#so THAT explains why it ended up like that and i just forgot to rename it

[humanitys-strongest-bamf]

"get me a damned matcha" | Chapter 5: October I

{{ Chapter 4: September | Chapter 6: November I }} Chapter Directory

levi's stupidly observant for someone who pretends to be aloof all the time, js

if you're interested in getting tagged for updates, fill out this form here!

✧ pairing ➼ levi ackerman x fem!reader, college x coffee shop x roommates!au ✧ summary ➼ After you find yourself plagued with misfortune due to struggles in your personal and family life, you find yourself needing to move last minute. As a junior in undergrad with little money and little social support, you considered yourself lucky when you found a sublease that was close to campus and was relatively cheap. Unfortunately, it seemed that your roommate did not seem to be so excited regarding your presence. ✧ content/warnings ➼ fluff, slowburn, enemies to lovers (sorta), strangers to lovers, fem!reader, descriptions of reader being superficial (ITS PART OF THE BACKSTORY ILL EXPLAIN LATER ITS FINE), jean and eren being comedically competitive, the ex-boyfriend that was supposed to be porco that i renamed to zack, floche being gross, explicit descriptions of grief, substances/alcohol, college-typical parties ✧ word count ➼ ~4.8k

"Did you have to plan this on the day of the Rumbling?" 

You shot an intentionally offensive side-eye towards Oluo. The two of you, plus the rest of the officers for your Honors Society, currently found yourselves at an arcade that was about a 10-15 minute walk from campus. It was the weekend after midterms, so you figured that it was the perfect time to host your first official social event.

However, your generally clueless vice president and social committee chair decided to conveniently book the event on the one night in which another major event that you were all planning on attending was occurring. You had initially said you would handle the booking and were pleasantly surprised when Oluo had offered to do it instead, only to be horrifically disappointed once you found out the date he chose.

This was why you never bothered asking the other officers to do anything—it always ended up like this. It was chaotic, disorganized, inconvenient, or all of the above.

The Rumbling was a rave at a nearby club on the outskirts of campus. They hosted a Halloween party every year, but had an age restriction of being 21-years old due to the open bar, which meant that this was the first year that you could attend without doing something shady to get a fake ID of some sort. 

Literally all of the other officers were planning on going together, so you were more than pissed that Oluo had planned your social on this day. Not only did it disrupt your plans, but it also might give the freshmen a bad first impression. It wasn't much of a social support community if you were cutting them short and leaving them on their own at their very first formal event. 

"I forgot!" Oluo exclaimed in defense, which earned an eye roll from you. 

You looked over towards the entrance as you heard the door open and saw a few other students walk in. They weren't at your general meeting last month, so you didn't recognize them, except for one.

You smiled and waved at Marlo. You had never talked to him, but you've seen him behind the counter at the café before.

"Oh hey!" you said with a smile as Marlo walked up to you. "You're the freshman that works at Levi's café, right?"

"Sophomore," Marlo said awkwardly as he shuffled. "Just started, but yeah!" 

After chatting a bit, it turns out that you and Marlo were both in an individualized track related to writing, although you were focused more on creative writing whereas he was focused more on grant-writing for criminal justice organizations. It was the same program, but completely different tracks. 

Everyone had formed into their own little circles. Most had gathered around the dining table to chat while devouring the pizza you had ordered.

You looked up as you noticed a particularly rowdy group on the other side of the arcade.

It seemed that Eren and Jean were bickering with each other in front of a Dance Dance Revolution game, nearly having a yelling match over who was better at the game, while Mikasa was playing, clearly outscoring the both of them combined. 

You were nervously checking the time periodically, wanting to end the event as late as possible without having to rush to get to the Rumbling later. After about an hour and a half, you began wrapping up, motioning for everyone to clean up before heading back to campus as a group.

Although the event had ended early, you were able to tell that the freshmen had a good time with how chatty they were on the way back to campus. 

While that was good news, you still found yourself being restless, walking at a slightly faster pace than everyone and forcing yourself to slow down and wait occasionally. You were more than overstimulated by the time you finally dropped everyone off at the main hub on campus for them to each head to their individual dorms.

You watched them intensely as they all went into the building. By the time the door had shut, you were long gone, leaving the other officers confused. 

They were supposed to accompany you to the party, but you found yourself much more stressed than they were, which resulted in you making a beeline for your apartment.

By the time you had arrived, you were out of breath and running purely on adrenaline. You entered through the front door and immediately ran for your room, without even taking a moment to notice if your aloof roommate was at home. 

You frantically opened the door to your closet, your eyes scanning through all of your clothes.

It was silly, but the reason you were so stressed was because you weren't sure of what to wear to the Rumbling. It was a high-key Halloween party, so you felt obligated to wear a costume. There was nothing about a dress code and a good amount of people went in casual clothes, but you still felt the need to wear something that was obviously a Halloween costume. 

Your eyes immediately fell onto a party dress that you had bought a few weeks ago that you had planned to be your default get-up whenever you went out. However, it'd be boring to wear such a plain thing to a Halloween party—and you definitely didn't want to seem boring.

After a few minutes of digging through your closet, you tensed as your eyes fell on a maid costume you had bought as a joke freshman year. You never intended to wear it as an actual costume—even now, a part of you resisted against it, wondering if you could find something else to wear. 

You tapped your finger on the closet door, desperately trying to think of anything else to wear.

After a few minutes, you realized that you couldn't afford the time needed to labor over this decision. You immediately grabbed the maid outfit, groaning in exasperation.

~~~~~

The club was more than filled by the time that you arrived. Both you and Petra stepped inside after showing the bouncer your ID's. The music was stupidly loud, there was a DJ cheering everyone on at the very back, and fake smoke littered the air. A mix of students and locals were dancing on the dance floor, with some choosing to hang out around the local bar.

This wasn't your first party. You've definitely drank and partied before, but being 21 meant that you could officially drink now. It had a different feel to it. Some of the thrill that you used to get from illegally drinking had faded, but you felt that you were now able to enjoy it properly.

A few minutes passed before you noticed Oluo and Gunther also step in, with a tall gentlemen quickly following. You had never met him, but Gunther mentioned that he was friends with Eld and that he was bringing him along to catch up. 

"You got changed fast!" Oluo said immediately, eyeing your maid costume.

You immediately punched his shoulder, feeling more than a little embarrassed that his first comment to you was related to your last-minute costume that you were already reluctant to wear.

"You think we'll see anyone we know?" Petra asked as she looked around.

"Probably," you said, walking past Oluo who was now rubbing his shoulder in pain. "It's a pretty big party."

The first half of the night was a blur for you. You remembered doing some shots while getting to know Eld, never mingling too far into the dance floor. The mosh pit-style get-up was just never your thing.

You were feeling a gentle buzz at this point and the sensation allowed you to let loose for a little while and forget all the bullshit you had to otherwise deal with.

However, that didn't last very long.

You felt your entire body freeze up with anxiety as your eyes fell onto your ex-boyfriend's figure on the dance floor.

Your relationship with Zack was not the best one. It wasn't anywhere near healthy, and the last time you saw him, you were having a yelling match and he kicked you out, which was what prompted your whole housing situation. 

You saw him begin to turn in your direction and you immediately hid behind Eld's tall figure, thankful that you had noticed in time so that he didn't see you. 

"What's up with you?" Eld asked, noticing your sudden change in behavior.

"N-Nothing!" you replied nervously, forcing a smile. "I'm going to grab a drink!" 

You kept your head low as you quickly headed towards the bar, which was on the opposite side of the venue, immediately finding the most tucked-in corner seat that you could find and plopping down onto the barstool while burying your face in your hands.

After you took a few minutes to catch your breath, you gestured over to the bartender for a shot. Suddenly seeing Zack had sobered you up more than you would have liked it to and you definitely needed the numbing effect of more alcohol to forget his presence, although your night was already somewhat ruined.

Just what I needed. On the one night I decide to let myself let loose after the shitshow that was the first half of the semester and he's here.

You frowned as you glanced back towards the dance floor.

He can come out to a rave in the middle of the night, yet he couldn't find the time to drop off my shit?

You weren't surprised, but it still pissed you off.

Your view of the dance floor was immediately obscured as someone decided to sit next to you—a bit too close for comfort.

He was a scrawny dude roughly your age, with a cocky face and a questionable haircut that somewhat looked like a bird's nest. You couldn't tell if the haircut was purposeful or not. It looked ridiculous either way. 

You've seen him around campus. He was a sophomore majoring in business, so you never had the chance—or desire—to interact with him. 

"Name's Floche," he said with a tone of confidence that didn't really match his appearance. "Can I buy you a drink?"

You scoffed at him.

"Are you even old enough to be drinking?"

"I can be," he said with a shrug.

You grimaced for a split second at his answer, although it was barely noticeable—and especially not noticeable to someone like Floche. You quickly changed your expression to one of a forced smile.

"I'm okay, thanks! Already took a bunch of shots."

"Oh c'mon, let me treat you!" he responded, scooting a bit closer. "You're too pretty to be here alone, so let me keep you company." 

Part of you had hoped when he sat down that he was just being friendly, but now you could no longer deny that he was being aggressively flirtatious. Normally, you wouldn't mind the random comments you'd get at parties. They were usually non-consequential, other than making you uncomfortable in the moment. 

However, with your elevated anxiety due to suddenly seeing Zack, you really didn't have the emotional capacity to handle something like this at the moment. Any intention of humoring Floche with his cheesy and flirtatious commentary was nowhere to be found.

"Who said I'm alone?" 

He needed to go away. 

Instead, he scooted even closer to the point that you were starting to feel cramped as you scooted back towards the wall, cursing at yourself for choosing to sit in the corner.

"Well, you're over here on your own, without looking around for anyone you know."

He was getting way too close.

"Just let me buy you a drink! I promise you won't regret it."

"Mmm, I said no thanks," you responded sternly.

Floche responded by gesturing to the bartender.

You were not in the mood for this. You were beginning to get more than pissed, to the point that your people-pleaser façade began rapidly diminishing. You couldn't get yourself to continue masking.

You scowled at him.

"Dude, are you allergic to the word 'no'?"

"Don't worry," he said with a smirk. "I like it when you play hard-to-get!"

That did it. In that exact moment, you no longer gave a single shit about what others thought of you.

"What the fuck, I'm not-"

"Oi, fuck off, you lanky parasite."

You heard a familiar voice that brought you a heavy sense of relief—in contrast to how irritated it usually made you feel.

Floche looked over and made eye contact with Levi. He was about half a foot taller than your roommate, but Levi was much more intimidating than he was.

"What, are you her boyfriend or something?"

"Fuck no," you both responded at once. 

You felt the corner of your lips tugging up subtly into a smirk in response to your simultaneous answer. At least you were on the same wavelength with Levi on something—a feat you never thought you'd achieve.

"See? I wasn't here alone?" you motioned towards Levi, hoping that this would be enough to get Floche to go away.

"So fuck off," Levi scolded, not giving Floche to make the decision himself. "Don't make me say it again."

After Floche finally left, Levi sat on the stool next to you. You glanced at him and noticed he wasn't in a costume of any sort, simply wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He couldn't possibly look any more plain.

"Fucking undergrads," he grumbled.

"What's with you and hating undergrads?"

You'd lost count of how many antagonistic comments he had made towards undergraduate students at this point. 

"It seems I can't get rid of you even when I'm not at the café or apartment," he said, dodging the question. "How annoying."

You pursed your lips, giving him an unamused expression.

"You're the one that chose to sit next to me. You could be anywhere in this giant ass theater."

"That douche was harassing you," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he was astonished that you were even questioning him. "And there's too many fucking people in here."

He paused, his gaze moving from your eyes down to the rest of your body, finally noticing your outfit. 

"Kinda ironic that you're in a maid costume when you're shit at cleaning at home."

You groaned and rolled your eyes. While you were embarrassed when Oluo commented on it, you felt your head ache in response to Levi's comment. 

"I'm going to need at least three more shots if I'm going to be forced to talk to you," you grumbled as you gestured the bartender over. 

You immediately downed the shot when you received it, grimacing a bit at the feeling of the alcohol traveling down your throat. 

Your eyes went back into the crowd, scanning the crowded theater nervously. You were well hidden, but the fact that Zack was here still threw you off. This did not go unnoticed.

"What the hell are you doing here if you're truly not alone?" Levi asked, raising an eyebrow at you. "Doesn't seem like you to just be drinking in the corner."

"Don't act like you know shit about me or why I'm here," you immediately responded, barely giving him a chance to finish his sentence.

You realized that you responded much more defensively and sternly than you had intended. His question had struck a nerve and your anxiety plus the alcohol made it harder to regulate around him. 

You took another shot as he looked at you in his usual unamused fashion, but didn't inquire further.

"What are you doing here?" you asked, deflecting from his question. "This is the last place I thought I'd see you at."

"'Don't act like you know shit about me'," he muttered, repeating your phrase word-for-word, earning a scowl and a groan of frustration from you.

You told yourself it was the lighting or the alcohol playing tricks on you, but swore you saw an ever-so-subtle smirk appear on his face that was gone within the second.

Levi glanced into the crowd and motioned over towards the opposite corner of the bar. You looked over and saw two people conversing. You vaguely recognized Hange, who was rapidly chatting away with a tall blonde gentleman that you had never seen before.

"Friend's in town," Levi mentioned. "He's actually the roommate you replaced."

You glanced at Miche again. Although the two of you were in contact to get the sublease set up, you had never physically seen him before.

"I'm kinda pissed at him for moving out because now I have you to deal with," Levi grumbled.

You stuck your tongue out at Levi, which earned you a grimace in response from Levi. 

His eyebrows immediately scrunched together as he saw your eyes slightly widen before your entire body tensed up again. 

Your eyes followed Zack's figure as he walked by again. Once you were able to confirm that he hadn't noticed your presence, you finally let out a breath that you weren't aware you were holding in.

Your anxiety was acting up again and you felt like you couldn't stand being in that theater any longer. It was as if you were suffocating on the spot. 

"I'm getting out of here," you mumbled as you took the third shot, immediately getting up.

"On your own?" Levi asked, turning in your direction as you began to walk off. "You're not seriously thinking of driving, are you?"

You stopped in your tracks and scoffed at him. 

"Of course not. I'm walking, dumbass."

"It's a 45-minute walk at least, dumbass."

"Well, I have plenty of time," you retorted as you began to walk away again.

"Tch. I'll just drive you, you stubborn brat," Levi said in exasperation as he dug his keys out of his pocket.

He glanced up as you gave him a skeptical look, questioning his ability to drive.

"I'm sober contact anyway. Just let me grab Hange and Miche."

He got up and walked past you to summon the two of them over, indicating that he was leaving.

"Any excuse to leave this place."

~~~~~

You felt like you could finally breathe again once you got home. Not only were you able to dull down the anxiety that had been itching at you ever since you saw Zack at the party, but you were also able to finally take off that incredibly uncomfortable maid costume, regretting ever putting it on in the first place. You immediately changed into sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, which was the complete opposite of the costume you had been wearing earlier in the night. 

By the time you came out of your room, Levi noticed that you had looked much more relaxed than usual. It was that stark contrast that he noticed every day. The person he knew at home versus the person you presented yourself as in public were two very different people. 

Despite both Hange and Miche hanging out at the apartment, you were more than fine being in your casual home clothes. It was likely due to the alcohol and heightened anxiety from the party making you exhausted enough to just not be bothered to give a shit once you actually got home.

You typed a quick text message to Petra letting her know that you got home safe before tossing your phone onto the couch and sitting down on the floor on the opposite side of the coffee table in your living room. You didn't want to think about that party for the rest of the night.

The company helped keep you distracted. Miche sat on the couch while you, Levi, and Hange surrounded the coffee table. You were sipping on a beer as you chatted with Miche about having Levi as a roommate.

"Was he as annoying when he was living with you?"

A smug grin appeared on your face as you noticed Levi scowling at you.

"He had his quirks for sure," Miche responded with a shrug. 

"So he's just a dick. Got it."

Levi's scowl grew more intense as he glared daggers into your skull.

"A dick that cares," Hange chimed in.

The scowl on Levi's face turned into an unamused frown as he looked over at Hange, wondering exactly what was going on through their head at all hours of the day to prompt them to say such things.

"Ha," you forced a dry chuckle as you sipped on your beer some more. "What an oxymoron."

The four of you spent the next 45 minutes or so just chatting. Miche and Levi were catching up. Hange was asking you about your studies. Hange and Miche bonded over what it felt like to be free from the constraints of University. 

You and Levi avoided talking directly to each other, but this wasn't new—and from the lack of surprised looks from Miche or Hange, this wasn't news to them either. He had talked to them about you.

All horrible things, I bet.

A frown appeared on your face as you began to ruminate over what it was that Levi could have been saying about you behind your back. You couldn't stand him and couldn't really care less what he thought of you, but the possibility of him spouting that nonsense to others made your stomach churn.

"So what made you need the sudden move?" Miche asked, pulling you out of your head. "I had basically given up on finding a sublease when you showed up."

You looked up towards the ceiling, trying to figure out the best way to describe your situation in a way that wouldn't upset you or require further explanation that you weren't prepared to give.

"...Shitty ex kicked me out."

The look on Levi's face went from an intense scowl to a subtle frown as you spoke. He was more than prepared to spit out a snarky response at whatever excuse you came up with to justify upending his life, but he found himself staying quiet once you started talking. He hadn't bothered to ask (or care) about your housing situation prior to living with him, so he didn't know any of this either.

"Didn't really have anywhere to go."

As long as you left it at that, you could continue this conversation without getting too upset and be able to ride out the rest of the night.

"No family?" Hange asked.

It was an innocent and normal question. Most people would first go to their parents—or whoever took care of them growing up—for refuge in those situations, and especially for undergraduate students, who could just wait until August for leases to start renewing.

You fell silent. An unreadable expression appeared on your face and in your eyes as you lowered your gaze to the ground. You were emotionally exhausted and still buzzed from the alcohol. Masking was out of the question. 

"Sorry," Hange spoke after a few seconds, knowing that they had brought up a sore topic. 

The atmosphere was thick with tension and you felt yourself grow increasingly tense. You felt like everyone's eyes were on you, even if they physically weren't.

Family—who would you consider family? There wasn't anyone real that came to mind, other than your aunt, who was likely the least supportive person on the planet.

"Shitty aunt that was out of the country. That's about it," you said shortly, clearly indicating that you didn't want to continue the topic.

It was already too late. The conversation had already brought up all the grief you had buried deep within you. You felt like saying a single word more about it would make your whole personality come crumbling down into a sobbing mess.

"I'm getting another drink," you mumbled.

You were too enclosed within your own mind to notice, but Levi's gaze had been focused on you ever since he saw your reaction to Hange's question. He saw the way that you tensed and emotionally withdrew. He could tell that it was a painful topic to talk about—and likely, fresh. Your pain was either fresh or repressed to the point of agony.

He wasn't a stranger to that pain.

He subtly watched you as you stood up and made your way into the kitchen to pour yourself another drink, your expression remaining stagnant—but Levi could tell by the way you moved or even the slight way that you scrunched your eyes that you were deeply disturbed by the conversation.

For the first time since he first set eyes on you, he saw you as someone other than just a spoiled brat.

