#it's been better lately somehow and i have to attribute that to my life being better holistically | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

colddelusionsheep · 6 months

Text

So, this is my start of yandere hunger games, and before y'all read this. There are some things to take note of.

Everyone romantic (and y/n) is 18 or older. I am not going to mention age unless the story requires it.

This is going to be ocs x reader, and it will be based on the hunger games(with some differences.

The reader will also be fem.

And that is it! I hope you enjoy, and if you do, feel free to like and reblog(dni if you are under 18 tho)

2nd Part

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The reaping

Humming softly, you buttoned up the last two buttons on your dress. The light green was worn with a few stitched up parts where the fabric use to be ripped. It was old and has seen better days, but even with those details, it still was the nicest thing you owned.

You hoped you could wear it again someday. A wish that you had each year during the reaping, and so far it came true each time. People would comment on how lucky you were to avoid the reaping each time. Weeping love ones of the reaped would curse your name and say you somehow cheated to save your own skin.

You don't blame them. With how many times you have sold your name to this game that is hell. You should of been reaped a long time ago.

Even you didn't know how your name wasn't pulled. The suppose luck that people would attribute to your was no where to been seen on any other day of the year. It was only on this one. However, if it was seen on any other day then maybe you wouldn't be so closed to starving each day.

Reaching down, you pulled your worn socks to your knees. Patches were half hazerdly stitched onto them. Soon you would need new socks and shoes for the winter. You would have to decide on which. Shoes seemed to be the priority in your mind. What good were socks without shoes anyway.

Giving one last look in your mirror. You let out a deep sigh. All you had to do is survive one more time. Then you would be forever free of this life. Once you were free from the reaping, maybe you would finally be accepted in district 12.

The walk to the town square was always a silent one. Each person was getting ready to die. You always thought that the suspense was the worst thing about this. The knowledge that it could be you was nerve wracking to say the least.

Passing by one of your neighbors, you could Hear them mutter under their breath. "I hope it's you."

The rumors you got use to, it was just part of your everyday life by now. Being the outcast was a role you took with stride. What you didn't get use to was the fact that many of those that live close to you wished you dead.

Just like they wished your parents dead, and it was a wish they got. Maybe they would get this wish also.

The check ins went by like a blur. A yearly routine that you would never have to do again. There was peace in that thought, and that peace would surely give you the strength to make it through this. No matter how false it may be.

Taking place behind Susie Mack, you took note of how nice her dress was. The blue color complemented her bright red hair. She even had matching blue ribbons in her two braids.

Late at night, you liked to imagine what it was like to be her, to be Susie Mack. Almost everyone loved her. She was bright and cheerful. You supposed it was easy to be bright and cheerful when you had a full stomach and a loving family. What you would give to be her. To be loved and beautiful. To not have to worry on whether you would have shoes for the winter or food in your stomach.

You hoped that she wouldn't be reaped, simply for the fact that you knew if she was. Then the entire district would come for you. You don't want to imagine how they would punish you this time.

The escort of the Capital made his appearance, and just like every year. His fashion sense was..... lacking.

A mix of fine fabrics made up his outfit, along with a mix of patterns. You were sure that his clothes had every color known to man. Diamonds littered his neck on their choker that they wore.

You couldn't imagine that he were comfortable. Tight and stiff silhouettes seemed to be the main trend in the Capital this year.

As the escort made the same speech that they did every year. You could feel the anxiety of the crowd. It was getting close to the pulling of the names.

You could practically feel the heart beating of each person here. Looking around, you could even see some of the younger ones silently crying.

The two large crystal vessels were brought out. Each full of names. If you did your math right, yours should be in there 80 times.

"Now, as always, ladies first." You never noticed how gentle his voice was. It reminded of the stream your parents use to take you too. The sound of the water would always make sooth you matter how upset you may of been. It was just too bad that that stream turned into a raging river.

"Our female tribute is." He, as always, paused for dramatic effect. " --/n"

Ringing, that's all you could hear, it wasn't till someone shook you that you could fully understand what was said. It wasn't till the peacekeepers roughly pulled you out of your spot that you understood that your wish was finally ignored. It wasn't till the dammed Capital escort kissed your cheek, and spoke of how lucky you were that you understood that luck was just a lie. That the odds were and would never be in your favor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And the 1st part of the yandere hunger games is done! Hopefully I will have the next part soon. I did write this part very late at night so the are probably mistakes but that is okay.

Also, sorry I was gone so long, school really took everything happy that was in me away. Good news tho, I am graduated!. My blog is going to be open to asks and all, but for right now requests are going to be closed untill I feel more confident in my writing. It should be a lot more active now however!

That's all for right now! Love y'all <3

#yandere hunger games #yandere writing #yandere #yandere x reader #yandere idea #yandere story #platonic yandere #yandere harem #yanderes #x reader

253 notes · View notes

thelukesalvez · 7 months

Text

Luke Alvez x Reader: Shattered

Request: ‘Can you do a Luke x Reader imagine where they get into a really big argument but somehow it ends in fluff / Luke comforting the reader? Thank you so much!’

Word count: 1.6k

Warnings: minor blood mention

Luke watched you silently as you poured yourself a glass of wine.

It was nearing midnight, but the both of you knew that this fight wasn’t ending anytime soon. At this point in time, you had almost forgotten what you were fighting about. Only that you were frustrated, and angry- really angry.

And Luke was too.

“I just don’t understand it.” Luke let his head fall.

You scoffed, shaking your head at him.

“What?” he barked, “I don’t!”

“That’s because you refuse to even try to see things my way. You only ever think about yourself.”

Luke’s nostrils flare as he spoke, a hint of malice to his voice. “That’s not true.”

“It is true!” You raised your voice, your emotions getting the best of you. “You were too wrapped up in yourself tonight, to have the decency to call or text me, to let me know where you were. Instead you let me just sit here waiting. ”

“I already apologized for being late tonight, what more do you want for me?”

“That’s not the point, Luke!” You practically screamed. “I gave up my job, my family- everything for you. So that we could move here and you could join the FBI. I did all of that, just so what? I could be stood up? So I could be waiting for you the rest of my life, wondering if you’ll ever come home at all?”

He didn't even bother to lift his gaze to meet yours.

“Now who’s being selfish?” he sneered. “Women, young girls, were getting stabbed in Charleston, and you’re seriously mad that I didn’t make it home for date night?”

For a moment, the only sound came from the choppy inhale that escaped your lips.

Then, a tense whisper, “That’s not fair.” But you couldn’t help the pang of guilt spreading through your stomach.

“It was a bad one,” Luke barked. “The plane just landed. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“There’s always going to be a bad case. And another, and another, and another. It will never stop.”

“For Christ's sake!” Luke tossed his hands up in the air. “And I’m just supposed to what? Quit? Is that what you’re asking me to do? Will that finally make you happy? Will that make you stop interrogating me every night?”

His anger only made you more frustrated- frustrated that he didn’t understand all your anger and annoyance with him stemmed from the very fact that you missed him. Every goddamn minute he was away, you missed him with everything inside of you. Why couldn’t he just see that?

“Oh, cut the bullshit,” you said instead.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You just love to play the hero, don’t you? You can’t stand the fact that being good at your job makes you a shitty husband.”

Luke squinted his eyes at you. “A shitty husband?” he gawked. His lips tugged into a taunting smirk that only makes you angrier. “Right. Well let’s sit down and have that date now. What was it you had planned again? Spaghetti and a movie? Sounds romantic, really the kind of stuff to keep this marriage alive,” he yelled. His sarcasm bled through your skin and penetrated your body to it’s core.

“You asshole!” You choked, lifting your fingers to your face. You hadn't even been aware that you had been crying all this time.

Luke slapped his hands on the counter, rattling the silverware still laid out. “You know, maybe I’d get home on time if I had something a little better to come home to!”

“You fucking–” you went to raise your hands up in frustration, but in the process you find yourself knocking into your glass of wine with force. A tug against your skin, and then a stinging sensation ripped through your hand before you even realize the glass has been shattered.

“Damnit!” You screamed as the wine spilled everywhere. You slid down to the floor in frustration. The tears now falling down your face could be attributed to both Luke and the gash now evident on your hand. When you looked down, you saw the blood already dripping down your forearm and to the tiled floor.

You tried to stifle the cries escaping your body, but it was no use. You clutched your bloody hand while Luke quickly approached you.

“Shit,” he muttered, his voice noticeably softer now. He grabbed the dish towel from the counter and stepped over the shattered glass to crouch down next to you. “Let me see,” he murmured gently.

You tensed up at first and jerked your arm away. “I’m fine,” you sneered.

But Luke was persistent. "Please don't be stubborn right now, I just want to look."

He reached out again, and once he was convinced you weren't going to tug your arm away again, grabs your wrist, causing you to expose your injury to him. You were forced to surrender under his touch with a sigh.

Your body was still shaking from your sobs when he wrapped the towel securely around the cut, “It’s okay, it’s not that deep.”

You just nodded weakly, your sobs subsiding into sniffles. "I told you I was fine."

You watched Luke’s face intently. He frowned as he held pressure to your hand. “I’m sorry,” he whispered softly.

You swallowed a lump in your throat and say, “Me too.” But you were still hurt, and Luke knew that.

So, he sank down onto the kitchen floor so that he was sitting beside you, his long legs stretched out in front of you. And there, in the safety of the shadows, Luke wrapped his free arm around your waist to hold you against him. The moment your body was met with the warmth that radiated from his own, you immediately felt a bit more at peace. He pressed a soft kiss to your temple. “I didn’t mean any of that.”

You nodded into his sweater.

“I was just angry,” he explained.

Luke grounded you. He was the anchor that pulled you back together when everything fell apart.

“I’m sorry too,” you whimpered. “I just miss you- like all the time.”

You felt exhausted from all that crying. When the room was filled with nothing except for your quiet sniffles here and there, you heard his voice again.

“We should get this cleaned up,” he motioned towards your hand. It was throbbing intensely under his touch. The decorative dish towel you’d once loved so much was now stained with your own blood.

You exhaled a shaky sigh and nodded, letting Luke help lift you from the floor. Your knees shook when you saw the amount of blood pooled on the floor from your cut, but Luke was there to keep a steady grip on your hip.

“How’re we doing?” he asked, clearly noticing your shakiness and fatigue.

“I’m... okay,” you whispered unconvincingly, your voice raspy from it all. You felt his lips pressing against the top of your head and staying there. You counted five seconds until he pulled away and gave your frame a squeeze before leading you carefully over the shattered glass and towards the bathroom.

Luke instructed you to sit on the lip of the bathtub and to hold the dish towel in place while he collected bandages and peroxide.

You watched him as he maneuvered around the bathroom and realized that you didn’t know what you would do if he ever didn’t come home. Despite the challenges and hard work it took to make your marriage work, it would be a million times worse if he wasn’t around.

Luke kneeled in front of you, his gentle eyes connecting with yours before he spoke. “This will probably sting a little,” he warned. He peeled back the towel, muttering a soft, “sorry,” as the fabric stuck to your skin slightly from the dried blood. When he started to pour peroxide on the cut, you hissed, grabbing his bicep with your uninjured hand.

“There you go,” he soothed as the stinging subsided. Luke finished by wrapping the area in gauze lightly. Once the bandage was on, you pulled your arm to your chest and rubbed it.

“Thanks.”

Luke nodded, but then there was nothing but silence between you.

After a few seconds you opened your mouth to speak, but Luke beat you to it.

“This is all so new. My job- the traveling. But we’ll figure it out.”

You nodded, because you truly believed him. You always did figure things out.

“I’m tired," you said, your eyes feeling heavy. “I don’t sleep well when you’re not home,” you admitted, a bit shamefully. You didn’t want Luke to think that you couldn’t function without him, and you knew it was possible he’d feel a little guilty that he wasn’t around much.

Luke nodded sympathetically. “Why don’t you go get ready for bed,” he suggested. He stood up and started gathering the bloody towel and peroxide from the floor. “I’m gonna go clean up the glass in the kitchen. I’ll be in in a minute, okay?”

You nodded as you stood up before turning and heading towards the bedroom.

About ten minutes later, when you had gotten yourself settled into bed in one of Luke’s shirts and a pair of sweatpants, you heard him enter the room. You slowly opened your eyes and watched him as he peeled his shirt off and wiggled himself out of his pants. You knew you were supposed to be sleeping, but you couldn’t without Luke’s warmth. So when you finally felt his body shift the mattress and his arms wind around you, you exhaled a soft sigh of relief, you wanted to live in his arms for the rest of your life. You heard him chuckle softly in response, his legs playfully intertwining with yours.

He stayed quiet for a long time, and for a second you thought he might have already fallen asleep, until you felt his lips linger against the back of your shoulder, followed by a low whisper.

“You’re my favorite thing to come home to.”

#luke alvez #criminal minds #luke alvez fic #luke alvez imagine #luke alvez x reader #luke alvez x reader imagine #luke alvez x reader fic #criminal minds imagine #luke alvez x reader fanfic #criminal minds x reader

282 notes · View notes

creek-ink · 4 months

Text

I apologize for the lack of content.

(little vent abt how I've been lately)

I've spent so long connecting my personality to my art that I've lost my own self-worth and meaning to my craft. it's becoming impossible to distinguish my own happiness from that satisfactory feeling I get when I'm creating, and no matter the manic state I'm in, I can not physically create as much as I'd need to truly be happy, to feel like I'm worthy of rest, or even a fucking break. the pressure to make art is pushing me further from art itself, and it's really the only thing I'm good at. I'm not trying to be self-loathing, I truly have no other attributes that I could capitalise on. nothing that could put dinner on my table or a roof over my head. depression and burnout have become a staple in my life, and this stretch has shown me how careful I have to be with myself. I used to think I was fragile only when being handled by others, but I'm realizing now how I can't trust even myself to be gentle. I'm overwhelmed with the thought that this time in my life should be spent making memories, smth to pass on to my children, but instead, it's being wasted nailed to my bed. too stuck on things that don't really matter in the long run, but even knowing that doesn't make everything suddenly better. somehow, it makes it exponentially worse.

I need help. I can say that and mean it more now than ever, I need help. not only do I not have the income to seek it, but there are very few resources in my area to help.

in all honesty, I am lost. ik this won't last forever, but the light is dimming. I'm scared to ask too much from the people in my life, and Idk where that might lead me. so hello internet, how r u?

#I keep finding new things to say with color. It's a language I can not speak #at least not in the way others do #but nonetheless my words carry meaning #or something resembling meaning #im not sure #vent

36 notes · View notes

sunflower-lotus · 1 year

Text

i want to write more because this was my place of rest years ago. i feel like i had some of my best connections on tumblr throughout the years into the ethers and beyond, and provided a comfort in expressing myself.

this feels like a good time to start tracking out im feeling. i haven’t been able to speak freely for years or ever. but in a more recent past i couldn’t even write poetry, which was my way of communicating anything i could be feeling.

too much happened too quickly and it just became hard to catch up.

i feel like i’ve finally been able to reckon with how i feel about being in a new but old place. when i was last here i was just turning eighteen and heading away to school and that was my life until 3 years ago.

i did have roots here but we all outgrew them gracefully. and what i learned about friendship in the years that followed shaped me.

i met so many people that changed my life and realized that everything is so very valuable. losing a best friend taught me that i needed to stop un-thawing and just thaw out.

and it made me very thankful, and very aware of wasted time. that is one thing i want to stop beating myself up about. “wasted time” like.. what is that?

but it also helped me be like my late friend and show humility in communicating the value of others, the heart of why we connect. and so i’ve taken that up as part of my own attributes finding where it fits in me and helps me miss him in a way that hurts a little less.

2 weeks ago, i went back to a home i had built with only my own making away from family and felt a friend hug me for the first time in so long and say they loved me. and i realized again that i am loved. like yo, that’s wondrous. cus i had forgot.

these 3 years have been full of new things, and this past year i met so many people. i’ve learned so much more than i could’ve thought i would.

altho, it feels like everyone has their community here. i have somehow manage to find pockets of connecting. i never planned to be back here so i really didn’t start making connections until i felt secure to. until i started to affirm myself as deserving of connections.

i can’t do anything that i don’t feel abundant in. the nature of venus in taurus.

i also didn’t really know that i had much value to people outside of allowing them to hear their own thoughts, up until recently.

life humbles me and reminds me i am loved all in the same and i only hope for the same tender and loving kindness when things get harder to manage emotionally.

im happy to remain open and to be humbled in what it means to express, like constantly be reminded of what i actually don’t need. like humility to me is only having what you need in self expression nothing more or less.

i am forever grateful, and i always will be.

still trying to learn as quickly as possibly to love better each time around. each interation of myself and another.

i wanna thaw out more as get comfortable.

#me

3 notes · View notes

boredymcbored · 11 months

Text

I miss

you Brandon.

This tumblr used to filled wit so many posts between me and my high school friends, and now another...

