. They’re done and they look surprisingly perfect. He overfilled a few so they’re lopsided but those can just be his experimental ones.

“Thank fuck something worked out.”

After letting them cool a few minutes he transfers the cupcakes to a wire rack to cool. He readjusts the oven temperature so it’ll be ready for the cookies. Actually, these cupcakes look so good that he should celebrate with another Chocolate Buttery Nipple.

By now his music album has looped so he heads over to switch it up. He selects “Heroes” from Sabaton’s library. Because dammit, he feels like a hero now.

Castiel generously flours the table and the rolling pin and gets to work rolling out the dough. It’s ridiculously easier now with the flour. He’s not really sure how thin to make them but he figures if they’re on the thin side maybe that’s good because then he can make more cookies. He however comes to regret this decision when he’s trying to put a person shaped cookie onto the pan and their little leg comes off.

“No, your leg’s off!” he gently tries to reattach the leg to the rest of the cookie but there’s an obvious seam. “Well, I guess you’re definitely going to be a zombie...” He pulls the leg back off and places it next to the body. “Wait,” He glances down at the other people shaped ones and grins. “I think a few of you are going to be zombies. Gleefully he begins removing various body parts from several of the cookies.

He makes the next round of cookies a little thicker so that he doesn’t accidentally break them. While he’s got the cookies in the oven he moves the cupcakes to the cooling rack and then starts on the icing for the cupcakes. Most of the recipes say to use icing from the can but that feels like cheating so he’d scoured countless food blogs to find a good buttercream.

Castiel’s gotten all of the ingredients for the buttercream in the bowl when the oven timer goes off. He pulls out the trays of cookies and OK they may be a little on the brown side but that’s nothing they can’t fix with a lot of icing. Good enough.

Honestly he’s feeling pretty good about using the mixer again after how well the cupcakes went. He puts the beaters in the icing ingredients and turns it on. Everything goes white. In a panic he tries to turn it off but instead turns it to max power and even more icing sugar flies out of the bowl. In an act of desperation he grabs the cord out of the wall and unplugs the mixer.

Tentatively Castiel touches his face and his finger comes away white. “Oh my god...” he reaches up with his other hand and runs it through his hair. It also comes away white. “What the fuck?” He stares at the mixer in betrayal. “I trusted you.”

Glancing around the kitchen Castiel notes the extent of the damage. There’s buttercream ingredients on the wall, the counter, the floor the microwave, Castiel himself… Taking in a deep breath he glances up at the ceiling. He’s pretty sure the ceiling’s OK.

“Fuck.” He grabs his lemonade and downs a significant portion of it. Then he makes the mistake of looking at the time and fuck Inias and Claire could be home at any time.

With renewed panic he begins vigorously cleaning the kitchen. First he dumps out the ruined ingredients and then begins scrubbing every surface. After that’s done he frowns down at his clothing. Nothing is salvageable. He bolts up the stairs, stripping as he goes, and jumps in the shower.

When he’s pretty sure he’s gotten all of the icing ingredients out of his hair he quickly gets out and towels off. He doesn’t even bother with real clothes, just goes for some pyjamas.

By the time he gets back into the kitchen he finds that he only lost maybe 15 minutes. That’s not so bad. He starts throwing the ingredients into the same bowl (he’s not washing another bowl, ok). When all the ingredients are in the bowl he glares daggers at the mixer and makes a point of grabbing a spoon from the drawer and starts mixing by hand. This is way more work but there’s no way in hell he’s ever trusting that mixer again.

With the buttercream ready to go he grabs his lemonade and finishes it off. He’s 2 shots and 2 lemonades deep in this already so he shrugs and pulls a third lemonade from the fridge. Honestly, what more can go wrong?

Thank goodness he had foresight and made Inias put the piping bag together before he left. That however doesn’t solve the problem of how to put icing into a piping bag with only 2 hands. Eventually he has one corner of the bag between his teeth and is holding it open with one hand while he scoops icing with the other.

Unlike the candy corn Castiel had the insight to print out a picture of the mummy cupcakes so he doesn’t screw them up. It’s pretty simple, draw some lines out of icing and stick on some candy eyes. Easy.

Castiel sets out the first cupcake, takes a deep breath, and puts the tip of the piping bag to the cupcake. With the first squeeze icing comes out the top of the bag onto his hand.

“I fucking hate everything.” Castiel mutters as he tries to shove the icing back into the bag. He adjusts his hold on the bag so that one is keeping the top closed while the other is guiding the tip. The icing comes out thicker than Castiel intended but oh well kids like icing, right?

He’s just finished the cupcakes when the front door opens and Claire and Inias enter the house.

“Daddy we’re home!” Claire yells.

Castiel wanders out to the foyer to greet them. Upon seeing Castiel’s pyjamas Inias’ eyes widen slightly.

“I’m so glad you didn’t burn down the house.” Claire says as she wraps her arms around Castiel’s waist.

“Me too, sweetie.” Castiel can’t help but smile. He ruffles Claire’s hair then says, “Now get your coat off so you can help me decorate cookies.”

Claire pulls away and smiles up at Castiel. “Really? I thought you wanted to do everything yourself.”

“Well, sometimes when you’re not very good at things you need to ask people for help. And I happen to know you’re an expert cookie decorator.”

“Ok! Let me get ready!” Claire hastily extracts herself from her outerwear and thunders up the stairs to her room.

Inias eyes Castiel up and down before saying, “So… by your appearance I’m going to guess that there was at least one accident.”

“That’s an accurate assessment.” Castiel huffs.

Rolling his eyes Inias leans in for a kiss but pauses right before their lips meet. He sniffs the air and leans back. “Why do you smell like Aunt Becky?”

Castiel sighs and drags a hand through his messy hair. “I’ve had 2 chocolatey buttery nipples and almost 3 hard lemonades.”

Inias stares at Castiel for a few seconds before he starts to chuckle. “Buttery nipples?”

“Don’t judge…”

“Really?”

“Hey, the difference between you and me is I’m desperate and you’re not.”

Inias holds up his hands and backs up. “Fair enough.” He gestures towards the kitchen. “Do you want to show me your masterpieces?”

Castiel sighs and leads Inias into the kitchen. He winces a little when he notes all the dirty dishes piled in the sink. He meant to get at least some of them into the dishwasher before Inias and Claire returned home.

“These are cute,” Inias points at the pumpkins and smiles. He stares at the mummies and tilts his head. “None of the lines are really straight.”

“Nothing about me is straight.” The words are out of Castiel’s mouth before he even realises what he’s said.

Inias lets out a snort of laughter. “You got me there.”

“Well yah, if I was straight I definitely wouldn’t have gotten you.”

“You’re terrible.” Inias rolls his eyes.

“Ok, I’m ready!” Claire says as she comes into the room. Claire’s eyes go wide as she surveys the treats. “Wow, these look so good!” She runs over and throws her arms around Castiel once again. “Thank you so much daddy, I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“You’re welcome, Claire-bear.” Castiel hugs his daughter back and there might just be a couple tears that fall down his face.

“Ok, so what colours of icing should we make?” Inias goes about grabbing ingredients for the icing.

“Purple!” Claire squeals.

Castiel smiles. His desserts may not be perfect but his daughter’s reaction goes a long way to him feeling confident about everything.

-x-x-

Looking at the two trays of desserts he brought Castiel will admit that maybe he went overboard. Well, that’s until he looks over and sees what Dean brought. It’s a large sheet cake made to look like a graveyard with small monsters having a party on top.

Jody takes a look a the two trays Castiel and Inias are holding. “you din’t-”

“The pumpkins and candy corn are gluten free!” Castiel cuts her off and gives her a large awkward smile.

Krissy Chambers pops up next to Castiel and with wide eyes stares at the pumpkins. “I can eat those ones? That’s so cool! Thanks Mr Novak!” Then, since she’s 7, she’s running across the room to talk to someone else.

Jody shrugs. “Alright then. Thanks I guess. Just put it over there with the cake…”

Castiel and Inias place their trays on the table then Castiel shoos Inias away to help Claire get her fairy wings fixed since they’re crooked. Since the giant cake is in the centre of the table Castiel is forced to place his trays on either side. He supposes that it does sort of balance things out aesthetically. Or something. He’s not fucking Martha Stewart.

“Oh wow, is that home made candy corn?”

An arm reaches past Castiel to his now unwrapped plate of desserts. Before Castiel can even think he slaps the hand away. Horrified, Castiel spins around and locks eyes with a surprised looking Dean Winchester. “I’m so sorry!” He blurts out, shame outweighing his distaste for Dean.

Dean’s face lights up and he laughs. “It’s fine. I probably deserved that anyway. But seriously, home made candy corn? This shit-” he glances around to make sure no kids heard him swear and lets out a happy sigh when he sees there’s nobody near them. “I love candy corn.”

A smile tugs at the corner of Castiel’s mouth. “Well, you should come by my place. The first batch I made I put the white in the middle. I felt guilty so I woke up at 5 AM and made another batch this morning.”

“Honestly the kids wouldn’t have noticed, they’ll just grab a handful and stuff their faces.” Dean says.

Groaning Castiel puts a hand over his face. “You sound like my husband.”

“Yah?” Dean’s grin broadens. “Well it’s my understanding that your husband is a pretty smart guy.”

Castiel glances over to Inias who is surrounded by little girls who need help fixing their costumes. He can’t help the soft smile that spreads across his face. “He is, one of the smartest people I know.”

“Aren’t you like a professor or something? Not saying that Inias isn’t smart just like don’t you hang out with all the Smarty Pants McGees all day?”

