#the book i read this week (light from uncommon stars) was also like. really hit or miss

[utilitycaster]

A few recent books I've read and disliked led me to this conclusion but it feels like there's been this switch over time with queer stories. It used to be that queer relationships (or queerness in general) had to be Show Don't Tell because, well, you could not make them textual! So you get, for example, shows like Legend of Korra, or Xena: Warrior Princess, where you have women who are clearly devoted to each other to a degree that goes beyond mere friendship, and a ton of effort and care is put into that depiction because they can't actually be shown in an explicitly stated relationship. And as a result, these relationships, while they never receive confirmation in the show, are rich and complex.

Now not only is it much easier to make explicitly queer stories outside of niche areas; it's even popular (and, cynically, a marketing tactic). The problem is I've run into a bunch of stories that are marketed very clearly as A Queer Story that forget to like...be a story, or show me why these characters should be in a relationship. It's All Tell No Show: I'm told that the characters are gay and are in a relationship, but no work is done to actually explain why I should care about this beyond "well they are gay and in a gay relationship."

I'm not going to rehash what I discussed here, but Baru Cormorant is an example of those books where I'm given no real reason to care. The protagonist is a lesbian but the prose reads like a phone book. On the other hand, while Starless has a queer disabled woman as a one of the two protagonists, it also provides her with traits other than "queer, disabled, woman, important" and grants her a rich interiority (even though the story is told entirely from the first person point of view of the other protagonist.)

And the thing about the good examples in that link (Starless, Teixcalaan): they show and tell. It's both explicit that these are queer stories with a canon romantic relationship, but the little moments that make up the tapestry of a relationship are given the time that moments in a subtextual - or frankly, even a queerbaiting work are. That's the real tragedy; for queerbaiting to work, you have to actually make the relationship compelling enough for people follow it until you pull the rug out from under them; whereas you can slap a cold fish kiss on a cold fish queer relationship and technically you are Better because it was Explicit Representation even though everything about it was poorly constructed. I would rather have an lazy and shoddy explicit relationship than queerbait just on principle; but honestly I'd rather have a good story that does neither.

One of my more cynical interpretations of this is that writers are either intentionally or inadvertently taking advantage of the legacy of the Show Don't Tell era of queer coding to place the burden of those small moments on the audience. They know that people looking for queer relationships in fiction are used to having to dig for moments and subtext; but instead of providing that subtext, they set up the clunky text and assume the subtext to support it will emerge from the fandom. Or perhaps, more generously, especially for younger queer writers, they are just so used to having to provide that work themselves that they forget they are doing the writing and are able to (and should) layer subtext and text together and weave something actually good.

Either way, it's this that's led to the "Lesbian necromancers in space, need I say more"* era of recommendations, taglines, and writing, in which explicit representation is, if not plentiful, at least available; but a worrying amount of it forgets to actually write realized characters or a relationship with chemistry or a plot that makes sense.

I should also note: there's obviously a TON of straight romances and books that range from mediocre to abominable. I am under no circumstances arguing that "gayboring" media shouldn't exist. But while I don't think queer stories should be held to a higher standard, I don't think I should be obligated to settle for a lower standard either simply because it's gay. I know it's fraught, in that we're at risk of publishers and producers taking away the message "people hate this because it's gay" rather than "people hate this because it's poorly developed," but like...at the very least, could we recommend things in terms of "this is a great book that has a wonderful queer romance" and "this show is gay but it is also deeply mediocre, and if it weren't gay I wouldn't recommend it at all; do what you will with this information."

*I should note: I happen to like The Locked Tomb (of Lesbian Necromancers in Space fame) a lot! I know it's not for everyone; I know it can feel very gimmicky at times. But no matter how you feel, that tagline is DIRE and does a miserable job of representing the books. Like, that premise could suck, actually (and plenty of people find it does) if you're not sold on the mere fact that it's got lesbians, necromancy, or space in it. Worth noting that neither Starless nor the Teixcalaan books were heavily marketed as Queer Romance Fantasy/SF even though both very much are, which does further make me think this is a case of people writing good books that are queer, vs. people writing books with the intention to be on some New Queer SF list or, god forbid, Booktok.

#long post #the book i read this week (light from uncommon stars) was also like. really hit or miss #the locus review of it is spot on. like. i think one of the characters' stories is fantastic but i think it's afraid to have any bite. #also this was out of scope for this post but like. i have recommended terra ignota before #and like. it is saying THE MOST about Gender since Le Guin or Butler imo. but it's NOT marketed as queer at all #and part of that is that it's really not capable to read it as a romance (certainly not a happy one) despite there being queer pairs in it

[le-trash-prince]

Okay here is the final list of all the books I’ve finished this year! (since it doesn’t look like I’m going to get anything finished or even started this week.)

I tend to not finish things if I’m not enjoying them (two exceptions on this list because sometimes I am spiteful), so I liked all of these—but the ones in bold are those I particularly loved (I only bolded one per series or it would just be a wall of The Murderbot Diaries lol).

LGBT+ books read: 48

wlw books read: 22

trans/nb books: 17

I’m very happy with my year in reading. I hit my new year’s goal of 52 books finished. And I read a lot of things that I really fucking loved. Lots of robots. LOTS of scifi/fantasy sapphics which I am SO happy about. Some good horror, some good fucky “romances”. A lot of things written in response to the Trump era or written during 2020 lockdown.

I also enjoyed partaking in online book fandom for the first time in possibly ever! Especially Murderbot fandom, which is very active and creative and lovely.

(If you followed me for my bookblogging, thank you for enduring my Thai BL vroom vroom omegaverse brainrot. It will not be stopping anytime soon.)

For 2024, I am going to keep my goal at 52 books and save any extra time I have for rereading old things.

Anyways the list, for posterity:

After Midnight: A History of Independent India by Meghaa Gupta

The Old Place by Bobby Finger

Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell

The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monae

Women and Girls With Autism Spectrum Disorder by Sarah Hendrickx

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske

Unmasking Autism by Devon Price

Divergent Mind by Jenara Nerenberg

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk

Strictly No Heroics by B. L. Radley

Love after the End edited by Joshua Whitehead

Juniper Harvey and the Vanishing Kingdom by Nina Varela

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

The Witch and the Vampire by Francesca Flores

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

Network Effect by Martha Wells

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi

Flux by Jinwoo Chong

Burning Roses by S. L. Huang

In the Lives of Puppets by T. J. Klune

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

No One Will Come Back For Us by Premee Mohamed

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

The Witch King by Martha Wells

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier by Sarah Bird

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

Galveston’s Maceo Family Empire by T. Nicole Boatman et al

Blood Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Galveston’s Red Light District: A History of the Line by Kimber Fountain

Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake

In the Vanisher’s Palace by Aliette de Bodard

The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Linghun by Ai Jiang

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger

The Salvation Gambit by Emily Skrutskie

Spear by Nicola Griffith

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starking

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night by Iona Datt Sharma & Katherine Fabian

System Collapse by Martha Wells

Silver Nitrate Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia

Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele

#if you are curious about any of these or are looking for 2024 recs please feel free to comment or shoot me an ask! #books #bookblr #em post #new years

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of a commonplace book: a new term

saturday, sept 2 — sunday, oct 1, 2023

been running around and then lolling around and then running some more, and the last time i really understood what day it was i think it was aug 28?? though i have gotten a new wall calendar for my room so hopefully that...makes a difference?

anyway. lots of things viewed, read, played etc., but this is the ilcb where i talk about michael sheen's sex show. y'all have been warned.

reading finished this month:

light from uncommon stars, ryka aoki — there was a lot about this one to like, and lots of things that i think...could have worked better? the dialogue stood out to me as weirdly stilted. the author got so much good, fluid, lyrical writing into the descriptions of the violin maker, all the meaningful resonances of the violin, and everything else kind of paled to that. a lot of vision in this one, and hopefully readers who are less picky than i am will be able to chill out and enjoy the representation, the demons and space and music and donuts.

the empress of salt and fortune, nghi vo (audio) — stunning. short, but suggests/captures an entire world. adored the emphasis on little artifacts and material details, the flashes of actual history and the absolutely elegant touches of fantasy.

clouds of witness, dorothy l. sayers (audio) — a lord peter wimsey mystery is always a wonderful excuse to listen to a voice actor just go nuts with posh RP accents, but i do miss my girl harriet even as i know that i'm reading all the prequels on purpose :(

one last stop, casey mcquiston —i didn't think i liked casey mcquiston before, but this book was genuinely a delight. is this how everyone felt about rwrb? the romance tropes worked for me this time, the dialogue here felt natural and fun (especially the secondary characters), and the little turns of phrase and comparisons and twists hit just like you'd hope. the history! the queer community! the roommates! and you know what, fuck it. a little tooth-rotting fluff can be good for the soul.

listening bounced off of the new olivia rodrigo (sorry 😥) and the new chappell roan (sorry sorry 😥) and won't be trying to articulate why for now, haven't spent enough time with the new mitski (liked it on the first listen though) so this section of the post is going to go to noah kahan's stick season, which i have listened to on repeat for the last few weeks. i think i've got a favorite song chosen, only to notice something new about another one—it's not just 'northern attitude' and 'homesick,' though obviously the lines 'i'm mean because i grew up in new england' and 'i was raised out in the cold' / 'i was raised on little light' do fucking resonate. but so does. most of it.

at some point i have added both 'halloween' and 'the view between villages' to my liked songs, and for some reason i get a real kick out of the line in 'new perspective' about calling an intersection downtown just because it's gotten a target. but anyway here's 'stick season', simply for the line 'and i'll dream each night / of some version of you / that i might not have / but i did not lose.'

watching masters of sex (2013). if i'm honest, this is a little bit of a dodge—i watched the entire first season of this show back at the beginning of the month, it fully took over my staycation cat-sitting gig time, and then i haven't been able to get back to it now that i'm home. i think i'm scared to dip back in, honestly? because i can't let myself get sucked back in that strongly.

this show is maddening. it's fascinating. don't ask me if it's good. it's based on this book by thomas maier, which i may have to actually read, because i keep getting distracted wondering about how much the script is changing, adapting, etc. i've taken my intro psych class (and then some), i had to read about masters and johnson, and i feel like the show must be taking liberties— but also, is it?

this show isn't mad men, but it does have that period midcentury / postwar aesthetic, and they do a very good job mentioning bits of history/current events that tie it to the actual history. and there is actual history here, and i love that. but also, i have never been this aware of a show making choices for baldly strategic reasons— you can so tell that this show was written for weekly release, plot threads come and happen for an episode or two at most, only then to be either dropped (for future use if necessary?) or solved.

then again, there's some very competent and tightly-constructed stories, e.g. the episode about the nuclear attack drill and how everyone behaved, how it did and did not matter to them, how their worlds were and weren't also symbolically ending in the intertwined subplots. also a big fan of the one where they're hearing about the new research on the female orgasm! and freud! it's so interesting to have this all framed as ~the frontiers of science!~ and then see how in some ways it's more progressive than you'd expect (than we are today still, on primetime).

the other lead, lizzy caplan, is new to me, but she kills it, kills it, as ginny johnson. allison janney is in this?! caitlin fitzgerald aka tabitha from succession is in this? see what i mean, like half the cast is people who either were in big prestige tv enterprises or who would go on to be, which to me says something about the way this show was viewed as a good move for your acting career in 2013. (link to a piece of historical journalism discussing this show and nbc hannibal as not-to-be-missed viewing for 2013. wild.)

i've never thought this much about how television has changed from the early 2010s to now. this feels like a bridge, connecting pre-peak TV to where we've ended up, where it's not as 'prestige-y' as it would be now, but is still going for the sophistication and intensity. michael sheen wears a funny little bow tie and got a golden globe nom for this, but he could not be further from aziraphale here—it's like watching a totally different person (acting_patrickstewart.gif), he smiles so little and is routinely so awful to various women in his life, including those he purports to love. i distract myself watching him make acting choices in response to some of the (frankly wild) things that they've given masters to say and do, and that's. all i'll say about that.

okay that was mortifying. let's move on.

playing have now completed (for the second time) the first act investigations in pentiment, with new scenes unlocked (the spinning bee! storytime with brother sebhat! midnight in the library!) and still not a solid answer to the mystery. methinks there is a message there, but we won't know for sure until i can next find a time for me to continue with either of my play-through companions. when i play with A, we make choices based on 'i would never pick that if i was playing on my own, but since you're here, you'll be the voice of chaos egging me on,' which if nothing else has led to a lot of cackling.

things this game also excels at, besides narrating women's stories and moral ambiguity: animating children and animals. we shook hands with this dog and it was perfect.

making hungry for a handicraft. sewed a bra back together (unpictured), glued a handle back onto this little ceramic pitcher, glued a hairclip back to its backing and a slipper sole back to its upper slipper (all hail having appropriate adhesives for a job!) watched as squirrels made a meal of the valiant, late-blooming tomatoes.

working on the court romances chapter has a new direction, but it does feel a little like an albatross around my neck at this point. i sent my committee the body and soul debates chapter, but at my most recent meeting it was clear most of them hadn't finished reading it so the discussion was largely 'where's chapter 2? why isn't that here also?' they still gave me the equivalent of a little pat on the head and said 'keep going', so. i'm taking drastic steps (enlisting other on campus resources, my therapist, etc.) to try and fucking make some fucking progress.

#ilcb #in lieu of a commonplace book #monthly roundup #this got longggg

[letarasstuff]

Unbreakable Bond

(A/N): This is based on this post and this tiktok

Summary: A big age gap between Aaron's children doesn't have to mean that they are unable to form a strong bond

Warnings: Mentions of Haley's death and failed relationships

Wordcount: 1.8k

✨Masterlist✨

_________________________________

His life took turns Aaron never expected. It’s not the “Oh, mh, well that was unexpected”-type of turns, I talk about the “God played Cards Against Humanity with angels and decided to make it happen for someone”-type. But looking back he would not want to change a thing.

After Haley and Beth he was convinced that God, the Universe, something out there shared the opinion that romantic love isn’t the right thing for him and Aaron accepted that fact. Even more when he and Jack went into witness protection. I mean, when you are worried about the life of your family being in danger because of a stalker, you don’t think about the beautiful neighbor, who lives next door, right? Right?

Well, without going into too much detail, Hotch did think about her and she about him and vice versa. Everything went good until Aaron received the message that the team found the stalker and that it was safe to come back. He decided to come clean to his girlfriend. They talked about the possibility of moving back to Quantico.

