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fearlessinger · 1 year

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Time to address the Halcyon Green-shaped elephant in the room aka let me explain to you why I think it’s canon even though it seems like it should not be aka another installment of Tinfoilhatting With Fsinger

I’m really sorry I could not think of a better title. Hope you’re intrigued enough to follow me in this journey anyway.

So. The thing is.

The Halcyon story, taken as it is, does not gel with TOA at all.

And not because it’s OOC for Apollo to have done what Halcyon says he’s done to him… Although I think it is. I think an argument can and should be made – and has been made by @flightfoot before – that this story, taken as it is, is essentially… incompatible with Apollo’s characterization in every other scrap of the RRverse he appears in. (This story, and also the Harpocrates story, which I won’t examine here because it deserves its own post. For now I’ll just say it’s interesting to note that it’s the two additions to Apollo’s background that Rick invented out of whole cloth that share this peculiarity, and I don’t think it’s by mistake).

But whether the Halcyon story breaks the internal consistency of Apollo’s characterization or not is a matter of secondary importance in the face of the fact that the Halcyon story breaks the internal consistency of the TOA narrative as a whole.

Take this excerpt from The Diary Of Luke Castellan:

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

Halcyon shrugged listlessly. The monster spoke for him: “I have lost count. Decades? Because my father is the god of oracles, I was born with the curse of seeing the future. Apollo warned me to keep quiet. He told me I should never share what I saw because it would anger the gods. But many years ago…I simply had to speak. I met a young girl who was destined to die in an accident. I saved her life by telling her the future.”

I tried to focus on the old man, but it was hard not to look at the monster’s mouth—those black lips, the slavering bone-plated jaws.

“I don’t get it…” I forced myself to meet Halcyon’s eyes. “You did something good. Why would that anger the gods?”

“They don’t like mortals meddling with fate,” the leucrota said. “My father cursed me. He forced me to wear these clothes, the skin of Python, who once guarded the Oracle of Delphi, as a reminder that I was not an oracle. He took away my voice and locked me in this mansion, my boyhood home. Then the gods set the leucrotae to guard me. Normally, leucrotae only mimic human speech, but these are linked to my thoughts. They speak for me. They keep me alive as bait, to lure other demigods. It was Apollo’s way of reminding me, forever, that my voice would only lead others to their doom.”

An angry coppery taste filled my mouth. I already knew the gods could be cruel. My deadbeat dad had ignored me for fourteen years. But Halcyon Green’s curse was just plain wrong. It was evil.

Now think back on all the times Apollo compares Nero to Zeus or even Kronos, and all the times he does not include himself too as a term of comparison.

Remember how Apollo equated Nero warning Meg her disobedience would “make him unleash the Beast” to Zeus warning his children to not “get on the wrong side of my lightning bolts”, rightfully recognizing that they are the exact same kind of manipulative abdication to personal responsibility + shifting of the blame onto the injured party that’s a staple of the classic abuser’s playbook? Well, at the same time as he noted that, he was omitting to add that he himself had threatened Halcyon in an almost identical manner, telling his son that to disobey him would “anger the gods”.

And not only was Apollo omitting that, he was explicitly equating himself to Lu instead. Lu, who, yes, was a cog in the abusive machine that kept Meg trapped, but was so against her own wishes, because she really had no other choice, no better options. Lu, who only ever tried to help Meg survive. Who jumped at the chance to help set Meg free as soon as it was offered to her, even knowing that Meg’s freedom would likely come at the cost of her own life.

Remember how Apollo mentally tuned out Nero’s villain monologue right in the middle of the ‘Top 100 Times Apollo Has Failed As A Parent’ section, ensuring that we, the readers, would not risk learning about Halcyon even in this manner?

Because Apollo is the narrator of TOA. He’s the one who chooses what to let us know, and what information he wants to withhold from us.

Bearing this in mind, doesn’t the thought that he’d purposely choose to bury the Halcyon story fill you with rage? It sure has that effect on me! :))) (Yes, those are angry smiles in case you couldn’t tell.)

It’s painfully clear, right from the very beginning of THO, that Apollo’s not oblivious to the nature and mechanics of abuse. Especially abuse perpetrated by parents on their children. He knows exactly what that is and how it works. He calls it by name. He explains it to us and to Meg, repeatedly. He points fingers. At several people.

Never at himself.

Oh, he easily admits to being a “terrible father”. He expresses regret and apologizes for it multiple times. But the implication, all through the 5 books that make up the TOA series, is that he’s guilty of neglect, not of active abuse.

And we know, even though Apollo never even tries to defend himself, that the neglect is not really a free choice on his part. He DOES want to be there for his children. But he can’t. He’s not allowed to. The laws of non interference forbid it, and the consequences of disobeying Olympus’s laws… well the whole series is an example of how dire they can be.

‘Hey, if we don’t get out of this –’

‘None of that talk,’ I chided.

‘Yeah, but I wanted to tell you, I’m glad we had some time together. Like … time time.’

His words warmed me even more than Paul Blofis’s lasagne.

I knew what he meant. While I’d been Lester Papadopoulos, I hadn’t spent much time with Austin, or any of the people I’d stayed with, really, but it had been more than we’d ever spent together when I was a god. [...]

I was tempted to promise we’d do this more often if we survived, but I’d learned that promises are precious. If you’re not absolutely sure you can keep them, you should never make them [...].

So despite how much he wants to – and we know how much he wants to because he tells us, because by the end of the series he’s not hiding it anymore – Apollo can’t promise Austin that they’ll spend more time together, even if they both survive. The uncertainty has nothing to do with the fact that they are currently facing death. Apollo makes it crystal clear.

Right after his triumphant return on Olympus, where he’s welcomed with full honors, he still doesn’t dare state plainly his desire to go back to visit his children and all the mortals who have helped him along the way. “I’ll visit some old friends,” he says, fully knowing how that will be interpreted, and silently accepts Dionysus’ contribution in muddying the waters even further.

I don’t say this to absolve him. It’s right of Apollo to acknowledge that he’s failed his children. That he should have tried more, and harder, to be there for them anyway. That he must try more and harder NOW. And he does.

But none of the above addresses the Halcyon situation at all. The Halcyon situation is simply not the same.

The closest the TOA narrative ever gets to forcing Apollo to tackle a comparable sort of issue is when it introduces Trophonius, the only other son of Apollo whom we see harbor any kind of resentment toward his father… but even in Trophonius’ case, Apollo is guilty of inaction, not of taking active, violent action against his son.

Granted, there’s good reason to suspect that in Trophonius’s time the rules against divine intervention weren’t yet as strict as they are in the modern age, so Apollo does not have that excuse for his inaction there. And Apollo himself admits there was some sort of punitive intent on his part: he felt Trophonius “deserved to face the consequences” of his bad choices. But even considering all this… the Trophonius situation and the Halcyon situation are still light years apart in their substance.

Trophonius used the talent and the opportunities to make it shine that he’d gotten from his father (we can certainly add nepotism to the list of Apollo’s crimes) to fraud and rob his clients, and was left to deal on his own with the fallout of being discovered.

Halcyon was admonished by Apollo to never use the talent he’d inherited, and chose to disregard that admonition to save the life of a little girl. Something which by the way had zero negative consequences that we know of. For this, Apollo personally took it upon himself to actively punish him, by walling him up in his own house and cursing him to become the twisted instrument of death of countless innocent children for the rest of his days.

The two above things… are not the same.

One might even say the two above things stand in contradiction one with the other, but again that’s not the argument I’m making right now. My point is Apollo’s regret for refusing to help Trophonius and Agamethus can’t even begin to cover what Apollo did to Halcyon.

There is nothing in the whole of TOA that can be construed as even just… a viable proxy to at the very least obliquely address the Halcyon story, and what it implies about Apollo as a god, as a person, and as a parent.

And no, Apollo’s memory problems aren’t a good enough excuse for sidestepping this reckoning, because

that only works if we assume the Halcyon story is a single isolated incident and not representative of a pattern of behavior on Apollo’s part… which brings us right back to the idea that it’s actually OOC for Apollo to have done what Halcyon says he’s done to him. And

at the end of the series Apollo gets all of his godly brain power back. And what happens then? He condemns one final, definitive time Zeus’s and Nero’s treatment of their children without even so much as hinting that he himself has been guilty of exactly the same behavior in the past. Not even the distant past, but a few decades ago at most!

Again I ask: doesn’t that fill you with rage? :))

And yet the narrative contract here explicitly requires us to buy into Apollo’s honesty of intentions. No, there is no guarantee that he will manage to keep his promises. There is no guarantee that from now on he will do everything right either. But we are supposed to at least believe that he WANTS to. At the end of the series, Apollo literally asks us to put our faith and trust in him.

But how can we do that in the face of him choosing to never come clean about the Halcyon thing?

We can’t.

So. Where am I going with this? Am I arguing that the novella should be expunged from canon after all?

No, as stated in the title, I am not. There is a very simple way to reconcile the Halcyon novella with the story that is told in TOA, the Apollo that we hear about in the Halcyon novella with the Apollo we got to know in the 5 books that star him as both protagonist and narrator. All we need to do is let ourselves consider the possibility that Halcyon's punishment… was not Apollo's choice.

Yes, Apollo was the one to enact it, there’s no doubt about that. But he wasn’t the one who came up with it. He wasn’t the one who wanted it.

And the clues are there.

All throughout the series, there is one character who is particularly fearful of prophecies. Who condemned Apollo to his own punishment at the end of HOO by citing as a reason that he'd been too quick to name a new Pythia who could speak the future into existence. Who could plausibly have taken issue with Halcyon’s one single act of interference specifically, because it might not look like it but Halcyon saving that little girl's life is the first domino falling in the long chain that will lead to Luke allying with Kronos, the second Titanomachy, and Olympus' stability being threatened thrice in less than a decade. The character whose personal symbols pop up in key moments of the story: the goat Amalthea, the aegis replica destined to Thalia, his own daughter.

“Prophecies,” Apollo tells Meg in THO, rather vehemently, “are the catalysts for every important event—every quest or battle, disaster or miracle, birth or death. Prophecies don’t simply foretell the future. They shape it! They allow the future to happen.”

Zeus takes this to mean that if he can just stop prophecies from being uttered he can prevent any problem from materializing.

Frank looked at Zeus. ‘Um, sir, Your Majesty, can’t you gods just pop over there with us? You’ve got the chariots and the magic powers and whatnot.’

‘Yes!’ Hazel said. ‘We defeated the giants together in two seconds. Let’s all go –’

‘No,’ Zeus said flatly.

‘No?’ Jason asked. ‘But, Father –’

Zeus’s eyes sparked with power, and Jason realized he’d pushed his dad as far as he could for today … and maybe for the next few centuries.

‘That’s the problem with prophecies,’ Zeus growled. ‘When Apollo allowed the Prophecy of Seven to be spoken, and when Hera took it upon herself to interpret the words, the Fates wove the future in such a way that it had only so many possible outcomes, so many solutions. You seven, the demigods, are destined to defeat Gaia. We, the gods, cannot.’

According to Zeus, prophecies constrain the future. They lock people into a predetermined course of action, a predetermined outcome. They take away people’s ability to choose.

There’s a whole debate to be had on whether Zeus is right or not to think so – and a whole other debate to be had on top of that one on whether Zeus truly believes this is the case or just chooses to delude himself that it is because doing so absolves him of responsibility – but for the moment what matters is that Apollo disagrees with him.

‘Zeus was already angry with me for appointing that new girl, Rachel Dare, as my Oracle. Zeus seems to think I hastened the war with Gaia by doing so, since Rachel issued the Prophecy of Seven as soon as I blessed her. But prophecy doesn’t work that way! [...]’

Apollo thinks of prophecy as a guide, not a prison. Ultimately, it’s still up to each individual to make their own choices:

“The only other person I’ve ever known to have this, er, firewood problem, back in the old days, was this prince named Meleager. His mom got the same kind of prophecy when he was a baby. But she never even told Meleager about the firewood. She just hid it and let him live his life. He grew up to be kind of a privileged, arrogant brat.”

Hazel held Frank’s hand with both of hers. “Frank could never be like that.”

“I know,” I said. “Anyway, Meleager ended up killing a bunch of his relatives. His mom was horrified. She went and found the piece of firewood and threw it in the fire. Boom. End of story.”

Hazel shuddered. “That’s horrible.”

“The point is, Frank’s family was honest with him. His grandmother told him the story of Juno’s visit. She let him carry his own lifeline. She didn’t try to protect him from the hard truth. That shaped who he is. [...] By burning his own tinder, he kind of…I don’t know, started a new fire with it. He’s in charge of his own destiny now. Well, as much as any of us are.

Apollo really believes in people’s right to make their own choices. He believes in people’s right to take responsibility for those choices too. But to be able to do that, people need to be informed.

“Die,” I repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Not disappear, not wouldn’t come back, not suffer defeat.”

“Nope. Die. Or more accurately, three letters, starts with D.”

“Not dad, then,” I suggested. “Or dog.”

One fine blond eyebrow crept above the rim of his glasses. “If you seek out the emperor, one of you will dog? No, Apollo, the word was die.”

“Still, that could mean many things. It could mean a trip to the Underworld. It could mean a death such as Leo suffered, where you pop right back to life. It could mean—”

“Now you’re being evasive,” [...] Jason’s stare was unrelenting. I suspected that in the weeks since his talk with Herophile, he had run every scenario. He was well past the bargaining stage in dealing with this prophecy. He had accepted that death meant death, the way Piper McLean had accepted that Oklahoma meant Oklahoma. I didn’t like that.

“Let’s assume you’re correct,” I said. “You didn’t tell Piper the truth because—?”

“You know what happened to her dad.” [...]

“Yes, but you can’t know how the prophecy will unfold.” [...]

Jason shrugged. “[...] I knew you’d be coming to find me. Herophile said so. If you’d just waited another week—”

“Then what?” I demanded. “You would’ve let us lead you cheerily off to your death? How would that have affected Piper’s peace of mind, once she found out?”

Jason’s ears reddened. It struck me just how young he was—no more than seventeen. [...] Despite all his experiences, was it fair of me to expect him to think logically, and consider everyone else’s feelings with perfect clarity, while pondering his own death?

I tried to soften my tone. “You don’t want Piper to die. I understand that. She wouldn’t want you to die. But avoiding prophecies never works. And keeping secrets from friends, especially deadly secrets…that really never works. It’ll be our job to face Caligula together, steal that homicidal maniac’s shoes, and get away without any five-letter words that start with D.”

The scar ticked at the corner of Jason’s mouth. “Donut?”

It’s hard to say for sure how big a part did Jason’s resignation play in sealing his fate. This is not the time for that discussion anyway, but I think it’s important to make note of the fact that Apollo really, really did not like it. That Jason’s resignation is in fact what scared Apollo the most.

I quoted the above passage almost in full because I think it exemplifies and summarizes better than almost anything Apollo’s views on prophecy.

Apollo thinks of prophecy as a beacon in the darkness. It spurs people into action. It lights up their way and pushes them forward, far from the safe stagnancy whose ultimate and truer expression is death (or immortality. But that too is a digression for another time). It doesn’t take away people’s choices: it gives them new ones.

It’s easy to forget, but Apollo is not just the god of prophecy; he is the god of knowledge and truth too. As much as he’s guilty of doing it himself, he does not actually believe in sticking your head in the sand.

"I warned you," a new voice said. [...]

"You dare come here?" Hades growled. "I should blast you to dust!"

"You cannot," the girl said. "The power of Delphi protects me." [...]

"You've killed the woman I loved!" Hades roared. "Your prophecy brought us to this.'" He loomed over the girl, but she didn't flinch.

"Zeus ordained the explosion to destroy the children," she said, "because you defied his will. I had nothing to do with it. And I did warn you to hide them sooner." [...]

"Perhaps I cannot bring back Maria. Nor can I bring you to an early death. But your soul is still mortal, and I can curse you."

All through the course of PJO, HOO and TOA we see Apollo’s oracle – his oracles plural, in fact: the Sibyl of Cumae and the Sibyl of Erythrae too in addition to the Pythia – share everything they know punctually and without fail. It’s their job to warn people about the future on Apollo’s behalf, despite the unwarranted backlash they get for it. Apollo himself is heavily implied to be the one who’s sending demigods their convenient prophetic dreams. And who else but Apollo could be the source of Octavian’s confidence that the Sibylline books had survived the fall of Rome, well before Percy, Hazel and Frank met Ella the harpy?

In TOA, we see Apollo share all that he learns as soon as he learns it, with each and every one of the people he can count on his side. Even when he thinks it will be detrimental, even when he fears their reaction. He still tells them.

The only times we see Apollo be anything less than forthcoming, it’s to cover up the fact that he legitimately does not have the answer. This became extremely clear in TOA, but Percy, who’s much more intuitive than a lot of people give him credit for, had figured it out already in TTC:

"But it's your Oracle," I protested. "Can't you tell us what the prophecy means?"

Apollo sighed. "You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear through the search."

"In other words, you don't know."

Apollo checked his watch. "Ah, look at the time! I have to run. [...]"

So, here’s the million dollar question: why would Apollo be opposed to Hal doing the same thing he himself always does? Sharing Knowledge? Giving a little girl a choice, a chance to save herself?

He wouldn’t. He is not the one who was against it. He is certainly not the one who wanted to see Hal punished for it.

This recontextualizes Halcyon’s words that “Apollo warned me to keep quiet,” because to speak about the future “would anger the gods.” This phrasing is not an indication of Apollo trying to shirk responsibility for the punishment he was threatening his son with. It’s the literal truth. Halcyon putting his powers to good use would anger the gods – not Apollo himself. Gods like Hades who cursed Apollo’s oracle for trying to warn him of imminent danger, or Zeus who stripped Apollo of his immortality for revealing a prophecy “prematurely”. Gods who should very much not be named lest they turn their attention to Apollo and his son.

In this light, I feel it’s pretty illuminating to look back on this line from THO, right out of Apollo’s own mouth:

How could I have been so foolish? Whenever I angered the other gods, those closest to me were struck down.

Of course, Zeus would have been perfectly capable of enacting the punishment himself, much like he'd done with Asclepius, but… with everything we know about Zeus’ parenting and ruling style after TOA… it’s not that hard to imagine he might have wanted to make a point here. It’s not hard to imagine that having to personally deliver the punishment to his own son might have been Apollo’s own punishment for his son’s transgression.

Remember how many times Apollo likens Zeus to Nero? Wouldn’t it make a scary amount of sense for this to be a “Cassius, I’m rewarding you by letting you cut Luguselwa's hands” move on Zeus’ part?

Apollo, in my generosity, I allow you to give your son the horrible news yourself.

And of course Apollo would have taken the offer. Of course he’d have accepted to take part in this sick game. What other choice did he have? Defying his father? Declaring war on the king of the gods? Should he have murdered some of Zeus’ favorite servants again? He’d done it for Asclepius, and still had not been able to win him a better deal than forever jail. Which, granted, would still have been a better deal than the one Halcyon got… provided that Apollo could achieve that kind of victory again.

Something else to consider: Halcyon almost certainly wasn’t Apollo’s only child at the time. And if Apollo had more children, then those children undoubtedly would have become more targets for Zeus’ anger, had their father dared provoke it any further.

Perhaps Apollo should have taken the risk. Perhaps Apollo chose wrong. But there was no path for him to choose that would not lead to the slaughter of innocents.

At least, this way, Apollo could see and speak to Hal one last time. This way, he could leave his son with a promise that his punishment would come to an end.

Because it’s obvious, from Halcyon’s account of his father’s words and actions, that Apollo had foreseen that Luke and Thalia would be the ones to break the curse, and that Hal would be able to escape his misery by dying to save the life of Zeus’ daughter, and therefore had taken care to set up the means for that potential future to be realized.

The book containing the recipe for greek fire, that Hal was strangely confident they would find on his bookshelves.

The safe containing the aegis replica, an item befitting Zeus’ progeny, that only a son of Hermes could successfully open, and that Hal remembers Apollo telling him “was sealed since before [Hal] was born”. Who could have done that, and why, if not Apollo so that Thalia could eventually take rightful ownership of it?

I’d dare suggest, even, that Apollo might have been the one who sent the goat, with the precise intention of luring Thalia and Luke into the trap, knowing that they would make it out thanks to Hal’s sacrifice, with a gift such to ensure that Thalia’s divine father would have no reason to object to the final outcome of Apollo's gamble, and every incentive to overlook how it had been orchestrated.

But of course Apollo would never tell his son “I had no choice” because WHEN DOES HE EVER. Five books and WE are the only souls he’s actually confessed being an abuse victim to, and even to us he’s given zero details. He never makes excuses for himself. He doesn’t think it matters that he could. He holds himself responsible anyway.

He believes that he must, because his father never does.

‘I know you think your punishment was harsh, Apollo.’

I did not answer. I tried my best to keep my expression polite and neutral.

‘But you must understand,’ Zeus continued, ‘only you could have overthrown Python. Only you could have freed the Oracles. And you did it, as I expected. The suffering, the pain along the way… regrettable, but necessary [...].’

I had no choice, is Zeus’ constant refrain. I can’t help you, he tells the demigods. “You did not ask for this,” he tells Jason. “I did not want it.” And yet who could have forced the hand of the king of the gods?

He tells his son “I can’t praise you.” He tells him “I can’t give you credit.” He says “someone must take the blame.” He says “it’s the lightning bolt that hurt you.” He says “you must understand. It was necessary. I had no choice.”

So Apollo refuses to claim the words for himself, even if they are true.

It’s very noble, but also incredibly misguided. It’s the root of all the communication problems he has with his children. The reason why he can’t bring himself to answer Will, and Kayla, and Austin, when they try to tell him that they want him in their lives, not just once or twice, but always, every day. Even they, who know they are loved, have absolutely no idea how much.

“Maybe Apollo meant we’re going to rescue you,” Thalia said.

Hal typed a new sentence: Or maybe I die today.

“Thank you, Mr. Cheerful,” I said. “I thought you could tell the future. You don’t know what will happen?”

Hal typed: I can’t look. It’s too dangerous. You can see what happened to me last time I tried to use my powers.

“Sure,” I grumbled. “Don’t take the risk. You might mess up this nice life you’ve got here.”

I knew that was mean. But the old man’s cowardice annoyed me. He’d let the gods use him as a punching bag for too long. It was time he fought back, preferably before Thalia and I became the leucrotae’s next meal.

Hal lowered his head. His chest was shaking, and I realized he was crying silently.

When Luke and Thalia meet him at the beginning of the tale, Halcyon is resigned to his fate, and terrified that if he tries to fight it he'll be punished even worse, somehow. He's lost all faith in his father's judgment, and, if he ever had any, in his father's promise of freedom too. He's surrendered to utter despair. He resists Luke's demands that he do something, anything, to help both them and himself.