“Have you ever actually met an academic?” Castiel asks, voice dry. “They’re all pomp and self righteous. Most of them don’t know anything they just like to wave around their fancy titles and use big words to try to make non academics feel belittled...” He snaps his mouth shut as realisation washes over him. “I must apologise Dean, I’ve been an ass the last year.”

Dean stares at Castiel in surprise. “You don’t...” he scrubs a hand over his face. “Look you’re not the only one that’s been a di- butt. A big butt.”

Standing here and actually talking to Dean Castiel kind of feels like the floor’s gone out from under him. God he’s been just like his asshole colleagues and that’s not acceptable. Sure Dean’s frustratingly perfect. But maybe that’s a good thing. Despite how much of an ass Castiel’s been Dean is still standing here being kind to him.

“I think we should just Mulligan everything and start anew.” Castiel says, smile on his face. He extends a hand out to Dean. “Hello, I’m Castiel Novak.”

“Dean Winchester.” Dean grasps Castiel’s hand in his and flashes him a brilliant smile.

“So Dean,” Castiel leans in and intensifies his smile to something dazzling. “I hear you like candy corn. And I seem to have an excess of candy corn. I don’t suppose you would like to come over some time and enjoy some candy corn and perhaps some other activities?”

A faint blush is starting to spread on Dean’s cheeks. “Uhh, Cas… tiel Castiel I uhh...”

Castiel leans in further and whispers into Dean’s ear, “My husband and I are polyamorous. You know, just in case you were wondering.”

Dean steps back and bumps into the table. “Oh!” His cheeks are now bright red and he’s glancing between Castiel and Inias.

For a moment Castiel is worried that he’s perhaps overdone it. When he gets nervous he has a tendency to let his mouth run rampant.

“Yah, that sounds good.” He gestures towards Claire and Emma who are standing close together comparing their fairy wands. “I could bring Em and we could all enjoy some candy corn?”

Castiel smiles. “That sounds lovely. The girls can have a play date and we can have a real date. Or as close to a date as the parents of 7 year olds can get without finding a babysitter.”

Dean laughs. It’s bright and infectious and Castiel can’t wait to hear more of it.

#rosesficoween #rosemoonweaver #spn #castiel/inias #deancasinias #destiel #fanfic #my fanfic #stacey writes #i'm still so sorry this is late #enemies to lovers #food

[pumpkins-s]

Learned Behavior (Of The Replaceable)

Read on AO3 Here

In the wake of Shiro’s disappearance, Hunk reflects, not only on what it means to be a part of Voltron, but what it means to be a part of this Voltron, and his place in it.

Understanding Lance, trusting Lance, is easy. The others? Not so much.

And while Hunk has somewhat made his peace with the fact that he likely will die out here on some Galra battlefield, the idea of losing Lance, physically or mentally, is…terrifying.

(Or, Shiro goes missing, team Voltron freaks out, and Hunk and Lance learn that coping is best done together.)

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Relationships: Lance/Hunk

Characters: Hunk, Lance, Keith, Allura, Pidge

Written for the @aphelionzine

((Author’s Note:

This was written way back in the early summer of last year, as part of the Aphelion Zine, before season 3 came out. As someone with...mixed feelings...about the lion switch, even then, I wanted the chance to tackle a pre-season 3 fic that would give more emphasis on Hunk & Lance's feelings on the whole situation -- from the switch to missing Shiro -- than I expected (or ended up getting lol) from canon. As of season 3 & 4 coming out since this fic was written, this can officially be considered canon divergence, or an alternate take on how the lion switch might have gone down, whatever suits your fancy.

Either way, there's lots of Hunk and Lance being cute and just plain old Good for each other.))

After Shiro disappears, things kind of go to shit.

…Yeah, that about sums that one up, if you ask Hunk.

Well…not that they hadn’t already been shitty beforehand—what with the Galra and Zarkon attacking them and being an unfathomable distance away from home and all that—but things definitely do not improve with Shiro’s disappearance, to say the least. Losing their leader when they barely had half a clue as to what they were doing in the first place was not the best turn of circumstances in the slightest.

So yes, Hunk thinks it’s fair to say things deteriorate to an even larger extent with Shiro’s…absence.

Absence—that’s all it is. All it must be. Shiro can’t be dead.

…Right?

Because…if Shiro’s dead, then they honestly have no hope in hell of winning this fight.

Still, Hunk is painfully aware of the fact that sharing this little revelation on his part would do nothing to help the team’s morale. Nor will it get them out of the current pickle they currently find themselves in, and would likely only make certain people’s panic worse, so he decides it’s best kept to himself.

…And Lance.

Lance, who’s quick to sneak into his room that first night (and every night following) after they escape Zarkon’s clutches again, plus one new bayard yet sans Shiro, and curl up on the end of Hunk’s bed across from him, knees drawn up against his chest as he stares down at the blankets with wide eyes and pale cheeks.

“Shiro left Keith in charge,” he says almost immediately once he’s situated, giving up on beating around the bush. Not even bothering to give Keith’s name the usual disgusted inflection he tends to place on it at most opportunities for the sake of theatrics, if nothing else. “He left us alone, with Keith in charge.” There’s a breath, shaky and unsure. “We’re all going to die.”

…Welp. He doesn’t really know how to argue with that one.

“Lance…” Hunk sighs, long and low, because he knows Lance is right in his worry. Knows Lance is almost always right in his analysis of a person’s abilities, once he removes personal bias at least, but is scared to admit to this fact, especially in the face of Lance’s own spiraling paranoia. “I know you’re not Keith’s biggest fan, but we can’t just—“

“He’s going to get us all killed,” Lance cuts Hunk off flatly. “This has…” His face balls up, conflict and irritation crawling to the surface. “This has nothing to do with my feelings about Keith as a person one way or another, honest. You know I’m over a lot of that, anyways.” He breathes out, hands trembling where they’re fisted in the fabric of his pajama pants, and Hunk doesn’t hesitate to reach out and loosen his white-knuckled fingers carefully, tangling them with his own.

“It’s just logic,” Lance continues, narrowing his eyes and glaring down at the blankets. “He’s too hotheaded, impulsive. Never mind his focus right now is on figuring out this whole…Galra thing.” A pause, and Hunk meets his eyes sympathetically. “Look, I’m not saying he could never be a good leader. Shiro saw potential in him and that must mean something. It’s not like Keith’s terrible, but Shiro barely had a handle on how to lead us himself as it was, and he was mostly playing sounding board to Allura’s own bouts of impulsiveness when her anger gets the better of her. Put her and Keith together and we’re a dead ship sailing. Er…” He makes a face. “Floating.”

Hunk wavers for a moment, looking for a rebuttal, and slumps. “…Yeah.”

So…okay, yeah, they’re kinda fucked.

Ironically, Hunk thinks things wouldn’t be so bad if he or Lance (preferably Lance, in his mind) could get a word in edgewise to mention their concerns in the most polite terms possible during one of the team scheming sessions on how to get Shiro back, those already being the team’s predominant focus with barely a day passed in an attempt to stem their grief into something useful, and also, like, not die, but their version of Voltron, in its short and tumultuous history, has always operated as more of a ‘listen to the leader’ type group than a democracy, per se.

Or, at least, it’s somewhat a democracy, so far as what Keith or Pidge suggests at any given time if Allura and Shiro are feeling like listening—Shiro more than Allura, honestly. Allura isn’t much better than Keith in terms of the whole ’doing it my way’ thing, in Hunk’s opinion.

Which, incidentally, is another reason it kinda sucks not to have Shiro around.

At least then Pidge might be able to get a word in. Shiro always listened to her suggestions, which if nothing else provided the rather interesting telephone game that was Lance talking to Hunk who talked to Pidge who then talked to Shiro, when issues needed to be met that way. Perhaps, logistically, it would be easier to cut out the middleman, but Hunk generally found it easier to talk to Pidge than Shiro when necessary, and Lance could always easily start a fight even when there wasn’t one, when he felt someone wasn’t taking him seriously.

Not that Lance is inherently always wrong in those assumptions.

Just…sometimes, because, again, paranoia.

But…yeah, that’s another thing Hunk has noticed—that in terms of actual suggestions for dealing with problems, Lance’s and his own opinions aren’t exactly…valued beyond, say, votes on a group consensus, occasionally.

Even that is iffy, depending on how you look at it.

Not that the team ignores them or anything, just that…well. It’s complicated. As a group they really have no idea what they are doing, and he and Lance are not, unfortunately, top of the expertise-seeking food chain, as it were. Have questions about an engine, and Hunk is your guy, but those skills don’t necessarily extend to battle plans, and the fact that Lance might be useful with those is apparently lost on most people.

Then again, as much as that annoys Hunk ever so slightly, most people haven’t been glued to Lance’s side since they were like…eight. The team isn’t going to have his personal level of Lance-centered expertise, just like he isn’t going to have Pidge’s level of tech knowledge or Keith’s fighting instinct. Lance-reading is a learned art form, developed over a lifetime of observation, as are most things, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships—which Hunk will readily admit neither he nor much of the rest of team Voltron likely excels at.

Not that he minds being the Lance-to-world translator at times, just as Lance is for him often enough.

…It’s just. Complicated.

Really fucking complicated.

At the end of the day, Lance is paranoid, insecure, and a bit of a secret pessimist, but he’s not often wrong about these things—about people.

So yeah, they’re kinda fucked, and not, as Lance would so crudely put it given the opportunity, the quote on quote “fun way”.

