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rcksmith · 3 years

Text

Spring breeze part.4 — Spencer Reid

Icon by @obiwansjedi

Part.1 Part.2 Part.3

Sumarry: After the breakup, Spencer and the Reader follow different paths and lives. But, after 8 years, Gideon's death brings an avalanche of emotions, putting the two face to face again in a reencounter that could break their hearts again — season 10 —

Couple: Spencer Reid /Gideon's daughter!reader.

Warnings: mention of death, mention of violence, death of the father, depressive thoughts, murder, crying, swearing, a lot of anguish, mention of love, fluff (but it has a very fluff too, I'm not a monster)

Word count: 5k.

A/N: This is the most sad chapter that has, I promise that the next will be very cute.💖

I saw Gideon's death episode again to make it as faithful as possible for you guys. I used the original Criminal Minds chronology too, being 8 years from Gideon's last appearance until his death.

English is not my first language, so I so sorry if have a mistake.

Let me know if you want to be added for a taglist for a specific fandom (Criminal Minds, The Umbrella Academy, Riverdale, Roman Godfrey, or all)

Requests are open. Love you ❤️

— — — — —

Hunting bandits. Save people. Improve the world a little bit every day. Those were the three things Spencer believed it was worth to be at BAU. It was worth fighting for, holding on, staying sleepless for days, being haunted by murderers by day and nightmares at night. For what it was worth looking at the abyss, even when it looks to you

Reid could deal with human perversion, with the thousand and one ways to practice heinous crimes, the sowing of evil and cruelty. He could cope with constantly being inside insane minds, learning his whys and mechanisms. He could take it. He put up with it day after day, case after case. He endured being tortured, stay being held at gunpoint, having a piece of his essence plucked with red-hot iron month after month. Spencer knew he could handle it.

But he couldn't handle death. Goodbye. It shattered his soul far more than difficult cases, pushed his own sanity to the limit. Perhaps burying his feelings as deeply as possible was just a method of delaying the wave that would drown him at one time or another. Inevitably.

Each farewell took a piece of Reid away. His father, his mother, Ellie, you, Gideon, JJ, were just a few of the people who left, living their lives elsewhere. But what about those who died? The victims, the children, Hayley, Maeve, Emily (even if only for a short time) and so many others. These took much more than a piece of him. Maybe costu his whole soul.

Spencer felt himself harden over the years, the cases, loss after loss, day after loss. He felt the purity of his own heart slip through his fingers like sand, the faith in humanity to be put to the test. Sometimes even faith in himself.

Was that the price to pay for that job? Being constantly vulnerable? See his life and the lives of the people his loved most at gunpoint?

It was worth?

Maeve's death shook him more than any other, sucking all the pink glow from his world, leaving him with only the cold feeling of hopelessness. A very deep void. It took a long time for memories of she not to hurt like red-hot iron, for his breathing not to be heavy. It took a long time to be happy again.

And when Spencer felt healed from the deepest wounds, the most visceral pains, he was hit again. Deeply. If Maeve's death was a wave that brought him down, Gideon's death was the tsunami that destroyed him.

“It's Gideon.” Hotch's voice confirmed the fear of everyone in that cottage.

Then Spencer felt shattered. Torn apart. Torn like a rag doll and placed on the fire. He wanted to scream, to scream so loudly that he would never regain his voice. He wanted to break something, destroy some, run away.

But run away from whom? From what? That pain or himself? If Spencer had been able to tear off his own skin at that time and be someone else, he would not have hesitated. Not having dropped to his knees in that cottage was a miracle, because Spencer no longer knew what was holding him upright.

Jason Gideon, in many ways, was all that Spencer had. He knew that they took different paths and traveled different roads, living different lives, but he believed that they always end up on the same, even one they was old. Spencer was sure that if he was dying on his knees, Gideon would be to rescue him. For all those 8 years, it was extremely comforting to think that Gideon was out there, living life, finding the hope he had in college, finding the brilliance the world had.

And Reid knew that Jason had you. And you had Gideon. That was the most soothing and comforting thought. No matter what, he knew that you would take care of Jason, just like he would take care of you. But now... now Spencer's world had dissolved in the air. Like a sandcastle knocked over by the wind.

And the pain was surreal.

When he realized, he had left the room, close to the... body. If he could, Spencer would have moved away from himself. How would he take it? One more death, another psychopath. How many other people he love will are died at the hands of the work he did every day?

The answer to all of these questions was frightening, and Spencer wasn't sure if wanted them.

The trip to the coroner was the worst Reid had ever done, talking about the body was the worst conversation he had ever had. And when Morgan put his hand on his shoulder and said that he couldn't close himself now, that they were going to get that son of a bitch, all Spencer wanted to say was that he couldn't take it anymore. That he couldn't breathe. The emptiness was too oppressive. So much visceral pain.

But that was not what Spencer said. He just clung to the only lifeguard in the middle of the rough and deserted sea: justice. Gideon deserve it.

Reid doesn't know how he managed to get back to the Gideon’s house, how he managed to hear Hotch and Rossi talking about what could have happened. But he was there, standing, by some miracle.

“Do you know who might want to have done this?” Hotch asked Stephen, who had arrived, his eyes red from the crying he struggled to hold.

“No. I know he had a list of things he wanted to do before he died... That's how we came back to speak, one of the things was to get back in touch.” His voice was so reminiscent of Gideon's that it was stabbed in the heart of Reid.

“Didn't he talk about being chased? Feeling anything strange?” Rossi commented.

Reid watched Stephen's expressions carefully, first because he reminded Gideon a lot, and second because he looked for any clues in his reactions.

Stephen took a second to think before saying: “No, but we both don't keep in touch daily, you know?” He swallowed a sob, probably with regret, but then his eyes lit up with some information: “'But Y/n surely know, they both spoke to each other every day, if my father was thinking differently, surely she know.”

The mention of your name hit Reid with a very different wave. Bringing a very different feeling than it should. At that moment, he felt himself holding the air.

For a second, a lapse of consciousness, Spencer had not connected any of this with your physical presence. The notion that you were Gideon's daughter was obvious but, for some reason, Spencer didn't think about the fact that you were going to be there. That you would share the same air with him again, the same place...

“We will have to call her, bring her here to see if something has been left, or taken. If there is anything important on the scene.” It was Hotch.

“I called her as soon as you guys called me.” Stephen said “She arrived from California the day before yesterday, my father and she were going to travel.” He tried to swallow the crying, his eyes trembling.

"And you weren't going?" Rossi added.

“I have a son and a wife.” He gave a smile broken by the sadness of the mourning “They would stop by before I go… Y/n was going to tell me the news, since our schedules hardly match much, she works as an astronomer in…”

“Caltech.” Spencer completed, without even realizing it, like a thought out loud.

“Yea.” Stephen agreed.

Spencer felt a chill go from head to toe, and another ton of feelings were thrown at his back. The reality that he was going to see you again hit him hard. Like an arrow. Suddenly, Reid wanted to get out of there. Run as far as possible.

He couldn't see you. He had no ability to deal with those feelings now. Not now, when his life was so overwhelmed with emotions for Gideon’s death that he still hadn't dealt Not when you aroused the feeling of... hope. Spencer can’t could hope, of any kind. Not for them to be taken from him with visceral force. Reid was already hurt enough for handling another fall.

“... But I don't think it's a good idea for my sister to be here, anyway.” Stephen continued to speak.

Rossi and Hotch frowned: “Why?”

“They were very connected. Seeing this scene is not going to do her any good...” he sobs this time “Y/n is not like me… she is sentimental, emotional. ”

“As long as you're trying to stay calm, she'll be the opposite.” Hotch completed.

“I just don't want my sister to suffer anymore and...”

But it was too late for Stephen to complete. It was too much for Spencer to escape. It was too late to be born again, in a different life.

A gray car moved forward on the stone road, at too high a speed not to have washed several road fines. That was so much typical of you who hurt Spencer's heart pieces more than he thought possible. More than he thought he could feel at the time. You were always so wild at the wheel. But Reid didn't have time to finish a thought, not even Rossi, Hotch, Morgan who was with them or even Stephen. Because car brutally stopped it, the door opened and…

And it was as if the sun came out from behind the clouds after years. As if summer had finally come after decades of overwhelming winter. In a burst, everything you've ever represented for Spencer has come back for him once again. And he felt the same thing that he felt when he first saw you, 8 years ago. And he was catatonic.

You got out of the car in a very hurried and desperate way. And as much as there were tears in your eyes and redness in cheeks, Spencer has never seen anyone so beautiful. Your hair was longer, in a brighter shade, maybe you had dyed it. Your features were more lyrical and beautiful, and Reid thought that the passage of time had no effect on you. While he considered himself just less clumsy over the years, you proved to be blooming like Romania's most superb rose.

“DAD!” But that was when your desperate voice brought Reid's consciousness back to earth.

You weren't calling your brother, you weren't asking why, you weren't in mourning. You were in denial. Disbelieving. You called out to your father, with the certainty that he would show up. And the despair in your eyes hurt Reid more than being shot.

But before the agents could do anything, you were running towards the house and Stephen ran towards you, taking you in his arms, trying to keep you from getting inside.

“LET ME GO, STEPHEN!” You struggled, trying to get rid of your brother's arms, your hair messing with the wind, tears streaming down your eyes. “They are wrong! It's not our father! Let me fucking go! DAD!”

“Y/n” Stephen had a broken heart in his eyes, some tears streaming down his eyes “You need to calm down before you get in there !”

“LET ME GO!” Yours sobs broke the hearts of the four agents over there “DAD!” You was cryng out, almost like a prayer, in a desperate call.

"He's gone, Y/n.” Your brother kept his arms stronger in you, trying to contain you while you struggle in trying to break free and go inside the house, under the illusion that you would find your father there.

“NO!” Now your crying was continuous “I spoke to him yesterday! It's not him, Stephen!” Then your brother turned you to him, holding you tight, and you melted into a visseral pain “It can't be him!”

“I know...” he sobbed, looking at you with the same shared pain “I know...”

So you gave yourself up to a painful, loud and desperate crying, the kind that won't let you breathe. And, unlike Reid, you fallen down. Your knees found the stone and grass floor, your hands clasped on Stephen's shirt, who knelt on the floor with you, delivered the pain you both shared.

You knew what your father's risks were in working in such a dangerous profession. Expose yourself to constant and frightening danger. You always knew about the risks, you just tried to ignore them all your life, sinking your fears about your father not coming home at night. Then, when he let the BAU, that fear dissipated. You felt a colossal weight being lifted off your shoulders, like tons of lead, and you let go of a fear so great that you didn't even know you had it.

For 8 years you thought that the chances of him not coming home were over, that the chances of seeing him the next day had increased dramatically. For 8 years you two traveled together, stopping at every type of diner for milkshake, chocolate ice cream and mint - his favorites - For 8 years you had your best friend, the only thing you knew you had in the world. You always knew that if you were drowning in the ocean, it would be your father who would give his lungs for you to breathe.

You didn't see a life without Gideon.

For you, you were crying for hours in what one day was your father's backyard, totally devastated, but for the rest of the world it was a matter of minutes.

Your sobs were so loud and real that Hotch and Rossi caught themselves with watery eyes, perfectly understanding the pain you were going through, the devastation. The two had lost many people, many of them being essential pieces to be able to continue breathing. Many of them felt wounds that would never heal.

But it was Rossi who approached you, the pain at the top of his throat, his mind wandering the day Gideon said he was going to have a little girl. Unlike Stephen, Rossi never saw you in person, but the sparkle in Jason's eyes whenever he talked about you, or with you on the phone, was enough to know that you were one of the essential pieces to keep breathing.

“Hi, my name is Rossi.” He knelt in front of you and your face went towards him, your cheeks and nose as red as your eyes.

“M-my dad talked about you."” You were still sobbing, slowly letting go of Stephen's shirt.

"Good things, I hope.” The two of you laughed like a sigh, and soon the pain returned to your eyes in a visseral way. “I know this is not fair, and I know it is asking too much, but I need you to go inside and try to find something out of place. Something that whoever did this to your father may have taken or left. ”

You closed your eyes in pain, tears streaming as you sobbed. Your hands, trembling and cold, went to your face, perhaps trying to hide from reality, perhaps wiping away tears. Maybe both. When you looked back at Rossi again, you saw the pain in his eyes too.

"I don't know if I can do it.” You admitted, your voice shaking.

"I know.” Rossi took his hand to yours, squeezing comfortingly “But only you can help us now, help other daughters not lose their father to the same killer. Being inside in the house can bring information that is in your subconscious. I promise you will make it, we will all be here with you.”

His handshake got stronger, and it reminded you of your father. That should have been the same way he comforted the victims' relatives, the way he was supposed to act with people.

'Everyone is somebody's son.' That's what Gideon said. It hit you like an atomic bomb. And, for a moment, you thought it was possible to die of sadness.

You squeezed Rossi's hand tightly, as if you were looking for courage. When you opened eyes again, you gave a weak nod. Carefully, as if any sudden movement is capable of causing you more pain, you stood up, your legs wobbly, your heart bleeding, sadness clouding your vision. Rossi put his hand behind your back, in a way to make sure him were there, as an anchorage in reality that would not let you get lost in the valley of sadness and pain.

As you walked up to the house, you didn't see the other agents, you didn't see the trees, the cars. At that time, you didn't even know what color the sky was anymore. It was like a suspended moment, when the world is in slow motion, the hemisphere is terrified. The sadness was palpable in the breeze, in the way that the rays of the sun did not reach the ground. The whole land looked like mourning.

As soon as you stepped inside the house, the smell of home and Gideon hit your nose, and you felt your face tighten in an expression of pure pain. You didn't notice the agents coming in behind you, you didn't notice Penelope and JJ. You just saw the furniture, the decor, his stuff. As if Gideon had just left for the market and was going to come back.

Everything was in was there. Minus the most important thing: him.

You did not notice when Rossi left you, you did not notice who approached. Everything was in a haze of pain.

But that's when you saw the strong blood marks on the floor, stuck to the wood with possession. A cold shiver as sighed from death ricocheted through your entire body, bristling all over your skin. In a burst, like the bursting of a violin string, the mist dissipated, the state of tupor burst, and reality hit you with overwhelming force.

And then the plug fell.

Jason Gideon had died.

You fell again, barely noticing the sobs and loud crying starting to come out again, the most desperate and painful in you life. But this time the arms that took you were different, bringing with you sensations that you haven't felt in a long time. That a long time ago you forgot that you could feel.

They were long, thin, and contained a vigor hidden beneath the thin facade. The smell of his presence was… heaven. That feeling was your anchorage on the high seas, in the valley of despair, and you clung to him for fear of drowning, of not finding your way back home.

You didn't have to see it to know who it was.

You turned to the arms that took you, now Spencer kneels with you on the floor, and you cried in a way that you never cried before, with a visseral pain. Your hands went to the brown cardigan he wore, closing there as if the fabric was your only chance for salvation.

So you looked at the immensity of the his brown irises.

"He was the only thing I had, Spen.” You sobbed loudly with the crying, gently swaying his coat, your voice utterly torn.

Spencer felt his eyes sting, his throat lock and the remains of what was his heart ache in a hideous way.

“I know.” He felt a tear run down his left cheek, his hands on your arms.

At this time, the two of you supported each other. Gideon meant a lot to you two. An irreplaceable role in yours life. And Spencer knew that was what you were talking about when you said:

"He was the only thing we both had.” You closed your eyes, your hands still firmly on his coat, your heart pounding.

But this time Spencer's voice was just as broken when he said: “I know.”

Then he hugged you.He hugged you for everything. He hugged you because it was a pain that only you two could understand. He hugged you because you needed it, and because he needed too.

Jason Gideon had a special connection with you two, a connection that only the two of you had ever experienced. Each relationship with Gideon was different, special in different ways, but only the two of you had him as a protector, mentor, a much more paternal and confidant figure. He was the kind of person you could leave your life in his hands, the kind who would teach you the secret of the worlds, show you what goodness was and at the same time strength. And you two had that.

You stained Reid's coat with tears, and Reid stained you with the strong smell he had. He stepped far enough away to be able to see your face perfectly, at a considerable distance, and, against everything he had ever done before with anyone, he took your face in his hands, his eyes fixed on your in pain shared.

“We will catch how did it.” Reid assured you, as if he had tattooed this words on your skin. You closed your eyes in pain, but he brought you back “Hey, keep looking at me."

So you did it. Because you would always follow Spencer. To hell if he asked.

"Don't take your eyes off mine, okay?” His voice was so sweet, so gentle, and you couldn't have done anything but agree. “When was the last time you spoke to Gideon?”

“Yesterday.” You replied “We were going to travel to the beach today, I took a vacation from work.”

“Was he at home when you two talked?”

The team looked at each other, with several questions in those look.

You denied it, the hiccup now because of the shortness of breath you had because of the crying.

“He stopped at Roanoke for...” and that's when you seemed to remember something.

Your eyes widened softly, your lips trembled, and you let out a stammering sigh as you try to remember something very important.

“What do you remember?” Spencer stroked your cheeks with his thumbs, trying to calm the beating of your heart that went back to being frantic and making you focus on the question, not the sea of emotions you felt.

“He…” was when your eyes fluttered before meeting Reid's again. “He said he saw a woman on the news who was found dead. And ... and that he had to make sure of one thing ”

Rossi looked at Hotch, who gave an attentive and objective expression.

“Did he tell you why?” His eyes closed again and you sobbed. Reid moved closer, bringing your face back in his direction again “Look at me, Y/n.”

As soon as you did, he gave you a gentle smile, but contained all the pain in the world. He understood what you were felling.

“Why was he interested in the case?” He changed the question.

“I-it was something about...” you searched in your mind “Girl named Tara. I don’t know. He mentioned about a blue butterfly tattoo on her ankle as well, and that it was something to do with a… a case or something.”

“1978” Rossi interrupted and everyone looked at him “Gideon and I worked on a case in 1978, the suspect was never caught and Tara was a teenager who we thought had been kidnapped by him. The killer left dead birds in the hands of the victims ”

“But he didn't mention birds and...” That's when your eyes, fluttering, darted around the room and you stopped abruptly.

Spencer turned his attention to you again, seeing that you were staring somewhere. His hands slowly left your face and he asked:

“What?”

“The board.” You pointed to your father's board, which had a beautiful brown bird.

“Does say anything to you?” Rossi turned his attention to you.

You shook your head, your body too exhausted to go to the painting and examine it.

“He shot the board.” You looked at the agents “My father loved that painting, he never would have done that. Even though my father is stunned, he has the best aim I have ever seen.”

“The devil is in the details." Rossi went to the pinting and, after two seconds, turned to the team and said “I already know who did this.”

You let out a gigantic sigh of relief as the agents split up to continue the case, speaking so fast that you couldn't keep up.

“I helped?” You looked at Spencer, tears still shining in your eyes.

He smiled and nodded “Very.”

But when he got up, you took his hand, making Reid turn his attention back to you again, a questioning look on his face.

“You're going to get it, aren't you?” The sob invaded your voice "Promise me that you will catch him, Spen."

Reid took his hand in your, giving you a strong, comforting squeeze before saying:

"I will. I promise.”

And then he left, along with the other agents.

- - -

You thought you knew what pain was, the loss, the tightness in the heart. You thought that your many relationship breakdowns showed you what it was like to suffer. But you have never been so wrong. None of that compared to how you were now, to what you felt.

You would trade that feeling for anything in the world.