In the end they decided in favor of the move, the final argument was the surprising announcement of her being pregnant. Hotch wants to raise their youngest where his and Jack’s roots are located. But he decides against taking a position at the BAU, instead taking a desk job in order to be more at home. He also has the opportunity to work from home after little (Y/N) was born and continues to do so until she is old enough to go to Kindergarten. Even then he takes two days the week where he stays home. Aaron learned from his decisions and mistakes he made in the past and wants to live up to them and be a better father and husband than before.

And Hotch keeps it to this day, six years later. It’s (Y/N)’s first day of school, while Jack just graduated high school and goes off to college in a few weeks. Even though they have an age gap from twelve and a half years, their parents are sure there are no other siblings with such a strong bond.

Ever since his baby sister’s birth Jack is her biggest supporter, protector and friend. Her first word was his name, though it was more of a “ACK!”, but that’s the best nickname he ever got. As soon as (Y/N) was old enough to comprehend the concept of movies, he introduced her to Star Wars. Since then lightsaber wars out of cardboard pipes are not uncommon. Last Halloween they even dressed up as Chewbakka and Han Solo. You get three guesses on who was who.

“JACK!” (Y/N) runs into her big brother’s room with an excited expression on her face. “Daddy promised to buy me a real lightsaber after I read ten books! With lights and sounds and all! Isn’t that cool?” Jack smiles. Aaron did a similar thing with him. For a certain amount of books he got a reward they discussed beforehand. This way he felt motivated to read and improved writing and reading skills.

“This is awesome. I think that means we have to go book shopping together, what do you think?” (Y/N) is not only the cool kid that has an older brother, she is also the cool kid, whose older brother has a drivers license, a car and a part time job. She nods with big eyes, speechless, because the offer sounds like heaven to her. Getting books and one on one time with Jack after he was really busy with school for weeks? This has to be heaven.

“Ok, then you put your outside clothes on and I’ll tell Dad about our plan.” At that the little girl rushes to her room, not wanting to waste any more time. Jack makes his way down to the kitchen, where Aaron wipes the table from lunch down.

“Dad, I take (Y/N) to this bookstore in DC and we’ll probably go eat ice cream after that. Is that alright?” Hotch looks up at his son. It still feels like yesterday as he told Haley that Gideon is a big no as a baby name. Now he is all grown up and just a few weeks away from the next big chapter in his life.

“Of course, just let me get my wall-” Jack cuts him off. “No need, I want to use this as a kind of goodbye thing. At least until Thanksgiving.” Aaron knows what he means. It’s his last day before he goes off to college and just a couple more until the first classes begin. The family still hasn’t told their youngest exactly what’s going on. Else she would refuse to go to school and go on with her day, insisting on using all the time they have until Jack drives off.

Two hours later the siblings leave the bookstore, both of them having a bag in their hands. Of course Jack's heavier, but both he and the cashier assured (Y/N) that they lift the same amount of weight.

“Uncle Spence will be excited when I tell him that I read Harry Potter, he told me so many good things about it”, the girl gushes. Jack nods, indicating that he is listening. Of course they also picked books that are not that advanced. Still, no sister of his shall grow up without knowing the beauty of the wizarding world. Also, secretly he is hoping for her to turn out as nerdy as he is so they get more things to talk about. His next step is superheroes, especially the Marvel ones.

They converse until they get to an ice cream parlor and order both their usuals. “Do you think you are ready for me to tell you something important?” The older one asks after they sit down at a table. (Y/N) nods, confusion taking over her face.

“Uhm, you know how I graduated from high school? I’m done with school, but I want to get a degree, but for that I have to go to college. It’s pretty far away so I can’t come home for a few months. But I’m back home when Thanksgiving is and also for Christmas.” It doesn’t matter what Jack says, a sad frown has formed on the little one’s face. “Oh. And after Christmas, will you leave again?” He nods and explains when he is off from college and when not.

“We can always skype and write letters. How does that sound? And when you get your first phone, we can even text.” That (Y/N) lights up a bit. For her first year of school she got a stationary set and is eager to use it to this day.

“I’m going to miss you so much”, she says hugging her big brother. Jack pats her back. “I’ll miss you, too.”

The goodbye the next day is a heartfelt matter. Everybody cries, especially (Y/N). She can’t fathom a scenario where her brother isn’t there for her all the time.

The following weeks are also hard for the family. The youngest refuses to sleep alone for the first three days after Jack’s leave. She is more closed off and mainly just does her school work or reads the books he bought for her. By the time Thanksgiving is only away for another two weeks, (Y/N) has read through all of them at least two times.

Her father already ordered the lightsaber he promised her. Unfortunately shipping takes several months, so the little girl still has to wait patiently for her reward to arrive. In the meantime she works on getting the next and she is already pretty close to the comic book collection she wants.

“Sweetheart, can you set the table, please? Your Mom will be here soon from grocery shopping and she will need help getting them from the car into the house”, Hotch calls for his daughter while stirring in a pot.

The little girl nods, putting her stationary set and pens aside to do as her father asked. She is in the middle of answering her brother’s last letter, telling him that she is now the one that usually has to read aloud for the class because of her advanced skill for a first grader.

Just as she sets the last piece of silverware down the doorbell rings. “Sweetie, can you please open it? This should be your mother.” Happily (Y/N) runs up and turns the door knob. Over the last few months she hit a small growing spurt and is finally tall enough to reach it without standing on her tippy toes.

“Mo-” She nearly chokes on her own saliva. The one at the door is definitely not her mother. “JACK!” (Y/N) runs up to him and jumps onto his leg. “Hey Princess. I thought now that you read your books, we need to hold the most amazing lightsaber fight in history.” With a mischievous smile he pulls two from his back, giving one to his baby sister.

It is the most epic fight in history between an elementary schooler and a college boy. They can only be stopped by their parents announcing that it is a tie between both of them and that they have to sit down, else the food gets cold.

The following weeks mostly consist of (Y/N)’s joyous laughs and cuddling with her big brother. She even insists on him sleeping with her in her much smaller bed. On his last night before going back to college, the little girl turns to him in the middle of watching her favorite movie in the living room.

“Do you promise not to forget me when you are away? Because I alway think about you and tell my friends so much about you. I told them you are a hero, my hero, just like Daddy. They wanna meet you because of that.” Jack has to hold back tears at her statement.

“I also think of you so much. All of my friends at college are pretty jealous of me having such a sweet baby sister. Maybe one time you can visit me and I can introduce you to them.” The thought of that makes (Y/N) smile and is a little consolation to the thought of her brother leaving again.

Aaron watches the interaction going down, happy to see the strong bond between his children, despite their age gap. This is nothing like he and Sean were and that is a relief for him and the worries he had in the beginning. It is a sign that he did do some things right as a father.

Taglist:

All works:

@dindjarinsspouse @big-galaxy-chaos @jswessie187

Criminal Minds:

@averyhotchner @mggsprettygirl @herecomesthewriterwitch @ash19871962 @ellyhotchner

#aaron hotch x child!reader #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotch x daughter!reader #aaron hotchner x daughter!reader #aaron hotchner x child!reader #jack hotchner #jack hotchner x sister!reader #jack hotchner x reader #x daughter!reader #x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotch #x child!reader

[thran-duils]

Use All of Me (P.15 -- final)

Title: Use All Of Me (Part Fifteen, Final) Summary: Fem!Reader x Dark Mob!Steve Rogers. The Avengers are heroes saving the world but in this AU, they are also permitted by the powers in charge to have less than favorable business underneath their guise of mere superheroes. Steve and Tony are at the helm, keeping their empire’s wealth in check, both devious and perilous if crossed. Steve takes a liking to the reader at a party and it may be her undoing to her autonomy choosing to go home with him. Words: 2,591 Warnings: Dark AF, angst, emotional/mental abuse, smut, breeding, death Author’s Note: I had a lot of extra things I wanted to add in (not mentioning the two other ways I considered taking the fic) but they were fleeting and not conducive to the plot. Just day to day things and I didn’t want to drag it out more than it needed to be. I am satisfied with this and I hope you guys are too.

Part Fourteen || Masterpost (mobile) || Fanfic masterpost

Steve shook his head, scrolling through his phone across the table from you. His dinner was barely touched he was so engrossed in what he was reading. He must have felt you staring because he looked up, making eye contact with you.

You swallowed and asked now that you had his attention, “What is making you so upset?”

Reluctantly, Steve told you, “Gossip columns. About us. About you.”

“Well, I don’t know about that because I don’t have my phone… or internet access at that.” Steve’s face was stoic at your remark and you shrugged, unable to mask your scorn “You’re the one who put my face out there. Can’t blame people for being concerned about one of their stars.”

“You forced my hand,” Steve told you in a low voice. “Did you not?”

You took another bite of your food, knowing you were toeing a line.

Steve put his phone down, scooting his chair closer to yours, invading your space. “Did you not?” he repeated with more force.

“I did,” you whispered.

His fingers ghosted along the side of your face. “Like I told you… you don’t think about the repercussions of your actions. You were acting unstable. Nothing like yourself. I had to do it to bring you back. I had to do it to keep you safe.”

He was so insistent in his chivalry about whisking you back home, keeping you barred inside. You blocked out what he was saying about you, like he was blaming you for reacting perfectly normally to being kept in a cage. You wanted to move onto something else.

“Did you pay that person… who turned me in?”

“Yes.”

“Are Yua and Natalie back at their jobs?”

“Yes.”

You proposed honestly, “How can I be sure? That you’re telling me the truth? When I cannot even check on them myself?”

“You don’t trust me?” Steve’s eyes were hard, challenging you.

What a loaded question.

“I don’t see any reason why you would lie to me about it,” you lied yourself in response.

Steve looked tickled by your response, but you also sensed displeasure in his tone. “Y/N… I have enough money and power to ruin them if I wanted to. And I wouldn’t keep it a secret from you because there would be a damn good reason I would have done so. And I would want you to know what lesson you were supposed to learn. So, darling, trust me when I tell you that they are okay. I listened to what you requested. I can be reasonable when you behave.” He leaned back, eyes searching your face. He let out a small sigh seeing the meek expression on your face, “Over time you’ll get your phone back... your friends coming around to visit again.”

He was waiting expectantly for you to answer, to say anything.

“I understand.”

Steve’s hand was warm, grasping yours. “You did good, doll face…” he praised gently. “You came back to me. You brought the babies back. I am desperate to see you mothering our children… swelling with more of them.” He reached over, picking up an envelope on top of the stack of papers near him. He held it up to you and said, “And I intend to make good on my word about making it official.”

Steve handed it to you and you took it from him gingerly. Unfolding the papers inside, you looked down at the paper, seeing it was a marriage application.

Confused, you asked, “You… you don’t even want to have a ceremony?”

“Do you want a ceremony?” Steve asked seriously.

“Yes,” you breathed. If you were going to get married, you wanted to at least celebrate it. Have something to look forward to if you were going to be legally bound to him.

“Hmm.” Steve looked contemplative. “I didn’t think you would be interested in that.” He paused, chewing on the thought. He blew a small raspberry, reaching for his phone. “Well, maybe it is a good thing I did float the idea.” He began to hand the phone to you but paused, cocking his head slightly. “Now… I’m gonna let you look at this because Wanda was able to find some beautiful maternity gowns. Tell me what you think of them. Don’t search anything else. Understand?” You nodded and he handed you his phone and you stared down at it, shocked to see wedding gowns.

Being pregnant was not something you had considered for the ceremony. Or particularly wanted for your wedding day photos.

“Do we have to move so quickly?”

“Yes,” Steve responded curtly.

“Why?”

“Because I want it to all be settled before the babies get here.”

The only reason he would want that… he had to have an angle. There must be something that he wanted.

“Can I—”

“Small ceremony, Y/N,” Steve cut you off, as if he knew exactly what you were going to ask. And you could not fathom how he could just read you like a book. It unnerved you. He was observant and it was detrimental to you. “I already have the list and the venue was set.”

“The v-venue?”

He threw you a smirk, “I was banking on you wanting a ceremony.”

So that is what Tony had been talking about.

<><><>

Your hands ran over the gown. The beaded sheer top above your bustline glittered in the light. You were a little chilly with your bare arms, but you barely noticed above your nerves. Surprisingly, you had been left alone in the room serving as the bridal suite. Not that you could make a run for it anyway in this dress and with your stomach. You snorted at the thought of you running down the street; it did calm you down a little.

Yet, you still wished your friends had been able to attend but it was ‘family’ only as Steve had said. And that family meant the team.

The door opened, drawing your attention.

Wanda was standing there, and she stopped, seeing you done up.

“You look lovely,” she said gently, a sincere smile on her face.

You returned her smile, giving a quick nod. You found yourself more often than not, cradling your stomach, and here you were again. You grimaced when one of the twins gave a particularly hard kick and Wanda noticed.

She was at your side immediately, “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” you breathed, nodding. “Would be terrible to have the babies at 28 weeks… far too early.”

“Not uncommon though.” Wanda still sounded unsure.

You waved her off. “I’m fine. Really. They’re just kicking and moving around.”

Wanda relaxed a little and said, “Alright, if you’re sure. Well, they’re ready. Are you?”

Shakily, you told her, “Yes. Yes, of course.”

The room was bright, draped in shades of sky blues. White petals were scattered along the aisle down to where Steve was standing. You breath caught at the sight of him, causing you to hesitate in your stride. Steve looked handsome, so very handsome. Somehow you made it to the end of the aisle, coming to stand in front of him. You hardly could contain the smile that came to you, unable to block out the happiness you felt coming off of him in waves. He looked so sure, so satisfied as he took your hand in his.

His words were sweet, loving. You tried to breathe easy as he slipped the ring on your finger, noticing the hungry look on his eyes. When you were told to kiss, Steve guided you, his lips dominating yours.

Signing away on the marriage certificate, you noticed his lips twitch watching you. He was elated. He was getting exactly what he wanted… you. Forever.

The night would have gone smoothly if you had not felt another hard kick from the babies. It felt different. It was not a normal kick.

Your fork clattered to your plate over your dinner at the bridal table. Your hand came to your stomach, your face twinged in pain.

Steve’s laugh faltered, his attention drawn from Bucky next to him.

“Y/N?” he asked, his tone suddenly serious. Bucky was leaning forward, sharing Steve’s look of concern.