It is, Hunk reflects later—after Lance has crawled into the warm space next to him on the long, but not particularly wide, Altean bed that really can’t fit the both of them, snuggled into his side and sapping his warmth with cold fingers curled into his shirt sleeve, as they have done since they are children—undeniably frustrating that understanding the right path for the future of Voltron, and what to do in the face of this new, rather significant bump in the road, is not even half as clear as it is to him the simplicities of talking Lance down from a panicked spill of rambling and into sleep.

But he supposes that’s rather the point, isn’t it? He’s had the better part of a lifetime to learn Lance, and comparatively, in his short period as a paladin, he’s had basically no time to figure out exactly what the right way to go about being a paladin of Voltron is.

When days of searching for Shiro turn into weeks, Hunk gets used to two things very quickly: breaking up vicious arguments, usually with Coran’s help, and dragging Lance away from the hologram monitors on the bridge every night.

Usually, Hunk would count on Lance to help out with the former problem among their fellow paladins, and he still often can, blessedly, but thanks to the latter aforementioned sleep issue, not always. Lance is the kind of person that can run for days on nothing but spite and manic energy, but when he finally crashes, he crashes hard, and if he doesn’t get some solid sleep for a couple nights afterward, he turns nasty pretty quickly when pushed too hard.

A sleep-deprived, cranky Lance is not one you want to pick a fight with, Hunk knows this, but apparently the others haven’t quite gotten the memo yet. Which means he’s all-too-frequently forcing himself between Keith and Lance, and occasionally Allura, in order to stop their loud words from escalating into actual punches.

Trying to figure out what to do now is stressing them all out, Hunk included, and he finds keeping the peace comes with its own tolls in terms of exhaustion levels.

If nothing else, he can rely on Lance to consistently coddle Pidge off to rest when she gets overly tired and cranky herself—ever the caretaker to those that will let him get away with it. Honestly, Hunk rather suspects that Lance would do the same for Allura, maybe even Keith, if they let him, but he feels that’s a thought better kept to himself. There are enough pushed boundaries and stepping on toes going on now as it is without him aggravating the situation.

So he does what he can. He cooks, he cleans, he helps keep the peace, and he handles the complexities of Lance, as always.

Three weeks into Shiro’s “unplanned vacation,” as Lance has taken to calling it in faux-joking terms that have nearly gotten him strangled by Keith a couple times, Hunk finds Lance perched back on the flight deck floor, not long after Hunk had wheedled him into going to bed for the first time that night, hands swiping through hologram screens at a speed that gives him a headache just watching.

Great, so Lance is doing the sneaking out at night multiple times thing now. Classy.

“Y’know, it’s kind of hard to get this one past me when you sleep in my bed pretty much every night, dude.”

Lance startles, making a half-smothered noise somewhere between a squeak and a squawk, and turns back with hunched shoulders to look at him guiltily. “…You’re a heavy sleeper!”

“No,” Hunk says, taking the last few steps to Lance and folding down to the floor next to him, crossing his legs and tucking his hands under his thighs as he offers Lance a pointed side-eye. “You think I’m a heavy sleeper. Besides, I’ve got your body clock memorized. You’ve been waking up at four AM to pee every night since we were like…nine. By now, I wake up naturally, expecting to feel your sharp elbows jabbing me when you get up. Not really that hard to notice when you get up and then don’t come back, ya know.”

Lance pouts, blowing a raspberry into his palm and flopping backwards to lay spread-eagled on the cool metal floor, bringing his holo-screens with him to project over his head with a quick grabbing motion of his hand as an afterthought. Almost automatically, Hunk copies his movements, settling with his hands crossed over his stomach and feet tucked together, a sharp contrast to Lance’s all-over-the-place limbs, taking up much more space on the floor despite being half Hunk’s size. Making a happy noise, Lance frees a hand from the monitor to bury it in Hunk’s hair, scratching lightly in an idle motion as the other hand continues its swiping and tapping on the screen.

“Can you even read that?” Hunk asks, yawning, eyes glazing over as he tries to follow the whizzing Altean scrolling by. He can recognize a few written Altean words (or maybe they’d be better considered symbols) by now, but only things in relation to equipment around the ship hangars, workshops, and the kitchen when he’s very lucky. Even the alphabet, if Alteans even have one in a similar format to theirs, would be lost on him. But that’s hardly surprising, given language has always been more Lance’s area than Hunk’s.

Humming, Lance shrugs, shoulders sliding along the polished chrome. “Yes and no? I’m getting better, but a lot of the more complicated stuff is still lost on me, especially without a human language point of reference. I swear, Altean is the most complicated language possible to try and learn.”

Hunk smiles despite himself, closing his eyes, “Even harder than Japanese?” he asks, thinking back fondly to the period Lance had gone through in middle school when he’d decided he was going to try and learn the language, merely because some kid that had been really into manga at their school had bet him he wouldn’t be able to.

He’d managed to, as well, for the most part. It had taken a few years, but he’d done it, purely out of spite—the best motivator for Lance there is.

Lance snorts. “Well this doesn’t have three different writing systems, as far as I can tell, but it’s no cake walk either.”

Hunk hums in agreement, and for a long moment there is silence, distinct and obvious but not uncomfortable, Lance’s fingers still tangled up in his hair, before there’s a quiet sigh, and he cracks an eye open to watch Lance’s half-awake, exhausted face reflected by the dimly glowing lights of the holo-screens, hand still outstretched to tap or swipe.

“What’re you thinking?” Hunk asks. An offer to talk, but not a demand, and Lance glances ruefully at him, one thin eyebrow arched in a response.

“Hell if I know. It’s not like I have any idea what I’m doing, really.”

Hunk nods slightly, accepting the admission for what it is. “…Shiro?” he guesses, quietly.

Lance looks away, and he sighs. “You’re allowed to be worried about him too, Lance. Yeah, you’re not as close to him as Keith or Pidge…or Allura, maybe, but he’s still…” His voice catches on the words, and it comes out as something like a question, “He’s still our…friend?”

Blue eyes turn back to him, Lance’s face scrunched up in something between grief and distaste. “Is he? He’s our teammate, sure, and our leader. And yeah, we need him around, no bones about that one, but can we honestly say he’s our friend?”

“I…” Hunk blinks, hesitating, and Lance snorts, gaze darting away and narrowing to a glare at the monitor above him.

“I just want him back as soon as possible so that we can go back to normal,” Lance says firmly. “The less time Keith stays in charge, the better.”

“You’re allowed to care, you know.”

Lance grunts in response, fingers untangling from Hunk’s hair to cross his arms and pout up at the ceiling.

Hunk grins despite himself, rolling onto his elbow to peer down at Lance, head caught in his hand as a resting place. Almost unconsciously, he reaches out to poke Lance on the nose, earning himself an unamused huff. “Oh come on, don’t even try. I’m not saying you’ve suddenly got to become best buddies with Shiro or something, I know he wasn’t exactly what you were expecting, but don’t pretend it doesn’t matter to you whether he comes back in one piece or not for reasons outside of team functionality.” He laughs at Lance’s disgruntled face, smoothing his fingers over bared collarbone against the loose edges of the wide neckline of the castle-provided paladin pajamas, feeling the faintest pattern of heartbeat just underneath. “You care about him. You care about all of them, probably a bit too much. Don’t think I don’t notice. Every fight you pick with Keith and Allura is to distract them and give them a break from stressing over Shiro. It’s your own way of looking out for them.”

“Not every fight.”

“Most fights,” Hunk amends softly. “You, Lance McClain, have a heart the size of Earth, and you’d take a bullet for anyone on this team without hesitation.” He smiles ruefully. “Much as I wish you’d show a little more self-preservation.”

Lance grumbles, rolling his eyes, and pushes lightly on Hunk’s chest. Obliging, he leans away from his place hovering over Lance’s head, falling back to his original position on the floor. Lance rolls over in turn, tucking himself against Hunk and folding his arms up onto Hunk’s chest, chin resting on them over his breastbone, one leg idly tangling with his own.

“Maybe I do care about them,” he admits, catching his lower lip between his teeth. “But not as much as I care for you.”

Hunk smiles. “That’s a bit different though, isn’t it?” he says, and Lance hums in reluctant agreement.

“And what about you, huh?” Lance asks him quietly, eyes drooping and voice lulling in rare peace. “Sir Hunk—everyone’s knight in shining armor. Savior of the Balmera, and of our kitchen whenever Coran’s on the move. Leg of Voltron, strength of Voltron.” He grins lazily, wide and easy. “Strength of all my crazy, keeping me from falling off the rails.”

“Me?” Hunk laughs quietly. “I have no clue what I’m doing.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Not you. Never you.” He traces his hands over Lance’s sides, familiar warmth under his fingers. “You know me too well.”

“Maybe,” Lance acquiesces. “Maybe.”

They fall into silence, long and open in a way that makes the hum of the sleeping castle even clearer, like the ticking of a clock that gets louder the longer you listen to it, one part soothing and one part filled with the creeping, crawling sensations of distant foreboding. Almost idly, Hunk runs his hands along Lance’s waist and hips and up his back once more, one hand coming up over Lance’s shoulder to trace fingertips along his jaw, feeling the thin bone underneath soft skin. Lance smiles tiredly, turning his face into Hunk’s hand and closing his eyes, breathing in deeply and exhaling slowly, and Hunk finds himself copying his rhythm automatically.

There is still so much to be said. About them, about the team, about Shiro, about Voltron…but now, he suspects, is not the time. To press on too far would shatter the serene stillness of this pale imitation of night, and he doesn’t have the heart to do it. Not when so much about their situation, their lives, is so unsure, and Lance is the only stable, familiar thing he has left.