Then Luke manages to open the safe, and Hal begins to realize that… maybe… just maybe... there’s a possibility that his father had not lied to him.

Hal showed us the short novel he’d written: You’re the ones!! You actually got the treasure!! I can’t believe it!! That safe has been sealed since before I was born!! Apollo told me my curse would end when the owner of the treasure claimed it!! If you’re the owner—

He's still terrified. He struggles to let himself dare hope. But eventually he finds the courage to do the right thing once again: use his talent to save the life of these kids who don't deserve to die.

He reads Thalia's future.

And then he reads Luke's.

I could feel Hal’s pulse in my fingers—one, two, three.

His eyes flew open. He yanked his hands away and stared at me in terror.

“Okay,” I said. My tongue felt like sandpaper. “I’m guessing you didn’t see anything good.”

It’s in that moment, as he finds himself in the exact same position his father Apollo had once been, seeing the terrible tragedy in this child’s future that he knows, in spite of his best efforts, he won’t be able to avert… It’s in that moment that Hal finally understands.

Hal picked up his green leather diary. He gestured for me to follow him. We walked to the closet doorway, where Hal took a pen from his jacket and flipped through the book. I saw pages and pages of neat, cramped handwriting. Finally Hal found an empty page and scribbled something.

He handed the book to me.

The note read, Luke, I want you to take this diary. It has my predictions, my notes about the future, my thoughts about where I went wrong. I think it might help you.

I shook my head. “Hal, this is yours. Keep it.”

He took back the book and wrote, You have an important future. Your choices will change the world. You can learn from my mistakes, continue the diary. It might help you with your decisions.

“What decisions?” I asked. “What did you see that scared you so badly?”

His pen hovered over the page for a long time. I think I finally understand why I was cursed, he wrote. Apollo was right. Sometimes the future really is better left a mystery.

“Hal, your father was a jerk. You didn’t deserve—”

Hal tapped the page insistently.

We are not made privy to Hal’s thought processes in detail. Apollo was right, he writes, and he bristles when Luke tries to protest that notion. He taps the page insistently. What is he trying to communicate? Surely he can’t think that Apollo was right to warn him off of trying to use his gift to save people?

Especially because… Halcyon is at this very moment once again defying fate to try and save someone. He is at this very moment trying to save Luke from the terrible future he’s seen.

He knows he doesn’t know enough. He knows he can’t tell Luke what to do. Luke will have to make his own choices. But Hal can make sure those choices will be as informed as possible. Hal wants to give him a chance. He wants to give him hope, something to hang onto when he will be tried. He wants to give Luke what his father had given him.

Because Hal understands now. Not everything, of course, no. He, and Luke and Thalia too, are still missing the most important pieces of the puzzle. But, clearly, Hal understands enough. Enough to make peace in his heart with his father. Enough to trust that he will get the release his father had promised him in death. Enough to die with a prayer in honor of his father on his lips, quite literally dedicating his heroic sacrifice to him.

I heard Halcyon Green, shouting a battle cry: “For Apollo!”

We have no idea what kind of relationship Hal and Apollo had once upon a time. We don’t know what the tone of Hal and Apollo’s last conversation was. Did Apollo allow his heartbreak to show on his face? Did he tell Hal how sorry he was?

Certainly, he would not have blamed Zeus, and he would not have tried to exculpate himself. Which is why Halcyon still ultimately thinks this was Apollo's decision.

And yet, something peculiar happens when Hal narrates his conversations with Apollo. "My father warned me," he says, "my father cursed me". But in between those we get "then the gods set the leucrotae to guard me". The gods. There’s that phrasing again. And it does make me wonder... is this how Apollo presented the whole thing to Hal? Are these Apollo’s own words?

I have to say, I really can see it. This is the will of the gods, Apollo would have said, and just... never specified but NOT MINE. Because he felt that he had no right to Hal’s understanding, let alone Hal’s forgiveness.

Did Hal pick up on that subconsciously anyway?

We don’t know what kind of relationship Hal and Apollo had once upon a time. We know, because Hal tells us, that Hal had faithfully heeded his father’s warning, until the day he met that little girl, and found that his conscience would not allow him to let her die. We know that in the end Hal forgave his father. That Hal, in his last seconds of life, took comfort in his father’s name.

Why would Hal do such a 180 on Apollo in such a short amount of time? Just based on the realization that Apollo had indeed foreseen all this, and prepared accordingly? Because of what he’d seen when he looked into Luke’s future? It’s a hell of a leap from “Apollo can’t punish me any worse than he already has” to “Apollo was right”, and one that really there’s no way to make logical sense of… unless Hal had just been waiting for an excuse, any excuse, to reconcile himself with the memory of his father. Unless, all this time, Hal had wished nothing more than to be able to believe in his father again.

We don’t know what kind of relationship Hal and Apollo had once upon a time. But Hal’s change of heart, and his behavior leading up to his end, would seem to suggest rather a good one. Not too dissimilar, perhaps, from the one Apollo shares with his kids in the present.

Or perhaps Hal was just scared and desperate as he readied himself to die, and grasping for straws because straws were all he got. For all we know, that’s possible too.

But that is not how Hal appears to Luke in his last moments.

He met my eyes, and I finally understood what he was planning. “Don’t,” I said. “We can all make it out.” Hal pursed his lips. He wrote, We both know that’s impossible. I can communicate with the leucrotae. I am the logical choice for bait. You and Thalia wait in the closet. I’ll lure the monsters into the bathroom. I’ll buy you a few seconds to reach the exit panel before I set off the explosion. It’s the only way you’ll have time.

“No,” I said.

But his expression was grim and determined. He didn’t look like a cowardly old man anymore. He looked like a demigod, ready to go out fighting.

I couldn’t believe he was offering to sacrifice his life for two kids he’d just met, especially after he’d suffered for so many years. And yet, I didn’t need pen and paper to see what he was thinking. This was his chance at redemption. He would do one last heroic thing, and his curse would end today, just as Apollo had foreseen.

He scribbled something and handed me the diary. The last word read: Promise.

I took a deep breath, and closed the book. “Yeah. I promise.”

In his last moments, Hal is full of dignity and hope. He finally finds the courage to stand up tall and proud of himself again. I feel it would be doing Hal a disservice to assume that, in those last moments, his renewed faith in his father was grounded in delusion rather than truth.

What was he trying to communicate to Luke in their last exchange? What did he think Luke could learn from his diary? What is the promise that he asked Luke to make? We’ll never know. Luke chooses to not tell us.

Luke chooses to erase Hal’s last words to him from the narrative, and substitute his own.

I couldn’t shake my grief.

Promise, Halcyon Green had written.

I promise, Hal, I thought. I will learn from your mistakes. If the gods ever treat me that badly, I will fight back.

There’s a lot to be said about the way Halcyon and Luke influence each other in opposite directions. About the way Halcyon’s death and Luke’s death mirror each other. About the way Halcyon’s relationship with Apollo mirrors Luke’s relationship with Hermes. I know @tsarinatorment has excellent thoughts re: this, and not only this, that I hope she will share.

But for now this is already long enough, and so to bring us back to my original point… No, the Halcyon story, taken as it is, does not gel with TOA at all. But once you dig just a little deeper under the surface of it… I’d dare say it becomes impossible to rule it out of canon, because it fits too well within canon. It fills in the narrative blanks left by Apollo, who never tells us the details of Zeus’ abuse, and therefore… never tells us about Hal.

To tell us about Hal would require Apollo to admit that he had no choice. No good ones at least. It would require Apollo to admit that he’s not at fault.

But how can he not be at fault? He literally did do this. It was his words that cursed his son. His hands that delivered the instruments of torture.

So Apollo doesn’t talk about Halcyon. But when he calls himself a terrible father, when he berates himself for his failures as a parent, as a person, as a god, you bet he’s holding himself responsible for Halcyon too.

And in this light it’s interesting, I think, to note that despite how Apollo feels re: prophecy there are no known present day children of Apollo who possess the power to look into the future. There’s only Octavian, who is a legacy, and whose gift is implied to have been passed down his family line, and perhaps Georgina, who is in all likelihood a legacy too, possibly even descended from a different branch of Octavian’s family.

We know from Hephaestus that sometimes gods can choose to suppress the transmission of a specific ability to their children. Hephaestus did it with fire, and I don’t think it’s farfetched to imagine Apollo would have chosen to do it with prophecy after Halcyon. Again I know Tsari has given this far more thought than I have, so I pass the metaphorical mic to her.

Finally, I want to talk about how this whole novella is basically a concentrated allegory of TOA, featuring Halcyon as a stand-in for Apollo himself. Forever trapped in his childhood home full of monsters who have stolen and perverted his voice, and that he can never escape because they are inextricably tied to him, and him to them. Punished for the crime of having a functioning moral compass and having chosen to follow it, and after years of death & tragedy that are framed as a direct result of that choice... he has almost completely internalized the idea that he might actually have been in the wrong. He's surrendered. He’s not only accepted the slaughter but has even become complicit in it. He’s become a monster himself.

And then we get Thalia & Luke who are a stand in for all the people Apollo bonds with on his journey, who give him hope again, who reaffirm his conviction that there IS, there HAS TO BE a better way, and reignite his will to fight. After all, he realizes, what does he have left to lose?

I turned my face to the sky. “If you want to punish me, Father, be my guest, but have the courage to hurt me directly, not my mortal companion. BE A MAN!”

To me this novella absolutely reads like a first outline of the TOA series that Rick might have later decided to flesh out and expand upon. The core themes, the central ideas are all in there.

But Halcyon can only find redemption through death. The narrative denies him the chance to survive and do better. He’s only a man, and for him the odds are impossible. He dies thinking that on some level he deserves it – he brought this on himself. He dies still thinking that maybe he was wrong to save that little girl's life.

I wonder if in the first draft of TOA Apollo was meant to die at the end like Halcyon did. In a way he did die, in fact. But he’s a god, and for a god no odds are impossible. So Apollo is reborn through the power that he finally allowed himself to reclaim, because he finally has learned to believe that he was right to want to use it. He was right to want to help people. He was right. He learns the lesson that Halcyon never could. He is afforded the opportunity to keep trying.

#rrverse #trials of apollo #toa #toa meta #halcyon green #the diary of luke castellan

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bilbobagginshome · 1 year

Text

A Deadbeat’s Journal 22

A Jotaro Kujo x Blackfemreader story

Third-Person Narration.

When y/n broke the news down to her mother, there was an eerie silence that took over. It was as though a jinn had just passed by. Granny Rhoda looked at her daughter, her face an odd mixture between an agape mouth and pleading eyes. Y/n, despite her fidgeting feet, remained stiff, looking straight at her mother well aware that any sign of wavering could lead to her rethinking her already well-thought-out decision.

“Do you need my blessing ?” Faith monotonously questions after sipping her afternoon tea.

“Please, Mom.” Y/n unflinchingly replied.

“You have my blessing. Do you need my help with anything? My connections aren't as good but at least I can make the visa process less daunting.”

“Faith, you can’t be serious. This isn’t her asking to have more independence. This is her moving away from home for a year. She’s still a child, the breasts and degree should not fool you .” Grandma Rhoda responds with a mix of their mother tongue and English in quick-fire, brows etched so tightly they look like they’ll turn to a unibrow and fly away from her face.

“Mama, this is my child. I’m begging you, don't tell me what to do. If this is her decision then why should I refute it? Moreover the last time I took your advice I never saw my only child for almost a month. Life is for the living, let her choose her life decisions.” She responds calmly.

“Y/n why are you doing this to us? Do you need a holiday? I’ll pay. But a whole year away is crazy to think of. Your dad would have never approved you know .” Granny pleads.

“Mom really?” Faith irritatedly remarks while shaking her head.

“I barely knew the man, listen, mama, I know you are scared for me, but cocooning me to the same place will not aid in my recovery. Can’t you see I’ve become less selfish, I’ve made more friends? Seen new perspectives in life and I’m enjoying my life for once? I mean even Jotaro and I get along so well now when a few months ago, aside from the time we spend with Mom Holly, and Grandpa Joseph we would have barely acknowledged one another. And this all happened because I began to live with him .” I blurt out. Another silence stretches. Granny seems defeated, Faith looks more interested in eating the rest of her chocolate cake whilst looking into the backyard.

And it is too beautiful of a backyard to argue in. One look and you’d understand that y/n lived in a lap of luxury. The shimmering, freeform, blue pool sat at the centre of the backyard and it was adorned with rose bushes well tended. A stony footpath led to the elevated back porch of the house and long palm trees surrounded the fenced area. A paradise on earth. It's honestly a surprise why the retired brat insisted on moving out.

“OK, baby, I’m sorry. I understand your aims and I should be more accepting .”Granny resigns and drinks up her now lukewarm tea which she immediately gives way to be warmed.

“Thank you. And mom, the visa is already taken care of. Patience’s dad knows a guy.”Y/n warmly replies.

This kicks off another conversation related to moving and although Granny frown sits at the mention of housing plans, she says nothing. The conversations move as gently as the winds of the day and as the pool lights are switched on and despite insistence from her parents that she should stay for dinner, she refuses and they all escort her to the parking lot.

“Visit me more now that you are leaving okay? and leave Samosa here or at least tell Jotaro to bring her more often.”Faith softly says.

“Sure Mom.”

“I love you .”

“I love you too. Bye.”

* * *

Y/n walks home to find Jotaro removing his promised dinner.

“Just in time. Lasagna and salad for my favourite girl.”He joyfully says

“I didn’t think you’d make it after all that first about how good lasagna is tedious to make.” Y/n teases as she pets Samosa in greeting.

“Well, I decided to so there’s that. And I purchased some good non-alcoholic drinks.” He says whilst gesturing to the cans of mocktails on the dining table.

“And it's my favourite brand too. What’s the special occasion? You are treating me extra tenderly today .” She queries in a suspecting tone.

“Just let's sit and eat, I’ll tell you about it after dinner .”

Y/n washes up and takes a sit at her designated spot and after a bite, her eyes roll back in utter ecstasy.

“Jesus, this is so good! Thank God I didn’t eat at Mom’s honestly. I don’t know if I can control myself or become Garfield.”She moans out. Jotaro smiles sheepishly in response and says.

“Eat to your fill.”

This cues an attempt of y/n almost shoving the food down her throat and fortunately, after four pieces she taps out, a noticeable bulge at her stomach as she finally leans back from her chair.

“That was wonderful.” She burps out and apologises confidently for her disregard for table manners.

“I’ve never seen anything like that and I was around a group of boys for a majority of my college years .” Jotaro laughs out half in shock at the speed she ate the dish and half amazed.

“This is why greed is considered a sin,” Y/n responds whilst picking her teeth with a toothpick.

After feeling less full, she helps Jotaro with the dishes which doesn’t take long for Jotaro is a very efficient cook and they head to the sitting room with their cans.

“I got a yacht.” Jotaro says after they settle down.

“Congrats, when will it be unveiled to me?”

“Soon, I’d like to change up a few things for it to be conducive for safe travel.”

“And you are still fidgeting so what gives, what’s the other news?”

Jotaro suddenly kneels and calls Samosa out. She leisurely walks to the sitting room her collar braced with a blue velvet ring box that has y/n throat tightening and her stomach doing so many backflips she thought she’d vomit out the nicely made meal. He removes the ring box from her neck and softly says as he opens the box

“I’d like a tangible assurance of our love for one another. A gentle promise that we’ll make it work. Now that our paths are splitting once more, I hope that you remember me and I’ll come back to you .”

He reveals two simple gold-plated rings. One’s middle holds a starfish, framed in gold and littered with tiny diamonds and pink gems whereas the other is framed as two koi fish in a circle , this time littered with tiny blue gemstones and diamonds.

She takes the ring box from him and says,

“I thought you were going to propose, I would have run away .” she softly responds

“Don’t tempt me.” He then adds.

“Can I help you wear it?” Y/n nods as he takes the starfish from the box and before he places it in the middle she refutes it and instead places it on the index.

“Granny Rhoda always says to never wear your rings on your middle finger unless married. It brings bad luck,” she says after he rises up.

“Didn’t know you were superstitious.” He jokingly says as he sits next to her.

“I’m not, just not taking any chances. Can I help you wear your ring?” She questions softly with a slight smile.

“No problem.” He tenderly replies. After doing so, Jotaro links their fingers and moves her to him , stealing a kiss.

“Jojo you are so cliche.” She says after they split.

“What can I say, I love classics.”

* * *

“But Jojo, what about pirates, and hurricanes, or just heavy storms, did you think this through ?” Holly’s worries air out on speaker as Jotaro prepares breakfast.

“Mom, the African coastal straits are the most peaceful in the world. Plus there are measures to take during such dire conditions. You’re acting as if I plan on starting a pirate crew and I’m attempting to find the one piece.”Jotaro said as he plates y/n’s an over-easy egg.

“I don’t even know what that means but it seems dangerous. Anyway, you seem already made up so I don’t think you care about my concerns.”Holly sadly responds.

“Of course, I care that you’d know, that’s the whole reason why I informed you.” Jotaro sighs as he mixes his eggs to make his takoyaki omelette.

“Ok, Ok don’t get cranky my dear, Just always keep calling me. I stay worried you know?” Holly says. Suddenly a deep voice that sounds all too similar to Jotaro’s sounds out to say.

“Yes please take care. Mom is always worrying about you.”

“Ok, Dad. I have to go, love you.” He says as he slowly begins to flip his omelette to its desired layers.

“Love you too dear.” Holly lovingly calls out.

“Take care. Love you too.” Sadao responds with the most blase tone Jotaro has ever heard.

Jotaro cancels the call and is in a happier mood as his omelette turns out perfect. Then he hears the slow dragging of feet to the sitting room and beholds at the most frazzled form he has ever seen y/n.

“Why do you look like you just have come out from a tornado’s eye.” he jokingly asks though the tone takes the form of his mom’s earlier.

“I have cramps. I feel like I’m getting stabbed multiple times in my uterus and giving birth at the same time.”Y/n croaks out as she slumps herself on the kitchen island

“Yikes. Are they usually this bad? And do you have any painkillers I can get for you?”Jotaro inquires with a frown etched across his face.

“Sometimes though it's been a while, I have taken some ibuprofen, just waiting for it to kick in,” Y/n responds, she puts her head up to look at him through her chest remains atop the kitchen counter and adds.

“Stop making that face, you look like a grumpy cat .” then softly laughs, as though laughing too loud would increase the pain.

“You still have energy to make jokes huh? Well attempt to have breakfast, then we’ll see what we can do.” Jotaro says as he pushes her plate of buttered toasted bread and eggs to her side.

He then prepares their mugs, reheats the tea to make it extra hot and fills up their cups. They have a quiet breakfast. Samosa, who already bullied Jotaro for an early breakfast is out and only the sounds of Jotaro’s favourite tunes make the silence more comfortable.

“Let’s stay in my room, you’ll be nice and comfy there and I’ll be able to take care of you .”

“Okay.” Y/n mumbles and heads to his room as Jotaro finishes cleaning the dishes

He finds her already dozing off and rather than disturb her any further only scoots her enough to cuddle her more comfortably.

The day passes on quietly. Y/n is consistently woken up to take her meds and eat a snack then sleep and after spending the whole day either cuddling up with her or responding to emails praising his work as Jotaro released his research paper only a week earlier, they have a slow and steady day.

Samosa at one point joins them though after accidentally being shoved one too many times, she resorts to staying on her bed and lulling to sleep.

Jotaro wakes up earlier to make bone marrow soup and rice, something he noticed that helped him during his two days of being sick. He then softly shakes her awake to eat dinner and she surprisingly eats well, even asking for seconds which he gladly obliges.

“Bone marrow soup really is the cure to every illness,” Y/n says as she gulps down her second bowl and takes it to the sink.

“I’m glad you liked it. I hoped it wouldn’t be that bad considering it doesn’t taste exactly the same as the one you made for me.”Jotaro sheepishly replies whilst washing the dishes.

“It was more flavourful actually without being too overbearing for my tummy. Now, what's for dessert? I hope it has so much sugar.” Y/n excitedly says as Jotaro heads to the kitchen to plate their after-dinner snack.

He opens the container filled with double biscuits from her favourite bakery and she cries out in delight.

“You had these delivered? Aw, thank you! I’ve been craving them all day.” she says before separating the layered biscuits and biting on one

“I know, you mumbled them mid-dream.” He calmly replies which almost makes y/n bash his head to the dining table but instead gives him the stink eye and bites once more at the already half-eaten biscuit.

“Can’t you just say welcome rather than embarrassing me?”

“No, where would the fun be in that? And are you getting better ? “ He asks the last part in a more serious tone which she nods at

“Yeah, I’m not that disturbed, don't worry. By tomorrow, I’ll be chilling just will take some things slower than usual. And thank you for helping me, most people, even women don’t care as much when it comes to my cramps. I appreciate it” She smiles as she says it, crumbs still stuck around her mouth as she finishes her dessert.

“I will always be here for you. Never doubt that.” He responds as he softly wipes off the crumbs from her face.

* * *

Y/n walks into Jotaro’s balcony to find him lightly snoring mid-read. His chest softly inhales and exhales and the book atop it seems to be already halfway done.

With a slight smirk on her face, she slowly yet quickly moves back only to tiptoe back with a lit portion of an old newspaper. She slowly waves it across his face, careful enough to not burn him but close enough for him to smell the smoke and a slow twitching of his nose confirms his return to the conscious world as he slowly opens his eyes, she says

“Jojo, the house is on fire.”

This causes him to stand up straight, adrenaline to the max as he frantically looks at the unburned house in confusion and concern. After getting his grip on the prank, he scowls at a beaming y/n who laughs at his face.

“Great Buddha aren’t you a handful.” He groans whilst rubbing his face awake.

“You are so gullible.” She replies with a smirk

“And you cannot live in peace.” He mumbles while slumping down in his chair.

“Aw, don’t be mad, It was just a teeny joke.” She replies while sitting on his lap, arms placed around his neck.

“Give me a kiss and maybe I won’t be so mad.” He pulls her closer as he says so and before y/n is drawn even nearer him she pulls back and says.

“No, I’ll forget what I was coming to tell you. Tonight, the team planned a farewell party for me and I thought you could be my plus one as my unofficial official boyfriend.” She says while looking straight at him.

“What is ‘unofficial-official’ about our current relationship, We make out almost all the time and you have a promise ring from me.” Jotaro bluntly states

“Don’t be so vulgar. And besides, you never asked me to be your girlfriend.” she refutes.

“The promise ring is quite a huge sign.” He responds, the tone never shifting though gazing fondly at their intertwined hands between them

“I just want to be asked.” She silently mumbles while looking at the beach. now that it's approaching May, it seems less congested than it usually is and thus the white sands of the beach seem more exposed to the daylight.