Trying to play it off, you nodded with difficulty. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Another kick hit and you grimaced, a sharp gasp leaving your mouth. “Okay, maybe I’m not.”

Steve was standing and staring down at you in worry. The rest of the team had noticed and were hanging in suspension as they realized there was something wrong.

“I’ll get the car,” Steve declared. “Tony, Bucky, can you help her outside? I’m getting the car.”

Without waiting for them to answer, Steve was already halfway to the door, his stride quick.

Tony and Bucky were there, hands holding you as they helped you stand. You whimpered, your belly tight, soreness swirling in your hips and lower back. You had had period cramps before but this was something else entirely.

You felt wet and looked down at your legs. Your dress was soaked in a stream and you let out a strangled noise. Your water was broken and panic began to set in.

“Oh, boy, yeah,” Tony said sounding like he was trying to keep himself calm since he noticed it as well as him and Bucky helped you walk towards the door.

“I’m not ready,” you begged, tears welling up in the corner of your eyes. “I’m not ready!”

“I don’t think you’ve got much of a say in the matter,” Tony told you, trying to make a joke. He gave a small laugh, but you could tell he was nervous. You cried out and he quickly held to you as your knees threatened to buckle underneath you. “Oh, shit. Okay. Keep steady, sweetheart.”

“I can’t!” you snapped at him.

Tony closed his mouth.

Bucky grunted as your legs quivered and you leaned into him as you reached the door. They helped you down the stairs as carefully as they could as you heard tires squeal to a stop at the curb. Steve had been speeding from the parking garage.

Steve got halfway out of the car, but Bucky said, “We got it. Don’t worry.”

They helped you get into the front seat of the car and you gripped the sides of the chair, closing your eyes as another contraction rumbled through you. You heard Bucky get into the backseat of the car and slam the door closed.

Steve took off quickly, promising you he would get you to the hospital as quickly as possible. He was doing well hiding his anxiousness, channeling it into assuring you and telling you it was going to be okay.

<><><>

“It was the goddamn stress!” Steve grated furiously. “She should have stayed home! She shouldn’t have run off! Why was she so stupid?”

He was pacing angrily in one of the waiting rooms down the hallway. Y/N had given birth to both of the babies, far prematurely. They had both been whisked away to the NICU without Y/N and Steve both given much time to see them, let alone hold them. They were reassured they would be able to visit once the babies were set up safely. It did not sit well with Steve. Y/N was exhausted and was having trouble staying awake, so he had left the room when he was sure she was alright. She needed rest.

But now that he was out of the height of the situation, anger began swirling at the risk she had been put at along with the babies.

The team had shown up, still dressed in their wedding attire.

No one argued with Steve. He might very well have a valid point about it and saying anything to the contrary was not going to calm him down.

Steve ground his teeth, hands coming to his hips in frustration.

“They said the babies are alright though?” Natasha finally spoke.

Steve looked over at her and shrugged, “I think. I don’t know. They said they needed to be put on oxygen. That doesn’t sound good to me.”

“It’s probably precautionary, Steve,” Pepper offered gently.

Finding an empty chair, Steve sat down in it heavily, resting his elbows on his thighs. His eyes swept around the room, taking everyone in. He could see the unquiet in their expressions, their worry for him. He was supposed to be the one keeping everyone levelheaded; that was his job. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for just a moment. He just needed a moment to compose himself and be strong for everyone else.

When he opened them again, he said, “It better be. It’s gotta be.”

<><><>

Steve was there when your eyes fluttered open. It took a few moments for your eyes to adjust to the light in the room, even though it was dimmed. You focused in on the sheets and your gown. And then you felt the remnants of pain in your lower half, even though it was dull now.

It all hit you at once and you tried to sit up too quickly. You gasped in pain and Steve was halfway out of his chair.

“You’re fine,” he said in a rush, his hands coming to your arms. His eyes were swimming with worry. “Don’t get up, Y/N. You need to rest.”

Breathing erratically, you looked at him in alarm. “T-the babies?”

“They’re in the NICU,” Steve assured you quickly. “One is breathing on her own, the other is on tubes. But they think that he will be able to breath on his own soon.”

You stared at him and demanded, “You’ve seen them?”

“Yes. You did too. Briefly.”

That came back to you too. You had seen them. You had been awake for everything. But the exhaustion had taken over.

“But… you saw them? Without me?” you asked weakly.

“Yeah,” Steve admitted, slowly sitting back down in his chair. “I haven’t held them, but I’ve seen them. Through the window.” His hands rubbed your arms affectionately. “Y/N, doll face, really. You need to lie back. You lost a lot of blood.” That’s when you noticed the IV and everything attached to you. “They treated you and replaced but you’re still going to be weak.”

You did as he asked, lying back on the plethora of pillows behind you. He physically relaxed at you reclined, but he was still leaning towards you, ever watchful.

His tone was sympathetic, “I don’t like you sick. I don’t like worrying about you. I’m supposed to protect you.” His thumb traced across your lips, concern swimming in his eyes now. “I hope though you’ll take something from this… that you’ll think twice about being reckless. I don’t want our future children being put through this, Y/N. I don’t want you being put through this. I want you to be secure, relaxed… safe under my watch.”

Steve’s other hand came to rest on your stomach and you felt a sense of foreboding flooding in. His closed mouth smile conveyed confidence, his hand gently caressing. “Despite all of that stress though… you pulled through. You are special, Y/N. I can’t wait to watch you swell again.” He was sincere, gaze intense, and his fingers holding you close. “You are the most important thing to me. I’ll make sure next time goes more smoothly for you. I’ll be there every step of the way next time.”