You had been commenting on my social media posts more now a days. I considered reaching out. And didn’t. Now I won’t be able to.

It’s funny, many people have a den of regret, of things that they would’ve said in this scenario. For me, I feel you somehow knew anyway. Or would know. All the thoughts and care we had for each other, how much we were rooting for each other, how much we meant to each other back then.. I both know and knew and we got it. I have no regret in that regard.

But man, I wish we got to hang out with each other while grown if only a couple more times.

But I also know you bro. You’d tell me you can’t get that shit back and that’d it be alright. We’ll have our time eventually. I just have to keep doing my thing. And trust me, I am and have to go so much harder to make sure to do right by you.

With so many people passing lately, it’s sobering. And it’s not like I can just work past it being sick right now. I have to face this and face what I have yet to done as well. What I need to do. How much better I need to treat myself.

Lord bless BNice for having that great conversation with me in that bar during Momocon asking me what EYE’VE done for MYSELF. He knew just like I’ve been knowing for a while, not enough. And I wonder why I can’t stick out like I feel I deserve to when the only proof for receipt are things for other companies. Instead of displaying my talents and what I’m capable of. I’m not standing out cause what’s special about what I’m doing that's not attached to a much bigger company that’ll consolidate my work anyway.

Things to think about. I have a lot of small things in my bag, but how much consistent. How much really helping me. Not just short term, but displaying my grandeur potential.

When Trevor passed, I reconsidered everything and made a big leap. With that leap led to something better for myself. But I know I want and can do more. With Brandon and my aunt and so many others... maybe another leap is necessary. I have to reframe a lot.

Death just occurs. To attribute a grandeur meaning to it seems full of vanity. Of hubris. But, it will still change those that haven’t transitioned. In small and life changing ways.

I just wanna keep changing in a way that’ll make you proud bro.

In a way that’ll make me proud too.

#i love you #thank you #for everything #your goofy ass kept me going all those years ago #and will continue to sick with me #i'll keep pushing #Show em I'M A FUCKING BEAST huh?

0 notes

foodieforthoughts · 3 years

Note

Hi, my darling! I love your writing and I have a special ask for you: my birthday is in July 14th, a big and important holiday in France. So, how could it be if Henry brings me to Paris to celebrate my day (this is one of my biggest dreams)? (in case to describe the reader's physical characteristics I'd like it to be a plus size one, please ❤️) P.S.: Forgive my writing. English is not my mother language.

Honey! I know it has been ages since you sent this but now seems the perfect time. Happy birthday to you in advance sweetheart. 🤗❤️

Also, I only know about 14th of July celebrations from what's available on the internet, if I have made any mistakes I'm sorry about it. 🙈 Also, also, I haven't described the physical attributes of the reader. I hope that is okay. 😇

Title: Mon amour

You were pretty sure Henry was going to miss your birthday this year, what with him being away for filming and only a couple more hours until your birthday. But you were completely taken by surprise when he called, asking you to head out to the airport and pack whatever you deemed necessary.

"You are crazy, Henry!" You exclaimed on the phone, standing outside the airport in the night with a hurriedly packed bag. "What is happening?!"

"Hurry up, love." You nearly shrieked when out of nowhere Henry came up to you and grabbed your hand. Tugging you along to follow him, instructing you to take out your passport, Henry led you through the gate inside the airport.

It was only when you saw the boarding pass, your happiness knew no bounds as you realised he was taking you to Paris for your birthday.

Being in Paris for July 14th celebration, an important day called la fête nationale, was at the top of your bucket list. Henry explained how he had meant to come home one day prior but bad weather and some delays with filming had pushed his plans to the last minute. He had apologized for it but you assured him there wasn't any need for them. There was nothing to forgive, on the contrary, he got a big kiss and a tight hug when the plane took off. You were pretty sure your were floating to cloud nine even before the Eiffel Tower came into view.

Henry had left no stone unturned to make your stay special. A room in Shangri-la with an amazing view of the Seine river, complimented by the giant, wrought iron symbol of love for romantics, was already booked for next four days and decorated with balloons for your birthday. You felt your heart could burst with the surprises he had planned, unfolding one after another and making you teary eyed, only for Henry to take you in his arms and kiss the tears away.

"Good morning, love." He greeted you the next day, naked and still in bed with his arms around you. Running his hand through your hair and kissing your lips, Henry wished you a 'happy birthday' again.

Despite sleeping only for a few hours, both of you were eager to spend the day out and about it in the city. Henry had to try to blend in with the crowd, wearing a cap and casual clothes yet still managing to look like an adonis, making you laugh when he hung the DSLR from his shoulder. Luckily for him with the moustache he had going on for his upcoming movie, he looked almost, if not entirely, unrecognizable.

After watching the military parade in Champs-Elysées, he took you for a dessert splurge around the avenue. From all the crêpes, éclairs, madeleines and macarons, you were getting a sugar rush, joking and laughing with a constantly soaring high. Since Henry was on a strict diet, he only had taken a small bite from your crêpe, sitting and listening to you, amused at the sheer level of your excitement.

Lucky for you, before you could go on a downward spiral from the drop in blood sugar, Henry got you hydrated and tucked in the bed for a nap. You had protested initially, but all your complains vanished when he started kissing you and whispering in your ear in his low, gruff voice, how much he had missed you.

It wasn't until late afternoon that you finally woke up to find Henry in the balcony, sipping on tea and basking in the evening sunlight. You sneaked up behind him, wrapping your arms around his waist and taking in a deep breath of his scent while resting your face against his taut back.

"How did I ever become so lucky to have you in my life?" You mumbled against his shirt, smiling to yourself as you said it.

"I am the lucky one to find you." He placed the cup on the railing, twisting to pull you to stand in front of him. Trapping you in between his arms, he kissed your nose causing his moustache to tickle your skin and make you giggle.

You sighed happily, throwing your arms around his neck and running your hand through his hair. Gazing at him with a smile, you were mesmerized by his captivating blue eyes like it had been the very first time.

"We better start getting ready to head out again." He caressed your cheek with his thumb as he spoke.

"Yeah? We could stay in though. Maybe continue from when you stopped in the afternoon?" You winked at him, making him chuckle.

"Later tonight, baby. I have one more thing planned for you."

When you stepped inside the Bateaux Parisiens, you knew why Henry had asked you to pack 'something fancy'. Donning a sleek blazer suit himself, Henry looked dashing as always. Live music playing in the background, an elegant menu of scrumptious food, glasses of Champagne Jacquart Brut Mosaïque, accompanied by the love of your life while cruising down the river with magnificent view of the city on both sides, you knew dinner couldn't have been any more lavish than this. Henry was recognised by few, approached for photos which Henry would have generally declined but you insisted he should go for it. Their smiling faces and elated shrieks only somehow lifted up your spirits even more.

When the boat stopped near the Eiffel Tower with only a few minutes until the fireworks display, Henry grabbed your hand and took you up to the deck. It was already crowded but he managed to find a spot at the far end of the boat. He draped an arm around your shoulder, yours enveloping his waist as you waited for the fireworks to start.

Everything about your birthday was perfect. You were brought to tears as the vibrant colours of the fireworks glowed in the night sky. Henry hugged you closer, kissing the top of your head and watched the beautiful display with you.

Through the crackle of the fireworks, glimmer of the colours sparkling in his eyes, you stood on your tiptoes to kiss his soft lips.

"Thank you for making this day special, Henry." You whispered in his ears, placing another kiss on his cheek.

"Special day for a special lady." He winked at you, before leaning down to kiss you deeply.

#henry cavill requests #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill x you #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill fluff #henry cavill rpf #henry cavill

164 notes · View notes

pseudospectre · 3 years

Text

A Ghost Story

It was even better in person.

Walking up the cracked old sidewalk, the little white farmhouse I was here to see came into view, and I had never wanted anything so badly in my life. The realtor was waiting for me on the tiny sagging porch trying to look perky. "Hi! I'm Rhonda, are you ready to take a look around?"

I shook her offered hand and nodded. "Absolutely. Do you know anything about it? There wasn't much in the listing."

She unlocked the door and led us inside the dark front hall, fumbling for a light switch. Her voice remained chipper as she launched into her presentation. "Well! It was originally built in 1898, and you can see that most of the original features remain. All the woodwork, flooring, window trim...it's really got a lot of charm! And it's nice and small, perfect for someone just starting! The furnace, electrical, and roof were all upgraded by the last owner..." I stopped listening, happy to just wander through the few rooms and admire the old building. It really seemed to be in very good shape for being so far outside of town, and it wasn't much bigger than many apartments I'd looked at closer to work; but crucially, this little place would be cheaper than anywhere I could rent, and it would be mine. The farm town it was in wasn't close to much, but the highway was near enough that the commute would be reasonable.

"Wow..it really does sound great. I can't see much wrong with it though, for the price...it's not haunted or something, is it?" I joked. But to my surprise, her sales pitch demeanor instantly fell, and she just looked tired.

"Who told you."

"What, really?" I laughed, thinking maybe she was joking. Surely the one trying to make a sale like this wouldn't seriously tell someone there's ghosts. But she sighed.

"I was hoping it wouldn't come up, but that's why it's being sold again. The last several owners have all moved out within two years, and I've been told hearing noises and footsteps at all hours is a main reason. Apparently a little boy died here in the late thirties, just an accident, I think he fell out of a tree? The parents ended up splitting and the father lived here until his own death in the 80s, it sat vacant for a while before finally selling, and from then on it's gone through several hands and periods of vacancy. I personally find it ridiculous, but perhaps you will finally be the first sane person to want it. It is, in my opinion, in very good shape for its age and history, and for the price...?" She looked at me, hopeful.

"So what you're telling me is, it comes with a roommate that won't even help with utilities?" I tried to look serious but couldn't keep it up, and laughed again. "You hear that, kid? If you're sticking around, there's gonna be some rules around here." I grinned at the realtor. "I really do love the place. What do I need to do to put in an offer?" Rhonda smiled, and started pulling out paperwork.

------------------

Closing took longer than I expected, but soon enough I had a handful of shiny old keys and a little white haunted farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. My family told me I was crazy to move "all the way out to hicksville," but move I did, until the place finally started to look like a home. And as I moved things in, and cleaned, and painted, I would talk to the supposed ghost, mostly for fun. When the house settled at night, I'd sternly inform him it was after curfew, or that he's making me miss my beauty sleep. All in all, though, I rarely heard anything that I couldn't immediately attribute to the quirks of an old house. Every now and then, I'd hear rattling or scraping, but old country houses have mice, it's almost impossible to avoid. I did have a pest guy come look just in case, but if scratching and tapping was the worst my ghost could do, I could live with it and be happy.

I couldn't understand how the procession of previous owners hadn't been able to feel how comfortable and welcoming the place was; I could sit on the porch looking down the narrow asphalt road, listening to the birds and the wind and the droning insects with a patch of woods to one side and endless fields spilling out to the horizon on the other. And even as the seasons started to change, the house, with its well pump that liked to short out now and then and the somewhat uncertain electricity, was beautiful to me. Me and my ghost and my little haunted house.

A sudden late summer storm on evening put some of those feelings to the test-the power had gone out twice so far, and the cellar was prone to take on water when it rained hard enough, which it was definitely doing. I had found some old white candles wrapped in what was probably forty year old newspaper stuffed in a kitchen drawer I had somehow never opened til now. It was getting dark, and it turns out I don't own a flashlight. My cell phone would only go so far if the lights went out again...and then of course, they did.

And the noises started.

At first, I barely noticed over the rain and wind literally rattling the windows. But soon enough, it was definitely distinct from the storm sounds. "Hey, buddy, everything ok? Are you afraid of storms?" By now I was pretty solidly in the habit of talking to my ghost; it even helped with my own anxiety. "You don't have to be scared, come sit in the room with me, we'll wait for it to finish together." I lit one of the emergency candles in the living room, just to have another source of light. The dragging and thumping sounds were even louder now, with strange, shrill noises added. I can't explain why they were making me afraid; I love storms usually, but something about this one, alone in the dark and with something unknown here with me, making noises, was activating my fight-or-flight response.

And then lightning flashed through the window along with the gunshot sound of thunder directly overhead, and I screamed. And then I broke down laughing after seeing the tree branches thrashing the side of the house in the lightning flash. The noises were just from the tree. How stupid, stupid that I'd never thought of that! With that realization, my anxious mood broke. "Come on, kid, let's go to bed, huh? You're not allowed to tell anyone how dumb I am though, ok?" I made a mental note to get any fallen branches cleaned up from the yard in the morning, and went to bed.

The next morning, standing on the porch to check out the aftermath, it occurred to me why I hadn't thought of the tree as I stared at the old, rotten stump of an oak tree outside the front window-cut down decades ago.

#ghost story #short story #original fiction #mine #written bits #midwest gothic #Midwestern gothic #region gothic

110 notes · View notes

startanewdream · 3 years

Text

The road home

Summary: Lily watches Harry and Ginny finding their way back to each other following the end of the war.

Note: For @madhulika18, who asked for more Hinny moments as seen by James and Lily. I could never decide if this is really part of Eyes Glistening (because Harry and Ginny have drama really, and I don't like them having drama), but it works either way, so I hope you enjoy these moments (also, I have a soft spot for Lily and Harry talking, so...)

_______

It’s all about the words that aren’t being said.

Once, a long time ago, Lily lived that with James. But it was different and, though, of course, it didn’t seem like that at the time, it was easier too. Her problems were unknowing her feelings, not understanding why she enjoyed his company and why she craved his smile, his light. She had fancied him for a long time before she understood what it was what she really felt for him — and until then it was only her heart beating faster when they would touch each other without meaning too (a brush of hands, sitting together closer than necessary), enjoying the perfume he’d left on his trace, finding excuses to be with him.

But after she had understood what she felt for him, somehow it had been easy. Awkward, sure, that first date when she was feeling stupid near him — until she remembered this was James, and being with him was good and blissful and then kissing him had felt as natural as breathing —, but there was never a question about how they felt about each other, never doubts that they would be together.

They had fought over many things, until they perfected the art of compromising, of understanding each other’s view, but there was never a breakup, never something that really kept them apart.

They are lucky on this, she knows.

Especially when she sees the look on Harry’s face, the way his eyes can’t help but follow Ginny as she walks around between the tables of the Great Hall, stopping to share words with her friends.

They haven’t talked yet. Lily knows this because Harry was gone with Ron and Hermione after the battle and then he slept for a full day. When he woke up, he called his parents and they talked then — the most difficult conversation Lily had ever had in her life and the one she knew she needed most. She and James. They needed to understand what had happened, why it had cost Harry’s life and what it had meant, but nothing had really prepared her to know her son had died.

Only the thought of it sends shivers through her body.

Harry is fine now, having come down to the Great Hall to lunch; there are fewer people at Hogwarts two days after the Battle, so they manage to find a place for them to sit quietly. It’s almost peaceful.

Except Harry is clearly not at peace.

‘Go talk to her,’ she whispers to him, and Harry turns to her with those eyes that are full of ghosts lately — he has seen and lived and died too much.

‘She doesn’t want me,’ he answers, breathing heavily as if the words are physically hurting him.

‘How do you know?’ James asks, exchanging a confused look with Lily.

‘Because she hasn’t come to talk to me.’

Lily thinks Harry didn’t go to her either, so maybe this is just a case of miscommunication. But she doesn’t say anything, because she believes things have to happen at the right time. And she has been watching Ginny too; every time Harry looks the other way, she glances in his direction, an expression on her face that Lily cannot understand exactly.

It seems to be ablaze.

_______

Later, Lily will define it as a dance where the dancers aren’t supposed to touch each other but still they synchronize their steps perfectly.

It’s unnerving, really, and she doesn’t know how they are really managing it, but if there is a quality she could attribute to both Harry and Ginny is stubbornness.

They can’t ignore each other, not really, not with how much they encounter each other — funerals and homages and dinners over the Burrow and rebuilding Hogwarts —, so instead they adopt a sort of relationship that’s just a shadow of how much they got along together.

Lily saw them before they even dated or had acknowledged their feelings for each other, and Harry and Ginny had shined together with chemistry as if they were two ingredients in a potion that demanded to be together. It was only friendship but there was sparkle and understanding and compassion and brightness. Lily remembers thinking that even if they didn’t develop romantic feelings for each other, they were truly soulmates.

And this is just one of the reasons why their current formal courtesy with each other bothers her so much. If they wanted to be only friends, there wasn’t much she could do. But they are not even friends lately, just two people who had gone through so much and hadn’t been able to share anything with each other despite wanting very much.

That’s the other thing that annoys her. They want more. Both of them.

She knows Harry, of course — he shares the same expressions and he wears his feelings on the same sleeve Lily does, so it’s easy —, and Lily likes to think she knows Ginny too, for the times they met, for all they’ve talked and for the fact that Ginny is usually blatant on her feelings when they are at the edge.