This was terrible. A cold, coercive, brutal and cruel feeling. As if you were at the bottom of a black ocean, unable to breathe, falling deeper and deeper, consumed by the overwhelming cold of the water.

It was impossible to say in words how you felt. But if it were you had to define it in one word you would say: pain. A pain that bends you, a pain that makes you want to scream, that pierces your lungs so that it is not possible to breathe, but that even so, you fight for air.

It was pain at its rawest, most brutal, sharp and atrocious like a dagger blade. You would go through Dante's hells for eternity instead of living one day with that pain.

Since Spencer and the agents went after the person in charge, you have sat on the steps of the front door, watching the nature, the shaking of the trees, but your attention was so far, far away. Perhaps unattainable.

Gideon always loved watching the seasons go by, and in that moment, you wondered if looking at the same thing he looked at every day would make you feel close to him. Feel with him. It had only been three days since you last saw him, when he picked you up at the airport, but you felt like you were past three lives. How would you go without it? How were you able to think of living without it?

You pulled your knees up against your chest, hugging your legs, the metallic, atrocious and icy taste of devastation stuck to yours in your mouth. The trees shook hard, forcing the birds to fly away, but you didn't feel cold. You were not feeling the cold breeze hit your body, nor were your muscles contracting in exhaustion from the hard wood of the steps you were sitting on.

The hunger, the cold, the heat or the craving could not reach you, as if the pain had paralyzed all your system. Probably your soul.

You didn't see when Stephen put father's blanket over your shoulders, nor did you hear his sobs for seeing you so devastated. But you smelled Gideon, and the warmth of the blanket was like having his arms around you again. Then the rest of the water in your body found its way to your eyes and crying was as automatic as breathing.

You were clinging to Spencer taking the son of a bitch who did it, trying to chase away any other thoughts that weren't about that. You didn't want to think about what would happen after he was caught. Which meant his capture for you. It would bring justice to Gideon, honoring his name, his life, but it wouldn't bring him back. What was taken from you would not be repaired, regardless of the end of that damned man.

When he was caught, you would have nothing else to focus on instead.

You don't know how long you stayed there. Hours? Days? The those peach and gold tones in the sky is from dusk or the dawn of a new day?

You had lost track of time, as if your watch had stopped since the time Gideon died.

The sound of cars on the road was the only thing that pulled you out of your fucking valley, and as soon as the black SUVs stopped, you stood up as if you had been waiting your whole life for that moment. The blanket fell from your shoulders, heart accelerated at an alarming rate, and for a second, everything was gone from your mind.

Rossi was the first to get out of the car, but yours eyes darted to Reid. You wanted to run, ask what had happened, listen to the answers. But you were paralyzed in place. Afraid of the truth, of reality.

What would become of you after that news?

Spencer came towards you without hesitation, and you couldn't take your eyes off him for a second. He didn't say anything, nor did he explain anything. It was not needed. The way he reached out his hand and placed your father's rings in your palm were enough answers.

Your whole body shook and you looked at Reid with more emotions than askers.

"He is dead." He told you, and it made you fall down again.

But this time you fell into his hugging, clinging to him in despair. There were many meanings in that embrace: gratitude, relief, fear, pain and grief. And Spencer hugged you back in the same way.

You two stayed that way for a while, even when the agents went to talk to Stephen, even when Garcia and JJ left the house, even when the cold wind hit you both.

“Thanks." You heard yourself say it, and Spencer shook his head, signaling that it wasn't necessary, and the two of you moved away.

So you went to Rossi, and hugged him too. In that second, Rossi could feel Gideon in that hug, and it took a second to not cry.

“Your father was a great man." He told you when the two of you walked away, and you agreed on a sad smile.

"He was." You looked down at the rings in your hand, staying a second there before turning to the agents and saying: “You guys are going to the funeral, aren't you? I ... my dad would like it w-very much.”

"Of course." Rossi guaranteed it.

As they walked away and went back to the car, heading for their own houses, your eyes met Spencer's and he whispered in the air to you:

“I will see you at the funeral."

You nodded, giving you a sad, grateful smile. And while everyone was leaving and you were looking at the rings in your hand again, you had a feeling that your story with Spencer had just started over.

A/n: I also lost a very important person to death, and for everyone who went through it too, I mean that no one is alone! My message box is open if you need anything! Love you❤️

Tagged @gublersuvula

@peculiarinsomniac

@measure-in-pain

@nobutalsoyes

🍒 @misshale21

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queenaeducan · 3 years

Text

We Tame the Sky

Pairing: f!Cadash / Josephine Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No warnings apply

In the quiet before the final approach on Haven, Thora Cadash and Josephine share a moment together in Skyhold's chapel.

Written as a fill for Spronky as a part of the @sapphic-solstice event!

Read on AO3 here.

Sitting in the quiet of Skyhold’s chapel, Thora begins to see why her ancestors favoured the stone so. Being born Casteless she had always been as likely to choose a sun-soaked field over a well-lit cave, but tonight is different. Outside, the light breaks in a sickly green over the Frostbacks, scattering across the sky like a spotlight through the pieces of a shattered mirror. Thunder rumbles without storm clouds, booming with Corypheus’ ambition. Beneath the stone chapel ceiling it's not easy to forget the chaos that threatens to tear their world asunder, but peace seems a little more feasible here. The harsh light of a Breach wrenched open is blocked out by a heavy wooden door, and she sits awash in the scent of incense, beneath the watchful eyes of the Maker’s chosen.

She kneels before Andraste, her hopes and dreams clasped between her palms as they come together in prayer. She sings a prayer for those who will ride beside her into the abyss, perhaps never to return, a prayer for those she’s leaving behind, with nothing but belief to buoy their hopes for the future.

And one for herself, should Andraste have any grace to spare.

“You have walked beside me Down the paths where a thousand arrows sought my flesh. You have stood with me when all others Have forsaken me.”

The prayer for the despairing comes too easily to her, the hymn had played a companion to her countless times through the years, but never had its words rang more clearly in her heart than tonight, as she steeled herself to face Corypheus one last time. She can’t pretend she knows what was in Andraste’s heart as she stood before the gates of Minrathous with her army at her flank, but this is likely the closest she’ll ever come to knowing.

“I am not alone. Even As I stumble on the path With my eyes closed, yet I see The Light is here.”

Though the chant evokes the Maker’s light, it’s no longer His face she sees as she closes her eyes, lips pressed against her thumbs in reverent devotion. Before Him come the faces of her friends, the brilliance of Cassandra’s sword as it cleaves through their foes, the glow of Solas’ staff as he cuts through the Deep Roads’ dark, the soft gleam in Josephine’s eye as a smile spreads her lips. Heavensent or no, those were the lights that had gotten her this far.

“There you are.” The sound of Josephine’s voice startles Thora from her prayer, with thoughts of her so near at hand she’d almost thought she imagined it. She looks over in time to see her step lightly through the door, her slippers just a whisper against the floor. “I had thought to find you in the garden, but…” The distant roar of the Breach completes her thought in fewer words. She’d often take her evening prayers beneath the bows of the maple trees, preferring their sanctuary to the small chapel that harboured most of Skyhold’s believers, but she’ll find no peace under them tonight— nor any night until her job is done. Josephine’s lips turn in a smile, a practised expression Thora had seen persist in the darkest circumstances, but it strains now. “Well, what matters is I’ve found you now.”

Thora’s words stick in her throat, all she can do as she rises to her feet is stare dumbly. There always seems too much to say between herself and Josephine to know where to begin.

Thankfully, Josephine always seems to find a way. “I suppose it won’t be long now,” she says.

“It’s just a matter of time.” She wishes they could find anything other than the oncoming fight to talk about, but it may be asking too much of them both. Corypheus is difficult to ignore even at the best of times, now that the ruins of Haven tremble at their doorstep every thought is stained by his influence. “I thought I’d see if I could get a few words in before we set out.”

This time the smile that graces Josephine’s features sneaks up on her, chased by a short breath of laughter. “If it’s good fortune you’re after, I may have just the thing.” Before Thora can so much as ask, the ambassador produces a flag of cloth from the folds of her doublet, flourishing it with a street magician’s flair. “Do you recognise it? The pattern, that is.” She proffers it forward, supporting the fabric with the tips of her fingers so the image lays flat before her eyes. She doesn’t need long to know what she’s looking at (she’d spent far too many hours looking for the blasted thing to ever mistake it): a proud ship sails across an unruly sea, the bow cutting through choppy waves and rendering them calm.

“Your family crest…”

“Soon its likeness will fly above a fleet of ships that will rival the great houses of Antiva, but this one is yours.”

“Mine?”

She nods. “My favour may not have the same weight as Andraste, but if it can accompany you where I cannot, then I give it gladly. May I see your hand?”

Thora immediately extends her right arm, then draws it back just as quick. “No, wait,” she says, offering forward the other, fingers closed into a loose fist to contain the faint buzz of the Anchor. “This one could probably use it more.”

“Naturally.” She winds the handkerchief up so it resembles a bracelet, coiling the fabric up like a rope and measuring it against her slender wrist before she tries Thora’s. Curled ringlets coil around her ears as she leans over to tie it properly, and in all the chaos of Corypheus’ attack she’s still found the presence of mind to perfume herself. Thora discovers this herself as she breathes slowly, and tries to forget her daydreams. “I’m afraid I’ve little else to offer but my hopes, Corypheus has proven most resilient to my charms.” The fabric slides across the smooth finish of her gauntlets without purchase, and then again, each time reset by the patient hand of Lady Montilyet. At last it catches against the details, winding around dwarven runes that spell the Cadash house words in an alphabet that rarely saw sunlight. The sight of her words and the Montilyet crest winding together around her wrist moves something in her. It creeps up her ribs and into her throat and blossoms. Not for the first time since they’ve met, Thora finds herself grateful you can’t choke to death on love.

She ties the knot once, twice, and Thora thinks she sees some reluctance as they fall away to her sides. “May you tame the sky as we tamed the sea, Lady Cadash,” she says in a trembling voice, her words straining against her fears.

“Josephine, I—” Brown eyes rimmed with tears look up at Josephine. The sharp end to her sentence is a keen reminder that while she can’t choke to death on love, she sure can still choke. “I’m…” What she wants to say more than anything feels selfish to say, now more than ever, when her death is so near at hand. What good would it do her to die with no regrets, if it meant sentencing Josephine to a lifetime of them? She grinds her hopes beneath her heel, and tells herself that, should she live to see morning, there’ll be nothing stopping her anymore.

Even if it’s a lie, it’s a lie that can get her through this moment.

“Thank you,” she manages after a moment of tear-induced silence. “I’m... I don’t- I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” She folds her hands around Thora’s, cupping the armour-clad knuckles between tender fingers, like her glove was wrought with silk and not steel. “Just come back to us, please.”

Her heart constricts with the burden of a promise she may not keep. The sky calls her name, spelling her doom in the air with the ruins of her first failure, but Josephine’s words have worked miracles for her before. “I’ll do my best, I always— oh.” A distant horn blows, signalling her departure, and their farewell. Eyes laced with tears, she turns to the statue of Andraste as though she were a friend forgotten in the tide of the conversation. “I didn’t get to finish.”

The threads of Josephine’s smile start to unravel, grief twisting the manners from the corners of her lips. “I will finish it for you, Inquisitor,” she says in a voice laid thick with tears she wants desperately to dab from her cheeks. “Go with Andraste’s grace.” Her hands tremble as they release Thora’s, only finding stability as they lace together in prayer. As her footsteps echo with her retreat, she hears Josephine’s voice lift in song, words burdened with her weeping but warm with the Maker’s light.

“Draw your last breath, my friends. Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky. Rest at the Maker's right hand, And be Forgiven.”

#josephine montilyet #cadash #josephine x inquisitor #josephine x cadash #dragon age #my writing

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spnwatch · 3 years

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Season 1: The Rankings

WOW it’s been ages since I’ve posted here. But before moving on to s2, I wanted to talk about my TOP TEN FAVE EPISODES.

Something that surprised me about spn now i’ve finally watched some of it is how variable the episodes are in terms of quality. They’re not afraid to experiment either, and that flexibility is probably one reason this show lasted so long. Some things worked for me, some things didn’t. ANYWAY these are my opinions etc. just from a first time watcher!! 1.) Episode 6: SKIN. This episode, man. Where to even begin: I could be here all night. Suffice to say that the sequence where the shapeshifter sheds his Dean skin to “Hey Man Nice Shot” is just. Chef’s kiss. For the first time, the true depth of Dean’s self loathing truly came to the fore. How socially outcast he knows himself to be, all that hidden shame, that resentment he harbours towards Sam for having (potentially) a way out of the hunter life, coupled with his desperation not to lose him to the “normal world”: somewhere that Dean knows he can’t follow him. After so much posturing and bravado, that inner parodox was SO interesting to witness - he SHOOTS HIMSELF at the end -- and, for me, really steered the character into more *~ thematically complex territory ~* All the songs were good tbh. In-a-Gadda-da-Vida? Yes. 11/10

2.) Episode 11: SCARECROW. There was just so much going on in this episode, but the thing I liked most was the setting. It looked so good!! Autumnal and pastoral. After a couple of (in my opinion) not very good-looking episodes, it was a real breath of fresh air. I also loved Sam in this episode: he looked so small standing by the side of that road. I fully understood the argument, but I also loved how dean just... called him intermittently to update him on the case?This episode really drove home to me how alone they are, how they really have no-one but each other. It also really highlighted how far Sam has drifted from episode 1: he’s on the fringes now, too. All too quickly backsliding into the role of rootless grifter, an identiy he’d tried so hard to claw his way out of. Also, there’s a tome. 10/10

3.) Episode 12: FAITH. This. Episode. Slaps. To be honest, this is probably technically the masterpiece of the season in terms of plot, visuals, antagonist, music etc. but w/e it’s my list. Right off the bat Dean is dying and he’s like it’s fine Sammy, I’m not even mad about it, which is fucked up but then what is more fucked up is that his dad doesn’t even come when Sam leaves him a message? Dean seems to view dying as like. A thing grownups just have to do sometimes. Like jury duty. It’s extremely,extremely sad. Anyway I love the drama of Sam smashing apart the altar, I love the big tent, I love the “don’t fear the reaper” montage. It’s all, quite simply, a *~cut above~* 10/10

4.) Episode 7: HOOK MAN. I don’t know if I was meant to love this episode so much?? I just really, really liked it. I loved the central mystery, and I thought Sam in particular really shone when it came to dealing with the townsfolk and the afflicted girl. It was one of the most thematically coherent episodes when it came to tying the monster to sublimated fear, in this instance, sex and sexuality! Damn do Americans have a weird relationship with sex. And not just with women; this episode really shone a spotlight on Sam’s sexuality wrt his guilt over Jess, his desire for normality, his coltish nervousness in Lori’s presence. There was SO. MUCH. Bonus points for ugly mid-2000s fashions. 10/10

5.) Episode 3: DEAD IN THE WATER. This was the first episode which really made me sit up and go, oh, okay. I can see why people lose their minds over this show. When it’s good, Supernatural just. Shoots a volt of pure catharsis straight into your chest. This was also the first time I really sat up and took note of Jensen Ackles’ acting chops. There’s just so much going on with him every time he’s onscreen, and each little paradoxical turn he gives to Dean’s character is a joy to witness. It was a visually beautiful episode, with a strong supporting cast. The moment I saw her in her silky lavender nightgown, twisting up her unrealistically perfect chingoin, I wished to marry Amy Acker’s character. I know she doesn’t come back to spn but she should’ve!! She should’ve!! 10/10

6.) Episode 5: BLOODY MARY. I’ve heard tell of this episode being a bit of a fandom classic, and I support it. The last few minutes at the end? When Sam sees Jess at the side of the road in that slow panning shot, to the Rolling Stones song Laugh I Nearly Died? It was just... I think it changed me as a person, honestly. This show. It’s lower down on the list for me because how how freaking dark the lighting was at the end, but that might have just been the poor quality stream I found. But yeah, I really liked the plucky teen girl who helped them; I was pleasantly surprised to see a glamourous queen bee-type portrayed as smart and competent, and remain alive by the end. Gold star for you, spn. I know it’s all downhill from here. 9/10

7.) Episode 15. THE BENDERS. First off, I have to give it points for the production design on that house. My brother was of the opinon it would’ve made a good video game enviroment (according to him a lot of spn is akin to a video game which... yeah). This episode also made me really acutely feel for Dean. Could it be because I’m an older sister and this was a literal nightmare scenario? Perhaps. But again what really came to the fore was the single-mindedness with which Dean acted. Sam being dead was literally not an option for him. On a lesser show that might have been left as a given, but the time was really taken to give an almost sinister intensity to Dean’s thoughts and behavior. Some really pretty car shots too. 9/10

8.) Episode 17: HELL HOUSE. What can I say about this? It’s just fun. I love the two conspiracy guys, I love the sibling prank war, I love the concept of a monster created by shared belief. The set design was cool, as was the montage at the beginning where they’re interviewing all the witnesses. It’s a briskly paced and lighthearted episode, which was a breath of fresh air and welcome break after last episode left the Winchester boys abandoned by their father. Yet. Again. Ugh. Throw the whole dad away. 9/10

9.) Episode 19: PROVENANCE. Haunted painting! Haunted! Painting!! This is a simple lil episode but it receives points for Sam and Dean’s best and least convincing disguises thus far -- art dealers -- and a fun, sweet love interest for Sam. He’s so bashful! I thought she was smartly written and I especially liked that she took a more active role and actually helped them solve the case than other side characters we’ve seen so far. I also liked when they were standing over the grave and she was like wow, your lives are really fucked up... it’s true wtf these poor guys?? Anyway 8/10

10.) Episode 14: NIGHTMARE. This spot was a real toss-up between this and SOMETHING WICKED, but NIGHTMARE just edged it out because of the strong supporting character Max, as well as the sheer conceptual power of psychic Sam. Something about the way Dean treats his brothers latent psychic powers as... kind of a concern, but ultimately about on a par with him developing, like, a shellfish allergy, is hilarious to me. They have so many problems, it’s just low priority! Sorry Sammy. But what really clinched this episode for me was the three second-ish sequence where Sam shoves the dresser free with his mind, Dean gets shot in his vision, and Sam bursts into the room. Brilliance. Someone call the x-men. My heart was in my mouth. BIG minus points however for the extensive heart-to-hearts. It was just too much for me. It went on for so long. 7/10

This certainly is a show. I see that now. Anyway. Onto season 2!

#supernatural #long post #supernatural s1 #some dishonorable mentions: ep 4's frankly insulting attempt to convince me a flight attendant would allow the winchesters to drag a man off #and perform an exorcism on him #ep 8 for its Many Crimes #ep 22 when dean said that can't be dad #he told me he was proud of me!#JAIL #JAIL FOR SUPERNATUAL

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you-cant-spell-subtext-without · 3 years

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I know we are all discussing the latest episode of Season 16, but I need to wrap up 11 for my own sanity (because there is a LOT to discuss in my Season 12 rewatch already), so without further ado - more rambling for you.

I’m not going to include 11x20: Don’t Call Me Shurley because I think I’d like to do an entire Chuck - arc - series. Rob Benedict is a gift; that dad mug kills; and I love that the fan theories about Chuck spinning around this fandom for years turned out to be correct after all (WEIRD HOW THAT HAPPENS WITH CHARACTERS EH). Moving on.

As you will recall, two recaps and many many many crackhead other posts from my corner of super hell ago, I ended the 11x18 recap with this image of Amara realizing...”something” after Dean said Cas’s name (just before she took Casifer with her), Dean/Amara unbreakable connection be damned. Speaking of unbreakable connection this post is partially the AMARA DISSERTATION. Buckle up.