He leaned in close now, his lips brushing against your ear, “You’re all in my custody now. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

~~~

Tags: @imsonick , @alexakeyloveloki, @kvzctam, @ironlady1993, @taintedgenre, @inlovewiththefictionalcharacters @roxyfan14-blog @mrsnegan25 @coconutqueen21

#steve rogers x reader #dark!steve rogers #dark steve rogers #dark!steve rogers x reader #dark steve rogers x reader #marvel fic #dark marvel fic #dark marvel #my shit

[dornish-queen]

Pedro Pascal on Fame and ‘The Mandalorian’: ‘Can We Cut the S— and Talk About the Child?’

By Adam B. Vary

Photographs by Beau Grealy

When Pedro Pascal was roughly 4 years old, he and his family went to see the 1978 hit movie “Superman,” starring Christopher Reeve. Pascal’s young parents had come to live in San Antonio after fleeing their native Chile during the rise of dictator Augusto Pinochet in the mid-1970s. Taking Pascal and his older sister to the movies — sometimes more than once a week — had become a kind of family ritual, a way to soak up as much American pop culture as possible.

At some point during this particular visit, Pascal needed to go to the bathroom, and his parents let him go by himself. “I didn’t really know how to read yet,” Pascal says with the same Cheshire grin that dazzled “Game of Thrones” fans during his run as the wily (and doomed) Oberyn Martel. “I did not find my way back to ‘Superman.'”

Instead, Pascal wandered into a different theater (he thinks it was showing the 1979 domestic drama “Kramer vs. Kramer,” but, again, he was 4). In his shock and bewilderment at being lost, he curled up into an open seat and fell asleep. When he woke up, the movie was over, the theater was empty, and his parents were standing over him. To his surprise, they seemed rather calm, but another detail sticks out even more.

“I know that they finished their movie,” he says, bending over in laughter. “My sister was trying to get a rise out of me by telling me, ‘This happened and that happened and then Superman did this and then, you know, the earthquake and spinning around the planet.'” In the face of such relentless sibling mockery, Pascal did the only logical thing: “I said, ‘All that happened in my movie too.'”

He had no way of knowing it at the time, of course, but some 40 years later, Pascal would in fact get the chance to star in a movie alongside a DC Comics superhero — not to mention battle Stormtroopers and, er, face off against the most formidable warrior in Westeros. After his breakout on “Game of Thrones,” he became an instant get-me-that-guy sensation, mostly as headstrong, taciturn men of action — from chasing drug traffickers in Colombia for three seasons on Netflix’s “Narcos” to squaring off against Denzel Washington in “The Equalizer 2.”

This year, though, Pascal finds himself poised for the kind of marquee career he’s spent a lifetime dreaming about. On Oct. 30, he’ll return for Season 2 as the title star of “The Mandalorian,” Lucasfilm’s light-speed hit “Star Wars” series for Disney Plus that earned 15 Emmy nominations, including best drama, in its first season. And then on Dec. 25 — COVID-19 depending — he’ll play the slippery comic book villain Maxwell Lord opposite Gal Gadot, Chris Pine and Kristen Wiig in “Wonder Woman 1984.”

The roles are at once wildly divergent and the best showcase yet for Pascal’s elastic talents. In “The Mandalorian,” he must hide his face — and, in some episodes, his whole body — in a performance that pushes minimalism and restraint to an almost ascetic ideal. In “Wonder Woman 1984,” by stark contrast, he is delivering the kind of big, broad bad-guy character that populated the 1980s popcorn spectaculars of his youth.

“I continually am so surprised when everybody pegs him as such a serious guy,” says “Wonder Woman 1984” director Patty Jenkins. “I have to say, Pedro is one of the most appealing people I have known. He instantly becomes someone that everybody invites over and you want to have around and you want to talk to.”

Talk with Pascal for just five minutes — even when he’s stuck in his car because he ran out of time running errands before his flight to make it to the set of a Nicolas Cage movie in Budapest — and you get an immediate sense of what Jenkins is talking about. Before our interview really starts, Pascal points out, via Zoom, that my dog is licking his nether regions in the background. “Don’t stop him!” he says with an almost naughty reproach. “Let him live his life!”

Over our three such conversations, it’s also clear that Pascal’s great good humor and charm have been at once ballast for a number of striking hardships, and a bulwark that makes his hard-won success a challenge for him to fully accept.

Before Pascal knew anything about “The Mandalorian,” its showrunner and executive producer Jon Favreau knew he wanted Pascal to star in it.

“He feels very much like a classic movie star in his charm and his delivery,” says Favreau. “And he’s somebody who takes his craft very seriously.” Favreau felt Pascal had the presence and skill essential to deliver a character — named Din Djarin, but mostly called Mando — who spends virtually every second of his time on screen wearing a helmet, part of the sacrosanct creed of the Mandalorian order.

Convincing any actor to hide their face for the run of a series can be as precarious as escaping a Sarlacc pit. To win Pascal over in their initial meeting, Favreau brought him behind the “Mandalorian” curtain, into a conference room papered with storyboards covering the arc of the first season. “When he walked in, it must have felt a little surreal,” Favreau says. “You know, most of your experiences as an actor, people are kicking the tires to see if it’s a good fit. But in this case, everything was locked and loaded.”

Needless to say, it worked. “I hope this doesn’t sound like me fashioning myself like I’m, you know, so smart, but I agreed to do this [show] because the impression I had when I had my first meeting was that this is the next big s—,” Pascal says with a laugh.

Favreau’s determination to cast Pascal, however, put the actor in a tricky situation: Pascal’s own commitments to make “Wonder Woman 1984” in London and to perform in a Broadway run of “King Lear” with Glenda Jackson barreled right into the production schedule for “The Mandalorian.” Some scenes on the show, and in at least one case a full episode, would need to lean on the anonymity of the title character more than anyone had quite planned, with two stunt performers — Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder — playing Mando on set and Pascal dubbing in the dialogue months later.

Pascal was already being asked to smother one of his best tools as an actor, extraordinarily uncommon for anyone shouldering the newest iteration of a global live-action franchise. (Imagine Robert Downey Jr. only playing Iron Man while wearing a mask — you can’t!) Now he had to hand over control of Mando’s body to other performers too. Some actors would have walked away. Pascal didn’t.

“If there were more than just a couple of pages of a one-on-one scene, I did feel uneasy about not, in some instances, being able to totally author that,” he says. “But it was so easy in such a sort of practical and unexciting way for it to be up to them. When you’re dealing with a franchise as large as this, you are such a passenger to however they’re going to carve it out. It’s just so specific. It’s ‘Star Wars.'” (For Season 2, Pascal says he was on the set far more, though he still sat out many of Mando’s stunts.)

“The Mandalorian” was indeed the next big s—, helping to catapult the launch of Disney Plus to 26.5 million subscribers in its first six weeks. With the “Star Wars” movies frozen in carbonite until 2023 (at least), I noted offhand that he’s now effectively the face of one of the biggest pop-culture franchises in the world. Pascal could barely suppress rolling his eyes.

“I mean, come on, there isn’t a face!” he says with a laugh that feels maybe a little forced. “If you want to say, ‘You’re the silhouette’ — which is also a team effort — then, yeah.” He pauses. “Can we just cut the s— and talk about the Child?”

Yes, of course, the Child — or, as the rest of the galaxy calls it, Baby Yoda. Pascal first saw the incandescently cute creature during his download of “Mandalorian” storyboards in that initial meeting with Favreau. “Literally, my eyes following left to right, up and down, and, boom, Baby Yoda close to the end of the first episode,” he says. “That was when I was like, ‘Oh, yep, that’s a winner!'”

Baby Yoda is undeniably the breakout star of “The Mandalorian,” inspiring infinite memes and apocryphal basketball game sightings. But the show wouldn’t work if audiences weren’t invested in Mando’s evolving emotional connection to the wee scene stealer, something Favreau says Pascal understood from the jump. “He’s tracking the arc of that relationship,” says the showrunner. “His insight has made us rethink moments over the course of the show.” (As with all things “Star Wars,” questions about specifics are deflected in deference to the all-powerful Galactic Order of Spoilers.)

Even if Pascal couldn’t always be inside Mando’s body, he never left the character’s head, always aware of how this orphaned bounty hunter who caroms from planet to planet would look askance at anything that felt too good (or too adorable) to be true.

“The transience is something that I’m incredibly familiar with, you know?” Pascal says. “Understanding the opportunity for complexity under all of the armor was not hard for me.”

When Pascal was 4 months old, his parents had to leave him and his sister with their aunt, so they could go into hiding to avoid capture during Pinochet’s crackdown against his opposition. After six months, they finally managed to climb the walls of the Venezuelan embassy during a shift change and claim asylum; from there, the family relocated, first to Denmark, then to San Antonio, where Pascal’s father got a job as a physician.

Pascal was too young to remember any of this, and for a healthy stretch of his childhood, his complicated Chilean heritage sat in parallel to his life in the U.S. — separate tracks, equally important, never quite intersecting. By the time Pascal was 8, his family was able to take regular trips back to Chile to visit with his 34 first cousins. But he doesn’t remember really talking about any of his time there all that much with his American friends.

“I remember at one point not even realizing that my parents had accents until a friend was like, ‘Why does your mom talk like that?'” Pascal says. “And I remember thinking, like what?”

Besides, he loved his life in San Antonio. His father took him and his sister to Spurs basketball games during the week if their homework was done. He hoodwinked his mother into letting him see “Poltergeist” at the local multiplex. He watched just about anything on cable; the HBO special of Whoopi Goldberg’s one-woman Broadway show knocked him flat. He remembers seeing Henry Thomas in “E.T.” and Christian Bale in “Empire of the Sun” and wishing ardently, urgently, I want to live those stories too.

Then his father got a job in Orange County, Calif. After Pascal finished the fifth grade, they moved there. It was a shock. “There were two really, really rough years,” he says. “A lot of bullying.”

His mother found him a nascent performing arts high school in the area, and Pascal burrowed even further into his obsessions, devouring any play or movie he could get his hands on. His senior year, a friend of his mother’s gave Pascal her ticket to a long two-part play running in downtown Los Angeles that her bad back couldn’t withstand. He got out of school early to drive there by himself. It was the pre-Broadway run of “Angels in America.”

“And it changed me,” he says with almost religious awe. “It changed me.”

After studying acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Pascal booked a succession of solid gigs, like MTV’s “Undressed” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But the sudden death of his mother — who’d only just been permitted to move back to Chile a few years earlier — took the wind right from Pascal’s sails. He lost his agent, and his career stalled almost completely.

As a tribute to her, he decided to change his professional last name from Balmaceda, his father’s, to Pascal, his mother’s. “And also, because Americans had such a hard time pronouncing Balmaceda,” he says. “It was exhausting.”

Pascal even tried swapping out Pedro for Alexander (an homage to Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander,” one of the formative films of his youth). “I was willing to do absolutely anything to work more,” he says. “And that meant if people felt confused by who they were looking at in the casting room because his first name was Pedro, then I’ll change that. It didn’t work.”

It was a desperately lean time for Pascal. He booked an occasional “Law & Order” episode, but mostly he was pounding the pavement along with his other New York theater friends — like Oscar Isaac, who met Pascal doing an Off Broadway play. They became fast, lifelong friends, bonding over their shared passions and frustrations as actors.

“It’s gotten better, but at that point, it was so easy to be pigeonholed in very specific roles because we’re Latinos,” says Isaac. “It’s like, how many gang member roles am I going to be sent?” As with so many actors, the dream Pascal and Isaac shared to live the stories of their childhoods had been stripped down to its most basic utility. “The dream was to be able to pay rent,” says Isaac. “There wasn’t a strategy. We were just struggling. It was talking about how to do this thing that we both love but seems kind of insurmountable.”

As with so few actors, that dream was finally rekindled through sheer nerve and the luck of who you know, when another lifelong friend, actor Sarah Paulson, agreed to pass along Pascal’s audition for Oberyn Martell to her best friend Amanda Peet, who is married to “Game of Thrones” co-showrunner David Benioff.

“First of all, it was an iPhone selfie audition, which was unusual,” Benioff remembers over email. “And this wasn’t one of the new-fangled iPhones with the fancy cameras. It looked like s—; it was shot vertical; the whole thing was very amateurish. Except for the performance, which was intense and believable and just right.”

Before Pascal knew it, he found himself in Belfast, sitting inside the Great Hall of the Red Keep as one of the judges at Tyrion Lannister’s trial for the murder of King Joffrey. “I was between Charles Dance and Lena Headey, with a view of the entire f—ing set,” Pascal says, his eyes wide and astonished still at the memory. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t have an uncomfortable costume on. You know, I got to sit — and with this view.” He sighs. “It strangely aligned itself with the kind of thinking I was developing as a child that, at that point, I was convinced was not happening.”

And then it all started to happen.

In early 2018, while Pascal was in Hawaii preparing to make the Netflix thriller “Triple Frontier” — opposite his old friend Isaac — he got a call from the film’s producer Charles Roven, who told him Patty Jenkins wanted to meet with him in London to discuss a role in another film Roven was producing, “Wonder Woman 1984.”

“It was a f—ing offer,” Pascal says in an incredulous whisper. “I wasn’t really grasping that Patty wanted to talk to me about a part that I was going to play, not a part that I needed to get. I wasn’t able to totally accept that.”

Pascal had actually shot a TV pilot with Jenkins that wasn’t picked up, made right before his life-changing run on “Game of Thrones” aired. “I got to work with Patty for three days or something and then thought I’d never see her again,” he says. “I didn’t even know she remembered me from that.”

She did. “I worked with him, so I knew him,” she says. “I didn’t need him to prove anything for me. I just loved the idea of him, and I thought he would be kind of unexpected, because he doesn’t scream ‘villain.'”

In Jenkins’ vision, Max Lord — a longstanding DC Comics rogue who shares a particularly tangled history with Wonder Woman — is a slick, self-styled tycoon with a knack for manipulation and an undercurrent of genuine pathos. It was the kind of larger-than-life character Pascal had never been asked to tackle before, so he did something equally unorthodox: He transformed his script into a kind of pop-art scrapbook, filled with blown-up photocopies of Max Lord from the comic books that Pascal then manipulated through his lens on the character.

Even the few pages Pascal flashes to me over Zoom are quite revealing. One, featuring Max sporting a power suit and a smarmy grin, has several burned-out holes, including through the character’s eye. Another page features Max surrounded by text bubbles into which Pascal has written, over and over and over again in itty-bitty lettering, “You are a f—ing piece of s—.”

“I felt like I had wake myself up again in a big way,” he says. “This was just a practical way of, like, instead of going home tired and putting Netflix on, [I would] actually deal with this physical thing, doodle and think about it and run it.”

Jenkins is so bullish on Pascal’s performance that she thinks it could explode his career in the same way her 2003 film “Monster” forever changed how the industry saw Charlize Theron. “I would never cast him as just the stoic, quiet guy,” Jenkins says. “I almost think he’s unrecognizable from ‘Narcos’ to ‘Wonder Woman.’ Wouldn’t even know that was the same guy. But I think that may change.”

When people can see “Wonder Woman 1984” remains caught in the chaos the pandemic has wreaked on the industry; both Pascal and Jenkins are hopeful the Dec. 25 release date will stick, but neither is terribly sure it will. Perhaps it’s because of that uncertainty, perhaps it’s because he’s spent his life on the outside of a dream he’s now suddenly living, but Pascal does not share Jenkins’ optimism that his experience making “Wonder Woman 1984” will open doors to more opportunities like it.

“It will never happen again,” Pascal says, once more in that incredulous whisper. “It felt so special.”

After all he’s done in a few short years, why wouldn’t Pascal think more roles like this are on his horizon?

“I don’t know!” he finally says with a playful — and pointed — howl. “I’m protecting myself psychologically! It’s just all too good to be true! How dare I!”

#pedro pascal #jose pedro balmaceda pascal #variety magazine

[littlemessyjessi]

Torn: Remus Lupin Story: PS OC: Chapter Two: Bothersome Bella

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Remus Lupin Imagine Turned Story

Re-Written and Edit of an old story of mine I had on Mibba that deserved some more love and attention, lol.

Remus Lupin x Vega Black (OC, OFC, PLUS SIZE OC, PLUS SIZE OFC)

———————————————–

“If a thing is right it can be done, and if it is wrong it can be done without; and a good man will find a way.” ― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty 

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Chapter Song: “Cowboy Lullaby”: Tim McGraw and Faith Hill