“OK,” He says, his right hand repositioning her jaw to his face.

“Would you be my girlfriend mpenzi wangu?” (My love)

For the nth time y/n thanked God that her complexion does not accept un-melanated behaviours like blushing for he would gloat if he could see how quickly her cheeks rushed with blood at the affectionate Swahili term.

She instead says, “Yes mpenzie (My love), and don’t think you did something by saying that. I know you just want to show how your Swahili has improved.”

And before he could defend himself, she hops off his lap with claims that she should get ready and he only smiles in amusement.

After her shower, Y/n chooses a creamy milkmaid summer dress with a corseted heart shape top and sheer long sleeves. And despite how she’d love to wear heels, the beach wouldn’t allow it so she chooses her equally creamy slip-on with a simple design. She decides on getting her faux fur jacket to warm her during the night and wears her small pink gemstones on her ears and the matching tiny necklace with the gold chain and decides on a charm bracelet that her granny gave her a while back

She walks out to already find Jotaro in a loose-fitting polo shirt and loose-washed denim jeans with his white air forces. Surprisingly, he is hatless and his curls seem even bouncier than normal. And as accessories, he sports his favourite Bulgari watch and a mid-size Cuban chain link

“Damn, you really are showing out.” She says as she looks approvingly at his fit.

“Same to you, give me a spin.” He says as he leans back and Y/n twirls.

“Beautiful, though isn't the dress a bit too-”

“We’ll be running late, let's go” She cuts off by giving him his keys and locking up the house. Samosa remains unamused even as they close the door outside while promising to come back soon.

After a surprisingly short drive filled with y/n constantly changing songs midway and Jotaro being mildly irritated by it, they arrive at the soon-to-be-opened “Starfish Hotel”. The entire building seems empty though on looking ahead bright light illuminates the beach area where the tents have been propped up

As they approach the area, they notice that most people had already arrived.

“Ah, there she is, the guest of honour .” Kate acknowledges as she hugs y/n tightly.

“Wow, y’all went all out .” She says as he looks at the decor.

“Well, It also acts as a welcome to the hospitality staff and a celebratory dinner for the management.” She says unabashedly.

“Killing three birds with one stone.Typical Kenyan behaviour. Anyway, this is my boyfriend Jotaro, Jotaro this is Kate one of my besties here alongside Mary who should be around here.” Y/n introduces as Jotaro shakes his hand with a small ‘pleasure’ and Kate reciprocates the firm enough handshake.

“Oh, Y/n is that you? “ And y/n frowns as she hears the mind-numbing auto of the man casually approaching her while predatorily looking at her.

“Kamau. You’re here?” Y/n questions in a pitchy tone whilst side-eyeing Kate who immediately looks away. As he attempts to raise his hands to a hug she deftly forces a handshake.

“We’ll miss having you here, no one is quite a looker like you .” He continues to babble and she makes a face like someone is grating metal directly close to her ears. Jotaro firmly holds her waist and moves beside him before saying.

“Hey. I’m Jotaro, Y/n’s boyfriend.” He lowly says while glaring at him. Stunned, Kamau looks up at him and mumbly replies ‘Pleasure’ before quickly making an excuse to exit the thick atmosphere. When he leaves, he questions

“Is that jerk the same Kamau who’s been harassing you at work.”

“Yep, and Kate, you promised not to invite him. What happened.?” Y/n tone laced with betrayal faces a guilty-looking Kate

“He was placed on the organising committee and is good friends with the supervisor. Couldn’t say no.” Kate sheepishly replied.

“Well at least you tried, but you seriously did a good job so I can’t complain. Let’s have the buffet ok.” Y/n reassuringly responds and rubs Kate’s arms.

The buffet has a large variety of food. From ribs and baked honey-coated wings to buttered naan and garlic fried rice. And a large assortment of sweets which y/n almost squeals at in delight. According to Mary, who eagerly greets y/n and Jotaro, the chefs are testing out new recipes before the big opening.

As they munch and y/n continues to greet those who come her way with cheerly delight, Jotaro looks on lovingly. He had never seen her at her social element and assumed as much as she was just as much of a homebody as he is, she was just as socially reserved as him but it didn’t seem that way as she eagerly referred to him as ‘Her handsome boyfriend’. The way she would make men who obviously looked onto her with intrigue known well to men, be reminded of his presence and the seriousness of their new relationship. The way that after dinner, despite being a bit too full she danced leisurely with her girlfriends. It was wonderful to see her at her social peak and when the night would become a bit too long, and the partying a tad too annoying, she’d call on him. For now, he was contented to watch her in the distance.

After a few words from the mc who wanted to acknowledge the reason for the festivities, they went back to dancing and y/n, noticing Jotaro was seated, nods at him to dance with her which he declines and she shrugs her shoulders in acceptance as she continues to play whatever party games she’s been shoved into.

“Damn, your girl sure is a beauty.” Mark, one of y/n’s old colleagues with who she is unfamiliar, says as he sits next to Jotaro.

“I know.” He bluntly responds.

“Yeah. Though she is kind of a snob. For a woman, she should have less attitude if she wants to keep a man.” Kamau unnecessarily adds as he sits across Mark.

Jotaro simply grips his cup a tad tighter than normal yet says nothing.

“Really, she seems sweet though, gave me half of her tiramisu when she noticed I didn’t get any.” Mark muses out, his tone seemingly taken by the kind gesture.

“She must have been flirting. And next to Jotaro. Females really are shameless.”

The contents of Jotaro’s cup spill due to how tightly he grips it and at one look at Kamau, he brutishly says in a low tone whilst looking at a wide-eyed Kamau

“Out of respect for my girlfriend’s former colleagues, I kept quiet. But I will not tolerate you hurling insults at her. And she told me all about you. How she could notice that you wanted her. And it took me all the force necessary to not deal with you sooner. So if you don’t want to be pummeled, keep her name out of your fucking mouth.”

And then he walked away from a stunned Mark and a quivering Kamau to her who, unaware, was currently failing at a limbo game. She camly accepts defeat when she notices Jotaro near her and says

“Why are your frown lines showing ?” She smoothens out his forehead which causes him to relax.”

“Nothing my love.” He softly responds, removing her hand from his forehead and giving each one a kiss.

“Stop that, we’re in public.” Y/n shyly says as she removes her hands from his

This time though, Jotaro joins her in playing some games and after a few wins in his belt all under y/n’s name as she claimed he’s ‘Good at everything’ and couldn’t prove her wrong simply because of pride they head home, happy that they actually went to the event.

* * *

Despite the ignorance played around the Kujo-L/n household, the day came for y/n to take flight. She felt the jitters and anxiety from uprooting her life to someplace new even though it was for a short while. She contemplated cancelling the thing but after Patience went to excruciatingly long details on how difficult it was to get her the visa in a successful attempt to make her feel guilty, she bit down her fears. And yet, the day still arrived.

At the Mombasa SGR terminus, where she would head to the JKIA in Nairobi she looked over the large floor-to-ceiling window which displayed the outskirts of her beautiful city. She had already bid her mom and grandma a tearful one as this was the first time in a long time she had seen her dear mom’s eyes well up. Samosa, who was dropped off with all her toys and remaining food at her place simply let y/n pet her a little more than usual and there was a glint of something when she looked back at her for the last time in a while.

‘First Class boarders, please prepare your luggage as the gates open.’

Patience and Abdul decide that this is the perfect time to rush to the washrooms and Y/n, slightly annoyed remains seated with Jotaro.

“I’ll miss you, my love.” Jotaro sorrowfully says as he hugs her tightly.

“I’ll miss you more. Nakupenda.” Y/n hoarsely replies, attempting to not let her waterly eyes burst into tears.

And they shared one last kiss even as the last warning for the trains blares out. And as her friends rushedly tell ‘Mr Lover Boy’ to let her go, she releases from their tight hug first and before she enters the train, she notices he mouths something to her in a watery smile.

When they are finally sat and the train begins to move away from Mombasa, as her two menaces attempt to lift her mood by teasing about her little white boy, she realises with a smile that he had mouthed out the phrase,

‘Nakupenda pia.’

( I love you too)

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#Jotaro kujo Jotaro x reader jotaro x reader Jotaro x black reader jotaro x yn jotaro x black yn jotaro imagines jotaro scenarios jjba jojo

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ltleflrt · 3 years

Note

Hey Carrie! You talked a little the other day about writers' tendency to start a fic too early in the story, and how you see a lot of first scenes that could have been scrapped to improve the story. My question is if you have some tips to recognize while writing that first scene that you are starting too early in the story?

Hello friend!

That's a really good question, and I'll see if I can give an answer that makes sense. I am not a professional, and I'm not educated or trained in this stuff, it's just something that I recognize from years and years and years of voracious reading. And as with all writing advice, I encourage you to take what I'm going to say with a grain of salt and remember that no writing rule is a hard rule, only a guideline.

Also, my advice is going to be pertaining fanfiction, and specifically to AUs. Obviously a published book has an editor with a razor blade going through a manuscript for you, and the problems that bother me in fanfiction crop up in AUs more than Canonverse.

Oh, and every instance of "you" is general, not specific 😜

So I think the main problem that I see is that people are starting with an Info Dump. An Info Dump is not always a bad thing, sometimes it's completely necessary, but it is NOT where you want to start your story. If it absolutely has to be done, it's better to be somewhere in the middle or near the end. When it's something that your characters need to know.

That's an important bit: Do your characters need to know this?

And related to that: Does your audience need to know this for the story to make sense?

And very important follow up: If the answers to the above questions are yes, does the character/audience need to know this RIGHT NOW?

There's a lot of information about your story that YOU need to know. Heck, my notes files are full of sooooooo much stuff that I know about the characters and plot that never reaches the final product.

So when you're reading your first chapter (I say reading, not writing, because sometimes info dumping for your own benefit is good, and then you fix it before you share the story lol), ask yourself those two questions.

So for example:

In an AU where Dean is a tattoo artist, and it's his POV. The story starts with Dean driving to work, and when he gets there he's going to find out that the empty shop next door has been purchased and is going to be a yoga studio. He meets Castiel out front, up on a ladder trying to hang a hand painted sign, and some teens go running buy and knock into the ladder and Dean has to catch Castiel from falling. (Anyone who wants to adopt this idea is welcome to it btw, I would love to read this lol)

The mistake I often see in a first chapter like this is that as Dean is walking to work, there's a whole Info Dump about why he's a tattoo artist instead of a hunter. He'll be ambling along, thinking about his nice little business, and there's info about how his mom died in a fire, and his dad was a jerk, and Dean didn't go to college because he saved his money for Sammy's college fund, and Dean's only passion was art, and Bobby Singer introduced him to a tattoo shop owner who took Dean under his wing, etc.

Question 1, does your character need to know this?: Why is Dean reflecting on his past? Does Castiel need to know this information in order to build a romance with Dean?

Question 2, does your audience need to know this?: Why does this information matter? If Dean's only reflecting on this because you want to make sure your audience knows where the timeline changed and this became an AU, then you're starting too early in your story. Dean doesn't need to know this, and honestly in a lot of cases the reader doesn't need to know this. This is information that should have been left in your notes file.

Question 3, does the character/audience need to know this NOW?: If this information is pertinent to the plot, like maybe there's some trauma there that Castiel might need to know about to develop their relationship, then you don't want to put it HERE, you want to put it in a conversation with Castiel LATER.

If I was writing this AU, I would just start with Dean sipping his coffee, he's kinda tired because reasons, he looks up to see an unusual commotion, and has to drop his coffee and sprint forward to catch Cas. If he's reflecting on anything in this scene, it's going to be whatever made him tired, or how good/bad the coffee is this morning. Since Cas is a new business owner, they can talk about the origins of Dean's business on their first date, because it'll be a relevant response to Castiel talking about the origins of his yoga studio.

And just in general, if Dean's origin story includes a lot of canon elements, like mom dying in a fire, dad being a deadbeat, Sammy being the adorable overachieving Stanford student.... try to hide that info for as long as you can so that the audience is actually curious about it by the time the info might pop up. It's the wild divergences that are more interesting earlier on.

Okay, and then I want to talk about my giant pet peeve for a starting chapter. It's a specific kind of info dump, that often includes the stuff from above, but then goes a step further.

My nemesis, The Daily Grind.

I haven't asked the authors, so I could be wrong about this, but I feel like most of the time when this type of chapter is included in a story it is because the author wants to show the reader that the character's life is boring and meaningless before the plot's inciting incident. I can absolutely see why that might be considered an important detail about the character, but keep in mind if it's boring and meaningless to the character, it's boring and meaningless to your audience.

You know how I said earlier that writing tips should never be hard and fast rules? Well this is in regards to that Show Don't Tell rule, and it's an example of TOO MUCH showing lol

It is possible to do a daily grind in an interesting way, but only if you include a Shake Up right away. And you have to look at the 3 questions a little bit differently.

So for example:

Castiel POV, and he works in an office. His daily routine is to always get up at the same time every day, he goes for his run, he grooms himself, he has his breakfast, he goes to work and talks to Kelly about how Jack's doing in kindergarten for a few minutes before going into his office. Adler comes in to be a prick, Castiel hates him for it, and then he does his reports, has lunch hiding in a corner of the lunch room so that his co-workers will leave him alone, he does more reporting, leaves an hour after his shift technically ends, goes home to a lonely apartment that maybe includes a pet who is the only being that shows him affection, has an unsatisfying dinner of leftover takeout while watching a mindless reality tv show, then he goes to bed.

Ugh.

BORING.

Which, yeah I get it, the point is that his life is boring. But now the story is too, and I've clicked the back button before I can see how exciting it's capable of getting.

Question 1, does your character need to know this?: No. He knows. Poor thing definitely already knows.

Question 2, does your audience need to know this?: Yes, but...

Question 3, does the character/audience need to know this NOW?: Yes, but new question for ya:

Optional Question 4, why does this need to be separate from your plot's inciting incident? The answer to this 4th question is usually that it doesn't.

Chapter 2 of this type of beginning usually shows the shake up of Castiel's day. My advice is to start with the shakeup, and sprinkle in the details of what you would have put into chapter 1 to show the contrast. It's far more interesting to learn how boring Castiel's day is by starting with the shake up.

So, same scenario:

Castiel's alarm doesn't go off for some reason, OH NO HIS ROUTINE IS SHAKEN UP! You're explaining his routine while also stressing him the fuck out because he has to rush, or skip something that he normally needs to do. Action! Interesting! He gets to work late, and has to miss his conversation with Kelly about Jack because she's telling him that Adler's already in his office being a prick because Castiel isn't there waiting for him like he always is. Oh shit, he's pissing off his asshole boss! Conflict! He's so flustered by the shakeups that he misses something on his report, and he gets a call from that new marketing guy Dean Winchester who asks if they can have a meeting about it when Castiel normally takes his lunch. BAM! MEET CUTE OPPORTUNITY! While Castiel is getting all flustered by how pretty Dean is while they talk about TPS reports, he can reflect on how this is both better and worse than hiding from his co-workers in the corner of the lunch room. The rest of the day after that meeting he's thinking about how weird this day is, he still goes home an hour late, he talks to his pet about his weird day when he gets home, and maybe he still eats leftover takeout, but he's not paying attention to the reality tv show because holy shit he wants to count Dean's freckles.

In this example, you're Telling the audience about Castiel's normal routine instead of Showing them. But since it's during a plot heavy chapter, it works!

Lemme see if I can TL:DR this...

As you're reading, ask yourself who needs to know this information, why do they need to know this information, and why is it important for this information to be included early instead of later?

If the answer to any of those questions boils down to "this is backstory" instead of "this kicks off the plot", then you've started too early.

I hope this helps? I'm always nervous about giving writing advice because so much of the time I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm just feeling around in the dark. And I definitely do not ever want to hurt an author's feelings, because this hobby is so fucking hard, and we're all fragile. Even authors who welcome con-crit with open arms will have a weak point that they're unaware of that might get poked wrong and cause a crack, ya know?

I hope anyone who gets this far who might see their own works reflected in my examples understands that I have a lot of respect for their ability to put their work out into the world, and I want them to keep doing it. We're here to have fun, okay? Okay. I love y'all 💜

#ltleramblings #writer's angst #also i think some of these problems can be solved with a prologue #but that's something i'm literally exploring in my current WIP #so I have no idea if I'm doing it right #and i might be breaking all of my own rules with it lol

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zorobae · 3 years

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Rereading One Piece #6

There are many themes/lessons in One Piece that you could easily apply to real life. And imo, it’s most obvious during the Fishman Island arc cuz much of it is about race. Jimbei tries to explain to Luffy why they need a plan to make Luffy the hero instead of him, just barging in to beat up Hody. The only reason Luffy ends up agreeing to Jimbei’s plan, though, is cuz he promises him meat. Luffy doesn’t understand the race conflict (between humans and fishmen) in the slightest since he himself doesn’t treat anyone differently at all because of their race or gender or looks. Someone’s past crimes don’t matter to him either. He never meets anyone with prejudice or judgement at first sight. When someone is nice to Luffy, he is nice to them and when someone mistreats either Luffy or his nakama, he will send them flying. It’s that simple for him. Really, the only thing he cares about when meeting someone new, is how they treat him. It’s one of the many things about his character that I think everyone should aspire to be like, too. We know now that kanjurou was a filthy traitor which is why it was weirdly upsetting to reread even any mention of him in the Punk Hazard and Dressrosa arcs. And to see how desperately Kinemon tried to get back to him. I just kept thinking “don’t even bother” although I already know full well what happens (lol). The Dressrosa arc is where I caught up on One Piece after reading it the first time. I remember being surprised by how many fans liked Doflamingo. I def get it now, though. He is a charismatic, interesting and well-written villain, for sure. But he’s also a monster. We don’t get to see all the tragedy and suffering he caused throughout his life but we e.g. see what he did to Kyros and his family and also Law and Cora - which is enough. Kyros’ flashback is rather short but... he cuts off his leg to save his father-in-law just to then get turned into a doll and be forgotten by everyone he loves. And then his wife dies in his arms without even remembering him. Props to Oda-sensei, though, for managing to come up with increasingly painful stories over the course of this series. I think Sugar’s ability is probably the most terrifying one we’ve seen so far. The only reason she didn’t get Luffy, to be forgotten by everyone, is cuz he unknowingly got saved by Usopp. There are many great moments in Dressrosa’s arc but Usopp, awakening his observation haki and showing what an incredible sniper he is, is my favorite. We all know that Usopp, Nami and Chopper aren’t the best at melee combat. But each of them excels in their individual areas, as sniper, navigator and doctor. I’m always proud of them when they get their moments to shine. Then of course, there’s also the revelation that Sabo is alive. I still remember that my initial reaction was excitement. But then I thought a bit more about it and got mad at Sabo, for keeping the fact that he was alive from Luffy and Ace all these years. The only thing we knew is that he’s part of the Revolutionary Army and I couldn’t think of anything that woulda justified his silence. I didn’t see any convincing theories either. But heck, we’re supposed to admire that deadbeat dad, dragon, cuz he leads the RA so why not be okay with Sabo, turning out to be a shitty brother. He was too busy in the RA, too, after all. Needless to say, I immediately forgave him when it was revealed that he had amnesia (which had not occurred to me at all). This is something I’m infinitely glad to have been wrong about. Sabo is a great older bro, thank Oda~ One thing I still wonder about, though, is why Robin didn’t tell Luffy about Sabo, as soon as she returned after the timeskip.

#one piece #rambling for ts #text

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thenightgazer · 3 years

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A Long Way Home

While still trapped in the Underworld, Dante and Vergil have to resolve their family issue. One that can't be solved only by swords and guns.

It's been two years since Red Grave incident, one week after Christmas, and still no news about Dante and Vergil. That leaves Nero terribly upset, but little did he know that miracle will come to him very soon.

Merry Christmas @nibbbs! Surprise surprise, I’m your secret santa from @dmcsecretsanta! Hopefully you enjoy the gift I wrote for you! Happy reading and happy holiday!