Maybe he was wrong about you.

~~~~~

Your head was pounding. You couldn't tell if it's from the hangover or the lack of sleep—and you couldn't tell if the lack of sleep was from the alcohol, the mention of your parents, or both. You had been chugging water ever since you woke up, but it was doing little to help.

You squinted and groaned in pain as you arrived at your obnoxiously bright classroom. Holding your hand up to your forehead to shield your eyes from the assault of the bright lights, you slowly made your way over to the table that Oluo and Petra sat at, immediately burying your face into your arms once you finally got to sit down.

"Rough night?" Petra asked.

"You could say that," you responded quietly, your voice muffled as you continued to hide between your arms.

Just being upset was one thing. Just being drunk was one thing—you never could sleep well after drinking, anyway—but Hange's question brought up bad memories. Those memories frequently translated into nightmares. You couldn't sleep no matter how hard you tried.

You couldn't get your parents' death out of your head.

Ever since their passing, it was literally just you and your aunt. She became your main source of support, but you couldn't realistically count it as support. Although you were hesitant to admit it, you knew that she was a pretty shitty person, and generally drained you more than she was able to help you.

You were well aware of your people-pleasing tendency, or your inability to really stand up for yourself or voice your opinions in certain situations, and you knew where that came from. Your aunt constantly made comments along the lines of having to "save face" in front of others, and that social relations made or break whether someone could be successful in their lives and that you should prioritize getting along with others, even if it was at the expense of your own autonomy.

You knew it was bullshit deep down. You knew she was projecting her inability to hold anyone in her life onto you, but she had made those comments ever since you were young. Your parents did try to passively shield you from it, but then the comments came in full force once your parents passed, leaving you completely vulnerable to those thought processes. It was going to take a lot of time and effort to break that chain of thinking, but that involved energy that you just didn't have right now.

Your breakup with Zack plus Hange's question from the night before were rude reminders that you really didn't have anyone else. You didn't have anyone that you could really call your family.

"Magath is out today, isn't he?" Oluo mused out loud.

"Partied too hard?" you joked dryly, trying to distract yourself. 

You turned towards the classroom door when you heard footsteps approaching. The door opened and a tall blonde man with a beard and round glasses walked in. You remembered him as the neighbor that helped direct you to Levi's café on your first day at the apartment. Apparently, he was the substitute TA for the lecture today.

His voice, and therefore his lecture, was difficult to focus on, although you couldn't tell if it was because you weren't used to him or if it was due to the hangover. You felt yourself nodding off throughout the lecture, which you didn't fight, although your dozing never lasted for long.

It was either fall asleep in class and miss the content from a substitute TA or force yourself to stay awake and deal with the chaotic thoughts mixed with grief, anxiety, and anger that were running through your mind—and miss the course content anyway because you wouldn't be able to focus.

You were quickly regretting even coming to class, but staying at home wouldn't have been much better. You'd be trapped with your thoughts regardless—your thoughts of losing your parents and being left to navigate a harsh world all on your own, without a single stable source of support.

#: @levisbrat25 @gothgril69 @sckerman @berrijam @notgoodforlife @meowjaa @averysmolbear @roseofdarknessblog @bejewelledd @hhighkey @ayame236 @sad-darksoul @velouria17 @kamyru @l1zk4 @layenacreates @lamees004 @whoami-72 @highgoon69 @chaotic-on-main

#tw: alcohol #tw alcohol #levi x reader #levi ackerman x reader #levi ackermann x reader #levi heichou x reader #captain levi x reader #levi #levi ackermann #levi ackerman #levi heichou #captain levi #modern!au levi #coffeeshop!au levi #college!au levi #attack on titan #aot #shingeki no kyojin #snk #fics: matcha

[voyaging-too]

Harrow the Ninth reread notes. Spoilery.

I’m at around 40%. There is so much foreshadowing, oh my God.

Augustine’s lesson in spirit magic explains and foreshadows the presence of Commander Wake in the sword, and then in Cytherea’s corpse. It also foreshadows Augustine’s ability to throw a whole city into the River, which totally ends up happening.

The very first appearance of Mercy introduces her ability to successfully and accurately manipulate the interior of other Lyctors’ bodies, which should be blind spots to her, foreshadowing, among other things, dios apate major.

Ortus renames the Sleeper ‘the waker’, accidentally guessing her real name.

Also I love Ortus. While everybody is trying to find out how and why Judith Deuteros died, he washes and dries her blood-soaked neckerchief, because that’s all he can do for the dead.

Ianthe reminds me of Draco Malfoy. Maybe it’s the pale blonde hair, maybe it’s the snivelling terror barely hidden by sneering condescension, maybe it’s just that she keeps calling Harrowhark ‘Harry.’ Also I forgot the detail that it’s Ianthe who made sure to bring along Harrow’s own clothes to the Mithraeum, which is a decent move on her part.

Mithraeum is such a fascinating name. I don’t know much about the cult of Mithras, but I can sort of guess the implications: it’s a secret, it’s a sanctum, it’s an underground cave, it’s the place of sacrifice and the place of rite-of-passage. The place where blood is spilled to create/renew the world.

I remember that when Harrow finds Ortus the First kissing the dead body of Cytherea, neither she nor the reader knows yet that both of those people are actually someone else. Which is brilliant and super confusing!

I love that the novel is structured as a count-down to the murder of the Emperor. On the first read-through, I remember the gradual change from “oh no, someone’s going to kill the Emperor” to “thank God someone’s going to kill the Emperor.” Like I kind of knew that the Emperor was a morally complex person from the very beginning, but the real extent of the horror only sank in very, very gradually.

#harrow the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt #wrote

[adara-et-al]

got the thing from here.

These are all of the currently working OCs i've got. Well, not all of them all of them but like. most of them. Yes Adrien is on there twice, he learned how to cope and still is not coping in turns - sometimes in the same sentence. He's very traumatized it's fine.

Adrien, Melle, Ettie, Jian, Billy, and D'artagnan are all from my universe i'm calling Adara. I forgot Rianu but he's in the process of being renamed so it's okay that I forgot him.

Mieczyk Beznazwy is my OC for the Witcher fandom, self-insert, he's Doing His Best but there's a lot happening to him constantly.

Em'Ashael is my Inquisitor Lavellan, and she's having a hard time (this is the same but different version of Em from Lia & Em's Adventure in Thedas, I promise that sentence makes sense it's a lot to explain?)

Aylog, Krotki, Adhira'at, Cel and Lola are all from various TTRPGs i've played. Aylog is an orc (half-orc, just also both halves are orc), Krotki ended up being her son sort of? he's also half-orc and the other half is dwarf. Adhira'at is my tiefling warlock with dubious morals and even more dubious common sense. Lola is from a VTM/VTG (i don't super remember which one it was, i know it matters, we didn't get far in it before shit happened and i wasn't able to play with that group anymore) game, she's Nosferatu and very sweet but kind of unhinged. Cel is from a game with friends that one of my metamours is developing and they're vaguely aware that PTSD exists, has no idea they have it, and is dealing with it by being high all the time.

Aylog is the epitome of "ignorance is bliss" she had low int medium wis and a hilarious amount of charisma for a barbarian. i don't remember how much. she's doing amazing over there in the corner with her flower orc wife and her music dwarf husband. she would be very sad to know how Krótki is doing but that's why he doesn't send the full story to his three parents.

#adrien caen (oc) #d'artagnan caen (oc) #melle st. jean (oc) #billy dietram (oc) #jian asaria (oc) #mieczyk beznazwy (oc) #em'ashael lavellan (oc) #aylog (oc) #Krótki (oc) #adhira'at vanhaishtavani (oc) #lola franklin (oc) #cel schmidt (oc)

[eclypsd]

forgot i accidentally named all my gifset folders after their faceclaims except for one...he’s real to me </3

#ignore rika promo bc realistically that should be in my promos folder anyway /: #i think i made karam's folder first and then it was a year before i made the momo one & that's bc i was making a gifset for my personal ASDF #so THAT explains why it ended up like that and i just forgot to rename it

[fridayfirefly]

A Guardian in Gotham

Read A Guardian in Gotham on AO3

Masterlist

Written for Maribat March Day 19 - Guardian

Note: In this AU Master Fu gave out the Ladybug Miraculous to Marinette and the Black Cat Miraculous to Adrien before consulting the Kwami. Marinette turned out to be a true holder, but for the Black Cat Miraculous, not the Ladybug Miraculous. However, she and Adrien made it work and were able to defeat Hawkmoth anyway. After Hawkmoth's defeat she becomes Lady Noire full-time.

----------

Being the Guardian of the Miraculous was hard work. There were no family vacations, no sleeping in or going to bed early, no breaks. Marinette could not relax until Hawkmoth was defeated. Which explained why it was such a jarring change once the Miraculous Team defeated Hawkmoth.

Gabriel Agreste was behind bars. The citizens of Paris were free from the threat of akumatization. Tikki, Plagg, and the rest of the Kwamis went dormant in order to restore the damage done to Duusu's Miraculous. Marinette didn't exactly know what to do with herself. Suddenly it hit her that she was no longer the middle schooler who accepted the burden of Guardianship. She was in her final year of high school, nearly an adult. All around her, her friends were making future plans. Adrien was taking a gap year to help Emilie recover from her coma. Alya was accepted to a prestigious journalism program. Nino was DJing at one of the best clubs in Paris. Luka was releasing his EP. Kagami was training for the Olympics. Chloé took up an internship with her mother.

Marinette couldn't move on, the way all of her friends were able to. Marinette couldn't be a normal girl anymore. She couldn't go to university, start a family, live a normal life. She needed the rush of adrenaline that came from two little words - Spots on! or more recently, Claws out!

It was around this time that the Temple of Guardian got in touch with Marinette, offering her an opportunity to continue her work as a Guardian of the Miraculous. They send Marinette a box of old journals, dating back to the 18th century. The journals detailed the discovery of twin "wells of evil" located in the American cities of Gotham and Metropolis, then named Mortham City. The Masters of the Miraculous who made this discovery studied the evil and expressed the desire to find a way to remove it, but didn't have the chance to complete the task before the Temple of Guardians fell. When the Temple reappeared they believed that the Masters had managed to destroy the evil in Mortham, due to the reports of the city's recovery and renaming to Metropolis soon after, but were unable to destroy the evil in Gotham. The city festered, growing more and more troubled while Metropolis flourished. Marinette's task was to do her best to study and remove the evil in Gotham.

Marinette applied to Gotham University, feeling relieved that she might finally find her purpose.

----------

Marinette's dorm room at Gotham University was rather lackluster; it was the typical tiny, cramped American university dorm, complete with a stained carpet and a bathroom shared between six girls. Her roommate was a computer science major named Barbara Gordon. Barbara was older than Marinette, a senior while Marinette was only a freshman. It was a fluke accident that the freshman dorms had filled up before she was admitted. Secretly Marinette wished that she had been able to room with another freshman. Barbara was rarely in the dorm room, too busy with her coursework and her real friends to make small talk with her nervous roommate.

Marinette barely spent any time in her dorm room, either. She spent most of her time in class or at the library studying. Marinette had the ambitious plan of double majoring in both fashion and business, in order to start her own fashion company someday. Her classes overwhelmed her, and Marinette began to regret overloading her first-semester schedule. It gave her barely any time to work on her Guardian work, let alone join an extracurricular.

Marinette wanted to decorate the dorm and make it more of a home, but because of a plane delay, she ended up arriving at the university the day before classes started, giving her no time at all to go to the store and buy anything. Another unfortunate casualty of Marinette's late arrival was that she still hadn't figured out how Gotham's bus schedule worked, so she walked everywhere, even in the pouring rain.

Overall, Marinette's first week of classes was miserable. That was why Marinette was crying in her dorm room, alone, at six in the evening on a Friday night. It all started when Marinette saw a picture of her old class on social media. Alya and Nino were making faces at the camera; Marinette and Adrien were both grinning, Marinette's blue scarf wrapped around his neck; Ivan and Mylène were holding hands, staring into each other's eyes; Rose was posing, kissing Juleka's cheek; Alix was perched on Kim's shoulders; Nathaniel had his arm wrapped around Marc's shoulders; Max was holding up Markov so he could wave to the camera, Sabrina and Chloé were smiling, holding hands.

The photo had been taken years ago, on their first day of lycée. Marinette remembered it well. They had all been nervous about starting at a new school. There was no guarantee that they would all be in the same class. Max had calculated the odds for even half of their class staying together and it wasn't good. But that morning, when Marinette walked into her homeroom and saw all of her friends sitting there, she knew that it would be okay. Chloé revealed that she had gotten her father to provide a generous donation to the school to keep them all in the same class for the rest of their education. Marinette had been so happy to get to stay with her friends. Now she was on a different continent from them.

The tears started to fall, slowly at first, then more and more until Marinette was sobbing, face pressed into a pillow. How could she have made such a stupid decision? All of her friends were in France and she left them, all because she couldn't move on.

Two knocks on the door halted Marinette's sobs. "Babs? Are you in here?"

Marinette got up and opened the door, revealing a young man. He looked to be her age, tall, with black hair and blue eyes. "Barbara isn't here right now," she told the man.

The man blinked, looking at Marinette like she wasn't what he expected at all. "I guess I should have called her before I showed up. I'm Tim, by the way. I was just here to drop this off." Tim held up a container filled with chocolate chip cookies.

"I'm Marinette. If you want, you can drop the cookies off on her desk. I'll tell Barbara that they're from you, once she comes back to the dorm." Marinette wiped her eyes with her shirt sleeve, trying to get rid of the evidence of her crying.

"Are you okay?" asked Tim.

"Oh, I'm fine. Just a little homesick. Nothing to worry about."

"You should come with me to get dinner," offered Tim. "I was just about to stop in at the dining hall."

Marinette shook her head. "I wouldn't want to impose."

"It wouldn't be an imposition at all. I hate eating alone."

Marinette gave him a wary look. "I don't know you. Why would you invite me to eat with you?"

Tim shrugged. "You look like you could use some company, to take your mind off of your homesickness. Unless you want to spend the rest of your night crying in your dorm."

Marinette bit her lip as she thought it over. It would be nice to get out of the dorm and get something to eat. On the other hand, Tim was a complete stranger whose intentions Marinette still didn't trust. Then Marinette remembered the photo of her friends and made up her mind. If she couldn't have her old friends here in Gotham she would have to make new ones. "Alright. Just give me a few minutes to get ready."

Marinette threw on a pair of jeans, a Gotham University hoodie, and her sturdiest pair of sneakers.

"So what's on the menu tonight?" asked Marinette as they walked out of the dorm building to Tim's car.

"Uncertain. I can't remember the last time the dining hall actually updating its online menu. I was planning on crossing my fingers and hoping that they would be serving something edible tonight."

Marinette wrinkled her nose. "Is the food usually edible?"

"It's hit or miss. If you want, we could go to a diner instead?"

Marinette nodded. "I don't want to spend my weekend with food poisoning."

"Good choice." Tim turned the car around and started driving into the center of Gotham.

"Are you a senior like Barbara?" asked Marinette.

Tim shook his head. "I'm a sophomore. How about you?"

"Freshman. This is actually my first Friday in Gotham."

"Where are you from?" asked Tim.

"Paris, 21st arrondissement."

"That must be a pretty big change. What made you choose Gotham?"

Marinette shrugged, not wanting to give away her real reason. "I figured all the supervillains and Rogues might remind me of home."

Tim looked confused for a second before a realization passed over him. "I forgot about Hawkmoth. It was a big deal here in Gotham when he first emerged because the Mayor of Paris refused to allow the Justice League to intervene. All because he was worried about 'damaging the historic buildings of Paris'."

Marinette let out a bitter laugh. "That wasn't the real reason, you know. I was friends with Andre Bourgeois's daughter, Chloé. She says that he didn't want the Justice League to get involved in the fight against Hawkmoth because he couldn't merchandise any of the Justice League members. Ladybug, Chat Noir, and the rest of the Miraculous Team, on the other hand, never copyrighted their images. Paris used the Miraculous Team to bring in billions in tourism and Bourgeois never paid them a cent."

Tim looked surprised. "You sound like you know a lot about the Miraculous Team."

"I got to know them all pretty well. My classmates were known throughout Paris as the 'Children of Hawkmoth' - as if it was our fault that Hawkmoth targeted my school at a rate astronomically higher than the rest of the city. Of course, when it turned out that Gabriel Agreste's son was one of my classmates the nickname got a bit more personal."

Tim let out a break. "I suppose moving to Gotham makes sense when you've spent that much time in proximity to superheroes and supervillains."

"Gotham is an improvement to Paris under Hawkmoth. At least none one your Rogues can mind control." Marinette shuddered at the memory of her friends and loved ones turning against her due to Hawkmoth's influence.

Tim pulled into the diner parking lot. The pair got a booth in the back and put in their orders. Tim and Marinette spent the night trading stories of the most interesting Parisian akumas and Gotham Rogues.

Tim was enraptured. He told Marinette that for years it had been difficult for outsiders to get any reliable information about the Miraculous Team, outside of what Andre Bourgeois used for his tourism campaign. So Marinette did her best to share all the little details that every Parisian knew like the back of their hand: That Valentines Day was the worst holiday because all of the akumas were love-based. That they were trained in school to either lock their emotions down or let them all out, if they saw an akuma, to try and diminish the akuma's power. That Ladybug and Chat Noir, once they realized that their fanbase was primarily children, made it a point to never swear during their battles.

By the end of the night, Tim and Marinette made plans to meet up the following day. Tim promised to take Marinette out into the city for the shopping trip that her delayed flight caused her to miss. Marinette went to bed that night hopeful for her future in Gotham, a feeling she never thought she would have again.

----------

Over the next few weeks, things got better at Gotham University. Marinette started spending more time out of her dorm room with Tim, and eventually, with her roommate Babs and Tim's brother (and Bab's boyfriend) Dick. Tim became Marinette's lifesaver after he taught Marinette how Gotham's bus system worked. Marinette finally got around to decorating her side of the room. Her new style and color scheme (navy blue and sunflower yellow, Gotham University school colors) suited her much better than the pinks and whites of her high school days. Her productivity increased as she settled into the school, and Marinette found that she actually enjoyed her classes. It wasn't perfect, but Gotham University began to feel a bit more like home.

Most importantly, Marinette had begun to make progress on her work as a guardian. It had taken a whole weekend, but she eventually located the epicenter of Gotham's evil, a rundown tenement building in the heart of Crime Alley. The basement of the building housed storage units, one of which Marinette promptly rented. She set up her workshop there, bringing out the Miraculous Box so that she could consult the Kwami. Tikki and Plagg both woke up from their hibernation and Marinette got to work.

"I can sense the evil," spoke Tikki. "It's overpowering."

"It's like going from the Sahara Desert straight to the middle of the ocean," added Plagg.

"It does feel similar to drowning," Tikki agreed.

"Do either of you have any idea how to get rid of it?" asked Marinette.

Tikki shrugged. "I wish I could tell you how to defeat it, but it's unlike any enemy the Kwami of your Miracle Box have ever gone up against before. But look on the bright side, we know that it can be eliminating. I can only assume that the Kwami were involved when the evil was eliminated in Metropolis."

"The solution is easy. We cataclysm the evil," said Plagg.

"We don't know what would happen if we use cataclysm against something that isn't fully corporeal."

"Then we use Sass's second chance until we get it right."

Tikki brightened up. "Oh, that is a good idea - using second chance, not using cataclysm irresponsibly."

"See! I do have good ideas sometimes. We could also use Pollen's venom to freeze the evil in place and stop it from fighting back."

Marinette could listen to her two favorite Kwami argue forever. She had missed them terribly. But she had a job to do, so she interrupted their banter. "Do you think I should use Mullo to wield multiple Miraculous?"

Tikki shook her head. "You'll need at least one other person with you. If you get hurt, someone else will have to use second chance."

Marinette pondered that fact. "Luka's going on tour next month. He's stopping in Gotham for a weekend. Chloé is only an hour drive from Gotham, up in New York City, so she could be here any time. If we plan everything right, we could have the evil destroyed before the semester is over."

Once again, Tikki shot down Marinette's plan. "This is too strong for Luka's second chance or Chloé's venom. If you want to do this right you'll need to use true holders."

Marinette winced. Finding the true holder of a Miraculous was a near-impossible task. Of her entire Miraculous Team, only Marinette and Adrien were true holders. While the Kwami could sense a person's aptitude, they needed to be within fifty feet to get an accurate read. There was no way Marinette would be able to find the true holder of both Sass and Pollen. "Okay, new plan. What if I get Mullo to multiply myself and then have each copy of me take a different Miraculous?"

Marinette brainstormed with the two Kwami for hours, desperate to find a solution to the problem that had plagued Gotham for centuries. However, they still couldn't come up with a plan in which Marinette would be able to rid Gotham of the evil without enlisting the help of at least one other true holder. In the end, Marinette decided to take Tikki, Plagg, Sass, and Pollen back to the dorm with her, hoping that they might stumble upon another true holder.