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Vega stood outside of Ravenclaw tower looking at that arrogant eagle door knocker who refused her passage until she correctly guessed the riddle. She'd guessed three times now and each time she was wrong. Now normally, she would've had more patience that than but the last three weeks hadn't been the best for her. Lost and late for her classes because of the moving staircases. Detention for her tardiness. A howler from her Aunt Walburga every single day telling her how upset they were with her sorting.

It didn’t help that she was missing her parents an awful lot. 

It had been years and yet still... she was trying her best to deal with it. 

Relocating was nothing new to her due to change from Tennessee to London...but Hogwarts was different.

At times like this, she just really wished she could still run into her father’s arms. 

Ride behind her mother as they took a moonlight ride on her mother’s mare, Star. 

She missed it. 

She needed it. 

She was dealing with alot.

All the mundane little things of life. 

And many other struggles of the first year. In a few years, this would be comical to her...but not today. So.....she lost her temper. "Piece of shitl!" she screamed hauling back her Charms book and swinging at the entrance. "I hate this! I hate everything! Now let me in so I can go to sleep!" "Vega?" She paused in her assault and looked over her shoulder at none other than Remus Lupin. Of course. Of course it would be him. Why on earth would it be someone else besides her crush? The universe was against her and the little eleven year old girl felt like she was doomed to have Remus think she was mentally unstable. First it was crying over a muggle book and now it was psychotic rage over not being able to get into the common room. "Everything alright?" he asked her cautiously. She sighed, blowing a puff of air out of her reddened cheeks sending a dark curl bouncing in front of her before looking down in shame. "I can't get inside." He almost smiled. She was beating herself up over nothing. Most first years couldn't. Most upper classmen in the other houses would never even have a chance. "Oh, maybe I can help." he offered. "What's the riddle?" "Follower of man, dark as night, a trained choreography, comes after light." spoke the eagle again. Remus tapped his chin. "Alright, follower of man. So it's behind you and dark as night so it's black or at least darker. A trained choreography. Hmmm, we'll come back to that. Comes after light." he rambled. Vega bit her lip, "Ok so something dark that follows you after light....and it's moves. Merlin's beard!" "What?" he asked a little startled by her outburst. She grinned, "It's a shadow!" "Correct. You may now enter." spoke the eagle behind them. She smiled at Remus, "Thank you. I couldn't have done it without you."  He shook his head, "Yes, you could've. You were just frustrated. You're smarter than most adults I know...and you're only eleven."

He bent to pick up her fallen books and peered at the cover, “Black Beauty?” 

”Um, yeah.” she mumbled. “I found it in the common room and I just thought it looked interesting.” 

Remus smiled at her gently, “You like horses don’t you?” 

Vega’s cheeks flushed, “Well, I- I mean my mama - well, I just- just- Yeah.  Yeah I like horses.” 

Remus fought not to smile as she rambled but simply nodded and handed her the book. 

”I like them too.” he said. “They’re gentle giants.” 

”Yeah.” she said hugging the book to her chest. “They’re majestic.” 

”Yeah.” he agreed. “I hope you have a good night, Vega.  Good night.”  "Good night, Remus." she smiled before ducking inside. Remus smiled and shook his head as he carried on his way. He hadn't seen very much of her since the sorting ceremony but she was in a different house and a different year than him. Additionally, she was a first year and apparently a very high strung first year so he didn't hold it against her. He did feel sorry for her. Everyone could hear the howlers her aunt sent her every day. Sure, Sirius had gotten them too and they were much worse for him but.... things seemed to affect Vega a little differently than they did Sirius. Remus went on about his way until he reached the Gryffindor tower and studied in the common room for a little while. Which actually meant he studies while James and Sirius copied his notes. After a while, he went to bed and actually had a fairly restful sleep. You never get him to admit that he had dreamed of Vega. Her curly black hair. Her big grey eyes, silver like the moon. Her full little lips. He'd never admit it but there was a sort of calmness that he got from her. She soothed him. The very thought made him laugh darkly. Of course, soothe the savage beast. At twelve he desperately wanted more friends and was incredibly grateful for the ones he had but...he'd never let himself be anymore social. Because he was afraid of what he was...and what he might do. The full moon was next week and he most certainly was not looking forward to it. The process, the lies, the hiding...any of it. He felt so lousy for lying to his friends like that. He'd done it all of the previous year and he got the feeling that they were onto him...just that maybe they didn't quite know what they thought they knew. The next morning we he awoke, he was alone in the dorm room. It was a bit odd seeing as how it was Saturday. The snores of James and Sirius who always chose to sleep late usually shook the bed. It wasn't all that uncommon for Peter to be up early. He was never one to miss a meal. "Hmm." Remus hummed in curiosity before climbing out and getting dressed. He greeted a few other house meets politely as he made his way out of Gryffindor Tower and down the corridor. His stomach growled and he figured he nip in and see if any breakfast was left in the Great Hall. However, on his way he heard some noise. A bang and then a lot of ruckus. Her recognized the glint of black hair up ahead and could clearly see that Vega lay in a heap on the floor....clearly injured. He ran to her and knelt beside her when he noticed three other girls. He recognized them instantly as the Black sisters. The eldest, Andromeda, had long brown hair and was the most tolerable. She was a Slytherin prefect a few years older than him but she was quite nice and polite. The youngest, Narcissa or Cissy, was a year younger than he, also in Slytherin, and had long white blond hair. He didn't know her very well, only that she was very quite and seemed completely smitten with Lucius Malfoy. The middle child was by far the worst. Bellatrix Black, hooded dark eyes and curly black hair with sharp features. Bella had a mean strike a mile long and she was cruel as they come. She was in his year and it was very clear that she and Sirius hated each other with a passion. And apparently, this included Vega who lay on the ground with cuts all over her and a blossoming bruise on her face. "Bella, enough!" Andromeda threatened. "What?!" Bella sneered. "She deserved it!" "She didn't do anything to you!" Andromeda pressed. "I saw her go for her wand." Bella spat at her elder sister. "If she did it's probably because you drew yours first." Andromeda said sternly towards her sister. "We both know that Vega was minding her own business just reading a book and -”

“A muggle book!” 

“You're being a bully." "And you're a blood traitor." Bella snapped at her sister. "Come on, Cissy." The blond first year followed behind her sister who sneered at Vega, "See you later, cousin." Vega looked down and away from her. When the two of them left, Andromeda knelt down and inspected her young cousin. "I'm sorry, Vega." she said honestly. "You know how Bella is." Vega nodded and winced, "I'm fine. Thank you for your help." She moved to stand only to collapse into Remus' arms. Much to her embarrassment. She turned bright red. Andromeda arched an eyebrow at it but said nothing. She simply picked her cousin up. Since she was a seventh year and Vega just a first year, and a rather small one at that, it was nothing to lift the little girl. "Remus, if you would run along to the Great Hall and tell Professor Slughorn that I need to speak with him in the hospital wing, I'd appreciate it." she told him. He nodded and took off in the direction of the Great Hall. Breakfast long forgotten...as well as the blood on his clothes. He almost hit himself for not realizing because James and Sirius almost attacked him over it. "Whoa, Remus, mate! What happened?" James pressed. "Nothing." he tried to push them off on his way to the Head Table. "Professor Slughorn." he said as he approached. "Andromeda Black has asked me to inform you that she needs to speak with you. She's in the hospital wing." He tried to be quite but Slughorn being Slughorn drew attention to it. "The hospital wing?!" he exclaimed and Remus flushed a little. "Yes, alright, Mr. Lupin. Thank you." And with that he was gone in bustle of robes. When Remus turned he was met with many stares but none so potent as James and Sirius'. He maneuvered around them and headed for the door, his stomach twisted in knots. Two familiar hands came down on his shoulders and turned him around. "What's going on?" Sirius asked him. He looked into his friend's eyes. If anyone deserved to know....Sirius really did. She was his cousin. "It's Vega." he said. The color drained from Sirius' face. "What?" he whispered. "What happened?" Remus glanced around, "Follow me. Not here." James and Sirius exchanged a glance and they followed him outside the Great Hall and down a corridor. Remus sighed, "She’s hurt. Andromeda took her to the hospital wing so I'm sure Madame Pompfrey will fix her up but Bellatrix Black jumped her in the lav." Sirius almost turned purple with anger, "That bitch!" "Is she alright?" James asked. Remus shrugged, "She awake but pretty cut up and she had a bruise on her face when I got there. Narcissa was with Bellatrix but I don't know if she was involved." "I bet she was." Sirius snarled. "She's just like her. She's got her nose shoved so far up Malfoy's arse that she..." "Andromeda broke it up." Remus cut him off. "She took her to the hospital wing and sent me to fetch Slughorn." "I'll kill 'em." Sirius seethed. "Sirius, mate, I know that you're angry but we've gotta be smart here." James reasoned with him. "She's my sister!" he exploded.

“Cousin.” James corrected. 

“Well whatever,” Sirius said before deflating. “Vega never did anything wrong. She's a good girl."

James and Remus could clearly see how he was worried for her. "She's in good hands, mate." James assured him. "Madame Pompfrey is a wicked healer." "And I'm sure Slughorn will do something about Bellatrix and Narcissa." Remus reasoned. "Andromeda seemed determined of that." He had to admit that was quite admirable. Even when she knew there was definite possibility of points being deducted from her own house....still it seemed as if Andromeda's good judgment would way out. "Not good enough." Sirius growled. "Well then." James smiled. "I guess we'll just have to prank them." Sirius grinned slightly in spite of himself, "Well do it for V." "Somehow I don't think she'd approve of you causing mayhem in her name." Remus smirked before adding, "But I'm in."

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Chapter One

Chapter Three 

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Hello my lovelies! Here is another rewrite of a previous work of mine that I had on Mibba! I did a bit of reworking on the character, her name and her backstory because I just felt like she deserved more!  I would love to know what you think of little Vega!

So please comment, reblog with thoughts and/or smash the ask box!  I do so love hearing from you my loves!

Love,

Kenny

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Love, Kenny

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#remus lupin #remus john lupin #remus lupin x vega black #vega equuleus black #vega black #torn remus lupin story #torn remus lupin x vega black #young remus lupin #marauder #marauders era #sirius blacks cousin

[risenfrommyimagination]

can i request peter x fem!reader where he had a bad day and the reader tries to make it better but he snaps at her but it ends in fluff please💞💞

Ok you really made my day a few days ago with this, because this is my first submission and aaaah I got way to excited, so here it is, thank you so much ♥

Please send me more submissions, I love to do that & reblog if you like it :)

8:13 pm

Rain is rustling against the window as you throw your phone in front of you, pulling your legs closer to you, trying to find a comfortable position in this bed. A book is lying in front of you – biology – showing you detailed drawings of the human nerve system. You read this during the last thirty minutes, trying to fit all the weird names and descriptions of nerves and muscles into your brain. It worked. Until you decided to look at your phone, wondering where your boyfriend was.

It’s Thursday night and it’s your movie date night. Like every Thursday each week. For almost two years now. At seven thirty. And he isn’t here.

It’s not uncommon that he is late. Spiderman duties. Sometimes something happened, he had to stay longer outside or when is Spidey senses noticed something. But then he’d write you, telling you he’d be late. But today, he didn’t.

“Don’t text and swing”, you always told him before he went out and he always smirked at you, kissing you goodbye before jumping out his window. Sometimes he did and although his messages were always cute and soft and you knew he paid attention to not crash into a traffic light or a building, you’re not very pleased about it. Being Spiderman was already a really dangerous job and despite Peter being great in what he was doing and having a really protective suit, there was still a spark in your body, that was full of angst.

You lean forward, pressing the home button on your phone. No new messages.

“Fuck”, you mumble, leaning back against the wall. Where was he? Or did he forget about your date?

No, he would never. This was your ritual. Started with the third date you had. Exactly here, in this room, with May probably waiting in front of the door, ready to chime in when she’d hear something different than movie noises. But at this time, both of you been too innocent to connect movies with the other thing – sex – and just sat next to each other, holding hands while stealing sneaky glances at each other.

And today a movie night consisted of a lot of cuddles, just wearing panties and a shirt, Peter mostly just his boxers. Him curled up on your chest, his head on your breast – or his personal pillow – and your hand brushing through his soft, brown curls, while you were watching one of your favourite movies for the thirty time. Sometimes High School Musical, just to hum along the songs, Peter sometimes pulling you up, dancing with you through the small room and sometimes Harry Potter, after you decided which part – Azkaban is the best – and then just watched the movie, totally drawn in to the magical world. And sometimes, when you didn’t want to watch either, some cliché romance comedy, which you sneaked from your mom’s or May’s DVD shelf, ending in both of you making out, ignoring the film, his fingers slipping under your shirt, pulling it up.

So yes, movie nights changed, but you loved it. And today, you craved for it. For his touch, him peppering soft kisses over your neck, teasing your soft spot. You haven’t seen him much last days, both of you had been fairly busy with school, chores and extracurricular activities. And Peter’s Spiderman duties.

Your eyes glimpse at the closed door. May is here, she let you in. You could ask her, if she knew where Peter was, but also you didn’t want her to worry. She worries so much about him, more than you do probably. You try to focus back on the page in front of you, whilst ignoring this angsty grumbling in your stomach. What if something happened to him?

You shove it away. No. It was a normal, rainy Thursday night and even though rain didn’t stop criminals from doing their dirty work, no one really got out on Thursday’s, right before the weekend started.

A noise comes from the adjoining bathroom and you look up. There is light coming through the gap between the door and the floor. You hear someone mumbling, swearing. A familiar mumbling.

Peter.

You jump from the bed, your heart relieved. A little bit. Steps carrying you to the door and you open it, slowly, glimpsing in the bathroom. Peter is standing in front of the mirror, his suit just covering the lower part of his body, right above his hips. There are visible scratches on his back from the last fight and a few new ones you don’t know yet. Behind him on the floor, the reason for the noise, a broken bowl, where Peter had put in some of your hair ties and clips for you to use them when you’re over.

“Since you always lose them here, I can also store them”, eHe hhehehehhe told you, pressing a kiss on your forehead. And you knew how much your heart grew just by this simple gesture.

Peter hasn’t noticed you by now which is – due to his incredibly sensitive senses – really off for him. Sometimes in school, he noticed you when you weren’t even in his sight. Girlfriend senses he calls it.

But now, they didn’t seem to work.

“H…hey.” You clear your throat, leaning a little bit against the doorframe. “You’re home.” No judging. No anger that he was late. He was home. It was ok.

But he doesn’t look up. No reaction from him. His hands gripping around the edges of the sink, you notice fresh bruises on them, scratched skin. “Hey.” You try again, stepping a little closer. Carefully, not to scare him. Sometimes, when he is really concentrated, just a little weird noise could make him flinch and overreact.

Peter doesn’t move. His chest is raising, you can see his muscles moving as he grips around the sink tighter and you bite your lip, hesitating. Then your fingertips meet his back. No reaction.

“Peter?” Gently, your fingers trail up, trying to not touch the fresh scratches. “It’s me. Your girlfriend.” A little joke, to loosen up the weird tension in this room.

Your boyfriend doesn’t react, not a single flinch in his face, no growling about your really bad joke. Something was off, but you couldn’t quite figure out what it was and it made you crazy. Because you though you knew him well.

“Do you want to…” You pause, licking your lips. “Want to watch your favourite movie? Star Wars?” Star Wars is his all-time favourite movie, his go to when he was sick and lying in bed, whining about himself and May cooking him soup and bringing him tea all the time. 

Finally, Peter looks up, his eyes meeting yours in the reflection of the mirror and you feel a lump in your throat. His so brown and soft eyes are dark. And empty. If something has gone missing.

“Hey.” You lean to him, your hand grasping his hair. “Babe.” Carefully, you press a soft kiss on his shoulder. And he flinches, away from you, his back hitting the glass of the shower cabin, his left arm almost hitting you.

“Fuck, can you not…” His jaw clenches, you can see his lips trembling, something in his eyes is glistening. “What are you doing?”