Usually. This time, it seems their stubbornness is getting the better of both of them.

They are alone most of the days of May. Hermione has gone to Australia to find her parents and Ron went with her, and Lily thinks this would be perfect for them to get together again – to have time to talk and to truly live their relationship without the threat of a storm above their heads.

But they don’t go to each other. They stay apart, even though Lily sees the cracks in their stubbornness when Harry breaks a glass after hearing Ginny talking about exchanging letters with an ex-boyfriend, and when Ginny suddenly leaves the room after Harry mentions Kingsley’s proposal to start the Aurors course.

James sees it too. He is always frowning when they are in the same room, and Lily knows no one rooted more for that relationship than James. So she is not surprised that he approaches her one morning when they are cleaning the mess the Death Eaters made in her office.

‘Do you remember when you forbade me from intervening in Harry’s love life?’ he asks in a nonchalant voice, cleaning a stain that looks a lot like blood on the carpet.

Lily nods with her head.

‘Maybe it’s time to change that rule?’ James asks then, now sounding hopeful.

Lily throws him the briefest of the looks, without turning away her attention from the cauldrons she is supposed to check if anything is worth saving.

‘Harry would hate it if we did anything.’

‘Harry would hate it if he knew we were doing anything.’

‘And James Potter can be discreet? How many detentions did you get just because you couldn’t help but flaunt your work?’

He raises his eyebrows challengingly.

‘That Slug Club dinner on my birthday. I was so discreet no one ever found out what we were doing.’

Lily blushes. He was absurdly quiet that night, indeed, despite her attempts otherwise.

‘Fine, you’ve got a point. Go on, but I’m warning you, if Ginny realizes what you are trying to do, she will hex you and I won’t stop.’

‘As long as she hexes me on their wedding day, I won’t complain,’ James says unabashedly, and Lily has to grin.

She is not feeling much confident — James’ love plans took him three years to her agree to date him, after all, and even then she had fallen in love with him when he had given up on any plan at all —, but she can’t deny James is creative and it’s better trying anything than watching Harry sigh all over the place, heartbroken and unhappy.

During the year they were out, their house has been searched over and over; their furniture is broken and there are spots of red ink — or blood — in every room, with curses or slurs written on every wall. They could just easily destroy the house and build a new one, but it feels good to clean the place; it feels like a new beginning.

Maybe this is what James is hoping to give Harry and Ginny because he asks for her help in rebuilding their house. Ginny accepts surprisingly quickly, probably guessing that Harry will still be occupied with the work at Hogwarts.

‘Thanks for the help,’ Lily says after she and Ginny manage to clean the debris away from the stairs, so now the first floor is available for them to start cleaning up the rooms.

‘No problem, it’s good to be out of the house,’ Ginny notes, drying the sweat on her face. ‘Sometimes it feels… too claustrophobic there.’

Lily raises her eyebrows, indicating around the hall, where the number of things still to be organized makes the corridor seem a lot smaller than it is. Ginny gives a small chuckle.

‘It’s just — Mom is trying to compensate, I think. Ron is not here and I am the youngest and she needs to take care of something, after — after everything that happened. So, yeah, I need some time to myself.’

‘Are you sure there is nothing else you would like to do?’ Lily asks, concerned now. Ginny just shrugs.

‘Since I can’t fly, this seems like the best available option,’ she says. ‘And it feels good to be doing something — and there is so much to do here. The Death Eaters made a mess.’

‘That could be said for everywhere.’

‘And everyone,’ Ginny adds softly, and she returns to the cabinet she is trying to fix without saying anything further, but Lily doesn’t think she needs to. She saw Neville’s bruises, she saw Luna’s scars and she has a pretty good idea of how it was at Hogwarts under Voldemort’s regime.

But Ginny keeps her marks quietly, and Lily knows there is only one person she will be able to talk to.

The next day, James comes home earlier from Hogwarts with Harry. There is an awkward moment when Harry and Ginny meet in the kitchen and James mentions that now the main work over Hogwarts is done, Harry volunteered to help get his home back again.

‘Any problem?’ James asks genially, making both Harry and Ginny jump.

‘No,’ they say at the same time, and it doesn’t convince anyone.

Lily never noticed how big their house was until she realizes Harry and Ginny still manage to avoid each other except during mealtimes, so she decides they can get past subtlety. She and James start to ask them for help for the same rooms until they eventually are paired in the same tasks.

She doesn’t hear them talking, but it seems to work, albeit at the slowest pace ever.

‘You won’t believe who asked Sirius for an interview,’ James says one night after they settled for the day and they are having dinner before Ginny returns to her house. ‘Rita Skeeter.’

‘What scoop does she want now?’ Harry asks, rolling his eyes. ‘I am still awaiting her biography about me.’

‘What will be called?’, Ginny asks, and Harry turns to her with his eyes already shining with the joke.

‘Easy. Harry Potter, chosen or undesirable one?’

She laughs – it’s a short tentative laugh, but it’s there, and Harry smiles too. James exchanges a look with Lily, but she shakes her head warningly to him.

‘What Skeeter wanted with Sirius?’ she asks, putting the conversation back into place. It was just a shared joke. There is still a long road ahead.

‘Oh, gossip on you and me, actually, which unfortunately is something Sirius thinks it’s too funny to pass – and also he has a soft spot for Skeeter.’

Harry chokes on his drink.

‘Soft spot?’

‘Oh, please, don’t tell me –‘ Ginny raises her eyebrows, exchanging a bewildered look with Harry. ‘Sirius and Rita Skeeter?’

James chuckles.

‘No, he just likes her because of the animagus stuff. He says he can’t fault her for being one.’

‘Oh, much better,’ Ginny sighs. Then she bits her lip before looking back at Harry. ‘Can you imagine them together? Rita Skeeter as your godmother?’

‘I would have to quit Sirius from his job as godfather,’ Harry says, pretending to gag. ‘He would clearly be underqualified.’

There is another small giggle and that’s it for the night.

They are talking again at least, even if it is still not like it used to be. There are no whispered words during their time together during the day and they don’t seem to be secretly snogging. But they talk sometimes, and once or twice Lily hears a laugh when she passes the room they are in.

But it’s only two weeks later that something seems to happen.

Lily is in her room, finishing to set up the bed so she and James will finally be able to sleep there, when the voices catch her up on her window.

‘You are bleeding.’

‘It’s just a cut, Harry, no big deal.’

‘It was a splinter, there can still be something there.’

‘I told you, I took everything off. I will just press it, it will stop bleeding in a minute.’

‘I can help you, I – I know a lot of healing spells.’

There is a pause.

‘Me too, but I also know that the bleeding will stop. It’s not deep.’

‘How do you –‘

‘Same way you know, Harry.’ There is a note of tension in Ginny’s voice. ‘I had to learn.’

‘Ginny –‘

‘What? Do you think you were the only one who had a hard time?’

And she storms inside, giving him no time to answer.

Harry is subdued that night, even more reserved than natural, and when she passes his room late at night, she sees the light is on. For a second Lily wonders if she should call James, but then she sighs and knocks on his door.

‘Harry?’

In answer, the door opens quietly. Lily enters his room to see Harry fully clothed on his bed; he is holding something and, with a start, she realizes it’s the Marauder’s Map. That’s a weird thing for Harry to be consulting in the middle of the night.

‘Can’t sleep?’ she asks, sitting on the edge of his bed and running her hand through his hair comfortingly. He shrugs. ‘Anything to do with that fight with Ginny?’

He raises his eyebrows.

‘Hearing behind doors, Mum?’

‘No need, you were talking under my window.’

‘Next fight I will make sure we are far,’ he says with a grimace.

‘There will be a next fight?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admits, and this prospect doesn’t seem to make him better. ‘If I asked you something, would you be honest with me?’

‘Wasn’t I always, Harry?’

He smiles for a second before his expression is grave and uncertain.

‘Do you think I am self-centred?’

Lily blinks.

‘No one would accuse you of being selfish, Harry, I mean –’

She doesn’t know where to begin, considering all the sacrifices she had seen Harry make over the years — he gave his life —, but Harry shakes his head.

‘Not selfish, I mean – the summer after my fourth year, when Voldemort was back, I said plenty of things –’

‘You were under a lot of stress, no one –’

‘I know, but I was complaining about how everything happened to me and now I am thinking that maybe, somehow, I never stopped to think that things happen to other people too.’

Lily squeezes his hand.

‘It is not a suffering competition, Harry.’

‘I don’t know if I see it that way. I mean, when I saw Neville for the first time, with all his bruises and looking so hurt, I still wished it could be me, staying at Hogwarts and fighting because it seemed easier and it never occurred to me that she could – they could – have had a difficult time too. It still seemed… just school.’

He pauses to pick up the Marauder’s Map, opening it even if there is no map showing there.

‘I used to take the Map last year to watch over her,’ he whispers, his face flushing. ‘And I saw her dot and I never thought that she could be in trouble. I knew they were rebelling, but… it didn’t feel like it was something real.’

‘Well, that’s why you should talk to each other. None of you will understand if you keep avoiding each other.’

‘She is mad at me.’

‘Of course she is. You are avoiding her.’

He doesn’t answer.

‘You need to talk, Harry. Go there. Try it.’

He blinks, a hint of a smile on his lips.

‘Are you suggesting that I go visit my ex-girlfriend in the middle of the night?’

‘I’m pretty sure you will just talk if she doesn’t hex you first,’ Lily says brightly. Then she smiles softly. ‘You could wait until tomorrow, Harry, but I have the feeling you both have been waiting too long. And this isn’t any of your styles. You are both people of action.’

Harry grins now, standing up.

‘I will go then. Thanks for the tip, Mum.’

Lily accepts the soft kiss he gives her on the cheek.

‘Just be safe, Harry.’

_______

Harry seems to be in a better mood the next morning, despite the fact that he slept a few hours that night — Lily knows he returned by five, just as the sun was rising.

But she doesn’t say anything, just smiling to herself when Harry’s face lights up when the fireplace erupts into emerald flames and Ginny appears, dusting her clothes. They exchange a look that it’s still not there yet, but it’s soft and promising. James looks in her direction, surprised, and she promises to explain later.

It’s not Summer yet, but the days of May and then June get warmer and then Harry and Ginny are spending more time outside, though there isn’t much to fix there.

At least, not material things.

James keeps an eye on them — he wouldn’t resist not doing so —, telling her that most of the time they just seem to be taking long strolls and talking.

One day they return from their walk holding hands, and Lily has to lock James inside the room so he doesn’t say anything. Harry and Ginny are still not there.

The road home takes time.

On the second weekend of June they have the hottest day yet and they take some time off; James transfigures a pool in the backyard that neither Harry nor Ginny seems to enjoy other than to sit at the edge of the pool and take off their shoes to wet their feet. Instead of helping to ease any tension, the pool seems to create some weight over them, making them more silent than usual, so James suggests they go flying instead.

‘My Firebolt is gone,’ Harry remembers, wincing, and Lily knows it’s not the broomstick he is really missing right now. Harry lost a friend that day.

‘Mine was burnt by the Carrows last year,’ Ginny adds, her voice casual as if it’s nothing important.

They don’t end up doing anything after that.

In the afternoon, James gets a call from Sirius and Lily decides to just stay home, finishing the Wolfsbane Potions she will need to deliver to Remus by the end of the week. She is quietly lost in her favourite potion world when she hears the voices, and it’s just because they are whispering, rather than talking normally, that it draws her attention.

‘Are you sure?’ Ginny is asking, her voice unusually hesitant.

‘Only if you are,’ he whispers, sounding just as unstable.

Lily approaches the window and withdraws the curtains as little as she needs. Harry and Ginny are still by the pool, standing facing each other, and without looking away from Harry, she takes off her shirt, to reveal her bikini under it.

Harry gasps, but Lily knows that what is taking his breath away are the marks on Ginny’s torso — faint scars of cuts and small yellowed bruises that remained from the battle, over a month ago.

Ginny bits her lip, her arms trembling as if she wants to cover herself. Harry finally takes a step in her direction, looking her in the eyes now.

'Thank you for showing me,’ he whispers and then he sighs. 'My turn'.

His hands are shaking as he goes to unbutton his shirt, until Ginny raises her hands.

'May I?'

Harry nods slowly.

Ginny keeps her head high, not looking away from Harry's eyes, until she finishes opening all the buttons from his shirt and taking it off.

Then her eyes fall to his chest and Ginny freezes.

Lily knows what she is seeing, even though Lily can't see it from her angle: Harry's new lightning scar, across his chest, over his heart, where the Killing Curse hit him for the second time in his life.

'Harry,’ Ginny sighs, pain evident in her voice. She raises her hand, looking at him, questioning him silently. Harry nods once more.

Then Ginny takes a step closer to him, touching his chest, and Lily knows that she must be feeling his heart over it.

She lets the curtain fall and returns to her potion.

She is not surprised when they return home holding hands and she only tells James later (so he doesn't say anything during dinner because she knows her husband) that Ginny kissed Harry softly on the lips when she thought no one was seeing them.

#Hinny #Jily Lives AU #Hinny Fanfiction #Eyes glistening #T: Fanfiction

176 notes · View notes

sequinsmile-x · 3 years

Text

His Girls

For my dear friend @sweetsecretskeptinside , who loves the idea of Aaron being a girl dad probably more than I do. Part of the Full House series Rating: Mature (for the tiniest bit of spice, but mostly because Emily has a potty mouth)

Trigger Warning: mentions of people throwing up/being sick Read over on a03, or below the cut

“I should cancel.” She says, nervously biting her lip as she readjusted their daughter on her hip. “I don’t think it’s a good idea if I go.”

Ivy was unwell, a cold making their usually happy baby very cranky. Emily was standing by their front door, dressed in a knee length red dress, her hair curled to perfection and her make up painstakingly applied. She looked beautiful, as she always did, but on edge. She had Ivy curled in her arms, the 9 month old practically trying to crawl under her skin as she clambered to get impossibly closer to her mother.

Aaron was usually the favourite, the one Ivy would seek out at any given moment, but as soon as she was sick she was all about Emily. Demanding her mother’s embrace and attention.

“Em, love, it’s your bachelorette party.” He says, trying to reason with her. “If you don’t go it’s kind of pointless.”

“But she’s sick.” Emily rocks Ivy, gently patting her back at the same time to try and soothe the rattle in her chest. Each cough that came from her daughter made Emily’s heart constrict. “She needs me.”

Aaron closes the gap between them then pulls his fiancee and daughter into his arms. “She does, but I’ll be here.” He soothes, pressing a kiss to Emily’s temple. “And you need to go out with your friends, when was the last time you did that?”

He knew the answer was long before Ivy was born, her reluctance to go to bars with Penelope and JJ whilst pregnant born out of being the designated driver, and having to ignore many questions about her sex life with Aaron. He still remembers her coming home one night when she was 5 months pregnant, frustrated to the point of tears over how different things were.

He also knew that some of her hesitance to go out now was that this was the first time she was willingly spending a night away from their daughter. Emily had gone back to work months ago, when Ivy was 4 months old, so had been away on several cases since then, but she’d turned down many requests from Penelope for girls' nights in the interim. Wanting to spend as much time with Ivy as she could when she didn’t need to be away.

Aaron loves her for it, how much she adores their daughter. She was exactly the mother he always knew she would be, the one he assured her she was when she struggled to believe she could do it during her pregnancy and the hard early days of motherhood. But he knew she needed some of her old self back, to remind herself of who she was outside of the BAU and their home. So despite how much he selfishly wanted her to stay home, how he knew Ivy would settle easier with her there, and how he struggled to sleep without Emily next to him, he was encouraging her to go out.

Emily sighs. “A long time ago.” She runs her hand up and down Ivy’s back again, who now had her face pressed into Emily’s neck.

“We’ll be fine here.” Aaron says, gently easing the baby into his own arms. “She’ll go to sleep soon anyway, and then Jack and I will watch a movie.”

Her hands twitch to reach out for Ivy when the little girl starts to cry again, but the doorbell rings before she can talk anymore about cancelling her night out. Emily sighs as she turns to open the door, a fake smile plastered on her face as Penelope enthusiastically greets her, pulling her into a hug.

Ivy cries, drawing the attention back to her. Emily is by Aaron’s side immediately, her hand on her daughter's back. She kisses her hair, soothing her with gentle words.

Aaron and Penelope exchange a quick look whilst Emily kisses the back of Ivy’s head, and an understanding passes between them before Emily can change her mind again about going out.

“Come on.” Penelope says as she links her arm through Emily’s. “The bride-to-be can’t be late to her own bachelorette party.” She tugs Emily towards the door, not really giving her any choice in the matter. “Your adorable mini-me will still be here when you get back.”

Emily throws Aaron a smile over her shoulder as she leaves, watches as he gently bounces a still cranky Ivy. “Call me if you need me to come home.”