"I wish we had a better plan," sighed Marinette.

"Keep your head up, Marinette. The only thing we can do now is stay positive and hope for the best," advised Tikki.

It wasn't a good plan, passively waiting for someone to solve her problem for her, but it was the only plan they had. Marinette had no other choice. If she tried to take on the evil alone, it would overpower her. It was disheartening. Marinette rode the bus back to her dorm. The streets of Gotham felt colder on the return trip.

Getting dinner with Tim was the only thing that could cheer Marinette up, so she pulled out her phone and sent him an invitation to meet up.

Marinette: Do you want to go get dinner? I heard the dining hall has vegetarian lasagne

Tim: Sure! Be there in twenty

Marinette put her phone away as she got off the bus and started walking towards the dining hall, dodging the sidewalk puddles that never seemed to dry. Even when it wasn't raining, Gotham was a dreary city.

Tim and Marinette chatted about their classes as they ate their food. By the end of dinner, Marinette felt a little better about her disappointing day. Tim could always lift her out of a bad mood. Marinette considered it his superpower.

"I'll see you tomorrow," said Marinette as she got out of Tim's car in front of her dorm hall. She expected to get to her room without incident, but as soon as she got into the relative privacy of the stairwell, all four of her Kwami were circling around her head, speaking in rapid succession, too quick for Marinette to keep up.

"I can't believe it!"

"You've got some luck, Pigtails!"

"This is great news!"

"I can't wait to meet him!"

Marinette blinked as she tried to make sense of the Kwamis' words. "What's going on?"

Pollen's eyes were bright. "Tim is my true holder!" the Kwami squeaked excitedly.

Marinette gasped. "Really?"

"He'll make a perfect Bee. He seems so smart and funny and considerate. I bet he'll feed me loads of honey and get fresh flowers for all of his rooms and be my best friend." Pollen sighed dreamily, pure joy in her voice.

"Pollen, have you ever had a true holder before?" asked Marinette.

"Of course. It's been a long time, though - at least a thousand years since my last true holder died. I missed it a lot. But now I have Tim!"

Marinette smiled, overjoyed that she finally had the means to complete her mission, that Pollen finally got to meet one of her true holders again, that Gotham might be freed from the evil that had loomed over it for centuries. Mostly, she was overjoyed that she met Tim all those weeks ago, that he took the time to get to know her, that he was there for her when no one else was.

----------

"So the Kwami are little gods?" Tim stared at Pollen with an almost scary intensity, as if he thought looking away might make the Kwami disappear.

Pollen flew up closer to Tim to explain. "The Kwami are linked to certain aspects of humanity: creation, destruction, intuition, protection, et cetera. We have a certain amount of control over these qualities. I am the Kwami of Subjection, of control and mastery. I can give you the power to incapacitate your enemies."

"Incapacitate them how?"

"Using the power of venom, you will be able to freeze your enemies in place."

Tim wrinkled his nose. "That sounds a little morality dubious. How do you know I wouldn't use it for evil. This is Gotham."

Pollen rolled her eyes. "You're my true holder, Tim Drake. I trust you with my entire being."

"What does that mean, for me to be your true holder?"

Pollen's cheerful expression turned sad. "Of all the Kwami, my powers are the most often exploited. The power of subjection, of complete and total control over your enemies, is corrupting. However, you, Tim, are my true holder. Your self-control is strong, I can sense it. You will not be corrupted by the power I give you. You will wield it fairly."

Tim glanced over at Marinette, and she gave him her most encouraging smile. "I need you, Tim. I've needed you for a while. First, as a friend, when I was at my lowest, and now as my partner. There's an evil that resides in this city, that I have been tasked with destroying. I can't get rid of it alone. I need you to help me."

Tim's eyes widened. "You mean there's a supernatural reason for Gotham's condition?"

Marinette nodded. "There's a well of evil underneath the city. Using the Miraculous, I can remove it. But it's too powerful for me to do it alone. I know this is a lot to ask, but-"

Tim interrupted Marinette before she could finish her sentence. "You know, Gotham is well known for its distaste for magic-users and meta-humans." Marinette opened her mouth to protest but was interrupted once more by Tim. "However, I trust that you want to do what's best for this city. I'll help you."

Marinette's face brightened. "Thank you! I have a plan but I still need to fine-tune the details. I'll get back to you as soon as possible. For now, you should take the Bee Comb with you. You'll need to form an emotional bond with Pollen before you can achieve peak performance."

"You seem to know a lot about the Miraculous and the Kwami."

"It's my job to be knowledgable. I'm a Guardian of the Miraculous."

----------

"So how does a girl like you become a Guardian of the Miraculous?" asked Tim as they ate their lunch in the storage unit after a long morning of pouring over plans.

"I was chosen by the previous master. It's a long-standing tradition that the Guardian can only be a true holder, because true holders notoriously incorruptible except in the most extreme situations. I was the only true holder that Master Fu knew of, other than himself, so despite my age and despite the fact that I wielded the Ladybug Miraculous rather than the Black Cat Miraculous, the Miraculous I was the true holder for, he passed the responsibility onto me."

"How old were you when you became the Guardian full-time?"

Marinette tensed her shoulders. "I was fourteen. Master Fu wanted to wait longer, but there was a situation. I lost my only mentor, with only a fraction of my training completed."

"That sounds rough," Tim's tone was sympathetic. He placed his hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

"It was difficult," Marinette admitted. "For the longest time, I was mad at Master Fu for waiting so long to start training me. It wasn't until I got older that I realized why he was so reluctant to start my training. He felt guilty for stealing my childhood away from me. The situation in Paris was bad and tough choices had to be made. I don't blame him, but there are a lot of things I wish had been done differently."

"I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I don't know what I would have done if I had lost my mentor-" Tim's thoughtful tone turned frantic. "Not that my experience with mentorship would compare to yours, because I wouldn't know anything about being a teenage superhero."

Tim's words were suspicious, but Marinette didn't have time to figure out what he was hiding. They had a job to do. "Well, it's time to get back to work. You need to practice using venom on non-corporeal objects. I want to see if you're able to freeze the wind."

"Sounds good, Bugs."

"Bugs?"

Tim nodded. "I figured you could use a nickname. Do you not like it?"

"No, it's fine." Marinette paused. "Actually, it's better than fine. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Tim."

"No problem, Buggsy," Tim teased.

"Okay, now you're pushing your luck," Marinette teased right back.

----------

Lady Noire and her partner Yellowjacket stood in the basement of a rundown tenement building in the heart of Crime Alley.

Lady Noire spoke the plan aloud, the rhythm of her words revealing that she had spoken them many times before in preparation for the event. "I'll start by drawing out the evil. As soon as it senses the power of destruction that I hold it will try and consume me. I need you to be ready to use your venom the moment it emerges. Once it is frozen, I will use cataclysm. Are you ready?"

Yellowjacket responded. "I'm ready."

Lady Noire closed her eyes and let out her breath in a drawn-out hiss. The shadows around her darkened and she let out a pained gasp as she fell to her knees.

Yellowjacket sprung into action. "Venom!" he shouted, thrusting his palms out to let his power fill the room. The whole room lit up with yellow light, bright enough to rid the room of all but the supernatural shadows.

The shadows, which had been growing exponentially, suddenly stopped dead in their tracks. Lady Noire got back up onto her feet, a vicious snarl on her face. "You have been terrorizing this city for centuries. No longer will I will allow this evil to haunt Gotham. Cataclysm!"

The shadows crumbled, leaving behind only natural darkness. The transformation disappeared from Lady Noire, leaving behind a girl, who gasped for breath. "Tim, we did it!"

"Pollen, buzz off," commanded Yellowjacket. He was so impatient to hug the girl that he had his arms wrapped around her before his transformation was finished. "It's over, Marinette."

The girl shook her head gently. "It's not completely over. The effects will surely linger - Metropolis still sees its fair share of villains - but it will be nothing like what it was before. I imagine the vigilantes that roam Gotham will have a much easier job, though."

The boy tensed up. "Speaking of the vigilantes that roam Gotham, I suppose there's something that I should probably tell you. I'm Red Robin."

The girl blinked once, a dumbstruck expression on her face then burst out into peals of laughter. "Just my silly luck that I ask a vigilante to be my superhero partner."

The boy grinned. "I am rather fond of your silly luck. It's what brought us together."

@maribatmarch-2k21

#maribat #timari #timinette #marinette dupain-cheng #tim drake #MaribatMarch2021 #miraculous ladybug fic #my work

[lovee-infected]

Hello Geo-san, just read your post on Malleus's birthday. It says that his only relative is his grandmother and she still rules the Valley of Thorns. There are theories that his grandmother is none other than Maleficent herself. If that's the case, there are two options here, either she survived her encounter with Prince Phillip or the TW timeline is following the 2014 film. Where she's still alive and ruling the Moors, maybe renamed as the Valley, alongside with Aurora. We'll just wait and see.

I've actually been thinking about this myself, that was much of a shoking reveal!

Aside from revealing the fact that Malleus's parents are dead, this somehow dropped a bomb on "Maleficent being Malleus's grandmother theory"

The main discussion going over the fandom regarding the topic is whether his grandmother is Maleficent or not, which is a really important question!

As someone who strongly supported this theory before this reveal, I can't say I wouldn't be disappointed if Maleficent isn't actually his grandmother, but on the other hand, the possibility of her being Maleficent and still alive would face some strong contradictions in the story:

First off, let's flash back to where this theory begun in the first place:

In Malleus's personal chats, we can find Sebek complimenting Malleus's performance after the classes, telling him that he'd even surpass the witch of thorns herself one day!

Malleus immediately objects to it, saying his powers barely come close to his grandmother's.

Well, to think that they were actually talking about Maleficent but all of a sudden Malleus mentioned his grandmother instead, left us qith a great possibility of him being Maleficent's grandson, to the point that many, including me, considered this theory as canon! But now I highly doubt this theory, even though I wanted it to be confirmed true so much. But since we have more information to seriously discuss the matter right now, here are my thoughts whether this theory is still acceptable or not, which is mainly explaining what would happen if they're actually using the 2014 and 2019 live action movies as a reference:

1) Maleficent being alive would totally WRECK Silver's character development and design!

Come to think of it, there would be no Silver if Maleficent is still alive! Silver's twisted logo is the sword, and the one and only famous sword in the sleeping beauty classic AND the live action movie is the one which slayed Maleficent.

So... If Maleficent's still alive -> There hasn't ever been a sword which slayed her -> Silver doesn't have any special or specific symbol/ character which he is twisted from!

While his name might have something to do with the live action version, where they strongly used Silver to defeat Maleficent, it can also be referring to the fact that dark fairies would immediately be wounded if touched with Silver, which is most likely because of Yana's studies in the fae mythology field (Like how she chose ice cream as Malleus's favorite food since fairies love cream) which isn't necessarily bound to the live action version. But since the sword is Silver's most important role in the game, we can't really stick with the live action version because not only didn't we have any special swords in the live action version, but there also would be a big confusion if there hasn't ever been a sword which slayed Maleficent and Silver is twisted from!

In summary, I'd be honest and say this out loud: Maleficent HAS TO be dead because we need the Silver sword to exist somewhere in the story!!!

2) History of 'Classic Maleficent' vs 'Live action Maleficent'

one of the main points which needs to be considered in this matter, is how different Classic Maleficent and Live action Maleficent are. Maleficent is the very first Disney live action to present a totally different face of a well-known Disney villain such as Maleficent, which also led to a considerable growth in both "Maleficent" and the classic version of "sleeping beauty"'s popularity at the same time! But while 2014's Maleficent was an absolutely amazing movie (to at least) and nearly turned Maleficent into the most beloved villain of Disney's history, the live action (especially the 2019 version) received some strict critiques regarding how they pictured Maleficent: Many of the fans were familiar and attached to the original Maleficent, the mistress of all evil who had control over the powers of hell itself. A REAL villain and an absolutely perfect one. But the live action Maleficent wasn't meant to be a villain, the live action narrated a totally different story from what the classic was.

Though it didn't really lessen the movie's popularity, there were fans who begun to dislike this version of Maleficent after the 2019 version and their reason for disliking the movie actually made sense, the live action went TOO FAR with creating a second Maleficent, almost to the point of not being anything similar to the original, that strong villainous sense they were expecting to see in Maleficent had disappeared.

Now let's talk about twst, what is twst about? Villains. It's basically the world of villains. We need that evil, menacing and demonic sense of villains to be brought back to life through this twisted vessels, as it's confirmed that this school's students have villainous souls. From the Heartslabyul chapter till now, the Pomefiore chapter, his is all we've dealt with: Absolute villains. Each chapter is about a dorm leader (expect for Kalim) discovering and revealing their villainous spirits, which leads to an overblot. They want them to see just as evil and reckless as the original villains, which is why they put them into a mode such as overblot, where they're controlled by a puppet in the shape of one of the great seven.

Is such a story, where they need to make each of the main characters be as evil as possible, choosing live action Maleficent (who is a half villain, half hero character) not only is debatable but ia also a big contract to the previous chapters as they all followed the original villains' stories!

I guess we can all agree that Diasomnia's quite special compared to the rest of the dorms, but going as far as using a different source in character development and plot design compared to the rest of the characters and dorms seems to be a bit too much- I don't think Diasomnia's design and development is planned to be THAT different.

3) Key points about fhat has been officially mentioned in twst

Personal chats are VERY important to go through while doing a character analysis, they're such a wealthy and perfect source of information regarding each and every of the characters!

As for Diasomnia, each and every of the members mentioned something about the witch of thorns and her background, which directly leads us to how and who is the twst's Maleficent:

Lilia: Explains how Maleficent's Chronicles spent 16 years looking for a baby in a cradle -> This only happened in the classic! Live action Maleficent never sent any of her minions to look after aurora as she never had any!

Silver: Explains how the King of a well-known kingdom forgot to invite Maleficent and offended her with this, he wonders what kind of King would ever do such a disrespectful thing? -> Original Maleficent was offended and mad just because she wasn't invited, while the Live action Maleficent was betrayed by the King Stephan, Aurora's father who intentionally refused to invite Maleficent. Keep this in mind that Silver said forgetting to invite her, which is exactly what happened in the classic and King and Queen seriously forgot to invite Maleficent, not to intentionally avoid and decide to keep her away from baby Aurora like what happened in the live action.

Malleus: In his chats with Lilia, he mentions how The witch of thorns once invited the prince of as enemy Kingdom into her own castle -> This is again, something which only happened in the classic, referring to the scene where Maleficent captured prince Philip and imprisoned him inside her castle. Live action Maleficent didn't even have a castle to begin with, note that all she did was to take Phillip to Stephan's castle to give Aurora a chance to live.

Malleus: He explains how The Witch of thorns could turn into a dragon -> Live action Maleficent never turned into a dragon, she just once turned her crow, diaval, into a dragon (2014 ver.) and turned into a phoenix (2019 ver.). The only Maleficent which could and did transform into a dragon is the one we know from the sleeping beauty classic.

Hitting with the lighting: This is something Malleus is capable of doing, he both did this to Sebek back in the manga anthology and threatened Rook with it -> Again, this is something which the original Maleficent and herself only could do.

There are quite a few of other orginal Maleficent references you can find if you carefully go through the story and voice lines, but I'm not going to mention each and every of them because I believe I've already discussed this enough. Note that while there are tens of original Maleficent references in the story, there hasn't been anything mentioned about the live action Malleus so far expect for fan content and stuff.

Obviously, they're using Original Maleficent as the main reference. The question is whether they're using the live action too as a reference or not.

4) A summary + Existing debates

Aside from all of the current theories and headcanons, I guess this is all we can tell about the canon information revealed so far. But before we end, I'd like to add a few of small notes:

Lilia has never referred to the Witch of thorns as Queen of thorns, it's not quite specific to tell but it seems like Queen of thorns and Witch of thorns are indeed to different people.

But then again, why does Malleus bring his grandmother up in the middle of a discussion about Witch of thorns? Could it be that he just used her mother as an example since her too, is a very powerful magician but not exactly the witch of thorns herself, or...??

There hasn't been any information revealed regarding the great seven's current position in twisted wonderland's history, how long ago has their stories taken place? Could it be that some of them are still alive? Did their stories end just the same as orginal stories or did they decide to twist the endings as well?

The main reason why I think Maleficent cannot be alive now is not becuase she died in the original story, it's becuase of Silver, which has already been explained in part (1)!

At last, I'd like to add a final note to this piece: Even if the "Grandmother Maleficent" theory turns out to be wrong, many of the fans are already enjoying the eixisting fanon twst content which are using the live action as a reference! The most popular reference is probably with Malleus's back, where many artists decide to add two wounds on as a reference to what happened to Maleficent's wings in the live action. This is personally one of my FAVORITES and I just love it when artists draw the wounds, though the possibility of Malleus actually having wings is pretty low! We can almost call it impossible lol. The thing is, from how the story has gone so far we can assume that they aren't going to use the live action at all, but if they do, that'll be quite amazing and interesting to discuss!!

#answered #mister-jedblack #twst #twisted wonderland #malleus draconia #character analysis #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #disney twisted Wonderland #twst theories #twisted wonderland theories #lilia vanrouge #sebek zigvolt #silver

[erinhime83]

Since APPARENTLY I did the designs all wrong (I won’t lie - doing  my own design of Evangelia was sort of a thinly veiled attempted to get @callistochan87 to redesign her herself.  >.>), I figured I’d make it my life mission this week to go through and, like, fix them.  Partially because in my fuming about finding out that two of the people were talking about this behind my back, I kept giving myself ideas.  >.<

I am pleasantly pleased with the design that @callistochan87 did for Evania/Evangelia, although I’m worried how much is actually influenced by my design and how much she actually decided to do on her own.  *shrug*  I just like the simplicity of it and how it does make her look like a goddess.  I kept forgetting to add in the pieces in front of her ears, lol.

Antigonus I did fiddle with a little bit.  Mostly, @callistochan87 mentioned that she thought it was funny having this super old guy traveling with a bunch of teenagers, and she wondered why I didn’t just...make someone new.  Well, mostly because I didn’t want to, and mostly because when she did create someone new when I decided the Guides were supposed to be younger, it felt...wrong. 

SO, I decided to age him down a little.  Which I suppose sort of defeats the purpose of @callistochan87 creating another character when I wanted to do the same, but ignore that.  He basically has the same backstory - he was the youngest Guide of the previous generation.  He’s the heir of the empire, being the Emperor’s nephew, and now that his Guide duties are over, he’s preparing to take over the Empire.  EXCEPT, the idiot new Guide managed to get himself killed, so Antigonus is temporarily taking over the duties as they try to find someone else to take over.  BUT THEN GUESS WHAT?  He’s about 35, so while he’s old, he’s not stupidly older than than, and is sort of more of a chaperone than anything else.

His outfit come from an old one @callistochan87 designed, and I figure it’s just, like, a traveling outfit?  idk

Freyja...omg, Freyja.  She caused most of my strife.  Like, I honestly didn’t change THAT MUCH of her design, just sort of little piddly stuff to make it look more visually appealing, but APPARENTLY, that was still bad.  I stewed and hemmed and hawed on this for quite a while, annoyed before it hit me - this is a a redesign.  Shizuka sort of went back to her roots.  Why couldn’t Freyja as well?

(And yes, I realize I was in the wrong, but like I said, I hadn’t changed her that much from her last design, and, well, these were done years ago so I sort of...forgot that she didn’t originally look like that.  >.<)

And I figured, ya know, since I had minorly changed Freyja and she didn’t like that, I had better change Desiree, too, because I drastically changed her.  I don’t care what @swankifiedcos says about this one, I am IN LOVE with her outfit.  <3  Her hair, though, was inspired by a recent picture of @swankifiedcos of her hair between dye jobs where it was pink at the tips and she looked SO PRETTY.  Sure, Desiree is brunette, not blond, but I like that look on her so much I wanted to recreate it somewhat, and she looks so nice! 