FF to 11x21: All in the Family; the boys are shooting the shit with Chuck and in the meantime, Amara is torturing Casifer. Important to note that just recently the actual Cas was enlightened that Dean wants him to cast Lucifer out, so I presume he is a little more active at this point, and that strengthens the following hypothesis. Look how Amara is looking at Casifer here:

And here, right before she touches him on the chest.

It’s the same look she gave Dean. She’s trying to decipher something; trying to figure something out.

She appears to Dean in the VERY next scene, to show him how she is torturing Casifer. But the real point is, of course, to show him how its affecting the physical form of Cas, reminding him its not just Lucifer who is suffering. It works.

DEAN

Amara is – she's in my head. [Sam looks at him sharply] Hey, I didn't ask for it, okay? She just showed up. But she's showing me visions of – of Lucifer. By Lucifer, I mean Cas, and he looks like crap – like she's really doing a number on him.

***Note, yet again, despite the *connection* Amara/Dean supposedly share, all he can think about and talk about is Cas.

And Amara knows it. That’s the realization she has in 11x18. Dean loves Cas. Then, in 11x21 she realizes Cas loves Dean. So, she uses it to her own ends. Smart girl.

Enter Donatello (I love him), prophet of (not) the Lord. He, Metatron, and Sam set out to rescue Casifer while Dean distracts Amara. If we start with the presumption she now has the prior additional insight, the following snippets of dialogue hit a little different.

AMARA

This place, this world hasn't been especially easy for you. Why not at least consider my offer?

*********

DEAN

You're right. I am drawn to you. And it bothers the hell out of me, 'cause I can't control it.

AMARA

Then why fight it? What you're feeling is that I am the end of your struggle.

***AHEM, this was not the FACE CUPPING I requested.

What keeps Dean from having it all? What is his struggle? It’s not the monsters or the hunting. Dean’s repeatedly shown he loves this life; he doesn't want anything else (and the one time he did try it in Season 6, it was half-ass at best, and he left the minute Sam returned to go back to hunting). Dean’s KEY struggle in the show is internal. He represses his feelings, pushes his pain aside, resulting in a cycle of self-loathing and anger. That cycle keeps him from having it all - accepting he can be loved, allowing himself to give his heart to someone else. And at this point, Amara not only knows that someone else is Cas, she knows that Cas feels the same way. Girl, welcome to super hell. Take a damn seat by Sam.

11x22: We Happy Few

I’ll skim through this one so this post doesn’t completely make your eyes bleed due to the sheer length.

The splicing with the scenes of everyone assembling different factions to form the new “line-up” needed to trap Amara is excellent. I’ve already done a short post on the brilliance of Dean heading to get Crowley and the ex-boyfriend mood of it all (Dean, of all people, telling Crowley to sober up gives me an ENTIRE head canon of the Crowley/demon!Dean unseen dynamic in Season 10). And of COURSE Dean knows exactly what to say to convince Crowley to get on board. I also enjoy our future Sam-witch as the emissary to Rowena (”three’s a coven” would be a great tattoo, TBH).

BONUS:

I love her.

Big fight scene with Amara ensues, but this isn’t the finale so she cannot be beaten. However, right before she mortally wounds Chuck, she does this:

[Yelling, LUCIFER charges her from behind again, but AMARA flings him hard against a support pillar across the room.]

AMARA

Goodbye, nephew.

[She banishes LUCIFER. CASTIEL slumps unconscious to the floor.]

DEAN: Cas!

(He rushes AMARA, but she flings him away without effort.)

***She banishes Lucifer. She could have just killed him. Ended him entirely, and Cas along with him. But she BANISHES LUCIFER. Because of what she learned in the prior episode. Because of the pain she saw in both of those idiots.

She does this for Dean.

Anyway, thank you Casifer FOR YOUR SERVICE. I miss you already.

11x23: Alpha and Omega

There is nothing more precious than Dean sending his brother to check on GOD while he goes to check on his boyfriend:

DEAN: [Grunting]

Check on him.

SAM: [kneels next to Chuck]

Hey. Chuck?

[Dean kneels down next to Cas and puts a hand on his shoulder. Cas stirs and looks up at Dean]

CAS:

Dean.

DEAN:

Cas? Hey, is that you?

***All the heart eyes for the reunion!!

*********ALSO SHOULDERRRRRRRR

Chuck is dying, Rowena bonds with him. Crowley is gold in this finale. I MISS YOU MARK. This line is NOT in the transcript/script I used, and it potentially being ad libbed makes it even better.

Dean decides to deal with the end of the world by drinking ONE beer, then deciding there is “not enough” beer and grabbing Cas for a beer (and....*feelings*) run.

DEAN:

You know what? This isn't gonna be enough. I better make a run.

[Sighs]

No reason to die sober, huh?

[to Sam]

You want to?

SAM: [frustrated]

No!

*********************

DEAN:

Be right back.

SAM:

I'll stay here, find our Plan B.

DEAN:

Okay. Cas, come on.

Nothing makes me more pleased than the assumption that of COURSE Cas is coming with him. I mean, he just got him back. Also, Sam is frustrated because he is back in super hell, obvi ;)

***Now we have the little “you’re our brother” bit in the Impala beer run dialogue, but to me it’s because Dean doesn’t know how else to express what he’s feeling. Repression, people.

The look of literal PAIN on Cas’s face at the “brother” line makes me cackle. Misha Collins DESERVES AN EMMY; he is doing the Lord’s work with his Acting Choices here.

This little part before is what really gets me though, especially with all of the WORDS OF AFFIRMATION:

[Dean and Cas are driving in the Impala]

DEAN:

How you doing? You good?

I mean, you know, the whole Lucifer thing.

CAS:

I was just... so stupid.

DEAN:

No, no, no. It wasn't stupid.

You were right. You were right to let Lucifer ride shotgun.

Me and Sam wouldn't have done that.

CAS:

Well, it didn't work.

DEAN:

No, but it was our best shot, and you stepped up.

CAS:

I was just trying to help.

DEAN:

Well, and you do help, Cas.

***ITS JUST SO LOVELY. Dean asking Cas how he is doing (what Cas always asks Dean); telling Cas he wasn’t stupid (throwback to Cas telling Dean he was stupid “for the right reasons”); acknowledging that Cas does HELP. That he is important and appreciated. THIS IS SUCH GROWTH. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. Speak his love language, King.

Anyway, then Dean turns into a human bomb because martyr!dean gonna martyr and be “daddy’s (Chuck filling that role here) blunt little weapon” and we get -

THE DESTIEL GOODBYE. Tell me they didn’t actually go canon for the FIRST time here. I will fight you.

LOOK at Cas watching him in the background.

These fucking desolate eyes. I’m crying.

THEY JUST GOT EACH OTHER BACK -

(I recognize this .gif is meh quality but I love that he turns and walks to him and Cas just GRABS him in this crushing hug)

DEAN [accepts the hug good-naturedly but then looks sad]

Okay, okay.

***”good naturedly??? ok Jensen “Acting Choices” Ackles. That is not “good nature” that is BLISS.

AND THEN THIS -

SOBS IN ENOCHIAN.

***I literally had to remind myself that the reunion hug is coming; it’s just an episode away. I’ll make y’all feel better too; here it is - A PERFECT PARALLEL. Curse this show.

MORE OF THIS “GOOD NATURED” HUGGING PLEASE.

Anyways, back to depressing subtext.

DEAN:

Okay, look. I want a big funeral.

All right? I'm talking epic.

Okay? Open bar, choir, Sabbath cover band, and Gary Busey reading the eulogy.

*****This scene lives in my mind rent-free as PROOF 15x20 doesn’t exist.

I can’t skip over further growth in Dean’s goodbye to Sammy.

***He’s being serious. Seasons 1-3 Dean would never have admitted this. I was a blubbering mess at this point.

So, Dean heads to Amara, and the rest of the gang heads to the bar.

CROWLEY:

Your round, Moose.

***I would love an entire bottle episode of Crowley, Sam, Rowena, and Chuck at that bar TBH.

And then, Dean saves the day. BUT NOT by dying and sacrificing himself, letting himself be used as a weapon of mass destruction. No, he fixes the DAMN WORLD by connecting to Amara emotionally, and bringing her and Chuck back together, because he understands that not to be alone is what she really needs; that her own struggle is the same as his - letting in love instead of raging against it and fighting her own need for companionship. Because that’s where ELDEST SIBLING AMARA AND Dean Winchester CONNECT. Amara isn’t in love with Dean. She identifies with Dean. She sees her own feelings in him, her own pain, and that’s why she exorcises Lucifer and saves Cas - FOR Dean. Amara’s just a Dean girl, everyone. And we know Dean girls protect Cas at all costs.

Yup. Amara Dean Girl Darkness Heller.

That’s it. That’s the dissertation.

See you in Season 12, where I will attempt to figure out the reason behind the British Men of Letters, killing Hitler, the brain melt that is Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox, the comedy of errors that is Cas playing Dean hot and cold, and the Mary Winchester of it all.

#destiel #spn analysis #spn meta #supernatural #spn family #spn fandom #spn season 11 #amara #spn recap #dean winchester

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zhaozaipalooza · 3 years

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I saw that there might be more kinds of various paloozas in the future and I just wanted to say that sounds very cool. I also recognize the mods are pouring a TON of work into making this event happen. So I wanted to ask, how did you find each other and decide to do the event? I'd be open to helping mod something in the future, but I think I'm more or less alone in shipping my little rarepair. 😞

ray:

I was a private eye stashed in the seedy district of Rarepair Hell… or so the locals called it. Devils they were, crawling around abandoned tropes and daring dynamics, pushing the boundaries of the unknown like my late partner who went down in ‘42.

Boy, had I hit a goldmine for unapologetic crime. I’d reckon I was home.

Got straight to work defying the anti-shipping crowd. We had canoes, kayaks, sailboats held together by grit and spunk alone, tiny but almighty crews I grew to call mutuals aboard The LuZhao and S.S. Zhaozai. Then hit quarantine, the kind of snowed-in null of buzz and song that had us all baking in burnout. Folks called it the Covid Crunch, a stifling few months colder than my ex’s heart, Val… You’d think it was time to hang my hat.

Instead, the grandest imaginable wellspring of creativity and passion brought every gang and crew of Rarepair Hell together. A glorious time. This frigid heart might have thawed a little. And in walked her, the dame of my dizziest daydreams, looking like a million bucks and then some… at the center of it all.

Ah, did I have a sharp nose for hot leads. And she was, indeed, a brilliant tack. An ember in the concrete jungle, lighting the way for a celebration from sea shanties to love in all shapes and sizes, across all stretches. I never minded the wayward side of the wind again.

Should invite her to dinner sometime… polish my best dress shoes, order us moon peach pie. I’d get Miss Crooked towers of gold if it weren’t for this thin wallet. Dream on, they say.

Half of this Palooza is just Ray and I writing love letters to each other, though she writes them far more eloquently and creatively than I ever could. Bear with us, Anon. Your message is lovely and we do answer it in full. Eventually.

crooked:

I was a young lieutenant, sifting through the sands of time and fandom, scouring tumblr for early Zhao content with which to stock my queue. Early days for me, naive of the purity police and the anti-shippers, unknowing even of what OTPs lay within my own heart. All I knew was that I liked villains, and I hungered for what others had to say about them.

And behold, glittering within the muck of expedient promotion jokes and sideburn slander, there she was. A light in the dark, a ray of thoughtfulness and taste, humour and brilliance. This gleaming jewel beckoned, promising riches and wonder if I would but only brave the deep. Like any good archaeologist I dug.

Truth be told, Anon, Ray and I began our journey as mods of this event as so many do. We stumbled across each other’s content for one reason or another, hit the obligatory Follow button after liking and reblogging so many posts it felt weird not to acknowledge that, and have continued to swim in similar pools as mutuals ever since.

The Palooza itself came about -- in true fandom fashion -- out of sheer bloody-minded spite.

It came to our attention earlier this year that, quite out of the blue, a Zhaozai Week was being planned. We were intrigued -- after all, most of the villain shipping community knows each other, and yet most of us were unaware who was behind the event, which added an element of mystery to it all. We were also naturally very excited, only to then discover that the organizers were not serious about the event and in fact had designed it as a mean-spirited exercise with the express purpose of mocking genuine participants. It was, as another esteemed Admiral says, A TRAP.

The open disapproval that followed was sufficient for the organizers to reconsider and cancel, but the damage had been done, the carrot dangled, and it became clear that a week for Zhaozai was something that many desperately wanted and were disappointed to have been deprived of. Not to mention be made fun of for.

The notion of hosting a legitimate event started floating around, with Ray and a few others leading the charge, but concrete plans seemed illusive, largely due to complicated schedules, availability, and the fact that not a single one of us had ever run a fandom event before.

Nevertheless, we persisted. Hot on the heels of the wildly successful @avatar-rare-pair-ship-challenge I had an idea of what a fun event looked like and made further inquiries as to how the organizers navigated things and made that possible. Armed with this precious info I approached those early proponents of the event, and from there planning with Ray began in earnest. If you think how we’re running things now is ambitious, you should have seen some of the initial palooza plans...

To conclude, Anon, circumstances conspired to create a environment that was ripe for Zhaozai, and like Rohan we answered the call.

Future paloozas or character/ship weeks would be amazing, and we’re sure that there is just as much of a demand for them. All that such an event needs is someone (or a couple someones) willing to champion it -- and most importantly, who will have fun while doing so. When the dust has settled from this inaugural run, we’d love to hear from you (and anyone else) who might like to turn the Zhaozai Palooza into a noble, annual tradition.

And fear not. If our time in the archives of the internet has taught us one thing, it’s that somebody somewhere ships it. Or shipped it. Or will ship it. You’re never truly alone that way, and the more you openly love something, the more it seems that others are drawn to and share in that love.

#*writes a noir novel instead of answering a simple ask* APOLOGIES FROM RAY TO ANON #we thank you anon for your kind words and acknowledgment and we hope we answered to your satisfaction #thank you!#thanks anon!#asks and replies #zhaozai palooza 2021 #and there you have it folks THE LORE THE HISTORY #a cookie for whoever can name all the pop culture references we peppered in here

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fiction-fun · 3 years

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Lost and Found Soulmates

@braidedchallah @alexanderdamnhethin @rthoney @creedtheconquer @andpeggy21 @theconfusedleo @friedrich-the-gay @haha-gunsgoburrr @hamiltimes

Fandom: Hamilton? in a way? otherwise...Music?

Pairing: Daveed/OC

Words: 9598

I groaned and dropped onto the couch in sitting room of the dorm apartment I shared with a few of my friends.

“Girl! Just go! I will loan you the 20$!” Logan said sitting down by me.

I shook my head.

“I’m barely going to be able to cover next semester’s tuition. I couldn’t pay you back, Lo'. It was sweet of you to offer but I think I’ll just have to let this one slide by.” I said looking over to her.

She grabbed my shoulders and I looked up seeing Roxanne and Arianna behind her looking at me the same way she was. Logan shook my shoulders.

“Girl! You have talent, you know all the songs and choreography already! You can do this!” She said determination in her eyes.

I shook my head and stood up carefully.

“No, Lo' that’s final.” I said before walking into my room and locking the door.

I laid down and fell asleep quickly. But found myself woke up way to early in the morning the next day.

“Roxie, Ari I said no.” I grumbled as they forcefully dressed me and brushed my hair.

Yeah, they did this often. Usually when I was late to class. We all kind of took care of each other it’s why we decided to all room together.

“And we said yes. Now go have a good audition.” Ari said patting my head.

Roxie gave me a shove and Lo' pressed a 20$ into my hands, I groaned again and stomped off out of the dorm with them all cheering after me. I slid into my car and started it, putting the Hamilton soundtrack on in the car, I started the long drive.

“Might as well get some practice in.” I muttered just as the first song started.

I sang along as I drove and it felt like no time had really passed since I started before, I was pulling up outside the theater. I sighed softly and climbed from my car closing and shutting the door, I leaned on the car so I was looking over the roof.

“Come on, you can do this! It’s not like this is the first musical you’ve auditioned for! Yeah, but it’s also not the first Lin Manuel Miranda musical I’ve auditioned for and I’ll surprised if I get this one.” I sighed and shoved off my car, tucking my keys into my pocket. I paused for a second looking at the thin red string attached to my finger before stuffing my hand in my pocket.

'Not today.’ I sighed walking into the theater.

There were only a few there and some of them I recognized from the last time I had auditioned for a musical. I put a smile on my face and walked up to the sign in table. Quickly writing my name and grabbing one of the provided lyric packets I moved to lean against a wall. I always felt better when I was standing, at least, when it came to pre-audition jitters.

“Alright we’ll start calling them in, in five minutes and you just come in when you get here. No Daveed it’s no problem, traffic happens! It’s New York, really, I’m not surprised. Alright, I’ll see you in a few, bye!” I looked up at the familiar voice and smiled softly.

All the others here for the interview gasped and crowded around him the best they could I just stood back as he looked around smiling at everyone. I waved from the wall and his eyes went wide.

“Kaley! I didn’t expect to see you!” he said stepping over to me.

He gave me a small hug and stepped back hands still on my shoulders.

“Lin, how are you? You wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for my roommates.” I said smiling softly at the excitable man in front of me.

Lin wrapped his arm around my shoulder and walked towards a door with me.

“Oh, I’m alright. So why did they have to shove you out now?” He asked smiling.

I laughed and nodded.

“Oh, you know how I am at this point. Broke with no confidence! They literally dragged me out of bed this time, I didn’t even get coffee and I was to worried about being late to stop for some.” I said laughing as we paused outside of the door.

Lin nodded and turned the knob after letting go of me.

“Well just breath, you’ll be fine. I would have hired you last time, but circumstances.” Lin said apologetically

I laughed again and shook my head.

“No, it’s totally fine. I get it, I just hope I’m better than last time. I could really use the boost and the reassurance I’m on the right path.” I said softly towards the end.

Lin smiled and hugged me again.

“You’ll do amazing, I know you will! Oooh I’m getting that look, I have to go. I’ll see you out there.” He said before hurrying though the door.

I laughed and waved as the closed. I turned back to the room and saw the glares, I slowly put my hands up.

“He gets to know people who have auditioned for multiple of the shows he’s involved with. Chill.” I said muttering the last bit to myself.

I walked back over to the wall and leaned against it, flipping through the packet. This was a different style audition and the style was partly why I had decided not to come. Lin was choosing the songs we auditioned with. And due to an audition years ago, he knew I could rap.

‘Knowing my luck? I’m going to get Guns and Ships because he knows I know the words for it.’ I thought leaning back and closing my eyes.

Lin and I had met at an audition about 6 years ago, and we had instantly hit it off. Both of us kept checking the string just to make sure, that’s how close we were. But we ended up trading phone numbers and being good friends. I was one of the first he sent the demo for Hamilton, he had already called and raved to me about his idea. Which although it worried me that it wouldn’t be a hit, I was fully behind him, even more so after hearing the demos. The reason he was so surprised to see me? He had offered me a roll back when Hamilton was in its 'please take a ticket, come see our show!’ stage, I had been too busy with school to properly honor the commitment. I had also told him that I would want a fair audition, not to just be given the role because we were friends. I sighed as people started getting called back.

‘I hope the others do good. Even though I’m sure they hope I do badly. I’m getting coffee after this no matter what.’ I thought as I read through the packet again.