“Have fun, sweetheart.” He says as the door closes behind them, unable to resist smiling when he could still hear Penelope’s enthusiastic voice as they walked away from the house. He looks down to Ivy in his arms, and rubs her back when she coughs again. “Why don’t we go see what your brother is up to?”

Ivy promptly throws up on him and he sighs.

It was going to be a long night. ______________________

Aaron is surprised when JJ brings Emily home only three hours later. When he opens the front door and sees her leaning against their friend, a giggle on her lips and a very hazy look in her eyes, he realises this might be the drunkest he’s ever seen her.

“Is she ok?” He asks, not quite covering the panic in his voice as he takes her from JJ, who made sure Emily was fully leaning against him before she let go.

“She got really drunk, really fast.” JJ explains, a sheepish look on her face. “The same thing happened to me my first night out after I had Henry.”

Realisation dawns on him, a memory of Haley getting absolutely wasted her first night out with her friends after she had Jack. Her tolerance changed, but her expectations of her ability to drink wine like it was going out of fashion remained the same.

Emily could drink like no one he had ever met. He attributed it to her growing up in Europe. Wine and hard liquor were her drinks of choice as a teenager, as opposed to the wine coolers and beer she was more likely to have drunk if she had been in the US. He could smell absinthe on her breath, and he wondered if they’d even bothered to eat anything before they went straight into the heavy drinking.

“Thanks for bringing her home, JJ.”

JJ nods at him, and mercifully ignores it when Emily clearly palms the front of his jeans. She always had been a handsy drunk. He thanks JJ again before closing the door, and he thinks logistically about how he was going to get Emily upstairs.

“You’re very handsome.” She slurs into his cheek, hand moving round to his back pocket, slipping in and grabbing a handful of his ass. “So pretty.”

Aaron stifles a laugh, knowing when he tells her about this in the morning she’ll be embarrassed. “Ok, sweetheart.”

She somehow stumbles on the spot and he knows he has no choice but to carry her. He wraps an arm around her back and places one under her thighs, lifting her into his arms. As soon as she is leaning against his chest she loops an arm around his neck, sleepiness taking her almost instantly.

He gets her into bed managing to change her into one of his t-shirts and get her shoes off, tucking her in. When he gets in next to her she rolls towards the edge of the bed. “Need to check on Ivy.”

“Not now, sweetheart.” He laughs pulling her back towards him. “She’s sleeping, just like need to.”

“I need you.”

He kisses the top of her head. “I’m right here.” ______________________

He suddenly wakes up at 1.30am and at first he’s not sure what’s woken him. Aaron sits up in bed and quickly realises it’s empty next to him. He hears retching coming from the ensuite and is out of bed quickly.

He finds her kneeling on the bathroom floor, just flushing the toilet as she sits back, groaning as she turns back to look at him. He sits on the floor behind her and rubs her back. “Oh, sweetheart.”

“I used to be able to drink more than this.” She laments, all but crawling the small distance from where she’d been laying on the bathroom floor into his lap, curling up into him like a cat. “I cannot remember the last time I got sick. I think I was a teenager.”

Aaron smiled to himself as he stroked her hair. She wasn’t wrong, she could usually drink the entire BAU under the table. Derek never learnt, always daring her to drinking challenges he would inevitably lose. The worst Emily ever got was a hangover, a headache that made her head feel like it was going to explode as she begged him to stay in bed with her. He’d never seen her get sick with it before.

“Sweetheart, you had a baby 9 months ago. And you only just stopped nursing her. Your tolerance has probably changed.”

She groans and presses her face into his thigh, curling tighter into his lap. “So what you’re saying is this is our sweet little girl's fault?”

He laughs at that. “No, what I’m saying is that you probably shouldn’t have gone straight for the absinthe.”

He feels her gag at the mention of alcohol and stops himself from laughing, knowing she would kill him for it even in her inebriated state. “Hindsight is a wonderful thing, Aaron.”

Aaron is about to ask her if she is fine to go back to bed when she wrenches herself from his lap, head bent over the toilet bowl again as she throws up again. He holds her hair with one hand and gently rubs her back between her shoulders. “You’re okay, Em.”

She groans, pulling back and leaning against him.

“You done?” He asks gently, hand still rubbing circles on her back. Her answer is a nod, and he flushes the toilet. He gets on his knees to reach for a washcloth off the counter, and he runs it under the tap before sitting back down next to her.

She apologises again as he washes her face gently with a washcloth, wiping away tears and vomit as she murmurs threats towards Penelope that he knows she would never carry out.

“You’re ok, love.” He soothes, pulling her hair back into a ponytail with a hair tie he had found on the floor.

“I’m a mess.” She laments, leaning against him. “I don’t know why you want to marry me.”

“Because I treasure you.” He replies, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Besides this isn’t that different from when you were pregnant with Ivy, except this time I can make it better.”

“You make everything better.” She mumbles into his neck, finally sounding sleepy. Aaron smiles and kisses the top of her head.

“Do you think you can make it to bed?”

She shakes her head against him. “No.” She swallows, grimacing at the taste in her mouth. “You can go though.”

He scoffs. “Like I’m going to leave you on the bathroom floor alone.” Aaron kisses her forehead. “I’ll be right back.” He leaves the bathroom and grabs a couple of pillows from their bed as well as the comforter.

He sits back down on the floor, and settles with his back to the bath, a pillow between him and the hard surface. He pulls her to his side so she can lay on him, a pillow on his thigh for her to rest her head on. When she’s settled against him he places the comforter over her.

“I’m sorry.” She apologies again, words slurring due to her sleepy state and the alcohol in her system.

“Stop apologising.” He replies, cupping the back of her head. “I love you, part of that is looking after you when you’re sick.”

“Even when it’s self-inflicted?”

“Especially then.” He soothes. “It’s just another way you and Ivy are similar.” He jokes. “I’ve had both of you throw up on me tonight.”

She lifts her head, too quickly if the groan that followed was any indication, and looks at him with concern laced through her features. “She was sick? You should have called.”

“Em.” He placates, lowering her head back down into his lap, scratching his blunt fingernails over her scalp. “She is fine, she just coughed a little too much that's all. It was only once.” He continues the way he’s scratching her head, knowing it never fails to lull her to sleep. “Now try and get some rest, baby. I’ll be here if you need me.”

She sleeps for two hours against him, and when it becomes clear she will sleep through what is left of the night he gently removes himself from under her. Despite a slight protest in his back he picks her up off the floor, gathering her into his arms so he can settle her into their bed. She doesn’t wake at all, a true sign of just how much she must have drunk. He places the comforter back over her and puts an empty trash can on the floor on her side of the bed.

Aaron slips into bed next to her and falls asleep as quickly, the warmth of her body providing comfort he could never find elsewhere. ______________________

Emily wakes up in the morning feeling awful. Aaron is not in bed next to her, but there is a glass of water on the nightstand along with some painkillers. She quickly takes them, carefully sipping the water as she does so, her stomach still unsettled.

She gets in the shower, washes away the lingering stench of liquor she swears she can smell on her skin. And she brushes her teeth to get rid of the awful taste in her mouth.

When she gets downstairs no one is in the house. She grabs her cell phone off of the kitchen counter, not even sure how it got there in the first place, and is about to call Aaron when the front door opens.

Aaron walks in, Ivy’s car seat in one hand and a McDonald’s bag in the other. Jack walks in right behind him, another McDonald's bag in his hands and a big smile on his face. As the smell of greasy food gets to her nose she doesn’t think she has ever loved her fiance more.

“You, Aaron Hotchner, are a GOD.” She kisses him before taking the baby carrier from his hand, leaving it to him to sort out whatever food he’d bought. Emily smiles at Ivy as she lifts her out. “Hi sweet girl. I missed you last night.” Ivy coughs against her and Emily frowns at the pitiful sound that comes out of her. “Oh, baby.”

“Em.”

She turns to look at Aaron and can’t help the laugh that escapes her when she sees the pile of hash browns he has bought.

“I love you so much.” She says as she reaches for one. “I can’t wait to marry you.”

“Me or the hashbrowns?” He quips, a wide smile on his face.

Emily bites into the food in question and groans. “It’s about 50/50 right now I’m not going to lie, honey.” ______________________

Ivy cries throughout their entire wedding ceremony. The little girl reaching for her father from Derek’s arms, clearly feeling as if she was missing out on something.

Aaron looks up at his bride, once again taken aback by how beautiful she looked. She gives him a quick nod before looking down to Jack who was standing by Aaron’s side, and she gives the young boy a wink.

Aaron walks over to the front row and takes Ivy from Derek, her tears clearing up almost instantly when she is in her fathers arms. He goes back to the front, apologising to the officiant before looking back at Emily.

“Hi, sweetheart.” Emily whispers to Ivy. “Didn’t want to miss out on the fun, huh?”

They smile widely at each other when they are told they are man and wife, and she leans forward and kisses him, laughing against his lips when Ivy grabs at her. Tiny fingers digging into the lace of her dress at her shoulder. Emily pulls back from her husband and beams at her daughter, taking her into her own arms. She rests Ivy on her hip and kisses Aaron again.

He places his hand on Emily’s cheek, holds her in place despite the good natured jeering from their guests. When he pulls back he keeps his hand on her face, thumb skimming over her cheek bone. He smiles as he looks at them both together, Ivy resting her head on Emily’s shoulder. He wraps his arm around Jack's shoulder and pulls him towards him, and with his whole family within reach he doesn’t think he’s ever been happier. ______________________

Once the festivities at Dave’s have ended they go back to their own house. Jack and Ivy fast asleep by the time they get home, the long day having taken it out of them. Aaron carries in Jack, and Emily takes Ivy, whispering to him that she’d meet him in their room once they’d settled the kids down.

Aaron pulls Jack’s bedroom door closed behind him and smiles when he sees light still filtering out from under the door to Ivy’s nursery. He walks in and his smile widens when he sees Emily pacing the room, still in her wedding dress, their daughter fast asleep in her arms as she speaks to her in both English and French.

“My girls.” He whispers, and it draws Emily’s attention to him, a beautiful smile on her face and a flush to her cheeks as she sees him.

“She started to wake up when I went to put her down.” Emily explains, tilting her head back to look at the baby against her chest. “Although she seems to be out now.”

“I’ll take her.” He says, reaching his arms out and gently taking Ivy, both relieved when she stays asleep. “You go to bed, love. I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay.” She kisses Ivy’s head. “Goodnight, baby.” ______________________

He helps her unbutton her dress, the tiny buttons down her back almost too small for his hands to undo. She sighs as his hand traces up her spine, loosening the dress over her shoulders. Aaron doesn’t miss how she yawns as she steps out of it, the lingerie underneath the dress briefly distracting him.

She leans back into him, smiling as he wraps his arms around her. “Hi, husband.”

Aaron kisses her temple, his smile wide against her skin. “Hi, wife.” He’s about to trail his hand down her belly, run his fingers over the lace of what she is wearing, but she yawns again and his decision is made.

He shrugs off his jacket and then his shirt, settling the shirt over her shoulders. He turns her around and does up a couple of the buttons before kissing her. When he pulls back he rests his forehead against hers. “Let's get into bed.”

Emily climbs into bed and he follows after stripping off the rest of his clothes. Aaron pulls her towards him, settling her tightly against him.

“Shouldn’t we fuck or something?” She asks, pressing her face into his neck. “It is our wedding night.”

Aaron laughs and grabs her leg, resting it over his waist. He runs his fingers up and down her thigh. “You’re tired, Em. It’s been a long day and you need sleep. We have forever for everything else.”

She hums, sleep already overtaking her. “What did I do to deserve you?”

He kisses her forehead, and gives the only answer he has for her. “You’re you.”

#hotchniss #hotchniss fan fic #hotchniss fanfiction #sickfic #domestic fluff #i just love them happy #so here is something where they are happy #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #aaron hotchner x emily prentiss #likes its so fluffy

63 notes · View notes

fyeah-bangtan7 · 3 years

Text

RM: “I hope I’m on my way somewhere”

There are two gears in his life that RM shifts between: when he has to pick up speed as the leader of a worldwide hit-making group, and when he makes his way back home and slowly cracks open some artist’s catalogue. Let’s take a look at the time in between, at the young artist’s journey to seek out his own canvas.

Do you still work out? Your stature looks very different. RM: It’s been around one year? Since I started doing it four times a week without fail. It’s like my lifeline. (laughs) Since, if you exercise, your body gradually improves. I like to feel like I’m doing something and getting better. If you look at other people posting their progress, you can see their bodies change dramatically, but I’m not very strict about my diet, so it’s not like that for me. (laughs) Still, I can feel my frame changing bit by bit.

I saw in the “ARMY Corner Store” video uploaded to YouTube for the 2021 FESTA celebration of your eighth anniversary that your life is focused on doing work and making appearances these days. Has following that repetitive routine led to any changes in your life? RM: My daily routine has become very clear-cut. Now that it’s been exactly a year since I started doing this mid-last year, I kind of think, So is this how people live? I have to go to work and come home, then there’s things I need to do there, and things I have to keep up with like exercise. And same for checking out exhibits. And so I thought my nature itself has changed a lot over the course of a year, but I don’t know whether it’s good for me as a creator.

Why’s that? RM: There was so much that happened with BTS, but with the current situation, sometimes it felt like those things were just things happening on my phone. When I’m listening to other music or watching something I’ll sometimes think about how I would do it, but my life is what it is right now, so I can only draw on things from my own life.

In that case, how did it feel to keep up the energy for your Grammys performance and for everything related to “Butter”? RM: I was really happy that we added one more thing to our list of accomplishments. I think our team really needed the work itself. It made me realize we still have things left to achieve. And I want to thank ARMY above all others for making all of this possible. I’m Korean, so I’m no stranger to finding joy in accomplishment. (laughs) It was really satisfying and nice. It would’ve been better if we got a Grammy, but so what if we didn’t? In the end, getting it means you have one more trophy at home, and after that your daily routine repeats.

How was writing the lyrics for “Butter”? Your performance with SUGA works to kick the energy of the second half of the song up a notch, but I also think, strikes a balance to improve the song as a whole. Your short rap feels like a fusion of American pop and BTS’s distinctive style. RM: That’s the part I spent the most time on. Even though the song’s in English, I thought we should make it feel like our own, so we kept the original but put a little of our own flavor in at the end.

I felt that fine-tuning turned out well. It’s short, but I think it would’ve been a very different song without that part. RM: It’d feel like something’s missing if it weren’t there, right? (laughs) I felt like we absolutely had to have it in there. There’s something different about us from American pop stars. Our DNA is different.

How was making “Permission to Dance”? You can count on one hand how many BTS songs have a message as positive as in that song. RM: Right. They talked about putting some rap in “Permission to Dance” while we were working on it, but we said it would never work. I have more fun when I’m singing and dancing than anything else. I think this song was one of the few times that I felt like I was just having fun while singing and dancing on it. It feels amazing to give into the song with your whole body and just laugh instead of thinking about it too much. I think that’s the power of the song. I wasn’t stressed preparing for it like I was with “Butter.” When it came to “Butter,” I had to think about what we should show off and how I could do that. I’m always careful not to be a problem within the group dynamic. But I didn’t really have to worry about that with “Permission to Dance.” Honestly, I felt like I only needed to add just a dash of the enjoyment I felt.

After the unimaginable continued success of “Dynamite” and “Butter,” this song feels a little more laid back. RM: Oh, this is really fun. Just like that. And there’s a line in the lyrics that says, “We don’t need to worry / ’Cause when we fall we know how to land.” The message is universal, but you could say it’s also something BTS has been saying all along.

You talked about “2! 3!” on “ARMY’s Corner Store,” saying, “2015 to 2017 was a tough time for us and our fans.” Were you able to say that because you ended up knowing how to “land”? RM: What I do can be thought of as a sort of business—a person-to-person kind of business. That’s why I want to be as honest with ARMY as I can be, almost obsessively so. They say it can’t happen in the world of K-pop, and there’s an aspect of good faith to that because I don’t want to worry the fans, but I want to tell them about the things we’ve been through as much as I can. Another reason I talked about those times was that I wanted to pay off my debts to a lot of people. To pass over this story like it never happened would be like saying “that’s not us.” And because it’s in the past. I think that, since it’s in the past, and since we’re doing all right now, and since those days were clearly necessary, I think we have to be able to talk about just how difficult a time that was.

It feels like that was something you wanted to convey to your fans, too. RM: Sometimes we’re artists whose souls are full to our very cores, sometimes we’re meticulous office workers, and sometimes we’re part of the hyper-patriotic “do-you-know club.” We’re many things all at once—that’s why we talked about persona and ego. It’s sort of painful and lonely to want to talk about these things to this extent, but I guess that’s who I am. I want to express myself in full.