You can also read it on my AO3!

~~~

The Underworld has never been this quiet before.

That forsaken place is the real no man’s land; always boisterous with fights between demons to take over the throne of the Underworld. Be it a slaughter between lower demons or higher demons, they couldn’t care less. Their primal instinct is just craving more power and of course, human flesh. But since the portal to cross into the human world isn’t always unfolded, cannibalism is ineluctable. It’s either eat or be eaten. It’s bound to happen and demons don’t have any choices but to yield to the Underworld’s natural law. Surviving and escaping the Underworld seems like an absurd fantasy for humans, even for demons as well.

Which is why voluntarily jumping into the depth of the Underworld to save the world is considered to be a valiant and honorable act, yet also frivolously lunatic.

Well, for Dante, lunatic sounds like his middle name, if he ever had one.

He chuckles by the thought of that.

“What are you laughing at?” Dante’s problematic twin brother Vergil snarls.

“Nothing,” Dante closes his eyes. “Just having a weird thought.”

Vergil replies nothing. He shows no interest in Dante's daydream, but that’s just probably because he’s too tired to even think of a reply. The twins couldn’t count how many days have passed since they cut the Qliphoth tree down. They spared and killed any demons nearby, exploring other regions of the Underworld simply because they are bored and need some time to rebound their lost time as brothers. Now, exhaustion forces them to take some rest. They lean side by side on the scorched desert, staring at the perpetual black sky while restoring their energy.

Dante can sense a demon’s presence not too far from where he is right now, but that presence fades eventually. “You feel that too, Verge?”

“I do,” Vergil murmurs. “The words have been spoken, I presume. That they better not to disturb us if they still want to live.”

“Well, once we recover, they’re going to die anyway.”

Vergil’s short hum speaks of his concurrence.

Dante shifts his hands under his head as he glances to his brother. Vergil stiffly lies on the ground with Yamato on his chest while his hands gripping on it. He might close his eyes but Dante knows his brother can still attack his opponent while closing his eyes. As hard as a steel, this old bastard, Dante amuses at his idea. “Rest means relaxing, bro. You don’t have to be on guard all the time.”

“I’m preparing for any attack.”

“It’s not like there is a demon near us at this moment.”

“Have some self-consciousness, Dante. You could attack me at any time, given a chance.”

Dante wakes up straight away. “Why would I wanna attack you?!”

“There’s always a possibility.”

“Says the guy who always has the intention to kill me, huh,” Dante lies back again. “Seriously, Verge. Just for five minutes, stop thinking and go to sleep. Bet it’s been a while since you have a proper sleep, right?”

Neither show any agreement or disagreement, Vergil turns his head to Dante. “Why are you still awake then?”

“Huh? To keep an eye on you, of course. Who knows you’d do some weird shit outta there again.”

Vergil curves a smirk, then turns his eyes to the dark sky again. “I see. You are also scared of me attacking you while you’re asleep, aren’t you? We’re twins, after all.”

“I don’t-” Dante almost bite his mouth.. “Man, you’re as sharp and annoying as you always have been.”

“I take that as a compliment.”

“Yeah right.”

And there’s silence again. It’s been days, or weeks, since the last time Dante hears any demonic voices around him. To be honest, he kind of expects their appearance. He likes talking to Vergil, but the older brother has an issue in healthy communication. Hell, Vergil is a difficult person and Dante wonders if the eldest children around the world are always like this. But Dante realizes he is also no expert in social interaction, and fighting is also the only thing they both are good at. Vergil would talk a little bit much when fighting, even if it’s mostly taunting and mocking Dante, yet it’s better than having Vergil succumb to the dark side again.

“By the way,” Dante breaks the ice. “Are you ready now to tell me who’s the lucky girl a.k.a Nero’s mom?”

Vergil draws the Yamato above Dante’s throat. “One more word, and I’ll cut you into pieces.”

“C’moooon! I’m curious!”

The Yamato is now touching Dante’s skin. “Final warning, Dante.”

Dante flicks the Yamato’s blade. “Fine. Whenever you’re ready, bro. You might not want to tell me, but you owe that to Nero. He’s your son. He deserves to know.”

Vergil sheathes Yamato, scoffing at Dante’s warning. “It’s not like I’m going back to the human world.”

“Well, we HAVE to!”

“Pray tell why I should agree with you.”

“I have a shop to run and there’s a new menu at my favorite pizza parlor. You should try it, by the way. And you got a lot to explain to Nero. You don’t wanna be a deadbeat like Father, right? Though you kinda already are all this time.”

“You know it better than anyone else that I didn’t know Nero’s existence until you told me so.”

“Which is more reason why you have to come back to the human world soon. You can say you don’t need to catch up with Nero but I know you want it. You left him your frigging book; the same one you didn’t allow me to borrow. Dear ol’ Vergil got some soft spots for his son, huh?”

Vergil turns his back from Dante like a sulking child, ignoring his younger twin’s laughter. As expected from a cold man like him, he won’t ever admit that every single of Dante’s words is true. Again, a long and neglected fear consumes him. What’s fatherhood for a man who ran out of place and time like him anyway? Is there any chance for him to fix his family? Getting back in terms with Dante is one thing, but with Nero, the son he had never met before his escapement from the Underworld? Does he even have a right to call him his son after all he had done to him?

After quite long of silence and battle with himself, Vergil murmurs a question to Dante. “How old is he?”

Dante almost squealed if only he didn’t remember not to ruin Vergil’s mood or else they won’t have any friendly conversation anymore. “Nero? Twenty-something, I guess. Haven’t asked him myself.”

“How did you meet each other?”

“Long short story, some weird-ass cult that worshipped our father as a god turned out evil and wanted to use our father’s power to rule the world-”

“The Order of the Sword?”

“Right! You did your research! Nero was one of them but rebelled after they kidnapped his girlfriend and killed her brother. I came to Fortuna to retrieve the Sparda sword and apparently your kid was able to summon the Yamato and I got the picture already. He got white hair, he summoned Yamato, tried to kill me repeatedly, stab me with Rebellion and Yamato, craving for more power to save his beloved. I wondered where he got that from, by the way~”

A hint of smirk curves in Vergil’s mouth.

“Then we worked together to save Fortuna from a pope who was obsessed with our Father and destroyed the island. We succeeded and brought peace. Nero got his girlfriend back, and we established the branch of Devil May Cry in Fortuna. The end.”

“A heartwarming, and very unoriginal story.”

“You think I made up that story?”

“Didn’t say that. I am merely implying that I heard stories similar to your experience.”

“Hell knows you are the coldest person alive, but you are a terrible liar. You are a man of pride, after all. Lying doesn’t suit you.”

“I can tell thousands of lies as I please, if only that’s necessary,” Vergil takes a brief look at Dante’s mischievous face. “But I won’t, if it’s concerning my son.”

Is this really the Vergil I used to know? Dante can’t hold his grin while elbowing his brother. “Starting to feel like a real dad, huh?”

“Silence.”

“Admitting that you love your son won’t do any harm, Verge.”

“I-” Vergil stumbles upon his own words. He growls impatiently, hurrying himself to get up and sit down as he wipes his face frustratedly. “We’re not having this conversation anymore.”

“Why? Just because you can’t admit that you grew care for your son?”

“Because I’m a terrible person!”

That was the most honest words that came from Vergil, if anything, ever. When was the last time he showed his vulnerable side like this? Even as V, crumbling and dying slowly, he didn’t even spare Dante any sign of defeat and regret. Dante gets up, clapping Vergil’s shoulder. “Only if you still want to destroy the world and kill your own family, then maybe I’d call you the worst shit in the world too.”

Vergil shakes his head. “If only…”

“Huh?”

“Had I known I have a son back then…” Vergil says bitterly. “I would never leave him. I would never go pursuing power or raising that foolish tower and this ridiculous tree…” he points to the remains of Qliphoth tree with his sword. “I would have a better chance to be… a good father for him…”

Regret always comes late, isn’t it? The ‘if onlys’ never come at the front of the mind, merely whispering behind the head but never appearing into the surface before regret comes. Vergil knows that, but never really understands it until Dante tells him that Nero- the very man whose arm was ripped by him and still willing to help him in every way- is his own flesh and blood. His priority was to seal the gate of the Underworld and cut the Qliphoth tree, so that Nero and the rest of the human world are safe and sound. He will stay in the Underworld to redeem himself, for he thinks he has no place in the human world for all he has done. He planned to create a portal to the human world after he fixed things up with Dante to kick him out from the Hell with force, because he knows Dante won’t leave him alone again and will do anything to drag Vergil out from the Underworld. The plan is simple. It should have been easy to execute.

Yet ever since Vergil landed at this hellhole, his steps are getting heavier as time goes on. A haunting voice inside his head kept telling him to come back to Nero as soon as he finished his job cutting Qliphoth roots. Another sound tells him he should stay longer here with Dante to catch up with their sibling bound. The third sound, more demanding and urging, tells him to stay in the Underworld forever as a redemption.

“Y’know, bro,” Dante folds his legs as he seizes the Yamato from Vergil’s hand and puts it on the ground, which dismays Vergil. “Gotta admit that I wanted to kill you because I wanted to free you from evil, and get rid of Nero’s burden of having you as his father. Though he proved to us that we are just a bunch of nonsensical idiots who got unsolved sibling problems between us-”

“I am not an idiot!”

“You might have scored higher on the Math test than me but you’re still an idiot!” Dante barks. “Anyway that’s not my point! What I mean to say is, as much as I hate your dumb-as-rock head, you’re still my brother. And it’s never too late to fix things up.”

Vergil scoffs and takes his sword back to his embrace again. “How can you be so sure?”

“I blamed you, y’know, for that day” Dante admits, his eyes getting darker and the carefree vibe in his voice is gradually gone. “For not rescuing me and Mother.”

Vergil streaked at that confession. “What do you mean?”

“You thought Mother only saved me and left you behind while she died searching for you,” Dante woefully chuckles. “But for me, on that day, I thought you would come to rescue us.”

“I was planning to-”

“She could have hid with me in the closet until you come to save us. That’s what I thought back then when she died, and you never came back. I thought you left us, before I heard one of them say they had you killed. There I was; frightened and thinking that I was alone. My mother and brother died. No one could save me but myself. I was blaming you for running away that day. If you didn’t, we could have defeated them all and protected our home.”

“Or, we could have died. All of us.”

“Exactly. Instead of blaming you, I blamed myself for picking a fight with you. Should’ve left you and your book alone,” Dante stands up, spinning the Ivory before shooting a flying demon that approaches them. “I lived by loathing myself, until I met you again in that cursed church, remember? I was genuinely happy to see you.”

“I remember,” Vergil nods slowly, recalling a blurry picture of their younger selves. “You said you are a devil hunter and will be filthy rich someday.”

“Still waiting for that day, actually. Yet you fucker started being a dick, saying shits about power and stuff,” Dante’s harsh voice trembles slightly. “I thought we could start over as a family, but you decided to fucking stay in the Underworld. I couldn’t save you at the gate of the Underworld. I couldn’t save you at Mallet Island. I could save everyone else, but not my own family.”

Vergil raises up. His arm is reaching Dante’s shoulder, but it never touches him. His hesitation is rational, for he knows words can’t describe how Dante must have felt towards Vergil. Hatred might be the wrong word; it sounds too soft. Too lenient, too merciful.

One could tell it’s disappointment, Vergil gets his answer as Dante turns over to face him. The mischievous little brother side of Dante has gone as he aims his gun at Vergil. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. Let alone a family.

Dante wails horridly. “Always the quiet one, ain’t cha? Remember how our parents always told me to be quiet like you? ‘Why can’t you just behave like Vergil?’ Guess what? At least I’m not the one who fucked the world up and ripped off my son’s arm-”

“Dante-”

“Shut the fuck up!” Dante’s grip on Ivory is slightly trembling as he snaps. “I’ve been through shits too, Vergil. I missed Father and Mother. I missed you, for fuck sake! After all this time I believed I killed you in Mallet Island, then you came out of nowhere to destroy the world. I came out with the conclusion that you didn’t even change a bit, just an egomaniacal who thinks the world only revolves around him. I needed to kill you again because I don’t want my nephew to kill his own father. Don’t you fucking realize how maddening was that?!”

A bullet passes through Vergil’s head. The older hybrid stands still without any intention to return the attack, only wiping the blood from his forehead. I don’t have the right to be irritated, he reminds himself while his mouth forms a bitter grimace as Dante puts the gun on Vergil’s forehead, ready to pull the trigger anytime soon. For a second Vergil can sense Dante is going to lose his temper as he catches a glimpse of red flash in Dante’s eyes. Ever since they were kids, Vergil was always aware that Dante in his total wrath is dangerous. A ticking bomb , Vergil recalls what their father said about Dante’s anger as he watches the raging fire in Dante’s eyes ignite until it’s slowly fading.

“But I changed my mind again,” Dante continues. “Instead of blaming you and carrying on the bad blood, I choose to start over. And that’s how I can be sure,” he pokes Vergil’s head with the gun before putting it back into his coat. “That everyone deserves a second chance and it’s never too late to fix what you have done.”

The red devil yawns as he slams himself on the ground again, stretching his hands before he closes his eyes. “Sorry for raising my voice. It’s just impossible to use soft words whenever I’m talking to a stubborn jackass like you.”

He opens one of his eyes to see what Vergil would react. His older brother sighs heavily, sitting beside Dante’s lying body and puts his katana on the ground. For a man with a soul of a true warrior like Vergil, putting weapons down on the ground is a sign of defeat. Which is the reason why he was slightly aggravated when Dante seized the Yamato and put it on the ground as if he told Vergil to surrender. It should be a humiliating act, but for once Vergil throws his pride away.

Because you are right, Dante.

“Dante,” he calls his brother. This time there’s no hostility in his voice, only sincerity and repentance. “I am ever so sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Dante smirks playfully. “Why do you think I’m here if I still hold a grudge against you?”

“I mean it,” Vergil emphasizes. “Truthfully. For everything I have done… and my sincere gratitude for taking good care of my son while I wasn’t there for him.”

“Honestly, Verge. Forget it. I only do what I have to do.”

Watching his little brother finally howls in laughter, a surge of warmth fills Vergil’s veins as he joins the laughter. It’s comforting, since they can’t remember the last time they laugh together without any fight and bad blood. I barely remember how it feels like to have a family, Vergil chuckles while Dante kicks Vergil’s knee mischievously. Was it always this… warm?

“Dante.”

“Yup?”

“I think we should go back to the human world now.”

Dante whistles in joy. “Ready to meet your grandkids?”

“Do tell me the truth,” Vergil growls, impetuously tugs Dante’s collar. “Are you serious about grandchildren or you just make it up?”

“For fuck sake, Verge! Didn’t you know that already when you ripped your son’s arm?”

“I didn’t pay much attention... I can only recall a voice of woman called Nero for dinner- not the voice of that mouthful friend of Nero-”

“Yeah that was Kyrie. Your soon-to-be daughter in law. Anyway they adopted kids called Carlo, Kyle, and Julio,” Dante pats Vergil’s shoulder with pride and teasing manner. “Congratulations, you’re officially a grandpa! What a fine day for revelation!”

As if my life could get any worse, Vergil grinds his teeth in frustration as he releases Dante from his grip. “How unfortunate.”

“C’mon, swing that flimsy sword of yours and make a portal to the human world. We got plenty of things to do! I gotta pay those bills, refurbish my shop, return Kalina Ann to Lady, and buy a birthday present for Patty.”

“Rather a cumbersome list you got there, Dante.”

“What can I say? I’m a busy man! Now get your ass up, old man! Nero’s waiting!”

---

It’s already two fucking years.

Nero was never a believer. There’s no such thing as a miracle, he told himself. Protecting Kyrie and the kids is an endless responsibility that bestowed upon him. There’s nothing he won’t do for their happiness and safety, even if it means to cost his own well-being. He relies on nobody but himself. He doesn’t pray. He never tries to exceed any expectation, because hope is a dangerous and fragile thing. Hope bothers him, and he hates to be bothered.

Yet, lately, he almost surrendered by the temptation to hold some hope.

What hope? Nero rejects his own thought. For those douchebags to return safely? Gimme a break.

Sitting in his garage and polishing the Red Queen, Nero takes a brief look at the snowy ground outside of the house where the children are building a snowman. He grins at Kyle who waves at him; the youngest from the three children he adopted, who’s now taller and braver than he used to be when he found the little boy searching for some scraps at Fortuna’s slum. Nero chuckles when a glimpse of a picture of Vergil meeting Kyrie and the boys pops out from his head. Would they be pleased to meet him? Would Vergil be pleased to meet them? Would he himself be pleased to meet Vergil again? There’s no fucking way for them to coming back, Nero slaps himself. They either die or shit themselves in the Underworld. Probably fucking fighting again like toddlers.

Still, the thought of his father and uncle somehow return and meeting his little family is overwhelming. Nero can’t even hide his smile anymore. He throws away the rug he uses to wipe the blade and hangs the Red Queen on the wall.

Come to think of it, that fucker ripped off my arm in this garage too.

He lays a hard punch on the wall.

“Keep punchin’ the wall, and ya would destroy the house.”

Nero glances at his friend and partner in crime, Nico, who rests her back on the van and lights her cigarette. He still finds it strange to witness Nico in her winter outfit, a contrast to her usual tanktop and shorts she used to wear before winter comes. "How many times have I told you to smoke outside the house?”

“Ya blind or what? It’s cold outside!”

“Darn it, Nico! Then don’t smoke!”

“Too late~” Nico barks a laugh while blowing a smoke. “Anyway, why did you punch the wall like a madman?”

Nero shrugs nonchalantly. “Nothing. Just feeling like punching something.”

“Cut the bullshit. Ya missed yer old man, ain’t cha?”

“Buzz off, Nico.”

“Aaaaw, don’t be so meanie~”

“Seriously, Nico. Go bugger off someone else. I’m not in the mood for having a chit-chat.”

“Everyone’s worried, ya know,” Nico exhales exaggeratedly, pointing at the children outside. “Those lil’ brats asked me if somethin’ pissed ya off because ya look like ya wanted to punch someone in the face since the Christmas party last week.”

“I indeed want to punch a certain person,” Nero lets out a cackle. “But he’s not available at the moment.”

“Y’know, I’m not an expert of daddy and son shits, and yer dad is obviously not an ideal father, but it’s totally okay for ya to miss him. The jackass did save the world, at least.”

“Thanks, Nico. That’s so motivational. I’m deeply touched- ouch !” Nero swears when a sturdy plug lands on his head. “What the fuck Nico?!”

“Talk to Kyrie,” Nico lowers her voice. Her brash mouth always sounds kinder and empathetic when she talks about Kyrie. “Ya locked yerself in this garage the whole day! You’re making her worried, ya know?”

“I think you should double your eyeglasses. I didn’t lock myself. See that door? It’s unhinged, because I need to make sure the kids are alright.”

“Yeaaah whatever. Go talk to her, pretty boy. I’ll watch over the brats.”

“Fine…” Nero scratches his nape as he walks away from the garage. “Don’t let the kids go anywhere near my weapons!”

“Gotcha~!”

Nero never meant to worry anyone, of course. He lives a happy life; he married the love of his life, adopted a bunch of orphans whom he loved and took care of equally, and ran a business with his best friend whom he considered a big sister. The world is currently safe from danger. So what's to worry about?

His confusion disappears when he sees Kyrie’s figure covered in a thick blanket at the terrace. She smiles happily as the snow continues to fall and catches a drop on her palm. Nero feels like he could melt anytime he sees Kyrie’s soothing smile. He takes his time to watch her catching snow as he leans against the door, ignoring the cold breeze that sneaks inside his body. It doesn’t take a long time for Kyrie to be aware of Nero’s presence as she asks him to join her at the terrace.

“You should put your coat on, Nero. It’s cold here.” Kyrie speaks her concern while she wraps him with her blanket.

“Chill out. I’m fine,” Nero gives her a light peck on the forehead. His right hand envelopes Kyrie’s waist to give her a sense of comfort. “The kids are building snowmans back there. Been hours and who knows when they will stop.”

Kyrie giggles. “The more they grow up the more energetic they become! At least we don’t need to worry about how to get them to sleep on time. I believe they’ll get exhausted after play and filling their stomachs with delicious dinner would quicken their way to sleep!”

“You’re right.”

Kyrie looks up at her lover’s tensed face. She brushes the tip of Nero’s nose slightly to make him smile. That little maneuver always succeeded to cheer him up. Kyrie rests her head on Nero’s chest. “Are you not happy with the Christmas party last week? I know you hated surprises but-”

“No- I liked it! Really! You know we rarely celebrate things lately and last week was one of the best days in my life! How could I hate that?” Nero tightens his grip on Kyrie’s waist, gazing at Kyrie’s eyes deeply. “I’m happy, Kyrie. I’m happy here with our little family.”

“Then it must have something to do with your father and uncle, is it?”

“That obvious, huh?” Nero smirks bitterly. “I just… I don’t know. You know how Dante is. To think that he’s actually my uncle is… weird. Then I found out the man who screwed up Red Grave was his brother. My father. Vergil, he left me when I was a child… as V, he manipulated me to do his agenda. He reemerged and left me again. And Dante didn't even bother to tell me the fact before Vergil was back. That made me feel… kinda betrayed. It still doesn’t make any sense to me. I got a pair of dysfunctional family members and I don’t know what I should do if they come back. I just can’t stop thinking about it.”

The only parental figure Nero ever had was just Kyrie and Credo’s parents, and they didn’t even live that long to give little Nero more love and parental advice. Kyrie truly understands Nero’s struggle to accept his heritage and keep holding on his humanity. “Nero… do you forgive your father?”

“What?”

“I don’t mean to bring it up again, but after all the ill he caused to you, do you forgive him?”

The memory of him and Vergil on the top of the Qliphoth tree rises again. He succeeded in bringing some sense back to his father and the old man entrusted him his precious book- the one which Nero kept safely on the shelf- before jumping to Hell and finishing what he started. Vergil didn’t say much, but his promise… his damn promise!

“I won’t lose next time. Hold onto that until then.”

“I forgive him,” Nero admits. “I think… I just miss him. And Dante. I really want us to be a proper family. That's all.”

“Just as I thought,” Kyrie cups Nero’s jaw with her hands. “I’m glad that you’re honest with yourself. There’s nothing wrong with missing them. They might be flawed, but they are your family."

Nero carefully caresses his beloved hands as if he's afraid of hurting her. "I'm sorry I keep putting you to my demon lineage problem…"

"Hey, we talked about this. Demon or human, it's you I want to be with…" she kisses him on the lips. "I love you, Nero."

"I love you too." He returns the kiss deeper.

Nero wraps her around his arms, seeking comfort and warmth from her presence. Kyrie's words succeed in getting his head together. He can feel a degree of burden has left his shoulders as he finds himself finally letting go his worries. Kyrie is right. There's nothing wrong with missing those douchebags. They're my family-

"NERO!"

Nico appears out of nowhere at the terrace, panting and panicking like she ran for her life. Every single nerve inside Nero's body tells him that something wrong is happening, but the sassy smirk on Nico's face while she tries to breathe normally tells another thing. "You're not gonna believe me if I told you this-"

"Are the kids safe?" Kyrie asks anxiously.

"Yeah they're fine. They have company."

What the fuck? "Company? What are you talking about?!"

Nico rolls her eyes as she grabs both of Nero and Kyrie's hands. "Just follow me quickly!"

Nico seems excited… if it wasn't a danger, then what?

The children are giggling and shouting happily at something Nero can't see yet. But as soon as Nico delivers them in the backyard, he spots two familiar figures among the kids. The red-coated man joins them to decorate the snowman as he helps them crafting the pile of snow with stones and branches. He summons a cowboy hat and a shiny red scarf from thin air- which excites the kids- before he puts the hat on the snowman's head and wraps its neck with the scarf as the last touch. The children are applauding and hugging him, saying their gratitude and bombing him with questions on how he could summon stuff only from thin air. The cocky red man barks in laughter and tells them that he learns some magic tricks.