A few minutes later I heard my name and shoved off the wall, walking onto the stage I stopped and took the mic they handed me, handing them my packet. I walked to the front of the stage and leaned down a bit, glad my friends had picked a regular button up instead of something low cut.

“Kaley, firstly, good luck. Secondly your song, I’ve selected Guns and Ships for you.” Lin said a smile on his face.

The others at the table looked at him like he was insane. I smiled and turned to the stage pausing, and spinning back.

“I need the table.” I said my hands on my hips.

Lin sat back and laughed waving crew members in from the wings.

“I told you that would be her only comment!” Lin said laughing.

The others were still looking at him like he was crazy, even as I stepped up onto the table and nodded to Lin. The music started and I closed my eyes letting the intro wash over me. Without a second’s hesitation I jumped right into the song, singing and rapping it the best I could, my eyes snapping open as I jumped from the table, landing and bouncing around the stage a bit. A crew member, who wasn’t Christopher Jackson came out and did Washington’s part. I had just turned towards were the audience using my hands to my advantage.

“Sir, he knows what to do in a trench, ingenuitive and fluent in French, I mean!” I said bobbing to the music.

“Hamilton!” the Washington stand in said.

“Sir, you’re going to have to use him eventually what is he going to do on the bench? I mean!” I said bobbing.

“Hamilton!” came the call.

“No one has more resilience or matches my practical tactical brilliance!” I shouted.

“Hamilton!” was called.

“You wanna fight for your land back?” I called as I moved around the stage.

“I gotta get my right-hand man back!” the Washington stand in said sitting at the table so I could dance around him.

I went through the next few lines, really feeling myself. I grabbed the fake letter and just as I turned to run over to the stairs on the side of the stage, I heard the door open and glanced up, Daveed had just entered. I kept in motion, my legs knowing this part by muscle memory. I had just turned to hand the letter off when my string caught my eye. I swallowed as I realized, it was connected, and who it was connected to. The feeling hit me in a second and I stumbled hitting my knees, letting my head drop. Letting the wave of dizziness run over me.

“Alright that’s enough!” Lin called and I heard him jump onto the stage.

He kneeled beside me and placed a hand on my back.

“Kaley, what happened? You were killing it!” he asked softly, having already turned off both of our mics.

I just shook my head and looked over at him, not seeing Daveed there anymore. I closed my eyes, before slowly getting to my feet.

“That’s your only warning, breath when rapping!” I said trying to act casual.

Lin gave me a look, and followed me to the wing.

“Kaley! I’ve never seen you take a fall like that. And you've rapped faster than that before. So, I know that’s not it. What happened?” He asked concern radiating from his whole being.

I sighed and wiped my face.

“Just text me when you get done, I’ll explain after class ok?” I asked softly.

I didn’t think I could talk right now. I saw Lin nod and I turned running from the building. I climbed into my car and dropped my head to the steering wheel.

'It's one thing to not want me. Another to cause me to screw up. But now I just feel terrible. I thought as the tears slid down my face.

I turned my car on finally and started the drive back to campus. I sighed as I pulled into my parking spot. I wiped my face again before climbing from my car, walking slowly into the building. I still had another hour until my class, and I wanted coffee.

'And maybe ice cream' I thought sadly.

I opened the door to see all three of the girls waiting for me.

“Well? You killed it! You totally killed it!” Lo' said excitedly.

I smiled faintly and shrugged.

“No, I probably didn’t get the part.” I said as I walked to the kitchen.

I heard them walk behind me.

“But who else, besides the actual cast knows the musical as well as you do?” Roxie asked looking offended for me.

I shrugged and looked over at them.

“it doesn’t matter, let me just make my coffee and go read over the chapter for my class.” I muttered softly.

Ari walked over to me then and looked at me.

“What happened?” she asked.

I slammed my hands on the counter and spun around.

“What happened? I fucking fell, that’s what happened. Now I’m going to go read my damn chapter while my coffee cooks, just leave me alone!” I shouted running into my room and slamming the door shut.

I quickly crawled into my bed with my book in my hands, reading over it. About twenty minutes later Roxie walked in and looked at me.

“Lo' and Ari already left for class. I’m headed out shorty, but you should think about apologizing.” She said her hands on her hips.

I looked up and nodded.

“I will.” I whispered I didn’t think I could talk any louder than that.

Roxie looked at me, and sighed sitting next to me. She reached over and hugged me rubbing my back.

“Whatever happened really messed you up, huh?” she asked softly.

I snuggled into her hold and sniffled nodding.

“Yeah…I don’t want to talk about it.” I said softly after a few minutes.

Roxie nodded and sat back brushing my hair out of my face and giving me a soft smile.

“It’ll be ok. I have to get to class. Don’t forget to go to yours!” She called as she walked out of the room.

I sighed and set an alarm for twenty minutes from now. I went back to reading my book, drinking my coffee as I did. I heard a ding on my phone and initially ignored before sighing softly and grabbing it.

‘I shouldn’t just ignore everyone. I thought swiping open my phone.

I looked and saw a text from Lin.

“Hey what happened? I found Daveed in a similar position in the hallway.” His text read.

I sighed softly, and looked at the clock. I swore softly and jumped off my bed cramming my books into my bag I chugged the rest of my coffee before jamming my feet into my sneakers. I grabbed my Phone and Keys before running from the apartment, barley stopping to lock the door.

“I'm running late. I’ll text you after class, but seriously? Take a guess. I hope he’s ok. I gotta go.” I sent the text and ran into my class, sliding into my seat just as the bell rang.

“Close one.” A snide voice from the seat behind me came.

I sighed.

“Hello, Rachel I see we have classes together again. Why don’t we try to be mature and leave the childish actions for years passed.” I said, trying to be the bigger person.

She laughed and sat back.

“So, I heard you fell at the Hamilton auditions today!” she said loud enough for the whole class to hear.

I clenched my fists on my desk and took a deep breath.

“It happens, doesn’t help I had been rapping Guns and Ships while bouncing all over the stage. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you miss park and bark?” I said slipping in the last comment.

I tried to ignore her and listen to the professor it was difficult, but doable. At least it was until I heard her muttering about Daveed.

‘Oh hell no.’ I thought as I heard her utter a few choice slurs.

I spun around and grabbed her head slamming her face into her desk. Within seconds, we were rolling on the ground arms swinging. It took a couple of the football players to pull us apart and walk us to the headmaster’s office. A nurse was waiting in the office and I ignored her, but took the offered ice pack.

“Alright, girls what happened?” the headmaster asked when he called us in a few minutes later.

Rachel immediately started with the water works.

“She just attacked me!” she cried out over dramatically.

I sat back and raised an eyebrow, ice pack pressed to my eye. The headmaster turned to me.

“Is that true?” He asked his tone firm.

I shrugged and sat forward, pulling the ice pack off my face.

“Nope, I only slammed her face into her desk after she ran her mouth about me for a solid ten minutes and then started saying racist shit against a man I look up to, who we should all look up to. You do what you have to do, but I’m not apologizing to her, no, no way. I refuse, she brought this on herself.” I said firmly and the headmaster nodded.

He turned back to Rachel.

“Is that true?” he asked her.

Rachel looked smug, she should even if he tried to expel her, her dad would just donate money until she was let back in. It’s happened twice already.

“Why should she care what I have to say about some…” Rachel started before I turned to her.

“Do you want to go again?” I asked my voice cold.

The headmaster raised his hand and shook his head.

“Both of you will be out of school for a week, you can stay on campus but won’t be permitted to go to classes. You can get classmates to get your work for you.” The headmaster said with a tone of finality.

I nodded and rose to my feet waving as I walked away.

“But sir!” I heard Rachel about as I was walking away.

I walked slowly back to the dorm debating with myself weather or not to text the girls about what happened, before shrugging and deciding it had been long enough it would be all over school. I stepped inside the building and paused for a second under the heater, it was a cool New York day and this was nice, especially with the icepack. I walked up the stairs and slotted my key in the lock twisted and walked inside, turning and locking the door again. I walked into my room and dropped my bag on my chair before kicking off my shoes and falling into my bed. I sighed and grabbed my phone.

“Hey if you’re free and wanna chat, call me.” I sent Lin quickly.

Within seconds a video call was ringing on my phone and I sighed softly, answering it. Trying to hide the fact I was injured.

“Hey Lin.” I said trying to put cheer into my tone.

“Hey! So, what happened? And turn the camera I can’t see you.” he asked and I heard he still sounded worried.

I sighed and spun the phone a bit, letting him actually see me. I saw his eyes widen.

“What happened? When during the audition or after?” I asked loosing the false cheer.

“I was asking about the audition; we can talk about after afterword’s.” He said, giving me a look.

I sighed and laid back holding the phone over my face. That was the only 'down' side to being close friends with Lin, he worried and treated me like his little sister.

“My string.” I said softly looking to the side.

Lin’s eyes went wide before he tilted his head in confusion.

“But you two have met before, haven’t you?” he asked.

I shook my head adjusting the icepack.

“No, he’s the only one I hadn’t met yet.” I said softly, tired from the events of the day.

Lin nodded and glanced to the side before focusing on the phone again.

“So, what happened?” Lin asked and I shifted knowing he was asking about my face now.

I sighed and scooted up in my bed, my back hurt.

“I’ve had this girl trying to do better than me since I got here. We always have classes together, and she always says some crap to get me mad. Today I wasn’t really in my right mind, focused on everything else. So, I didn’t take her bait, which she didn’t like. She had heard about the fall I took and knew when it happened.” I took a second to stop talking reaching over and grabbing my water to get a drink.

Lin nodded and waited for me to continue. I sighed and closed my eyes, for a second before opening them again.

“Well she started spewing vitriol and I got mad.” I said looking away for a second.

Lin hummed.

“That doesn’t exactly tell me how you got so injured.” He said, he could always tell when I was trying to down play things.

I sighed softly.

“She was spewing racist garbage, so I grabbed her by her hair and slammed her face into her desk. A few seconds after we were rolling in the ground trading punches. Took two of the football players to pull us apart and get us to the headmaster’s office. I’m out of classes for the next week. That’s what happened.” I said finally looking back at Lin having looked away.

Lin’s eyes were wide at what I had said.

“And what happened to her?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Technically? She got a week out of classes too. In reality? Probably next to nothing. Her dad’s a top donor so he has a lot of sway.” I said rolling my eyes.

Lin nodded and looked up again.

“I have to go but text me your room number and building, I’m sending you your favorite take out.” Lin said quickly.

I shook my head.

“Lin no! It’s fine!” I said quickly.

He looked back to me.

“No, I want to. Please?” he asked giving me his damnable puppy eyes.

I sighed and nodded.

“Alright, go do what you have to do.” I said with a small smile.

He smiled back and waved, ending the call. I sighed and texted my building and number to Lin. I set an alarm, and sat my phone on my bedside table and pulled the blankets over my head, I dozed off and quickly fell into a deep sleep. The alarm went off and I let out a groan. I sat up and turned my alarm off, moving out of bed and changing out of my jeans.

'How did that happen? I never fall asleep in my jeans.’ I thought as I grabbed my phone and walked out to the living room.

I looked at my phone seeing that the girls weren’t going to be back tonight. I sighed and made some coffee letting out a yawn.

“Looks like it’s just me tonight, well at least I don’t have to worry about dinner.” I muttered softly as I moved over to the couch.

I picked up the remote and flipped on some stupid mindless show as I sipped my coffee. I sat back and watched the show, just waiting for a ding of my phone with Lin letting me know the details or a knock. Around 7:30 I heard a ding and looked at my phone. Seeing a text from. Lin.

“Kaley, hey! Sorry I completely lost track of time. You know how I am with new shows. Foods on its way though, be nice to the delivery guy, I was kind of frantic on the phone!” I laughed softly and shook my head.

This was exactly like Lin.

“Don’t worry about it Lin! I know how you are, when you get working! I’m also always nice to delivery drivers. Have a good evening Lin, I’ll message you in the morning.” I sent quickly, already knowing he’d ask me too.

I turned back to my show for a little while longer before a knock on the door pulled me out of the show. I stood up and sat my cup on the table, walking over to the door. I looked through the peephole and saw a paper bag in front of it, I could just make out the logo of my favorite take out place. I undid the lock and pulled the door open.

“Hey! Thanks!” I said smiling at the other person.

That’s when he lowered the bag and I swallowed thickly.

“Hey, can we talk?” He asked.

I nodded mutely and opened the door wider, stepping back and letting him in. I closed the door and waved him over to the couch.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” I asked more so I had a second to gather myself.

“Yeah that’d be nice.” He said.

I nodded and walked into the kitchen after grabbing my cup. I heard footsteps behind me and leaned up to grab another cup. Pouring the coffee and turning, freezing.

“We should probably start with introductions, even though I’m sure we both know who the other is.” He said.

I nodded and sat the cups on the counter, where he unloaded the food spreading it out. I grabbed a pair of plates and the milk from the fridge. Walking over to him and setting them down, I sat in a chair.

“I'm Kaley Sinclair. Although, in theater I’m mostly called Hyper rush.” I said smiling slightly.

He sat down across from me and reached to grab the milk after I had used it.

“I’m Daveed Diggs, and except for characters, that’s all I’m known as.” He said smiling softly.

I laughed a bit and reached over grabbing some food.

“So, how did you end up delivering dinner? Not that I’m complaining.” I asked before quickly amending.

Daveed laughed and shook his head.

“No, it’s ok. Lin asked me too, plus I have prior delivery experience.” He said laughing down more.

I laughed and winced slightly when my twitched, he instantly noticed and gave me a worried look.

“Are you ok?” he asked softly.

I nodded and waved at my general self.

“I’m fine, just a bit banged up is all.” I said waving it off.

He placed his non string hand over my non string hand and rubbed his thumb over it gently, I smiled at his thoughtfulness.

“I heard a bit of what happened.” He said quietly a minute later.

I looked up at him and shrugged lightly swallowing what I had in my mouth.

“I'd do it again.” I said simply.

His eyes went wide at that, before a soft smile slid across his face.

“That’s….” he just smiled; I flipped my hand.

“It’s what humans should do and how we all should act. She should have kept her mouth shut.” I said firm in my beliefs and already knowing his thoughts on it.

Daveed smiled again at my words and I let out a soft sigh, smiling gently right after. We ate in silence for a little while, finishing eating and slowly packing away the food. Daveed stood looking awkward in the living. I sighed softly and stepped in front of him.

“Relax. We can sit and talk.” I said gently nodding to the couch.

Daveed nodded and we walked over to the couch both of us sitting. We sat silently for a few seconds before Daveed let out a breath.

“I'm sorry.” He said softly.

I looked at him and raised a confused eyebrow.

“Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything wrong.” I said softly with confusion lacing my tone.

He smiled softly and shook his head.

“The audition, Lin told me you were killing it. But you fell.” He said softly.

I nodded understanding on my face, I let out a small laugh, which caused him to look up at me.

“Yeah, they always say the rush will knock you off your feet. I just didn’t expect it to literally knock me off my feet. But don’t worry it’s ok, not your fault.” I said reassuringly.

Daveed lifted his hand the red string still connected to us both, with a small smile.

“I mean it kind of is.” He said softly.

I shook my head.

“No, it’s not. It would have happened eventually. And actually, I’m glad it happened now.” I said with a small smile.

Daveed looked up at me with a confused look on his face.

“Oh? Why?” he asked looking as me.

I laughed and stood, waving for him to stay there I walked into my room and grabbed a small envelope from my top desk drawer walking back out and sitting next to him again, handing to him. Daveed opened it and looked back at me.

“Because it would have happened with you on stage otherwise. And I wouldn’t want that.” I said gently.

He looked up from the tickets in his hand to me with a small smile.

“How are you so…. calm?” he asked finally, after a few seconds.

I couldn’t help but laugh as he passed the ticket back to me.

“I’m not.” I said simply as I stood up and quickly stashed the tickets before sitting back down.

He gave me a confused look, and I smiled a bit.

“To be honest? I’m still waiting to wake up, because this feels like a dream. I didn’t expect you to show up at my door, especially not after …” I broke off and shook my head a small smile on my face.

Daveed gave me another, unreadable look.

“After?” he asked softly.

I looked down and away from him, fiddling with the class ring on my hand. I took a breath and let out a small sigh.

“Especially not after I looked up and saw you were gone.” I said softly, I didn’t know if I could have actually spoken up right then, at least not without my voice cracking.

Daveed reached over and took my hand again, letting his thumb stroke over the back of it.

“I’m sorry, it washed over me so quickly and I didn’t want the others to see me, and realize what happened until we could get a chance to talk. I tried to catch you but you left so quickly. And Lin still figured it out, how I’m not sure.” He said looking into my eyes.

I bit my lip and nodded.

“Lin probably figured it out because if me.” I said softly.

That caught his attention, and he gave me another curious look.

“How, did he figure it out from you?” Daveed asked curiosity clear.

I shrugged lightly and smiled softly.

“Lin and I have known each other for six years. We text, and he texted asking what happened and mentioned finding you on the same position. Without thinking, because I was rushing to class, I basically told him 'I’m late to class what do you think happened?’ and then went to class.” I explained.

Daveed nodded a smile on his face.

“And of course, he figured it out, and decided that setting us up like this was the best idea.” Daveed finished my thought.

That cause a big smile to cross my face as I nodded and laughed a bit.

“I mean that’s how Lin is!” I giggled out.

We sat like that laughing and laughing getting to know each other for a while before I yawned softly. Daveed smiled gently down at me from where I had ended up tucked up to his side his arm wrapped around me.

“Maybe I should let you get some sleep.” He said softly and I snuggled more into his side.

“I don’t want you to go.” I said softly.

He laughed softly and gently nuzzled his nose into my hair.

“But you need to sleep.” He said and I felt the smile he pressed into the top of my head.

I sighed and nodded tilting my head a bit to look up at the clock and frowned slightly.

“You can’t leave now.” I said definitely.

Daveed laughed again and shook his head.

“I’m not going to keep you up all night, besides we can always plan to meet up tomorrow.” He said softly.

I shook my head and unwrapped one arm from around him, pointing at the clock he looked up and his eyes went wide.

“It's already two in the morning. You won’t get back into the city for another hour then who knows how long it’ll take you to get home or where you’re staying. By the time you get home you’ll have to almost turn around and leave for rehearsals in the morning, won’t you?” I asked softly looking up at him.

Daveed rubbed a hand over his face and sighed nodding.

“It’s worth it though.” He said softly a smile taking over his face.

I giggled softly and snuggled into his side.

“You can always stay here and leave in the morning after a couple hours of rest.” I suggested lightly.

Daveed looked down at me a smaller smile crossing his face.

“And your roommates?” he asked softly.

I shrugged.

“They’ll be curious but I’ll keep them away from you for now.” I said quietly.

Daveed laughed a bit and squeezed me gently.

“Alright.” He said finally.

I smiled up at him before slowly uncurling from him and standing up holding out my hand to take his and lead him to my room. We walked in and I ducked into the closet looking through what I had.

“What are you doing?” he asked a small laugh in his tone.

I hummed light before finally finding what I was looking for.

“Ah-hah! I ordered a pair of sleep pants but they sent me a pair about four sizes too big. But I kept them, because I figured they’d come in handy. And they did!” I said spinning to face him.

Daveed smiled at me and took the offered pants and headed to the bathroom to change. He came back smiled gently at me.

“Alright, we should sleep, and thank you.” He said softly.