Would you say that the song “Bicycle,” released during 2021 FESTA, shows who you are as a person? You talked about your everyday emotions using a bicycle as a metaphor. RM: I’ve faced a lot of pressure while making music throughout my life to move ahead a little more or make music that stands out better, from minor things like my rap technique to bigger things like trends. I wanted to be good at rapping and I wanted some recognition. In that sense, you could say “Bicycle” is somewhat defiant. I wanted to release a song to celebrate FESTA, but the subject matter is really important to me specifically. Bicycles hold an important place in my heart, so that’s just what I ended up writing about. The song’s something like a compass, telling me where I’m at right now, I feel like. My present-day life is the input, so that was going to end up being the output one way or another.

There’s a part in the lyrics where you say, “When you’re happy, it makes you sad.” I imagined you riding your bike and contemplating your life. RM: My feelings kind of go to extremes whenever I ride my bike. My personality used to run to both extremes sometimes, but it also comes back to me again on its own when I ride a bike. When I ride my bike, I’m free from the pressure of the things I’m supposed to feel and think about. I don’t care if people recognize me, and that’s the closest I get to feeling free, mentally and physically—when I’m riding fast and feeling like I’m up on a cloud.

In my case, there’s a big bookstore in my neighborhood, and there’s times when I’ll walk all the way there by myself and think over what kind of person I am while choosing which books to buy. Somehow it makes me think of that. RM: I read a book by Lee Seok Won from Sister’s Barbershop recently. He was contemplating why he likes bookstores. He remembered how not only is it noisy, but everybody’s staring at their books and not looking at anyone else, and there’s a kind of freedom in that. I really sympathize with that. So I make time to go to the bookstore and spend a little more time reading.

I end up talking to myself just by looking at all the book covers at the store. In a way, it’s contemplation on contemplation, but it seems to be an especially necessary time for you. RM: I think I’d be pretty bored without it, since I’ve been too sheltered lately. Read! Work out! Go to galleries! Ride my bike! (laughs)

So writing “Bicycle” was an experience that you had to go through anyways, even though we’re not sure where you’ve come from, where you’re at now, or where you’re headed to. RM: Exactly. It was exactly that kind of milestone of a song for me, and I think I kept that in mind to some degree when I released it for FESTA. I agreed to do something at first, but then I asked myself what I should do and that came to mind immediately: Let’s just do something about bikes.

Even the music has deep connections to all the music you’ve ever listened to, from folk to the hip hop and Korean indie scenes. RM: You’re right. I drew on music from the people who’ve had an impact on my life—artists I’ve been listening to lately, like Elliott Smith and Jeff Buckley, and groups like KIRINJI.

It’s interesting how the end result is a song whose style is difficult to attribute to any one era. Neither the sentiment nor the sound is retro, nor do they reflect current trends. RM: I, and our team, are, you could say, at the forefront of pop, so after I made “Bicycle” we wondered whether we should go with it. But that’s actually why I ended up doing it this way instead. Because that’s what my life looks like right now. It’s good for me just to get to know myself this way, but I don’t want to trap myself, either. On the other hand, I’m interested in artists from all around the world who are totally different from me. There’s even people who make music on a whim and who don’t care about the genre whose music I’m interested in now. It’s—how should I say this? Anyway, I’m at some place in my life, I guess. (laughs)

Last year, in an interview with Weverse Magazine, you said, “I’m just 27 in Korean age.” I think “Bicycle” might be your own response to that statement—the song of someone who grew up listening to Drake in Korea. RM: You got it. Exactly. Drake’s the one who made me think I could sing, too, back in 2009 (laughs) and that’s what brought me all the way here. In the past I wanted to do something just like Drake—he influences Western music as the musical style he’s after changes. But because I don’t live my life the way they do, I can’t make the exact same music as them.

And for that reason, I figured it’s the kind of song that would end up on the playlists of people like you, as it has a style that can express that sort of person’s overall feelings more than any specific genre can. RM: That’s how it usually turns out eventually. I sometimes think this way: Can’t I put “Bicycle” on the same mixtape as some songs that are made totally off the cuff, like I just talked about? I wish I had that kind of flare or image when I made songs, but nowadays I’m really slow at making them. I can’t think of lyrics as well as I used to, either. I have more avenues to absorb new things, and yet the output coming from inside of me is ridiculously limited, and extremely slow. They say there’s plenty of stories of artists from the past going up to their canvas and being unable to pick up their brush and screaming, “Who am I?” That’s sort of how I’m feeling. I’ve been working on a mixtape since 2019, but I haven’t finished that many songs.

Well, maybe it’s because the direction you want to take with your lyrics has changed. That is, that you’re trying to express the ideas you’ve built up inside yourself, instead of your experiences or social commentary. RM: That’s why I can’t write lyrics as fast as I used to. I don’t know what I’m doing, so I have no choice but to just write first. And that’s why I think Yoongi is such an amazing person. I mean, how does he make that many songs, and so well? Maybe it’s because he takes a producer’s point of view, but I can’t do that. Not only am I jealous, but I also think the starting point when I’m making music has to be the lyrics. I just—I hope I’m on my way somewhere. But that’s how I always feel (laughs) so when I listen to my stuff from two years ago now, it already sounds old.

You’re featured on eAeon’s “Don’t,” which boasts impressive lyrics as well—lyrics that start with the color of waves and end with an image of pebbles. It seem like it’s your interest in art that allows you to keep developing such visual images. RM: I can’t say for sure, but it’s likely a strong reflection. I had seen an article where an artist said that pebbles are the perfect form: a rock worn down over and over in a series of incidents and coincidences, made into some round shape in the end. It said the artist collected pebbles for a long time, saying pebbles are so perfectly smooth without any edges, although they’re neither perfect circles nor ovals. Also, I absolutely love Lee Qoede. I saw a quote in a book about his art: “Let’s become entangled. Let us stand united. Let’s not argue. And let’s become pebbles in the new leadership narrative of my country.” He wrote it in a letter while he was working during the country’s liberation period. I thought it was, what, a very modern way to express things, for someone who lived through the chaotic political circumstances of 1948 to want to become a pebble. I felt like his words still have meaning—like they live on. I guess those two artists’ use of the word “pebble” made a very lasting impression on me.

I was impressed how the relatively large waves give way to the image of small pebbles, and then you end the flow with lyrics like, “Don’t take that name away, the one only you know,” and “I hate being just any wildflower,” about a small presence that is defined by others. RM: Yes, it was fun. I once thought how people’s relationships are like crashing waves, and I think that mixed together with my thoughts about pebbles and it came out all at once. There’s a sentence I wrote down a long time ago while I was thinking by the sea. I thought, Is there any color in the waves? When people talk about waves crashing in, what waves are they talking about? The blue waves, or the white waves? I went completely overboard with emotion when I was thinking that (laughs) but again, that’s just me. So I wrote this one sentence—“I wonder what color the waves are”—and listened to the music eAeon gave me, and it sounded to me like fog rolling over the ocean. It was really easy to start writing the lyrics since the sensory perception of that sentence overlapped with what he gave me. It was a so-called “aha moment” (laughs) and whenever that happens, the lyrics come out of me all at once. It only took about an hour and a half to write the lyrics. I thought of more lyrics later on, but I ended up sticking with the first ones.

What are you looking for that you’re thinking that much? RM: In the end, it’s really important for me to ask about who I am, and I want to express who I found myself out to be, but I’m having a really difficult time because I don’t know if what I found is right. So for now, “Bicycle” is also the result of collecting the selves I found who I think represent the best of me. Even while making a song like “Bicycle,” I have to convey—how do I put this? It’s just about me, this kid from outside the big city—an essence that I can’t get rid of, I guess. I can’t let go of the kid who used to perform in Hongdae. It’s not really something I want to express or hold onto; it’s my essence, so I don’t really have a choice. (laughs)

You’ll just ride your bike, anyhow. RM: Exactly. Exactly that. (laughs)

#bangtan #rm #m:weverse magazine #210730

44 notes · View notes

araxiis · 3 years

Text

Family Found- Kuzupeko

CW: Verbally & physically abusive parent, fighting/violence

Angst, but not between Fuyuhiko and Peko

Also Fuyuhiko's parents are never named so I just picked a name

Words: 3001 (oop)

Read it on Wattpad here

--------------------------------------------------------------

The curtains were open in the modest house on the corner, letting the morning sun dance about inside like a pleasant houseguest. The violets in the garden were growing beautifully, a lovely surprise to those who may be passing by the house. A casual pedestrian may take note of the house, and find it quaint or cozy, but not something quite worth note, and continue on with their day.

This is exactly what the Kuzuryuus had wanted when they bought their home.

After a lifetime each of being in the public eye, and never for good reason, Peko & Fuyuhiko had agreed that a life of anonymity would be beneficial to them both. They were married quietly, their only witnesses being their fellow students of class 77-B, who had all grown very close to one another during their recoveries. Now, a few years later, Peko stood in the nursery of the sun-dappled house, holding her four-month-old daughter in her arms.

"Good morning, bunny," Peko whispered to her baby. The little girl was called Riki, her name meaning 'little bunny', the nickname her parents so often used. The baby was so blissfully unaware of the frightening world she was born into, and her mother hoped it could stay that way for at least a while. Riki was born at home, her parents hardly ever daring to take her out of their neighborhood, for fear of being recognized. They had a lovely backyard for her to play in, after all. Whenever a shopping trip became necessary, Fuyuhiko or Peko would travel individually, never together. It was a difficult life, to be sure, but a peaceful one. A normal life was never in the cards for them either way.

On this particular morning the baby had been sleeping soundly, and Fuyuhiko had opted to stay in bed and relish the rare moment of quiet so scarce with an infant. Peko, ever the morning person, was never one for sleeping in. She chose to rise at the same time as usual, and spend the morning simply admiring the miracle that was their daughter. She had no engagements that day, choosing to stroll about her home in her pajamas, her hair loose and unkempt. In the nursery with Riki, who was still soundly asleep in her arms, Peko walked to the open window that faced the street. It was a rather high window, the lowest sill at the level of Peko's chest. When Riki was upset, it always calmed her to be held up near the window (safely, of course). But now she was dozing contently, so Peko kept her resting in her arms just below the window. The baby had a soft head of silver hair just like her mother's, and the features & sharp green eyes of her father, now invisible behind her sleeping eyelids. She was the perfect mix of her parents, and had taught Peko that displaying emotions was not something to be ashamed of. Peko gazed lovingly down at her little girl, wishing she could freeze time and stay in this exact moment forever.

As luck would have it, the moment was broken by a harsh knock at the front door. Peko glanced at the clock on the wall; it was just past seven AM. Laying Riki back in her crib, she wondered who could be at the door this early. Perhaps Teruteru had brought them something freshly cooked from his family restaurant, or perhaps Sonia was returning the book she had borrowed the week prior. Still engulfed in the peacefulness of the day, Peko opened the door without looking through the front window first, a very uncharacteristic decision that could only be attributed to the laziness of the morning. She was punished for this choice in due time, though, as the door swung open and Peko's blood turned to ice in her veins.

Dressed sharply in a black business suit, a short blond woman in her sixties stood on the front step as if she owned the place. Truly, her presence could make any room feel impersonal. Peko knew this well, as she had grown up in fear of this woman. A woman she had sworn to keep her family away from.

Aika Kuzuryuu, Fuyuhiko's mother.

Any words Peko had thought to say froze in her throat. How would she even address this woman now? It felt wrong to call her Mrs. Kuzuryuu, since that was also Peko's name now. Aika? No, she wouldn't dare. As a child she had addressed the matriarch of the clan as Mistress, the thought of saying it now burned like poison. Her mind was swimming as Aika began to address her.

"Ah, Pekoyama," her voice was as cold as it had been when Peko was young. "As excellent as it is to see you're continuing to fulfill your duties this many years later, this is quite an inappropriate state for you to be seen in." Aika sneered at Peko, green eyes glancing from Peko's undone hair down to her pajamas. "Though I suppose we never did keep you around for your looks," she laughed cruelly. Peko flushed pink, still unable to muster any words.

"Anyway," Aika continued, examining the nails on her right hand. "My sources tell me Fuyuhiko is living at this address, and judging by your presence, I assume this is true. He has evaded my contact and his responsibilities for too many years. Now that I have his location, I am here to stop this childish charade. Let me in now, Pekoyama."

Peko didn't move. Her mouth was dry, her hands shaking. Uncountable thoughts ran through her head, and she had no idea where to start. Something dangerous flashed in Aika's glare.

"Let me in NOW, Pekoyama!" Aika shouted.

A piercing wail carried down the hall to the door. The yelling had woken Riki. Upon hearing the cry, Aika's eyes widened.

"Is there a child here? Does Fuyuhiko have a child? Where is his wife? Is she here as well?" Aika fired off questions like bullets at Peko, one finger pointed at her accusatorily. "Do you even UNDERSTAND how inappropriate it is for you to be here? Dressed like a slob in the home of my son and his family, unbelievable."

Riki was still screaming. Choking on tears and unable to think rationally, Peko turned on her heel and ran to the nursery, Aika's belittling chasing her down the hall. She heard Aika shout "come back this instant, Pekoyama!" before Peko turned the corner and collapsed against the nursery wall, silent tears streaming down her face. She slowly lifted Riki out of her crib with shaking hands and held her daughter close to her chest. As Riki's crying faded, Peko's only became more intense, causing her to fall to her knees on the carpeted floor. Across the hall from the nursery, she heard the bedroom door creak open.

"Peko?" Fuyuhiko was still drowsy, she could hear it in his voice. From the bedroom doorway Fuyuhiko saw her, knelt on the floor with Riki and sobbing. Suddenly, he was wide awake. "Peko, what-?" His question was cut off as he took his first step into the hallway, and saw Aika, still standing haughtily at the door.

"What the fuck," Fuyuhiko growled in a voice Peko hadn't heard in years.

"Fuyuhiko," Aika greeted her son in a tone that could only be described as borderline indifference. "I was speaking with Pekoyama, but she ran off when that child started screaming. I can only hope she's assisting your wife in caring for the child, since keeping her around for any reason other than that would be WILDLY improper." She examined her son's ruffled form. "I was going to suggest you lecture Pekoyama on how she presents herself, but it seems you yourself aren't doing any better. How humiliated your wife must be."

Fuyuhiko's had his fists clenched so tight his knuckles were white. Aika was still talking.

"Of course, I only assume you're married to the child's mother. I suppose it wouldn't be beyond you to father a bastard child."

If looks could burn, Aika would be ashes. Glaring daggers, Fuyuhiko spoke through clenched teeth.

"What the fuck are you doing in my house," he spat. Aika remained unbothered.

"Is it not obvious why I'm here? I've come to bring you back to the clan." Fuyuhiko paled as she continued. "You've had your fun, avoiding your birthright, but you have responsibilities to fulfill. Your wife and the child may come with you, but not Pekoyama. She is of no use to you anymore, to any of us."

Peko, still on the floor of the nursery, slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs. Fuyuhiko saw her move out of the corner of his eye, his concern & love for her mixing with the rage he felt towards his mother, who was somehow still talking.

"Go fetch your wife and the child, Fuyuhiko. I must see if they are up to clan standards. If not, adjustments will have to be made. I'm sure you understand."

Suddenly and inexplicably, Fuyuhiko seemed to completely relax. He smiled tightly at Aika. "Of course, mother." He spat the word like an insult, turning his head to face the nursery and Peko. "Honey, could you come here a moment?" He asked her.

Peko was terrified. What was he thinking? He nodded once at her, quickly, his face certain and stern. Despite everything, she still trusted him. She stood slowly, wiping tears from her face, and moved to lay Riki in the crib.

"No, bring her too, please," Fuyuhiko said.

Cautiously, Peko obliged, laying Riki's head on her shoulder and creeping into the hallway, into Aika's condescending gaze.

Aika raised an eyebrow. "That's just the child, Fuyuhiko. I asked for the child and your wife."

"I know," Fuyuhiko said simply, taking Riki from Peko's shoulder and cradling her in his arms, making sure Aika could clearly see the baby's crown of silver hair.

Peko's wish from that morning seemed to have arrived late, as time froze still in that moment. Aika's eyes flashed erratically between the three before her, her sharp face turning a dozen different shades of red and purple as the pieces fell into place in her mind. Peko's heart was racing, though Fuyuhiko remained completely composed.

"You-" Aika sputtered, stepping further into the house. "You- you disgrace. How dare you-" She was approaching them at a steady speed down the hall. Fuyuhiko passed Riki back to Peko and stretched his arm out in front of her, forcing her to step back and behind him. Peko held her baby close as Aika reached them. Fuyuhiko stood confidently, his chin up and his arms crossed. Aika jabbed a finger at him, just as she had done to Peko earlier.

"You disgusting, pathetic disappointment of a son," Aika snarled. "Running off with the help. How dare you leave your family, your clan, your future, to waste your life on this miserable girl?"