Frejya, well, I did sort of tweek her design slightly to what @callistochan87 did, mostly giving her cold shoulder sleeves as a sort of call back to her old sleeves.  I won’t lie - I did attempt to do them again and failed spectacularly.  Sorry.  But apparently she approves of this sleeve, so that’s...one less problem for me to deal with.  XD   Just so you know, I gave her hearts rather than flowers merely because I can’t draw flowers.  Consider it a style thing.  Like, in reality, she has flowers, but i just draw them as hearts.  I am SHOCKED that I was able to make the feathers as nice as I did, though!  This look makes SO MUCH more sense than the way we used to draw it.  Me likely. 

(Also, you might be thinking that she’s still wearing the pants.  I originally indended that, with the thought that she comes from a cold kindgom, but then decided they’re actually shorts that she ended up added to her outfit for modesty sake, much like Sethos did with his shirt.  :P)

I really wanted to redo Nannin’s outfit as well, but I’m sorry - I’m lazy, and her original outfit is both too detailed and too simple.  So I just made her top layer a darker pink, and I like it better.  Also made her a blond again with the idea that the people of Melohdia like like normal ass humans, and the Chosen have colored hair, and the Guides have unnatural colored eyes, which is how people can tell they’re Guides.

Geoffrey (I’m thinking of renaming him Geauffery, because that’s how I prenounce it in my head) over there gets a new design as well because I didn’t care for his other one.  >.<  Also, decided, as much as I like the name Dimitri Kaminiski, I;m going to go ahead and make him Owen again.  Mostly because he’s sort of shifted more into being Owen.  I was sort of going with this old look while making it look a little more medieval, and I like it.  I also decided he’s not a soothsayer, but rather a magician.mage.

Which is sort of similar to Evangelia’s power, but not quite.  She uses the power of miracles, whereas he uses actual magic.  Its sort of like how Shizuka and Freyja’s power is similar, but Frejya’s is a little weaker.  (Shizuka has mastery over all weapons, whereas Freyja just has mastery over bludgeoning people with a huge ass axe.  But she has the benefit of also having  magic, whereas Shizuka can just use some fire magic.)

The next design is where it get all long and involved.  Basically as I was stewing about having my feelings hurt and how I was going to hide everything in my annoyance, I THINK I was briefly reminded of the last time I screwed up and within that instance a brilliant idea came to me, mostly because I needed more villains.  

I remember I really like Astrid’s design, but looking back, I’m sort of confused as to why?  It doesn’t look at all better than Freyja’s.  >.<  Anyway, the thought is simple - when the Chosen are originally yanked into Melohdia, Nuncio replaces one of them with one of his own that would be easily manipulated.  Why Freyja, you ask?  Plot reasons, since it does help explain the whole Nannin thing a lot better.  The thing is, though, that Ariadne and Atalo sort of find out and drag Freyja in as well, except she ends up in Baldernan rather than Azibo with the rest of the Chosen.

So the Chosen are in Azibo thinking Astrid is one of them, except they don’t really vibe with her that well.  They just figure it’s because they can’t like everyone, and ignore it.  Astrid herself doesn’t really suspect anything.  But then they travel to Baldurnan and find Freyja there, who they do vibe with very well, and they find out that Astrid is a fake. 

Which would be all fine and well.  Even Freyja’s willing to give the girl a chance because, hey, it’s not her fault she was falsely brought into this world with no purpose.  Except Astrid is a spoiled bitch and takes it as an affront that they would even want to include Freyja at all.  So she just sort of runs off and Nuncio catches up to her, and convinces her that she’s the real one, and and she goes around antagonizing the group from time to time.  They think she’s in league with Atalo at first until they find out of the truth.

NEW IDEA.  I actually had this very vague idea while musing around, but @callistochan87 had another idea that was similar enough that I can change things to make it work WAY better.  So, the new idea is mostly that Nuncio pulls Astrid into Melohdia way before the others.  The people are rather confused, certainly, but it’s not 100% unheard of one Chosen being brought over.  So she’s treated like something of a god and spoiled further, and Nuncio pretty much convinces her that she’s the soul savior of Melohdia. He assigns Thor to be her Guide, although he’s just some Random Dude (because I decided that matching genders to the Chosen is sort of weird, so Nannin is a full Guide now).

BUT Ariadne and Atalo end up pulling the REAL Chosen a month or so later, which REALLY pull the people for a loop, and they realize that Astrid is a fake once they realize that Thor isn’t a real Guide and that Nannin claims Freyja.  The group attempts to assimilate Astrid in with them, because they realize it’s not HER fault all this happened, but since she’s a fake Chosen AND a narcissistic bitch, they end up not viving all that well, and she ends up running away in anger and embarrassment.

Nuncio sort of blames the whole thing on Atalo somehow, since the people forgot that Ariadne is the only one who can pull true Chosen into the world, mostly to save face.

Astrid and Thor do end up joining with Atalo for a little bit, because he’s trying to be sympathetic to her as well, but their goals aren’t really the same.  She does prove to be a major threat to the group because she DOES have the power of a Chosen, although they’re sort of weak.  

Her real name is Katelyn Davis, and she’s pretty much the opposite of the other Chosen.  She’s a complete social butterfly, the sort to think the world revolves around her.  She’s not happy unless she’s around people, whereas the other Chosen are pretty much introverted and would prefer to keep to themselves. 

Her Guide’s name is Thor (I keep calling him that in my head, I think because of Frejya being named after a god), and he is, in fact, a true Guide.  It’s just that he’s not a very good one, nor is he a good person.  He’s a bandit and delights in the misfortunes of others.  The other Guides avoided him at all costs, and wasn’t sure why he was chosen to be a Guide.  He goes off with Astrid after they kick him out of the group when Freyja chooses Nannin over him.  (The two of them became close in the month Frejya was stuck there on her own, so of course she’d want to have her stay with her.)

The last picture was just me giving them their original hair colors just for the hell of it, and now I’m torn.  >.<  Because I like these as well.  I mean, I like the idea of the colored hair being how you can tell they’re the Chosen, BUT I also, you know, like the original colors BECAUSE they are the original colors.  >.<

#original charcters #designs #mi #evangelia #antigonus #frejya #nannin #geoffery #alden #astrid #thor

[rev-1832]

please for the love of all fuck explain mcyt to me

Omg I've been waiting for this

So mcyt means minecraft youtube, but usually also includes Twitch streamers. It's like a in general thing, and not pointing to anything specific

But since you sound so confused, I'm gonna explain to you the Dream SMP lore 'cause why not

TL;DR: Chaos and war, basically also like a hamilton, heathers, and les mis crossover (but i mean if you want to understand everything you should read.)

If theres spelling mistakes, sorry

Note: Everyone on the smp has three canon lives, and when you loose all three you're canonically dead (except philza minecraft. he has one canon life bc hes known as the hardcore guy bc he had a minecraft hardcore series for 6 years until he was killed by a spider while trying to fight a baby zombie lmaoooooo)

IMPORTANT: THIS IS ALL RP. IRL THEY’RE ALL FRIENDS. THERES A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PLAYER AND THE CHARACTER. THE RELATIONSHIPS AREN’T ACTUALLY TOGETHER IRL. ITS ALL THEIR CHARACTERS THAT THEY MADE UP. (obviously the best friends stuff are irl)

In the beginning there were 8: The Dream Team (Dream, Georgenotfound [the guy in my pfp btw :)] , Sapnap), Badboyhalo, Awesamdude, Ponk, Callahan, and Alyssa. Around this time, nothing much happened since it was all brand new, uhh yeah (this was around may-july of this year)

Then around late july new members joined: Tommyinnit, Tubbo, Wilbur Soot, Eret, Skeppy, Fundy, Punz, Purpled, and Schlatt. This part is very important to the lore, because the lore kinda started off with the british (so tommy, tubbo, wilbur, eret) Schlatt was banned, cause Sapnap was the one who invited him and Dream didn't know who he was. He'll come up later.

So Wilbur and Tommy decided to create a new nation called "L'Manberg". Also around this time (i think) Nihachu and Jack Manifold joined. They also were part of L'Manberg. There was this huge revolution between Dream Smp and L'Manberg. Very historical period on this smp. In the end, (i think it was?) L'Manberg who won (if memory serves).

After that, L'Manberg had started growing bigger, with a lot more buildings added and stuff, notably Church Prime, which where they created a religion for Twitch Prime, which is how you can sub to your favorite twitch streamer for free if you link your amazon prime account. I'm pretty sure around this time, Quackity, Karl Jacobs (if you watch Mr. Beast; yes, that karl jacobs), HBomb, Technoblade, and Antfrost joined. And then the railway war started. It happened when Tommy accidentally ran over Dream with a Minecart and then took his stuff. This is how the disc war started (once again, if memory serves). The two discs Tommy owns are his prized possesions, and Dream took them. Also around this time the Pet War started, with Sapnap killing someones(i forgot oops) pet. And then more pet killing. Annnnd then even more.

Then there was the L'Manberg eletion. There was POG2020, who was Wilbur and Tommy, SWAG2020, Quackity and George, Coconut2020, Fundy and Nihachu, and Schlatt2020 which was Schlatt. Oh yeah and he got unbanned btw

SWAG2020 and Schlatt2020 decided to combine their votes, thus Shclatt became president and Quackity his vp. Oh and ever since the election Quackity has this grudge against George bc he slept through the election. Schlatt renamed L'Manberg to Manberg, and exiled Tommy and Wilbur from it.

Schlatt is a evil dictator who likes power. He and Quackity started fighting, and so Quackity became part of Tommy and Wilbur's side. Around this time was The Battle of the Lake and The Burning Eiffel Tower, both part of the pet war. (It seems like a innocent war but its actually brutal lmao) Also (irl) Mr. Beast had a $10,000 Taco Bell gift card hunt. Eret won. It was at the cords 6969,420, because haha funny number haha weed number. This has nothing to do with the lore but yeah. Eret also became King of the SMP 

Then there was the Manberg festival. It was to celebrate democracy, but Tubbo puts it as "i decorated my own execution" bc he helped decorate it, but he was murdered there. At the festival was the Manberg Massicare, where Technoblade was forced to shoot tubbo, but he released a firework rocket kiling Tubbo, Schlatt, Quackity, and a few others. Many people lost one of their canon lives. Wilbur went all J.D like and planted 11 stacks of TNT underneath Manberg, and wanted to blow it up.

Pogtopia was formed, which is a ravine which i think is underneath? manberg? Which included basically everybody who wasn't neutral or with schlatt. On November 16 was the Manberg VS Pogtopia war, but the Badlands were also there. The Badlands is a nation of four people: Bbh, Skeppy, Awesamdude, and Antfrost. They faught with the loosing side, so the chaos could continue. Eret disobeyed Dream and got stripped of his royalty, and gave it to George. Oh and during this time, George had no idea there was a war and was building a cottagecore mushroom house with callahan and was very confused with all the death messages in the chat. Schlatt died canonically of a heart attack or stroke (no one knows tbh). Tommy became president, passed it to wilbur bc he still has unfinished buissness with dream (the discs), and wilbur passed it to Tubbo, who made Tommy his vp. Technoblade then argued about how government is bad, and they're just repeating history. Philza Minecraft joined the server, but no one could find him, until Wilbur blew up L'Manberg (they rechanged the name also). Wilbur then made Philza kill him, so Wilbur also became canonically dead. Then Techno, still mad at L'Manberg and governments, summoned two withers and made it attack the others. The Geogre decided to check out what was happening and helped fight. After the chaos, Captain Puffy and ConnorEatsPants joined the smp. About one to two weeks later Vikkstar and LazarBeam joined, then about three months after that Ranboo joined.

They rebuilt L'Manberg on stilts, and there water where the explosion was, but now with coral and stuff to make it all pretty. Tommy and Ranboo decided to go steal from Georges mushroom house, but then also griefed it and burnt it, and Dream, being a George simp, built obsidian walls around L'Manberg. They took Tommy to court, and was put on probation. Then Tommy got exiled (again) but this time by his own best friend. This made Quackity vp and Fundy secutary of state. Dream also took Georges king thing and gave it back to Eret because Eret has a good relationship with everybody, whereas George being King just caused chaos cause hes close to Dream. Quackity and Karl made Mexican L'Manberg, and George and Sapnap joined in also. War against Dream SMP, it was a negotiation and it got renamed into El Rapids (reference to Chilling in Cedar Rapids, which Hilary Clinton once said, and Quackity referenced it, got it trending #1 one twitter (well i mean dsmp gets things trending like everyday but), and got DONALD TRUMP TO SUBTWEET HIM. (This happened irl)

In his exile, Ghostbur (wilbur as ghost) and Tommy made Logstedshire, and Dream was often there to watch him. Dream then blew it up, and now Tommy is living with Techno in his arctic place. Currently, Quackity made a thing called The Butcher Army, so they could execute Techno. Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy, and I also think Ranboo? are trying to get another festival, and yes its a secret execution plan, but for them to kill Dream, who they realized is who they need to kill first. The disc war is still not over. Tommy has one of his discs, but Skeppy is in possesion of the other one.

Unluckily for Tommy (reguarding the discs), something happened in the Badlands. Bbh was digging out his underground statue room (he plans to make a statue of everyone of the server) and found this crimson egg. He, Antfrost, and Captain Puffy kinda got possesed. Also since Skeppy didn't really hang out on the server at night, but bbh does (OF FUCK I FORGOT TO MENTION HE AND BBH ARE BEST FRIENDS) Captain Puffy created Discount Skeppy, which is her in a Skeppy skin. Skeppy found out, had a little conflict with her during her stream, but it was resolved, and at one point in the stream, he asked bbh to choose between him and the egg, and when bbh didn't answer, he went to the egg, put himself inside it, and logged off. Couple days later, bbh and puffy got him out, hes now possed by the crimson, called Technoblade his "best friend" infront of bbh, and is now living in a grass hut. Bad is convinced theres still some skeppt left, but yeah. Skeppy also wanted to burn the disc.

End of lore for now, bc its like if you miss ONE STREAM YOU MISS LIKE A REALLY IMPORTANT EVENT AND ITS STRESSFUL

Not much part of lore but Nihachu and Captain Puffy once went on a date. They’re both bi irl and Puffy was on Nihachu’s Love or Host (twitch dating show. its really entertaining) Captain Puffy was a contestant, and chose love. (LoH is also how Nihachu and Wilbur met.) 

Funfact: Theres 5 irl lgbtq+ ppl on the server (people who came out, anyways cause you never know, ya know?) Antfrost is gay, Eret, Nihachu, Captain Puffy are all bi, and Karl Jacobs is ace spec 

Family stuff: Philza Minecraft (he'll come up later) had two twins with a Samsung Smart Refrigerator in the 70's. The two twins being Wilbur and Technoblade (he'll come up later also) and also had another son, Tommy. They also adopted Tubbo, who they found in a box on the side of the road. When he grew up, Wilbur met Sally the Salmon, and they had a fox together (dont ask just go with it), which was Fundy. (The character) Fundy is trans, and yeah . Bbh is a dad to sapnap and yeah

Oh and a new member is coming on today on Quackity’s stream (twitch.tv/quackityhq at 5pm CST if you want to watch) 

I left out some parts, sorry, but theres always the wiki...

Wilbur Soot is also a musician! He wrote I’m In Love With an Egirl, The Internet Ruined Me, and Your New Boyfriend. (did you know the last one beat taylor swift for #1 trending on youtube? idk why but im really proud of him for that) They’re all catJam’s. Go listen!

#dreamwastaken #georgenotfound #sapnap #tommyinnit #technoblade #wilbur soot #philza minecraft #tubbo #karl jacobs #quackity #nihachu #badboyhalo #skeppy #ranboo #schlatt #eret #punz #awesamdude #purpled #captain puffy #antfrost #fundy #hbomb #lazarbeam #vikkstar123 #callahan #jack manifold #dream smp #mcyt #minecraft

[vintagedolan]

mint chocolate

you’ve been in love with ethan since the early days of your childhood friendship, but what happens when it’s too late to tell him?

word count: 5k

warnings/tags: fluffy fluff lets go ladies

also shoutout to @gloriousgrant​ for this request, ily bby!!

feel free to send in requests! and check out my masterlist if you wanna :)

An elephant’s memory. That’s what your mom had always said - you had an elephant’s memory. Never forgot a detail, a friend, a face. Which is why you could still remember the first halloween party you ever got invited to, all the way back in preschool, as clearly as you could remember what you had for breakfast yesterday.

You didn’t remember the party though, but that was because you didn’t go. It had been a simple decision once you’d found out from eavesdropping on the mom gossip that only 33 of the 35 kids from your class had gotten the cute personalized invitations in the mail. 

Your four year old self said it best - “If etee and gray aren’t going, I’s not going.”

You didn’t realize until you were older that you words had made Lisa cry, overwhelmed and grateful that her boys had a friend at school when everyone seemed to be against them. So, she’d decided to make it the best halloween that she possibly could for her kids, and for you. 

And thus, over way too much sugary candy, smores, trick or treating and the watchful eyes of your mom and Lisa, the trio was born on Halloween night, 2004.

The three of you held strong through elementary school - sat next to each other until the teacher separated you for talking too much, shared your lunches every day. Lisa would even send an extra piece of candy on Friday’s for you in Ethan’s lunch - little pieces of mint chocolate that they kept at the salon for clients. Recess was always your favorite time, because the boys were wild, always finding something more fun than the playground equipment, like trees to climb or hills to roll down. You were fine with that - there were too many kids on the playground anyways. And when little scrawny David tried to kiss you at the top of the slide Ethan shoved him down, getting himself time out for the next three days.

You sat with him in the mulch every day until he was allowed to play again. 

Middle school was where the bumps in the road came along. Grayson went, in his mother’s words, ‘girl crazy’, and in his brother’s words, he ‘became a player’. Turns out, middle school girls don’t trust their boyfriends to have girl best friends, and Grayson fell into the trap, desperate to people please and get a date to the dance. Every time he broke up with them he’d come back, apologize, want to be your friend again, and you let him, because you loved him, even if he was a dick sometimes. 

Ethan was another story. Sure, he had a few 6th grade girlfriends who constituted an after school hug as a date, but the first negative thing they said about you had him bounding down the hallway to your locker to reassure you that he was, once again, a ‘single pringle’.

With Grayson off having Lisa drive him and the girl of the month to the fro-yo shop twice a week, it left space for you and Ethan to get even closer than you already were. You took stupid pictures on his families computer, edited them to high heaven with the strongest contrast and put stupidly fonted “<3″ and “bffz foreva” all around your faces, set them as your blackberry backgrounds. You watched movie reruns and renamed the characters and talked about how Ethan wanted to be an actor someday. You played hide and seek in the Dolan’s backyard, always giving away your hiding spot when one of you got too spooked and ran to the other one. You were allowed to spend the night if you stayed in the living room, which meant you took the couch, Ethan took the floor, and usually Grayson ended up curled up in the recliner, wanting to be a part of the fun once he got home and realized he was missing out. 

Things got worse in 8th grade. The bullying was incessant with the boys growing popularity on vine, and since the three of you were always seen as a unit of sorts, you got pulled into it. There were so many jeers in the hallways that you couldn’t keep track of them. The trio reunited, Grayson clinging to you as one of the few friends he could trust. It became texts of ‘lets eat lunch by the band room, no one will bother us over there’ and ‘hey, I heard Jillian earlier, u ok?” snuck under science room tables. You got suspended for punching a guy who wouldn’t shut his mouth about Ethan in September - your parents were pissed but you didn’t care - no one was going to fuck with your friends. 

Your reprieves were after school when you could hang out like you always had... well, after they got done with football or lacrosse or wrestling practice. They’d come home sweaty, smelling like gym mats, texting you to come over. If your mom couldn’t take you over Lisa would come pick you up - even Cameron got you a few times, acting like it was a chore but secretly glad that her brothers had someone, anyone, to rely on. You went to every single one of their games and matches, wrote 47 and 8 on your cheeks in face paint and yelled as loud as you could, ate celebratory ice cream with them when they won. 

Things got, somehow, even worse freshman year of high school. The bullying was even more intense, with threats posed against both of them, and against you. Ethan got secretive for the first time in his entire friendship with you. One minute he was even more clingy than usual, and the next day he was quiet and distant. It took you calling him out on it one night for him to finally fess up.

And it was those four painful words that made you realize that you were in love with Ethan Dolan.

“We’re moving to LA.”

You cried. Ethan cried. Grayson cried. Lisa cried. 

But you dried your tears, put on a brave face, told him how proud you were of him, of both of them. They were chasing their dreams, making it happen for themselves in a way that you could only admire. What type of friend would you be if you tried to hold them back?

You made the most of the last month that they were still in New Jersey, hanging out every minute that you could, helping them look at apartments in LA online, watching them film videos for their channel, supporting them every step of the way. 

You lost track of how many times you had to reassure Ethan that you’d be fine in high school without him, even if it wasn’t true. He’d told you over and over to just pretend like you weren’t friends with them anymore - anything to get the bullying to stop. You told him no way in hell. 

You stayed the night at the Dolan’s house in October, the night before they got on the plane to move out. It was fun, an early halloween celebration of sorts, mixed with a going away party that had you laughing as much as it had you crying. 

The real kicker came around midnight, after Grayson had fallen asleep in the chair that he was much too big for now, and you and Ethan were left in the silence. 

“I’m gonna miss you. So much. I don’t know what life looks like without you,” you admitted with teary eyes, toying with his fingers.

“I’m gonna miss you more. But I’ll always be here to visit, and it’ll be just like old times.”

You doubted that, but you weren’t going to say it. The thought of not seeing him everyday, having him so far away, surrounded by new people, new girls - it put a lump in your throat that you couldn’t quite get the words “I’m in love with you” around. You’d realized that it was more than just friendship for you as soon as he told you he was leaving - but you couldn’t bring yourself to put that on him when he already felt guilty enough for leaving you behind.