I smiled gently and walked over to him, he had pulled his shirt off as well and I couldn’t help wrapping my arms around him taking a deep breath. He laughed softly and wrapped his arms around me rocking us gently. I smiled and snuggled into him.

“We have one more thing we have to do first.” I said softly as I pulled back and pulled my hoodie and t-shirt off, leaving me in just a tank top.

He raised an eyebrow as I tossed them into the corner.

“What’s that?” He asked me softly.

I smiled a bit and lifted my left hand wiggling the finger with the red string attached to it.

“I mean, if you want to.” I said softly second guessing myself when he didn’t answer after a few seconds.

He quickly wrapped his arms around me again and pressed his face into the top of my head.

“Of course, I do.” He whispered softly.

I let out a soft sigh, having let my fears get the best of me for a second. There were multiple ways what we were talking about could be done. Daveed uncoiled his arms from around me and stepped back a step, a smile on his face. He used his right hand to lift my face and leaned down, pressing his forehead to mine.

“Are you sure?” he asked softly his voice barely a breath over my face.

I swallowed and nodded my eyes locked with his.

“Absolutely.” I whispered.

Daveed smiled gently and leaned in, connecting our lips. I sighed softly into the gentle kiss, completely relaxing into it. He let his right slide up the side of my head resting on the side of my face, as I let mine drift up and press against his chest. I felt his left-hand land on my shoulder and slide down my arm slowly. I felt butterflies fluttering in my stomach the closer his hand slide to mine. I felt his hand hit my wrist and then he twisted both of our hands so they we’re palm together. I gasped into the electric feeling, hearing an equally sharp gasp. Daveed laced our fingers and let the electricity race through us, as we continued to kiss. The feeling started to lessen and we sighed softly, after a few minutes we pulled back and pressed our foreheads against each other. The feeling had lessened but the tingle was still there.

“Woah.” I whispered softly.

The kiss had incited fireworks to flash and the bond forming had cause electricity to course up and down our spines.

“Woah.” Daveed agreed just as softy.

We smiled at each other sharing another sweet soft kiss before climbing into the bed. He laid behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. I sighed softly and relaxed into his hold, reaching over and setting an alarm.

“When do you have to be up?” I asked softly.

Daveed hummed for a few seconds.

“Probably around seven, so I can be there by nine.” He said nuzzling into the back of my neck.

I giggled softly as I set the alarm.

“Your beard tickled me.” I murmured softly, relaxing back into him after setting my phone down.

Daveed laughed softly and rubbed his face against my neck again, making me giggle again. I fell asleep with him rubbing soft soothing patterns into my side. Hours later I groaned hearing my alarm going off, I reached over and swiped it off with a sigh snuggling back into the warmth behind me and froze for a second as the memories of last night came back. I sighed and rolled over laying my head on Daveed’s chest smiling softly when he wrapped his arms tighter around me. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head and I sighed softly in response.

“Mmm good morning.” He murmured; voice heavy with sleep.

I felt a small shiver run through me at the gravelly tone his voice had and pressed a small kiss to his chest in response.

“Good morning.” I said just as softly.

Just as I tilted my head up to get a proper good morning kiss, my door swung open and I lunged out of bed grabbing it and slamming it back shut.

“Roxie or Ari or Lo' NOW is NOT the time!” I shouted leaning against the door and breathing heavily eyes wide.

I heard a sigh from the other side of the door.

“You’re going to be late for first class come on!” Roxie called, beating on my door.

I laughed and shook my head, sending a look and small apologetic smile to Daveed, I turned and slipped out of the door closing it behind me to lean against it again.

“Roxie, I got into a fight yesterday. I’m out of class for a week.” I said slowly reminding her and waving at my face which was by now no doubt sporting a black eye.

Roxie sighed and tilted her head back.

“Right, forgot sorry. So, who’s the guy?” Roxie asked a smirk on her face.

That’s when I realized Ari and Lo' were right behind her wearing the same look. Logan held Daveed’s jacket in her hands with a smug smirk. I growled and held my hand out.

“He’s mine, and that’s all you need to know currently. Look go to class or go in your rooms. He has to leave soon and you three aren’t going to hound him.” I said firmly as Logan handed me his jacket.

Roxie tossed her hands up and grabbed her backpack turning to the door.

“I took some of the take out for lunch!” she called as she walked out.

Logan following with a similar call. And Ari just waved before going back into her room. I sighed and turned back walking back into my room. I smiled at Daveed who was now sitting up on the edge of my bed.

“I'm sorry about that.” I said softly sitting down beside him.

He smiled and leaned over tilting my head and pressing a kiss to my lips.

“It’s ok, they’re curious.” He said softly.

I nodded and watched as he stood up. And moved to get his clothes I stood up and wrapped my arms around him, splaying my hands over his abs. I hummed lightly and he laughed, turning and wrapping his arms around me.

“I have to get ready.” He said softly.

I sighed and nodded nuzzling my nose into his chest.

“I know but I find myself not wanting to let you.” I whispered.

He smiled and pressed his face into my hair, before pulling back and uncoiling one arm from around me. He tilted my head up and pressed a kiss to my lips, I sighed softly and leaned into the kiss, using this time to really memories how his lips feel against mine. When oxygen became a necessity, we pulled back pressing our foreheads together and he brushed his nose against mine, drawing a small giggle from me.

“Now it’s a good morning.” He said with a warm smile on his face.

I nodded a warm smile over taking my face as well.

“It is.” I agreed softly.

We pulled back and he moved to the bathroom, turning at the door he sent me a smile.

“Why don’t you come with me? I’m sure Lin won’t mind.” He said softly with a smile playing on his lips.

I smiled back and nodded.

“Ok, sounds good.” I said softly.

He smiled back and turned to the bathroom. I moved to the closet and quickly got dressed stepping out I saw the bathroom door open so I looked in, seeing him stood in front of the mirror, messing with his hair. I giggled softly as I stepped inside.

“There you are.” He said dropping his arms to wrap around me.

I smiled and leaned up pressing a kiss to the underside of his chin. Delighting in the light shiver that I felt travel through him. I reached up into the cabinet and pulled out a pair of toothbrushes and toothpaste smiling and handing one to Daveed.

“I always have extra.” I said in explanation when he looked at me.

He laughed and shook his head, before we quickly began brushing our teeth, he kept one arm wrapped around me. I sighed softly and leaned back against him, smiling gently at him in the mirror. We finished our teeth and looked up in the mirror, I reached over and grabbed my brush and ran it through my hair. I smiled softly as I pulled hair up into a ponytail. Daveed took my hand and lead me from the bathroom and out of my room. I paused for a second smiling up at him.

“Later Ari!” I shouted grabbing my bag and keys.

Daveed and I walked from the room and down the stairs, leaving the building. He led me over to his car and we climbed inside, retaking each other’s hands almost on autopilot as Daveed started the car and put it in drive. We got on the road and Daveed lifted our joined hands to turn the radio on, turning the volume down with a small smile.

“Hope you don’t mind. I usually listen on the way in.” he said softly.

I shook my head with a smile and leaned over, and kissed his cheek.

“I enjoy your music.” I said simply.

Daveed turned and sent me a smile before quickly turning back to the road. The ride didn’t seem to take as long as it actually did and before long, we had pulled into a hotel parking lot.

“I have to run up and change, otherwise neither one of us will ever hear the end of it.” He said smiling gently.

I nodded, a smile playing on my lips.

“Alright.” I said softly.

He lifted our hands and kissed the back of mine.

“I’ll be right back, maybe ten minutes.” He said smiling.

I nodded and watched as Daveed climbed from the car, still holding my hand until he had to let go. He closed the door and sent me a smile before running into the hotel. I sighed and leaned back against the comfortable seat in the car. Grabbing my phone and opening it to look at any messages I might have. My eyebrows furrowed together when I saw frantic messages in the group chat with Roxie, Ari and Logan.

“Girl! You have to see this! Rachel has gone too far!” Roxie sent, alongside a photo.

I raised an eyebrow, in a chat where we sent basically porn pics often enough, we didn’t usually use the 'cover image’s feature on the app. I tapped the picture and my eyes went wide a gasp slipping from my lips. There on screen was a horrible flyer, with the nastiest words imaginable printed on it. I felt the tears well in my eyes as I read all of the words. From disparaging and hateful words about me to hateful and nasty things about Daveed. I backed out of the photo quickly, my thumbs flying across the screen.

“Take then all down! Now! Get rid of them all! I’m not on campus please, Roxie, Lo' Ari! Please you have to do this, it can’t get out, I can’t let him be drawn into my feud with that hateful witch! Please this could really hurt his career! Burn them if you have to but make sure nobody else sees them!” I sent frantically.

Just as I hit send, I heard the backdoor open and close a second before the front door opened, I looked up at Daveed who was dressed in new clothes.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked having seen the look on my face.

I heard my phone ding and looked down quickly.

“I’ll explain in a second.” I whispered, my voice shaking.

“Girl, already done. Just focus on you and him we got you covered here!” Roxie sent along with another image.

This one showed Ari and Lo' holding boxes of the flyers and a shredder between them working away at a stack of them already.

“Thanks girls I owe you one, we both do. Keep it up.” I sent before sighing and turning.

I looked over at Daveed who was watching me with concern. I sighed and closed my eyes opening the app on instinct and swiping up a bit.

“I'm so sorry to drag you into this. We’re already doing damage control so it shouldn’t get out, there shouldn’t be rumors or anything.” I whispered softly.

“Kaley, what happened?” he asked reaching over and taking my hands.

I sighed and freed the one holding my phone sending him a small, worried smile.

“The girl who did this, posted hateful posters all over campus. They’re horrible but Roxie and Lo' saw them got Ari and got them all down and are now destroying them.” I whispered softly.

Daveed lifted his free hand and placed it on the side of my face, his thumb rubbing gently over my cheek. I sighed and closed my eyes, leaning into his hand.

“Ok, it’ll be ok.” He said reassuringly.

I sighed and opened my eyes looking into his, I leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.

“Remember, they’re all down. And getting destroyed currently.” I said softly.

Daveed looked at me confused for a second before I clicked the picture and turned my phone to face him, he took the phone and held it in his free hand. I saw his eyes scanning over the flyer, his eyes widening each time he saw something new. I knew he finished when his head dropped back against the car seat. I watched him as he worked through his thoughts, he turned his head to me and slipped my phone into the cup holder raising his hand he placed it onto the side of my face, drawing me forward he pressed a kiss to my lips. I kissed back just as fiercely as he kissed me but after a minute we pulled back, and he rubbed his thumb over my cheek.

“None of that is true.” He said firmly as if trying to make me believe.

I smiled softly and nodded.

“I know it’s not; I wasn’t worried for myself. I was worried for you.” I said gently.

Daveed gave me a sweet smile and shook his head.

“I’m ok, I was more worried with how you reacted than anything else.” He said softly.

I laughed a bit.

“I reacted like that because I didn’t want my stupid school yard feud to get this far, to involve you. I know if your label sees that shit, they’ll call and talk to you but they won’t like that it’s out there. I won’t let anything interfere with your career. That’s the only worry I had.” I said just as softly.

He huffed out a small laugh and kissed me again. Leaning back, he started the car again pulling out of the parking lot.

“It’s ok, they know me. And your friends seem to have it under control. Let’s just try and enjoy our day together ok?” he asked softly.

I nodded and smiled gently at him.

“Yeah, sounds good to me.” I agreed easily.

With that the short ride back to the theater was quiet besides the soft music playing in the car. Daveed pulled into a spot and he turned the car off turning and smiling at me.

“Lin is never going to let us hear the end of this.” He said softly lifting our joined hands and pressing a kiss to the back of mine.

I laughed softly.

“Like he’d even try! He’ll just be giddy and giggly and bouncy all happy because of this. And knowing him….” I said laughing softly and trailing off, shaking my head.

Daveed laughed, nodding.

“He’s going to be singing the kissing song as soon as he sees us.” He finished my thought.

I laughed at the thought and Daveed joined me laughing loudly. We laughed for a long time, both unable to stop. We finally managed to stop and climbed from the car. Daveed reaching into the back to grab his bag as I checked the message that just came in on my phone.

“It’s done! We’ll handle the rest of damage control have fun!” Logan sent into the group chat.

I smiled softly sending a quick message back.

“Thanks girls! You’re amazing!” I slipped my phone away.

Daveed took my hand as soon as it was free giving me a gentle look, I smile and lean up pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“The girls just finished destroying the posters and wanted to let us know.” I said smiling softly.

Daveed nodded and kissed my forehead before leading me inside. We stopped at the office so Daveed could say hi to some of the people there and I waved politely when they looked at me. Daveed had wrapped an arm around me at this point and led me down the stairs towards his dressing room.

“Daveed! There you are! I thought you were going to text me when you got home?” Lin’s voice came sailing about a mile a minute from behind us.

Daveed looked down at me at the same time as I looked up at him.

“Yeah, I only got home this morning.” Daveed said turning us carefully.

Lin’s eyes went wide and he giggled running up to us, wrapping us both in hugs.

“Yes! I knew it!” he said cheering.

I couldn’t help but to laugh at the man.

“Yes, you did. And I thank you. But I have to go get dressed for practice.” Daveed said grinning at him.

Lin nodded enthusiastically.

“Right! Oh! Kaley! Good news! Come here!” Lin said grabbing my hand.

I tried to snuggle closer to Daveed.

“I don’t wanna!” I whined petulantly.

Daveed laughed softly and leaned down kissing my lips softly.

“I’ll be right here when you get back. Well not here, but my dressing room.” He said softly reassuringly.

I sighed softly and nodded.

“Oh alright.” I said softly pulling myself out of Daveed’s warm hold slowly.

As soon as I was clear of Daveed’s hold Lin took off down the hall quickly.

“Lin! I can’t keep up with your coffee fueled steps!” I shouted almost running after him.

I heard Daveed's laugh echoing off the halls and sighed softly. Lin slowed as we reach a split in the hallway, stopping completely.

“Ok, ok. Trust me!” he said putting his hands over my eyes.

I sighed and walked forward when he nudged me.

“I trust you, but Lin, I swear I will beat you if I fall down stairs!” I exclaimed softly.

Lin laughed and I felt him shake his head.

“No steps don’t worry, we’re almost there.” Lin said and I heard the smile.

We walked for another minute or so.

“Ok, stop!” Lin called turning me slightly.

I smiled softly at his obvious excitement.

“Close your eyes!” He said and I felt him bounce slightly.

I laughed and shut my eyes.

“They’re closed.” I assured.

I felt him move and I assume he stopped in front of me making sure my eyes were closed. I felt him shuffle me a bit and laughed as he did.

“Hmm ok. Ok! Open your eyes!” He said and I heard the physical restraint in his voice.

I laughed as I opened my eyes only to stop short.

“Lin? What the hell?” I asked softly, my eyes wide.

Lin laughed and reached over twisting the knob.

“You were still our best audition. So, welcome to the crew if you still want it. Please tell me you still want it?” Lin said smiling a bit nervously.

I laughed and started jumping around in place.

“If I want it? OF COURSE, I want it! Ahh thank you Lin!” I exclaimed hugging him quickly.

He laughed and hugged me back, we pulled apart and I walked into the room behind the door that held my name. Looking around the dressing room.

“it’s just the first act who’s rehearsing today, second act is tomorrow. So, you can go and head back to Daveed I just wanted to show you.” Lin said as he leaned against the doorway.

I giggled and spun around the room.

“Lin, seriously thank you.” I said turning back to him with a smile.

He laughed and shook his head.

“You earned it!” He said smiling.

After that he gave me the room key and I head back towards Daveeds dressing room a smile on my face. I knocked lightly on the closed door hearing a few voices from Inside before the door swung open.

“There you are, thought you got lost for a minute.” Daveed said smiling at me.

I blinked quickly and shook my head.

“No, thankfully I didn’t haha.” I said as he let me in.

I smiled up at him and he leaned down kissing me softly.

“AWWW!” shouted both Anthony and Oak as they saw it.

Daveed turned but I saw he couldn't get the smile off his face.

“Oh, shut up! So, what did Lin want?” He asked turning back to me.

I pulled out my key and held it up to him.

“He didn’t tell you?” Anthony called at the same moment.

I rolled my eyes when Daveeds widened seeing the key. He grabbed me up in a hug and swung me around, I giggled wrapping my arms around him.

“I knew you could do it.” He said softly, as our foreheads pressed together.

I smiled softly.

“Well that makes one of us.” I whispered and he pressed a kiss to my lips again.

Which of course caused the other two to call out again. Daveed sat me on my feet and brushed my hair behind me ear with a soft smile.

“Why don’t you two go finish getting ready.” Daveed suggested softly.

“Yeah, we’ll see you out there. Just don’t get distracted.” Oak said slipping out the door quickly, Anthony right behind him.

I giggled a bit.

“You’re happy.” He said turning to me as he finished fixing his neck poof thing.

I nodded.

“I am, I’m glad I got this.” I said sitting on the couch.

Daveed smiled and turned back to the mirror making sure his outfit looked good. A few minutes later I sat up ramrod straight and groaned.

“Fuck!” I exclaimed.

Daveed whipped around looking for a problem, and I laughed softly at his face.

“What happened?” He asked eyes wide.

I smiled softly before it faded and I leaned back.

“Nothing, technically is wrong. I just fucking realized the downside to this.” I sighed softly.

Daveed shrugged into his jacket as he walked over to sit beside me.

“And what’s that?” he asked taking my hand in his.

I sighed softly smiling at the small action.

“Well the role I got was Maria, right?” I started softly.

Daveed nodded staying silent and letting me continue.

“Lin is basically my brother.” I said sounding grossed out.

Daveed laughed a bit and kissed me gently.

“Ok, so what’s the problem?” he asked smiling.

I smiled and shook my head.

“It means that I have to both kiss and basically give a lap dance on stage to my brother.” I said pulling a face.

Daveed also pulled a face.

“That’s gross, my only suggestion is, get into the character?” Daveed suggested lightly.

I laughed and nodded wrapping my arms up around his neck carefully not to disturb the poof his hair had been pulled back into. I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips, his hands instantly finding my hips before sliding back around my back. I sighed softly into the kiss only to groan a few seconds later when the door opened.

“Oh! I…uhm…I’m sorry! But it’s just about time to head up.” Leslie said turning quickly so his back was to the room.

I laughed as Daveed and I pulled away from each other. He stood up and took my hand, pulling me up. We walked over to Leslie and Daveed tapped his shoulder.

“Let’s go.” Daveed said and I giggled lightly as he pulled out the Lafayette voice.

#daveed diggs #oc #hamilton #soulmate au

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ddp456 · 3 years

Text

My retirement

Hey, all.

Boy, um, I’m sure that title is kind of a shocker, so I’ll do my best to explain myself. And stop me if you’ve heard this story before (or should I say, these stories before).

I created a surplus of materials and examples to go by when making a Gravity Falls/Wendy and Dipper story in the same fashion that I do. But in my heart of hearts, I can tell you all that the souls of these stories, the thing that everyone seems to tell me makes them so real, are based upon three real people.

I grew up a lot like Dipper did. I was a smart kid, but not that smart. I was the one everyone pointed at as a freak. The weirdo of the class. The smelly kid. I had friends; not a lot of them, but in most cases, time and distance separated us, or I drove them away of my own accord. I won’t excuse it by saying I was different; a lot of my pain I caused myself. I would be lying if I said I had proper guidance as well. I couldn’t tell you how many regrets I have.

But as I got older, I met someone special; someone different. They didn’t treat me the same as everyone else. I couldn’t tell you if it was out of pity, or perhaps, they were able to see something that other people couldn’t. And I appreciated it. To be honest, I loved them for that.