Peko wanted to disappear. She wanted to melt into the floor, and only come back when everything was back the way it was before she'd blindly answered the door. In front of her, Fuyuhiko lowered his arm slowly, clenching his fists at his side.

"Get out." His words were flat, dangerous.

Aika opened her mouth in shock, then closed it. Her fists were clenched as well, and Peko distantly thought that they had never looked more like mother and son than they did now. They stood still, facing off, for a good moment, before Aika raised her arm and smacked Fuyuhiko across the face.

Peko gasped as Fuyuhiko fell against the wall, shocked. Riki was sobbing quietly, almost as if she was aware of what was happening. Wild-eyed, Aika turned on them. The composed woman who had entered the house was gone, and in her place Peko saw a glimpse of what she herself used to be; what this woman and her clan had instructed her to be.

A killer.

Aika raised her arm again, and Peko held Riki as close as she could, bracing for the impact.

But it never came.

Fuyuhiko had caught Aika's wrist in the air mid-swing, and had twisted her arm behind her back at a painful angle. Aika was struggling, she was strong, but her son was stronger. He caught her other wrist, twisting them both further with murder in his eyes.

"Don't you fucking dare," he snarled. Years of knowing him, and Peko had never seen him quite this way. This was something new. Something more intense.

"I'll kill you." His grip on his mother's wrists tightened. "If you even touch my wife or my daughter, I will fucking kill you."

Aika laughed once, rudely. "How dare you threaten your mother?" she spoke over her shoulder. "And for her? She's not worth this. How could you choose a tool over your own mother?"

Something cracked in Aika's wrists, and she shrieked in pain. Fuyuhiko let go of her arms, and slammed her back against the wall, holding her firmly by the shoulders.

"You..." His breathing was shallow. "You are nothing to me. After what you've done to me, to her, you mean fucking nothing to me. Peko is everything to me. She's not a tool, she's not worthless, and she is not a mistake. She's my wife, and the mother of my child, and I know damn well she's better at both of those things than you ever were. This is my family, and you are not part of it."

He let go of her shoulders. Aika had her wrists clutched against her chest, and was staring at Fuyuhiko in shock. Peko stood back, a hand over her mouth, with Riki still quietly crying against her shoulder. Fuyuhiko took a step away from his mother, gaze never breaking.

"Get out."

Wordlessly, Aika stumbled towards the door, which still stood open from when she entered. One foot outside, she turned clumsily to face Fuyuhiko.

"I hope you know how big of a mistake you just made, son." She had the same wild look in her eyes as she had before. "You will face the repercussions of your actions. You and your pathetic family." She spat the last word harshly before leaving the house. Fuyuhiko slammed and locked the door before falling against it, heaving. Peko had fallen to the floor for the second time that morning, once again crying in sync with her daughter. Peko hardly ever cried before becoming a mother, but she now felt emotions just as strongly as her baby did. Riki hiccupped through her tears, the little noise snapping Fuyuhiko back to reality. Quick as a flash, he was knelt on the floor next to Peko.

"Shit. Shit, fuck, hey, it's okay. It's okay, I'm here. It's okay." He ran his hand through her hair and down the side of her face, gently brushing away her tears. His other hand rested gently over Peko's hand that was holding Riki to her shoulder, and Peko brought her free hand up to cup her husband's face. Her fingertips brushed his cheek, and only then did she realize he was also crying.

"Here, love, give her to me. Let me take her." Fuyuhiko gently took the baby off Peko's shoulder and into the crook of his own arm. Riki was still crying, though quieter now. "Sit back, against the wall. That's it, love." Peko's back hit the wall and she buried her head in her hands, her whole body shaking. As Fuyuhiko took his place against the wall beside her, he heard her mumbling over and over;

I did this. I did this. I did this.

He wrapped his free arm around her and held her close, as close as he possibly could. "Hey, hey, no, you didn't do anything. You didn't do anything wrong." His thumb rubbed small circles into her shoulder. Still shaking, Peko lifted her tearstained face out of her hands to look at her husband.

"I didn't check. Before I opened the door, I didn't check." She took a shaky breath. "It was such a peaceful morning and I- I was so relaxed, and I could have gotten her killed. I could have gotten you both killed."

Fuyuhiko looked at her with so much love in his eyes, not a trace of anger or disappointment. She didn't understand how he wasn't upset with her after such a dangerous misstep. He simply pressed a kiss to her hair, and quietly said "hold out your arms."

Peko shakily obliged. Gently, Fuyuhiko laid Riki in her outstretched arms, keeping his hand under the baby's head as Peko held her. Upon seeing her mother's face, the baby's howls turned to quiet hiccups as her tears steadily stopped. Peko couldn't help but smile at the sight.

"See that, love? Bunny's okay. She's safe." Peko turned her head towards her husband, and pressed her forehead to his. "I'm safe," he mumbled quietly. "I'm here. We're safe."

They stayed like that for several minutes, focusing on the fact that despite what happened, they were all alive and safe and together. Eventually, Peko spoke.

"I suppose we have to move now."

Fuyuhiko laughed breathily. "Yeah. Too bad though. I liked this place."

Peko nodded once in agreement. "Perhaps our new home shouldn't have a window in the nursery that faces the street. Something tells me that might have given us away."

"Ah, man, you're probably right. Why didn't we think of that right away?"

They both looked down at Riki, who had exhausted herself crying and dozed off in their arms. Peko smiled.

"Because it made her happy. Nothing else mattered."

What a sight, two reformed Remnants of Despair and their infant daughter, collapsed on the floor of their hallway. Much like their life as a whole, their little family would never be normal.

But it was theirs.

#fuyuhiko kuzuryuu #kuzupeko #peko pekoyama #danganronpa #fuyupeko #pekomama and fuyupapa #otp: i heard your voice #goodbye despair #trigger warning #possible tw

28 notes · View notes

fellowstrangetownappreciator · 3 years

Text

The Strange Case of The Strangetown Metamorphosis

There is a mysterious Sim that appears in Strangetown.

That's like saying "there is a fish that appears in the ocean", I know, so I'll be a little more specific.

They are an adult whose memories show inconsistencies with those of their family members. Something is missing!

Alright. That's also not saying much, that's like half of the premades in vanilla, non-clean hoods.

They are immediately recognizable by their appearance and, dare I say it, have distinguishing features unique to them.

Well, that also kinda fits everyone...

They feature in more than one installment of the series.

Again, not that helpful. I mean, almost everybody from the base game hoods is (for better or worse) represented in TS3 or TS4.

They appear in TS2 for PSP!

Hmm...

They are a member of a wealthy family connected to science and paranormal.

And...

They are somehow connected to (possible) cloning.

I imagine that now you’re probably rolling your eyes and asking: Why didn’t I just simply say I was going to talk about Bella Goth?

Because... I’m not!

It’s Loki Beaker. In this mini-essay I’m going to speak about Loki, what is the mystery around him, what hints are there and what are some of the theories and which one do I fancy.

It’s basically a routine round of the popular game “connect EAxis’ oversights and glue them together into a headcanon”.

So without further ado, let me introduce you to:

The Mystery of Loki Beaker!

0: Preface: Loki who?

“As soon as he perfects his latest invention, Loki is sure to get the recognition he knows he deserves. In the meantime, he keeps himself busy by trying to assemble a nuclear reactor out of common household items.”

On the first glance, Loki as a Sim seems quite straightforward. He is a Knowledge Sim with a very eccentric personality. All his trait points are in the extremes, as you can see:

He is a scientist, a competent one at that, as proven by his high career level and the fun fact that some of the game’s horrible machinery you can buy for Aspiration points is attributed to his creation.

(It explains why are the Beakers the only ones who have the stuff lying around by default. It is normal for a Strangetown family to own a non-buyable reward object or two but those are career rewards, the Beakers are the only one who canonically own Aspiration points rewards.)

Even though he knows his stuff when it comes to his profession, he is very corrupt and tests his questionable projects on his captive, Nervous Subject.

To say that Loki is unpopular would be an understatement. No one but his wife Circe likes Loki, even his own sister is indifferent towards him. Yes, he has a sister. Her name is Erin and she also lives in Strangetown with a colorful collection of roommates.

Nothing mysterious about him so far. (apart from his eyebrows)

1: Characterization fallen apart

And then The Sims 3 happened. It was actually quite late into the game’s life cycle, the early 2013, when a beautiful nordic-themed world was released on TS3 Store. Its name was Aurora Skies and it featured Loki, Erin and their parents.

TS3 Loki is a child and Erin is a toddler.

Now I haven’t actually played Aurora Skies. I own (and love) TS3 but the price range for the Store worlds is too high for me, content-to-money wise. So there might be some hidden clues about the Beakers in their house or relationship panels that I haven’t been able to inspect but... not to sound cynical but I doubt it. I doubt such attention was given to detail of this family in Aurora Skies, as they don’t even have individual bios.

But... that is... fine? I mean, we have Loki’s TS2 bio...

Nope. Sure we do. And it would be fine if hair color and ambitions weren’t the only thing Loki and his younger self (from now on referred to as smol Loki) had in common.

Let’s take a look on smol Loki’s personality.

The first noticeable thing is that there is not a trace of Loki’s trademark villainy. He’s not Mean Spirited, he’s not Evil, he’s not even a No Sense of Humor Sim. His extreme neatness and hyperactivity are nowhere to be seen either. While it is true that TS3′s capabilities of defining personality are very limited as it picks “outstanding points” rather than a position of each trait on a scale, and it only has 5 slots (and tiny teeny 3 for children), it doesn’t make any sense still for the devs not to pick some more loki-esque traits for the precious slots they had.

Unless...

They didn’t care about Loki’s personality and there were no deeper intentions.

Unless the devs were trying to purposefully show us new angles of his character that either got suppressed while he was growing up, or manifest in ways that TS2′s scale system wasn’t able to show.

Could the Lucky trait in particular have had something to do with the change?

(Also, those traits of smol Loki are reason why I usually go for a Family Secondary Loki in TS2 and thus make Strangetown the purgatory of two unstable blonde Knowledge/Family sciency guys.)

We also must not omit that even though smol Loki didn’t display any of them, he still had all of Loki’s signature traits in him, as Loki in TS2 has his actual personality synced with the genetic one, meaning that there was something in there that caused him not to act so mean that got lost as he grew up. In other words, something brought up the worst in him.

And that’s not all. Smol Loki is not a regular TS3 child. You see, in TS3, premade children aren’t particularly known for being highly skilled experts. Neither are in TS2, for that matter, and it’s okay. It’s realistic.

Smol Loki has a skill maxed.

It is very rare for a premade regardless of age to already start with a maxed skill and I personally don’t know of any other premade children that do.

And it’s writing.

What does writing have to do with Loki? Does Loki write? Probably he has to, those academic papers aren’t gonna spawn out of thin air, but that’s not what the writing skill in TS3 (or the hidden writing skill in TS2) are about. They’re about creative writing only.

Ok, ok. How high is Loki’s Creativity skill, then? In TS2, skills are much broader, they more resemble skillsets than individual skills, and writing categorizes under Creativity. Bring out the skill panel!

Two. He has 2 points in Creativity. That is... low. That is actually very low, especially for a Sim that has supposedly been writing for fun since childhood. (and was a prodigy, while we’re at it) It is safe to say, I think, that if the player doesn’t make him do it, Loki doesn’t write anymore and he hasn’t been doing that for a long, long time.

While I would cynically admit that the dissonance in personalities might be just the lack of damns given from EAxis’ side, this seems to me too on the nose to be unintentional.

They would have no reason to bring the Beakers back without the “evil scientists” thing in mind. I mean, that’s what they’re iconic for. That’s what they’re recognizable by. (apart from their eyebrows)

So the person who was in charge of creating smol Loki probably knew they were recreating “Loki the mad scientist”.

So when they were picking the skill they use to demonstrate that this kid is gonna go far, they thought... “evil scientist = writing”...?

I would understand going for Creativity in general. I mean, Loki’s an inventor. That comes with the territory. But creativity as such isn’t really a skill in TS3. It’s divided to different activities.

Wouldn’t it make more sense just in general to pick logic, then? I mean, Loki isn’t that extremely logical by default but it is his second strongest skill and a feature unmistakably connected to being a scientist.

That’s what leads me to believe that writing plays a role in the story and it was chosen on purpose.

So how did a sweet little family-oriented boy talented with words transform into the ruthless catboy inventor we know and love?

And that, my friends, is the mystery of Loki Beaker.

2: A closer look at our environmentalist friends, the Beakers

If we want to get the full picture and come to a satisfying conclusion of some sorts, we need to inspect smol Loki’s surroundings. Maybe there is a clue to the continuous force or a traumatic event that shifted smol Loki’s direction in life?

Loki’s and Erin’s parents are named Gundrun and Bjorn. Even though their age would still allow it, they’re not present at the start of TS2′s Strangetown play, they’re long dead. Bjorn died before Erin became an adult and Gundrun died shortly before her son’s engagement to Circe. Because they died by the time Loki had (presumably) already long enrolled in his current life-path, we can safely rule out any tragic early death of parental figures scenario as a possible answer.

Gundrun is the only Beaker that canonically also writes. She has 5 points in the writing skill. She also shares some traits with Loki, namely the smarts and ambition.

But she has little to do with science and is way more business-oriented which is a trait she shares with Circe’s ancestors, for example her father. Maybe the families knew each other from business ventures even before they moved to Strangetown? It is stated in their memories that Loki and Circe first met when they were children. But I digress!

Anyway, I don’t see anything in Gundrun that would suggest any abusive behavior towards her son that might have triggered his drastic change. Possibly but not necessarily she might’ve been a bit absent but nothing out of ordinary.

And now the father, Bjorn.

Bjorn is the sciency half of the couple and works as an Aquatic Ecosystem Tweaker. Again, he has zero traits that would raise any red flags and he shares 4 out of 5 traits with either smol Loki or Loki. (I don’t know if Loki is a “natural cook” but he cooks quite well, so I think that counts.)

What’s interesting about Bjorn, though, is his speech that serves as a flavor text for the Aurora Skies store page.

(Image transcript: “Do it for science! Science is everywhere around us, but at Aurora Skies it’s not just something you learn; it’s something you do! We need bright young minds to make the dreams of the future a reality. Even now we’re finding more uses for garbage to help the planet. Charging batteries, powering machines - the sky is the limit. Just this last year we created a modified Hot Air Baloon using garbage as fuel and turning it into pure air with a pine breeze scent. Now you can have efficient travel and an amazing romantic adventure with no cost to the ozone (or your nose)! Every year we’re creating more and more exciting things in the world of science. Garbage-powered hearts, heart-powered cars, solar-powered cats; what will you think of next! It’s all up to you. Do it for Science! Did you know? Hot Air Balloons are an epic form of travel based around the simple principle that hot air is lighter than cold air. They lift in the air based on the heat system in the balloon. Increasing the temperature of the air inside the balloon makes it lighter than the air outside and the balloon begins to float. More air is required to lift heavier things; that’s why the balloons have to be so huge! How cool (or hot!) is that?”)

From this piece of text we can see Bjorn’s passion and dedication to “green” science. Nothing in his traits suggests he fakes it, so I think it’s safe to believe that this peppy idealist is a glimpse into Loki’s father’s genuine self.

He might have encouraged his children to follow in his footsteps (”We need bright young minds to make the dreams of the future a reality.“) and smol Loki, who later in life seemed to have similar levels of enthusiasm (science is his One True Hobby), might have been receptive to that.

Now just close your eyes for a second and imagine an alternate reality in which Loki picked up where Bjorn left and instead of a energy-refilling machine that electrocutes you if you’re not happy enough, he invented “solar-powered cats”.

Still no hints on what could’ve messed Loki up, though.

Let’s take a look at the parents in TS2. Even though they’re not present and aren’t even resurrectable, they’re still coded in the game for purposes of genetics, memories and family trees, so some of their characteristics are salvageable.

And by the Watcher, they were both Romance Sims.

They were workaholic Romance Sims who cared about the environment and liked recycling (and Hot Baloons).

And they were both extremely Nice and very Sloppy, if their personalities on wiki are something to go by. Which they unfortunately aren’t, at least not completely because most ancestors don’t simply have “their own” personalities and use presets instead, so they tend to be quite similar.

The same goes for most of the Beaker clan, unfortunately. Fun fact is that there is no Knowledge Sim in sight (before Loki, of course). Maybe they weren’t a scientist family, but a bunch of Romance Sims who used to spend their free time in between woohoos saving the planet with eco-science. (3 out of 6 of Loki’s and Erin’s ancestors were Romance Sims, 2 were Fortune and 1 was Family)

But! There is one outlier. Her name is Gertrude Beaker. She is Loki’s paternal grandmother.

And similarly to her grandson, she certainly has a personality to remember.

She doesn’t use a preset, this is a personality that someone went and manually assigned (...or generated) for her. And she is Neat, Outgoing and doesn’t have a nice bone in her body. But unlike Loki, she has a sense of humor (which makes her even more dangerous, in my opinion) and is extremely Lazy.