So you just nodded at his promises of flying you out to LA when they got enough money, showing you all around California, tried to believe him when he said you were always going to be his number one, and fell asleep against his chest. 

You rode with them to the airport, held their hands the whole way in the backseat and kept your head held high as you hugged them and sent them through security.

You sobbed the whole way home. Even after you managed to pull yourself together a little bit, when you got that made it, miss you already text that signaled they had landed that night, a whole new wave of tears made their appearance. 

You knew it would be hard, but you didn’t realize just how lonely you were going to be without both of them, but especially Ethan at your side. 

But there was a silver lining.

It was in those next few months that you realized that Ethan always kept his promises. He facetimed you whenever he could, showed you around their apartment, asked you to explain how to make mac and cheese cause he was ‘gonna starve’. He sent you pictures of everywhere cool he visited in LA, even sent you postcards sometimes just for fun. And when he came to visit a month later he stopped at your house first, knocking incessantly until you opened the door and threw your arms around him. Once the tears had stopped - the ones you let flow and the ones he blinked back, he reached into his bag and pulled something out.

“Look what I found in the airport in LA. Your favorite.” He placed the mint chocolate bar in your hands with a grin, proud of himself for putting such a big smile on your face. 

And so, the tradition began. 

Every time he came back to New Jersey he was on your doorstep, and every time he brought you one of those little chocolate bars. It didn’t matter that he was home to see his family, because any time you brought it up he’d wave you off, reassure you that ‘you are family bub’, making you fall more and more in love with him every time. 

When he had the money, he flew you out to California, showed you all his favorite places. He took you to the beach, on hikes, made sure you got the full cali experience with him at your side.

There were times over the years where he visited less, or visited more. But It didn’t matter if it’d been a week or 3 months since you’d seen him - the butterflies were all the same when you saw him again. 

You were sure to catch up each time you reunited, going down the list of everything you might of missed, even if you still talked every day. It went like so:

One: how’s the channel going? To which he would ask “how’s school?”

Two: any new friends? He’d ask the same.

And then came question number three, your least favorite:

Got a girlfriend?

You’d wait with bated breath every time, sighing out in secret relief when he’d say “nah, don’t have time” or “no, LA girls are weird”. And then you’d go on with whatever you had planned that day, whether it was just hanging around your old Jersey stomping grounds or sit in your room, and eventually your apartment when you moved out, heart a bit lighter.

Maybe that’s why it hurt so bad on his last visit when he’d hesitated on that question, looked down at his hands.

The most painful four words you’d been told changed that afternoon, when he finally answered.

“Yeah, I do actually.” 

You’d always known it was going to happen eventually - you’d been preparing for it in the back of your mind for a while now. You saw the comments on every post he made, the replies to his tweets, thousands and thousands of adoring girls, and it only grew every single day. Maybe it had been dumb to think that he’d ever realize just how in love with him you were, dumb to think that maybe, maybe, he saw you that way too. 

So, you put on your brave face, forced that smile to spread over your face and ran through the motions.

“Really?! What, since when?!” had never sounded faker than when they came out of your mouth, laced with false enthusiasm. 

And you listened to him tell you all about her, Allison, a girl he’d met at an LA party that he didn’t want to go to. You nodded at the right times, smiled and asked questions you didn’t care to know the answers to. 

You secretly wished hearts made a noise when they broke - maybe it would have stopped the conversation, saved you from having to see his face light up when he said her name, the blush that spread across his cheeks when he told you about his first date with her. 

Three months passed - and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t run at least part of that conversation through your head every day since you had it. It was nice that Ethan wasn’t the type to put his relationship out to the public - a front row seat would only make it worse, you were sure. 

You decided it was time to try, to really try to find someone that wasn’t Ethan. Sure, you’d talked to people in the past, but you’d never gone all in when trying to find someone to be with, because, well, there was really only one on your mind anyways. 

Which was why it was weird to answer one of Ethan’s usual what’re you up to this week texts with not much, work, hanging out with my parents, got a date tomorrow night. You all still working on the candle launch stuff?

At his kitchen counter in LA, Ethan frowned as he read it. Date.

“What?” Grayson asked, reading his twin’s face as he washed the pans from dinner.

“Y/N’s going on a date.” 

“Huh. Well, good for her,” he shrugged, looking down at the water running over his hands, eyes flickering up to Ethan’s face, trying to figure out if he should say what he’s thinking. Fuck it, if he gets pissed he gets pissed. “How do you feel about that?”

That got Ethan’s attention off his phone screen.

“How do I feel about that? What’s that supposed to mean?” The defensiveness in his tone had Gray tensing up a bit.

“It’s just a question bro.” 

“I have a girlfriend Grayson.” 

Grayson stopped scrubbing, annoyed at his brother’s tone. He’d tried to be supportive, loving - but he was getting tired of Ethan complaining about his relationship woes and not doing anything about it. 

“Yeah, who you said you wanted to break up with twice last week, for the record. And you’re the one that brought up Y/N, not me,” he pointed out, knowing that if he was already gonna piss his brother off, he might as well say everything he wanted to say. 

“You never liked Allison,” Ethan snapped.

“Fuckin facts, cause she’s manipulative and fake.”

“No she isn’t.” He threw Grayson a glare, pressing his hands together until his knuckles popped.

“If you actually believed that you would have hit back with an actual argument just now. I mean jesus Ethan, she told you you couldn’t go back to see Y/N for god’s sake. That used to be your fuckin�� dealbreaker back in the day, why would you put up with that shit now?” 

“I didn’t put up with it, I told her it wasn’t negotiable and I went to Jersey anyways!” He was yelling now, hands gripping the edge of the counter.

“Yeah, and then she gave you the silent treatment for a week when you got back like a fuckin’ six year old. That’s some middle school shit and you know it E. You don’t have to put up with that, you can find somebody who treats you better.” 

“Will you fucking stop Grayson?” He threw his hands in the air, exasperated. “I’ve got enough shit going on right now, I don’t need you in my head too.” 

“Fine. But friends don’t get jealous when their friends go on dates, especially not when that friend is across the fucking country. Just so you know.” He watched his brother put his face in his hands and felt that familiar pang in heart that made him add a “I’ll be in my room if you wanna talk about it” before he walked out.

Grayson had mastered the art of keeping tabs on Ethan without him knowing. So even from his room he heard him leave, and based on how long he sat in the driveway with the car running, he knew exactly where he was going.

So, he wasn’t fully surprised when Ethan came into his room three hours later without knocking and laid down on his bed next to him without a word, staring up at the ceiling.

“So...”

“So.” Ethan repeated. 

“Did you uh...”

“Break up with her?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I did.” 

“Cool. How’d she take it.”

“About exactly how you'd expect.”

“Ugly sobbing?”

“So much ugly sobbing.” 

“Sounds on brand.”

The conversation faded into silence, only the hum of the fan spinning in the corner filling the room. Grayson let it go on for a few minutes before he spoke up again.

“So.”

“So.”

“You goin’ back to Jersey?”

Ethan perked up at that one, sitting up slightly and turning so he could look at his brother. He quirked an eyebrow, waiting for the explanation. 

“C’mon bro. You can’t act like Y/N doesn’t have anything to do with this. I mean, you should have dropped Allison a while ago, but it’s not a coincidence that the idea of Y/N going on a date was what made you do it now. You should just tell her how you feel. Put it all on the table.”

He pondered that for a minute, staring up at the white ceiling.

“I hate sharing a brain with you, you fuck,” were the words he eventually chose, rolling over and pulling out his phone. Grayson smirked when he saw what he searched - American Airlines.

“Not my fault we split into two goops.”

Ethan typed in the flight plan he’d done more than any other - LAX -> EWR. 4 hours and 56 minute, like usual. There was one leaving in just over an hour and a half, and the knot that formed in his stomach was all too familiar. It came around every time he waited on the doorstep of her apartment in New Jersey, waited for her to show up at the door with that bright smile that had never changed, never wavered. He’d do anything to have her smiling like that all the time.

“Maybe I shouldn’t do this.” 

Grayson’s brows furrowed, knitting together above his eyes. “What?”

“What if she gets mad that I ruined her date. I don’t wanna fuck that up for her. She could be happy with the guy.” The words tasted like metal on his tongue. 

“Oh c’mon Ethan. She’s only dating somebody because you’re dating somebody. Well, were, I guess.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know how she feels about me.”

“You’re forgetting that I’ve been her friend for just as long as you have. You just gotta trust me on this bro. It’s not a coincidence that she starts going on dates when you tell her you’ve got a girl.”

“So many coincidences,” Ethan huffed.

“So many not coincidences,” Grayson corrected, raising his eyebrows and waiting for him to give in. 

“Am I just supposed to show up at her house? I’m not gonna get to Jersey until-” he did the time change math that was second nature by now “- shit, like 2am? That’s kinda sus.”

“Right, because showing up at her house isn’t the first thing you do every time we go home anyways.” Grayson rolled his eyes. “What time’s the flight?” 

“In like an hour and a half.”

“We can make it, just pack a bag real quick, I’ll start the car up.”

“Okay. Okay.” Ethan nodded, standing up and waiting for a minute before he fully decided that holy shit, he was finally gonna do this, and then he was running down the hall towards his room.

“And don’t wear shorts! Put on some fuckin’ pants and look decent at least!” Grayson called after him with a grin.

“I can dress myself bro, fuck off!” 

It turns out, Ludacris mode on a tesla comes in handy when you’re trying not to miss a flight. They sped all the way to LAX, barely time for a hug and a “text me when you get there” before Ethan was running through TSA precheck and barely making the last boarding call of Flight 8333. He took the numbers as a sign that he was doing the right thing, that everything was going to work out.

The nerves really hit when he got settled in his seat on the plane, tattooed thigh bouncing on the floor, covered by his Louis pants. His shoes didn’t match the outfit very well, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He hadn’t had much time to do anything but run through the terminals - he hoped he didn’t stink, didn’t forget anything.

Fuck. The chocolate. 

He twitched in his seat, ready to run back out and head to that little convenience store where the manager knew his name, knew he was only there to get a diet root beer for the flight and a mint chocolate bar. But it was no use - the place was probably closed, and it wasn’t like he could get off the plane anyways.

So he put his headphones in, turned on his playlist and closed his eyes as they started to taxi down the runway, praying that maybe he could sleep. Behind his eyelids, memories of you played like a mixture between a slideshow and a movie - little snippets and still images of times he had committed to memory, swore he would never forget.  

You, with your toes in the California sand for the first time, so excited to see the beach and the ocean waves crashing, face lighting up as you ran towards the water. Your fourth grade halloween costume - the first year the three of you had coordinated, all of you going as little skeletons. Sitting in the middle school hallway with lunch balanced carefully on your legs, swapping sandwiches and laughs. You hugging him goodbye when he left for LA, how he never wanted to let go, wished he could take you with him more than anything else. Every visit, every time he counted down the days before he could make it back to see you.

He couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t in love with you, wasn’t trying to convince himself that it would be wrong to ask you to try long distance, wrong to ‘hold you back’ or ask you to support someone, to love someone, so far away. It almost felt childish now, the thought that the two of you were going to end up with anybody else. His nerves prickled at the daunting task that he knew was awaiting him when the plane wheels touched down again, so he focused on your face instead, trying to breathe.

It was both the longest and quickest flight of his life somehow. 

He got a rental car - it was no smooth cat, but it would do - text Grayson that he was safe, and headed out in the familiar direction of your apartment before he could stop himself. He hadn’t made it four minutes down the interstate when the rain started falling, slow at first until it grew into a downpour that was roaring against the car. 

His wipers worked double time, keeping his windshield just clear enough for him to find his way to your parking lot. 

Heart in his throat, he threw his door open, stepping out into the rain before he could talk himself into turning around, jogging to your door and knocking.

In your bed, your eyes shot open. You waited for another knock, heart beating fast when you heard it, and then the constant rhythm of them afterwards. You rolled over, checked your phone.

2:16am.

“Who in the fuck,” you grumbled, sitting up and rubbing at your eyes as you headed out the door of your room in your pajamas, confused and concerned. If it was your drunk neighbor again, you were going to kill him. 

Popping up on your tiptoes, you peeked through the peep hole, breath catching in your throat. 

There was no way.

You blinked hard, looked again.

You knew that face, and you threw the door open, relief and panic playing tug of war on your heartbeat.

“Ethan? What- what the hell are you doing here? Are you okay? Is something wrong?” It wasn’t unlike him to show up and surprise you, but it had never been in the middle of the night. Still, he looked perfect as always, even with his drenched hair plastered to his head and soggy clothes. 

“I’m okay.” 

“Okay... well come inside, come outta the rain,” you reached out to grab his shirt, pull him inside, but he caught your hand, holding on tightly.

“I gotta say something first, and then you can decide if you wanna let me in.” He was too formal, more serious than you were used to and it had your stomach in knots. 

“You’re scaring me a little E.” 

“Don’t be scared. It’s just me.” His eyes shone, even in the dark, with a familiarity that settled you a bit and you nodded, waiting for him to say whatever it was. 

“I don’t know why I never thought it was okay for us to love each other. No, that’s not right, that’s not what I meant to say. I... hang on.” 

He took a deep breath, rainwater spraying a bit off his lips when he pushed it out and tried again.

“A long time ago, when we were kids, I convinced myself that we couldn’t love each other, because I couldn’t handle losing you. You’ve been my rock, my only constant outside my family for my entire life, and I don’t think I would have made it without you. So I just decided that we couldn’t love each other like that. And that was selfish. Because I’ve always been in love with you I think. Back then I don’t think I realized what it was. But now, when I look back, I think that’s what it was.”

You’ve always been the person I wanna see every day, especially when I can’t. The first person I think of when I wake up, the one I’m thinking about when I go to sleep. You’re my favorite human on the whole planet, and if soulmates are real I think that’s us. I don’t know why I ever tried to be with anybody else when you were here the whole time.”

And I know it’s not fair for me to put all this on you right now, especially when you tried to be supportive of me with other girls. But that text, you telling me you were going on a date. It slapped me in the face, made me realize just what I was about to give up, what was about to slip through my fingers if I didn’t get my shit together and just tell you everything. So... here I am. I’m here, and I love you... I’m in love with you. And I just needed you to know that. I’m in love with you Y/N. Always have been. And I kinda think that you could be in love with me too. Or at least, I hope maybe you are.” 

He had been looking at you the whole time, but you saw the nerves take over as he realized everything he had just said out loud, as he watched you, waited for your reaction. 

“I...” Your brain was spinning, unable to understand how everything you’d been waiting your whole life to hear had just come out of his mouth, all at once. 

It wasn’t a conscious decision - more of an instinct. Two steps forward out into the rain and then you were throwing your arms around his neck, up on your tip toes to finally, finally, press your lips to his like you’d dreamed about doing so many times. 

Your fantasies hadn’t done it justice. He was so warm, so familiar, so Ethan. His hands went to your waist, fingers curling and pulling you against him as he leaned in so hard that you leaned back with him, smiling as your hands came around to hold his face, hold him to you, unwilling for the moment to ever end. 

You didn’t even notice the rain.

“Am I dreaming?” You hadn’t meant to say it out loud but it slipped past your lips anyways, making Ethan’s chest swell and his smile get even brighter as he pulled back enough to look at you.

“No baby. This is real. This is us, right here, right now.” 

"No fuckin’ way,” you breathed, running your thumbs over his cheeks before he kissed you again, walking you backwards into the house and out of the downpour and over to the couch. 

“I love you. So much. Sorry I forgot your chocolate by the way,” he grinned after he sat down and pulled you onto his lap, gazing up at you like you hung the moon and stars.

“You’re so much better than mint chocolate. I love you too.” You kissed him again just because you could, relishing in the feeling of him there with you, not a worry or a care in the world.

#WOOOOOOOOO #i sped wrote the end of this haha i have class SO SOON #love you guys!!!! #lynds writes #ethan imagine #ethan dolan #ethan dolan x reader #ethan dolan fanfiction #dolan twins #dolan twins imagine #dolan twins fic

[because-of-a-friend]

Joshua Office!AU

MASTERLIST

Thanks for the request anon! I hope this is what you were looking for, and that you like it! I feel like I did better with this one than with some of my other recent requests, sorry I haven’t been on my A-game lately team! 

It started when you needed to take on a part-time job to help pay for college

Everyday you’d go online to find places that were hiring in your town that would work with your schedule

After endless applications and waiting for a response, you finally get an interview at a small office downtown

It was a small company, barely more than just a start-up

But they were growing fast and needed someone to start keeping everything in the office in order and help organize their schedules and responsibilities and files

Y’know...

Secretary things

They don’t even mind that you have school

Just as long as you can come as much as possible during office hours when you’re out of class, that’s fine

The job is honestly a dream come true for you

They hire you on the spot and you immediately start working

Since it’s a smaller company, the rules are more lax

Your boss explains that most people working in the office, depending on their position and responsibilities, will work from home or at more random hours

So it takes you awhile to meet everyone

But everyone you meet is super kind and friendly and they welcome you in right away

But it really does feel like you’re meeting someone new every day

You’ve been set up in the front of the office, where the entrance is

You have your own computer and everything 

It doesn’t take long for you to become familiar with the way things work there and you do well with helping to get the office organized

You’re there for awhile before you meet Josh

You’ve emailed him a couple times to pass along messages from your boss, and give info about the schedule

And while his replies are always enthusiastic and kind

You’ve never actually seen him face to face

“Oh yeah, Josh is our accountant. Most of his work is on different computer programs, so he usually just works from home.”

But one day there’s an office-wide meeting so Josh is coming in

You’re not sure what to expect when meeting the nice accountant that’s a total home body

But it’s not the handsome young guy that walks through the door Thursday morning at 10AM, just in time for the company meeting

At first you think he doesn’t even work there

“Yes sir, how can I help you?”

He smiles brightly at you

“Oh, you must be [Y/N], I’m Joshua, we’ve been emailing.”

He reaches his hand out for you to shake it

It’s warm and soft

“Oh- oh! Nice to finally meet you in person, Joshua!”

“You can call me Josh if you want! Oh, I guess I should get in there!”

He looks over your shoulder into the office to see everyone gathering for the meeting

You nod silently and gesture for him to go ahead

In a passing thought you think about how cute he is

But you quickly shake the thought from your head

He’s too attractive to be single

Right?

But one day in the break room, you’re talking with two of your coworkers

One of them gets a text 

“Ugh Joshua wants me to bring him the checks again”

The other one scoffs “He seriously can’t come here?”

“I guess not, I don’t know how he expects to ever get a date if he’s inside all the time”

*cue you very obviously knocking over the sugar*

And then you trying to be casual but you’re not so casual as you ask

“Joshua is single?”

Your coworkers look at you already ready to tease you

“No! No! I’m just saying, he’s handsome, surely people fall over themselves trying to flirt with him!”

Not a great defense in your case

“Are you trying to say that you’re falling over yourself trying to flirt with him?”

Your coworkers don’t let that one go for weeks

But it doesn’t really matter

You only see him every once in awhile since he doesn’t come to the office much

You’re thinking you don’t have much of a chance with someone you never really see

But one day your boss asks you and Josh to work on a project to digitize all of the files concerning finances to make it easier for everyone to access that info even when Josh is away

It’s a lot of stuff....

Like a lot...

So for most of your day you’re standing at the printer, scanning documents to Joshua’s email for him to organize into digital folders

Joshua comes into the printer room and knocks on the door to signal his entrance

“Hey, I’m going to attend a conference tomorrow with a couple other people from the office so I won’t be here to organize the files on the computer, do you mind taking a second to learn how to do it while I’m away?”

You agree and follow him into his office

You don’t normally go into anyone’s office

You usually at most just pop your head in to deliver messages and such

So you don’t really see much of anyone’s space

Joshua’s office is really clean and organized and practically empty

There’s a few photos and other decorations here and there

A plant that is somehow miraculously alive