So he lets it be, sliding his palm up Lance’s cheek and pushing his bangs back off his forehead, running his fingers through Lance’s hair in a steady motion as Lance brings an arm up to rest his elbow on Hunk’s chest, his chin propped into his fist, and his other hand traces unfamiliar symbols into Hunk’s sternum, practicing his Altean, assumedly, even in this half-awake state.

“I know I’ve been worrying you,” Lance murmurs eventually, voice laden with sleep as he peers down at him with lidded, dazed eyes, “I’m sorry.”

Hunk smiles softly, shrugging as best he can against his position on the floor. “I always worry, it’s what I do.”

Lance snorts lazily. “Yeah, but I haven’t really been helping.”

“Just take care of yourself,” Hunk says quietly. “That’s all I need. To know you’re okay, that’s it.”

There’s a sigh, and Lance slumps forward, dropping his arms and resting his face against Hunk’s chest, ear right over where he knows his heartbeat resides, and he brings his arms up carefully, wrapping them around Lance’s shoulders. “Ok…ok.”

“…You too. That—you too.” Lance adds almost silently after a long moment, and Hunk closes his eyes, pretending not to hear.

There are some things he can’t swear to, right now, if it means keeping Lance, and everyone else, safe. He won’t make promises he can’t keep.

A little over a month and then some into Shiro’s disappearance, the Galra find them once more, and they run out of time.

It’s a whirling, anxious thing, in the aftermath of what is much more an escape than it is a victory, as they realize that hiding and waiting and hoping Shiro will return to them of his own accord—or that they will magically find a way to locate him immediately—is a near hopeless endeavor. A dangerous one, even, given they now know for certain the Empire has regrouped and is doing just fine.

Whatever element of surprise or advantage they might have had, knocking Zarkon out of commission, it is lost now. The Galra have more than demonstrated that they do not waver in the face of a threat in favor of sentimentality, not even for their Emperor. Everyone is replaceable, even Haggar and Zarkon’s generals know this, and they are on the losing side of this battle so long as they pretend otherwise.

At least, that’s so much as what Lance says, when it’s all over and they’ve skulked off to some deserted star system to lick their wounds and consider what to do next.

Not surprisingly, Keith promptly reacts by grabbing Lance by the front of his shirt and threatening to show him exactly who is so replaceable, and Hunk forces his way between them with diplomatic grace as he ignores the flicker of hurt on Lance’s face and the grief in Keith’s eyes. He can’t solve everything at once, he just can’t.

It’s Allura who finally gives into it, catching Hunk’s eye and nodding before asserting control with a steely grip, demanding their attention and their compliance with tone alone as she calls for silence, and reluctantly, oh so reluctantly, admits they cannot carry on like this any longer.

She doesn’t say it, would never say it, but it rings in the air anyways—Lance is right.

Pretty much most everything is replaceable in war, even if it’s a damn shoddy replacement, like a bad spare part for an engine. It has to be.

Everything. Even Shiro, albeit hopefully temporarily.

It leaves Lance with a smug grin and his hands on his hips even as Keith scowls and shoulders past him, not that it stops Hunk from catching the sight of Keith’s wrist darting up to rub at his eyes as he speeds out of the room, or the crack in Lance’s petty expression as he watches him go, genuine concern flickering across for only a moment. They’re all hurting, they’re all terrified, but Hunk doubts Keith and Lance will ever get on the same page long enough to notice, let alone talk it out properly.

They’re too different—Keith is hot anger and fire, channeling his grief and his love into fury and wickedly bladed words in the face of what they have lost, and still stand to lose. And Lance…Lance takes all his fears and doubts, ties them to an anchor, and chucks them in the water to let them drown, hiding them from any wandering eyes. Neither of them is what they seem on the surface, but underneath their contrasts and occasional similarities are even more obvious.

It’s the kind of thing that might be able to be fixed one day, to sit them down and help them hammer out a way to understand each other, but that certainly isn’t now. This isn’t the time, or the appropriate situation, and frankly Hunk may not be the person for the job.

He’s biased. Admittedly, undeniably biased, as much as Shiro is towards Keith, and he doesn’t think he’d even know how to be an impartial party in a manner pertaining to Lance, honestly. A good decade of doing the exact opposite stands firmly in the way.

And so, as Keith departs the bridge and Lance follows him with his eyes, weaknesses covered up and his indecipherable mask back on once more, Hunk sucks in a deep breath, exhaling slowly, and then lets it go. He’ll deal with Lance later, and Keith…well. Someone else will have to handle Keith.

He ignores the part of himself that reminds him that certain someone else for Keith would normally be Shiro.

He looks to Lance, who nods, hands curling into anxious fists at his side, and then Hunk turns to Allura, observes her tired eyes and set jaw, steady on her feet even as their few reclaimed victories crumble around them.

“What do you have in mind, Princess?” he asks, speaking for both himself and Lance—and Pidge, he supposes, from where she hovers in the corner, arms crossed and leaning against the wall with a dark expression. Allura’s face brightens ever so slightly with relief as she relaxes her shoulders and brings her hands together in front of her, and Hunk tries to feel glad for it.

Fighting her helps no one, after all. She needs their support, because right now there is no one else to give it. That is simply the way it is.

They are all replaceable, yes, but right now, at least, they are valuable—maybe not as individuals, but certainly as a unit, and that has to be enough.

It must be enough.

In light of Shiro’s final advisement to the team, Allura calls for a lion rotation in the interest of finding a way to reform Voltron in his absence, admitting it’s probably a more sensible option than looking for a new pilot for Black altogether, given the suitability of a black paladin relies severely on the composition of the rest of the team.

Perhaps Shiro had known what he was doing after all.

Or…perhaps not, Hunk thinks, when post Allura reassigning Keith to Black, as they all expected, she makes the executive decision to stick Lance in Red, and take over the Blue herself, rather than try and convince the Red Lion to accept an inexperienced pilot.

“It’s the best solution in light of our situation,” she tells them, looking to Lance in cool appraisal. “You’re the closest substitution we have for Keith’s position. It will go fine, with any luck.”

Hunk takes one look at Lance’s face, pinched tight and brimming just under the surface with a good dozen emotions, most involving anger, and seriously doubts it.

Lance argues weakly for a few scant moments, arms crossed defensively in the face of his own argument that they are all of them replaceable, before he accepts the position, arms at his sides in a not at all subtle parade rest as he nods to Allura and exits the room quickly. Keith’s eyes follow Lance, mouth a thin line, in a cruel mockery of their positions during their earlier confrontation, and Hunk forces himself to turn away and ignore the pit in his stomach until Allura finishes speaking and dismisses them. He may want to go after Lance like…now, but then he will likely miss something said, and Lance will want to know what happened.

One of them needs to be here.

Eventually, Allura departs, gesturing to Keith to follow her and mentioning she needs to speak to Lance about the lion change in depth. Hunk watches them go, hesitating on whether to follow or not, before sighing and going to see if he can press Pidge to eat something and get some rest, since Lance isn’t here to do it for him. He doubts any of the participating members will appreciate him eavesdropping in on a conversation he’s clearly not meant to be a part of (even he has enough tact to admit that much), and Lance will no doubt want some time to himself to get his thoughts together afterward. They may be…close, and share the aspects of their thoughts and personalities the others aren’t privy to, but Lance is still the kind of person who prefers for someone not to see him at his most vulnerable unless he approaches them first. Hunk has painfully given into this one, through much trial and error. It’s not easy to leave well enough alone when it comes to Lance, but he’s getting better at it, slowly.

Hunk makes a show of coaxing a meal onto Pidge and then tidying up the kitchen, creating noise simply for the sake of it to shake off the still emptiness of the castle that still claws at him even after this long, far too used to the busy noise of the small town where both his and Lance’s families had moved when they were children, and later the hurried racket of the Garrison in full operational swing.

The castle might have been glorious once, packed to the brim with Altean nobles and staff and visiting diplomats, but now it is only a hollow ghost of a shell of what it might have been, echoing with the barely forgotten memories of the past. With only seven residents—eleven if you include the mice, he supposes—in a residence meant for hundreds, their own tininess in the vast scheme of things, even in relation to the size and scope of one singular culture, is palpable.

…He hates it, honestly. While there is something undeniably incredible about visiting alien species, rescuing their homes and liberating their planets, he finds his mentality has grown over time to be more and more like Lance’s, rather than, say…Keith or Pidge’s. The more he sees, the more he just wants to go home.

He may have accepted this duty gracefully, he may have even embraced it, but he never signed up for it. Hell, he only applied to the Garrison on Lance’s encouragement, relieved at the idea of this oh so special, and so close to his heart, piece of home coming with him into this new, foreign territory.

The two of them had wanted a little adventure, maybe, sure, but…not this.

It’s too much and too little, all at once. So much responsibility and promised infamy in the history books eating away at the moments of normal life, all the little milestones that they’re skipping over. His grandmother’s birthday, Lance’s sister’s wedding, their college graduations…

Missed, lost. Every last piece of it, all the promised memories they’ll never get at all now.

Sometimes, in the recesses of the night, he wakes with heavy breaths to a creeping, crawling fear—that one day, if they stay away long enough, they too will be forgotten, just barely distinguishable smudges of the past, like the ghosts of the Castle of Lions.

He doesn’t tell Lance about those nights, even when the other is there in his bed still sleeping next to him, which is a solid almost always. There are some things Lance doesn’t need to know, with so much weight and so much peril already to bear.

Later, much later, after Allura and Keith have returned, arms crossed and avoiding each other’s eyes as expected, because Hunk’s not quite sure if they ever fully worked out the Galra thing, and he doubts all this is helping with it, he ventures down the flights of the ship in search of Lance.