“Love,” I know, is a really strong word. It’s probably the most overused and misused word presented by most of civilization, and the majority of mass media. To me, love means to cherish, to want to protect, to wish no harm upon, and if possible, take the blunt of any blow wishing to do so.

I like a lot of people. I love a whole lot less, if that makes sense.

Even as I write this, I do not claim for this to be the correct way of looking at things; I can only tell you the way I saw things at the time.

Such is why I chose to hide my true feelings for the longest time. For all of the healing and solace this person gave to me, the very last thing I wanted for them was to be the monster’s mate. Unfortunately, my private life wasn’t too much better. It was like there was no safe haven I could provide.

Above all things, I didn’t want them to hate me for that.

Then, as always, fate played its hand. The good spark in my life was whisked away and I was forced to deal the rest of the world. But after the lot of a new series of battles and worries, something amazing happened. That little spark was reintroduced into my life.

But I was still afraid; afraid of the new monsters that would use this person to try to hurt me; afraid of a home life that wouldn’t accept them with open arms. I wanted to get closer so very much, but kept them at a safe distance.

That is, until fate struck again.

Pinned up against the wall, at the very last moment I’d believed I’d have with said person, I confessed everything.

Kinda makes you think of a certain two dorks locked in an underground bunker, doesn’t it?

They say with age, comes wisdom, and upon looking back, I understand my youthful folly. I shouldn’t have lied everything at their feet and expect a positive response. They were shocked by my admission, as they had their own feelings and hopes and dreams and heart’s desires.

I believed, because of my fear, I was too late. If I were honest from the beginning, maybe, it might have made a difference.

Despite of the distance and my own hardships, I tried my best to stay in touch with my friend. A lot of times, it was for the better. And a ton of times, it made things a jillion times worse. And I’ll admit; it was my fault. I let my own loneliness get the best of me. The very last thing I ever wanted to do was to creep someone out. Maybe that’s why it bugs me so much when someone jokingly says that about poor Dipper.

In the future, I would apologize for reaching out, only to have a welcome hand on my shoulder in return. “I’m really glad you did.”

As time passed, we did grow closer; not always in the ways I hoped, but I’d be fibbing if I said I didn’t enjoy it. We were constant valentines. They were my first real date; my first real kiss. I’d have calls waiting for me instead of me doing the chasing. For the first time in a very long time, I thought things were getting better.

But once again, fate would have its way...

Even after all these years, I question: how is it that upon telling a loved one that you must part ways (again), they become so upset that they strike you and demand why things are the way they are, if they do not care?

(For the record, kids. You should NEVER let a S.O. hit you no matter what. After all, don’t want to leave a bad example on the way out)

Part of me will always wonder if this is what made things sour between us; that eventually, I became another person that would always let them down, regardless if it were my fault or not.

Little did I know that behind their mild exterior, lived a wild heart that craved adventure and excitement. A group of rowdy and unpredictable friends were more than eager to help scratch that itch. I would be told incredible tales of mischief and wonder and mayhem. And if I were honest, I would say part of me was jealous. I wished it was just us having the adventures. I wish we could have spend the day together at an arcade. Or a carnival.

I’ll say something else I never admitted before. This person has told me countless times in our lives that I was their hero. The truth is that there were several times in my life were I considered them my hero. They were brave and independent and smart-on-their-feet and pretty much everything I wasn’t but wanted to be.

And beneath all that, there was a person who was embarrassed to be sensitive and “weak” and wanted to cry. At that time, I cherished that person more than anything in this world.

Then, I heard about the other stories: the “close-calls.” And that led me to believe that there would come a time where my loved one would go off on one of these wild adventures and never come back.

I wasn’t too far off. I’ll spare you all the rest of the details.

As I said earlier, I like a lot of people, but I love even fewer. So, it was a really long time before I could feel the same way about someone as I did before. In the middle of all of this, I accidentally stumbled upon a show on cable called Gravity Falls, and found a kindred spirit with the male lead, Dipper Pines.

Even more so, I saw parallel lines between my personal plight and that involving Dipper and his crush, Wendy. And while Wendy shares the same adventurous appetite as my loved one, that’s pretty much where their similarities end.

And poor Dipper, man. Oh, the internet was just brutal to that kid. “Robbie is the victim?” Get outta here with that garbage. It was the same crap I’ve heard half my life.

As I explored the GF fandom, I noticed a lot of the best Wendy/Dipper works came from fanfiction. (Thanks google!) And I found my inspiration for stories of my own. I was able to relate my hopes, my dreams, my fears, my doubts; bits and pieces of my real life, even if they are grossly exaggerated. (so, no fighting ghosts, haunted mansions, or cursed arcades for me, I’m afraid)

To my surprise, the first batch of stories received a ton of feedback. Lots of people cheered my interpretation of Wendy and Dipper, and what I hoped they’d evolve into. (I’d give myself a 70% on that estimate)

Did all of these viewers, reviewers, and rebloggers share the same view of the world; about love as I did?

About two years in, little did I know I would get another surprise. I would get a Dipper of my very own.

I wasn’t looking for love. Honest. But upon new experiences and meeting new people, I discovered someone - a special speck of wonder - that became enamored with me. I didn’t notice it at first. I still find it odd that someone can look or think of me in such a way.

But I remember what happened the last time I hesitated. I always said that in the slim chance I would ever get a second chance, I wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice.

I kept my word and enjoyed the best years of my life.

I made up a lot of lost time with an adorable hipster with a similar spirit to Wendy. An old soul, they loved retro culture as a whole: the movies, the music, even the video games. Their literary tastes were also very similar to mine. I couldn’t tell you the last time I had a conversation with someone about books outside of a school setting.

But at the same time, you could see Dipper’s innocence there as well. A tough attitude hid a fragile heart. A hidden brilliance was often overshadowed by a lack of courage and self-esteem.

It was around this time that I noticed new comments on my latest stories. People were saying that I was (inadvertently) writing a stronger and more detailed Wendy. At first, I didn’t understand what they meant. Then, after thinking about it, I finally got what others were noticing.

My Wendy had changed because I had changed. Somehow, I gained a deeper insight on her character and the way she would view certain aspects of her life, I was now a Wendy myself, with a little Dipper that thought the world of me, and for this, I tried my best to make sure they would never feel the growing pains that Dipper (or a younger me, for that matter) would usually face alone. I was their cheering section, their coach, their backup, and I encorporated all of these things into our favorite redhead.

I found it funny that the show would (periodically) use that same angle. I only wish they would have done it as much as I did.

But as with all great things in my life, I royally screwed everything up. And during a time of distress and turmoil, my little Dipper found something better and hitched their wagon elsewhere.

So, by now, you have to be asking, “Why are you telling us bits and pieces of your life?” I do this because I want people to understand why I can’t do this anymore.

Don’t get me wrong. I love writing the stories. I also love the fact that there’s so many people that look forward to each tale, as if it was made by the real Gravity Falls team. To me, that’s a great honor that very little can ever replace.

But at the same time, the series (and especially Wendy and Dipper) is so close to my heart, and in some cases, so indistinguishable from certain aspects of my personal life that it actually hurts. For the record, I haven’t sat down and watched an episode of Gravity Falls since the Blu Ray box set came out, in which I listened to the commentary for a project for Wendip-Week.

Maybe it’s because I know what happens to Dipper and Wendy at the end of the series. Maybe it’s because their fate reminds me so much of my own. It’s a “Chicken or the Egg” question for sure.

This is why DBR3 and Serendipity took so long to finish. At times, I had to force myself on the computer to write 1,000 words at a time. It takes me months to do what I used to do in mere days or at most, a week. I don’t have the strength or the enthusiasm to do it at the same pace. And you all deserve better than that.

I need a break, guys and gals. I need to clear my mind and find out what’s going on inside here. For the first time in years, I have accomplished all of my Gravity Falls related goals. Just to go down the line:

-Published a new chapter every weekday for a month straight in honor of the GF Season 2 Premiere.

-Created a few GF stories based in the first-person perspective. One of them is one of my most popular stories.

-Delivered a DBR2 and DBR3 due to high demand.

-Shaped a two-part Wendy/Dipper story based in the same nature and context of the classic graphic novel, Scott Pilgrim.

-Wrote several extensions to Gravity Falls episodes that I had uneasy feelings about.

-Helped a fellow Tumblr user create a Wendy/Dipper themed full sized Christmas poem in less than 24 hours.

-Tried my hand at a Wendy and Mabel story just to try something different and to see if I could do it.

-Wrote and outlined a 50-page Gravity Falls comic after 3+ years of trying to get it off the ground.

That’s not really a bad resume, not counting all the contributor’s work I’ve done for other Wendip artists/writers or the essays, guides, and projects I helped Wendip-Week design. Even if I still had the energy to keep going, what unexplored territory is there for me to explore?

So what does this mean?

Well, that’s up to you lot, isn’t it?

I would love it if the same fans that enjoyed my stories took up the reigns and show us in the Wendip/GF communities what they could do. Lead the way with new Wendy and Dipper tales! Make it about the past, present, or future! Give us a new way to look at them, or present them in an undiscovered light.

And it doesn’t have to be writing, either. Make a comic. Draw a picture. Heck, do a radio broadcast for all I care. Express your minds, hearts, and soul and create with them just as I have.

(and as a side note; I hope my Deviantart friends take this to heart. The last time I was on the site, the cute/adorable pic/X-rated pic ratio was greatly, greatly one-sided in a bad way)

A lot of people might be asking, “Well, you’re calling it quits. Why shouldn’t we?”

Because if you believe in the messages I put into the stories or the effort we put into Wendip-Week, then aren’t those messages worth spreading? Just because my personal life went to crap in a handbasket, it doesn’t mean the same would happen to anyone else.

A harsh lesson I learned with age is that you can do everything perfectly, or to the best of your abilities, and still fail. The Gravity Falls team loved to instill this over Dipper time and time again.

I want to believe in something better. Don’t you?

And who says I’m gone for good? Maybe I’ll find a new form of inspiration and come up with an unique idea that I just can’t keep to myself, Perhaps Gravity Falls will come back in some form and ignite enough of a fire in me to pull a comeback.

But, until then, I plan on taking a long, well-deserved break. After all, I have a ton of missed Wendip Week submissions to catch up on. I promised myself I wouldn’t check them out until my final story is completed. It looks like that day is finally here.

However, it is the holiday season, and for this, I wish to leave you all with three different sources of inspiration. Maybe it’ll help; maybe it won’t.

1. An inspirational letter from none other than my namesake.

2. A key word of advice from one of the only series that could stand up to Gravity Falls’ legacy. It is a message I wish I could have learned sooner.

3. And simply because we NEED more sources of strong females (and something I wish I would have found in time for the Spider-Man essay), here is a tumblr blog dedicated to my favorite Marvel female, who IMHO is as close to an adult Wendy as we’ll get,

I wish you all a happy holiday, and hope that my announcement hasn’t dashed your holiday spirit. I am forever honored by all those I have worked with and by those who took my nonsensical musings and elevated them to something more.

As one of my favorite bands like to close their shows with:

“It's never goodbye, It's just 'till next time."

-ddp456

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love-fireflysong · 4 years

Text

Day 20: Dare

Fandom: Until Dawn Character(s): Beth Washington, Josh Washington, Hannah Washington Words: 1728 Rating: General (minor language, plans to poison your best friends and yourself!) Author’s Notes: Super late holy shit. But it’s fine. Have some cookies. Just don’t take any from Josh...

This fic is not sponsored by Dare Cookies. Honestly, that’s probably a good thing.

When Beth walked into the kitchen that morning, to say that she had not expected the sight before her would not be a lie. There were many things she anticipated seeing when walking into her kitchen, Josh covered head to toe in white powder was not one of them. Well, that was a lie actually. Truthfully, Josh was exactly the type of person she could see running a secret coke lab, just not from the family kitchen. At least, she really hoped not. Reporting her brother for running a cocaine lab in the middle of their kitchen was not what she intended to start her day with.

“Are you, are you covered in flour?”

While Josh didn’t move from where he was standing at the counter, he did look over his shoulder at her affronted. “Um excuse me. This is cornstarch, not flour. Learn the difference Beth, god.” He gave a disdainful sniff, and then proceeded to sneeze violently into his arm.

Beth rolled her eyes. “Sorry. Cornstarch. Why in the world are you covered in cornstarch then.”

“Making cookies.”

Beth just stopped to stare at her brother with narrowed eyes, mouth opening and closing as she tried to find some form of words, only to groan and rub at a spot between her eyes. Words were quite literally failing her right now, and she didn’t even know where to start.

“Hey Beth, what’s taking so long—why is Josh covered in flour?”

Beth turned to see Hannah behind her, who stopped to stare at Josh in turn. Before she could figure out how to even start answering her question, Josh had butted in with exasperation. “It’s cornstarch, people! God, does no one in this house know what basic fucking baking supplies look like?”

Beth ignored Josh, an easy feat when he’s been part of their everyday lives since before they could talk, and gave her twin a flat, unimpressed look. “He’s making cookies. Apparently.”

Hannah’s forehead creased in confusion. “But, cookies don’t need cornstarch...”

Beth nodded slowly in agreement, her next words coming out as a tired sigh. “They also don’t need soy sauce, mustard, and mayo, and yet, here we are.”

True to her words, surrounding Josh on all available surfaces were bags upon bags filled to the brim with numerous bottles of soy sauce, mayonnaise, and two(!) kinds of mustard. All of this was ignoring the dozen boxes of cookies scattered around the kitchen and the roughly four bags filled with cornstarch alone. There were questions out there that Beth never wanted the answers too, and this right here was roughly seven of them.

Unfortunately for her, Hannah didn’t share the same thoughts. “Do I want to know what kind of cookies you’re making?”

“No, no you don’t. I don’t want to know. Neither of us want to know. So let’s just grab our shit from the fridge and get back upstairs where it’s safe.”

Josh ignored Beth just as easily as she did him earlier, instead reaching over to grab one of the bottles of soy sauce and proceeded to dump almost the entirety of it into what she hoped was a bowl. A bowl of what, she didn’t want to know. “Special cookies, Han. For three very special people.”

“...if those cookies are for us, I will end you here and now Josh, don’t think I won’t.”

Josh snorted as he lifted his whisk to inspect the consistency of his soy sauce/cornstarch concoction. “Oh please Beth. We both know that you could probably snap me like I twig.” He grimaced for a second, seemingly unhappy with the thickness, and added some more cornstarch. He coughed at the rising cloud of white that erupted from the bowl. “Nah, these are for me, Chris, and Ash later.”

“Alright. Gonna be honest here. Was not expecting to have to call the police because there was a murder-suicide pact tonight.”

“Sad thing is, probably the least exciting call they’ll ever have coming from our house.” Hannah gave a long-suffering sigh as she reached for one of the empty boxes of cookies on the table nearby, this one Ultimate Maple Creme. “Is there a reason you bought like, a million boxes of four different flavours of cookies?”

Josh shrugged nonchalantly at the question, and reinspected his brown sludge. Happy now with the results, Beth and Hannah watched him reach of a plate of what they recognized to be the cookie halves of the Ultimate Fudge Chocolate. “We’re playing truth or dare tonight.”

Hannah held up the empty box of Dare brand cookies higher. “I don’t think that when people play truth or dare, they mean the cookie brand.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because you don’t share my brilliance. See, this is how we can tell that I was the only one who got any imagination in this family.” Josh started to carefully take his thick sludge and began to ice the cookies with them.

Hannah was a little more hesitant with her next question. “What exactly are you doing to all these cookies anyways?” Once again, not a question Beth wanted the answer to.

This time, Josh did fully turn to face the two of them, and oh boy was he a sight. He was almost completely covered in cornstarch with random flecks of soy sauce and mustard covering his hands and the apron he had probably stolen from the home-ec room at school. In one arm was a bowl filled with what Beth assumed to be the unholy amalgamation of soy sauce and cornstarch and the other held the whisk, covered in said mixture. The large, maniacal grin on his face and insane look in his eyes was enough to complete the image that their brother had officially snapped. “Oh, am I glad you asked, Han! You see, this is where my brilliance comes into play! I am slowly and painstakingly replacing the creme in every single one of these cookies with my own!” He waved the whisk wildly and Beth backed up to hopefully avoid the spray of brown, but it was thick enough that nothing actually flew thankfully.

Beth hated herself for the words coming out of her mouth, but they were out into the world before she knew it. “And what kind of cream is that?”

Josh changed the tone of his voice so resembled that of a teacher giving a lecture. “It changes for every cookie of course, but they all start with the same cornstarch/water base as a thickener. From there, it all changes! For the maple, I add some dijon mustard for color. Chocolate gets soy sauce. Lemon, just a smidgen of regular mustard.” Josh turned back to the row of chocolate cookies on the counter. “And the coconut gets mayo, simply because an icing of just cornstarch is boring and I am not all about that life.”

“Kind of making it sound that your not all about life in general right now.”

Josh didn’t give much of an answer other than a shrug. “That’s because you don’t understand my genius.”

“Evil genius more like.”

“Is there any better?”

God help her, but Hannah moved closer to watch over Josh’s shoulder as he continued to ice the cookies. “And what are you doing with the normal fillings?”

Without looking, Josh pointed towards a couple of containers to the left of him. “Failures and fillings are over there if you want them.”

Beth was definitely more then a little hesitant when she looked in the bowl of ‘failures’. Only to sigh in relief at the sight of what was just a bowl of broken cookies that Josh hadn’t managed to separate properly. Which wasn’t a surprise. These weren’t exactly Oreo’s he was dealing with, so it was probably harder to split these without one or both sides of the cookie shattering. The other container was just filled with maple and chocolate creme centers as he promised. She reached into the first bowl and picked out a maple one that was missing about a third of the cookie on top, popping it into her mouth as she handed Hannah a similar chocolate one.

“Surprised that these are even here. Thought you would have eaten every single mistake.”

The look that Josh gave her was so unimpressed that she almost choked on the cookie in surprise. “Beth. I have been at this for literally hours. Trust me, I got sick of these things like two hours ago. There were so many mistakes.”

Hannah stuck her hand in a bowl to grab another broken chocolate fudge, but carefully added some of the discarded maple creme on top. “So how exactly is this game supposed to work? Whenever someone picks dare they have to eat a cookie?”

Josh shook his head in clear disappointment as he gestured at himself. “Oh Hannah. Hannah, Hannah, Hannah. Once again, only one who has any imagination, right here.” He returned back to his tray of cookies, carefully placing the other half back on top of the soy sauce creme, cleaning up any that leaked over the edge as he did so. “Of course not. It’s very simple really. Someone picks either truth or dare, and the person asking asks their question or gives their demand. The fun comes in refusing! If anyone refuses to either answer the truth or do the dare, then they have to eat a cookie as repentance.”

Beth watched Josh put the tray of now completed ‘chocolate fudge’ cookies into the fridge to harden as she ate a piece of maple creme from the bowl. She noticed that there was already a couple of other trays in the fridge and made a note to warn Sam not to touch a single cookie when she came over later in the afternoon. “And are Chris and Ashley aware that there are going to be cookies?”

“Nope.”

She sighed. “Are they even aware that they’re gonna be playing truth or dare tonight?”

“Nope.”

The pop of the p was so self-satisfied that Beth turned to look at Hannah, but saw that she was already on her phone before she could open her mouth.

“Already putting Poison Control on speed dial.”