In a contrast to the red man, the blue-coated man stands a bit far from the crowd, facepalming and reluctant to do anything despite the children's curiosity as they glance at him and whisper their surprise on how similar his face is with the red man. Carlo states that the blue man is scary, and quickly hides behind the red man when the blue man hears his mutter and glares at the poor kid.

"C'mon, Verge, stop glaring at the kids! You're scaring them!" The red man chuckles.

Dante?

Vergil?

How-? Since when…?

"You…" Nero breathes heavily, barely trusts his vision. "You guys are alive…"

Dante grins and waves a salute at Nero. "Heya, kid! Miss me? I know we're late, but Merry Christmas!"

Kyrie holds her giggle when she catches Nero's dumbstruck face. She grips his hand and whispers him a word of advice. "Time to let your doubts go, Nero. They are here, at last."

Nero gives a nod, but his mouth isn't capable of forming any words. He reluctantly approaches Vergil, who seems nonchalant about his surroundings, if only Nero failed to catch his father's warm gaze as he stands before Vergil. A minute has passed and none of them say anything. Words cannot describe how they feel towards each other.

But Nero decides to solve the problem in Sparda's family old-fashioned style: punching his father hard right in the face.

There echoes Dante and Nico's laughter as Vergil's body lands violently on the ground, covered with snow.

The older son of Sparda can taste a metallic scent liquid dripping from his lips.

"That hurts," he murmurs and proceeds to get up as he wipes the blood from his mouth. "Two years and still have no manners, I see."

"Fuck you, old man!" Nero spats angrily.

Dante, still laughing at the picture of his brother getting sucker-punched by Nero, sloppily walks to approach them. He pats Nero's shoulder in pride. "You're doing the right thing, Nero. You gave him the right Christmas present-"

The legendary devil hunter gets a very lethal slap from his nephew before he finishes his sentence.

"And that's a present for you, deadweight!" The young devil hunter shouts.

The view of Dante and Vergil getting slammed by Nero only increases Nico's laughter.

"Why did Nero punch Mr. Dante and Mr. Vergil?" Carlo asks Kyrie. "Nero always punches bad people. Are they bad people?"

"Well… no, they are good people! Mr. Vergil is Nero's father and Mr. Dante is Nero's uncle," Kyrie chuckles to hide her worry and struggles to find the correct way to explain the situation. "They haven't met for a very long time. Nero misses them so much that he… doesn't know what to do anymore. But punching people doesn't solve problems, so don't ever do that, okay?"

The kids nod obediently despite not completely understanding the circumstances.

"Can we stop Nero from punching them, Kyrie?" asks Julio, the oldest one from the three. "Family doesn't hurt each other, right?"

"Nah, don't worry. They will stop soon," Nico says as he points at the three hybrids. "Let 'em get the reunion they deserve."

They become calm and smiling at the sight of Nero bringing his father and uncle in a tight embrace together as the young man lets out a cry.

"You both are full of shits and stinky… like a scavenger…" Nero sobs, his teeth grinding hard. "At least take a shower before you show up, dumbass…!"

Dante sneers as he taps Nero’s back. “Yeah, I miss you too.”

The red devil glares at his twin. Say something to your son!

Vergil, unmoved and stiff, doesn’t know how to react from this awkward embrace. He feels uncomfortable, yet finds himself melting between this fuzzy feeling. “Nero…”

“Shut up,” Nero interrupts while breaking his embrace and burying his teary eyes on his palm. “Just fucking shut up.”

“Forgive me,” the blue devil insists to continue. “For leaving you again.”

“Yeah yeah, just shut up...”

Nero jolts by the unexpected weight on his head; Vergil’s hand ruffles his hair as he curves a very subtle smile.

“I’m proud of you, son.”

Oh how Nero wanted to punch him again, if only he could bring himself to.

“Uhm…” Kyrie comes to Nero’s rescue as she smiles politely to the twins. “I’m sorry to interrupt this reunion. It’s dinner time and… we would be very happy if the two of you join us for supper.”

“We’d be glad!” Dante accepts cheerfully. “Nero once told me you cook the best meal in Fortuna!”

“Shut up, Dante!” Nero grunts. He remembers he hasn’t told the twins that Kyrie and him are married. He pulls Kyrie closer and holds her hand firmly. “Anyway, Father. This is my wife, Kyrie. Kyrie, this is Vergil. My father.”

Kyrie smiles warmly at Vergil. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Vergil.”

Vergil appreciates Kyrie’s bravery and gives his sincerest nod of approval. There is not a single hint of fright from Kyrie as he recalls how people tend to tremble and stutter in fear whenever they talk to him. He can see why Nero loves her and is very protective towards her. “Thank you for taking good care for my son all this time.”

“Sorry for missing your wedding party, babe. We’ve been busy cleaning up Hell,” Dante grins at Kyrie. “Congratulations. My nephew is lucky to have you as his wife.”

“Can you shut up already?” spats Nero, feeling terribly embarrassed.

“I’m hungry~!” Nico shouts mischievously. “Let’s continue inside! It’s damn freezin’ out here!”

Kyrie gives the twins a final nod as she invites them to come inside the house. She runs to the kitchen with Nico while Nero gathers the kids to enter the house. Dante chuckles like a cocky cool uncle when Julio asks him to do another magic trick, and the little chuckle turns into a bigger laughter when he sees Vergil’s hand tucked in Kyle’s hand as the youngest child calls him Grandpa Vergil.

“Grandpa’s hand is cold!” Kyle says, unaware of Vergil’s death glare. “Once you eat Kyrie’s food, you’ll be warm in no time!”

“Let go of my hand, little rascal.” Vergil scoffs, uncomfortable by the strange kindness from the little child.

Kyle laughs and keeps guiding him to the kitchen. The food is prepared and everyone is about to get their seats. Carlo drags a chair beside Dante’s seat and shyly asks Vergil to sit there, which Vergil accepts.

“Starting to feel like coming back home?” Dante asks his brother.

“This is not bad.”

“I’ve contacted Lady and Trish. They will be here soon,” Nico says as she puts the cigarette on the ashtray. “Lady said something about returning her Kalina Ann. Trish gave her regards, and said that ya need to pay the rent as soon as possible.”

“Damn… those devilish ladies…” Dante buries his face on the table.

“Your office looks like shit without you.” Nero sneers at Dante.

Further family resolvement can wait. Now let them enjoy their first family dinner for the first time. Christmas might have passed a week ago, but Nero thinks his most valuable present had just arrived today. He still wants to beat the shit out of his father and uncle for some unknown reasons, but it can wait for later. His eyes meet Vergil’s, and his father forms a warm smile to him. He never says much, Nero knows that, but he can give him time to adjust in the human world.

Amidst the chants and chatter in the house, unbeknownst to each other, the three descendants of Sparda secretly hope that this rare moment can last forever.

#dmcsecretsanta #dmc #devil may cry #dante #vergil #nero #kyrie #nico #nero x kyrie #night writes #nibbbs

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valkyrieofsmut · 3 years

Note

How would the boys of reacted if mc had a kid already but the dad skipped out so she’s now trying to take care of them with their current situation?

It took a while to think about this and come up with an answer for everyone, but I think I’ve got it. Current, I’m taking as RIGHT NOW in the story. But there’s also a future (more relationship-y) answer I’ll try to give.

Classic- Oh, hey, a kid. He’s just accepted the kid into the plans with everything else. Give head ruffles and jokes, is the basic hilarious prankster uncle that is always the favorite of the kids. MC’s kid gravitates to him, and after getting to know him and checking him out, MC is fine with this, as long as he’s not doing crazy, dangerous stuff, or things that could hurt her kid.

When things start to get Serious™, Classic starts to think of the kid as his own, probably without even realizing it at first. He’ll just wake up one day and stretch, getting ready for work, wondering why it feels weird that the kid isn’t running around like he’s trying to break the sound barrier, like his brother used to when he was getting his coffee in the morning… When he realizes that he’s totally fallen for MC, it makes so much sense! Of course he’d think of the kid as his; that’s what happens when you have a mate; you have kids with them! And, additionally, if that worthless deadbeat ever tries to come around looking for his kid, claiming some sort of “parental rights” that ass is going to get a lesson in family. Because it doesn’t matter where the sperm for the kid came from, which he’ll gladly remove the source of, if he ever comes back, but who loves and cares for them, nurturing them as they grow.

Creampuff- A child, oh, yes, those happen! Wait… where is the other parent? He what?! Well… excuse him for a moment… there are some shrubbery that need… yelling at- yes, it helps them grow! And when he gets back, you have now unlocked mother hen Creampuff, and if she didn’t get constant pictures and updates of what they were up to, MC might worry that her kid had been kidnapped…

Creampuff may not be interested in the making of kids, the physical way, anyway, but this kid is his, now, and he’s ready to be a parent! He’s not sure how he feels about a romantic relationship, though… maybe he and MC can just work it out like a split custody situation, like he’s seen at work! Except they won’t have to go to the police station to exchange the kid. What wonderful parents the two of them are, already!

Red- heh… a kid… Wow… Red knows how to be a dad, and even has some confidence at what to do, but… the other stuff… makes him kinda nervous. What do you say to a kid whose mom you want to bang until the sun explodes? Ha- definitely not that. It takes some time, but after he gets used to the kid and relaxes a little, he’s already acting like a parent, like he did for Edge. He’s used to it being dangerous, so he’s going to make sure the kid is ok. And teach them all sorts of cool stuff. If you start them young enough, they’ll have insanely high levels of comprehension as they get older! MC better be ready for her kid to be learning advanced mechanics- as in, you know those hoverboards? Not the stupid ones that have wheels and catch fire- the ones that actually hover, like that one movie! Yep… that’s going to probably be the goal for her kid’s senior year science fair project… better get started on it now...

When stuff gets serious, Red isn’t going to be able to keep his hands to himself- honestly, sweetheart, we gotta get on makin’ that kid a sibling. been too long wit’out one a’ready… though i know ya were jus’ waitin’ on me ta cum along- heh heh! Red’s “dad mode” is activated, and well… if anything, that… actually might just make MC see things Red’s way about needing a sibling for her kid… He’s just so… parental… it stirs something primal that looks for the ideal mate… Yeah… she’s not going to stand a chance.

Edge- Ugh- another one?! A small one?! SIGH! Well, he may act like a hardass, but, he values childhood, and remembers how rough his was, despite Red trying to make sure he got the best of one he could afford without letting him be in danger. So he may act like he’s irritated and annoyed with MC’s kid, but he’s actually very flattered if they follow him around, and he may do things particularly slowly and demonstratively so they can learn by watching. He may also leave candies or treats for them… And, when the kid shows to have learned something from him- of course he’s going to act offended at the thought that he actually meant to help them! But the pride and affection he’s radiating is poorly hidden. He also won’t let anyone touch them, though it’ll be “JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE TOO WEAK TO ATTACK ME DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN ATTACK A CHILD!”

When things get serious, he will finally officially take the kid under his wing and- holy shit, had she thought that he was secretly training her kid before?! Now Edge is always talking, teaching how to do something, showing new things, and standing at her side as he urges their kid to show off what he taught them. He is full of pride, chest puffed out to the max. If anyone implies that his child doesn’t meet any standards- he’s going to have to “have a talk” with them- a terrifying talk, where that person might just have to change their clothes after, because- how does someone get so scared that they get waste matter on their shirt? Who knows, Edge certainly doesn’t. He’s never seen that happen before… twice, from the same person, anyhow.

Blue- He’s not phased by the fact that she has a kid. She’s amazing, who wouldn’t want to mate her?! Wait… her kid’s other parent did what?! It’s alright- neither of them has to worry about anything, now, not while he’s there! He’s already taken to playing with the kid, loving that they’re as energetic as he is, loves driving with them on his bike- yes, he’ll make them wear a helmet, and sit in front of him if they can’t hold on tight enough, but they still get to feel the amazing freedom.

When things finally get serious, he really doesn’t change, except that he says “GO ASK YOUR MOM” less and takes on more parental responsibilities. He is their parent now- oh stars, he’s their parent, now! He talks to Stretch a lot; he knows how to be an amazing datemate, and mate, but a parent?! Stretch assures him that he hasn’t messed up the kid enough for it to be noticeable yet, so that’s a good sign. Blue gets irritated and spends a lot of time asking MC if she thinks he’s doing the right things, but when she tells him that he’s been acting like a great dad the whole time already, and that he hasn’t messed up anything majorly, yet, he realizes that being a parent is more about doing what’s best for the kid, and less about doing everything “right”. He then begins the campaign for another kid. “DON’T GET ME WRONG! I LOVE OUR CHILD DEARLY, BUT… I WANT MORE KIDS… THEY NEED SIBLINGS TO RUN AND PLAY WITH! … Don’t Worry, Dove, I’d Never Leave You And Our Children Like That Unlucky Moron Did. He Just Couldn’t See How Lucky He Was To Have Two People As Amazing As You In His Life… But I’ll Never Forget. I Think About It Every Day, Already, Actually.”

Stretch- He has a very serious and very strict “eh” policy about kids. Cool, a kid. Nothing about this situation changes how he acts in the least. Just another person around, though he’s maybe not the person the kid should hang around with, at his own admission. “don’t want ‘em growin’ up to be lazy like me, do ya?” But he won’t turn them away if they want to play games or hang out and take a nap for a bit.

If Stretch has already gotten to the point where he’s thinking about being serious with MC, he’s going to take her kid into consideration, too. It wasn’t awful being a stand in parent for Blue, and he’d probably make a pretty good uncle, but… he’s not sure he’s got it in him to do it again… but for MC- what the hell, he’ll give it a shot. He’s not going to mess them up too badly, after all; he’s not doing it alone this time! And now he has someone to teach the inner workings of what he does at work- no, it’s not because he’s lazy and wants someone to do his job for him! … ok, that thought may have come up when he decided to teach ‘em- but only for a second! His job skills are important, and will give the kid lots of opportunities when they get older- even if it’s just to start working as his assistant and make things easier on himself, he’ll be up to date and able to take over one day. Stretch will be a proud papa that day, just the same as he was when they graduated top of their class at MIT. Can you- can you believe he actually had a hand in- in building that person…? It’s so surreal… and beautiful…

Black- Hmm… his pet has a young one already… but he doesn’t scent any other humans on her… Ah, that’s why- Wait- what?! NO, NO, NO, LOVE, YOU MUST BE MISTAKEN, YOU SEE, YOU TOLD ME THAT THIS MORONIC, INSIGNIFICANT WORM IS STILL ALIVE SOMEWHERE! HE IS… YOU DIDN’T KILL HIM FOR BETRAYING YOU?! WHY, LOVE- YOU’RE TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD… WOULD YOU LIKE HIS HEAD ON A PIKE FOR A WOOING GIFT? NO? ALRIGHT, SUIT YOURSELF, PET. He just is absolutely stunned that someone so stupid could exist. But, there is no accounting for taste, he supposes. MC and her child are in his care, now, and that means they receive all of the benefits that entitles them to. If the worm comes back- he’s not going to play nice- he’ll show them exactly what they missed out on when they left his family behind to pursue whatever had caught his fancy.

He’s already acting like a mate and father by the time things get serious, and he is very proud of how smart his child is, but not surprised- after all, they did come from MC’s loins, and were tutored by him. This just shows how great any children they have together will be, and… maybe they should have them now? He’s always heard that you shouldn’t have a large gap between kids, as it can lead to discord in the ranks. Yes, now would be a fine time to start… NOW TELL ME, LOVE, HOW MANY WERE YOU THINKING? WE SHOULD PLAN THIS OUT SO THEY ARE SPACED PERFECTLY AND WE CAN GIVE THEM ALL THE UTMOST TRAINING AND AFFECTION.

Mutt- Oh, a kid? Hm… Interesting… he guesses. He really skulks around a bit more before he comes over to hang around MC. It’s not that he’s afraid of the kid or doesn’t like them, he just really doesn’t want to be interrupted while he’s trying to get some time with MC. He also doesn’t want to scar them for life by them walking in on him with their mom in all sorts of compromising positions! All sorts of them. Wherever they happen to be… Really, he’s being considerate.

Mutt, in the future, when things are serious, and MC already has a kid? Cool. Pretty much nothing changes. Everything is the same, except that now that MC is his, so is the kid. So he’s going to keep a socket on them like he did his bro. And he’s going to make sure that no one messes with them. They’re going to turn out very loved and very confident, and very, very safe. Mutt may disappear sometimes, but he always comes back, and when he does he usually seems pleased; kid’s doin’ great. made some new friends. And let me tell you something… If this boy ever meets the douchebag that donated sperm for his kid- he’ll say thanks. And explain all of the accomplishments the two have made without him, bragging how amazing the kid turned out without him. Right before he beats the shit out of him.

(as a side note, I was inspired by Mutt’s little section in this post by @tyranttortoise, and have something planned much like this… yay!)

Axe- When he first saw her, his plan was solid; food for his brother. When she used her cleverness and wits and fought to stay alive, he had a bit of respect for her, though he didn’t think it would help her. When she managed to get him and his brother to go back to the camper and he could smell the other scent, knew there was a small human hiding and locked away in the cab of the truck, even though he couldn’t find them, and she was giving them her food to go away- giving up their food to throw off attention and protect her young… it struck a chord with him about how he was protecting his brother, and- well damn… he just couldn’t eat her now!

After that, when they went around with the bros, she always had that protective front up, never going to let her child be hurt, and… damn it… it just made him like her more. When the boys were reminded that humans can’t survive in the cold, Axe went to collect them, and found that she was even sharing the blanket nest- giving her own heat to keep her child safe and… fuck… he’s pretty sure he’s fallen, but he’s going to resist this weird feeling as hard as he can! Then, when she’s helped and provided for them, his brother, and him, in addition to her child, even though they did what they could to pool resources… He’s a lot more apt to be violent if the others come by and try to take her. She is their human, her child is their child now, and he will kill anyone who tries to mess with them. When the humans move to the lodge, he’s up there, every day, takes the kid out, shows them around, is very sure to have them back for lunch and dinner, teaches them everything he can so they can be strong and take care of and defend themself. Her kid is offended that Axe makes them wear one of those leash backpack type things tied to him, until Axe explains that it’s for him, so he doesn’t get lost from them, then, being MC’s kid, and seeing the example of how to take care of others their whole life, they understand, and Axe is greatly amused at the tiny version of her he now has running around with him. MC is very surprised at all of the hunting, trapping, and survival stuff her kid has learned with Axe, and is super proud of that smart little squirt! And so is Axe. Proud as a dad. Which is what he is when things are serious. He is a proud dad.

Crooks/Bun- Oh, poor Bun is distraught when he finds out. You Mean That FIrst Night When You Gave Us Your Food, You Were Doing It To Protect Your Baby?! SANS! YOU ABSOLUTE CAD! HOW COULD YOU?! He takes the little human under his metaphorical wing and tries to teach them all the fun stuff he knows, like puzzles! And how to tie all sorts of pretty knots! And useful ones as well. He remembers what it was like when he was a baby bones and Sans did his best to keep his life fun, innocent, and worry free, let him have a childhood instead of having to grow too early, or, really at all, until everything hit the metaphorical fan… He will reenforce your claim to be camping, inviting you to stay with them and claim that you just chose a bad year to camp here, trying to do the same for your kid not to disillusion them. It’s No Trouble, Really! Your Mom Is A Great Mother, And You Are Both Such Wonderful Friends Of Ours, We Want You To Have Fun On With Us On Your Vacation, Too!

When the others come, he will keep them away, far away from the cabin. He didn’t want her to know, but he would be heartbroken if he let her kid’s image of her fall one tiny bit. Yes, talk all you need to, but let’s do it far, far out here- how about in the road?! How about at the lodge?! Not Here, Where The Baby Might Hear! He feels like his nest is empty when they move to the lodge, and is up there every day, helping to cook and clean, being the mother hen he used to be, and feeling absolutely overjoyed to have a little one to tend to! And the fact that she asks him to take care of the baby when she has to go do something, or needs a moment to herself makes his magic sing! Life is so wonderful right now! And no, he doesn’t care how old the kid is, or how many times anyone says anything- they can almost fit in only his two hands! (you know, depending on how far apart he holds them.) And any young that small must be a baby! Luckily he doesn’t try to spoon feed them. That could be a fight, depending on the kid’s personality. When things move to the point where it would be considered “dating” or “Seriously Dating” he’s glad to have this child with her. He loves them both very much.

Dusty- The first time he met her, he didn’t know, so he had no opinion, though he’ probably be thinking about some exp, and thinking about pseudo revenge. But, after he’s gone off, found out what he needs to know and come back-

A kid- oh fuck, a kid! No- no, that can’t be the same kid! They look different- he knows they do- shut up, Paps, he’s trying to think because he doesn’t want to do something wrong! That’s the human’s kid! Yes! That’s right! Ok! Ok. Ok… ok, he’s ok now. He’s very anxious around MC’s kid because he’s afraid that he’s going to freak out, flashback, and attack. He is very careful to always have someone else around when he’s with the kid. Someone that can either get the kid out of there, or kick his ass to stop him. He’s very nervous about if things get serious, and fights it, actually, not wanting anyone to count on him being around, because… he’s afraid that things will fall apart in the worst way possible.

Ask Masterlist?

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elliebartlets · 3 years

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TWW REWATCH: Process Stories (4.08)

• ooh those desserts the waitress was carrying looked good!

• I just realized you can see Donna through the blinds in Toby's office

• wait why are Sam and Donna sitting in Toby's office?

• oh maybe cause he has TVs

• "By the way, when I said I'd run in his place, it's not like I meant it."

Well gee Sam, maybe don't say things you don't mean!

• lolol when they announce Sam's name he's like *Mariah Carey voice* I don't know her

• "They're talking about someone else."

*puts Sam's picture up on screen*

• the lighting in CJs office. the candles. the lamps with the red mesh (?) over them. the blue lava lamp! talk about setting a mood girl!

• lmao Toby looks so amused as Sam leaves CJ's office

• so did Bartlet's hand tremor and vision problem just...go away? I mean I know the MS symptoms come and go but wasn't he having problems only a few hours ago?

• Martin Sheen as Bartlet saying he won the badlands makes me lol

• "Hon, this is like nerd hot talk?"

• Charlie's face when Bartlet asks if its one in the morning loool like yes sir and I am still here

• I need to keep track of how many times the Barltet's Sexy Time is interrupted

• First up, Sam

• "Actually, it looks as if I couldn't have picked a worse time."

"No, no, you could have."

eohfudcbgidhsvfcd I'm wheezing

• what Abbey's wearing when she walks out and sees Sam there isn't all that inappropriate though.....but I mean we are in the year 2021 where anything goes so

•"You're not a deadbeat dad."

This makes me sad cause season 5 and on Toby does turn out to be a deadbeat, not interested in his kids lives

• "The great state of Maryland!"

"Maryland!"

• whyyyy do these men think rattling off election demographics is the way to turn a woman on?!? they're so stupid I love them

• "You know a guy named Chris Whitaker?"

"Widdle?"

"Whitaker."

"Whitkenstein?

"Are you drunk?"

"A little bit."

• "Donna!"

"How'd you know I was out there?"

"I felt you lurking."

• I like how Josh told Donna to find Leo for him and after she gets off the phone with I'm presuming Margaret, she goes to talk to Jack Reese and walk him down to his office instead of stopping by Josh's office to tell him where Leo is lol

• "That's "The Brunette named Annette."

"Wouldn't you just give anything if she was from Tibet?"

I love CJ so much

• how the hell does CJ have a still in her office? like who brought that lol

• I love how CJ wants to go with Toby while he tells the Barltet's about Andy's pregnancy. It's like a sibling watching their other sibling tell their parents something exciting.