“It’s Thursday, movie night…I….” Your voice is shaking, more than you want it to. “May let me…”“No.” Peter cuts you off immediately. “What are you doing?”

“I…” His jaw is clenched, fists balled and his eyes flinching.“I…” Tears are welling in your eyes, making it hard for you too see properly. “I wanted to…”

“Can’t you just leave me alone?”His voice is sharp, drilling into your heart and you back up a little. “Sorry I…” You gulp. “I’ll wait for you in…”

“I want you to leave.” The lump in your throat grows bigger. “What is wrong, I…did I…”“For fuck’s sake, can you just…” Peter runs his fingers through his hair, tugging it. A deep growl coaxes over his lips. “I had a fucking rough and shitty day and I just want to talk to nobody ok.”

His chest is raising heavily as the words hit you. Right in the heart.

He doesn’t want you here. Your boyfriend doesn’t want you here.

“Ok.” Suddenly you feel cold. Extremely cold. You turn around, tears welling up in your eyes and the bathroom door slams into the lock.

Somehow, you put on your shoes, collect all your belongings together. Your overnight bag, your phone, headphones. Then you head out.

You catch a glimpse of May standing in the hallway, asking you something, but you don’t hear it. Tears are running down your cheeks, your steps are echoing in the dark staircase, as you head down.

Down. Down. Just out of here.

 Cold rain hits your face as you step out of the door, heading down the three tiny stairs, mixing with the tears still running down your face. It is pouring, people are rushing past you, covering their heads and trying to get in somewhere, but you turn left, walking down the street, not even bothering to pull the hood of your pullover over your head.

Your steps are slow. Slower than usual. Your gaze wandering along the rooftops, which are merging with the almost black sky, hoping you’d see a familiar silhouette.

A boy in a tight suit.

Swinging after you to hold you back. To tell you that he just overreacted. Snapped.

 9:06 pm

Your hair is still a little damp as turn on the small light on your nightstand, slipping under the covers of your bed. Peter hasn’t texted you. Nor called you. There was no sign of him at all and although he said he didn’t want to talk to anyone, you hoped he would to you.

You sneak a glance at your phone the last time. No. No new messages. You turn it around, leaning your head against the cold wall behind you. Absolutely not the way your evening was planned to go out.

Your mum didn’t say a word when you came home, completely soaked, with red, puffy eyes. She let you go to your room, change, letting yourself drown in pity.

Maybe she’d ask you tomorrow what was up, when you would sit on the table, with your bowl of cereals in front of you, unable to eat anything. Then you’d tell her.

But what would you tell her? That you tried to be a good girlfriend to Peter and he snapped? Or just that he snapped?

Shaking your head, you grab the novel lying on your night stand.

Great Expectations a novel about a boy falling in love with a wealthy girl, trying to impress her to win her heart his whole life. Tragic and somehow sweet at the same time. And totally stupid at the same time, but you still had to read it and also write an essay about it. Peter and you started to read it together, reading small passages to each other, giggling about weird words and the whole situation.

Usually, Peter was lying on your lap when you were reading to him, giggling every time you impersonated every person in the story differently. Then you switched positions, you lying on his lap, his right hand playing with your hair, totally not concentrating on the text, but on touching you wherever he could.

It’s needless to say that you didn’t get very far along in the book.

You open the book at the marked page, sighing at the small writing. Although you loved books and considered to study literature after you finished school in summer, this book was horrible to read. Small, crammed font, long sentences.

Absolutely not perfect for your mood right now, where all you wanted to do was cry. You even wished you didn’t forget your biology book at Peter’s flat, somehow the human nerve system sounded more appealing to you than a love story.

Trying to focus back on the text, you pull you legs up, resting the book against them. Your eyes wander over the words, not even reading them properly, while your thoughts are switching back to Peter.

If he would have just talked to you. Normally, he’d talk about anything. About every child he saved from its bullies, the old lady he helped getting across the street, the criminal he prevented to get into the bank. Everything. And also, about his little fights with Ned, Flash mocking him in the hallways, him being angry at May, because she was so overprotective sometimes. He shared everything with you.

Something hits against your window. Probably just a gush of rain. You pull the blanket higher, your finger wandering over the line you just read.

The same noise again. A knock.

You put the book down, sliding to the end of your bed to the window. And there he is. Peter, sitting on the windowsill outside your window, his face slightly pressed against the glass, wearing no mask. You can’t see much, but he knocks again, waving at you. A soft smile on his lips and your heart stops.

With one movement, you get up and open the window and he slides in. Legs first, then the rest of his body, leaving a small pool of water on your floor. Clamped under his arm, your biology book. Looking a little bit soaked.

You step back, arms crossed, eyeing him, not sure what to say. “Hey ehm…” Peter’s right hand runs through his hair, as he holds up your biology book. “You forgot this at my place.”

Disappointment hits your gut and you gulp. “That’s what you came for?” You sit back on your bed, slipping right back under the covers and grabbing the Dickens novel. “Put it on my desk, be quiet when you leave. Mum is already gone to bed.”

Over the edge of the book, you watch Peter placing the book on your crammed desk, but instead of turning to the door, he touches the spider symbol in his chest, making his suit loose and drop to the floor. A warm shiver runs down your spine, seeing your boyfriend just wearing boxers, but you drop your eyes back on the book, ignoring him.

Slowly, he crawls into your bed, on his side. His warm feet bumping against your legs as he slips under the covers, his right hand taking the book from your hands, throwing it on the ground. “Peter, what…”

“I am sorry.” Wet hair brushes over your skin, as he pulls you close to him, his arms wrapping around your body. “I am sorry.”

A soft kiss on your neck making you shiver. Not enough to cut the knot in your throat.

“Your hair is wet.”“I didn’t want to snap at you.” Carefully, his fingers grace over your hip, drawing up to your arm. “I just…had a real shitty day.” Another soft, gentle kiss on your neck and you turn around. His fawn brown eyes meet yours, sparkling again, glossing.

“I am sorry.” Peter repeats, his nose nudging against yours. “I just…”You lick your lips, your fingers running through his wet hair, untangling it. “Talk to me…please…”

“I just…” He pauses, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. “I was so happy to see you again today and then Ned yelled at me, because I messed up the formula and…I was so angry at me, because I never screw that up, but…”

Another pause, he rests his forehead against yours, his fingers playing with the fabric of your his old shirt. “Tony called me in a break, telling me something weird about a new project, which I can join, but it means I will be away during the summer before college and…”

A sting in your heart. “You’ll be away in the summer?”He nods. “I…this project sounds so good and I know we had other plans before college, I mean you wanted to look for a flat for us and now I’ll be gone and…” His brown eyes glimpse at you. “And it made me so upset, because I want to plan our future and…”

Trembling in his voice, you can see water pooling in his eyes.

“You know…” Gently you run your fingers through your hair. “I can also visit you Upstate.”“Despite the strict visiting hours?” Peter arches an eyebrow. “I mean Tony…”“Someone needs to take care of you.” Your eyes wander to his bruised knuckles, carefully grasping his hand. “What happened here?”“Tried to smash a wall.” He bites his lip. “I was so angry…but…didn’t work.”“Idiot.” You plant a soft kiss on his forehead. “I just felt…I would leave you on your own when I do the project….”

“Hey…I can look out for apartments on my own.” Your fingers grace over his cheek. “And send you photos.”“From you?” Lips curling into a smirk and you bump your knee against his. “The flat you smug bastard.” Peter chuckles, pecking a soft kiss on your nose. “I just…my brain was overreacting and then we had P.E. and I am so good at this and I failed and…I failed everything today…”

A shimmer in his eyes, he slides even closer, his body snuggling against yours. “Even the date night with my absolutely gorgeous girlfriend.”

“Shut up.”“No.” He shakes his head, a few drops of water hitting your face. “I know you wanted to calm me down and I…snapped. Not a good Spiderman nor boyfriend today.”“Peter…”“I am sorry, really.” Soft shimmer sparks in his fawn eyes and you feel your heart melting. “Can I kiss you?” A gentle nudge against your nose, you feel his breath brushing over your lips as he props himself a little bit up.“You’re still asking?”He nods. “Very important. So…?”

You nod, pulling him down to you. Lips crashing against each other, slowly, passionate, your hands burying in his hair, pulling him even closer. “I missed you, bubs”, a quiet whisper against your lips, making your heart burst. “Missed you too Spidey.” He chuckles, his head sinking down on your chest, arms wrapped tightly around you. Not letting go.

“Babe?” Feather light kisses on your neck, trailing up to your cheek. “Still up for movie night?”Warmth in your heart. “Which movie?”“The best.” A short pause. “Goblet of Fire.”“Rude, we’re watching Azkaban.”

#tom holland one shot #tom holland x you #tom holland x reader #tom holland imagine #tom holland imagines #tom holland stories #tom holland x fem!reader #tom holland x y/n #tom holland story #tom holland headcanon #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland fanfic #tom holland fandom #make me write #risen writes #submissions #tom holland kiss #peter parker x you #peter parker x y/n #peter parker x reader #peter parker x fem #peter parker x fem!reader #peter parker fiction #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker story #peter parker imagine #peter parker headcanon

[leepace71]

When Pedro Pascal was roughly 4 years old, he and his family went to see the 1978 hit movie “Superman,” starring Christopher Reeve. Pascal’s young parents had come to live in San Antonio after fleeing their native Chile during the rise of dictator Augusto Pinochet in the mid-1970s. Taking Pascal and his older sister to the movies — sometimes more than once a week — had become a kind of family ritual, a way to soak up as much American pop culture as possible.At some point during this particular visit, Pascal needed to go to the bathroom, and his parents let him go by himself. “I didn’t really know how to read yet,” Pascal says with the same Cheshire grin that dazzled “Game of Thrones” fans during his run as the wily (and doomed) Oberyn Martel. “I did not find my way back to ‘Superman.'”

Instead, Pascal wandered into a different theater (he thinks it was showing the 1979 domestic drama “Kramer vs. Kramer,” but, again, he was 4). In his shock and bewilderment at being lost, he curled up into an open seat and fell asleep. When he woke up, the movie was over, the theater was empty, and his parents were standing over him. To his surprise, they seemed rather calm, but another detail sticks out even more.

“I know that they finished their movie,” he says, bending over in laughter. “My sister was trying to get a rise out of me by telling me, ‘This happened and that happened and then Superman did this and then, you know, the earthquake and spinning around the planet.'” In the face of such relentless sibling mockery, Pascal did the only logical thing: “I said, ‘All that happened in my movie too.'”

He had no way of knowing it at the time, of course, but some 40 years later, Pascal would in fact get the chance to star in a movie alongside a DC Comics superhero — not to mention battle Stormtroopers and, er, face off against the most formidable warrior in Westeros. After his breakout on “Game of Thrones,” he became an instant get-me-that-guy sensation, mostly as headstrong, taciturn men of action — from chasing drug traffickers in Colombia for three seasons on Netflix’s “Narcos” to squaring off against Denzel Washington in “The Equalizer 2.”

This year, though, Pascal finds himself poised for the kind of marquee career he’s spent a lifetime dreaming about. On Oct. 30, he’ll return for Season 2 as the title star of “The Mandalorian,” Lucasfilm’s light-speed hit “Star Wars” series for Disney Plus that earned 15 Emmy nominations, including best drama, in its first season. And then on Dec. 25 — COVID-19 depending — he’ll play the slippery comic book villain Maxwell Lord opposite Gal Gadot, Chris Pine and Kristen Wiig in “Wonder Woman 1984.”

The roles are at once wildly divergent and the best showcase yet for Pascal’s elastic talents. In “The Mandalorian,” he must hide his face — and, in some episodes, his whole body — in a performance that pushes minimalism and restraint to an almost ascetic ideal. In “Wonder Woman 1984,” by stark contrast, he is delivering the kind of big, broad bad-guy character that populated the 1980s popcorn spectaculars of his youth.

“I continually am so surprised when everybody pegs him as such a serious guy,” says “Wonder Woman 1984” director Patty Jenkins. “I have to say, Pedro is one of the most appealing people I have known. He instantly becomes someone that everybody invites over and you want to have around and you want to talk to.”

Talk with Pascal for just five minutes — even when he’s stuck in his car because he ran out of time running errands before his flight to make it to the set of a Nicolas Cage movie in Budapest — and you get an immediate sense of what Jenkins is talking about. Before our interview really starts, Pascal points out, via Zoom, that my dog is licking his nether regions in the background. “Don’t stop him!” he says with an almost naughty reproach. “Let him live his life!”

Over our three such conversations, it’s also clear that Pascal’s great good humor and charm have been at once ballast for a number of striking hardships, and a bulwark that makes his hard-won success a challenge for him to fully accept.

Before Pascal knew anything about “The Mandalorian,” its showrunner and executive producer Jon Favreau knew he wanted Pascal to star in it.

“He feels very much like a classic movie star in his charm and his delivery,” says Favreau. “And he’s somebody who takes his craft very seriously.” Favreau felt Pascal had the presence and skill essential to deliver a character — named Din Djarin, but mostly called Mando — who spends virtually every second of his time on screen wearing a helmet, part of the sacrosanct creed of the Mandalorian order.

Convincing any actor to hide their face for the run of a series can be as precarious as escaping a Sarlacc pit. To win Pascal over in their initial meeting, Favreau brought him behind the “Mandalorian” curtain, into a conference room papered with storyboards covering the arc of the first season. “When he walked in, it must have felt a little surreal,” Favreau says. “You know, most of your experiences as an actor, people are kicking the tires to see if it’s a good fit. But in this case, everything was locked and loaded.”

Needless to say, it worked. “I hope this doesn’t sound like me fashioning myself like I’m, you know, so smart, but I agreed to do this [show] because the impression I had when I had my first meeting was that this is the next big s—,” Pascal says with a laugh.

Favreau’s determination to cast Pascal, however, put the actor in a tricky situation: Pascal’s own commitments to make “Wonder Woman 1984” in London and to perform in a Broadway run of “King Lear” with Glenda Jackson barreled right into the production schedule for “The Mandalorian.” Some scenes on the show, and in at least one case a full episode, would need to lean on the anonymity of the title character more than anyone had quite planned, with two stunt performers — Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder — playing Mando on set and Pascal dubbing in the dialogue months later.

Pascal was already being asked to smother one of his best tools as an actor, extraordinarily uncommon for anyone shouldering the newest iteration of a global live-action franchise. (Imagine Robert Downey Jr. only playing Iron Man while wearing a mask — you can’t!) Now he had to hand over control of Mando’s body to other performers too. Some actors would have walked away. Pascal didn’t.

“If there were more than just a couple of pages of a one-on-one scene, I did feel uneasy about not, in some instances, being able to totally author that,” he says. “But it was so easy in such a sort of practical and unexciting way for it to be up to them. When you’re dealing with a franchise as large as this, you are such a passenger to however they’re going to carve it out. It’s just so specific. It’s ‘Star Wars.'” (For Season 2, Pascal says he was on the set far more, though he still sat out many of Mando’s stunts.)

“The Mandalorian” was indeed the next big s—, helping to catapult the launch of Disney Plus to 26.5 million subscribers in its first six weeks. With the “Star Wars” movies frozen in carbonite until 2023 (at least), I noted offhand that he’s now effectively the face of one of the biggest pop-culture franchises in the world. Pascal could barely suppress rolling his eyes.

“I mean, come on, there isn’t a face!” he says with a laugh that feels maybe a little forced. “If you want to say, ‘You’re the silhouette’ — which is also a team effort — then, yeah.” He pauses. “Can we just cut the s— and talk about the Child?”

Yes, of course, the Child — or, as the rest of the galaxy calls it, Baby Yoda. Pascal first saw the incandescently cute creature during his download of “Mandalorian” storyboards in that initial meeting with Favreau. “Literally, my eyes following left to right, up and down, and, boom, Baby Yoda close to the end of the first episode,” he says. “That was when I was like, ‘Oh, yep, that’s a winner!'”

Baby Yoda is undeniably the breakout star of “The Mandalorian,” inspiring infinite memes and apocryphal basketball game sightings. But the show wouldn’t work if audiences weren’t invested in Mando’s evolving emotional connection to the wee scene stealer, something Favreau says Pascal understood from the jump. “He’s tracking the arc of that relationship,” says the showrunner. “His insight has made us rethink moments over the course of the show.” (As with all things “Star Wars,” questions about specifics are deflected in deference to the all-powerful Galactic Order of Spoilers.)