“Probably a good idea honestly.” Josh didn’t even pause from grabbing the four boxes of lemon creme’s, another four containers of cornstarch, and two bottles of regular mustard as he replied.

#pride month prompt challenge #my writing #until dawn #josh washington #beth washington #hannah washington #and everyone died that night #also #how the hell have i written more shit with the twins then i have with em jess mike and matt #you know #the other half of the main cast that survives past the first 15 minutes of gameplay #sam is only barely beating them #3 days behind now #but at least im still here trying!#thats what really matter right?

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fantasyizlife · 5 years

Text

For the fandoms/fans who mourn their idol/hero. ❤

Word count 1,444

I was moved to say something before I force myself to get back up and fight to enjoy race week again. So many men and women in the Formula family will do the same. 🏎❤🏁🥰

Dear anyone who feels the loss over a human being they idolized with love,

I can't help but to try and offer some type of hope while we forever mourn the death of of our idols. Our personal heroes. No matter who they are, how they died, how they lived, if we met them, if we never met them, if they didn't know we loved them or if they did...😔

So many of us are told by the very people we are closest to that we should just get over it! They say all the above, more or less. They try to "encourage us" by stating the obvious. You didn't know them. You'll be over it tomorrow. Sometimes they say nothing at all.

Perhaps you have people in your life that don't even know your suffering with such deep pain. We can't explain our tears, sadness, anger, loneliness or whatever were feeling and that is so much harder than being able to attend a funeral for our loss. At least we wouldn't have to hide the way we feel. They wouldn't ask us what our deal is. They wouldn't question why we feel the way we feel. We would be given a short window to openly grieve their death. Our loss. We might be given the shot at closure if this was the case. We could somehow feel we got to say goodbye!

I still mourn the death of my idol. My hero! This person saved me and still saves me this very moment as I try to write this painfully and hopefully helpful recognition for us fandoms/fans in real pain with our loss.

I spent whatever hours I could hidden away from the world. Buried in the hours of footage on YouTube or wherever. I listened to my hero's voice, laugh, seen my hero still ALIVE! I went through every social media platform that exists, desperate for just one more moment. It took a hard solid year before I even felt like healing.

For the longest time I was so mad at the world! My hero's death wasn't a graceful one so the coverage was cruel at times. That enraged me! The footage/pictures of their deaths are now so very public and that is hard to swallow. Even death certificates are made public! Like where is the humanity? I remember asking why hasn't the world stopped for one minute to see it's lost some of its brightest light?!?

Our heroes were more than entertainers, athletes, artists...they were what got us through. Gave us hope and love when we didn't have any. They helped us to escape for whatever time we had with them. They have grown over the years with us. Some we only knew a short time but their beautiful light was SO powerful it caught our attention in the fog of life. Some taught us lessons in strength and courage. Some showed us they survived the same hell we survived. Some guided us to grow physically or mentally. They ALWAYS offered us an escape when we needed it. Most of all they were there when we needed them. EVERY time we needed them...

So now what world? You want us to move on? You want us to accept their fate and take whoever or whatever you offer to replace them?

They gave us so much more than we can ever explain. Some of us didn't know any of this until they were gone and they can never be replaced! So leave us to heal the ONLY way we can!

Lastly to us, the fans. The ones who hold in our pain because we have no real way of saying goodbye to our heroes…..

I'm sorry for your loss. It's been over two years since I lost my hero and there are times when I have to say goodbye again and again because *"Sometimes you don't say goodbye once. You say goodbye over and over and OVER again. I get tackled by the grief at times that I would least expect." * Every year another birthday passes. The anniversary of their death comes. All of a sudden there's a surge of our heroes faces. Forcing us to remember the moment they were taken from our lives. And then there are times when it seems no one remembers them. Your left wondering if your the only fan left with a whole in your chest? And it's another ride on the emotional rollercoaster! I wish I could tell you that while moving forward you won't know pain like that again but I didn't write this to sugarcoat lies. The fact is you might coast through a memory and smile. You grow with the pain. It's another scar but you do keep pushing! You might find yourself in the middle of a completely different realm of happiness and experience yet another loss. One that triggers your heroes loss and that pain claws its way towards the surface to greet this new loss like it was meant to be friends all along and it's not fair to feel this pain again!

You can get through this loss and you don't have to be alone!

If you have friends with this hero in common or belong to a fandom that can share your pain, please reach out! When I lost my hero I found a person in my area who was brave enough to start a Facebook group of support by herself. I found my place to mourn my hero with a hashtag that lit the way. This support group has been my only outlet when I'm hurting the most for my hero. And when remembering my hero is too much I take a break. I drop by and leave my emotions or thoughts and I see the other fans who also loved this person doing the same and it truly helps. I guess it's a virtual memorial for us who will never forget. I can leave my honest feelings in a safe space and seek other social media outlets to lighten my spirit. It's just my way of moving forward from the days I didn't want to move at all. It's my way of honoring my hero.

The only good I can possibly think for having an idol/hero with wings is that you are not alone! Someone in this world feels what you are feeling and when your ready, I hope you can help each other.

Feel free to reach out to me. Feel free to reblog and add your hero for me to know because they matter and so do you!

Hugz from my broken soul to yours!

Who cares if one more light goes out? I do.

My personal hero is Chester Bennington of Linkin Park. 🌠

My heart is re-shattered from the loss we are feeling in Formula ones racing family 8/31/19.

My inspiration came across Spotify as I scrolled through Instagram, Twitter and tumblr feeling all of our pain. So many on tumblr are being honest about the way this loss has affected them and I wanted to reach out before a new race week starts and something inside of you won't feel right. 😔

Take your time. Come back to the race family when your ready. Take a walk with some music in your ears to let out the feels. Take care of you!

Rest in Paradise to all our heroes. 🌠

One More Light

Song by Linkin Park

Should've stayed, were there signs, I ignored?

Can I help you, not to hurt, anymore?

We saw brilliance, when the world, was asleep

There are things that we can have, but can't keep

If they say

Who cares if one more light goes out?

In a sky of a million stars

It flickers, flickers

Who cares when someone's time runs out?

If a moment is all we are

We're quicker, quicker

Who cares if one more light goes out?

Well I do

The reminders pull the floor from your feet

In the kitchen, one more chair than you need oh

And you're angry, and you should be, it's not fair

Just 'cause you can't see it, doesn't mean it, isn't there

If they say

Who cares if one more light goes out?

In a sky of a million stars

It flickers, flickers

Who cares when someone's time runs out?

If a moment is all we are

We're quicker, quicker

Who cares if one more light goes out?

Well I do

Who cares if one more light goes out?

In a sky of a million stars

It flickers, flickers

Who cares when someone's time runs out?

If a moment is all we are

We're quicker, quicker

Who cares if one more light goes out?

Well I do!

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thefederalistfreestyle · 5 years

Photo

Just over four years ago, a friend messaged me asking if I was free the next day. I hedged. They then clarified that due to a travel scheduling mix-up, they had a spare ticket to Hamilton at the Public. I was then free as of an hour previous.

I'd been excited about the show since I'd first heard about it, since Lin-Manuel Miranda was clearly an extremely talented creator and I'd grown up being interested in revolutionary history (both American and French) and also Alexander Hamilton in particular. On top of being drawn to the themes of both that period of time and Hamilton's life, it was just part of being a New Yorker and having it be local history – hell, during my teen years, I spent one summer in an interactive murder mystery afternoon tea theatre (we couldn't afford dinner) play performed in Schuyler Mansion.

(I was an Anti-Federalist. Sorry, Alex.)

(For what it's worth, I was also the murder victim.)

The Hamilton run at the Public had sold out far too far in advance for me to know what my schedule would be in order to purchase tickets, so I'd resigned myself to not seeing it. But then all of a sudden, there I was, halfway into previews. It turned out that Javi was on that night – his very first night performing the role for an audience. Lin was, by deductive reasoning, somewhere in the house with us. There were no reviews. There were no recordings. It was all completely new.

Two days after walking out of the theater, I created a new tumblr because I feared that the commercial theatre scene might not understand this weird, whip-smart, heart-full show about things that I loved and I wanted to hype it the fuck up as much as I could. I'd been using tumblr for a whole three months (and it would take me about another year to figure out how to use the ask box), but I went full-on white man and acted based on what I wanted to be rather than what I had proof of already having accomplished, all so that I could shout this show to the rooftops and do my small part in getting ground support going.

I honestly also didn't want fans of the show to end up with some whack-ass cutesy fandom name and, well, to the founders go the spoils.

It was clear within a matter of months that this weird musical didn't need my help. But I wanted to keep shouting.

Subject matter aside, it's rare that I've seen a more tightly crafted piece of theatre, with every single note and word and tiny movement and detail of design telling a story with power and clarity, often on multiple levels. It spoiled me for a number of shows that I saw in the following months, with entire bars' worth of wasted lyric space and messy dramaturgy and unrealized potential. The brilliance of all of the artists involved was inspiring to me as a professional.

But as for the story itself: it was a legitimate turning point in my personal journey, accelerating my way around a curve toward my eventual first return to my birth country and the fullness of my own experience as someone from somewhere else. I entered the theater hoping for a good show, and I exited it with something reverberating inside of me in a new and powerful way, some shared frequency discovered.

Hamilton isn't the entirety of musical theatre or of "diverse theatre" (whatever the fuck that means), and nor should it be. I hope to hell that people keep pushing for the Hamilton effect to increase the size of the pie for everyone rather than for it to be a swirling vortex that attracts new resources but sucks them all into itself. I hope that space is held for those whom the show causes pain, whether by reason of inclusion or omission, and that a wider chorus of voices is amplified to sing out.

For me, however, the energy of creation and questions of legacy resonated. And my mind was blown by how simultaneously traditionally inspirationally and yet slyly subversive the show was. The United States of America has none of the creation myths of older peoples or nations. What we have instead is relatively recent politically history that has been mythologized and enshrined as our national civic religion. Hamilton declared that the manifestations of these nationally worshipped figures, whom our streets and schools and cities are named after, are to be found in the faces of people of color and immigrants. Hamilton made it so that you can't worship the flag, as so many like to do, without worshipping these people.

Of course, people's powers of compartmentalization are pretty strong, so there are those whose walls inside are so strong that a popular musical will never be enough to topple them. Or who put themselves in rageful opposition to the show for all of these very reasons. Hamilton isn't going to save a country or the world. But the show has still turned out to be an amazing force, and I do believe that that force pushes for good.

All of which is to say: it's been a joy and privilege to be able to experience this phenomenon with so many of you. While I stay largely hands-off in my larger internet life for the sake of my sanity, it's been amazing to have even just this glancing connection with more people than I ever would have imagined. If I had the time and energy to keep up this unpaid second job that I haven't been able to spin onto my resume yet, I would. But as time has passed, I've been having less and less space for this, and I wanted to bring this leg of this wild ride to an end in a satisfying way.

I'll be working on cleaning up tags and otherwise making this a place that you can come back to get your fix of the first four years of this show's history, through Lin's returning as Hamilton in Puerto Rico. There will be a couple of summary posts as the waves of updates are completed. But the regular postings from MC Publius have reached the end of their run.

So thank you for the past four years. And maybe see you on the other side.

#hamilton #mc publius

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otp-armada · 4 years

Text

A Time Capsule

I’ve been lurking across several fandoms spanning a decade now, since my days of reading “Bones” fanfics on fanfiction.net. Before any inkling of Ao3’s existence. Maybe longer, my memory is murky at times.

I’ve never made a splash in any fandom, so to speak. I’ve always been content to stand shrouded in anonymity, residing on the edges of fandom, never an active participant. Perfectly at peace to never have a voice. Never brave enough to want to be heard. It has only been in the last few years that I discovered Tumblr and felt comfortable enough in taking advantage of its anon feature to interact mostly with The 100/Bellarke crowd, “conversing” with one user in particular. In the instances I chose to speak, there was safety in knowing my words never had an identity attached. A safety that lent itself to sending anon asks a fairly common activity until I wrote one recently sharing a remnant of my “The 100” viewing experience. The warm response from the users who read it left me smiling for the rest of the day. Their reply took a direction I didn’t expect. They encouraged me to take credit for my words under my username, which of course, I didn’t have, not being a Tumblr user.

I was flattered by the response, bolstering me to continue the line of conversation with another ask and was met with reiterated sentiments.

In the wise words of one of those awesome people,

“I was the ultimate lurker for a long, long time. I had a Tumblr account for four years before I ever made a single post, and even then I had to be talked into it. And you know what? When I finally starting “talking,” it was so freeing! Even if no one else was listening, even if I was speaking into the void, I was no longer dependent on anyone else to share my thoughts and opinions. I could do that myself.”

I took the compliment but waived the advice. Tumblr is made of communities built upon sharing and I have always been unto myself an island. It goes against my shy, introverted nature to take part in a community. I have no business pretending I have a place there. None at all.

And yet, despite my misgivings, the idea wouldn’t leave me as I believed it would. I started to genuinely ponder the merits of creating a blog.

There are strong reasons to support the affirmative.

First, the utilitarian benefits. In the absence of a blog, I turned to alternative methods of archiving appealing posts. If by some miracle, the item count of my browser reading list hasn’t yet ascended to the thousands mark, it most assuredly rests in the hundreds. My camera roll queue has indubitably reached the thousands count, currently sitting pretty at 3,300. I shudder to think of the sheer number of my bookmarks. One hundred and eighty notes on my phone. The final frontier has been broken, at last, habitually inundating my laptop with screenshots. Long has it been overdue to clean house.

Second, I find writing to be a herculean undertaking I enjoy in the moments it doesn’t drive me to the brink. A slow-going process, but when I’m able to appreciate the fruits of my labor, marvel at the polished product, I often feel quite proud. Writing is a skill I’ve lost touch with over years of disuse but found incrementally returning while expressing my opinions via Tumblr asks. Like any skill, it can be honed with time and practice. Transferring my streams of consciousness onto written medium challenges me to think critically, ask myself if my POV genuinely holds true or falls apart, requiring further reflection. If nothing else, it’s a good way to process thoughts and emotions. I find it easier than and therefore preferable to oral communication. I am a perpetual editor, always amending my statements which can’t really be done as effectively in speech.

Third, if there was ever a time to join the Tumblr fandom I’ve found a home in for the last three years, why not in time for the show’s last ride? The night I signed up for Tumblr coincided the first day of “The 100” cast and crew filming their 100th and poetically final episode. Around the same space of time, we got a release date and the nostalgic goodbyes of a few cast members rolled in. I know when Bellarke crosses the last threshold, I’d want it plastered all over my dash and I’d be able to make it happen.

But where there are pros, the cons inevitably follow.

Do I really need a further distraction from my responsibilities, spending additional hours and expending more energy I should not spare online? The too easy potential for more hours behind a screen when prone to headaches and horrid habits of not regulating my eating and sleeping schedules? The answer is a clear and resounding “No.” Would maintaining a blog be harmful to my mental and emotional health? Remaining anonymous has historically done a fine job of insulating me from general rebuke, which has mitigated the risk of reproach at least. No corner of the internet can be designated as a safe space. I knew I would in all likelihood have to work diligently to curate and be responsible for my experience, leading me to doubt how the effort could possibly be worth it. How could it be worth feeling exposed, self-conscious? Constantly second-guessing myself, debating whether or not my thoughts are best kept within the privacy of my mind to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes? Combating the periodic skepticism that my thoughts possess value worth writing?

There was always the lingering possibility I was overthinking the decision to my detriment, as is my norm. After all, it seemed silly and dramatic to regard one obscure little blog in a sea of hundreds of millions of social media users as momentous. But I know myself better than that. It is a really fucking big deal for me.

I vacillated between both sides of the argument for days before deciding not to follow through with the venture.

And then one night, a single stray observation ran through my mind. One observation became another, became another and before I knew it, I had formed the grounds for an entire meta post. It didn’t end there. More ideas filtered through. I expanded on those ideas. More traction gained. Another meta formed. More jumping off previous points. Before long, I had mentally written the foundations for four metas. And I was so excited and proud of forming these connections to this puzzle without even trying that I wanted to share it. I sat down to write them in my trusty Notes, outlining, trying to jot the main points down before they fizzled away from memory. I saw how long-winded these spiels had gotten sans the full writeup, subsequently rationalizing…well, not blowing up someone’s inbox is just good manners, isn’t it? And terribly inefficient to boot. More to the point, it seemed a disservice to myself to censor my rumination to fit the small confines of a Tumblr ask box.

The part of me that wanted to push forward envisioned what the future of my blogging efforts may look like. That part knows that this blog is for me and only me. What makes me laugh, what makes me cry. Smile. Rage. Flail. Think. Whatever the hell I want. I get to say what I want, however, I want. It’s incredibly nerve-wracking. It’s also exciting, thrilling, and yes, freeing. The notion of carving out a tiny space for me to fill to the endless brim with whatever brings me joy makes me…really damn happy. It’s not an easy feat to accept and harder to retain. I should be ok, so long as I never forget that I get to be in control of what happens here. It’s within my right to block anyone I don’t want to engage or associate with. It’s my full right to not care what anyone else has to say if I don’t want to. Block out anything negative I don’t want to endure with only a few clicks. If I decide I want to walk away, permanently or otherwise, for any reason, it’s within my right to do that too. It’s comforting.

There was a time when I “knew” I would never sign up for an Ao3 account until one of my favorite authors withdrew the majority of her stories from public consumption. I “knew” I was never going to post commentary until I did. I “knew” my username would never be seen by anyone aside from me, never to be affiliated with my commentary until it was.

I did. Each and every time I thought I would never, I did. I broke my own barriers with patience and some courage. Maybe the most intimidating aspect of something new is simply the beginning. I said earlier that I’ve been an island for nearly as long as I can remember. It’s still true, I don’t expect overnight results. It’s probably going to be true for a long time. Perhaps forever. But maybe it’s all the more reason why I should take this step toward peeking out of my self-imposed shell. Do what scares you, or whatever it is they say.

I wish I could say it was enough to reverse my earlier verdict.

Nope, I had to agonize some more.

What can I say? Fear is a damn powerful inhibitor.

Lo and behold, as if the universe took pity on me, I got the chance to communicate directly with the same awesome lady whom I quoted above and she kindly offered some more merciful wisdom to a truly maddeningly indecisive individual:

“When you create a blog, you are STILL anonymous. You have a username, yes, but it doesn’t lead back to you unless you want it to. You still have your personal privacy. Tumblr isn’t Facebook. If you want to disclose personal information, you can, but you certainly don’t have to.

And second, your blog is for you, not for anyone else. It’s for you to express your own opinions. Or create gifs or other visuals. Or just repost what other people create. You can be on every day, or just once a week. It’s also a great way to save stuff you might want to look at again. And then… and then… when brilliance suddenly hits you, you have somewhere to let it hang out! 😁”

It was much I had already considered, but it helped immeasurably to have my reasoning reaffirmed from an external source I respect. I logged into Tumblr for the first time the very same night.

After much deliberation, an uncharacteristic burst of bravery and a grueling four hours I owe to technological ineptitude, I have, tentatively and cautiously, opted to give this Tumblr thing a go.

With luck, a day will never arrive when I dust this preamble off for a much-needed pep talk. Instead, it is my hope that one day, this memo-to-me will stand as proof that I don’t always need to be afraid of the unknown. Not all endeavors have to be as frightening as they may appear. And if I can apply this attitude to all else suppressing my personal growth, I might just be peachy someday.

Bearing this in mind…

…here we go.

#about me #personal

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silentauroriamthereal · 6 years

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So. I met Benedict Cumberbatch the other night.