• "You're young, Charlie. Don't you want to be having fun right now?"

"Yes, sir, but I work for you."

"I get that a lot."

• "Good evening, Mrs. Bartlet. That's a lovely housecoat you're wearing."

isfukdhjcs Toby stop

• I love how Bartlet's like oh yeah ok congrats *closes door* and Abbey's like "Jed!"

• I love Abbey's reaction to Andy being pregnant. She's so genuinely excited

• "It's my Catholicism, Toby. It works for me."

this is how all Catholicism should work!

• "Is that caviar there?"

"Not really, no."

lolol

• what if Josh and CJ went up with Toby when he went to tell the Bartlet's? That would've been hilarious

• Just realized on this rewatch that the guy CJs pissed at for taking credit for bruno's work is heard telling someone that he told Leo that education is the silver bullet, which is what Sam said!

• aw Leo and Jordan dancing.

I wonder what happened with them. They obviously stop dating and she's never seen or heard from again after season 4 (aka Mandyville.)

#the west wing #tww #process stories #rewatching the west wing #the west wing process stories

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caramujotan · 4 years

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disco elysium text-form #thots:

i finished my first run last friday because i went stupid and played the game for nearly 24h straight. i could literally not drop it. i called it a 10/10 when i was about 2h away from finishing it, finished it and kept that score. it’s a real good game and you can stop here with my endorsement but if you want some more in-depth spoiler-free thoughts on it you can read the rest of this post. it’s big.

due to the content of the game, i talk about mental health topics, suicide, drug use and - obviously - cops 🐷

in a way calling this by numbers feels reductive (scalding hot review take, i know). a 10/10 score doesn’t reflect the awe i felt when gilding through the end-game. it doesn’t say a thing about how viscerally my body reacted to a few pixels and lines of text. it can’t tell you that i spent 2h in bed trying to sleep but couldn’t keep my brain off of it and got up at 8AM to finish it; or how much i’ve been replaying the game in my head, curious about how certain quests or events would have gone if i’d tried a different approach or character build.

i have this funky little medical condition that goes with my autism that makes it difficult for me to identify and process most emotions that i feel. but i can tell you how my body reacted. this game went into my gut. it felt like a leaded fist burrowed through my throat into the pit of my stomach and shredded my insides. it got me fucked up, is what i’m saying.

obviously i can’t go into what caused me to react like that without spoiling the shit out of this game, and since i wish i could gently lobotomize myself in order to experience it again for the first time, i heavily recommend you go through it knowing as little as possible. what i can do, however, is talk about the technical elements of it.

the art is beautiful. the art direction is top-notch and it was definitely of the things that drew me to this game first. the oil painting aesthetic is sublime - gritty and ethereal in equal parts whenever each purpose is called for. finding out that the art team was spearheaded by painting majors from russian fine-art schools made perfect sense - it shows, and the game made peak use of it. the philosophy behind their visual approach is woven into the fabric of the game itself - it’s a perfect compliment to the writing and storytelling, and i’d struggle to imagine this game without it. it permeates and elevates every environment, every interaction, every character build choice - from the character portraits, to the UI, to certain skills and game events. real art cop hours all my homies kin the art cop.

the music by british sea power is subsided and haunting and gives the game that british/european post-industrial melancholic flavor. i’m no music critic sadly. it fits the mood and it stands out beautifully in a few key scenes, but that’s as much as i can say.

the biggest turn off for me was in the voice acting. if you’re interested in playing this game i’m going to assume with 75% certainty you’re in your early 20s to 30s and are politically located to the left side of liberal at a minimum - so i’ll just come out and say it plainly: every second NPC (especially in the late game) is voiced by a leftist podcaster. i’m sure this is a plus for some, and it’s not the kind of thing you’d immediately notice anyway unless you’re a quote unquote dirtbag leftist with terminal irony poisoning twitter brainrot. most of them do competent work, but the sound mixing and general performance is weaker in comparison to the NPCs voiced by actual voice actors.

it’s not that bad, but it’s there - and the fact that this is probably my biggest complaint about the game should say enough of my opinion on it. either way i was cringing with recognition every time it happened and it took me out on more than one occasion because i kept hearing felix chapotraphouse in one of the game’s big tense climatic scenes.

‘but caramujo!’ you say ‘this doesn’t tell me what this game is about’. hold on, i’m about to blow the ‘i can’t do literary analysis unless things are explained to me in clear cut absolute terms’ gang out of a career and spell the themes of this game out for you in detail:

it’s about loss, and renewal - both personal and interpersonal. it’s about rising from the ruins of something that’s been in motion long before you were even thought of, having little power over it, and soldiering on. it’s about heartbreak and the end of a relationship and how that can warp your mind and infect everything around you. and you won’t get better right away - the end game doesn’t wrap everything up with a little bow and lets you cause systematic upheaval. you can’t revolutionize your way out of this one. shit will, for the time being, continue to suck.

it’s about waking up in a body that’s fucked up with a heart that aches in a world that’s been torn apart - and still making the decision to try to make it better - because you’re alive, and your heart beats, and there’s other beings in the world that are tethered to you and we all owe it to ourselves to make it better. communism hasn’t worked, baby - but so hasn’t love - and we’re not gonna give up on that. that’s what it’s all about.

it should be pretty clear right now that i did my first run as a bisexual/questioning communist feminist hobo who kinned karl marx. but i can assure you there’s other ways to play this game, and there’s more to it than that because of it.

the quests (both side quests and a main story) are varied and had me laughing and dropping into existential despair on different occasions. other than trying to be the biggest communism builder, this game is also about:

- having a heart attack because a chair is too uncomfortable, but it’s OK because your buddy cop holds you in his arms like in the buddy cop movies.

- doing copious amounts of drugs and turning on, tuning in and dropping out, maaaaan.

- going on an x-files monster of the week episode to track down a curse that’s dooming the local businesses.

- shilling for the free market to come fix it all with its beatific invisible hand while standing in a town so fucked over by economic embargoes and poverty that the local union leader is a corrupt toad with a plan to revitalize the region by gathering the work force into a nationalized worker owned drug enterprise of the legal and illegal varieties - and it still comes off as one of the more levelheaded economic decisions one could make in that situation.

- trying not to fucking kill yourself even though you have to live with that thought every single day.

- winning the trust of a 12 year old crackhead with a deadbeat dad by becoming a positive masculine role model.

- turning into a fascist you so can get buffs from drinking alcohol, and therefore becoming a raging alcoholic and having to walk up to important story events carrying half a liquor store in your inventory so you don’t have a mental breakdown or kill yourself from lack of morale whenever someone calls you out on your ethnonationalist bullshit.

it’s also - and i cannot stress this enough - about making sure you can find a tape to sing karaoke and make kim kitsuragi smile. it slaps. it’s real good writing.

i don’t know what else can say. pretty sure the game is on sale on steam now. anyway please play this absolute masterpiece and stan studio za/um for clear skin. ACAB.

#disco elysium #.txt #not sure if this is done yet i might add more thots later specifically about the world building

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multimetaverse · 4 years

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Jamie Johnson 5x05 Review

If you were a fan of Andi Mack or Doafp you should check out the pretty great British show Jamie Johnson which just launched a coming out story line for one of its main characters and covers a bunch of other important issues. Let’s dig in!

My reviews will feature spoilers from throughout the series and if you’d like to watch the story from the start there are only 3 eps in the 1st season, 10 in the 2nd and 3rd, and 13 in the 4th and 5th with casting and writing already underway for a 6th season. All the eps are available on the CBBC website if you live in Britain or have a VPN. You can also contact @tkstrand for access to the eps (just don’t tell Scotland Yard). A big thanks to Mike for introducing me and so many others to Jamie Johnson and single-handedly starting the fandom. I highly recommend watching all the eps from the start; Jamie Johnson is a very charming show that tackles a lot of important issues in the guise of being a show about soccer and the show has gotten better each season and the writing shows no signs of stalling or declining. The acting does start off really rough in S1 but has improved markedly and some of the actors are very talented though overall the acting is closer in quality to a show like GMW or No Good Nick than Andi Mack or Doafp. In fairness, a big reason for that is that the show has to spend so much time on soccer games and practices and the kids are actually pretty good players; so good in fact that for S4 the actors actually entered the 2018 Gothia cup in Sweden and did extremely well. Jamie Johnson is in many ways a British Andi Mack but with a British Gary Marsh who is much less of a censoring shithead and a British Terri Minsky and crew who are better and more consistent writers

Tonight was a big night for reformed bully and star soccer player Dillon Simmonds. He’s the closest analogue to TJ Kippen the show has though unlike TJ he’s a main character and has been in the show right from the pilot; in some eps he even gets the 2nd credit after Jamie. 5x05 was in many ways a callback to 4x05 which was the first ep that had subtext for gay Dillon. 4x05 also introduced most of the characters who will play a big role in Dillon’s coming out story line: Ruby Osborne, her biological sister Alba, her foster moms who are a married lesbian couple, Dillon’s younger brother Liam, and Dillon’s father. S4 is really when Dillon Simmonds becomes a hashtag good boy and his arc is focused on him getting out from his Father’s incessant pressure to go pro though there is some delicious gay subtext in eps 4x11-13

The show’s always been good at setting up plot points in advance, like Dillon’s diabetes, Wozza’s ADHD, and Duncan Jones’ shadyness, but those plots were set up and then addressed all in the same season. I don’t think it’s that surprising that the gay story line is the exception. It’s very likely that the writers didn’t intend Dillon to be gay until they set out to write S4 and they likely didn’t have full permission to go ahead with it until S5. It’s also likely that their original plan for exploring Dillon’s sexuality was going to involve Ruby trying to act on her crush on Dillon; 4x13 set that up and then in 5x01 Ruby tells Zoe out of nowhere that she’s over Dillon and only sees him as a brother and wouldn’t you know it, she doesn’t even think Dillon looks at girls in a romantic way!

Thankfully the show is going in a much better direction with the introduction of Elliot. He’s already been fleshed out with a personality and hobbies like astronomy and magic (for his next trick he’s going to make Dillon’s heterosexuality disappear). I was shocked at how flirty the Delliot scenes this ep were, not just because they were gay scenes but also because the show really has not had these kind of scenes before for any of the straight characters either. Even Jamie hasn’t had more than pretty clear hints that he likes Jack and wants to be with her. I don’t know if it’s because the show is targeted towards an audience of young men or if there’s a cultural difference across the pond but there’s consistently been very little romance of any kind throughout the series. If this had been an American series, there’s no way that Jamie wouldn’t have had at least one girl he went on a date with or something, even if it was only a brief thing. It’s refreshing in some ways and it means that the show has to look elsewhere for drama and angst

Dillon is obviously drawn to Elliot and thinks he’s cool but he has quite the reaction when he learns that Elliot is gay. He runs to tell Ruby that she needs to cut it out with Elliot because he’s gay which is clumsy writing because Zoe had just told him that Ruby told her that Elliot is not in fact her new boyfriend but is her new gay foster brother. They obviously needed to show Dillon’s strong reaction to the news but also needed a way to come off as kind of homophobic but my own theory is that Dillon wanted to make sure Ruby didn’t waste her time pursuing a gay guy like Sienna Jones had wasted her time trying to pursue Dillon in S4. As the show hasn’t really focused much on romance I’m not expecting much to come of Delliot especially since they have a built in escape hatch with Elliot only being in care until his mom is out of hospital but I am looking forward to what happens with them this season and what will happen with Dillon in the remaining seasons this show has

I think this was the least that Jamie has been in any ep. One thing I really like about this show is that they’re not afraid to have main characters miss an ep or two unlike American shows that usually have to have mains appear in every ep even if there’s no actual story for them. From the S5 trailer it looks like Jamie will get really into e-gaming while his broken leg heals after he was accidentally run over on his 16th birthday by his deadbeat dad Ian Reacher. I would assume that Jamie eventually gets back into real soccer but it does promise a lot of drama between Jamie and grandpa Mike who has always been Jamie’s staunchest supporter

Duncan ‘’Big Dunk’’ Jones, former pro soccer player turned silver fox and head of Phoenix FC, took a big step forward in redeeming himself for trying to scuttle Jamie’s career with Hawkstone by appointing Jamie’s mom Karen as the new head of wellness which fits with the CBBC announcement that S5 would in part focus on mental health

Alba once again lost her cool during a game. It’s clear that a lot of her anger issues stem from feelings of abandonment as well as the constant uncertainty and rapid changes she’s experienced as a foster child. The show has always been good at showing how what’s going on with the children in their home lives affects them at school and on the pitch, like Jamie acting out because of his dad walking out on the family and Dillon being a bully to try and fit into the role his dad wants him to play. It’s very interesting that they’re now bringing back Liam Simmonds to begin his redemption arc as he was the first to make Alba lose her cool by attacking her foster moms at his father’s instigation way back in 4x05

To the show’s credit, they’ve always been firm in showing how awful bullying and homophobia are and all the soccer teams in the series have shown a zero tolerance policy for it. It’s a different world in many ways from North America, I couldn’t imagine an American show about football or even a Canadian show about Hockey that would plausibly show a zero tolerance policy for bullying and homophobia

Looking Ahead:

Next ep features Liam’s return to Phoenix FC after Alba accepts his apology for his homophobia. His redemption arc will be interesting to watch especially as it;s certain to tie in to Dillon having to face up to his father who is the avatar of toxic masculinity and homophobia. Perhaps it will take Liam defending his brother to make his father see the errors of his ways

Not sure who will take over coaching the U14′s now that Mike has said he’ll be stepping aside

Zoe faces another talented black player who she clearly does not respond well to. Zoe has always been hyper competitive and worried about losing her place to another female player which in part stems from the stress she’s under as her ill mothers primary carer. Good for Zoe for getting through to Howard Royle about Hawkstone lacking a women’s team

5x07 looks like it will be a huge ep for Dillon and Delliot and it seems likely that Dillon will snap after realizing that Ruby and Elliot think he’s homophobic and will come out to Elliot. Should be good

Until next week Jamie Johnsoner’s

#Jamie Johnson #Dillon Simmonds #Delliot #Andi Mack #Doafp #Elliot #Ruby Osborne #Alba Osborne #Mike Johnson #Jamie Johnson Reviews

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twinklecheeks · 5 years

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Friends With Benefits (Jeff Wittek Imagine) Part 5

Summary: Jeff and Y/N have been hooking up for a while. The whole vlog squad assumes they’re dating and Y/N does too but Jeff doesn’t like labels. He eventually starts to express interest in Natalie.

Note: Planning on making this a multiple part series, depending on how good it does. You’re 21 & Latina in this (maybe) series. Also, I’d like to apologize for the typos, if there is any. I’m just illiterate lmao.

Warnings! pregnancy.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Word Count: 1.7k

David’s house:

You walk into the house and everyone is already making bets on what are the genders. Zane, Heath and Todd bet both boys, Matt & Corinna bet a boy and a girl, Mariah/Carly/Erin bet both girls. Y/n: “Hey Natalie, can I talk to you in the car outside?” Natalie: “Sure. How are you feeling? I feel like we haven’t talked in months.” Y/n: “I’m doing great but I have to talk to you about something important.” Natalie: “Like what?” Y/n: “All the girls know who the father of my twins are and I don’t want you to freak out…” Natalie: “Why would I freak out?” Y/n: “Because Jeff is the father...” Natalie: “Wait, Jeff cheated on me?” Y/n: “NO NO NO. We kind of had this friends with benefits for months before you dated. He ended it with me before he asked you out. He was the only person I’ve been with during those months so I know it’s his.” Natalie: “Does he know?” Y/n: “No…” Natalie: “Why doesn’t he know?” Y/n: “Because he didn’t treat right. He was a player and I was under his charm. I was basically wrapped around his finger until I had enough.” Natalie: “I mean… I’m not surprised… Jeff looks like a player.” Y/n: “I just hope I don’t ruin your relationship. I told him during our last fight that I hope he treats you better than he treated me. If he wants to be in their life, that’s fine but if he doesn’t, I’ll ask him to sign his rights away once they’re born.” Natalie: “Thanks for telling me… Are you going to tell him?” Y/n: “Yeah but I wanted to tell you first incase he blows things out of proportion.” Natalie: “Understandable. I’ll go get Jeff.” She gets out of the car and goes into the house to tell him to go talk to you in the car. You see him walk out and you panic a bit.

Jeff: “ummmm hey?” Y/n: “Hi.” Jeff: “Nat said you needed to tell me something.” Y/n: “Okay but you can’t blame me for not telling you sooner. You have been such an asshole to me.” Jeff: “Telling me what sooner?” Y/n: “These babies are yours…” Jeff looked like he saw a ghost. He went pale like he was gonna pass out. Jeff: “Excuse me??!? How the fuck you know those babies are mine?” Y/n: “Pretty simple. You were the only guy I slept with since New Years until you dumped me for Natalie.” Jeff: “I don’t believe you. I want a paternity test once they’re born. Until then, I don’t want anything to do with you.” Y/n: “what the fuck do you honestly believe I just slept around? Wanna know something dick head?? You were the only person I wanted to sleep with because I was fucking in love with you but you treated me like shit and I let you do it for too fucking long. I was blind with something that was never going to happen. But I finally realized what I deserved.” Jeff: “Oh boo hoo I don’t want to hear you sob story and you better keep your fucking mouth shut about this.” Y/n: “Oh honey, you are way too late for that. The girls and David know and I just can’t wait to tell the rest of the guys.” Y/n runs out of the car so fast and locks Jeff in her car. Jeff: “WHAT THE FUCK YOU CRAZY BITCH.” You quickly run inside and lock David’s front door but Jeff get’s in through the back door. Y/n: “hey to the guys who don’t know who my deadbeat baby daddy is, it’s Jeff. Jeff runs in right as you finished that sentence. He basically doesn’t want anything to do with me or the kids he helped conceive until he knows for sure.” Jeff: “YOU SHIT THIS IS WHY I DIDNT WANT TO FUCKING BE WITH YOU. YOU ALWAYS FUCKING THINK YOU’RE THE RIGHT. YOU DON’T EBER FUCKING LISTEN WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU SHIT. YOU ARE EXACTLY LIKE CIERRA TRYING TO ACT LIKE YOU’RE BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE. WELL GUESS WHAT SWEETHEART, YOU’RE A NOBODY.. Y/n: “honey the difference between me and Cierra is that she cheated on you and dumped your ass cause she realized how much of a low life you are. You are such a piece of shit. I wish these babies weren’t yours cause I hope they don’t fucking turn out like drug dealers and go to prison. I don’t need you. Sign your rights away once they’re born because I’m fucking done with you saying lies about me.” Y/n turns around to Natalie. Y/n: “Natalie. Good fucking luck.” Jeff was livid. He hated when someone brought up his past mistakes so when you mentioned that you hope the twins don’t turn out like him, it stung. Jeff: “I’ll gladly sign my rights away cause It’d be hell dealing with you and those things for the next 18 years.” Y/n: “don’t fucking call my children that.”

The whole vlog squad were stunned with how Jeff was treating you. Natalie: “Jeff…. WE’RE DONE.” Jeff: “babe plea-“ Natalie: “Save the apologies. It’s too late. You think I’d pick you over her. Girl code bitch.” Todd: “dude, just leave.” Everybody is just so disappointed in Jeff. They thought he was a nice guy but he never showed that side of him. Natalie: “y/n I’m so sorry. If I knew I would’ve never gone out with him.” Y/n: “it’s fine. He seems like Prince Charming at first and then becomes a snake.” Heath: “baby, just know all of us are here for you. It takes a village to raise a baby.” Zane: “she’s gonna need 2 villages.”

1 day later (the night before the gender reveal)

(Y/n is spending the night at Kylie’s house since the reveal party is gonna be at her place)

Y/n: “I told Jeff he’s the father.” Stass: “NO FUCKING WAY.” Kylie: “HOW DID HE REACT.” Y/n: “It was bad… I explained everything and he completely flipped out. So I said if he doesn’t want anythng to do with me or these babies, sign his rights away so I can have full custody.” Stass: “Did you tell Natalie?” Y/n: “Actually, I did. Natalie and I have known each other for longer than we’ve both known Jeff. I knew she wouldn’t get mad at me. And I made sure to tell her that I wasn’t trying to get in between her and Jeff. That ship sailed months ago but she saw all the horrible stuff he was saying and dumped him.” Kylie: “Damn I would’ve loved to be there for that. I Would’ve ripped him a new one.” Stass: “We should get to bed. We have a big day tomorrow! What do you think it’s gonna be? I hear there’s a bet going around.” Y/n: “It’s a tie between twin boys vs twin girls.” Kylie: “Let’s just wait and see what the colors are tomorrow.”

Gender reveal party

Y/n is officially 4 months pregnant and it’s reveal day!

Kylie: “Wake up sleepy head. I know you’re tired with carrying 2 babies but we gotta get you glammed up. Y/n: “Ughhhhh why can’t I just be lazy and stay in bed.” Stass: “Cause you’re finding out what you’re having.” Y/n: “You can just tell me right now :)” Kylie: “ABSOLUTELY not. Kylie’s team then comes in and spends 2 hours doing your hair, make-up and picking out your outfit. You had to choose between a pink and blue maternity dress. You picked the pink dress and have your nails painted matte baby blue (Pictured below how you look)

Once you’re ready, you head downstairs and a bunch of your friends are there. You were glad to see your family, including your dad. He still wasn’t talking to you but he was there. Everybody was having a good time eating, playing the classic shower games like guessing what chocolate is in the “poopy” diaper and other stuff like that. Kylie: “Okay guys! Gather around so we can find out the genders of the twins. Final voting. How many people think they’re boys?” About half think boys, and the other half is equal between boy & girl twin and just girl twins. Kylie: “So y/n is going to be revealing baby A and you guys are going to be revealing baby B.” Kylie gives you the powder cannon. Kylie: “Are you ready?” Y/n: “AHHHH I NO IM NOT BUT I AM.” Everybody: “3! 2! 1!”

Y/n: “IT’S A GIRL!!!! AHHHHH.” Everybody is screaming. Stass: “To the people who bet, y’all better be praying that you’re right.” Kylie and Stass hand powder cannon to everybody at the party and the countdown begins again. 3.. 2… 1!!!

IT’S ANOTHER GIRL!!!!!! At this point, you’re just sobbing. You’re having 2 girls. The only thing you care about in the moment are your baby girls. Zane: “Man we lost the bet. I thought it was gonna be boys.” Mariah, Carly & Erin: “Ayyyye we won!!! Now give us our money.”

A couple of hours later

David: “So I guess you’re not naming one David Jr.” Y/n: “You thought I would?” David: “HEY! You promised for 250k...” Y/n: “I was never going to accept that. A joke is a joke.” David: “How you feeling knowing you’re having 2 girls?” Y/n: “I think it’s pretty ironic. Jeff treats women like shit and look what happened. I’m having girls. But I don’t mind. Baby girl clothes are way cuter than boy clothes.” David: “I just wanted to let you know that I’m in it for the long run.” Y/n: “Huh?” David: “Y/n, I have had a crush on you since before I met Liza. I was crushed when she dumped me and you were always there. You were the only one who was always there for me through thick and thin. I know this is bad timing telling you this but it’s because I was too much of a scared little bitch to tell you. I will be there every single step of the way. I’ll go to your appointments with you if you want me to and be there helping you through labor if you want me to.” Y/n: “I’d love it if you were there for me all the way.”

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