But it’s open and neat and nice

“You can do this from any computer in the office and from any email in the system including yours, but I’ll just show you from mine using the last few that you scanned”

You nod along to everything he’s saying and watch as he explains how to rename the files and where to put them

“Here, do you wanna try to do one?”

He gets out of his chair and holds it out for you to sit

You scoot it up to the computer and do as he says

After renaming the file you look around for where you’re supposed to drag it, and feeling a little embarrassed that you already forgot where it was

“Oh it’s right here”

Joshua puts his hand over yours on the mouse to guide it to the right file

“Remember if you can’t find it, you can just go to the search bar and...”

His voice fades out as you stare at his hand on yours

When you zone back in you realize he’s silent as well

You turn to look at him only to see him also staring at his hand on yours

After a moment he jumps back, taking his hand away and clearing his throat

“Anyways, you can organize the files too tomorrow, but don’t worry about it if it’s too confusing, I can do whatever you didn’t when I get back!”

“Right of course,” you shoot up out of the chair. “I’ll just get back to scanning now”

“Right, thanks [Y/N]!”

You trip on you way out

“Are you ok???”

“Yup,” you almost yell back to Joshua as you practically run out of the room

Neither of you talk about it

But Joshua suddenly starts coming to the office more

He walks in to the break room whenever you do

He attends office lunches when you do

He stays in the front of the office to talk with you every morning

The two of you are teased relentlessly by your coworkers

“Why don’t you two just date already?”

“When do you think they’ll get married?”

“[Y/N] and Joshua sitting in a tree...”

And after awhile, you actually listen to them

Why weren’t you and Joshua dating?

You both liked each other

And you didn’t want to risk skirting around him until you both got bored and lost your interest in each other and your chance at seeing if this could be something real or not

So finally you decided to be forward with him

One day you’re all leaving the office together after finishing a presentation to give to another company that will be potential partners

You’re all exhausted and your boss tells you all to take a long weekend because you all earned it

You stay behind with Joshua as he locks the doors

“So any plans for the long weekend?”

“Nope, why? Are you planning another company dinner?”

“No I was going to ask you out”

Joshua DROPS HIS KEYS

You laugh a little

“Oh, well then, I’m definitely free!!!!”

Then he clears his throat to try and make himself look more casual after his burst of over excitement

“Coffee or dinner?”

It ends up being both

You meet for coffee and spend the whole day together

You both talk and talk and talk and learn practically everything about each other 

At the end of the date he drops you off

Leans in to kiss your cheek

“Can we do this again?”

“Yes, Joshua Hong, we can definitely do this again.”

You and Josh keep going on cute little dates

If he wasn’t awkward enough around you in the office before

He’s definitely awkward now

Blushes and laughs at everything you do

Trips over himself all the time

Is clearing his throat like every two seconds to cover up awkward things he’s done

He’s a really sweet boyfriend

He’s so respectful and kind and romantic

Definitely the type to officially ask you to be his partner officially in a cute way

Sometimes when you both only have work that can be done over the computer, you’ll just go to his place and work together there

You both sit side by side on the couch and work away on your laptops

When you get bored you lean over and kiss his neck and cheek to get his attention 

Which he responds to by putting your laptops out of the way and then pinning you down on the couch to attack you with cuddles and kisses

You never thought you’d be so grateful to have gotten an office job

But the office is a great place with great people

And you never would have met Joshua without it

#i didnt know how to end it lol #seventeen #svt #incorrect seventeen quotes #incorrect svt quotes #seventeen texts #seventeen snaps #seventeen reactions #seventeen imagines #seventeen scenarios #svt texts #svt snaps #svt reactions #svt imagines #svt scenarios #scoups imagines #jeonghan imagines #joshua imagines #jun imagines #hoshi imagines #wonwoo imagines #woozi imagines #dk imagines #mingyu imagines #minghao imagines #seungkwan imagines #vernon imagines #dino imagines #joshua fluff #joshua scenarios

[lovebug5151]

Family Bonding (With a hint of Angst) Robodad Grian Au

(Yes, unless y'all have better ideas for the name of this Au, this is what i’m going with lmao. If you do have any, go ahead and say em! If i like it and it fits, ill rename it and say it was your idea in the next chapter.)

So this is about 2040 words, and i’m quite happy with it. I don’t think I made this one as sad as the first one, but im not sure. I actually have a story line for up to ch 5 of this story, and I hope that this is one of the last true sad chapters (Though I might spice some things up, dont want things too happy, do ya :D

This is also about a week or so after the events of the first chapter.

Grian sat on top of his mansion, just watching and listening to the wind, breathing in, and out. He needed to clear his head. Earlier Mumbo had made a offhand comment about how Grumbots heart was missing, and ‘maybe it fell into the ocean’ before laughing. 

While Grian knew Mumbo didn’t have the same background as he did with considering Aware AI’s ‘just robots’, he had called Grumbot son, even if it was awkwardly. It hurt Grian, to know that Mumbo might hurt Grumbot, even unintentionally, if he did see him. And Jrumbot… he was just a child, his dad saying hurtful things would hurt him so much more.

Grian had to quickly finish up what he was doing, and rush back to his base to breath. He couldn’t work beside Mumbo at the moment, couldn’t explain how Mumbo had hurt him, and so had run off. 

Grian leaned forward slightly to look down. It was a far drop. Grian had never truly been afraid of heights, he loved climbing high in the air. 

It was joked that it was because he was short, that he liked to be tall, but he just liked feeling the wind rush around him, and the feeling of falling and pulling up right before hitting the ground. It was elating, and whenever he was feeling bad he just took a leap off a roof and fell, before swooping up using his elytra. 

He wondered if Grumbot would like flying, he could fix up some Jet boots for him, maybe mechanical wings? Yeah, he’ll make some wings for Grumbot and if he liked them, maybe some for himself. He liked the idea of being able to mostly hover in one place. 

He let out a breath and looked at the sun. It was nearing lunch, and if he didn’t come inside Grumbot would come looking for him. 

Grian swooped down, landing in front of the door, before heading inside. 

--------

Grumbot hummed as he finished cooking some steak. He and Jrumbot were able to eat regular food, and no one knew how, but neither Grumbot or Grian really wanted to question it so they let it be.

He put the steak on plates and turned around just as his Dad walked in. He smiled and said hi to him while bringing the plates to the table. Jrumbot was already there and they sat on chairs to eat.

It was quiet for a moment before Grian yawned. “Have you two ever wanted to fly?” 

Grumbot looked at him weirdly for a second before nodding. “Yeah, kinda, but I'm way too heavy for an elytra.”

Jrumbot paused with his steak halfway in his mouth

“If fould fe fun fu fly” He said, still chewing his food. 

Grian sighed slightly and smiled at Jrumbot 

“Jrumbot, dont talk with your mouth full.”

Jrumbot finished his mouthful and squirmed slightly. “Sorry.”

“|Its alright. Its just something to that we dont make a mess okay?” Grian told him.

“Okay.” Jrumbot muttered, before continuing “But yeah! It would be so fun to fly!”

Grian smiled “I have an idea then, but let's finish eating, yeah?” Both of them nodded at him before starting to eat their steak again.

After dinner, Jrumbot went to go mess with some of the blocks Grian had given him, and Grian and Grumbot went down to the Lab. They called it a Lab, but it was just a basement with too many tech pieces in it.

Grumbot sat down in a chair before waiting for Grian to talk, while Grian went over to look at something on a table.

“Dad,” Grumbot started, when it was obvious Grian wasn't gonna start talking “What was with the questions about flying?”

Grian glanced back at him. “Not much, I was just thinking about something. You both know how you're too heavy for elytras, but I was thinking, if we remade some of your body into lighter but still strong metals, and used,” His talking stopped as he walked towards a wall. Grumbot was confused until suddenly a Shulker Box opened.

Grumbot stared for a second before laughing. “How did i not know that was there?” He got out between giggles.

Grian smiled at him. “I havent opened it around you, and you haven't snooped. I'm not surprised you haven't found it. I keep my old ideas in there, old blueprints, old mechanical pieces I just couldn't throw away, those sort of things.” Grian started unrolling a big piece of paper “And I remembered I had a blueprint of these old things.”

Grumbot stood up to look at the paper, and after taking a moment to understand it, froze with excitement. He glances up at Grian with a giant smile, and Grian smiled back.

---------

Grian let out a oof as Grumbot collided with him. Grumbot was giggling uncontrollably, and Grian was happy that Grumbot was happy. Grumbot let go to look at the blueprint again and looked up with eyes so full of excitement that Grian felt excited too.

“Can we actually make these?” Grumbot asked, almost bouncing up and down.

Grian laughed and nodded. “Yeah, we'll have to test them out, but there's no reason we can't. It will take a while.” He warned Grumbot “And I will test out the wings first when we think they're ready.”

He saw Grumbot take a breath, to say something when Grian continued. “I haven't tested these designs yet. I would rather, if something goes wrong, to have me gone for a couple days respawning, and you safe, instead of you-” Grian couldn't even finish the sentence before he had to take a deep breath before the tears started coming. “Instead of you getting hurt.” He ended quietly, putting his hand on Grumbots shoulder. Grumbot looked down for a moment, before looking up at Grian with sadness. 

“I understand Dad, but please don't get hurt, Don’t d-die and have to respawn, I don't know what I'd tell Jrumbot.”

Grian looked at him and smiled sadly. “I wasn't planning on dying anytime soon kid. Let's start figuring out what we need to get for the wings, yeah?” Grumbot nodded excitedly, and bolted for the metals cabinet. Grian laughed as he followed along.

--------

Grian Yawned and stretched out his arms. They were all sitting in front of a fireplace, enjoying tea and Jrumbot was cuddling with Maui.

The good feeling couldn't last forever though, because eventually Jrumbot looked up and over at Grian. “Dad,” He started “Why haven't we seen Papa?”

Grian froze for a second before closing his eyes. He didnt wanna talk about this to them, he didn't want to hurt them.

“Dad?” Grumbot questioned, seeing his Dad freeze up and look on the verge of tears.

Grian sighed and rubbed his face. “Both of you come here.” He murmured finally, patting the couch he was sitting on either side of him.

Grumbot and Jrumbot quickly came over to sit beside him, and Grian put both his arms on their shoulders.

Grian took a deep breath. “You have not seen mumbo, and have not been able to explore outside of my mansion area, for a couple reasons. One of these is that I'm not too sure how mobs will react to you, and How you'd react with being hurt by a mob. The other,...” Grian took a deep breath, and closed his eyes, letting his chin drop to his chest. “The other,” Grian continued, “Is because I'm not too sure of how the other Hermits would react to you.” He finally looked up and saw both of them staring at him in confusion. Grian tried to explain. “I'm one of the only ones who have experience with actually aware AI’s, I believe, and when some people are scared of something, they decide that they should hurt it before it hurts them.” He took another deep breath and looked into Grumbot and Jrumbots eyes, one after the other. “I do not believe that many of the Hermits would react this way, but I don't know exactly how they would react, and I don't want them to hurt you, either unknowingly or not.”

He saw Grumbots eyes widen and Jrumbots eyes narrow slightly. “I understand that reasoning dad,” Jrumbot started “But why haven't we seen papa?”

Grian sighed again. “Do you two remember yesterday morning, when I came back early and stayed on the roof for a bit?” they both nodded and Grian continued. “I did that, because Mum- Papa, upset me with his words.” He said, before taking a pause. He didn't look at either of his boys, but rather the ceiling as he said “He made some not nice jokes about Grumbot. Both of you must know however,” Grian started saying immediately when they both froze “That Mumbo doesn't know much about Aware AI’s. He believed Grumbot was an unaware aware AI, and that he was killed when he broke down. He did not know you had actual feelings, instead of manufactured ones. Mumbo often has issues figuring out other people's emotions, and most of the time redstone doesn't have emotions. Mumbo doesn't know about you two, and you haven't seen him,” Grian was starting to slow as he tried to find the words he needed. “Because, Because I am afraid. He murmured quietly. I am afraid he will unwittingly hurt you with his words, and I didnt want that to happen before you were aware it could happen. I'm sorry I kept this from you, but I wasn't aware of how to say it, or if you were ready for it, and decided to let one of you bring the topic up.”

There was silence for a moment before both of his boys hugged him. “I understand Dad,” Grumbot murmured into his shirt. “You didn't want us to get hurt, but thank you for telling us now.” Jrumbot nodded in agreement and Grian let out a wet laugh. Sounding on the edge of tears he said “What did I ever do without you boys?”

Grumbot pulled away and giggled as he said “Forgot about eating dinner.”

Grian paused before letting out a loud laugh which made Grumbot and Jrumbot start giggling.

“I can't say you're wrong.” Grian laughed, running a hand through his hair.

Grian then yawned, and stood up to stretch. “However nice this bonding session has been.” Grian started, turning toward his boys. “I believe it is bedtime. No buts!” he smiled at them as he said that, both of them having opened their mouths to deny it. It is nighttime, and very dark, and both of you need sleep.”

“Will you read to me dad,” Jrumbot murmured, fidgeting on the couch.

Grian smiled at him. “Of course, you only need ask.” He smirked at Jrumbot before saying “However, the first one to get to your room gets to pick the book, and oh look, Grumbots already at the hallway-” Jrumbot shrieked out a laugh as a sudden race took place in the hallway, and Grian smiled as he tidied the place up, talking the mugs to the kitchen to wash tomorrow.

He then walked to the boys bedroom, to find Jrumbot pouting as Grumbot sat on his bed.

“What will the story be?” Grian asked them, and Grumbot smiled before saying, “what about the one about the Dragons saving the world?”

Jrumbot glanced up with wide eyes and Grian grinned. Even though Grumbot had obviously won, he had also chosen his brother's favorite book to read.

Grian walked over to the bookshelf and found the book, “A Warrior's Tail” before walking to Jrumbots bed. He started reading to them, and within the third chapter, they were both asleep. 

Grian smiled and leaned over both of them to kiss their foreheads, before whispering ‘night’ and leaving the room. He walked toward his own bedroom and climbed into bed. Grian looked at the ceiling and felt Maui joined him, purring as he curled up around Grians head. He reached up to scratch Maui under the chin, before yawning and turning off his lamp.

That talk was one he had been dreading, and it went over quite well. Grians last thought before sleeping was ‘Maybe I should introduce them to another Hermit.’

-----------

For whatever reason, Autocorrect really hates all names. Anyways, I know who the Hermit is, But do any of you? I want to see who you think the hermit is!

Also, if you liked this story, please comment! I loved reading all of your comments on the last one! They helped me make this chapter as quick as possible! (I may also be procrastinating on other stories with a Grumbot Fix-it Fic but, oh well)

#grian #hermitcraft #Grumbot #Jrumbot #hermitcraft season 7 #Mumbo Jumbo #I love this family so much #The best family is a man and his 2 robot sons #I hope i made it clear how much Grian loves his boys #and how much he doesnt want to see them hurt #>:) #robodad Grian Au

[tartrazeen]

Starlight

Hank wants to see the stars. Connor tries his best. Some post-revolution, Rated-PG-13, pre-HankCon fluff as they figure this out. (Rough draft, reader beware.)

This is an idea I had, but since I don’t have time to write as its own fic, I thought I’d share it by describing what would happen: Picture Hank, some time before he and Connor get together. Imagine the two of them in the same house after Connor’s deviancy. Everything’s following the canon. The revolution came, the fear is there, and silence always feels like the calm before another storm. It’s tense for everyone, and Hank and Connor have quietly agreed to make their home some sort of escape: they don’t talk about it. It works about as well as any of Hank’s ways to cope. Not talking means it isn’t getting worse, even if those thoughts are looming in his mind. He’s curious – he wouldn’t mind knowing what Connor’s take is on the situation, if Connor sees light at the end of a long tunnel, or if Connor’s only going through the motions – but he isn’t going to ask. That might break something. He’s perfectly aware he can’t lose Connor over this, even if the ‘why’ hiding underneath is part of the tension he can’t touch. There’s nothing special about the night that it happens. Maybe it was on Hank’s mind those last few nights they were walking Sumo – Connor wants to be outside as often as he can, as if he’s overcompensating. Hank doesn’t mind the air and Sumo could sure as hell use the exercise. It’s a different escape. It takes a minute, but once they’re outside, the silence just becomes… … peaceful. He can see the stars. Hank notices Connor looking around at the other houses and streets. Never up. Just around. He didn’t realize he’d been paying attention to where Connor wasn’t looking before then. They’d made it to the park and the sky was clear, but Connor seemed calmly focused on the trees. So he asks. Well. Almost. He asked about as well as he ever asks anything.  “Nice sky,” he says. Then he waits for Connor to give his take. Connor agrees. That’s all Hank needed to hear.

He brought it up again the next time. It wasn’t a lie; it was another nice night. Connor picked up on that enough to offer to stay. And they do for a little while. It’s Connor who brings it up the third time. It’s Connor who takes it further. They’re almost home again – after they’d again agreed it was a nice night – when Connor asks him if he’d like to go another walk once Sumo’s inside. They can look at the sky. That seemed harmless. It wasn’t as peaceful as before, but it was close enough. The tension wasn’t the same as the kind he’d been shrugging off from the weight of the revolution. They looked at the sky. Hank saw the stars. That was it. He doesn’t mean to shuffle back inside the house as quickly as he does, but he wants that escape from talking again. He gets braver for the time after that. Hank outright asks if Connor wants to look at the stars that night. No Sumo this time either. Connor gives his almost-smile and assumes the sky must be nice. And it is. Sorta. Some clouds, but they aren’t too in the way. He strikes up a conversation. “Very nice.” He forgot that he’s an idiot. Luckily Connor was more of an idiot, because he asked, “The clouds?” The stars. An almost-smile. The tension turned awkward. Then uncomfortable. Hank asks if Connor wants to go in and Connor agrees to whatever Hank wants to do, and they’re outside. Their agreement was for inside. “I thought the point of being deviant was doing what you wanted,” he says. Too much bite. Less of a smile than almost one. They could go back in and leave it there. “I’m out here because I want to be,” Connor replies, not leaving it. “The rest was for your benefit.” Tension turned awkward turned uncomfortable turned bitter. But Hank knows how to cope with that. They escape inside the house and Connor agrees to leave him to it. That should be a bad sign. Instead, Hank appreciates the time it gives him to think. He’s not far into his second drink before he feels brave. “Think the clouds are done. Or – gone or… whatever.” Fourth drink, then. That was usually Hank got bad at math. And apparently bad at the weather, because when they’re outside, there aren’t any stars to be seen. He’s pissed and ready to turn around. Connor’s looking at the sky. “What are you doing?” It’s a gray mass up there. Hank checks again in case he’s a bigger idiot than he thought. No stars. “I’m watching the satellites,” Connor reports. Less bite. More awkward. “I’m sorry. We can go if you want.” Hank’s not angry – despite what’s probably still on his face – and he says as much, then asking, “You can see those?” Yes. “How many?” A lot. “Is that interesting?” Connor gives an almost-smile – more awkward, no bite – and says, “I like to track their patterns.” The patterns tell each satellite’s age and purpose, even its origin. When they stutter, it can mean they’ve hit trash. The newest ones make corrections around that. They’re ‘elegant’, apparently, and Connor likes to analyze whether each correction had to do with the amount of debris floating up there or the equipment’s sophistication. He’s named what he thinks are the trash piles – based on how many satellites have stuttered or curved around – after the problems they are. Three got named after Gavin. Connor’s been doing this for more than a night. “I meant to just keep busy while you were looking,” Connor admits. Embarrassed. “It got fun.” Relaxed. “I think I can understand why humans do it.” Hank points out that he’s been looking at stars. Humans can’t see satellites. Embarrassed. Connor offers to go. He must’ve really been on his fifth drink, because he stays. It’s not cold out, and maybe it’s a crappy night for him, but if Connor’s enjoying it, who’s Hank to take that away? “Would you like to see?” Connor takes Hank’s phone. The screen changes to black, with a series of lines streaking across in a dozen directions. Connor explains that’s from tonight. The screen changes, and Connor talks about the time they ran out of creamer in the breakroom and Gavin threw a fuckin’ fit for twenty minutes. Eight lines veer deliberately around some sight unseen – except for one, which plows through. Connor’s named the satellites too, of course, and that one’s Ben. When the screen changes for a fourth time, that’s Hank finally looks up from his phone to see Connor still staring up. Hank’s curious. He reaches out. He grabs Connor by the jaw and points his head a different way. The screen changes. A live-stream. Then Hank sees himself. “Sorry you didn’t get to see anything,” Connor says, watching him. The stream ends. His phone goes back to its default wallpaper. Hank deliberately waits for another crappy night. “Figured… th’screen – y’know…” Five drinks out of the gate. “S’bigger.” Connor streams the satellites on Hank’s TV, since Hank took the effort to haul it outside. They name a few other trash piles, since Hank’s also a fountain of knowledge on Gavin’s fuckin’ tantrums. He’s so involved that he almost forgets to check the sky himself. Stars. Patches of them. It’s clearing up again. “Guess we’re not gonna see as much now.” Not that he doesn’t like stars. They were why he’d stayed out with Connor in the first place. He’d just been enjoying their time as it was. “You can look at them,” Connor offers. “I’ll let you know if Jeff and Tina survive.” Someone took Gavin’s ‘best’ mug from the kitchen. Good luck to Jeff and Tina – Jeff was apparently set to plow through. “When it’s a nicer night, we’ll rename some normal constellations,” Hank says. Connor almost-smiles. Hank notices Connor had been smiling. “I can load a reference,” Connor reports. “If we put it on the TV, I can map the satellites against a star chart.” “Or we can point at ‘em.” More awkward. Tense. Hank’s uncomfortable. “Just figured I’d save you some work.” “We can try that,” Connor says. “You’d be doing the pointing.” Hank’s an idiot. “All that CyberLife tech and you can’t point?” Uncomfortable. Bitter. “I’m not exactly designed for stargazing.” And they were outside. “I can work with a chart.” The stream had ended, but the sky had been clearing up before that. There weren’t any stars while Hank had been watching. “Oh.” Connor helps him inside. It’s a different kind of embarrassed. “Why not?” He’d been feeling particularly brave the next morning. “It takes a certain sensitivity and steadiness to capture objects that faint. Some androids might be designed for it. Most can’t since it’s not necessary. I was built with other targets in mind.” Oh. “Pretty sure my phone can –” Connor wasn’t a phone. He reminded Hank of this as frankly as he could, considering their no-talking rule. There weren’t many other nights he could wait for. Finding a ‘good’ one seemed… bad. They just took Sumo for his walk and occasionally lingered outside of the house until it got too tense. He thought he could pick a day and surprise Connor – surprising Connor seemed to be a thing for Hank lately – but it went about as well as any other surprise. In that it didn’t. Connor, for his part, kept to their unspoken agreement. Hank didn’t pry even if he’d wanted to. It seemed uncomfortable. Things didn’t change until a sunny afternoon, when Connor announced that Ben had died. That stupid almost-smile was practically a grin as Hank twisted to find the context. “When’d that happen?” Today. “You get a newsletter or something?” Connor saw it at lunch. That’s what he looks at lately. It’s not as if he can eat, and Hank – oddly enough – doesn’t appreciate the cholesterol updates. He doesn’t mean to drive home as quickly as he does. He just reminds himself that he’s an idiot. Sumo gets all of two minutes of their time before Hank throws Connor back in the car. They don’t talk about it, even as the tension gets awkward. Even as it gets uncomfortable. Even as it gets bitter. By then, any questions that Connor could’ve asked were answered by the planetarium itself. So Hank asks his own. “You wanna… see?” They go back to awkward. Connor agrees. That’s all Hank needed to hear. The tour was kinda hokey. It was informative in that pity-for-the-parents way. But the star projections were why they were here. Everything should’ve bright enough for an android to see, including one that was built with other targets in mind. Sure, it wasn’t the same but… Close enough. “We should get a dome,” Connor says. Relaxed. “Sumo might like it.” ‘We’. “Where exactly do you think we’d get a dome?” “We could take their dome,” Connor suggests. They’re outside. They could talk about it. “Pretty sure that’s illegal,” Hank says in the meantime. “What are you, a cop?” “Sometimes.” He’s on the edge of breaking something. It feels tense, suddenly. Awkwardly. “I could quit, you know. I’ve got that option. If I wanted it.” Uncomfortable. “Just because I’ve been one way, it doesn’t mean I can’t be something else. That’s… free will for you.” He’s an idiot. Hank’s trying, but he’s an idiot. “You’re sweet.” Oh. More of a smile than not this time. “We’re still taking their dome.” “… Now?” No. It could wait, according to Connor. The forecast said it’d be clear tonight and that had usually set their plans. They could relax together. In their own way.