I’m still processing, honestly, and the big thing that I need to write is another letter to him, one which I assume going in that he will never read (I can’t even imagine the volume of fanmail he must receive!), but I’ll still write it because I need to say it, even if it’s never read. In this post I want to talk about some of the stuff I want to say there, so I’m just kind of working through my thoughts here.

This is going to be long, and a little emotional, so I’m putting it behind a cut to spare your dashes (among other things!).

I have a few different things to say about the entire thing. First, let me just go through the evening as it unfolded:

I managed to buy a ticket to the New York debut of Letters Live. I’ve adored the concept of this event since the first time they held it and when I found out they were doing one in New York right during the tiny window of when I was going to be there, I jumped at the opportunity, though the tickets were uncomfortably expensive for me. There is literally no other living person that I would have been more excited to see perform and potentially have a tiny chance to meet, though, and the timing seemed almost foreordained, so I did it.

The event was phenomenal. A gigantic wall of a human was seated in front of me - an unpleasant man who was approximately 10 metres tall and 5 metres wide, and I’m 5′4, so... yeah. I waited until after the first act and managed to slip into a much better seat, hahaha! The performance was so well-planned, I thought. The selection of letters was specially curated for an American audience, with most of the content written by Americans. To hear Rose McGowan read her own letter to the Hollywood higher-ups was chillingly powerful, as was hearing Toni Morrison’s letter to Barack Obama. There were several letters funny enough to make me cry with laughter, and to my pleased surprise one of these was read by another well-loved actor of mine, Tom Hollander (who I keep feeling so sorry for these days - people must confuse him with Tom Holland all the time, and they’re not remotely similar, lol). Benedict’s first letter was an absolutely hilarious one that just went around facebook about a month ago, written by a Canadian man apologizing for having absolutely trashed, via a flock of seagulls, his hotel room in Victoria eighteen years ago. He also read one of the Chris Barker/Bessie Moore exchanges with Loo Brealey, and finished the evening with Stewart Stern’s incredibly stirring and moving letter to the family of James Dean following his death.

Listen: seeing Benedict perform live, with my own two naked eyes, breathing the same air as him - it may sound ridiculous, but that alone was profoundly moving to me. Just seeing him, period. Then seeing him perform - breathtaking. And then hearing him read this particular letter was just - it’s hard to even put it into words. I felt a little as though I was hearing him read what could be his own epitaph. Listen to these words:

A star goes wild in the places beyond air — a dark star born of coldness and invisible. It hits the upper edges of our atmosphere and look! It is seen! It flames and arcs and dazzles. It goes out in ash and memory. But its after-image remains in our eyes to be looked at again and again. For it was rare. And it was beautiful. And we thank God and nature for sending it in front of our eyes. So few things blaze. So little is beautiful. Our world doesn't seem equipped to contain its brilliance too long. Ecstasy is only recognizable when one has experienced pain. Beauty only exists when set against ugliness. Peace is not appreciated without war ahead of it. How we wish that life could support only the good. But it vanishes when its opposite no longer exists as a setting. It is a white marble on unmelting snow. And Jimmy stands clear and unique in a world where much is synthetic and dishonest and drab. He came and rearranged our molecules.

I mean, this is exactly how I already feel about the nature of Ben’s talent, the privilege I feel at being allowed to experience it in any way, in any medium. He has a talent that lights up the cosmos and I’m just so grateful to the universe that this talent exists and has been given a place to be seen and witnessed by the rest of us. His talent blazes, and my life is the richer for being able to experience it.

I tried really, really, really hard not to hope too much to have a chance to meet him at the stage door after. It’s kind of impossible not to hope, but I told myself sternly that I already never thought I would have the chance to see him perform in person, and it really would have been enough. I’d joked to my friends before leaving for New York that if he so much as laid his own two beautiful eyes on me and actually saw me, heard my voice, any of that, that I could die in peace. I’ve never expected that, though, to have any sort of fleeting brush of contact like that. It’s not the nature of the way a person like him relates to a person like me. In fact, allow me a tangential paragraph here:

Being a fan can feel one-sided. I know everything that a person can possibly know about a person whom I have never met. I can guarantee that I have seen, read, or listened to every interview he’s done, ever, with very, very few exceptions. ALL of the press junkets. I could have written his imdb page. Like many of us! I know every line on his beautiful face. I know the freckles on his skin, the tendons of his forearms and calves. I know every part of his physicality that’s ever been shown to the public, and with him, that’s a fair bit! His voice is my ringtone (it’s a clip of Sherlock saying “it’s a text alert; it means I’ve got a text”) and his voice is more dearly familiar to me than most of the people I know personally. I know his facial expressions, though he’s constantly reinventing the way the muscles of his face can move for every new role he plays. I’ve analyzed his accents from a phonetics standpoint. In short, I know everything that’s possible for someone like me to know about someone like him. And he knows nothing about me - not my name, not what I do, not what I eat, not my voice or my talents or my eyes or fingernails or passions or pet peeves - not of my existence, full stop. But that doesn’t mean that our relationship - and bear with me on that word - is one-sided. This is how it works: he gives. He gives and gives and gives. Benedict doesn’t phone it in. He BLAZES. He burned through so much energy playing Hamlet (any wonder, have you seen him in it???) in the summer of 2016 that one of the reasons Dr. Strange had to push back its filming schedule was to give him the chance to bulk up again after the play’s run. Benedict commits, and like the aforementioned star analogy, he radiates energy to every possible point of contact around him. THIS is his side of the relationship: he blazes out his talent/energy/love/passion/commitment, and we receive it, and the appreciation and love and passion we feel in return for it is something that we share with each other, not with him. That’s how fandom works: it’s not a direct thing. Not in the standard, interpersonal way. He shines; we turn to each other rather than to him, to talk about how it made us feel, how it moved us, how it excited us and made us laugh and inspired us. Somehow, this entire experience crystallized this for me perfectly.

Now, back to the stage door: there was an absolute CRUSH of people at the barricades. I don’t want to talk about this part too much because it was extremely unpleasant. We had to wait for a long time. I would have stayed until he left the building, no matter how long it took, unless it would have made me look like a total creep, because that’s not something I ever want to do to someone I admire. He did come out eventually, and that’s when the pushing and screaming started. I once said that I would never scream at a celebrity, and I didn’t. The crowd, unfortunately, was a mix of three groups of people: 1. aggressive paparazzi 2. aggressive fanboys who had brought comic book shit for Ben to sign so that they could sell it on ebay 3. genuine fans. Guess which group was not at all problematic?? Turns out I was standing right in a knot of #2′s, and because they were hollering at him, like screaming at him to get over there and sign their shit, Ben went over to the other side of the barricade to sign stuff there. He told off one of the paps and said he was there to be with the “real people”, which I appreciated. He did come back near us, and I had the briefest of moments to talk to him. I thanked him for not having become a lawyer, and he laughed. Everyone was thrusting stuff in his face and yelling. I just had my little ticket from the show, and the comic book manchildren kept putting their stuff on top of mine. Ben finally said he was going back inside, that his wife was there waiting for him, but he turned back toward me and I managed to ask (possibly plead) if he would sign my ticket. He looked me in the eye then, smiled, and said, “Of course”.

I stammered out a congratulations on Patrick Melrose and he smiled again and said thank you, while he was signing. But that one moment of eye contact is all I wanted. He looked at me, and he saw me. And I made him laugh.

I was literally almost suffocated by the awful people around me, none of which were: a) female, or b) actual fans. I’ve thought sometimes, while watching videos of Benedict on the red carpet, with all of those media folk screaming at him to turn this way, smile into their camera, all of that, that it feels very much like harassment. I know that people in his position know that it comes with the job, that the fame and riches are supposed to be the offset of having no privacy, of being followed by media and fans alike, quite literally, of being shrieked and barked at like they’re trained performing animals (which I don’t like, either!). I know he knows that, but it doesn’t mean that it’s pleasant in any way. He handles it like a pro, because he is in every way a consummate professional. But it can’t be pleasant for him. He’s incredibly, extraordinarily generous with his time. As a performer myself, I know how I feel when I’ve just finished a solo concert or an opera - I feel like taking off my heels and fancy dress, putting on pyjama pants and relaxing every muscle I have on a couch somewhere, preferably with a tall drink in hand. Performing Hamlet is considered one of the most demanding male roles in the English theatrical repertoire, yet Benedict would not only perform it a stunning eight times per week, but then sometimes spend up to THREE HOURS signing autographs and taking selfies after. If he chooses to limit how long he gets screamed at by aggressive, even violent paps and shitheads who just want to use his signature for money, good for him! I respect that, even if I felt incredibly sorry for the people further back who didn’t get to have that, one brief moment of contact with this person we all admire so very, very deeply. And so, because of this, because of seeing firsthand how gross people are to him and just the sheer volume of what he puts up with for our sake, so that some of us, at least, can have that tiny moment, I don’t think I would do it again, if only to reduce that volume by one teeny tiny amount. I got my one, deeply, deeply hoped-for, fleeting, searing moment of contact. It’s all that I could have asked for. He saw me, and I had the chance to say some tiny part of my gratitude to him for what he gives of himself to all of us. That’s all I wanted.

The wait, the near-suffocation, all of that, was worth it, to win that one precious moment. I clutched my precious ticket and fought my way out of the crowd and wandered dazedly off toward the subway, through late Friday night Times Square crowds, feeling so much that I didn’t even know how to process it. I felt like I was about to burst into tears and I couldn’t have even said why or whether I was happy or sad or possibly a cornucopia of every human emotion ever. I felt - and still feel - a bit like I just had a brush with an actual, blazing sun. It was shattering, and I will be forever changed by it. I am so grateful.

#benedict cumberbatch #on being a fan

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raptured-night · 6 years

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Would you indulge me and share your thoughts about the relationship between Slughorn and Snape? I can't quite decide which I favour; the idea of Slughorn as a genuine mentor who perhaps greased the odd wheel for Severus, or a Slughorn who was entirely distant from the too-dark-to-be-comfortable youth who later claims association based upon Severus' success at Hogwarts?

I tend to go back-and-forth when it comes to Slughorn and a young Severus. Did Slughorn see his potential but ignore it because he lacked the connections? Was Slughorn initially someone who tried to mentor a young Severus and, when he felt he would be unable to steer him away from the kind of darkness he once failed to recognize in Tom Riddle, did he decide to cut his losses and leave him to whatever end he met?

Then there’s Severus. Did he ever feel maligned by Slughorn? Did he resent him? Feel his talents went unappreciated by a man who only appeared to want to court the kids with access to certain privileges or with certain character traits he couldn’t hope to ever have? Or did he respect him? Or perhaps he was entirely ambivalent to the man. Maybe, as a proud young man already critically engaging with his own textbook and making corrections, he felt Slughorn’s teaching style left much to be desired and he wrote him off as a self-aggrandizing hack.

There are quite a few possible ways to look at their student-teacher relationship and very few concrete bits of canon that can tell us what the nature of it was with any kind of certainty. However, I do find it interesting that Slughorn’s teaching style and approach to being Head of House, from what we were able to glean in HBP, was markedly different from Snape’s own methods.

Where Snape may have walked around, observed the student progress, and criticized obvious failures before providing his corrections when teaching a typical potions class, I believe that we get an idea of how Slughorn operates and where his priorities are very early on in HBP just by how he conducts his classes. He may have more affably corrected a few students; nudged those struggling in the right direction to avoid potentially disastrous mistakes but more than anything else he made it very clear to the students who his “picks” were among them and that it would have little to do with his house affiliation at Hogwarts.

Notably, we saw a bit of a reversal in HBP where Hermione, who is typically the student who answers all the questions and earns points and praise for her house from teachers, is overshadowed by Harry in Slughorn’s class. Indeed, I would argue that the symbolism of Harry being singled-out by Slughorn both as a result of his legacy (being the Boy-Who-Lived after facing off against the student he once praised, Tom Riddle, and Lily’s son in particular) and achieving much of his success by following the instructions of the Half-Blood Prince (Snape) carries the most poignancy and weight if we apply it to a reading where Slughorn allowed a young Severus’s brilliance and talent to go unacknowledged and be neglected. A reading where Slughorn (perhaps shy of making the same mistake he made in the past or perhaps just unconvinced a boy of his class and background can hope to go far) doesn’t nurture Severus’s potential and joins the ranks of authority figures in his life who may have, ironically, contributed to the series of circumstances that made it possible for Voldemort to recruit him into his ranks.

In fact, it is mainly because of the poetic and cyclical nature of it that I typically find myself going back to an interpretation of Slughorn’s and Severus’s relationship where Slughorn’s role in his life was less that of a warm or potentially helpful mentor and more one that a boy like Severus may already have become accustomed/resigned to; wary, distant, guarded, or even something bordering on dismissive. The neglected boy from Spinner’s End who once dreamt of finding his place in Slytherin at Hogwarts finds himself with a Head of House who overlooks him; he finds himself with a Headmaster who fails to protect him; bullies who ensure he must watch his step and expect danger at every turn; and ambitions no closer to being within his reach than before.

It falls in line with the sense of tragedy that appears to inform Severus Snape’s character. It also serves to further the connections between Severus, Harry, and Voldemort/Tom. Slughorn, who favored Tom and came to regret it, neglects Severus (perhaps out of the fear of repeating his mistakes) and closes off access to the sort of connections and resources that may have enabled Severus to find a better path to achieve his ambitions, thus furthering the likelihood that Severus would fall into the path of the Death Eaters. Then, years later, and in a great twist of irony, we see Slughorn finally praise the genius he once ignored in Severus through Harry (an amalgamation of Tom, Lily, and James) and his use of Severus’s old textbook while assuming the talent Harry demonstrates is something he inherited from Lily. Which, in itself, becomes intriguing for me because we again could potentially say we’ve encountered a bit of a cyclical symbolism in the fact that Slughorn acknowledges Harry’s talents and his belief he inherited it from his mother, while Hermione (a character who Rowling often parallels with Severus) becomes overshadowed by his success, but I digress.

Another point of interest for me is in the fact that Slughorn was a character who clearly played favorites. Where some of fandom, certain Gryffindors, and Harry liked to criticize Snape for favoring Slytherin (ignoring the potential for similar house politics and favoritism from other professors, McGonagall most notably) what made Slughorn so interesting is that he went outside of his house loyalties and simply favored individual students on the basis of who they were or what potential they held to become someone.

Personally, I would argue that his approach had the potential to be far more demoralizing for a student because of the nature of his selection process. Where a student may feel maligned or overlooked by Severus or McGonagall they do have house politics to fall back on to brush it off. It becomes less about them, as an individual, and more about their house. That is, after being given detention alongside Harry and Hermione by McGonagall, Draco can go back to his housemates and complain about how unfair she was; how she clearly just favored Gryffindor, etc., etc. In contrast, when Slughorn excludes him from his Slug Club it is a clear and very personal rejection of who Draco is, of his family, and who Slughorn believes he’s associated with (i.e. Voldemort and the Death Eaters). In essence, it’s a very different sort of statement and a different form of rejection.

That is why I typically argue that the Slug Club strikes me as something of a testament to the fact that Slughorn was clearly a teacher who played favorites during his tenure, in-so-far as that to be able to gain access/membership one had to be invited by Slughorn personally. As previously said, he didn’t appear to favor his house specifically when it came to his selection process but rather the students individually. Otherwise, Gryffindor and Muggle-born Lily Evans wouldn’t have been such a favorite of his.

Which brings me back to his relationship with a young Severus. The very fact that Slughorn didn’t appear to specifically favor his house is interesting. Because then Slughorn isn’t just the Head of Slytherin who opens the door for his young, ambitious Slytherins as part of his role as their mentor. He’s someone who acts as something of a talent scout, which means that being in Slytherin doesn’t appear to guarantee you’ll be invited to become a member of his Slug Club.

You can be a Muggle-born from a rival house like Gryffindor and still be favored by Slughorn, so long as you demonstrate to him you have the potential to go far in the world. And there’s the crux of it; we know that Severus was brilliant; we know that he was every bit the progeny that Lily Evans was at that point, yet when reflecting back on Severus as a student we have Slughorn remarking on his unfortunate disadvantages while contradicting himself by attributing some of his success at Hogwarts to himself. Could it be that he’s merely puffing himself up for posterity, does he genuinely believe he contributed in some way, or does that momentary hesitancy where he reflects on a young Severus who he saw as having little prospects serve as a reflection of regret in the same vein that we saw from McGonagall in POA over her treatment of Peter Pettigrew?

No matter how you look at it, the fact that Severus appears to have been excluded from the Slug Club and that Slughorn once doubted Severus had potential to go very far does come as a more personal rejection –and from his own Head of House no less.

One may assume that were Severus making connections in his house in the wake of Malfoy’s graduation (and assuming that the Malfoy name didn’t always rank as persona non grata in Slughorn’s book prior to Lucius Malfoy’s very public incarceration and affiliation with Death Eaters we can even examine what sort of outlook he may have had when it came to the Malfoys) that carried any influence Slughorn’s attitude may have been altered. Indeed, even had he felt that Severus’s associations were too dark for his taste and distanced himself, one would assume he would have been more inclined to have reflected on his past concerns for Severus, his ambitions, and what kind of influential people he had chosen to associate himself with rather than concluding he had been a boy with potential but too little prospects for him.

Then we have Severus and his own methods for teaching and his approach to being the Head of Slytherin House. As a spy we often have to factor how much of his behavior can be attributed to his role; however, we can still see that where Slughorn’s priorities were in cultivating individual talent in specific students, Snape’s focus seems to be specifically on his house. In Severus, we have a Head of House who, in the wake of Voldemort’s downfall when Slytherin was likely at the lowest point of morale, managed to lead them through a series of House Cup winning streaks until the arrival of Harry Potter. We have a Head of House who still allegedly favors his own house, despite never appearing to have awarded points to any student of any house (and one who could give a Gryffindor Muggle-born like Hermione higher marks in her exams than a pure-blood Slytherin like Draco and still be regarded as biased in favor of his house and remain a favorite of Draco’s). In short, we have a Head of House that Slytherin children like Draco go home and apparently talk about endlessly.

Is this solely to enable Severus to fulfill his role as a spy or could a case also be made that Severus has modeled himself into the kind of Head of House that he would have wanted as a student? The anthesis of Slughorn; someone who does not run away from the dark reputation of his house or among some of the students for his own sake and who strives to rally them, stoke the fires of their ambition, and not allow them to be neglected even during the times when the stigma surrounding their house is at it’s greatest? Someone who can honestly threaten to hold back his Slytherins (Crabbe and Goyle) or grade one lower than a Muggle-born Gryffindor (Draco) and still be favored because he’s made such an impression on them that they can accept his criticism and still see him as on their side.

Ultimately, it’s for all these reasons that I always end up coming back to the headcanon that Slughorn and Severus’s relationship was always more distant or reserved rather than any student/mentor dynamic. As I said, I do tend to waver back and forth but the literary scholar in me always tends to prefer this reading because it fits so neatly with all the threads of the overarching story and the character of Severus Snape.

Thanks for the ask! I don’t get them very often and Severus and Slughorn’s dynamic is one that I feel is so seldom explored by the fandom that I always enjoy turning it over and examining it in my mind. There’s so little material to go on yet the bits and pieces we do have to go on fascinate me. I’m the same way when it comes to the connection between Moody and Snape. Anyway, I hope that I managed to organize my thoughts coherently and that my answer has been satisfactory.

Regards,

Raptured Night

#severus snape #horace slughorn #snape meta #harry potter

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