Even if Pascal couldn’t always be inside Mando’s body, he never left the character’s head, always aware of how this orphaned bounty hunter who caroms from planet to planet would look askance at anything that felt too good (or too adorable) to be true.

“The transience is something that I’m incredibly familiar with, you know?” Pascal says. “Understanding the opportunity for complexity under all of the armor was not hard for me.”

When Pascal was 4 months old, his parents had to leave him and his sister with their aunt, so they could go into hiding to avoid capture during Pinochet’s crackdown against his opposition. After six months, they finally managed to climb the walls of the Venezuelan embassy during a shift change and claim asylum; from there, the family relocated, first to Denmark, then to San Antonio, where Pascal’s father got a job as a physician.

Pascal was too young to remember any of this, and for a healthy stretch of his childhood, his complicated Chilean heritage sat in parallel to his life in the U.S. — separate tracks, equally important, never quite intersecting. By the time Pascal was 8, his family was able to take regular trips back to Chile to visit with his 34 first cousins. But he doesn’t remember really talking about any of his time there all that much with his American friends.

“I remember at one point not even realizing that my parents had accents until a friend was like, ‘Why does your mom talk like that?'” Pascal says. “And I remember thinking, like what?”

Besides, he loved his life in San Antonio. His father took him and his sister to Spurs basketball games during the week if their homework was done. He hoodwinked his mother into letting him see “Poltergeist” at the local multiplex. He watched just about anything on cable; the HBO special of Whoopi Goldberg’s one-woman Broadway show knocked him flat. He remembers seeing Henry Thomas in “E.T.” and Christian Bale in “Empire of the Sun” and wishing ardently, urgently, I want to live those stories too.

Then his father got a job in Orange County, Calif. After Pascal finished the fifth grade, they moved there. It was a shock. “There were two really, really rough years,” he says. “A lot of bullying.”

His mother found him a nascent performing arts high school in the area, and Pascal burrowed even further into his obsessions, devouring any play or movie he could get his hands on. His senior year, a friend of his mother’s gave Pascal her ticket to a long two-part play running in downtown Los Angeles that her bad back couldn’t withstand. He got out of school early to drive there by himself. It was the pre-Broadway run of “Angels in America.”

“And it changed me,” he says with almost religious awe. “It changed me.”

After studying acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Pascal booked a succession of solid gigs, like MTV’s “Undressed” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But the sudden death of his mother — who’d only just been permitted to move back to Chile a few years earlier — took the wind right from Pascal’s sails. He lost his agent, and his career stalled almost completely.

As a tribute to her, he decided to change his professional last name from Balmaceda, his father’s, to Pascal, his mother’s. “And also, because Americans had such a hard time pronouncing Balmaceda,” he says. “It was exhausting.”

Pascal even tried swapping out Pedro for Alexander (an homage to Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander,” one of the formative films of his youth). “I was willing to do absolutely anything to work more,” he says. “And that meant if people felt confused by who they were looking at in the casting room because his first name was Pedro, then I’ll change that. It didn’t work.”

It was a desperately lean time for Pascal. He booked an occasional “Law & Order” episode, but mostly he was pounding the pavement along with his other New York theater friends — like Oscar Isaac, who met Pascal doing an Off Broadway play. They became fast, lifelong friends, bonding over their shared passions and frustrations as actors.

“It’s gotten better, but at that point, it was so easy to be pigeonholed in very specific roles because we’re Latinos,” says Isaac. “It’s like, how many gang member roles am I going to be sent?” As with so many actors, the dream Pascal and Isaac shared to live the stories of their childhoods had been stripped down to its most basic utility. “The dream was to be able to pay rent,” says Isaac. “There wasn’t a strategy. We were just struggling. It was talking about how to do this thing that we both love but seems kind of insurmountable.”

As with so few actors, that dream was finally rekindled through sheer nerve and the luck of who you know, when another lifelong friend, actor Sarah Paulson, agreed to pass along Pascal’s audition for Oberyn Martell to her best friend Amanda Peet, who is married to “Game of Thrones” co-showrunner David Benioff.

“First of all, it was an iPhone selfie audition, which was unusual,” Benioff remembers over email. “And this wasn’t one of the new-fangled iPhones with the fancy cameras. It looked like s—; it was shot vertical; the whole thing was very amateurish. Except for the performance, which was intense and believable and just right.”

Before Pascal knew it, he found himself in Belfast, sitting inside the Great Hall of the Red Keep as one of the judges at Tyrion Lannister’s trial for the murder of King Joffrey. “I was between Charles Dance and Lena Headey, with a view of the entire f—ing set,” Pascal says, his eyes wide and astonished still at the memory. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t have an uncomfortable costume on. You know, I got to sit — and with this view.” He sighs. “It strangely aligned itself with the kind of thinking I was developing as a child that, at that point, I was convinced was not happening.”

And then it all started to happen.

In early 2018, while Pascal was in Hawaii preparing to make the Netflix thriller “Triple Frontier” — opposite his old friend Isaac — he got a call from the film’s producer Charles Roven, who told him Patty Jenkins wanted to meet with him in London to discuss a role in another film Roven was producing, “Wonder Woman 1984.”

“It was a f—ing offer,” Pascal says in an incredulous whisper. “I wasn’t really grasping that Patty wanted to talk to me about a part that I was going to play, not a part that I needed to get. I wasn’t able to totally accept that.”

Pascal had actually shot a TV pilot with Jenkins that wasn’t picked up, made right before his life-changing run on “Game of Thrones” aired. “I got to work with Patty for three days or something and then thought I’d never see her again,” he says. “I didn’t even know she remembered me from that.”

She did. “I worked with him, so I knew him,” she says. “I didn’t need him to prove anything for me. I just loved the idea of him, and I thought he would be kind of unexpected, because he doesn’t scream ‘villain.'”

In Jenkins’ vision, Max Lord — a longstanding DC Comics rogue who shares a particularly tangled history with Wonder Woman — is a slick, self-styled tycoon with a knack for manipulation and an undercurrent of genuine pathos. It was the kind of larger-than-life character Pascal had never been asked to tackle before, so he did something equally unorthodox: He transformed his script into a kind of pop-art scrapbook, filled with blown-up photocopies of Max Lord from the comic books that Pascal then manipulated through his lens on the character.

Even the few pages Pascal flashes to me over Zoom are quite revealing. One, featuring Max sporting a power suit and a smarmy grin, has several burned-out holes, including through the character’s eye. Another page features Max surrounded by text bubbles into which Pascal has written, over and over and over again in itty-bitty lettering, “You are a f—ing piece of s—.”

“I felt like I had wake myself up again in a big way,” he says. “This was just a practical way of, like, instead of going home tired and putting Netflix on, [I would] actually deal with this physical thing, doodle and think about it and run it.”

Jenkins is so bullish on Pascal’s performance that she thinks it could explode his career in the same way her 2003 film “Monster” forever changed how the industry saw Charlize Theron. “I would never cast him as just the stoic, quiet guy,” Jenkins says. “I almost think he’s unrecognizable from ‘Narcos’ to ‘Wonder Woman.’ Wouldn’t even know that was the same guy. But I think that may change.”

When people can see “Wonder Woman 1984” remains caught in the chaos the pandemic has wreaked on the industry; both Pascal and Jenkins are hopeful the Dec. 25 release date will stick, but neither is terribly sure it will. Perhaps it’s because of that uncertainty, perhaps it’s because he’s spent his life on the outside of a dream he’s now suddenly living, but Pascal does not share Jenkins’ optimism that his experience making “Wonder Woman 1984” will open doors to more opportunities like it.

“It will never happen again,” Pascal says, once more in that incredulous whisper. “It felt so special.”

After all he’s done in a few short years, why wouldn’t Pascal think more roles like this are on his horizon?

“I don’t know!” he finally says with a playful — and pointed — howl. “I’m protecting myself psychologically! It’s just all too good to be true! How dare I!”

x

#pedro pascal #variety #interview

[moonstomars]

Follow the light

Melizabeth week Day One - Light/Darkness 

Notes: To be honest, I don’t know what this is. Probably the most random AU I’ve ever written. But it’s the first thing that came into my mind when I read the prompt for day one! (I totally blame my undying love for fantasy for this) I could have written more but knowing me, it would have turned into a super long fic with a too intricate plot (too late, this is already happening in my mind) and I would have never posted it. Well, I hope you’ll enjoy!  

Light Spirits rarely came out at night, so it was with surprise that Elizabeth caught glimpse of something gold and radiant through the window, when she looked up from the now clean plates. It disappeared in the blink of an eye, but it had been there, she was sure about it. She glanced at her sisters, who were sitting on the table behind her. Thet hadn’t noticed anything. Veronica pointed out at something on Margaret’s book and shook her head, while the oldest sister giggled, before whispering something in her ear that made Veronica snort. 

Elizabeth’s eyes returned to the window and - there! She saw it again. Something quick and bright as a falling star had just cut the darkness, nothing more than a flash in the night. Elizabeth carefully put the last plate at its place, then dried her hands on the apron before taking it off. “I’m going to check the animals,” she said to her sisters as she passed by the table. It wasn’t an uncommon task for her. Her father had always wanted to make sure that everything was in place for the night, and now that she and her sisters were old enough they often took his place, allowing Bartra to rest. 

Margaret looked up and smiled, whispering a soft “Thank you, Ellie.” 

“And be careful!” Veronica added. Elizabeth nodded without a word. There was nothing to worry about, not on their farm, not in the small village of Liones, that was far enough from both the capital and the borders. The most dangerous things that could happen there were mostly accidents, like that time when Cain broke his leg falling from the roof or when little Mead got bitten by a stray dog. Elizabeth had helped doctor Dana to take care of the two of them and many others as his apprentice and until now, they had saved every man or woman who was taken to them. No, there was really nothing to worry about. 

Even wearing her cloak, the night was chill. Elizabeth shivered, lifting the lantern as she moved towards the barn. Her father was rich, surely the richest man of Liones, but he was still humble and handled his terrain by himself, with only the help of some of the boys from the town. The animals were alright, quiet in the darkness, and it didn’t take long before Elizabeth turned around, studying the outline of the farm against the sky. She should have come back, now, yet she hesitated for a few moments. There was something in the air, it felt funny, almost like a storm was about to break; it made her skin tingle and her stomach twitch. But the sky was clear, and the few, white clouds that covered peaks of the mountains were too far to be a problem. She breathed in and out, slowly, almost as she was waiting for something, then she sighed and took a step towards the farm. 

A flash shone at her right and she stopped with a gasp, turning around. The light illuminated the trunks in the little wood that skirted her father’s land; she couldn’t distinguish what was producing it, and as she stared at it with wide eyes it started dimming, slowly disappearing between the trees. Her legs moved on their own will and in a moment she found herself walking through the trees, the lantern still in her hand, as she followed the light. 

She should have turned around and come back, Elizabeth knew it. Even though Liones wasn’t a dangerous place it was dark and if she had tripped over a root and sprained her ankle, her family would have been worried and they wouldn’t have known where to look for her. But … but it was a Light Spirit. In the middle of the night. A thrill of excitement crossed her entire body and she hurried, a smile forming on her lips. She could already picture the amazed look on her sisters’ faces when she would have told them! But before, she had to get a story to tell. 

No one knew what Light Spirits were, nor where did they come from. On sunny days, you could see them dance in the sun rays, brilliant figures wich shape changed constantly. Often, they looked like people, though they were tiny, usually no taller than one or two feet; getting close enough, it was possible to distinguish their limbs and even their feature before they vanished into thin air. Some other times, they simply looked like spirals of light, twirling among the roofs and the trees. They were beautiful, joyful even, and every time she saw them Elizabeth couldn’t help but stare, following their paths in the air. 

They were also said to be devils. Ludociel, the priest from the high church that often visited the town of Liones, always included some them in his sermons. Light Spirit, he said, might look like gold and joy but it was just an illusion to hide their true, corrupted nature. They were rotten on the inside and their aim was to deceive the humans and drive them away from the Goddesses above, that they feared and hated. 

Elizabeth snorted. Ludociel knew nothing. The truth was that no one knew anything about the Light Spirits. Not what they were or where they come from. As far as they knew, they could have been sent by the Goddesses themselves, even though they weren’t mentioned in the sacred scrolls. They were just there, and they had always been - since the time when her father was a kid and even before. Here and everywhere else in the country of Britannia. And so Elizabeth kept going. Every step took her further and further from home. Alone and surrounded by darkness, she knew she should have felt scared, but the sight of the light that still palpitate a little farther, close enough that she could follow it but not clearly see it, gave her courage. She didn’t feel alone - she wasn’t alone. 

Until suddenly, the light faded away, almost disappearing between the trunks. Elizabeth gasped, her heart jumping in her throat. With the only light of her lantern to illuminate her path, the wood looked different, spectral and dark. What I’m doing here?, she thought, almost taking a step back. She should have been home by now, her sisters were surely worried about her, what were she thinking when -

Another flash illuminated the night, dimmer than the previous one and coming right behind the trees she was facing. It was followed by a sound, something muffled and barely audible. It could have been an animal, maybe even something dangerous, but Elizabeth didn’t run away. She should have probably done that, but she couldn’t go back now. Not when she was so close. She took a deep breath before taking a step forward, then another and another, until she put her hand on the bark of a tree to carefully look at what was waiting for her behind it. She was left speechless.

She hadn’t been able to take a proper look at the Spirit before, but she was quite sure it didn’t have a shape, it was just pure light twirling in the darkness. But now, a young man sat on a rock among the trees, bending over so that she couldn’t see his face, and he was - he was tall. No, she decided after a moment, not quite tall, he was still shorter than any other man she has ever met, but still, he was more than twice the size of the other Light Spirits she saw. His entire figure was lightly shining and the only reason she could distinguish his profile was that the light wasn’t too bright. He even looked solid, and she wondered what she had felt if she had touched him. It, she corrected herself. It wasn’t really a man, of course, it was a Light Spirit who had taken on human form. She shouldn’t have considered it like one. 

Suddenly, even though no noise had broken the silence of the wood, the Spirit raised his head and looked at her, and when their eyes met she felt like her breath had been taken away. The light that shone in those green eyes was different, alive and clever, and she immediately knew that there was no way this creature was anything less than human. Different, maybe. But not less. And more than that, she had never seen any Light Spirit whose eyes were not as golden as the rest of their bodies. Was it possible? Could she have simply not looked close enough? 

His lips formed a tired smile before contracting in an expression of pain. He glanced down, breaking the eye contact and leaving Elizabeth a moment to catch her breath, her heart still pounding on her heart. This wasn’t what she expected, this was - impossible and weird and - she should have gone back now, she really should have had, now that he was distracted looking at -

Her eyes found what he was staring and at first, she couldn’t understand what was wrong in the foaming of light on his left side. It wasn’t like the rest of his body, it didn’t stay at its place but formed tendrils that extended and fell in the darkness, pouring on the ground where they shone for a moment before disappearing. She frowned, wondering why he was doing that. It looked like he was losing that light, and this couldn’t be good for a Light Spirit, could it?

Then, as she observed the urgent way he pressed his hands on his skin, trying to keep the light in, it hit her. He wasn’t doing that. The light was simply leaving his body like he was bleeding - no, he really was bleeding. He was hurt.