#dbh #detroit become human #hankcon #hannor #hank x connor #fic #rough draft #connor is a good ol' murder-bot #my stuff #good job tartra

[pixelfun20]

Flower Fields: Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Notes: Again, all credit to @give-grian-rights (hope you don’t mind the tag!) for the concept! Thank you so much! Also almost forgot to post this on Tumblr rip.

No fighting wars, no ringing chimes

We're just feeling fine

Tubbo started out by building his starter base.

It was a concept he’d learned about while living with Xisuma, and it was quite a good one, too. After all, megabases worthy of Hermitcraft’s admittedly lofty standards often took months to build, and he’d need somewhere to live in the meantime. In Season 6, he’d neglected that fact, and had suffered his fair share of mob deaths before he put up four walls and a ceiling to protect himself, back when he’d left to live on his own. And that was with a small, quickly-thrown together base, not the project he was currently planning.

Still, even setting up the basics of his starter base took a few nearly sleepless days. Finally, the framework for the build, a treehouse spanning more than a few trees at the edge of the forest, was up, and Tubbo was finally able to place a bed down in safety and sleep for a solid fourteen hours straight.

Xisuma dropped by, quite literally, a day or so later.

Tubbo had been sitting in his quickly-expanding living room, sorting through the loot he’d gotten from yesterday’s day-long mining session when he swooped down through the half-finished roof. While he was still wearing his bee-themed armor, now there were two glider-like wings, shimmering purple, strapped to his back.

“Heya, X,” Tubbo greeted the admin with a wave, closing one of his chests. “You got elytra already?”

“Tango and I defeated the Ender Dragon yesterday,” Xisuma replied, touching down softly. Tubbo made an ‘ah’ sound, recalling the achievement he’d seen out of the corner of his eye the other day. Right; he’d forgotten about that. Trust X to be as efficient as possible and defeat one of the toughest monsters in the world just for the ease of travel.

“I’ll have to go endbusting soon, then,” he said, more to himself than X. Before the elder man could protest (ah, he was getting good at noticing when he was going to), he added: “Stress and xB have already asked me to go with them, so don’t worry , alright?”

“Good,” Xisuma sighed. “It’s never a good idea to go out on your own, especially since this’ll be your first time seriously exploring the End.”

Tubbo rolled his eyes good naturedly. To be fair, he hadn’t gone out to the End before it had been conquered before. He’d had a fair few trips last Season, mostly with X, but it was generally for the XP farm once it’d been set up. He’d never left the main island before. Now that he had considerably more freedom at the beginning of the Season, he was excited to go exploring.

“Anything bring you over?” He asked, changing the subject.

Xisuma nodded. “Yeah. A bunch of the others are getting together for some sort of wrestling tournament this weekend.”

“And I’ve been invited?!” He grinned, clapping his hands together.

“As the referee.”

“Ah,” he pouted. “Darn.”

“Don’t worry,” Xisuma chuckled, setting down a shulker box. “It can be a lot funner to watch sometimes; I’m just going to be part of the audience, too. I think Doc wanted you because he thinks he can bribe you.”

“He can not !”

Xisuma raised an eyebrow. “Area 77.”

“Oh, that’s not fair. I am completely unbiased!”

“And that was why you became their lawyer and not for all the cool experiments they had. I don’t think Cleo has forgiven you for defeating her in court.”

“No one can defeat Big Law,” Tubbo sniffed, faux-offended, and Xisuma laughed. “Well, I’ll show him!” He declared, crossing his arms. “I’ll just have to make sure he loses, then!” Xisuma blinked, and he laughed. “Kidding! Kidding!” Mostly .

“So you’re going?”

“Sure! It’s nice to see the Hermits all in one place, anyways. What’s in the shulker?”

Xisuma tilted his head teasingly. “What do you think? Someone had to get the supplies for our honey farm.”

Tubbo gaped. “You’re ready to build farms already?! Man, and I thought I was ahead of the game with just having my base halfway done.”

The armored man shrugged, looking about the partially completed build. “Well, you’ve certainly put more effort into this than me. Truly, your building skills are already improving. I love how you’re styling the roof with peaks like you are; it looks like it took a while.”

“My last house had a roof like that, too,” Tubbo reminded him, glancing up as well. It had become a tradition, of sorts, to build curved, peaked roofs onto his builds. Last season it had been one of the few things he’d built slowly to make look as good as possible. In all honesty, it was his own way of honoring the person who’d made it possible for him to come here, to have a life worth living once again. Rushing through the technique just felt disrespectful.

“Yes, but you’ve definitely gotten better.” Xisuma bent down over the shulker box, checking its contents. “Do you have any good ideas for where to make the bee farm? I’ll admit, I’ve been a bit too busy to scout out a good area.”

“Really? Then where’d you get these guys?”

“Tree farming in the desert.”

Tubbo snorted into his hand, and he could practically feel Xisuma’s embarrassment. “Well, you did say you hadn’t scouted out a good spot.”

“Indeed I did.”

“I can take a look around here and see what I can find. Meadows are supposed to be excellent places for farming bees, right?”

“Indeed it is,” Xisuma agreed. “Do you have plans for your megabase, yet?”

Tubbo nodded, grinning. “And trust me, it’s going to be awesome .”

............

Two days later, a chicken appeared in his base. Tubbo found it laying an egg in what was starting to become the base’s storage area, with one of his shirts nearly ripped to shreds in what appeared to be a makeshift nest.

There was a nametag wrapped around its leg. After some chicken wrangling and a few feathers to the face, he got a good look at it and realized there wasn’t a name written there, but a set of coordinates.

A set of coordinates rather far away, but who was he to turn down such an intriguing mystery?

With the chicken now renamed Wilbur and placed in a pen (he’d needed a chicken farm anyways), Tubbo set out that morning with a few supplies to find the spot he was looking for. After crossing a fair bit of forest and ocean, by the next day he’d found himself cutting his way through the underbrush of an overgrown jungle and wondering why in the world Stress had wanted to wait a week before going to get their elytra.

He pushed a few low-hanging vines out of the way, checking his communicator for the upteenth time. He was getting closer, now. This better be worth going out a few hundred chunks in the middle of nowhere—hey, wait a minute!

There was smoke in the distance. He could just make it out through the leaves, and now that he concentrated, he could smell it, too. Tubbo rushed forwards, pushing through the brush to see several man-made wooden pillars sticking out. As he pressed forwards, he made out a semi-stone floor, several chests, and a small fire in the middle, explaining the smoke.

“What is this?” He asked himself, looking around the place. The coordinates were right, and yet no one was here. Just this outpost in the middle of the jungle.

Tubbo walked around. There were some papers pinned to the wall, and a few dispensers lying around. Idly he pressed the buttons on them, already starting to form a plan to enact revenge on whoever made him travel over a day to get this place.

He pressed the button on the dispenser in the middle of the build and nearly got an arrow to the face.

Tubbo yelped, his reflexes, honed from a half year of training, the only thing saving him from a sudden death. A bell rang behind him, but it took him a few more moments to calm his racing heart.

“Not funny! You nearly took my head off!” He shouted to the jungle. Still, he didn’t leave, instead turning to the bell the arrow had his, examining it. Huh.

There were some cookies in one of the chests, probably left behind by whoever had actually built the place. He nibbled on it, only half hungry, as he tried to examine the place better.

“HERMIT CHALLENGES!”

Tubbo shrieked , dropping the remains of his cookie as the voice rang through the forest air. He looked around, trying to find the source, but found that he couldn’t.

“INITIATION!”

A diamond-clad figure dropped out of the vines above, landing with a firm thud on one of the ground dispensers. He nearly lost his balance before righting himself with a huff.

“Mumbo!” Tubbo exclaimed, a little annoyed but mostly impressed.

“INITIATION!” He shouted at the top of his lungs. “HERMIT CHALLENGES! YOU ARE BEING INDUCTED.”

“How long have you been up there?! It took me over a day to get here.”

“No matter, Mr. Tubbo! Congratulations! You’re in!”

“...Thanks?”

“Of course, my friend! You have been inducted into Hermit Challenges! Of course, you could have eaten the entire cookie—” he glanced down at the crumbs at Tubbo’s feet. “But besides that you have acted perfectly.”

“Wait, what is Hermit Challenges?” Tubbo asked, blinking. What? This version of Mumbo was almost nothing like the Mumbo he’d seen at Spawn a mere week and a half ago. Who used chickens to deliver messages? Or perch in a tree for supposed hours on end?

Okay, he had to admit, that last one was pretty funny.

“Oh, it’s a game I’ve made up,” Mumbo continued. “Iskall and I have already had a go at it, and I figured I’d invite you next.”

“...Alright, then. How do I play?”

“It’s simple! Write down three challenges and put them in the dispenser. Then we’ll pick one at random from each other.”

Mumbo reached into one of the chests on the ground, taking out a sheath of paper and passing three to him with a pen. Tubbo looked at him, and Mumbo grinned.

“Go on! I’m sure you’ll have something fun in that head of yours.”

Ah, he was right. Tubbo gave in with a smile, leaning back and thinking briefly about what he wanted to challenge Mumbo. A few ideas came to mind, and he quickly scribbled them down, pushing them into one of the two dispensers on the side of the small build, Mumbo doing the same.

“Alright, then!” Mumbo announced with a smile. “You go first.”

Tubbo stepped towards Mumbo’s dispenser and clicked the button, causing a slip of paper to slide out. He unrolled it, then read it out loud.

“‘Steal everyone’s front doors for the rest of the season.’ What? The whole season?!”

Mumbo laughed. “Oh, that one! Man, you got the hardest one from me!”

“Well, I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what you’ll get from me.”

“We’ll see,” Mumbo said with a chuckle.  He moved across the platform, and pressed the button the dispenser Tubbo had put his challenges in. The dispenser whirred, and then another slip of paper popped out. Mambo picked it up and read off of it, face contorting as he did so. “...‘Act like you don’t believe in the moon for the next two weeks, and claim the sky is a hologram put up by the SCA (Secret Chickens Agency) to keep us from seeing the real overlords- the sky chickens.’ What?”

Tubbo snickered at that, covering his mouth with one hand. Oh, he was proud of that one.

“No, seriously, this is awfully specific.”

“What? It’s funny!”

“Funny for you!” But Mumbo was smiling, and Tubbo grinned back at him.

“I’m going to be having a fun few weeks,” he giggled.

“So am I,” Mumbo agreed with a raised eyebrow, tucking the slip of paper away. He clapped Tubbo’s shoulder. “I suppose I’ll have to make up a good story to go with this prompt.”

“And I have some doors to steal!” Tubbo laughed.

“Whoever gets the first complaint in chat wins?”

“You’re on!”

#tubbo #tubbolive #hermitcraft #mcyt #xisumavoid #mumbo jumbo #hermit challenges #fluff #Hermit!Tubbo AU #watcher!tubbo #it took me like a month but hey I updated

[tickledpink31]

My tablet wasn’t working so behold a hand-drawing of my OCs

Let me introduce them to you:

Akane Hayashi from Ouran High School Host Club

Age: 16-17

Height: 157cm (5′2″)

Formerly known as Aisling by her birth parents

The adopted daughter of the Hayashi family

Deaf and speaks JSL

She came to life after I watched Amélie 

Affiliated closely with Kyoya

A talented engineer and botanist

Her parents are generous people and she’s no different

The Hayashi family are also a modest bunch and live in an apartment big enough for three people

Veronica Midford from Black Butler

Age: 19-20

Height: 156.5cm (5′2″)

I wanted to indulge in my love for reverse harems and time travel stories so Veronica was born

Prepare to be romanced by a demon, three reapers, and maybe I’ll throw in an angel

Descendant of the Phantomhives and Midfords (either from Lizzie or Edward, but not O!Ciel.)

Known as Lady Phantomhive by ominous people that she meets *cough* Undertaker *cough*

I kept changing her style before I settled with the short wavy look

A psychic like her ancestors as a side effect of the demon contract

Dresses in lolita, but her fashion choices look more mature these days

Her older sister, Beatrice, practices exorcism

I just realized I forgot to put the devil’s trap in her eye (Beatrice put it there for protection)

A charitable young woman who wants to help and will do it outside of the law if she has to

Much smarter than people realize

Fluent in 6 languages including ASL

Kaguya from Avatar the Last Airbender

Age: 16-18

Height: 165cm (5′5″)

Born in the era after Korra

I don’t really follow The Legend of Korra ever since the end of season 1 and I don’t really want to so I’ll decide what’s canon

Youngest of 10 siblings

Has been to the spirit world several times without aid

Travelled to Republic City from the Northern Water Tribe to attend the Bending Arts Academy and become a doctor

Invented a healing form of blood bending

Minerva “Minnie” Castillo from Obey Me

Age: 18-19

Height: 162.6cm (5′4″)

You probably know her from some of my posts so I’ll give you a brief rundown

She’s me but better

Why did I draw her eyes wonky?

I ship her mostly with Lucifer

Filipino-Canadian like me

A musical theatre kid

An identical twin, practically the Snow White to her sister’s Rose Red

Unwilling and chaotic mom friend

Planning never goes right for her so she’s in literally in hell

Lives in a van during her college life

Erika Matsumori from Harry Potter

Age: 11-16 (Golden Trio Era) 30s–40s (Post-Wizarding War II)

Height: 175cm (5′9″)

At the risk of getting attacked I am making not one but two Harry Potter OCs one of which will be paired with Draco

I am a recent fan and yes I’m aware how problematic Rowling is so don’t ruin this for me

This girl’s resting bitch face gives Blaise Zabini a run for his money

In the language of Hanakotoba, Erika means “solitude” explaining her solitary disposition

Her surname translates to “pine” and “forest”

Pine for the wood of her wand

Forest because back in Japan, Erika often ventured into the nearby forest to look for yokai

Erika has nerves of steel and an equally steely face

But she has a good heart underneath

Had a hard time making friends but Luna Lovegood was a good start

Ginny became her friend by extension of Luna but not without a few misunderstandings

A year younger than the Golden Trio

Dated Colin Creevey for a month before they decided to just stay friends

She’s a muggle-born Slytherin (I do what I want)

Although she’s a muggle-born, she grew up knowing about the wizarding world because her uncle is a muggle-born

Was once a student at Mahoutokoro (did you know students there start attending at age 7 but are not boarded until they are 11?) until she was expelled for associating with yokai

Moved to the UK with her uncle to attend Hogwarts at 11

Became part fox after helping a kitsune get back to their mother

Has narcolepsy and has plenty of vivid prophetic dreams because of it

Like a true Slytherin, she protects her kind, muggle-borns that is

She defended her fellow Slytherins before the Battle of Hogwarts

It annoys Draco that she just happened to catch his attention

Made love potions illegal as an adult

Like vixens, Erika goes to great lengths for her family especially her three children in the future

Kikyo Malfoy from Harry Potter

Age: 16–19 (mid to late teens depending on when the story takes place)

Height: 160cm (5′3″)

Erika and Draco’s eldest child and only daughter

She two brothers who are twins, Scorpius and Ryuji, they are both protective of their sister

In the language of Hanakotoba, Kikyo means unchanging love, honesty, and obedience

Not a Slytherin but a Ravenclaw, her parents knew that all along and they are proud of her regardless

Wrote a non-biased version of the Harry Potter series for the purpose of helping muggle-borns and half-bloods who are not aware of their magical heritage

Writes about Newt Scamander, her mother, and herself—a complete series in different points of views of all the houses

Has the ability to split into four different versions of herself (Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor) possibly even more

Wishes she has her mother’s nerves of steel

Has some kitsune abilities like summoning fire and enhanced sense

Marie Christen/Marjorie Calieus/Mar from The Arcana

Age: 21

Height: 151.8cm (5′0″)

I have mentioned my love for time travel stories and world hopping so prepare for another one

There aren’t a lot of world hopping fanfic for The Arcana so here’s mine…sort of

They are the offspring of two powerful magicians from far outside of Vesuvia

Their father travelled to our world and dropped Mar off at a married couple’s house in Zürich and was renamed Marie Christen

Mar is non-binary but goes by all pronouns and still responds to the names Marie and Marjorie

They have a birthmark on their cheek which The Fool symbol

Happily lives in adoption with her parents Eva and Liam and her kid sister Antoinette

Her familiar is a lamb named Edelweiss

Her biological aunt located Mar when they were 10. From then on, Mar made frequent visits to their aunt’s shop in Vesuvia to hone their magical abilities

At 12, they met Asra who was nearly 15 at the time

#my art #OC: Akane Hayashi #OC: Veronica Midford #OC: Kaguya #OC: Minerva Castillo #OC: Erika Matsumori #OC: Kikyo Malfoy #OC: Mar #ouran high school host club #ouran koukou host club #black butler #kuroshitsuji #avatar the last airbender #legend of korra #obey me #harry potter #the arcana

[sky-blaze]

Restart And Try Again

Summary:

Sam has found Rinzler, and is trying to turn him back into Tron, but thirty-year-old code requires an expert touch. Enter Alan Bradley, who ends up unexpectedly attached to his creation.

---

“I need your help.”

Alan turned to see Sam in the doorway of his office at ENCOM. His godson looked unusually agitated, despite the faux-casual pose he had assumed, leaning against the doorframe, the way his leg jiggled with barely-suppressed nervous energy gave the game away.

“Hello Sam,” Alan greeted with exaggerated formality, “Nice to see you.”

There was the barest twitch of guilt that he was abandoning politeness, but even Alan’s subtle admonishment didn’t deter him, “It’s… Dad’s… uh… project. I need your help with something.” Sam blurted, the words coming all in a rush, making him sound like the awkward teenager Alan remembered with a mixed amount of fondness. The words, however, made Alan raise an eyebrow.

“I was under the impression,” Alan said slowly, “That you and Quorra were handling that.”

“We are… mostly. But there’s one thing that needs your...uh...personal touch.” Sam said, his eyes darted around warily, and Alan understood that this was not something Sam was comfortable discussing in the ENCOM officers, where just anyone could listen in.

After only a moment of hesitation, Alan grabbed his keys of his desk, “Lead on, then. I can’t promise anything, but I can take a look.”

Sam’s answering smile was full of relief.

-

Neither Kevin nor Sam had revealed the full details on Kevin Flynn’s ‘project’. The closed system hidden in the basement of the arcade was still largely a mystery to him, Lora and Roy, but Sam had at least told him about Kevin’s ultimate fate; saving the system, The Grid, by reintegrating himself with his rogue program, CLU. Alan was torn between being impressed at what his old friend had accomplished and wanting to raise him from the dead so he could strangle him for being so reckless.

A prickle of apprehension crawled up Alan’s spine when he saw the digitising laser; so familiar from those early days at ENCOM. It looked so incredibly incongruous sat there in front of a workstation terminal. Alan took a deep breath of the dry, stale basement air and looked at Sam, who shuffled uncomfortably.

“Would you care to explain?” Alan asked carefully.

Sam looked at his shoes for a moment, taking his own deep, fortifying breath, “You gave a copy of your security program to Dad for his project, right?” Sam began.