Yoooo I AM SO SORRY I SAID I WAS GONNA POST EARLY. I had the chapter mostly done but it felt very boring so I basically rewrote most of the chapter. I might take longer than usual for the next chapter cause I have no Idea what to write next... Also, sorry if this chapter sucked.

Comment if you want to be on the taglist!

Taglist: @elvlogsquad @siemprestan @zavidzobrik @galxydefender @iminlovewithenchilidadas @ilsolee

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jacscorner · 4 years

Photo

So I liked Steven Universe Future and, honestly, after having some time to think on it...I have mixed feelings about it. I’ll go into it down below.

BUT, for now, I’ll just say what I wished for from Future, but sadly didn’t really get: Stevonnie getting more screen time. She got some, but I really wished for more. In fact, I was hoping Stevonnie would’ve become a Perma-Fusion and would’ve gone on space adventures.

I guess that was a long shot since Steven Universe has made it clear it doesn’t wanna focus on action. But still, I think it would’ve just been so cool to see! I don’t care that Lars went back into space, I wanted Stevonnie! T_T I guess that’s another for the Fanfic pile.

This part of my post is a rant. Turn back while you can!

I get what the show was going for, and I applaud Sugar and co for wanting to tell a story about coping with stress and taking care of your mental health. I think that’s something important for people of all ages to learn. Both the young kids Cartoon Network aims for and the older audience who either grew up with the show or came into watching the show after could all use that lesson.

BUT! On the opposite hand, I feel the show sacrificed a lot to make this point and the internal narrative suffered. It feels rushed at times, yet slow at others. There’s a lot of points in the series where I think ‘wow, this is interesting’, but the show cuts it short and we’re never gonna see it expanded cause that was the show’s final hour. Or we get smaller snippets that just don’t seem to line up with what we saw in the previous series-a problem Steven Universe classic had a problem with, but it’s pretty amazing just how bad a problem Future has it, breaking its own continuity’s back for the sake of spinning this exact narrative.

Let’s start small: here’s an episode that crushes my dreams where Steven wants to propose to Connie and before he gets the chance to ask Garnet, she splits into Ruby and Sapphire so they can go off and do their own thing. On paper, that doesn’t sound too bad, cause we get more Ruphire!

...Except this goes against the characterization they had. If anything, they were borderline dysfunctional when they were apart.

And this entire plot hinges on Garnet not waiting, like, 2 minutes just to explain to Steven ‘no, don’t propose to Connie. She won’t make you feel complete’. Which is a good lesson to teach, and the episode that follows this is also a good lesson to teach, but that’s my point: the narrative is sacrificed in order to preach to the audience.

But now, let’s REALLY talk about character assassination. There’s an episode where Greg tries to help Steven find what he wants and it leads to Greg taking Steven to his childhood home-AKA, his parent’s house.

The differences between how Greg was raised and how he raised Steven is night and day and we get a lot of insight to Greg’s past and relationship with his family. He ditched the family name for ‘Universe’ cause of some random song he heard, he lived in a pretty standard suburb home, and had a pretty normal upbringing. Steven is actually envious of his father, because he had a normal life and had a normal family and didn’t have to deal with the issues of having to deal with homicidal aliens and dying almost every week. And Greg...

Just doesn’t get why Steven is so upset! Steven wishes he had what Greg had, but Greg wanted Steven to have the freedom to be whoever he wanted to be-even if that means he never went to school and never went to the hospital. The episode ends with him just being so upset with Greg and it’s heartbreaking for me to see.

Now, Greg has never been the BEST Dad, considering he’s mostly been a deadbeat and let Steven be raised by a group of space rocks who more or less kept using him as their personal therapist. But, you know what? As badly as Greg was written in that last moment, the real character assassination...was of Steven’s.

Let’s rewind a bit: Greg’s upbringing was normal, but it was restrictive. His parents never let him discover himself, he wasn’t allowed to listen to the music he wanted to nor did they let him grow out his hair. Greg was miserable, so miserable he ran away and changed his name because to him, Greg DeMayo wasn’t someone he wanted to be. And we see in the episode that Greg wrote letters to his parents to reconnect with them, but they were never opened. They never responded or heard him out. Greg wanted his freedom, but his parents cut all ties with him when it was clear he wouldn’t fall in line.

And Steven...

Just doesn’t care. He completely ignores Greg’s point of view on the matter because he just doesn’t agree with him. And I’m not saying Steven should agree with Greg, and I still think he has the right to be upset with his father since Steven has poor social skills, can’t really relate with a lot of people his own age, doesn’t have a standard education, and hasn’t even gone to a hospital until the episode prior.

But here’s the reason why I think they assassinated Steven’s character for the narrative: Steven’s greatest character trait-more than his powers, his musical talents, or his crippling depression, is his empathy. Steven’s always had the biggest heart and always listened out to others and their problems. Even when they didn’t want his help, Steven’s always been willing to extend an arm to them-friend and foe a like.

Naive? Yes. But it’s staggering how age didn’t give Steven wisdom. Future focuses on Steven’s powers and his anxiety and seems to have completely forgotten his strong sense of empathy for the sake of pushing a story about that anxiety and stress and depression and all that awful stuff...

And boiled it all down to Steven just needing a hug.

It amazes me how when cartoons wants to be mature and more adult, they end up being more childish.

#JAC Art #Stevonnie #Steven Universe #Steven Universe Future #Surprise!#JAC Rant

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supernatural-book · 5 years

Text

Here’s To...

Title: Here’s To... (Dean x Reader)

Summary: When a simple vamp hunt in the reader’s hometown ends with something unexpected, the reader is forced to face someone from her past. Dean notices something’s wrong and urges her to tell him everything.

A/N: I’ve been working on this for months, but the announcment today gave me motivation to write some angst, as I was already crying. I promise that even a year from now, after the show has ended, I’ll continue to write as much as I can. Okay, clearing something up about the fic before you begin. I’m not saying John was abusive or anything but he obviously wasn’t the best parent and Dean definitely has some sort of daddy issues because of it,

Warnings: deadbeat dads; daddy issues, ya know; death of a family member; common SPN violence; swearing and lots of insults in one part.

Word Count: 5,250

“Great.” He had said. “It’s just a vamp a few hours away in (H/T). You mentioned you grew up there, so I thought you might want to come with. It could be just the two of us, yeah? We could get back late this evening if we leave now.” You were completely ecstatic. Not only were you going to see your hometown and the people you loved, but you could spend the whole trip with Dean. “You sure you’re ready to get back in the game?” Dean smiled at you from where he stood on the other side of the Impala, watching as you took in the image of the black beauty with a large grin on your face.

When Dean had first come into your room, where the boys had tried to keep you on bedrest, you had figured he was here to tell you he and Sammy were going away without you again. But instead, he asked if you were up for a hunt. Excited, you had jumped out of your bed quickly, trying to prove that you no longer needed to be held in the bunker. “Of course I am!”

“Uh, hell yes I'm sure! I was starting to feel all cramped up in there!” You opened the passenger side, slid in, and threw your bag in the back, Dean in the driver’s seat. After being held in the bunker for two whole months due to getting injured on a past hunt and Dean refusing to let you risk getting hurt again, you had finally persuaded him to let you come along with him to a case in your hometown. It had been too long since you were there, and you couldn't wait to see all the old sights of the place you grew up. Maybe you could see some of your old friends and family. Of course, you'd have to keep most of your life on the down low, considering they didn't know about the reality of the monsters under their beds. Swallowing down your worries, you absentmindedly stroked the leather on the seat between you and Dean.

“Hey now.” he chuckled, speaking in a teasing tone. “Don't get too handsy with my Baby.”

“Sorry. It's just been too long since I've been in here with you.” You looked up at him. “Thanks for letting me come with.”

“What are you talking about? That’s your town, there's no way I’m gonna make you sit this one out! You know the best places to eat.” you laughed, causing Dean to erupt with a grin himself. “Nah, but really. I know you’d want to see your old place. You need to care about this town, right? They're your people!” His tone was teasing, but you almost felt the words were true. You did need to help them. But really, there was one reason you were going. He started the car, and instantly your nervous thoughts were relaxed and you were excited about this trip. To most people, long car trips were boring, tiring and being stuck in a car for hours to days was enough to drive them insane. But you, personally, your favorite thing to do was to hit the road with the person you were closest to. Especially when it was just the two of you.

After a few hours of driving and eating at rest stops and small-town diners along the way, the sun was high in the sky and you were laughing at Dean as he belted out the lyrics to an AC/DC song. The fact that he could make you laugh with his passion for classic rock was just another reason you loved hanging out with him. God, you loved him. “Ya know, Dee, as much as I love your taste in music, you should listen to some of my music sometime, don’t you think?”

“No way!” He laughed, teasing. “You probably listen to some trashy pop music.” You played mock offense, putting a hand to your heart.

“Dean, my taste isn't that bad! Give it a chance!’

“Well if the music you listen to is as good as your choice in diners, maybe I'll have to take your word for it.” He laughed and used one hand to pick up the burger he had ordered from the last cheap diner you’d stopped at, only to be interrupted by a ringing phone.

“Oh!” You grabbed your phone from your bag and checked the caller ID. You expected it to maybe be Sam calling from the bunker, but instead, you were shocked by an ID that you hadn’t heard from in at least a year. Your brother.

You had an… interesting family life, to say the least. You were the older sibling, just like Dean- it’s not that he knew that, though- and your brother had no idea about the hunter life. When you were younger, your mother and father were hunters, though your mother had decided to quit. Your father, though, didn’t care what his wife wanted, so he continued hunting. For the majority of your life, you grew up normal, despite without a father. To put it simply, you had what people call daddy issues. Of course, in your rebellious teen years, you decided you wanted to try hunting, and obviously, it stuck until now. But no matter what, you wanted your brother to stay ignorant to the ugly truth of the supernatural. Suddenly worried as to what he might be calling about, you knew you couldn’t ignore it. “Dean… pull over. Please pull over.” Dean looked worried for a moment but complied.

“What’s wrong?”

“Private call. I gotta get out.” You quickly answered the call, stepping out of the car and shutting the door behind you. “(B/N)?”

“Hey! (Y/N)! I haven’t heard from you in a while.” Still not able to fully understand why he was calling, you couldn’t bring yourself to respond right away.

“Well... well, why are you calling? What’s up?”

“Dad told me to call. We need some help.” You swore you could feel your heart drop to your stomach and suddenly felt like you were going to be sick. You crossed your fingers and prayed that that didn’t mean what you thought it meant.“I just started hunting with dad. He explained everything. The monsters, the hunting, if that’s what you’re wondering about. So yeah, I know everything. And there’s a vamp here. Dad’s thinking we’re gonna need your help...” You weren’t paying attention. After he said that he’d been hunting, your mind had gone blank. This can’t be happening. You struggled to wrap your mind around it. Your sweet, innocent little brother hunting? No way. How could dad pull him into this? “Hey, (Y/N). You listening? We got the vamp in those woods behind that old shack… thing. Remember that place?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was actually heading into town. It won’t be too long before we’re there.”

“Great! Thanks (Y/N). I’m sure you’re much better at this than I am.” You quickly said your goodbyes and hung up, standing still for a few moments before finally turning back to Dean, opening the door and sitting back down. You tried your best to swallow down your worries.

“Everything alright?” His voice comforted you more than you ever thought it could as you slid down into the seat, searching for words. He studied your face for a moment. “We need to talk about anything?” Ah, there was that caretaker vibe that he always gave off. He could always tell when something is wrong, and he always seemed to know exactly what to do to help you.

“Just… if someone you really cared about was getting themselves into a dangerous situation, you’d wanna help them, right?”

“Of course.” You kept silent after that, not knowing what else to say. “Well, I don’t know what’s wrong, but if you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t make you. If you’re too distracted to help, I can take down the vamp myself. Alright?”

“No. I’ll be fine. It’s an easy hunt.” You took a moment to gather yourself. “I actually know where the vamp would be. So we could skip all the actual hunting and just catch it by surprise. I’ll show you the place, but first let’s get into town, yeah?” You smiled at Dean, trying to convince him you were alright. He smiled back just as weakly, still showing his concern for your well-being. Maybe that was another place you were the same- you both tried to bury your emotions and let them out later. The rest of the trip dragged on slowly, the mood obviously dimmed, but eventually, you were pulling up in front of an old shed on the outskirts of town. You had often come here to play in the woods with your brother.

“Here?”

“Yep.” Dean looked at you with a skeptical look.

“Can I ask how you know it’ll be back there?”

“I had someone tell me. They’re also trying to hunt it.” The hesitant pause between your sentences was anything but natural, and you were sure that any sane person could see right through them- even Dean. “I trust them.” Dean nodded, immediately understanding.

“So you know this place?” Dean pried. You figured he just needed some more reasons that he should trust you. To be fair, you did answer a strange phone call and refused to give him any information about it.

“Yeah. I used to come here to play when I was young.”

“All alone?”

“Well…” Does it really matter anymore? If your brother was already going on hunts, there’s no reason for you to try and hide him anymore. Taking a breath you decided to let Dean know a part of your past you’ve never told anyone. “No, with my little brother.”

“Really?” Dean smiled, letting out a breathy laugh. “We’re more alike than I thought, huh?” He just looked at you for a moment, a soft look in his eyes. “Why didn’t you mention him before?” You could already feel tears coming, and all you wanted to do was take out your emotions on some monsters.

“It’s a long story. Let’s go.” You felt Dean’s eyes on your back as you exited the Impala, grabbing your weapons and preparing yourself for the hunt, but couldn’t do anything but ignore them.

“Alright, let’s go.”

Neither of you said anything as you approached the woods. You could practically feel the tension in the air, but you ignored it, trying to focus on more positive things. You thought back to when you used to walk here with your little brother, but that only made you even more emotional. You took a shuddering breath and willed yourself not to break down. You were only a few meters into the woods when Dean looked over to you, holding your shoulders.

“Okay, I won’t pry, but something’s obviously up. I can handle this on my own. I don’t want you to have to hunt when you’re so distracted.” You were about to say you’d be fine when a loud scream of agony caught your attention. Turning towards the sound, you both took off, all personal matters aside. Pulling out your blade, you approached the area the tortured noises had ceased, leaving an eerie silence. You were worried it was too late, and the civilian was already gone. You cast a look at Dean before he jumped past the briars and out into the clearing, straight into the view of the vamp with you on his tail. You’d done this so many times before, Sam and Dean would take care of most of the vamps, while you checked on the civilians that had been hurt. And that’s just what you did.

But this time, something was different. Yeah, Dean when after the vamp- it was kind of odd that there was only one vamp and not a whole nest- but when you went to check on the man lying on the ground, there was something oddly familiar about him.

“No…” Your heart seemed to stop when you noticed what was so familiar about him. No matter how many years had passed, you’d always recognize this face. “(B/N)?” You grew frantic, dry sobs racking your body. “No, no, no…” You searched for a pulse, though you knew it was useless. His throat had been ripped out- there was no possible way he was still alive. You gathered him- his body- up into your arms, smoothing out his hair and trying your hardest to pick up on the scent of that God-awful cologne he’d worn since he was practically twelve. You hated it then, but now you’d do anything to smell it over the stale scent of blood and grime. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. (B/N), I’m so sorry.” You heard Dean approaching, but you couldn’t tear yourself away. Never in a thousand years did you imagine that you’d be in this position. Your sweet, innocent little brother lying before you, throat ripped out by the vampire that he had tried to hunt.

“Hey, hey, (Y/N). You alright?” It was only then that you realized the tears streaming down your face. Dean seemed to then understand the state the man was in, and knelt next to you, laying a hand on your shoulder in condolence. “You know him.”

“He’s dead.” You let the words leave your lips softly, not wanting to believe them yourself. After a few more moments, you looked up to Dean and tried to wipe away the tears. “We need to give him a hunter’s funeral.”

“Of course.” He squeezed your shoulder and gave you a pitying look before standing. “I’m sure I have some tarp in the trunk. Would you be okay to gather some wood? I’ll be back in a sec. Promise.” You nodded and forced yourself to your feet, moving slowly, tearing your eyes away from the scene. You worked quickly, trying to gather sticks large enough to build the pyre. You had gathered only a few before the initial pain had numbed only long enough for the anger to take over. How could Dad let this happen? Did he even know? Where is that bastard? Part of you hoped that he had met the same fate- he was the one who deserved it, after all. You grabbed your phone out of your pocket and pressed on the contact that you hadn’t called in years. Just when you thought it would go to voicemail, a voice spoke up.

“(Y/N)?”

“Dad, where are you?” You couldn’t stop your voice from dripping with venom. In fact, you didn’t want to conceal it. You wanted him to know just how mad you were.

“I’m doing fine, thanks-”

“Cut the crap. Where are you?” You heard him scoff over the phone.

“Still the same as your mother, huh?” Before you could send a snarky comment back at him, he continued. “I’m waiting for your brother in that warehouse near the old place. He’s certainly taking his damn time on the hunt. Maybe you’ll run into him. Family reunion, how about that?” You hung up, wanting to throw your phone on the ground. You took a moment to gather yourself, before shoving your phone in your pocket and turning back to your growing pile of sticks. You stopped in your tracks when you saw Dean standing a few feet behind you with the tarp in his arms.

“How much did you hear?”

“Nothing. I only saw you hang up. You looked pretty angry. Everything alright?” You only shook your head.

“Let’s just get this done. Please.” Dean nodded, sending you a half smile in understanding. Obviously, both of you had a problem with opening up to people. You took one last look at your little brother’s body before Dean began wrapping it in the tarp. You tried to keep your tears back as you build the pyre, but Dean wouldn’t let that happen, not on his watch. Once it was finished, Dean put an arm around your shoulder.

“You can cry, kiddo. I know how hard this can be. Losing a friend.” Every bit of you wanted to scream out that he was your brother, not just your friend, but you didn’t want more pity then he was already giving you. And frankly, you didn't want to explain the whole ordeal about your family life to Dean. So you held your tongue. Dean handed you the lighter, letting you decide when you were ready to let go. For more moments than you’d like to admit, you thought of not burning his body, but instead making a deal to get him back. You knew how much he would hate it, though, so you clicked on the lighter and looked away as you tossed it. The pyre lit up, and you wanted was to crumple into Dean’s arms. And that what you did. He was always there for you, and even if he didn’t know the whole truth behind the man who was burning in front of him right now, he could share your sorrow. You let your body relax into the warm feeling of Dean’s flannel-clad chest, and felt the tears start up again. You turned your face to his chest, breathing in his scent and grabbing at the fabric of his dark blue jacket. His arms found your shoulders and waist and he tucked you snuggly into his form, resting his chin on the top of your head.

“Thank you.” You stood in this intimate position for a few minutes, just holding each other, flames burning against the setting sun in the background. You never wanted to leave his arms, never wanted out of this pure sense of security and care. This was unlike him, giving hugs. Last time he hugged someone, it was literally the end of the world, so you felt special being one of the few able to unfold yourself into his arms. But eventually, it was time to head back. With his arm still around your shoulders protectively, you cleaned up and walked back to the Impala. It was only after he had settled into the driver’s seat next to you that you dug up the courage to face your past. “Dean?”

“Hmm?”

“Can we stop somewhere before heading home? I need to meet with someone. Tell them about…” Dean nodded, immediately understanding. Your family would want to know.

“‘Course. Where?” You directed him to the building, relying on your childhood memories to find it. “(Y/N), if you need to talk about anything, you know you can tell me, right?” You only nodded, holding your tongue. It was too complicated to explain. Dean frowned and turned his face back to the road. Soon enough, you pulled up in front of an old warehouse. It looked exactly like how you remembered it, and it threw you years into the past just looking at it. “No way am I letting you go in there alone.”

“I’ll be fine.” Dean didn’t seem convinced. “Okay. If I’m not out in five minutes, you can come in to get me. Yeah?”

“Be safe.” He still seemed uncertain but smiled anyway. You gathered up every once of hope that that smile gave you, slipping a knife into your jacket and turning towards the entrance to the warehouse.

It wasn’t completely dark inside, but you weren’t quite sure where the light source was coming from. It smelled musty and old, but that was to be expected, it was an old building. You took careful steps into the large, empty room, holding your knife out in front of you as a precaution. “Where’s your damn brother?” You turned towards the familiar voice. Before you even saw who it was, you knew It was one of the few familiar voices that you wished you’d never have to hear again. You lowered your weapon, pushing away the urge to just end the bastard’s pathetic life. “I knew he wasn’t cut out for this life.”

“You fucking bastard. I thought I told you to keep him out of it?”

“You don’t get to boss me around, kid. I’m the parent.”

“A shitty excuse for one if you ask me. Sending your inexperienced child on a hunt that you knew he couldn’t handle alone? Pretty jackass move.” You could practically hear the venom dripping from your own words. “Do you even care where he is?” He took his time answering the question, nodding nonchalantly.

“Sure I do.” He sounded bored and like he just wanted to get this over with. You stepped closer to him, feeling confidence swelling inside of you.

“He’s dead, you bastard. He’s dead because of you!” You practically spat in his face, and seconds later your cheek met harsh knuckles.

“He’s dead because of his own stupidity! If he can't even handle a test, then he doesn’t belong in this life at all!”

“A test?!” You were fuming, ignoring the painful bruise on your cheek, the possible black eye forming. “This was a test?”

“Why else would it be one vamp and not a whole nest? I had to test him.” The truth of your father’s part in your brother’s death settled in your foggy mind, and you couldn’t hold yourself back any longer. You threw your own punch back at him, colliding with his mouth. “You don’t even care about your own son, you dick! You never did! You gave up on your own wife and children for this!” You pulled your knife out and jumped towards him, but he overpowered you. His hand caught your wrist in a death-grip, and you felt as if he could snap it without hesitation. He twisted the knife around in your hand and ripped it out, catching your cheek in the process.

“If your mother wasn’t such a pussy, you would’ve all been taught how to survive. Then you wouldn’t be so weak! (B/N) would have survived!” His verbal attack on your brother only made you angrier.