It’s not hard to guess where he might be, honestly. Lance has a short list of places he considers as close to safe as he can within the castle, and the entirety of it is basically comprised of just his room, Hunk’s room, and the lion bay, right with Blue. Given the situation, Hunk feels he can safely guess which of those it is, and he skips any fanfare by just finding the closest elevator down to the lion hangars, fingers tapping nervous rhythms against his side as he considers what he could even say in this situation.

It’s not like he can offer to take Lance’s place or anything. He probably would if he could, just to spare Lance any pain, even if it makes his gut queasy and causes Yellow to growl moodily in the back of his mind, but he’s pretty sure he’d be an even poorer replacement for Keith, and Red might just eject him if he ever got motion sickness in her cockpit.

Much as he hates to admit it, and much as he knows Lance will too, Lance is the better option here, even if it’s still not a remotely good one.

Hunk finds Lance at the Blue lion’s base, curled up in a miserable-looking ball on one of her feet, thin shoulders hunched and knees pulled to his chest, turned away from the door in a clear sign for any intruders to go away. He notes with some relief Lance is at least out of his paladin armor, form all the more deceivingly breakable looking in his oversized jacket and faded jeans. Lance tenses as he gets closer, no doubt hearing his footsteps, and Hunk breathes out slowly, giving it a moment.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Allura.”

“It’s me,” Hunk says quietly, and is rewarded with Lance rolling out of his ball quickly, turning around and wiping not so subtly at his eyes to look at Hunk, expression hovering between closed off and calm, and open and vulnerable.

“Oh.”

Hunk sighs, slowly walking the few extra steps to stop in front of Lance, waiting. “Can I sit down?”

Lance snorts, forgoing an answer and instead shifting over to tap the space on Blue’s paw next to him in invitation, clearly considering the question unnecessary, if appreciated for the permission check it offers. They’re both very different people when it comes to personal space, and while they know each other better than most people when it comes to these things, it certainly never hurts to check, especially in situations like this.

He sits down gently, patting the metal of Blue’s surface when her welcoming purr starts up in the corner of his mind through the interconnected lion bond via his tie to Yellow, muffled and less distinct than his own lion’s, but still plenty clear in its intent.

There’s a short moment of wonder as to whether Red would respond so positively to his presence in the same situation, assuming she first accepted Lance, and then he shoves it out of his mind. It’s hardly important, really, what Keith’s lion thinks of him, even through the lens of Lance as a pilot.

Lance is on him in seconds, curling into his side, tucking a leg over the closest knee, and burrowing the side of his head into Hunk’s shoulder in an obvious seeking of physical comfort. Hunk accepts more than gladly, trailing an arm around his waist and resting his head on top of Lance’s, breathing in the smell of citrusy-sweet Altean shampoo and feeling himself relax properly for the first time in hours after the haunting silence of the nearly empty castle. After a moment, he feels the slightest stirrings of movement as hands wiggle under his shirt, coming to rest on his stomach and abdomen, and he grins sheepishly against Lance’s hair. It’s not sexual in the slightest, it rarely is with them, but the skin on skin contact is nice, a reassurance in the void of space where human touch outside of their team is completely nonexistent. Lance has always been big this sort of thing, even before Voltron, but he’d become particularly insistent on making it a regular occurrence after they ended up in the castle—not that Hunk can blame him, really. If he had five siblings, he’d probably be used to a significantly higher amount of physical contact too.

…And it’s enjoyable, regardless, so he hardly minds.

Idly, he brings a hand up to catch on the hair at the back of Lance’s head, threading thin strands through his fingers, and hums, “It’s getting longer. Are you thinking about growing it out again?”

Lance shudders visibly, knowing exactly which childhood phase Hunk is referring to, and makes a noise of disagreement. “What, and let Keith give me crap for following in his frankly atrocious footsteps? I think not.”

“I thought the whole point of that argument was against the existence of mullets,” Hunk says, voice tinged with amusement. “Not long hair on men in general, per se.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Lance mumbles, shifting slightly. “Besides, it was always a mess. Impossible to keep tidy.”

“It was fun to braid, though,” Hunk offers, remembering hot summer afternoons when they were little spent up in the high branches of the climbing trees at the park, his hands pulling the locks of Lance’s just slightly curly brown hair gently through the processes of the short braids he’d do down Lance’s neck.

Lance offers only an amused huff, wiggling against Hunk’s side in an effort to get more comfortable as they lapse into silence once more. After a long moment, he sighs, extracting a hand from under Hunk’s shirt to reach next to him and grab the object Hunk hadn’t even noticed had been there until now, holding it into view in front of the both of them. “I thought it wouldn’t really matter who kept what bayard, since they’re just weapons, but apparently they’re synced to each lion’s consciousness or something, since there’s the whole…plug it into the dashboard and produce a huge weapon thing, so…”

Hunk looks down, watching the lights of the hangar glint off the polished surface of the red bayard, and fights back the slight, but undeniable sinking in his stomach. “What shape does it take?” he asks almost automatically, unable to help himself as his head buzzes with the possibilities. Lance is naturally a ranged fighter, preferring guns or…basically anything that can be used from a distance, honestly, but the traditional role of the red paladin, from what he understands of it, is that of a close combat fighter—a bladed weapon.

There’s the slightest of exhausted, but willing breaths, and then Lance’s second hand is on the bayard as both grasp it and yank it apart as the bright light of its activation shapes it willingly with his movements. When the blinding white clears, Hunk blinks down and whistles at the two small, distinctly shaped blades lying in Lance’s palms.

“Throwing knives?” he asks, reaching a hand out carefully to trace along the sharp edge of the closest of the thin-edged blades, hissing when it catches on his skin and pulling away quickly, sticking the offending finger into his mouth as he would a paper cut. Lance looks worriedly to him for a moment, but he waves it off, pulling his hand back away and nodding to the knives. “Do you um…even know how to use those?”

There’s a huff of laughter, and Lance shakes his head. “Nope, not a clue, and I’m not that hot at it either, Allura made me practice for her.” Hunk winces, and Lance just shrugs, “This was apparently the closest compromise the Red lion and I could reach between a ranged weapon and…well. Its preference for something sharp and pointy, so it is what it is.”

“What would you do once you’ve thrown them, though?” Hunk asks cautiously, squinting at the small blades suspiciously.

“They just seem to automatically re-spawn? Every time I threw one and reached for another—while Allura yelled, of course—there was one waiting at my hip like there would be if I had a storage belt.” Lance wrinkles his nose, “Pretty much in the same vein as how our guns never run out of ammo or Pidge’s electric blade…thing…never runs out of charge. It’s like some kind of…bad alien video game hack. Infinite ammo.”

“Well,” Hunk offers quietly, “It is magic…I think.”

Lance scowls, dropping the knives and watching with unreadable eyes as they clatter to the ground and are reabsorbed by the white light, reforming the red bayard’s resting form at the base of Blue’s foot in an almost painful moment of visual irony. “I hate it. I already miss my gun.”

“It’s only temporary,” Hunk murmurs, and Lance snorts in response.

Temporary. Right.” He sighs out, falling back against Hunk’s chest and craning his neck to peer up at him, eyes wide and tired and full of so much raw humanity, the same way they were that night out on the flight deck only what was a couple weeks ago, but in many ways feels like lifetimes previous. Every day out in space has been long and unfamiliar, and every minute and every hour without Shiro even more so. “We’ve been searching for more than a month, Hunk. Everyday, nonstop, every night, out on those holopads looking for something, anything that might tell us where he is. What if we never find him?”

He considers making some quip about Lance’s previous insistence on not caring, and then dismisses it, knowing it will do little to help in this case, instead smoothing a hand over Lance’s forehead gently. “We’ll find him.”

“But what if we don’t?” Lance presses, staring at him with so much naked fear, and bone-chilling certainty in the face of his admission. “Like I myself said first, as Allura kept reminded me, we’re all replaceable. All of us— Zarkon and his soldiers, Shiro, even you and me. We’re only here because we were a convenient option that managed to fulfill some very specific characteristics. What if it gets to a point where it’s just…more economical to stop looking? Could we really blame that logic?”

Hunk freezes, looking into Lance’s imploring expression and trying to decide the right answer, jumping between gaps in sentimentality and logic in the face of their deepest fears and worries laid bare. “Do you…do you remember that time when we were ten, and that older kid in the grade above us stole our lunch cards?”

Lance blinks, furrowing his eyebrows. “Uh…yeah? But—”

“And do you remember how we were too embarrassed to tell our parents, so every morning you’d sneak over to my house before they woke up and we’d make lunch for ourselves in my kitchen?”

“Yes, Hunk, I was there.”

“That first time—“ He hesitates, idly brushing his fingers over Lance’s bangs, “That first time, we realized the brown paper bags we’d need to pack them were on the high shelf, yeah? The really high shelf, the one neither of us could reach even when standing on the counter. So we got the footstool ladder from the hall closet, and we still couldn’t get them down, because I was too scared to climb up, and you were too short to reach back then even with the ladder. So you remember what we did?”

Lance’s mouth is a scrunched line of confusion, eyes squinting up at Hunk in bafflement. “We…I climbed on your shoulders?”

“You climbed on my shoulders.” Hunk beams. “And like that, we were just tall enough together to get that cupboard open and save ourselves the humiliating embarrassment of admitting we had forsaken our lunch cards to the horrendous monster that was the idiot in class B6.” Lance laughs, soft and fond, and he grins despite himself. “A hundred other people could have gotten that cupboard open a hundred different ways, but only the specific combination of you and me would have produced that exact result. We could only do it as a team.” Hunk sighs, tracing a thumb along Lance’s cheekbone. “There may be a hundred other potential paladins out there…we may be replaceable as a part of this team, because we have to be for Voltron to survive, that’s fact. You know it and I know it. But you are not replaceable to me. There is only one Lance McClain in the whole universe, and I wouldn’t want any substitute, lions or no.”