She is a Fortune Sim and the only Beaker who shares the darker sides of Loki’s personality. (to be clear, I don’t mean their taste for cleaning but the round 0 of Nice points)

Because she doesn’t feature in TS3 at all, it is safe to say that she wasn’t in her grandchildren’s lives until the family moved to Strangetown. Could she be the corrupting influence on smol Loki?

As far as personality comparison goes, she seems to be the only possible culprit, the only one who’s personality shares the same unpleasant qualities he became infamous for. But! That’s not saying much. There is no evidence she actually did anything.

There’s not even any evidence that she ever met her grandson, given he has no memory of her dying which means she might have died before he was even born. That would be a solid evidence on the contrary and would rule her out. But I’m leaving some maneuvering space for theories here because she is the only Beaker ancestor with custom personality, after all, and that is suspicious.

That’s all the Beakers we know of if not counting Atom and Ceres, who came after Loki, so they’re not relevant to the question of his childhood. Or... are they?

3: And that’s when the trouble began

Another part of this question that might help us discern what happened to Loki is the when. All we know so far is that there is a big void of unknown between smol Loki and regular Loki and the point of transformation happened in there somewhere.

Thankfully, we have something to give us an idea. It’s this snapshot in storytelling pictures for the Beakers:

It shows smol Loki destroying a dollhouse. It seems to be in an impersonal environment of some sorts. The cheapest bed in the game is against a bare white wall, the window is hid behind blue curtains and there doesn’t really seem to be anything else but the dollhouse, a teddy bear in the background and that... very unpleasant bed.

It clearly tells us that Loki’s shift started in his pre-teen years.

And seeing that room which is definitely not in the Beaker Castle at 1 Tesla Court, it makes me think of a hotel or a cheap apartment the family was staying in while moving from Aurora Skies to Strangetown. Maybe the castle-like something the household inhabits at the start of the game wasn’t a property of the Beakers at all, maybe that was where the Salamises used to live and now it belongs to Circe?

Anyway, could it had been leaving Aurora Skies that sent smol Loki down an existential crisis and settling in the not exactly welcoming environment of Strangetown, enrolling in a local school, that sealed it?

But why all the stuff with writing? This would work with any other hobby but somehow it had to be writing and it’s our task to find out why.

4: Not your average tragedy

Now in our search we already have some ideas but it wouldn’t be thorough if we didn’t take into account smol Loki’s actual personality. I mean, we went into what traits he doesn’t have but what about those he has?

Namely Lucky and Family-Oriented.

I think Lucky is a very interesting choice. There’s nothing inherent about Loki Beaker that would make you go “that’s one lucky guy!” (if you don’t count his relationship with Circe as a stroke of luck, that is) and the same goes for smol Loki.

But... it could be a clue. His metamorphosis either couldn’t be triggered by trauma because he’s lucky and it would avoid him, or it must’ve been something tremendously horrid so he’s lucky he’s still alive.

Now we know we are searching for something that happened in his late childhood, verging on the start of his teenage years. His family was going through the turmoil of moving to a desert and he has already known his future partner Circe. Meanwhile Erin-

Oh, wait. Erin.

Smol Loki was Family-Oriented which implies he would probably have a good relationship with his little sister, as he would’ve naturally inclined to protect her and help his parents take care of her. But!

Not only do they have an amicable but distant relationship as adults but Erin seems to forget that Loki even existed in her childhood.

He has the usual set of memories of a sibling growing up well but she doesn’t, she has no Loki-related memories at all, not even of his marriage, which was a quite recent event.

Could the reason for Loki’s “downfall” be somehow related to his sister? Was there a dramatic event in which she lost a part of her memory?

5: Theories!

Ok, we’re finally here! Now I try to present some theories about what might’ve happened.

1. Burdens of the golden child

In Aurora Skies, Loki used to be the little wonder every relative was gushing about. With his father as an acclaimed scientist and a very liked person in general, there was little to no adversity his son had to face. He followed his passion and having nobody to really compare himself to, nor anybody who would terrorize him, he prospered.

But then the Beakers moved. Strangetown was... different. It was way smaller than Aurora Skies, so everybody inherently knew everybody and everybody had to interact with everybody... because the small space of a desert community didn’t leave them with any choice. And it was bleak and unfriendly. No one except for the Salamises knew the Beakers, so they found themselves under scrutiny from their new neighbors.

So Loki, who used to live thinking he was unique, was now sitting everyday in a much smaller classroom with Pascal and Vidcund Curious, whom he was immediately being compared to. But he wasn’t like the Curiouses. He was a kid of a scientist but wasn’t a science kid. He didn’t have much in common with Pascal who approached him and tried to befriend him at first but he wanted to. In Strangetown, nothing seemed to be cooler than being really, really into science. Pascal’s and Loki’s communication attempts were rather poor, though, and in the end, they never made friends. Loki slowly began to disdain the oldest Curious boy and it culminated a few years later in high school when Pascal made an attempt to woo Circe. It was even worse with Vidcund. Ever since Loki’s first day at the new school, Vidcund had been eyeing him with a disgusted look and Loki became quick to reciprocate.

In Strangetown, nothing seemed to be cooler than being really, really into science. Even Circe was on it! She was the only person his age he has know in Strangetown before his family moved in and he liked her. Not “like” liked her, yuck! But he thought she was cool. Her family used to visit the Beakers in Aurora Skies and they played together. She was a friend! Or so Loki thought. She seemed to like hanging out with the Curiouses much more.

In Strangetown, nothing seemed to be cooler than being really, really into science, yes. But not in the eyes of Buzz Grunt, the son of a general who lived in Strangetown. Their family were the self-proclaimed protectors of the hood but at the same time they weren’t shy to show a strong distaste for all that made Strangetown an important desert settlement in the first place. And little Buzz, although Loki doubted he understood the nuances, was very fond of asserting his dominance over his less sporty and hyper-masculine classmates.

Suddenly jealous of the Curious brothers, under pressure from both the adults and his peers comparing him to them and bullied by Buzz, Loki’s social life fell apart. He started having problems... and he came up with solutions. He has always liked science but from back then on he hyperfixated on it to prove everybody who picked on him for being a worthless parody of a science kid wrong.

Not only his social life and self-confidence were busted, though. Moving away from Aurora Skies to Strangetown that had much higher prices for housing because of the limited space, the living standards for the Beakers lowered. It was chaotic and uncomfortable. Plus, almost everybody in Strangetown was loaded. Why, Circe and her parents lived in a small castle! Loki felt like they’re the only “poor” family around and it played into his new-found insecurities.

And then there was Erin’s accident. She suffered a severe head injury and even though she fortunately survived, she was never... the same. She had issues with her memory. Loki tried to convince himself that he’s big enough not to cry but when they were visiting Erin in the hospital and she didn’t recognize him, he cried. It was his little sister! And... it was all his fault anyway! If he was quicker and pushed her to safety, she would’ve been fine! Or even better, he wished the car would’ve hit him instead.

Loki was becoming more and more snappy, focused on his grades and projects, unavailable. The siblings never mended their relationship, Erin, even though she recovered, never got to make new memories with her brother. Not remembering them growing up together, he was like a stranger to her. A scary mean teenage boy she didn’t know and, even though she was a very friendly child, she was too intimidated to willingly spend time with him. And Loki was always busy and moreover, he felt guilty and inexplicably angry, so he postponed approaching her, until it was too late, he was in college, she was in high school and it was too awkward.

And... there was no time to write anymore.

2. Gertrude the Neat and Mean (and Lazy)

Ok, Loki doesn’t have any memories of his grandma. But hear me out! Erin does not have any of him either and yet they met. This theory doesn't require any additional write up – he simply got under the influence of his 0 Nice points granny and she cultivated him to be just like her.

My personal take: This is maybe my least favorite theory of them all, even though it is quite straightforward. It doesn't take much into consideration and demonizes Gertrude, who as far as we know, might not done anything wrong.

3. The accident

This theory takes advantage of TS3's canon sciency machinery, namely Cerebralizing Brain Enhancing Machine 2.0.

It can, among other things, change a Sim's personality. There is (quite unfortunately, in my opinion) no chance of consequential failure in the actual game, the most it can do is to (non-fatally) electrocute your Sim. But...

Imagine smol Loki sneaking into his dad's laboratory, most probably at his workplace.

He was curious. Ever since his father showed him all the equipment in there, all he could think of was the machine that made people smarter.

Maybe it could make him smarter?

I mean, Loki knew he was already quite smart. At least, he's been told he was and he had no reason not to believe it.

But he could be even smarter.

He could be like his dad. Or his mom. Or Erin. Everyone was talking about how clever young Erin seemed. Loki was proud of her but part of him just wanted that, too.

So what if... he went to dad's laboratory, just for a little while, and made himself smarter?

He made all the necessary preparations. It meant to memorize dad’s schedule, so he knew just the time when he could sneak into the laboratory. It also meant to get a good costume so he won’t be recognizable on the security footage!

And then finally, he was ready. To infiltrate the laboratory was easy enough but it only made Loki more nervous. He was on the edge but determined. He wanted to make it big in the world. He needed to seize the opportunity. And fear... fear was there to be ignored! Hands, stop trembling!

His confidence grew a bit once he got to the machine itself. He knew how to run it thanks to his dad and it made him feel competent and ready.

Little did he know that there was a huge oversight. Although Loki could operate the technology on a very basic level, his knowledge went nowhere near deep enough for him to detect that the machine has yet another set of settings and those currently expect an adult user. It wasn’t configured for a child patient.

But unaware of that, the boy in his patchy dinosaur costume climbed on top of the machine and with his eyes wide open and his heart racing he connected the Brain Enhancer to his system. Then, with his hand sweating, he pushed a button on a remote he was clutching to.

When Bjorn, alerted by Loki’s screams, rushed into the laboratory, it was way too late.

As his terrified father was calling the ambulance, the child was alive and even still awake. He was too weak to cry. He just watched Bjorn, wishing for death and looking for signs of wrath in father’s eyes.

There were none. Only fear.

Physically, Loki Beaker managed to recover just fine. With the power of advanced medicine and plastic surgery, the burns he suffered were reduced to nothing but almost invisible scars.

But inside, he was never the same. Literally. Even though the procedure backfired horribly, it still worked to some extend - but even that extend was warped. Loki succeeded in giving himself the Genius trait but several of his traits were replaced also, including the Lucky trait that probably saved his life.

6: Conclusion!

I like Loki very much. (no sh*t, who would’ve guessed) He’s a very controversial and over-the-top character who tends to be rather unpredictable in the actual gameplay. I started writing this giant thing to find an answer to his backstory that would satisfy me and hopefully also some of you.

With a heavy heart I conclude I’m not successful.

First I have to admit I originally planned to present 5 theories instead of 3 but I scrapped 2 of them.

First was about Atom time traveling and replacing Loki, creating himself again and again in a time loop (would explain the huge personality difference between smol Loki and Loki-Atom) and it was very far-fetched but fun, alas I realized it was out of character for Atom, since he seems to love his sister and his Plumbot so much he would hardly leave them behind to pull that off.

The second was about Nervous and the corrupting power of Death he has inside that would slowly drive Loki and Circe “evil” even though it’s unclear whether they first adopted him with being a lab-rat in mind. But it would not make sense since a change like that would be visible on their personality panels. That’s not that important, though. What made me not include this theory is that it feels uncomfortably victim blame-y. It’s not directly since it wouldn’t be Nervous’ fault anyway but any attempt to shift the blame from Loki and Circe in this situation feels uncomfortable.

(To be clear, I don’t think the Beakers deserve demonization. In my opinion, the best way to treat them narrative-wise is like eccentric people capable of feeling love and doing good things sometimes, yet irredeemably self-centered, morally bankrupt and deserving a lifetime in jail for child abuse they have done on Nervous. Not one-dimensional but still villains and still objectively bad people.)

And those 3 theories above? They could’ve been better.

I think I like the first the most, even though I still feel like something is missing. I just tend to like relatively grounded explanations and this one doesn’t feature the supernatural nor any deus ex machina gadget.

What about you? And do you have any other theories? Sky’s the limit! It’ll make my day to hear them!

Whatever your takes are, they’re all valid.

#loki beaker #strangetown #premades #the sims 2 #the sims #simbrl #headcanon #ts2

52 notes · View notes

depressedhatakekakashi · 3 years

Text

Kakashi Week Day 3: Bleeding Out

Gift For: @alumort

For You

@kakashiweek

Words: 2195

Warnings: Blood Tw, Near Death experience.

Pairing: Kakagai (can be read as platonic or romantic. it's up to the reader)

The battlefield is a blur. Even Obito’s sharingan struggles to keep up with the speed of all of the enemy’s movements, just barely giving Kakashi the information he needs to dodge an attack or to strike at the perfect moment.

Winning feels like an impossible task, but he continues moving. This wasn’t a fight that he was willing to lose easily.

Not when Gai’s life was on the line.

“Nice try!” Hearing a triumphant call from his best friend, Kakashi risked a glance. A moment to check-in and make sure that everything was alright, and just in time to see Gai planting his foot into the enemy’s face. Sending him stumbling back with a bloody, most likely very broken, nose. “It will take more than that for-”

The rest of Gai’s words faded into the background when Obito’s eye locked onto an incoming attack. The sight of sharp steel gleaming in the sunlight made his blood run cold, and the target was clear.

Gai.

Kakashi’s body moved without thought. Kunai coming up to guard against the incoming attack. To protect Gai, no matter what. That was his goal. The only goal that mattered at this moment.

Steel clashed, a struggle for victory between Tanto and Kunai while Kakashi stared down his enemy. It didn't take long for the victor to be decided, and unfortunately for Kakashi, this one wasn’t his battle to win. Feeling his hand giving out, he watched as the Kunai was flung off to the side. Decoration for the dirt until the battle was done.

The enemy’s speed didn’t give even for a second. His eye followed the tanto as the enemy pulled it back, leaving his body to react on instinct rather than logic. Lightning sparked in his hand, a desperate last-ditch attempt to protect himself and his friend.

The warmth of fresh blood is a feeling that’s all too familiar to Kakashi. The way it drips from his fingers, staining his hand the same as every shinobi who has met their end on Kakashi’s chidori.

The coldness though, that’s a feeling he doesn’t experience a lot.

A feeling that could only be compared to being thrown headfirst into a frozen river, his fingers ache when he tries to move them. The warm blood provided no relief to the sheer cold that settled into his bones.

“I won’t allow y-you-” His words faltered, sharp pain in his own chest suddenly making its presence known. Lowering his eyes, he stared down at his enemies’ tanto. Cold steel buried deep inside of his chest, mirroring his own attack against the enemy.

There’s no response to his words, and when he risks a glance upward he can see why. The only thing keeping the enemy’s body up is Kakashi’s hand. A limb struck through a now lifeless body, refusing to allow it to crumple to the ground.

At least if he died here he could say he wasn’t the first one to fall.

Removing his hand carefully, he ignored the slight tremble in his fingers. A response to the memories that came with the attack. No longer being held up by Kakashi, the enemy’s body crumpled to the ground. Lifeless and forgotten in favour of the much more pressing matter of his own wound.

“Kakashi?” Gai’s back pressing against his is another familiar feeling, though a lot more comforting than any of the other ones he had experienced in the last few minutes. “I appreciate the protection, and I’d appreciate it a lot more if you told me that you were uninjured.”

Just like Gai. Always worried about Kakashi when he needed to focus on the battle, not that Kakashi was any better. After all, it was his worry for Gai that had landed him in this position.

“Tell me you can keep fighting,” The voice behind him grew distant. As if Gai was moving away from him, even though Kakashi knew that wasn’t possible. Not when he could still feel Gai’s back pressed up against his. Protecting him from an attack from behind. “Kakashi-”

“Don’t think-” the wound in his chest ached. A pain that he was far too familiar with, but was also somehow ten times worse than he had ever experienced before. “Might need to, fight alone. Sorry.”

His knees gave out suddenly, sending him crashing to the ground as the cold that had burrowed its way into his bones just moments ago disappeared suddenly along with the sound of Gai’s voice. He’s certain that he should feel the moment that his body collides with the ground, but the only thing that he registers is the distant sound of fighting. Fists colliding with flesh and nunchucks deflecting Kunai and Tantos.

Laying there on his side, he watched as feet rushed past him. The fight continued as he lay there, surrounded by silence and feeling nothing except a deep numbness that could only be attributed to blood loss.

This was where he was going to die. A cold body on the ground, unable to do anything while his best friend fought for his life, and yet he couldn’t find it in him to be sad. At the end of the day, he died protecting Gai. Gave his friend another chance to win the fight and complete the mission.

To get home alive.

It was a fitting death, and as the world around him slowly started to fade away he couldn’t help but allow a small smile to tug at the corners of his lips.