“Fucker!” You brought your knee up and hit him between the legs, knocked his knees out from under him in the process. He was on the ground in an instant, but not without pulling you down with him. Your shoulder hit the concrete with a thud and, ignoring the pain, you climbed on top of him, knee on his chest and a pocket knife to his throat to pin him down. His hands pushed against the knife and wrapped around your throat, and for a moment you stayed locked like that, trying to find the strength to overpower him and end this, when you felt a sudden arm wrap around you from behind and pull you away. Someone else’s hand secured the knife so you couldn’t lash out. You recognized Dean’s arm in a moment and pulled against him. “Let me go!”

“(Y/N), calm down!”

“Who’s this, (Y/N)? Your fuckbuddy? You’re just like your mother!”

“Hey!” Everyone went silence when Dean pulled a gun and aimed directly- and quite accurately- at your father’s form. “Listen here, buddy. I suggest you shut the hell up and don’t mention any of tonight to anyone. Otherwise, you’ll have me on your ass. And lemme tell you…” His voice dropped to a deadly octave. “...you don’t want that.” After your father didn’t respond, Dean wrapped an arm around your waist and turned, helping you out to the car. You kept your gaze fixated on the ground, knowing Dean was probably disappointed. You tried to ignore the swelling and stinging under your eye and the aching in your shoulder as Dean helped you into the passenger side of the Impala.

“I’m sorry.” You apologized as Dean turned the key and started hightailing away from the warehouse.

“Are you hurt anywhere? Like, super hurt?” You shook your head. Other than the cut on your cheek and the possible black eye and black and blue shoulder, you were fine. “Listen, (Y/N). I don’t like to pry, but as soon as we get a bit of distance between us and him, we’re gonna stop and fix you up, and you’re gonna tell me everything. Okay?” You sat in silence, tears streaming down your cheeks. “(Y/N), I’m not mad.” His voice softened and he spoke in a whisper. “Just worried. I’m not going to yell. Promise you'll tell me what’s wrong. Okay?”

“Okay.”

You sat in silence for only a few minutes before the scene around you changed and you were back on a highway with nighttime settling in. You drove for a few minutes in silence, feeling ashamed that Dean had to stop you from killing your own father. Not even the sound of his classic rock tapes filled the car. “There’s a rest area up ahead. We could park there, fix you up, maybe get some crappy food, and sleep in the car for the night, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Before you knew it, Dean had parked under a patch of light in the mostly vacant parking lot of the rest stop. He turned to look at you under the streetlight, but you turned your head away, not able to meet his concerned gaze. You heard him sigh, and his tired voice reached your ears.

“(Y/N), I promise I’m not mad. I just want answers. Can you give me some?”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Think it over.” Dean opened his door and went to pull something from the trunk, while your mind tried to gather up a solid explanation for him. Where could you start? With your deadbeat dad or your dead brother? Or maybe you could just read him your entire biography. “(Y/N.” Dean’s gentle tone pulled you from your mind. “Come sit back here.”

“I had a bad childhood.” Dean lets out a somber chuckle at your sudden statement as you sat next to him in the backseat.

“Welcome to the club.”

“Maybe not as bad as yours, but it was hard for me.” Dean dabbed a cloth at the cut on your cheek and nodded for you to continue. “Well, I didn’t grow up a hunter. But my dad was one. He abandoned us.”

“Another deadbeat dad, huh?” He finished cleaning up the cut and focused all his attention on you.

“I only knew him as the drunk who showed up at our house or called every now and then. I didn’t actually know him until I was twelve… or something. I don’t remember when it was. He got me into hunting by persuading me it would protect my brother from bad things. That I could protect everyone I cared about.” You swallowed harshly. I never thought my involvement would cause his death. “But I hated my dad.” You watched the pieces connect in Dean’s mind.

“Was that your dad, fighting you back there?” You nodded, and Dean’s face twisted into anger. “I’m sorry, (Y/N). No one should say those things to their own child.” You couldn’t help but notice the close proximity between the two of you. You were sitting sideways on the bench seat, knees bend and pressing into Dean’s thigh. Dean had one hand on your shoulder, where he had been holding you steady as he cleaned up your injuries. His eyes bore into yours as if telling you it’s all going to be alright. Willing that to be true, you sucked in a breath. You needed to gather up strength for your next confession.

“Remember when I got that call earlier Dean? That someone I cared about was also hunting that vamp?” He nodded, his eyes slowly become dark with realization. “And remember when I said I had a little brother? Apparently, dad got him into hunting too.” Then, he knew.

“... No… was that..?” His eyebrows furrowed together and he gazed at you with those sad green eyes. “Son of a bitch…”

“My brother. Dean, my brother is dead. Dad said it was a test hunt. He’s dead-” Your voice cracked dramatically. Since when was your throat this tight? Tears that had been building up for so long finally broke free from your eyes, and you brought a hand up to wipe them. Dean pulled your hands away gently, urging you to lie your head on his shoulder.

“(Y/N), don’t hold it in.” You willingly buried your tear-streaked face in his neck, inhaling his musky, smoky scent and clawing at his jacket hopelessly. “Sweetheart, I’m so, so sorry. I know how much it hurts to lose a brother, trust me. I’ve lost Sammy more times than I even want to count anymore.” You stopped you sniffed through your words.

“But he always came back. You could always get him back. I can’t-” You suddenly realized what you must look like, and buried your face back into Dean’s chest.

“I know… I know, kiddo.” His strong arms enveloped you, pulling you even closer. You felt his face against the top of your head and knew he was giving you a kiss.

“If I would’ve been faster, he’d still be alive. This is my fault.”

“No.” Dean’s voice switched from comforting to urging with only one word. He looked you in the eye, holding your full attention. “Don’t blame yourself, (Y/N). None of this was your fault. None of it.” He paused for a moment, thinking over what you had said to him. “Did you say that was a ‘test’? It’s your dad’s fault. I should’ve let you kill the son of a bitch. I’m sorry.” You laughed through your tears and felt Dean’s fingers trail through your hair.

“Thank you, Dee.”

“‘Course, sweetheart. I understand how it feels, and the last thing you need is to feel even more alone. You know I’ll always be here for you, right? I know it’ll take you a while to get past this if you ever do. So I’m not going anywhere.” You smiled thankfully at him, and he sent back one of his killer looks before turning and grabbing a beer out of the cooler. “You need a drink?” You smiled and gladly accepted the offer. He cracked one open for himself and tapped the end against yours in a toast. “Here’s to being more similar than we thought.”

“Here’s to shitty fathers and daddy issues.” Dean cracked a smile at your addition.

“Here’s to your brother.”

“Here’s to us, Dee.” You both smiled at that, clinking your bottles once again and taking a huge gulp. Dean watched you with a soft smile on his face, taking a small sip. He wanted to stay sober tonight. He wanted to remember this night for the rest of his life. And remember it he did. He remembered how the love of his life sat with her legs across his lap, face in his chest and arms around him, in the backseat of his Impala. How you’d drunkenly asked for cuddles before passing out in his arms, and the lights outside vanished as he lay back on the leather seat, holding you to him in an intimate yet innocent embrace at the end of the night. He remembered how he hadn’t even kissed you, yet he felt so much more satisfied than any night he could have spent sleeping with a different woman. And, even years into the future, when he stood before you, ring in his hand, he could still remember that last toast clear as day.

“Here’s to us, Dee.”

Taglist:

@theredheadedwinchester

@solis200213

@music-lockscreen

@bella-ca

@samanthaharper2018

#supernatural #spn #spnfamily #reader insert #dean x reader #dean winchester #dean x you #dean x y/n #angst #fluff #fanfic #here's to

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mymelancholiesblues · 5 years

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Just wondering, what your head canon for Leon's family?

Oh my god, I was planning to post this huge compilation of my RE Headcanons soon (starting with what I have for Leon) when I got your ask’s notification. Are you a mind reader? Hahaha. But really, thank you for providing me with a justification to start posting them.

I would like to please invite you to sit because I have plenty – honestly PLENTY – of things to share over this specific matter (Leon’s family). And, of course, to ask you to bear with me through them.

For anyone else whose interest might be picked over this: keep in mind that these are (obviously) my headcanons for Leon’s background and family and in no way is anyone else under the obligation to accept nor fully agree with them.

I wrote them down because I think A LOT about storytelling devices, stories structures, characterization and characters studies, world-building, fiction tropes, etc. and, since I’ve been a Resident Evil fan from age eight to this day, I also tend to spend a lot of time thinking about its characters – and the overall rest of its lore. Furthermore, as a way to help me write them in fanfictions or even in meta-analysis, I’m always thinking of what would make sense within these characters narratives and to their personalities.

Anyway. Back to Leon and his family!

There’s a very solid theory in RE Fandom that Raccoon City is set in Missouri. I really take this into account when I think about RE Characters because it helps me “placing them” before Raccoon, since not all of them were originally born/living there. Leon, for example, according to canon material, only decided to apply to be a police officer in Raccoon because “he was intrigued by the bizarre murders cases in Raccoon City” going in the news.

Because of this, *my* Leon S. Kennedy:

– Was born in small Galena/Illinois. His parents moved to Chicago/IL when he was around 8;

– So, huge fan of the Chicago Bears (and the Chicago Bulls);

– Leon was lovingly raised by a very Catholic couple, Liliana and Isaac;

– Since Kennedy and Scott are, respectively, an Irish surname and a Scottish name and Leon is not an unusual name in Polish (check out about Polish Americans in Illinois and you’ll have a more proper comprehension of my thought process) and German cultures, I think Isaac would be a man of mixed Irish and Scottish heritage, and Liliana of Polish and German heritage;

– Although, his biological parents were actually Roberto (Italo-American punk) and Abigail, Liliana’s youngest sister;

– Robby was a drunken deadbeat, while Abbie was an airhead obsessively in love. Leon was conceived when they were both very young – his mom had sixteen and his dad eighteen;

– Liliana had three daughters (ages 10, 13 and 15) by then (1977), but she and Isaac always dreamed of having a little boy. They even tried to, but the attempts led to miscarriage after miscarriage, so when Abbie gave birth to Leon, the couple was pretty much devoted to their nephew, always visiting to see him and make sure he was properly being taken care of;

– Robby took note of all that and when Leon was only barely one year old, he packed his and Abbie’s stuff and imposed that he was leaving and that she should go with him, leaving the baby behind, telling her that surely Liliana would raise him as if he were hers;

– Indeed she did, albeit feeling distraught by her sister’s complete negligence;

– Isaac adored the boy, and Leon’s three cousins always treated him as their little brother;

– Also: Liliana decided she wanted to erase Abbie’s true connection to Leon, so she got rid of all the photographies that led to those deductions, leaving only the ones that showed baby Leon alone or the ones with the rest of his relatives, but not with his biological parents. Isaac never agreed with this, though. He believed that once Leon got older, he had the right to know his origins, believing that if their love for the boy was true he’d love them back and recognise their role in his life, so there was no need to lie. Thus, he kept a photo that featured Robby resting a hand in Abbie’s shoulder while she was breast-feeding Leon;

– Isaac was very ill when Leon was nearing his eighteenth birthday, and passed away just five months prior to Leon turning nineteen (Isaac was sixty-three years old by his time of death). Leon found that hidden photo after Isaac’s death since his dad left most of his personal belongings to Leon;

– Leon never confronted his mother on it, putting together two and two and realising his biological parents haven’t thought twice before abandoning him, so he shouldn’t bother with them either as he was raised in a genuinely loving and supportive family;

– As I said, Leon has three older sisters: Lydia (born 1962), Meryl (born 1964) and Olivia (born 1967). Two nephews from Lyds’ side, and a niece from Liv’s;

– Parents personalities: I picture Leon’s dad as a mixture of both Jonathan Kent (DC Comics) and Eddard Stark (ASoIaF). A firm, caring, kind, upfront and sincere man with high moral values, strong ethics and unwavering sense of justice, who valued honesty above all else and always believed in the best of people and in helping others, true to the “love your neighbour as yourself” commandment. Liliana was the more stern parent (especially with Lydia, always wanting and expecting her to set out a good example for her siblings), so I picture her as a fierce, proud and honest woman, passionately protective and supportive of her family, that dedicated herself entirely to whatever she put her mind into (domestic activities, city projects, EVERYTHING);

– Lydia would be the “Patricia Arquette’s character in Boyhood (2014)” kind of woman. Kind-hearted, hardworking and amazing, but guilty as charged of the serious flaw of always being romantically involved with scumbags. A Geriatric Nurse, divorced twice, mother to Kilian and Luke – both kids from her first marriage;

– By the way, Kilian is a problem-child and Lucas is the emo kid. Leon has trouble dealing with both;

– On top of it, Leon have several difficulties dealing with Lydia. Being the most distant from him in age terms, Lydia always came off as a bit distant to and unnecessarily strict with him;

– Meryl is Leon’s lesbian best buddy. Confidant, a bit arrogant, always open to give advice, prone to bluntly point out faults in her loved ones and to get angry with Lydia. She graduated in architecture and is a state employee, working as an Urban Planner. Has cleaning OCD;

– Olivia is the sister Leon was closest to since it was with her he had the “smallest” age difference. Driven, headstrong, empathetic and an introvert, she’s actually the one who inspired him to join Law Enforcement and is now a detective in Massachusetts. Liv has a long-time relationship with Peter, whom she met during her childhood in school, and they have a daughter, Harriet (any coincidence with Olivia Dunham from Fringe (2008-2013) is on purpose since Olivia would be Leon’s perfect older sister, ok);

– Leon’s sense of humour takes much after his brother-in-law’s one, Peter, considering he spent a lot of time with him as he would be a frequent guest to their house;

– He fell in love for the first time when he was in middle school in his seventh grade with an eighth grade girl, Allison, who was an exceptionally good basketball player and would kick his ass in all the practice games;

– Allie has very evident native-American heritage, skin and eye colour, hair;

– It was Allie the long-time girlfriend who broke up with him right before Raccoon. She felt he was being distant even prior to his decision to be a cop in Raccoon City. In truth, what happened was that Leon feared his future being set stone too early in his life the way things were going. His wishes to have more agency over the shaping of his own destiny started driving him further and further away from Allie as he felt she was expecting their relationship to progress over time to the building of a family etc.;

– Meryl and Olivia both loved Allie and to this day they don’t get over the fact that Leon didn’t marry her;

– Leon unwillingly distanced himself from his sisters, though, only contacting them for birthday calls and holidays alike because of all of that government recruitment stuff and classified shit and also dealing with a heavy emotional load after surviving Raccoon;

– The only reason Hunnigan found out that Leon had living relatives was that Lydia called to give Leon the news of Liliana’s death in 2010 (by seventy-two years of age) on work-time. Leon, of course, was very shaken with the news;

– While Leon only knows what Ada herself lets him about her past, family, childhood and the circumstances that put her precisely where she is now, Ada knows everything there is to know about his past, family, childhood and the circumstances that placed him precisely where he is now because she’s very competent at her job and did her homework as a spy (this will die with her, but for countless times she fantasized about him confiding all of those mundane details of his life and backstory in her);

– I’m very convinced that in one of those nights Ada visited him for some hoochie coochie after like, six to eight months without seeing or talking to him at all, Leon had to break up the news that she came in in a bad time since he already planned for a Thanksgiving dinner with his sisters. Ada accepts the challenge because she’s been REALLY missing him (horny on main). Ah, and he’s quite upset with her because of that “six to eight months with no news at all” “little” issue. So, picture that. Please.

And that is all I have for “Leon’s family” headcanons. For now. As I warned: PLENTY. Hahahahaha, sorry! Hope this can provide some entertainment and delight to you.

#Leon Scott Kennedy #Leon S Kennedy #Leon Kennedy #Resident Evil #rebel-the-way #OTP: like a part of me I can't let go #レオエイ #Aeon #Leon x Ada #♥#[games]#[mine]#//#golden puppy #///#asks and answers #Aeon fandom #my headcanons

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wndamaximov · 5 years

Text

iron man[1]

Masterlist

Summary: Joseph Rogers stole from The Iron Man, landing himself and his son in deep debt with the mobster. The only way to work off the debt is for Steve to start dealing for the crime lord. But what happens when he starts to fall in love with Tony Stark?

Words: 1, 513

Pairing: Tony Stark x Steve Rogers (stony)

Warnings: Mentions of (dealing) drugs, angst

Characters: Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, James Rhodes, Joseph Rogers, Pepper Potts(mentioned), Obediah Stane(mentioned), Sharon Carter(mentioned)

Ask to be tagged in this series here!

Tony stood in the center of the corner cafe that never seemed out of the ordinary. It had started the morning mundane, a steady flow of customers streaming in for their morning coffee, not enough for the place to be considered popular, but just enough to pay the bills. Except it wasn’t enough to pay Stane’s debts.

The once pleasant ambiance was destroyed, several chairs knocked over, scuff marks all over the floor, booths on their bellies, and as the cherry on top of a bloodbath sundae, bodies strewn haphazardly throughout the room, their owners last pleads for mercy permanently plastered on their faces.

Once, such a scene would’ve made Tony feel something, anything, but now it meant absolutely nothing to him. Another day, another guy who couldn’t pay what he owed. The same routine over, and over. Tony used to feel sympathetic to his debtors’ plights, but now it all just seemed futile. If they missed one payment, they’d miss the next. No point in giving them a second chance.

“You want us to clean this dumpster, boss?”

“As usual, Colonel. You know the drill.”

“You ever think about getting a girlfriend, boss?” Tony grimaced. Rhodey had been pestering him to get a girlfriend ever since the love of his life had died. The memory of Pepper was still so fresh in his mind that he could still feel her sometimes. Her presence would hit him out of nowhere, and it made him wonder if life was truly over after death. Luckily for him, no one else from his tainted past had ever come back to haunt him.

“You know I haven’t, Rhodes,” he quipped, throwing up the facade of the most feared mobster in New York.

“I think it’d do you some good; I hate the thought of you prattling around that big, old mansion all by yourself. At least with a girlfriend, you won’t be lonely.” Rhodey clapped Tony on the back and walked past him to hoist one of the many fallen corpses onto his shoulders. Before walking away to do his job, he stopped in front of his boss. “It’s been a decade since Pepper died. You’re not doing her any favors by being unhappy, and you know it.”

Anyone else. Had anyone else dared to rack up the courage to ask him that, they would have been dead before the end of the sentence. But it was Rhodey, his best friend from childhood, the one person present for every up and down in his life. His right-hand man was his number one confidant- but only in his business. The one person that he could trust more than anything, and the one person he couldn’t trust at all- and he couldn’t care less. After all, they didn’t call him the “Iron Man” for nothing. He was cold, calculating, and ruthless. And he just couldn’t find it in himself to care.

━━━━‎⎊━━━━

Tony leaned back into his chair and stretched. It had been a fairly slow day for Stark Industries and its countless side-businesses. It was like this most days; not as many people dared to mess with the guy who was rumored to bite the heads of those who crossed him off, and not in the figurative way. Tony’d always wondered who had come up with that interesting myth. Just another thing to ponder as he struggled to keep his eyes open.

The weather outside didn’t help his boredom either. All he noticed about it was the bleak gray fog settling down on the traffic like a blanket of dread. Not good enough for rain, but Tony was high up enough that little droplets had formed on his window, fragmenting the world below him into pieces not nearly interesting enough to put together. New York- the city that teemed with life. No corner was occupied by just a single person, except for his little bubble. No one bothered to venture far enough inside, and why would they? Tony’d built a fortress around his corner, making it impenetrable. His reputation made him a god, a cruel, capricious god who was only to be worshiped, not loved. Only one person had ever taken the time to get to know the man underneath the beast.

Suddenly, the intercom buzzed, the piercing sound shaking Tony out from inside his head.

“Yeah?”

“Boss, we’ve got someone who stole something from you. Would you like to see him, or should I tell the War Machine to deal with him?”

“Send him up. I want to hear his story.” Not like Tony had anything better to do anyway.

━━━━‎⎊━━━━

The shaking man was deposited on his knees in front of the emotionless king. That’s what Tony realized he was. A king with his cowering subject awaiting judgement in front of him.

“Please sir,” he sobbed, “I only did it for my son.”

Tony laughed. Children. That was always their excuse. “What’s your name?”

“Joseph, Joseph Rogers, sir.”

“Tell me, what’d you take for your… son.”

“Just a packet of rush. I needed money, to buy my son a birthday gift,” the man said, his voice gradually raising in volume, “but I swear on my boy’s life, I had no idea the coke was yours! I thought it was a small time dealer’s, please sir, you have to believe me!”

Tony sat back down in his chair and undid the top button of his suit jacket. “Take him to my mansion and lock him up. Make sure he doesn’t see the light of day until he can find a way to pay me back. And get me the son too.” Maybe he’d order in some pizza when he went home. Yeah, pizza sounded good. Even a merciless king needed to eat.

━━━━‎⍟━━━━

It was Steve’s 30th birthday, and so far, not off to a great start. He’d been looking forward to seeing his dad soon, but it turned out that he was late- by 4 hours. Steve would’ve been worried, but this was a common experience. His deadbeat drunk of a dad was probably getting wasted at some random bar in New York- as per usual.

As Steve was about to settle on the couch to channel surf with his beer and pizza in hand, he heard a rapid knocking at the door. It was probably Mrs. Carter downstairs asking him to stop being so loud. The crazy woman hated even the slightest sound that he made.

He yanked the door open and was surprised to see a bunch of men in black suits and sunglasses standing around. The one in front looked down at the gun tucked into his waistband warning him to comply. They looked like mobsters.

“Sir, we need you to come with us.” What had his dad gotten him into now?

━━━━‎⎊━━━━

Tony ate his pizza into his mouth in a robotic way. Lift, put in mouth, chew. He couldn’t taste any of the flavors in his mouth. It was all bland in his mouth; like eating water. Eating wasn’t even the same anymore- he needed help.

His phone rang, and he knew that Rhodey had done what he had told him to. “You got the boy?”

“Man, sir. He’s somewhere around his late thirties.”

“Still living with his dad?” Tony wanted to get a feel for what this guy was like.

“Yeah. Dad’s an alcoholic- looks like he was there to take care of him.” Fathers. Nothing good ever came out of them.

“Hmm. A stealing alcoholic. What does the son look like?” Hopefully the son was a better person.

“Someone who’s trying to do his best in a bad situation.” Tony flash backed to his own childhood. It was a struggle shaking the past off of himself.

“I’ll see that for myself. How far are you?”

“15 minutes out.”

“Hurry. I want to see whether this son is worth all the trouble.”

━━━━‎⎊━━━━

He didn’t look like much, just your stereotypical blonde, tall, and muscular guy. “You know why you’re here?”

A guy who looked down with a set jaw and back up with contempt in his eyes. “What’d my dad do this time?” Not contempt for him, but his father.

“He stole something from me. But let’s talk about you. What’s your name?”

“Steve.” As if an afterthought, he added, “Rogers.”

“Well, Steve, I’m willing to let your father go. He’s an old man, and I don’t think he’d last long here.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Rogers started to get up.

“But.” Steve sat back down. “In exchange for his freedom, I’ll need your service.”

After a couple seconds of deliberation, he replied, “Fine. Just… let him go. What do you need?”

“One of my dealers got himself arrested.” Tony had that idiot shot by one of his men in the LAPD. “I need a replacement. You following?”

“Yes sir.”

“So we have a deal?” They both rose and met hands like equals.

“It seems that we do.” And just like that, the smallest bit of color seeped back into Tony’s life.

━━━━‎⎊━━━━

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