There’s a chuckle, and then Lance grins, thoughtless and bright and all the things his smile used to be, before Voltron, before everything. “That was an absolutely terrible metaphor.” Hunk snorts, and said grin stretches even wider. “…I like it, though.”

“Yeah?”

Lance’s hand finds his, fingers twisting around each other and palms pressed flat together, and Hunk closes his eyes, breathing in softly.

He may not know what comes next in this perilous experiment they’re calling the rebirth of Voltron, the weapon born of long gone ghosts of Altea and revived by five children of Earth who accidentally stumbled into a war they were never meant to be a part of in the first place. He may not know if they will find Shiro, or what condition their leader may be in. He may not even know where he stands with this team, disjointed and falling apart already as it is, and he may not know when he will ever get home again, if ever.

But he knows he has Lance.

“…Yeah.”

And that, for once in his life, he thinks, can absolutely be enough.

#Aphelion Zine #my writing #vldfanfic #Hance #Hunk #Lance #Voltron #Learned Behavior (Of The Replaceable) [Voltron]

[stalwartignoramus]

Return of the Obra Dinn (Review)

Gameplay (8/10) Memento Mortem

(+2) Unique gameplay mechanic. The process of invading the dying memories of a corpse to investigate the circumstances surrounding their demise was a very innovative and clever way to explore the Obra Dinn.

(+1) Great pacing. The game progresses in two ways; either you discover new corpses to investigate or you correctly guess the fates of 3 crewmembers. Investigating new corpses gives you more evidence to pinpoint the identity of each crewmember, and correctly guessing their identity and fate narrows down the selection, making it easier to deduce the remaining crewmembers’ identities.

(+1) Intricate character detail. The crew and their relationship with each other really shines through the gameplay since you’ll be using any sort of clue in their interactions to correctly determine their fate and identity.

(=) Trial and Error works wonders. There are certain points in the game where you can make educated guesses based on the information you currently have. For example, if you narrowed down the identity of a crewmember to 2 possibilities, you can force the game to progress by guessing between the 2 possibilities and pairing it with 2 fates that you’re absolutely sure of. It surely isn’t the intended way to play the game, but it works if you don’t quite have the patience (like me) to look for the more subtle clues hidden in the game.

(-1) Traversal and exploration in the midgame can get tedious. In the middle of the game when you already have all the pieces but don’t know where they fit yet, you’re gonna do a lot of walking around, flipping through pages, and jumping from one corpse to another. The game’s lack of a sprint mechanic, or an easier way to navigate the pages of the book, or a way to go back and forth between corpses in a certain chapter really drags out the game and makes it extremely tedious.

Story (6/10) Standard Lovecraftian horror

(+1) Tried and tested narrative. While it doesn’t tell anything new (classic ancient relic stumbles upon a ship, misfortune descends upon the crew, sea monsters emerge to take back said relics, everyone dies), it fits the mold really well because of the gameplay mechanic. The story is the gameplay. The gameplay is the story. You can build up the narrative by discovering the subtle details in each memory and witness the downfall, the daily life, and the different activities that take place in the Obra Dinn through the player’s eyes.

(+1) The non-chronological structure of the game keeps the player guessing about what really happened aboard the Obra Dinn until the very last minutes. It also helps you in deducing the identities of the crew by observing their behavior before, during, and after a certain crewmember’s demise.   

(-1) Anti-climactic final chapter. The Bargain chapter was completely set up to be a major plot twist, and the first part it shows (Part 5) certainly supports this when the game makes us think a certain character did something mischievous behind the scenes. Instead, it fell flat on its face and ended in a very predictable manner which most players probably already knew.

Visuals (10/10) Less is more

(+2) Masterful use of illustration, shading, and negative space. The entirety of the game looks like an illustration from an old book come to life, which is what the game is. A Blues Clues-esque adventure that allows you to jump into a “picture” of the surroundings of a dying person. Every detail, carefully illustrated. The shading, well contrasted to give life to the environment. Negative space in places where the game doesn’t want you to focus on to give more emphasis to the relevant details. It all comes together to create a simple yet intricate portrayal of the Obra Dinn and its members.

(+2) Intricate character design. Every crewmember has a defining characteristic that separates them from their fellow crewmember and it is usually reflected in their character design. One crewmember has tattoos all over his body, some crewmembers share a similar hairstyle that stems from their cultural background, while the officers wearing hats are obvious tells to give the players a headstart in determining their identities. The illustration makes sure that there will always be something that separates one crewmember from another so that each one is a unique individual that can be discerned even from a seemingly similar crewmember.

(+1) Well-orchestrated death scenes that create a dramatic spectacle of the crewmember’s moment of death. Aside from being pleasing to the eye, it also offers the players all the information they need; victim, suspect, method of death, murder weapon, motive, etc. From a Kraken wrapping around the entirety of the ship, to an accidental death by cannon fire, to a cabin scuffle, the game never runs out of spectacles that are worthy of being portrayed in a masterpiece renaissance painting.

Audio (8/10) The terrifying and magnificent sounds of life on the sea

(+1) Ambient noise to Seafarer’s tunes. The background sounds switch depending on where you currently are. If the player is in the present time, they’ll hear nothing but the waves, the rain pelting the deck of the ship, their own footsteps, and the creaking of the doors as they get opened. If the players are inside a memory, a track plays depending on the overall mood of the memory. It varies from solemn to intense. It’s a wonderful juxtaposition of the present time and the past to remind the player that life was once bustling on the Obra Dinn but it is now lifeless and silent.

(+1) Voice acting plays a vital role. In all honesty I’m not at liberty to say that the voice acting was great since I’m not a native speaker of any of the languages spoken in the game, but they were distinct and detailed enough that I can tell roughly from which area their language/accent hails from.

(+1) SFX also plays a vital role. If the frozen scenario doesn’t give enough information regarding the circumstances of a crewmember’s death, the sound effects that play at the moment of their death might be a better tell. Gunshots indicates being shot by someone, blunt sounds indicated clubbing, gruesome squelching and tearing sounds accompanied by screaming means someone is most likely being torn apart. The plethora of sound effects littered throughout the game are just as helpful as the visuals when it comes to determining the fate and identities of the crewmembers.

Final Score (8) Excellent A game that defines the decade in gaming

This decade has seen the rise of indie gaming. More and more indie developers are coming up with excellent and fresh titles that can stand against the AAA games. They make up for the lack of sheer size, scale, and detail that a AAA provides by utilizing simplistic visuals and innovative gameplay mechanics. Return of the Obra Dinn will be remembered this decade alongside indie gems like Celeste, Shovel Knight, and Super Meat Boy as the games that defined indie gaming’s march to greatness. Simple yet intricate, short but sweet, hard and rewarding. Return of the Obra Dinn, a cult classic in the making.

(1-2) Terrible (3-4) Bad (5) Average (6-7) Good (8-9) Excellent (10) Masterpiece

[themadandthemaverick]

Dear Heart Dramatic OTP Asks: 1-16

Extra-Dramatic OTP Asks: Send me a ship and number and I’ll tell you…

1. Who would sell their soul to the devil to save the other. - Since Twilight has already sold her soul once to save someone she loved, I’d have to go with her for this one. I feel like Tumsa would be clever enough to find a way around dealing with the devil.

2. Who would become a stalker, in the right (wrong) situation. - I’m leaning towards Tumsa. Under the right (or wrong) circumstances, things can go sideways very quickly and his more unpredictable side comes out. When his buttons are pressed, he’s likely to become much more possessive. 

3. Who would pine away in silence their entire lives without confessing their love. - Tumsa would be more likely not to speak out on his affections, considering the fact that he’s not the most outwardly affectionate one of the two. At some point, Twilight would muster up the fool’s courage, but she would probably have to make the first move in any case. 

4. Who would leave their friends, family, and life to move overseas to be with the other one. - This one’s difficult. In their own ways, they’re both devoted to their friends and family; it would be extremely difficult for them to just leave it all behind. In my eyes, I don’t think one would be more willing to do this than the other. Tumsa is devoted to his loved ones just as much as Twi is to hers.

5. Who would be the most worried the other might cheat on them. - They both have enough trust in each other not to seriously worry about this, but I think that the thought would cross both of their minds at some point, even briefly. This most likely would stem from the belief that each one is not good enough for the other, so the worry springs up that their partner might one day realize this. But, like I said, neither one of them stays awake at night worrying about something like this.

6. Who would run into a burning building to save a stranger while the other calls 911. - (I think that when it comes to two beings with inhuman powers and little regard for the law, 911 is out of the question unless necessary.) Twilight- being the poor, brave fool that she is - would no doubt be the first one to sprint head-first into a burning building to save someone. Her heart bleeds for strangers in need. Plus, helping others is part of her day job.

7. Who would haunt the other after death and chase away other suitors. - Twilight might do this for a bit of weird humor, but I don’t think either one of them would seriously do this. Twilight would more or less just want to find some sort of entertainment in death.

8. Who would stand up at the other’s wedding and say they object. - I could see either one of them doing this, honestly. Of course, I think that in this case, most of it would depend on the circumstance. Neither one would do it if the other were getting married to someone they actually loved.

9. Who would write long, beautiful poems for the other. - Tumsa’s always been more eloquent and poetic, so I think he’s the one. It’s not really sappy or over-the-top, but it’s beautiful and heartfelt, perfectly matching the tone of his affection. Twilight would keep it with her and treasure it, just as she does with all of his gifts.