Waiting was always the hardest part. No matter how much people talked about the pain of seeing someone they care about injured or watching them slowly dying in front of them, it was not knowing that hurt the most.

Wondering if this was going to end with another funeral.

Another goodbye.

Or if somehow he had managed to make it on time. If his feet had moved just fast enough, carrying him home just in time to save his best friend from otherwise certain death.

Staring at the door that Tsunade-sama had disappeared behind with Kakashi, he waited. The only thing keeping him in his seat is the constant reminder of who it is behind those doors.

Hatake Kakashi.

His eternal rival and best friend.

A wound like this would not be Kakashi’s end. It couldn’t be. There was still so much that they had to do together. Challenges that Gai hadn’t even thought up yet, and festivals for them to enjoy together.

“Gai-Sensei?” Dragging his eyes away from the door, he focused on the pink-haired Chunin who had just arrived, her hands held timidly in front of her chest. “Shizune said-Is Kakashi-Sensei.”

Shoving all of his feelings aside, Gai smiled at Sakura. A bright confident smile, followed by his signature thumbs up.

“Kakashi will be fine,” he assured her. “He’s Kakashi. He’s not one to give up easily. Besides, Tsunade-sama is looking after him. She is not known as the best medical ninja in all of the lands for nothing.”

If anyone could save Kakashi, it was Tsunade-sama.

“Good,” lowering her hands, Sakura glanced towards the door. “Captain Yamato is keeping Naruto distracted. When Shizune gave us the news he said it was best if Naruto didn’t find out until- well…”

It made sense. Yamato was always level-headed, even in times of great stress. There was no doubt in Gai’s mind that he was concerned about his Senpai’s current condition, but he knew when his attention was needed elsewhere, and when it came to Naruto it was best to keep him in the dark. If he found out what had happened-

Hearing a door opening, Gai pulled himself out of his thoughts and looked back over at the door he had spent the last four hours staring at. The first thing he noticed was all of the blood that now stained Tsunade-sama’s hands.

Kakashi’s blood.

“Gai, focus,” Tsunade-sama ordered, sighing when Gai diverted his eyes. Ashamed of himself for thinking of the worst before she could even get a word out. “Kakashi is fine. It took a bit of work, and there was some damage to his right lung, but he pulled through.”

Hours of worry melted away. His body released all of the tension that had been building up while he sat there waiting, hoping that Kakashi would be alright. That he hadn’t been too late.

“C-can i…”

“He won’t be awake for a while,” Nodding he waited for her to continue. “But, once we have him in a better room to rest and recover, you can sit with him. Though I do suggest we keep guests at a minimum. Sakura, can I trust you to make sure the room doesn’t get too crowded?”

“I’ll make sure Naruto stays out,” Sakura confirmed, a smile on her face when Gai looked back at her. “Team Kakashi can wait to see him. As long as we know he’s alright, we’ll be fine. You should be the first person he sees when he wakes up.”

“Thank you.” with that decided, Gai turned back to Tsunade-sama. “What room is he going to be in?”

“34,” she held out an arm, pointing towards the hallway with her hand. “I’m sure you know the way.”

That was an understatement. After all of the visits he had made over the years, between Kakashi, his old teammates, and his own student’s injuries, he could now walk the hallways with his eyes closed.

A challenge he may take upon himself another day. When there was a little more energy, and a lot less worry, in his soul.

The smell of cleanliness is the first thing Kakashi registers when his mind starts to swim towards consciousness. A smell that he knows all too well. Has spent too much time around not to recognize it as soon as it hits his nose.

The hospital.

If he were dead, he wouldn’t smell the hospital. There was no way that whatever afterlife there might be, that it would smell like a hospital. That would be the worst way to introduce someone to death.

Which meant only one thing.

“Gai,” he spoke without thought, already knowing that his best friend was there by his side. “How…”

“Are you really doubting my resolve right now, Rival?” he longs to open his eyes. To see that blinding smile that he knows is on Gai’s face at this moment, waiting to welcome him back into the world of the living. It’s too much though. There’s too little energy in his body to even manage that one small gesture. “Tsunade-sama said that it would take a while for you to recover. The enemy’s sword did a lot of damage. It even hit your lung.”

That explained why it was a little difficult for him to breathe. Tsunade-sama must have had a hell of a time trying to save him this time, and there was no doubt she had a lecture already brewing for him when he woke up again.

Speaking of lectures.

“I don’t regret it.”

“I know.”

“But you’re mad.”

Silence settles over the small room. Not a word was spoken, or a muscle moved. The two of them just sit there, wondering what to do next. How to continue a conversation that neither one of them wanted to have.

“You almost died.”

“For you,” he’s surprised by how easily those words leave his mouth. Words he wouldn’t dare say to anyone else, for fear of the reaction that they might give. “And I'd do it again.”

He expects anger, perhaps disappointment. A reminder of how precious his life is, and how Gai can’t stand the thought of having to bury him. Being forced to say goodbye when they had so much life to live.

Instead, his ears are greeted with laughter.

Bright, beautiful laughter. The kind of sound that makes his heart flutter, and gives him the energy he had been missing just minutes ago. Cracking his right eye open, he turned his face to the left and stared at Gai. Watching as his best friend shut his eyes and threw his head back, his laughter growing louder with each passing second.

A sound Kakashi would gladly listen to for the rest of the day.

The sound of life.

“Don’t you dare,” he’s surprised by the words, not because he doesn’t expect Gai to say them but because of the way they’re said? With so much joy and kindness that Kakashi’s certain his friend has lost his sanity. “You’re not allowed to die, Kakashi.”

“Mmm, is that so?” Relaxing back into the bed, he chuckled to himself. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m apparently too stubborn to die then.”

It would take a stronger enemy to take Kakashi out, and he was alright with that.

As much as he didn’t mind the thought of dying to protect Gai, he was much more fond of living. There were still so many contests for them to have and so many opportunities for him to get under Gai’s skin.

“For you,” he whispered once more, a tender smile pulling at his lips when he felt a hand rest on his arm. “I’ll fight to live.”

#Hatake Kakashi #Maito Gai #Haruno Sakura #Tsunade #Kakagai #Kakashi Week 2021 #kakagai #Kakashiweek2021

22 notes · View notes

sapphia · 3 years

Text

look i don’t want to @ people who are trying to explain the complicated intricacies of their personal sexuality (even if ya’all are doing it in the discourse channels) but i do just want to say in general terms for everyone who keeps saying that they don’t identify as bisexual because it “felt restrictive” or “pan just fits better” or they “don’t care about gender”

these sort of emotional reasonings are exactly why there is an issue with the split between bisexuality and pansexuality. making this statements is rooted in your own internalised biphobia.

bisexuality and bisexuals have always sort of been shat upon, and have drummed up poor reputations and negative connotations both inside and outside of lgbt circles, and this was especially prevalent in the late 90s and 2010s when gays and lesbians were getting more accepted but there was still a lot of reservation and negative stereotypes surrounding bisexuality, including the idea that bisexuals aren’t really bi, they’re just straight or gay and lying/in denial; that they’re slutty; that they only care about sex or are hypersexual. This idea was rampant in mainstream cishet culture but was incredibly prevalent in gay circles as well.

which is where pansexuality comes in. because whatever the reasons for someone coming up with a brand new sexuality (which isn’t what we’re discussing here), its rapid spread can definitely be attributed to the fact that pansexuality really quickly began to distance itself from all the negative stereotypes that plagued bisexuality. and in doing so, reinforced them.

every anxiety people had about their sexuality was appeased by pansexuality. why do you think pansexuality is pushed so heavily on “hearts not parts”? because bisexuality is hypersexualised, and pansexuals wanted to distance themselves from the slutty stereotype - and so propagated the idea that pansexuals aren’t interested in people’s genetalia, but in a way that isn’t concerned with sex. it’s not that they’ll fuck anything that moves (like those bisexuals) but they don’t care about gender, they don’t see gender, gender is irrelevant.

pan emphasises the equal attraction aspect because anyone and everyone who was in a relationship with a bisexual worried that one day their partner would wake up and realise they were with the wrong gender. straight people worried their partner was really gay, gay people worried they were really straight. gay and lesbian groups excluding bisexual people specifically was really starting to take off, as did the concept of a “gold star lesbian” - because women touched by men were dirty, and women who continued to fraternise with the enemy were traitors, and feminism and lesbian rights combined in a whirlwind of hatred to demonise men and anyone who consorted with them. and gay men were little better - gay sexual liberation gave rise to the lovely transphobic “ew, vagina” jokes, promoting the idea that a gay man was somehow lesser as a gay man for feeling anything other than disgust for a vagina.

pansexuality appeases this anxiety a lot; by claiming equal attraction, gays and straights alike can be reassured that their partners aren’t experimenting with them, aren’t testing the waters, don’t have a preference that will later turn into a realisation that they weren’t bisexual at all. bisexuals had never needed to preface their sexuality by explaining exactly how they experienced attraction; after all, that can be pretty personal and private, and people often find that fluctuates throughout their life or depending on circumstance. this left the waters murky for other people, who wanted to know - are they gay enough to count as lgbt, or are they bi but just had a gay fling once? are they mostly gay, so i shouldn’t shoot my shot because i’m not the same gender as them? now pansexuals were opening the door with that description (whether accurate or not, as it turns out a lot of pansexuals didn’t actually subscribe to the “equal models” theory, or their attraction later changed), so anxiety soothed.

pan was touted as the “woke” sexuality; bisexuality was falsely labelled transphobic, and even when that wasn’t actively mentioned, “hearts not parts” and being attracted to “all” genders has a strong implication that pansexual people have somehow transcended gender; that has a huge appeal in the age of growing recognition of trans rights, especially nonbinary people. bisexuals were still arguing with other lgbt members that bi doesn’t mean two; pansexuals had surpassed that entirely by getting to create their own word not bogged down in lgbt+ and gendered history. so no wonder it felt like it “fit” better - it’s designed to feel pure, to feel transcendent, to feel “woke”.

bi doesn’t feel restrictive because it includes less (in actual fact, by common “definition” that keeps popping up, it should be less restrictive, as ONLY people with equal attraction can be pan, whereas anyone who feels any sort of non-monosexual attraction can be bi). bi feels restrictive because it’s weighed down with 40 years of biphobic baggage and negative connotations. pansexual, on the other hand, is a new age term designed to appeal to people who don’t want to deal with that stuff, and who want to feel like their sexuality is inherently less problematic and more open-minded than other sexualities.

so yeah. i don’t want to go around messaging specific people, even if those people are willingly inserting themselves and their sexualities into the conversation, because i don’t want anyone to feel like they are personally being attacked. but honestly, please think about why pansexuality exists, and why people (or yourself) choose to identify as pansexual when bisexual has always existed and meant exactly the same thing. because it’s all very well to say that “it just feels better”, but that “better feeling” is rooted in and takes advantage of biphobia and no one wants to talk about it or even think about it for fear of being labelled panphobic.

#bi vs pan #bisexuality #bi discourse #queer

185 notes · View notes

im-totally-not-an-alien · 3 years

Text

Final Fantasy 7 prompts #70

1. Time traveler au where everyone remembers, and I mean everyone!

Hojo? Incredibly curious about this new phenomenon and is hunting Cloud like a Zolom slithering up to a Chocobo

Sephiroth: Also hunting Cloud, although for entirely different reasons

Genesis full on tackle-hugged Angeal to the ground and not even a half hour later the scene repeats with the puppy

Random people on the streets scream and cry in delight at seeing thier loved ones for the first time since The Plate/Meteorfall/Geostigma took them from the world of the living.

Its a mess.

2. Cloud was never a selfish man. At least, he never considered himself to be. But standing here, aiming a gun at a sleeping man's head, he couldn't help to feel like he was.

3. Cloud sniffled, staring at his campfire as the wind blows at it. Its as if the wind god himself is trying to snuff out the only comfort he had left. He didn't mean to betray the group, he swears.

Not that it meant much.

(Au where Cloud never got mako poisoned after giving Sephiroth the black materia and swam away from Tifa, losing her in the lifestream)

4. After going through yet another tragic event, his mind shuts down. He fell into a coma (again) this time within the lifestream

Now its up to Zack and Aerith to save him from himself by entering Clouds dreamworld and spending time with him in hopes of convincing him to leave. They didn't count on Cloud not remembering what happened in the real world, nor for Cloud to have been given everything he had ever wanted.

Zack struggles with the morality of taking Cloud from a happy dream world and dumping him back into a bleak reality

5. Yuffie dumped a bucket of water onto Cloud, prompting the blond to grab a bucket of his own and chase the ninja through the jungles of Wutai.

Playtime was cut short however, when Yuffie fell into a hole in the ground. It was covered by large ferns and plant life, completely obscuring it from view. Still, she was a ninja! She should have seen this coming.

Cloud also feels a bit foolish for also falling in while looking for her.

They wake up and climb out of the hole, and head back to Godo, expecting nothing to have changed, only to find they-

A. Had been missing for 20 years

B. Are in an alternate reality

C. Have time traveled to the past

(Take your pick)

Cloud has no time to feel down, not with his precious annoying baby sister around. Someone has to keep the princess safe, and thats not easy when she's her own worst enemy.

(I intended this to be a fun sibling fic)

6. Before Crisis Shinra gets reports of a silver haired woman with reddish purple eyes dragging an unconscious blond man around like a stuffed animal.

Aka Jenova herself has come out to play

7. Sephiroth comes out of the labs much more woozy than normal. He doesn't think much of it at first, and by the time he realized he was in trouble, it was too late.

Genesis came into the Generals office to complain to the silverette about Shinra, only to find Sephiroth spacing out and acting rather...odd.

"Sephiroth," the redhead asked gently, "Are you...high?"

Sephiroth blinked slowly at him, and the commander couldn't help but to feel it was a greeting of some sort.

The silverette smiled before saying. "I am higher than you, yes."

"Thats not what i- Wait. Did you just make a joke?!"

A certain blond trooper walks in holding paperwork for the general, who proceeds to pick up the smaller man and coo at him.

This somehow culminates into Sephiroth saying, "I know. I should adopt you!" Before spinning the young man around in the air like one wood a toddler.

Clouds confused shout was audible a whole two floors down, catching the attention of the honorable commander and his puppy, who went to investigate.

(Inspired by a dream I had of Sephiroth holding a struggling Cadet Cloud and saying "This is my son now." To Angeal)

8. Genesis munching on popcorn while watching Cloud beat up Sephiroth for the umpteenth time.

He even has the audacity to cheer for the blond

9. General Sephiroth encounters a child who is dressed up like him when out on a walk.

He talks to the child and leaves the situation feeling much better about himself.

(I need some wholesome Sephiroth fics)

10. Kadaj as a cat loaf

11. Sephiroth and Cloud have a shared dream about them being happily married and Cloud being pregnant.

The moment Cloud wakes up he barricades the doors and windows.

Sephiroth...well he doesn't know what to think about this situation. He's kinda just staring off in a daze.

He attributes it to trauma and neither ever bring it up.

12. Time traveler Cloud, but with all of Jenova-fied Sephiroths abilities. The problem is that Cloud has seemingly little control of these abilities, leading to Cloud being very tired and the writer being very amused.

13. Sephiroth rescues a blond fae from the rubble he was pinned under.

This was how he gained his silent stalker. The man never spoke. But his calming smile said enough.

14. When Lazard discovered there was two red clad men, who spoke in loveless quotes, he had to fight the urge to bang his head onto his desk and groan like a teenager. When he found out there were three of the man, he actually did just that.

Finding out there was only one Angeal was a bit concerning, especially since these other two worlds were supposed to be further along in the timeline. Thankfully, Zack hasn't seemed to change much in either. Then again, the one carrying the mako poisoned blond seemed wary of everything. Strange.

Strangest of all were the Sephiroths. One refused to come to this meeting, stating that it wouldn't be worth his time, which shocked the entire board of directors. Nothing they did or said seemed to faze the once dutifully obedient man. Luckily, Shinra still had thier own Sephiroth on thier side to protect itself if necessary...and the people too if they were lucky.

The third Sephiroth only commented something about searching for clouds or some such nonsense.

Lazard couldn't help but to feel disaster looming on the horizon.

15. "I'm pretty sure they would trade everyone here for a single corn chip if I got hungry." The blond deadpanned. "They're heartless."

Yes, food good. The voice interjected. Nutrition. Survival.

Cloud wanted to tell it that he didn't even like corn chips, but talking back to the voices in your head is usually considered to be a bad idea. Even if they're real.

Especially if they're real.

Aka the J and S cells mutate and begin communicating with thier host.

Cloud is not pleased.

Bonus: Sephiroth and Cloud reacting to your fanfiction.

#plot bunny #prompts #fanfiction #cloud strife #sephiroth #ff7 #zack fair #sefikura #ffvii #final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 story prompts #final fantasy 7 prompts #final fantasy prompts

96 notes · View notes