Alan frowned, “Tron. Yes, I did. What does this have…” Alan’s eyes widened, “Is he still..?” Alan had often found it difficult to reconcile the work he did every day - coding, compiling and upgrading software - with the ideas that Kevin had espoused about programs being like real people, living within the machine, but Tron had always been… different. Special. There was a connection there that Alan had never been able to explain. Thinking Tron was… gone had been unexpectedly and inexplicably painful.

Sam looked uncomfortable again, “Sort of. CLU got to him. He… repurposed him. Turned him into an attack dog, renamed him Rinzler. I don’t know how, but something in him must have… fought back. Towards then end, before the reintegration, Rinzler turned on CLU - tried to attack him.”

Alan frowned, his brows drawing tightly together as apprehension congealed into worry, “But you found him?”

Sam nodded, “Yeah but… his code is a total mess. I’ve tried to help him, but some of his core kernal is… well, its beyond me.”

Alan blinked, “And you think I can help?”

“He’s your program.” Sam said softly.

“Sam, in case you forgot, I wrote it – him – in the eighties. Its been a while.” Alan replied, anxiety rising in his chest, tension making his shoulders ache as he stared at the laser and the darkened terminal.

“You’re his best shot,” Sam insisted, “You’re his user. He’s… well, he’s been asking for you.”

Alan couldn’t help but stare, “Asking for me?”

Sam sighed, “He’s not completely conscious, but whenever I try to work on his code, he pushes me away and says ‘Alan1’ over and over.”

“My old username at ENCOM.” Alan said faintly. He sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose, “All right. You’ve convinced me. I’ll give it a shot. What do I need to do?”

Sam nodded at the seat in front of the terminal – the one with the laser pointed ominously at it, “Sit right there. I’ll handle the rest. Oh, and don’t worry when you get there, I’ll be right behind you.”

For the first time since Sam had arrived at Alan’s office, Sam flashed one of his bright smiles. Alan wasn’t sure if it was meant to be reassuring, but since that same smile was often on the face of both father and son right before some of their more outrageous stunts, Alan decided he was correct to be concerned.

–

Arriving in the Grid was just as disorienting as Alan had feared. He materialised – for lack of a better term – to almost total blackness. The only faint white light in the small, closed-off room was… himself. His shirt glowed with a faint white radiance, while his suit pants and jacket had gone from dark grey to jet black. His face felt… odd. He reached up to touch his glasses, but once his fingers made contact with the frames, there was a spark of white across the lenses and his vision suddenly came alive with a host of information, scrolling across like a military-style heads-up display.

“Huh.” He said.

A column of light coalesced beside him, and in moments Sam had arrived, wearing some of sort of… armoured black suit covered in glowing white circuitry patterns.

“Nice outfit.” Alan commented dryly when Sam had fully materialised.

Sam grinned back, “Nice glasses.”

“I appear to have come equipped with an augmented reality display.” Alan said, “I can’t say I don’t appreciate the upgrade.”

“Advantages of being a User in a computer, I guess.” Sam shrugged.

“Apparently.” Alan’s gaze sharpened as it fixed on Sam, trying to ignore the little pop-ups of information on the heads-up display, which described Sams’s clock speed, code integrity and power level, “Where is he?” Alan asked softly.

“This way.” Sam said, leading Alan out of the darkened room and into the city streets.

The city was something of a revelation for Alan, who was almost mesmerised by the colour, the angles, the beauty of it all, especially with his glasses providing him with helpful information on each point of interest, right down to its code composition, if he so chose. Getting control of the flow of information was a challenge; Alan was a programmer, and the beauty of this place, not just on a physical level, but on the level of pure code, was almost too much to resist. Only the knowledge that someone – that Tron – needed his help, let him keep his focus.

Sam led him through the neon-laced streets, up into a glowing tower. Quorra greeted them at the door, the usually perky ISO oddly subdued. The room Alan was guided into was comfortable, decorated in muted shades of white and pale blue. It almost like a high-end hotel, except with more glowing parts.

A figure lay motionless on the plush-looking bed. Dressed entirely in black, an opaque helmet covering his face, the glowing circuitry lines were strangely truncated, pulsing an ominous dark orange. The most distinctive marking was the set of small squares near his throat, set in a T shape.

“Tron.” Alan breathed. The figure on the bed twitched, and made a rattling moan. It was a ragged, pained sound, like a fan with a worn bearing, or a failing hard drive. Either way, the noise worried him.

“Here.” Sam said, handing him… a disk? It looked like a hollow Frisbee, its edges its edges pulsing the same malevolent, fiery orange as Tron’s circuitry. Alan’s glasses promptly displayed information telling him how to bring up a code overview from the disk. Helpful. He was starting to wish he had something like it in the real world.

He sat down on a sinfully comfortable chair and watched as the code spiralled up from the disk, appearing in a splay of holographic light. He examined it for a few long moments, turning it this way and that, marvelling at the 3-D representation that revealed data structures, variable arrays and other things that Alan usually had to keep track of in his head, all presented clearly but… something wasn’t right. He dug further, finally finding something familiar. He wasn’t usually one to blow his own trumpet about his programming prowess, but the core of the original code he had written looked remarkably elegant next to what appeared to be hastily hacked-in patches with more recent timestamps.

After further investigation, Alan sat back with a scowl, “Who wrote this additional code?”

Sam looked up from where he had sprawled on a sofa, “Uh...why?” he asked.

Alan scowled harder, “Because I’d like to punch them in the mouth.”

“It was probably CLU,” Quorra said, almost making Alan jump. She’d been so still and quiet he’d almost forgotten she was there, “Well, either CLU or Dyson.” She continued, “They’re both… gone now.”

“Hmph.” Was Alan’s only reply. He spent another few moments staring at the butchery that had been made of his creation, trying to fight down anger on Tron’s behalf at what had been done to him. The new blocks of code emphasised obedience, and violence. To have this done to Tron, who was created to be self-sufficient, to protect, not attack, it felt like nothing so much as torture and brainwashing.

“I think I can fix this.” He said finally, “But it’s not going to be quick. I’ll need time, and access to my usual suite of programming tools.” He gestured to the swirling holographic code, “This is lovely, but its not what I’m used to. It’ll be quicker and easier for me to use a normal workstation.”

Sam nodded, “Yeah, I get it. Programming in the Grid is… different.”

A thought occurred to Alan, “Is it even possible to transfer data to this system? I didn’t see any ports, except the I/O and display port, and the operating system is bound to be completely unique.”

Sam nodded again, more slowly this time, and Alan heard Quorra take a sudden, sharp breath, “It… is…”

“I hear a ‘but’ at the end of this sentence.” Alan said.

Sam gave a slightly forced chuckle, “Yeah, okay. It is possible, but you kinda need to use yourself as the data storage medium.”

Alan blinked, “What?”

Sam chuckled, sounding far more natural this time, “It’s okay. I’ll show you when we get back.”

Alan’s gaze went back to the figure lying so still on the bed, seeming almost lifeless if not for the dull pulsing of the circuitry, and the scrolling information on Alan’s heads-up display. “Will he be all right?” he asked.

“Quorra’s staying with him.” Sam replied. Alan caught the look that flickered between Quorra and Sam, suddenly understanding that it wasn't just a case of keeping Tron company; it was making sure that that awful ‘Rinzler’ code-butchery didn’t cause him to hurt himself or anyone else. Quorra was more guard than nurse. The thought made his stomach knot up. 

Without thinking, Alan reached over to pat Tron on the arm, “I’ll be back, and I promise I’ll help you.”

Tron made a noise, that odd grinding sound, but softer this time, sounding almost like a purr, and then, a barely audible rasp, “Aaalaan onnneee…”

“I’ll be back.” Alan reassured again, feeling a lump in his throat. He forced himself to let go, ignoring the odd look Sam gave him as he marched out of the room and heading back towards where the laser had dropped them, not really knowing why he felt like crying.

–

Less than a week later, Alan found himself back in the basement beneath Flynn’s Arcade. True to his word, Sam had taught him how to port code to and from the Grid. It was something of an involved process, and needed one of the obscure ‘floptical’ storage systems to interface with Flynn’s ageing, custom-built computer system. It had taken almost as long to find the right storage system as it had to actually rebuild Tron’s code.

Now, he loaded the disk caddy into the semi-hidden drive slot and loaded his own ‘profile’ on the workstation and hit ‘import’. Sam then took over and loaded the laser digitisation program.

“Ready?” Sam asked.

Alan shifted, feeling both impatient and anxious, “Yeah, let’s go.”

The dizzying sensation overtook him and he once again found himself in that darkened room inside the Grid. This time, however, there was significantly more light – still coming from himself. The sensible suit he had worn before was replaced by a long black overcoat, decorated with glowing white circuitry lines. His shirt was still softly glowing white, but he could feel the weight of an ID disk on his back.

“That’s new.” Sam said, frowning, “You okay Alan?”

“Yeah,” Alan smiled, “I think it’s due to the extra data I had to import into my profile so I could help Tron.”

Sam chuckled, “Looks good on you. No fair you get a cooler outfit than mine, though.”

Alan couldn’t help but smirk, “And the cool glasses.”

“Yeah, rub it in why don’t ya?” Sam lightly smacked his godfather on the arm, and once again led Alan through the twisting streets to where Tron lay.

It looked like Tron had barely moved, but when Alan stepped through the door, Tron made that painful-sounding grinding noise, his arms twitching. “How has he been?” Alan asked Quorra.

Quarra shrugged, “About the same. He twitches sometimes, and calls out for you. If anyone else tries to touch him, though, he tries to get away, despite how damaged he is.”

The bluntly spoken assessment chilled Alan, and he took a deep breath, reaching over to the program laying motionless against the plush blue bedcovers, “Tron? It’s me, Alan. I’m here to help you, but I need your ID disk. Is that okay?”

The grinding noise grew louder, and Tron’s body twitched almost violently, “aaaa...aaaa.” Tron rasped, trying again to move. It took Alan a few moments to realise that Tron was trying to roll over, to expose his ID disk at his User’s request. The display of trust made something in Alan’s chest twist.

Reaching down, Alan helped his program to roll onto his side, noting almost absently as he did so that where he touched Tron’s circuits, the orange faded into bright blue, just for a second, before it bled back to orange.

As gently as he could, Alan disengaged Tron’s disk from the port, and reached to his own back to pull off his own disk. Praying silently to whatever gods looked after programmers, he slowly brought the two disks into contact.

Holding his breath, Alan watched as the white light of his disk slowly melted into the orange, and wherever it touched, the light changed, transforming from deep orange into blue. When the process finally completed, Alan felt like he could breathe again, but the knot in his stomach still remained, a reminder that it wasn’t quite over.

Carefully pulling the two disks apart, Alan clicked his own back into place before leaning down and carefully, almost reverentially, placing Tron’s disk back in its port.

The change was immediate. The blue light flowed like water from the disk port, spreading across the circuitry lines. When it reached Tron’s neck, the mask dissolved, revealing a face that looked precisely like Alan himself had thirty years ago. Tron’s eyelids fluttered and he blinked open his eyes, looking unerringly at his User, eyes full of wonder and joy.

“Alan1.” Tron said, his voice almost...worshipful, which was deeply embarrassing, but at least it was at last free of the awful grinding growl.

Alan felt tears in his eyes, “Welcome back, Tron.” he said, reaching out to take his creation’s hand.

Tron frowned, “I… so much has happened.” Sorrow filled the program’s face, “I...I failed. I did terrible things. I’m so sorry, Alan1.”

“Shhh,” Alan soothed, perching next to Tron on the edge of the bed, unable to tear his gaze away from his creation, “It’s all right. You did everything you could. You fought back against CLU. I couldn’t be any prouder of you.”

The awestruck wonder was back in Tron’s face, his fingers curling tightly around Alan’s own, apparently totally unwilling to let go. Alan gently touched the circuitry on Tron’s arm, marvelling at the colour – it wasn’t quite the electric blue of Quorra’s lines, it was paler - closer to ice blue, and Alan wondered at the reason for that difference, if it had any particular significance.

The sound of someone clearing their throat startled them both, both Tron and Alan apparently forgetting that Sam and Quorra were in the room. Sam looked somewhat embarrassed, “Uh, so yeah. Me and Quorra have… stuff to take care of. We’re gonna head out, okay?”

Alan rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand, feeling his own embarrassment climb up his cheeks, “Uh, sure.”

Tron tugged on his hand, “You’ll stay with me, Alan1?” his face and voice full of hope.

Alan couldn’t help but smile, “Of course, Tron.” he said, and Tron shuffled over on the bed to make room, not once letting go of his User’s hand.

Alan lay down next to his creation, the security program he had coded with his own hands, trying not to melt under said program’s adoring gaze. Without really thinking about it, Alan brought Tron’s hand up to kiss his knuckles, wondering exactly how this had become his life.

Once he turned to see the joy shining in Tron’s face, free of the pain he had suffered, Alan couldn’t bring himself to mind.

End of Line.

#Alan/Tron #tron: legacy #Tron #fanfic

[calliope-love-corner]

I remember you

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

It’s a busy day at work when it happens. Spring was slipping closer and closer to summer, and our iced coffee had become especially infamous since our remodel. I’d been working there almost a year now, and had acquired the proud title of assistant manager. We’d renamed the cafe ‘Upton Parlor,’ even though we were nowhere near Upton. My idea, obviously. I’d insisted we keep the deck and outside seating. Overhead fans blasting, coffee grinders humming away, sunlight bleeding in through the big windows. It was peaceful. 

Cameron, my coworker, popped into the back while I was taking stock.

“Cal? Someone asked for you up front.” 

Probably Melanie. She liked to come in to visit me at this time of day. 

“Tell her that I won’t cover her again ‘till I get my Admiral privileges back!” I snicker. 

“It’s not one of the usual people who ask for you, though.” Cameron leans in the doorway, glancing behind him- presumably at the counter. I pop up and raise an eyebrow, then follow him out front. 

“Wait, wh-” He starts when we step through the door. No one is at the counter. I watch him look all around for where they might have gone out of the corner of my vision, hung over the counter to peer around the corners, but my gaze is locked on the entrance. I swear- I swear I see a familiar pair of heeled boots and a vintage skirt walk down the deck steps. I only see it for a second before the wearer had rounded the corner and gone out of sight.

There was no way. It wasn’t possible. I knew it wasn’t possible. But I had to check. 

Not once tearing my gaze from the door, I untie my apron and toss it on the back counter. I hurry across the clean rustic wood floors of my cozy little cafe and break into a jog, running down the steps and landing- almost falling- on the sidewalk. I desperately search the afternoon walking crowd. No luck. I stand up straight and look on wistfully for a moment. 

“No…” I mutter to myself. “No, definitely not.” 

I was seeing things. Cameron had followed me out to make sure I was okay.

“Just thought I saw someone I knew. Sorry,” I settled on. “It’s no big deal.”

These days it’s easy to tell when someone’s having a moment related to the apocalypse. Though a year had passed by now, there would always be scars. I shook my head and wandered back inside to finish taking stock.

***

The whole rest of the day felt strange. My lunch break felt off, and closing up for the night by myself- usually a peaceful and reflective activity- didn’t feel quite right. My head was swimming and buzzing with activity and doubt- It wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been her. But what if it was? Other avatars survived, why wouldn’t she have? She knew she would die, though. She didn’t wake up at hilltop road with me. It couldn’t have been her. She was gone. 

A soft knock at the open door. I heard it, but it didn’t break my train of thought. 

“Sorry, I’m just closing up now. We’re open until 8 tomorrow, though!” I say in my best customer service voice over my shoulder, not really looking at the latecomer. 

“Cal…?”

My heart stopped. 

No. There was no way. 

I turn around and drop my broom. Standing unsure of herself in the golden afternoon light, holding on to the doorframe as if to steady herself, stood Annabelle. I looked her up and down. Knee-length purple skirt, heeled ankle boots, white blouse, black ribbon, black purse, stark-white curly hair with a smooth faded undercut, deep black eyes. It certainly looked like her. My hands raise to cover my mouth in denial. Before I can stop it, before I can assess or evaluate or do anything to see if it really is her, tears well up in my eyes and threaten to spill over. Just seeing her- even if it isn’t real- in the flesh, right in front of me is enough to make me choke back a sob. Annabelle gives a sad smile, pursing her lips tight, holding something back. 

“...Hi.” She says. 

“No…” I reply. “I- is this- you’re…” 

I chance a step forward. “Th- there’s no way. This isn’t real.” I stammer. Annabelle bites her lip. 

“I…” She searches for the right thing to say. “I know it’s been awhile. And this doesn’t make much sense. But I promise I can explain.” 

I take a few more slow steps forward, letting tears spill over my cheeks. I hold out a shaky hand towards her. I remember the rift. I remember the end. I remember what I had to leave behind. 

Annabelle steps up to meet me. I see her deep, dark eyes have welled up. My mouth hangs open, and I look at her closely- her nose, her freckles, the piercings on each ear, her lips, her well-styled hair, her slender arms and long legs. She carefully raises her right hand. I take it slowly, letting my fingers intertwine with hers. I meet her eyes. She smiles at me. 

I break. I pull her into me, holding her tight in my arms, desperate to feel her close. I tuck my head into her shoulder and sob. Please, please, please be real, I think. I need it to be real. 

“I thought I lost you,” I stammer out between shallow breaths of air. “I thought I lost you forever, I- you were gone, and-” 

I feel her silently crying as she holds me. “I told you you’d be fine without me. I told you it would be okay.” 

I grip at her blouse and definitely leave a gross stain on her shoulder. We fall to the floor in a heap, and we stay there for a while. Annabelle rubs slow circles on my back while I let out heavy cries of relief and while I steady my breathing. When I’m ready, we talk, soft in low voices meant for just us.

“Where have you been..?” I ask, my voice hoarse. 

“To put it plainly, I… well, I forgot. I woke up in a hospital with amnesia.” 

I pull away for the first time since the light from the sunset faded more than 20 minutes ago. She wipes my eyes and smiles. 

“How?” I ask. “How did you get there? I woke up at Hilltop road- what was left of it, anyway…” 

She shrugs. “I… can’t know. I like to think something took pity on me, be it the web or some other higher power. Gave me another chance. See?” 

Annabelle turned her head to show off where the web-covered hole in her skull once was. It was gone, replaced with smooth skin and soft hair, without a scar or any indication it had ever been there at all. I run my hand over the spot where the wound should have been in awe. 

“They treated me as any other amnesia patient going through a trauma response after everything happened.” She continued. “Piece by piece, things started to come back. My upbringing, the people I used to know, things I used to enjoy. When… the full understanding of my alignment with the web came back to me, I… decided not to let the doctors know.”

I let out a pitiful laugh. “Makes sense. The others and I are… pretty low-key about our past employment. It doesn’t get you many brownie points around here.”

She laughs at my comment. I nearly cry just hearing it again. It had been so long. 

“They discharged me when I seemed to remember enough to function well, about a month ago now. Most everything had come back to me by then, but- god, I knew something was missing. I felt so… lost. Like I was looking for something important without knowing what it was.” 

I do start to cry again. I know where this is going. I hold her tight again, hugging her body close. 

“I- I don’t know how it happened. I was out for lunch, and- and I remembered. It just… came back to me. And I remembered why I changed and why I got a second chance at life, and what I was looking for, and who I was missing, and-” Her voice starts to break. She lifts my hand to her chest to feel her racing heart. “And I remembered you. I flew here as soon as I could, and I just- I wasn’t sure how to approach you, it’s been so long, and-” 

“God, shut up-” I cut her off, giving her an out to break down into tears without another word. 

“I love you so much-” I say into her shirt. She shakes against my body. I feel her warmth, her pulse, her shuddering breath, her tears on my collar, her love. And she’s human. She’s not an Avatar, not an extension of something, not a part of some grand cosmic scheme. She’s real, and she’s human, and she is home. She came home to me. Something gave her a second chance, a second try, where she gets to decide what she is and isn’t a part of. She gets a life where she can experience and feel and simply be the version of herself she wants to be. And she chose to come home to me. Not to manipulate me, not to play the long game, not to get me to fall into her trap, not to make me a pawn in some bigger game of chess- because she wants me. 

“God, I can’t fucking believe you-” I stutter, and push away to meet her eyes, clinging tight to her shirt. “I am never letting you out of my sight again, you hear me??” 

She wipes her eyes, smiles, and nods. I search her face for just a moment before pulling her into a deep kiss, which she sinks into like jelly. I tangle a hand in her hair and pull away, pressing my forehead to hers. 

“I missed you so much.” I mutter to her. 

“I’m here now. I’m not leaving.” 

“Penny made it through the end, you know? She’ll be happy to see you, though she’s a little more normal now. Less spooky.” 

Annabelle laughs. “God, you’re kidding. I can’t believe you kept her.” 

I shrug. “What was I gonna do, let her loose on the town? She- well, she was the last piece of you I had left. I couldn’t let that go.” 

“That’s sweet, but- Cal, I- I’m sort of… super scared of spiders now.” 

For a moment I’m speechless. Then I break down into a fit of teary giggles. “You’re kidding,” I say, “after all that, after I conquered my fear of spiders because I was JUST THAT in love with you, now YOU’RE scared of them??”

Her sweet laugher intertwines with mine. I hold her hands tight. Finally, everything is okay. Everything is right. She’s home.

<< Part 1

<< Part 2

#YES WE GET A HAPPY ENDING WHAT OF IT #i really speedran my grieving over anna #still feel like shit over the podcast ending though #the whole s1 crew sure is fuckign dead now huh #wow ok im going to stop thinking about that. only me and annas good end #we deserve it #f/o #fictional other #selfship #selfshipping #self insert #tma selfship #all part of the master plan 🕷💐🕸 #a little creative touch