10. Who would love the other no matter how evil the other became. - This would likely be more Twilight, mostly because Tumsa’s a bit more prone to his darker side. To her, it wouldn’t matter what happens; she’d never give up on him. She’s lost too many people in her life, no way is she about to lose faith in the last person she loves.

11. Who would be the most likely to become an addict (gambling/drugs/etc.). - Twilight, without a shadow of a doubt. Tumsa doesn’t see much appeal to addictions, but Twi had terrible coping issues. She’s already an alcoholic, so getting attached to something else wouldn’t be too hard. Her willpower is weak when it comes to covering up her pain.

12. Who would propose in a grand gesture of some kind. - I don’t think that either one of them would do anything too grand. They both like smaller and more intimate gestures; I think it means a lot more to them. 

13. Who would go berserk at harm or death befalling the other. - Either one would be distraught if something happened to their partner, but Tumsa’s rage would be much more prominent. He’d tear through hell if it meant he could get revenge for Twi’s death. (Not that she wouldn’t; the sorrow would hit her harder than anything else.) I feel sorry for the poor fool who manages to hurt her.

14. Who would spend too much money on expensive gifts for the other. - Tumsa would give Twilight gifts that held extraordinary monetary value - jewels, rare artifacts, you name it. He has a lot more access to high-priced, hard-to-find, and beautiful things than she does.

15. Who would fight an impossible battle to give the other time to escape. - They both would, but I could see Tumsa doing this more. Twilight would get herself into a bad situation and he has to come and save her one last time. (Okay, now I’m sad. How dare you.)

16. Who would be able to spend centuries in misery waiting for the other to be reborn. - I can see either one of them doing this. Twilight’s used to spending centuries alone, at least then she’d have something to look forward to while she waits. Tumsa would wait forever for her if he had to. Plus, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

#ask #untamablesouls #meme #I didn't have very good answers for some of them #I'm sorry

[captain-zajjy]

Solstice, Chapter 12 - A Final Fantasy XV Story

Pairing: Ignis x Female Original Character

AO3 | Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

A/N: Chapters 10-12 of this game broke me. 

After clearing the final Royal Tomb in Cartanica, the group had reboarded the train, and Ignis had laid down on bottom bunk of their sleeper car after showering and almost immediately passed out from sheer exhaustion. Exploring the murky swamp of the abandoned mine had left him physically battered and emotionally drained, far more than he was willing to admit to the others.

He only hoped his words had left some lingering effect on Gladiolus and Noctis - their little party was already beset on all sides; internal bickering was the last thing they needed, and he absolutely wouldn’t tolerate it being on his account. The pair of them had at least seemed cordial in the few moments Ignis remained awake after his head hit the pillow.

He couldn’t say how much time had passed before he woke, only that it must have still been night time (although the definition of night was apparently getting rather murky these days); the car was quiet, save for Gladiolus’s constant snoring and the rhythmic rumbling of the train riding the rails.

All the bruises, bumps, and scrapes he’d gotten trying to make his way around the slick, uneven terrain of the Caestino had truly begun to ache in earnest, each pain a protest from his body to remind him that continuing on this journey literally blind was a foolhardy venture. But he had to. He couldn’t abandon his friends, his King, no matter the toll it took on him.

Still, the pain was enough to prevent Ignis from falling back asleep, and it kept those pesky, intrusive doubts circling around his mind. Suppressing a groan, he sat up, felt around the end of the bunk until he found his jacket, and pulled his phone and sunglasses from the pockets. As quietly as he could manage, he rose and fumbled around for the door. Unlike his suite in Altissia, which had seemed chasmally large, everything on the train was narrow and cramped, which meant it was only a short matter of time until he bumped into what he was looking for.

Once in the corridor, Ignis slid the door shut behind him and sat down against it to ensure he didn’t lose his way. And to ensure that he didn’t frighten any fellow passengers who might happen to be about, he donned his sunglasses, covering up at least some of his scars. He had yet to get a straight answer out of Prompto about just how bad it looked; Gladio would tell him the hard truth, but the man had been too moody to bother.

Ignis pushed the home button down on his phone and instructed the device to call Valeria. He could at least manage to do that much on his own.

It rang several times before a sleepy voice mumbled on the other end of the line, “Hello?”

“I apologize. It’s late.” I think.

“Iggy... It’s fine.” Valeria still sounded only half-awake. Ignis felt guilty for rousing her, but he needed someone to talk to, someone to help him clear his head. “Are you...is everything okay?”

“It’s alright,” he said, gingerly rubbing the sore spot on his knee where he must have fallen at least a dozen times down in that bloody swamp. “We got what we came for. We’re headed to Gralea now.”

“Gralea...” Valeria sighed and Ignis heard a shifting sound in the background, like she was sitting up in bed. “A lot of the Niffs are talking about Gralea. It sounds like things are getting pretty bad there, like the MTs have gone berserk.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Ignis said, making a mental note. “Magitek running amok might work to our advantage.”

“You’re going after the Crystal?”

“Indeed,” he replied. “And if we happen to bump into the Emperor or the Chancellor, we’ll bump them off for good measure.”

“Do you really think killing them will change anything?” Valeria asked.

“Cut off the head of the snake...”

“And its heart keeps beating.” Given his current traveling companions, he forgot that such an analogy was less demonstrative on someone who had actually paid attention in biology class.

“For a time,” Ignis conceded. “But it lacks direction and purpose. The Empire has already overextended itself. Without those men holding it together, it will surely crumble.”

“I hope so, Iggy. If nothing else...” Valeria sighed. “They deserve to pay for what they’ve done.”

“You’ll get no argument from me there.” They sat in silence for a spell, Ignis taking a quiet sort of comfort in the steady sound of her breathing on the other end of the line.

“Ignis.” Valeria’s voice dropped, her tone gentle and forlorn. “Your eyes... They aren’t getting better, are they?”

He exhaled sharply, shifting on the cold floor of the train. Somewhere on the ride to that swamp, he’d accepted it, accepted that he’d never again see the sun rising over the Citadel, never watch himself and his friends grow old and grey, never look upon her lovely face once more. He’d accepted it, and yet it was so damn hard to say out loud.

“No,” he finally admitted. “I...no.”

Valeria let out a long sigh, as if she’d already known his answer. “I’m so sorry, Iggy. It’s like...it’s like it’s all a bad dream. But it’s not. Everything’s gone wrong.”

We’ll put it right, he thought. The things that could be fixed, anyway. “Tell me, Val. Do you think I’m being selfish? By insisting I continue on, despite my...impairment.” The word left a sour taste in his mouth, one that he knew he had best get accustomed to.

She paused. “Reckless, maybe. Not selfish.”

Ignis frowned. “‘Reckless’ isn’t a word I usually like to associate with either.”

It was a few moments before Valeria spoke. “You said it yourself: ‘Cut off the head of the snake’ and the rest falls apart. Do you really think the three of them can penetrate the Imperial capital without you?”

“Hmm...through sheer force, perhaps. But, certainly a more clandestine approach would prove most effective.”

“You need a sharp mind for that, Iggy. Not eyes,” she said gently. “I...I can’t begin to fathom how difficult this must be for you, but you mustn’t doubt yourself. You can do this. The others can tell you what you can’t see.”

It was difficult - extremely, painfully difficult - to ask the others for help with basic things right in front of him, that he should have just been able to see, but he knew he had to stop thinking of it that way. They didn’t seem the least bit chagrined when they called on him for his historical or political knowledge, for battle strategies, for advice. He would just have to start thinking of it as a give-and-take now, instead of just giving.

“You’re right, of course,” Ignis said.

“I usually am.”

That elicited a small smile from him, perhaps the first real smile he’d had since he woke to constant darkness.

“I miss you. Terribly,” he said suddenly, without thought. “Ah, forgive me. I know you don’t like it when I say such things.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it.” Valeria’s voice had grown thick. “It just...hurts.”

“I know.” Ignis didn’t want to hurt her either; but it was the circumstances, not him. “When we finish in Gralea, we’ll be coming back to retake the Crown City. Noct could use another sharp mind, one that has first-hand knowledge of the Imperial occupation.”

“Are you offering me a job?” Ignis was relieved to hear her resume her normal, glib tone.

“I can’t guarantee you any sort of steady pay. And, at the moment, the food is quite lousy, but I assure you that the chef plans to rededicate himself to the craft as soon as he is able.”

“Hmm...” Valeria mused. “A job working for the King. I guess I could do worse.”

“Much worse.”

“Plus, I heard that his chamberlain is stylish and brilliant.”

Ignis felt heat rising in his cheeks and a fullness spreading in his chest. He hadn’t realized just how much he needed her playful flattery until now, how good it felt to be handled by something other than kid gloves.

“I don’t know about all that, but I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”

As soon as Valeria got off the phone with Ignis, she buried her face in her knees and sobbed. I miss you. I miss you.

Dammit, Iggy, she thought. He was marching into the heart of the Empire, the Empire that had destroyed their home and killed her mother, the Empire that had blinded him and murdered the Oracle, the Empire that had by all accounts lost control of its own monstrous creations. The possibility that she might never see him again was very high, very real, and too much for her heart to bear.

And even if he did make it back to her and to Lucis, he would never see her again, period. That thought caused her to cry even harder.

He was acting so strong, so stoic about the whole ordeal, but she knew him and knew he had to be suffering, not only with the sudden physical limitations, but even more psychologically, and the only thing she could do about it was try to give him some kind words over the phone. It wasn’t enough.

She wanted to take him and disappear somewhere safe and quiet, where there were no kings or princes or emperors, where she could just hold him close and let him know that he was wonderful just the way he was. That he was enough.

Valeria hated this world and what it had done to him and to her, to the thousands just like him and her who had been ripped apart by other men’s ambitions. And the worst part of it was that she could see no end in sight. Even if they somehow managed to succeed, if Noctis managed to retrieve the Crystal and kill the Emperor, it would still come back to war. Men like Caligo Ulldor would rise up in the Emperor’s place, and there would be more death, more destruction, more daemons. All that would be easier to endure by Ignis’s side, it was true, but that wasn’t comfort enough to stem her tears.

I miss you. Terribly. Valeria missed him too. And she missed the mornings of waking up before dawn, being the first one in the office and the last one out. She hadn’t even been particularly happy  with that life, but at least it was steady, safe, and stable. At least then, surrounded by her employees and shareholders and business acquaintances, she could convince herself that she wasn’t all alone. That all her years of schooling, her sacrifices, her daily existence was all for something, even if that something had never really been her choice all along.

Now, she was no one, just an ID number on a bracelet, another faceless refugee to be herded by the Empire, to pasture or to the slaughter. It didn’t make any difference to the Niffs. Everyone who had ever cared about her was either dead or far away. And even though she was surrounded by hundreds in the exact same situation, she still felt all alone. No one had the energy to care anymore. All she had now was that lingering fear that the Niffs would come and haul her off again, this time for good.

Caligo Ulldor would be returning to Insomnia soon - and empty-handed, since Valeria knew Ignis and the rest were on an entirely different continent - and Loqi Tummelt wasn’t going to leave her be in the meantime. She wouldn’t entertain his proposal, not even for a second - despite her real fears that this war would end exactly as he predicted, she knew that Ignis wouldn’t want to be spared, not at the cost of the Prince’s life. He’d placed Noctis’s life above his own since he was a child; he would never just lie down and accept his own safety.

There was only one thing to be done: Valeria had to leave. She didn’t know how she would avoid the soldiers and all the blockades, and she certainly didn’t know what she’d do with herself if she managed to make it outside the city walls, but she knew to remain here much longer was a death sentence.

Valeria’s experience outside the Crown City was limited to meeting her father for lunch at a diner once every few months, where he always made the same bad jokes (“Well, I guess you don’t need any money”) and forced her to pose for a photo with a rusty old Kenny Crow statue or some other stupid landmark. But Ignis had spent a considerable amount of time roaming the Lucian countryside, and had surely made at least a few allies along the way - hopefully ones that would be willing to put her up until the Prince and his entourage returned.

There was just one last thing Valeria had to do before she left. Human experiments in the Manufacturing District. Felix had been the only person who’d showed her any sort of kindness or friendship, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to abandon him, especially to a fate as terrible as that. If it were her - no, if it were Ignis - she would hope that someone would at least try to help.

Valeria set her jaw and wiped her face with her shirtsleeve. Enough crying. Her tears would help exactly no one. And enough sitting around and waiting. Waiting for Ignis to come back, for the Niffs to cart her off, for someone to take pity on her.

The world may have gone mad, but her fate was still her own.

It seemed that, for Ignis, Tenebrae Station was never meant to hold pleasant memories.

He’d been here once before, a long time ago, traveling alongside the uncle he’d just met to a kingdom he’d only ever heard about in bedtime stories. He couldn’t remember the layout of the station or how it had looked at that time - much as that might have aided him now that he was unable to see - but vividly recalled the bright cordovan leather of his shoes, polished to a sheen for his parents’ funeral. Five-year-old Ignis had stared down at them, his feet hanging off the bench as he waited on the train, trying to understand just why he had to go far away, how Mummy and Daddy weren’t ever coming back home.

He’d been confused, terrified by the uncertainty of his future - much the same as twenty-two year-old Ignis was feeling now. The uncle that had taken him in was dead, the faraway kingdom he’d come to think of as home laid in ruins back across the sea. And him, scarred and without sight, in service to a young, unprepared King, with no army or resources to take down a seemingly infinite Empire. The outlook was as dark and murky as his ruined vision.

Adding to that was the more immediate concern for Prompto, snatched by that snake of a Chancellor for ends Ignis couldn’t quite bring himself to contemplate. In many ways, Prompto was the most vulnerable member of their group, and Ignis knew he wasn’t the only one who’d begun to think of him as something akin to a younger brother during their journey. A sentiment Ardyn Izunia was almost certainly counting on.

Something hard and unyielding collided painfully with his side, snapping his attention back to the present. Ignis grunted, swallowing a curse aimed more at his own infirmity than the sudden throbbing just above his hip.

“Watch out, Iggy.” Ignis felt Gladio’s broad hand on his back, steering him away from whatever it was he had just run into.

Poor choice of words aside, Ignis knew Gladiolus was every bit as unprepared and uncertain on how to behave in this situation as he himself was. Ignis constantly vacillated between wanting to assert that he could manage just fine on his own, and gratitude for a familiar guiding voice or hand when he found himself adrift and rudderless in the endless sea of darkness. But this was his burden, his deficiency, and it was his responsibility alone to instruct the others on what sort of assistance he did or didn’t require.

With that in mind, Ignis stopped, calling out Gladio’s name. “We ought to restock our supply of curatives.” They were certainly going to need as many potions as they could carry if they were going to make it through Gralea intact. “Surely there must be a vendor near the station.”

“Sounds good,” Gladiolus replied, sounding about half-interested. “Shop’s off to your left.”

Ignis waited, listening for Gladio’s footsteps and the creak of his leather jacket as he moved, but nothing happened.

“Are you...occupied with something?” Ignis asked, frowning in confusion.

“Huh?” Gladiolus replied. “What are you asking me for? You’re the one who knows about all that crap.”

Ignis’s frown shifted from one of confusion to consternation. “I...I can’t...” I can’t read the prices, I can’t see what’s in stock, I can’t even be certain of how much gil is in my own bloody wallet.

“‘I can’t.’” Gladio’s tone was almost mocking. “Words I never thought I’d hear coming out of Ignis Scientia’s mouth.”

Ignis parted his lips to retort, but was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder, spinning him to his left. “Stall’s about forty feet in front of you.” Gladiolus pressed a crumpled wad of paper into Ignis’s hand. “Here’s five thousand gil. Don’t let ‘em rip you off.”

Ignis stood there for a moment in indignation before he heard Valeria’s voice in his head. You can do this. Then he understood. Gladiolus wasn’t cutting Ignis loose to humiliate him, but because he, despite his earlier objections, believed in Ignis as well. You can do this. You can do this.

Squaring his shoulders, Ignis made his way forward, silently counting steps as he went. At thirty-four, his cane struck something - hopefully the shop stall.

“Uh...” Ignis cleared his throat, praying he wasn’t speaking to empty air. “Pardon me?”

To his right, there was the sound of creaking wood, and then creaking joints, and Ignis shifted toward it, his free hand finding the stall’s counter.

“My word!” The voice belonged to a woman, who must have been quite old from the way she rasped and half of her body seemed to click and pop as she moved. “My word!” she declared again.

Ignis frowned. He knew his scars were obvious, even behind his sunglasses, but at least Aranea had brought it up with some tact.

“Good afternoon,” he said flatly, hoping to move the transaction along.

“Oh, that posh voice! It really takes me back,” the shopkeeper crooned. “I haven’t heard highborn speech like that in years! Aside from Lady Lunafreya, of course. Stars guide her soul.”

Oh, Ignis thought, feeling slightly chagrined. She was startled by how I speak. He was well-accustomed to his accent being regarded as a peculiarity, a topic of idle conversation, but here in Tenebrae, particularly to the older set, it was a very real, tangible indicator of class and status.

“Have you come to see to the Manor, m’lord?” She sounded so hopeful, Ignis almost felt guilty for his response.

“Just passing through, I’m afraid.” He wasn’t certain if the Imperials had bombed the ancestral home of the Fleuret family or merely set it ablaze, but either way, the acrid smell of smoke made its way to the station with every passing breeze.

“Oh, that’s a shame,” the woman said with a sigh. “I guess they’re just going to let it burn... Anyway, what can I do for you, m’lord?”

Ignis didn’t bother correcting her about his title. He doubted a woman who had spent decades addressing anyone who spoke like him in such a manner would suddenly stop now that he asked her to.

“What...er, what do you have for sale?”

“Everything I’ve got listed here.” He felt her tap on the counter. “Best prices in Tenebrae, m’lord.”

“I, uh... I’m afraid I’ll have to trouble you for some assistance.” It’s her job, Ignis reminded himself, trying to chase away the embarrassment that Ignis Scientia, best and brightest of his day, couldn’t bloody read a list of inventory right under his nose.

“What...? Oh, oh my word!” the woman whispered, then he heard scrambling as fast as her aging joints would allow. “I am so sorry, m’lord. I’m over here with my head buried in a book, not paying attention, and I-”

“No need to apologize.” Ignis held up his hand to arrest her babbling. “If you could just tell me what’s for sale, please.”

“Of course, m’lord! Now, let’s see...” The shopkeeper ran through the inventory and prices - which weren’t terrible, but he highly doubted they were the best in the country - and Ignis was able to procure a full set of restoratives, throwing in a few extra for Prompto. Ignis wanted to be prepared for anything (well, almost anything - he couldn’t quite bring himself to prepare for the worst) when they found their erstwhile companion.

With the bag in hand, Ignis turned around and made his thirty-four steps back to Gladiolus.

“Well, well. Look at that,” Gladiolus said playfully. “What was it you were saying before?”

Ignis shoved the change into Gladio’s burly chest. “Don’t push it, Gladio.”

But despite the bag full of potions, Ignis had to admit he felt just a little lighter than he had before.

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