The Spirit inhaled sharply - he could breathe? - and looked at her again. He smiled weakly. “Well, I’m sorry to show up to you like this, but I could make use of your help, healer,” he said in the common tongue, the words feeling just a bit off like he had a very slight accent. “Would you offer it to me?” His voice was calm, confident and almost cheerful. Elizabeth liked it. Light Spirits, though, were not supposed to talk. She stared at him, terrified and fascinated at the same time, unable to think clearly. 

The spirit breathed out with difficulty, obviously in pain, but his smile didn’t disappear. “I know this is hard for you and I really shouldn’t be asking you to do this for me, but I didn’t have any other place to go.” He closed his eyes and panted, his hands twitching on his side. “Please, I can’t handle this for long.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what exactly pushed her to hurry beside him, if it was courage she didn’t know she had or her healer instinct, but in a moment she was there, kneeling at his side, her lantern placed on the ground and her hands lifted a few inches from the glowing skin of his hip, just above what she realised was a pair of trousers - she hadn’t even noticed he was wearing clothes, they were as bright as his skin. She hesitated, though, and looked at him. He seemed surprised, even impressed, as he didn’t actually expect her to come closer. She swallowed. She had the impression she was getting into something much, much bigger than what she could imagine. “Tell me what I can do,” she finally said, pushing her fear back with determination. First, she would have taken care of this man’s wound. Then, only then, she would have let herself examine this absurd situation. For now, she needed her mind free from astonishment and fear. She had a man to save. 

#nnt #nanatsu no taizai #the seven deadly sins #melizabethweek #meliodas #elizabeth liones #melizabeth #me creating a fantasy au from literally nothing #what happens next? #i wish i knew #(i'm lying i have at least half dozen ideas here but no time) #anyway i hope you liked this! #my writing #marswriting

[greenygreenland]

Wannabe Chap 11: Star Wars x Reader

-i'm so happy that I made it this far into the book -i hope you enjoy reading my work, because I put a lot of love and care into what I do. Basically, this book is my baby that I'm nurturing and growing -you're a young child in your flashbacks btw. Also sorry it's been like two weeks since I updated. School just started like two days ago and I was so confused on what was happening and stressed since I chose to do remote learning

'𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗜 𝘀𝗮𝘄 𝗺𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀 '𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻.' -𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗲, 𝗙𝗹𝗲𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗰

"Excuse me..." 

(Y/n) turned to the location of the voice. The young teen's padawan braid dangled from his brown locks, swaying as a strong breeze brushed past the courtyard. Today was a fairly cool day, so (Y/n) shivered a bit as she stood. "Were you speaking to me?" she quietly inquired. The boy let out a small, awkward laugh. "I don't know who else I'd be talking to." 

She surveyed the serene courtyard. At this time, it wasn't uncommon to find students studying together or other Masters holding classes in the afternoon sun. Today, it was absolutely dead. There was not a soul in sight save for her and the boy approaching. (Y/n) knew she had been meditating for a while, but not that long.

"By any chance," the boy added, "have you seen my master Obi-wan Kenobi?"

(Y/n) froze for a second, eyes widening in awe. She recognised the boy from class. He was a very eager and passionate student, but that seemed to be what held him back. Ever since he'd first shown up at the Temple, a plethora of rumours had spread about how he was the 'Chosen One' said to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force. Despite that, he himself hadn't reached equilibrium. "I," she swallowed and settled on the fountain's ledge. "I have not seen your master. Sorry."

She settled back onto the side of the fountain and the boy sighed in defeat. He plopped down next to her, placing his squarish hands on the ledge as he swung his feet in frustration. "Stars, he's been gone for hours and I haven't seen a single sign of him! Where could he be?" (Y/n) shyly shook her head with a shrug. "Master Kenobi is part of the Council, perhaps he is in a meeting?" 

"I haven't really thought about that." mumbled the boy. "Say, what's your name? I know I have some classes with you, but I've never really..." (Y/n) nodded in agreement. "Yes. I have not conversed with you. I am (Y/n)." 

"Last name?" 

She faltered, pausing to lick her chapped lips. The boy seemed so eager to hear her speak that she replied with, "Kryze. (Y/n) Kryze." He awkwardly smiled in reply. "Anakin Skywalker." (Y/n) frowned, knitting her brows so close together that they could have been one. "You are not going to...you know..." 

"You know what?" 

"Say something about me?" she quietly finished. Anakin mimicked her expression. "Why would I say anything about you?" (Y/n) played with the hem of her robes, turning her gaze to the loose threads to fiddle with. "I'm...I'm Mandalorian. The other kids always say I'll turn bad because of that." Anakin didn't seem to be all well-versed in Jedi history, because he only sat there with a dumb look on his face. Although he was older than (Y/n), he was definitely not the wiser.

"That's mean of them." (Y/n) dryly laughed. Her heart ached thinking about all the times kids picked on her for her heritage. It left an open wound that continued to grow with every passing day, and she knew that it was slowly turning her bitter. "That is what all the masters say, but none of them stand up for me. Some kids say that I should be a senator instead of a Jedi." (Y/n)'s shoulders slumped and Anakin crossed his arms. "I can't say I know how that feels like, but I do know that you shouldn't pay attention to that kind of stuff. My mum used to tell me that when I was younger."

(Y/n) nodded thoughtfully. "That is true. I suppose I just can't though. It is no easy feat to ignore people when they say I might as well be a killer." 

"Why would they have any reason to say that?"

"There was a battle between the Mandalorians and the Jedi long ago."

"Oh...I see."

There was an uncomfortable beat of silence. (Y/n) half-expected Anakin to get up and abandon her, but he turned to face her with a soft look in his bright eyes. "For the record," he piped up, "I think you're a wonderful person. I may not talk to you in class, but I see how nice you are to everyone. It doesn't matter what they say about you because I think it's great to be proud of who you are." (Y/n) furrowed her brows together. "Do you really believe so?" 

He firmly nodded. "I know so." He was about to stand up, but he tripped over his own robes and fell into the fountain. And for the first time in a while, (Y/n) laughed.

--- 

(Y/n) thought back to when Anakin shielded her from the exploding star ship probably a day or two ago. He had faced the full impact of the blast as she tumbled to the ground in his safe arms. 

"(Y/n)."

The pain in his voice was still so real to her. He meant every single word he said.

"I would never let anyone hurt you, and that includes me."

She turned back to the man marching towards her with the blood red saber. Her heart thumped so loudly that it could have popped out of her chest. That couldn't be Anakin--she was probably just imagining it. It wasn't possible and never would be. Even if it was, she saw him a few days ago. 

"Master Jedi," called the Princess, "we have to go now. If we stay here any longer, we all will die." The princess pulled (Y/n) up the ramp and into the safety of the rubbish ship and helped (Y/n) into the main lounge room. The two slid into the booth against the wall, and for a moment, (Y/n) relaxed. Her heart rate began to slow, and the blood rushing in her ears smoothly lessened into a dull throbbing. 

Then it hit her: that feeling of imbalance with the sense that something was wrong. She felt it in the air and in her veins and in the Force that what just happened was not meant to be. The Princess was saying something to her, but again, she couldn't hear.

---

"Why are you crying?" 

(Y/n) met Anakin's sky blue eyes with a sniffle. Her heart weighed heavy in her chest, and it was hard to breathe as she held back a sob. The temple was quiet this early in the morning, so she didn't expect to find Anakin in one of the main halls. "What...what are you doing here?" she cried out. Anakin leaned back against the wall and sunk down to the floor beside her. "I could ask you the same too." (Y/n) sniffled again and rubbed her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. Anakin dug around in his pockets and produced a small napkin. 

"Here." 

"...Thanks..." (Y/n) quietly blew her nose as Anakin averted his gaze to the open windows. The vibrant yellows and oranges of the sun illuminated across the brightening skies, reflecting off the clouds and shining over all of the city. Speeders lifted into the skies along with a variety of starships, zooming past skyscrapers and into the streets or up into the vast ink of space. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." 

Anakin frowned and scooted closer to her. He lifted up his sleeve and helped her wipe away the tears streaming down her face. "It's okay to cry, you know." (Y/n) knitted her brows together and said, "Everyone here says I shouldn't cry. They say it's a weakness and that I should release it into the Force but..." Her shoulders wildly shook and Anakin practically threw his arms around her. 

"Oh, no," he said. "Don't cry anymore. It's okay." He cradled (Y/n)'s small form close like his mother used to do. (Y/n) savoured the warmth reflecting off his aura and rested her head on his chest as he rocked back and forth, humming a small tune. The sun continued to rise over the horizon, soaring higher over the skyline and bringing with it a powerful light. "Did someone make you cry?" (Y/n) nodded. "Yeah." Anakin rested his head over hers. "What did they say?" 

"That...that I-I don't belong here. They said I'll never...that I'll never be a padawan..." Anakin wanted to believe he knew what he was doing, but he really didn't. Ever since he showed up at the Temple, all he's ever done was bow, speak beautifully, and learn the ways of the Force. Love wasn't exactly something they openly showed here, so he continued to hug (Y/n) close. 

"They...they said I'll be kicked out..."

Anakin's jaw dropped. "What? No! That won't happen. That won't ever happen. The Jedi wouldn't kick you out just because you're Mandalorian. They aren't like that, I promise." (Y/n) pulled away to wipe her eyes. "But those kids said..."

"What those kids did was waste their breath!" exclaimed Anakin. He wanted to say he was going to deal with this like a responsible padawan, but his lips curled into a scowl and his blood boiled like the lava on Mustafar. How dare her peers always insult her and make her days spent in the temple a complete nightmare? That wasn't the mark of a Peace Keeper, no it was one of pretender, a fake who only abused their titles. 

"You shouldn't care about what those kids say because you're an incredible, kind, and smart girl." he firmly said. The anger making his blood boil began to morph and cool into a sense of protectiveness. He didn't want to have to do anything he'd regret, so he resolved to protect (Y/n). Confrontation would only cause bigger problems, he thought.

"You've taught me so much about the Force and the Ways of the Jedi." Anakin added. He helped (Y/n) stand in the sun's morning rays. "When they knock you down, you've gotta get up again. You're better than them. You're so much kinder and nicer than them. If anyone's going to be kicked out, you better believe it'll be them!"

(Y/n) gave a watery smile and Anakin wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving it a good rub. "Come on, let's get some breakfast."

---

(Y/n) leaned back in the booth, resting her head against the ship's wall with a long sigh. That was her Anakin, the one and only who cared deeply for everyone and everything. He was like no other Jedi, compassionate and a bit unpredictable, but (Y/n) trusted him with her life. She paused for a moment and closed her eyes to bring her focus back. Her loud mind began to settle down before another face came into mind. 

Obi-wan Kenobi. Why had she sense him fighting the guy clad in black when he should've been back in Coruscant with Anakin? Her instincts were never wrong, but this? It again didn't make any sense. In fact, nothing made sense.

The Princess placed a hand on (Y/n)'s shoulder as Han and Luke came barrelling into the ship. Chewie had already started the controls, and while the boys made a racket and got the ship up and running, the Princess made sure to keep (Y/n)'s attention on her. "Are you okay?" (Y/n) opened her mouth, but the words wouldn't leave her lips. There was a disturbance in the Force that literally made her feel like the galaxy were a seesaw, tipping this way and that in a weak attempt to keep the balance.

"I..."

She didn't know anymore. Was she okay? Was she not? Maybe she was drugged and that was the problem.

"...what year is it?" 

The Princess frowned in concern. "Han, do you have any water?" she called. He dug around the cockpit before throwing a flask over his shoulder. The Princess caught the flask with ease and pried the top open. "Here, we've all been through a lot today." (Y/n) took the flask and chugged down the cool liquid without a second thought. She drained the container until every last drop had gone down her throat. Leia took the flask back and closed it. "Feel better?"

"A bit. Thank you, Princess..."

"Call me Leia. What's your name?"

"(Y/n) Kryze." she replied. Leia was about to set the flask down on the booth, but she went completely rigid. "Kryze?" she breathily repeated. (Y/n) nodded. Leia's hand flew to her forehead as if she were about to suffer from a stroke. "You're Mandalorian and a Jedi? Is that even possible?" (Y/n) shrugged. "I used to think the same thing when I was younger." 

"How did the Empire capture you?" (Y/n) knitted her brows. There was that word again 'Empire'. "I apologise, but what does that mean?" she inquired. Leia pursed her lips together with a hum. "Did you hit your head? What was the last thing that happened before you ended up on that space station?" 

"I was in a warehouse on Coruscant. There was an explosion, and then I saw Count Dooku. He...I believe he was the one who kidnapped me." Leia looked beyond concerned. A small 'oh dear' left her lips that send chills down (Y/n)'s spine. "I don't know how to put this, but Count Dooku died a decade or so ago." (Y/n) wasn't sure how to feel about that. Confusion was her first instinct, then worry, and lastly, shock. It was like her body had completely frozen over in ice. She couldn't move or think straight. 

A decade or so ago. 

She missed out on a decade or so of history.

But how?

"I'm not too sure," continued Leia, "but you may have been frozen in carbonite or kept in a stasis pod. The Clone Wars ended about nineteen or twenty years ago, so you've probably slept through all that along with the Jedi Purge." Jedi Purge? The ending of the Clone Wars? Her vision suddenly became blurry. "I think I need to..." (Y/n) never finished that thought. Her eyes rolled back into her head and it was lights out completely.

PART 12

#star wars #star wars x reader #starwarstheclonewarsxreader #luke skywalker #hansolo #princess leia

[oosteven-universe]

Banjax #1

Banjax #1 Action Lab Danger Zone 2019 Written by Rylend Grant Illustrated by Fabio Alves Coloured by Edson Ferreira Lettered by HdE     CHAPTER 1: THE CURE.     A wholly original and delightfully twisted deconstruction of the superhero genre by Hollywood screenwriter/Aberrant-scribe Rylend Grant. Liard Mason, a disgraced former superhero, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, brought on by years of using his powers. Defending what he has deemed an ungrateful and ultimately unworthy city is literally killing him. With just months to live and a legacy hanging in the balance, Mason launches a violent and misguided Death Wish-like campaign to purge the city of supervillains before he dies.     I found this to be utterly sensationally delightful. I wasn’t expecting this to be as hard hitting as it turned out to be and by that not only is this hardcore but it’s also emotionally charged and powerful as all get out. You cannot read this and come out if the same way you went into it pure and simple and as it turns out Rylend is one of the hottest new writers around, at least in comics, and his star just keeps rising. I cannot stress enough that you need to be reading this and if your store doesn’t carry it then order it from them ASAP!     I am a huge fan of the way that this book is structured. It took a minute to really get the idea behind it’s structure but once you do, you realise how bloody brilliant it really is. The opening is perfectly done it raises eyebrows, piques the curiosity and makes me want to see more. This look at a certain population in a city while not uncommon is focused on in a way that not amplifies it but showcases what we don’t like seeing. This is a part of the world the media and such don’t want you to see and that Rylend says hey look this is real even though it’s in the form of a comic. It is pretty eye opening and again a perfect way to open this series and the way it’s written and the significance of it will seen later.     So this is my introduction to Fabio’s work and I think it’s his comics debut since I can’t fine anything else from him. I am an instant fan of his too now because the linework here is freakin amazing. How we see him bring this to life is mindbogglingly good. The utilisation of the varying weights to create this sharp, clean and crisp detail work is a complete wow factor. The composition in the panels is stupendous then how the we see the utilisation of the page layouts and the angles and perspective in the panels show an extremely talented eye for storytelling. I really amazed by what I am seeing here because the black & white moments with the coloured backgrounds and it all works together and what it represents wow. The colour work is fabulous here as well. The way w see light sources being utilised to create shadows, shading and allowing for some colour gradation completes the work beautifully. ​     This is the first book out this week that I have read and this sets the bar amazing high for the rest of what I am reading. The way that we see the story & plot development unfold through the pacing and the character development is so effin good. By the last page we understand this man Laird in ways that I’ve never experienced before. We get why he’s done what he’s done with his life and why he’s going to do what he does moving forward. That we do understand him through the good, bad and especially the ugly parts of his life and the depths of which we can empathise with him is truly outstanding.

#comic books #comics reviews #Action Lab Danger Zone #Rylend Grant #fabio alves

[stevesharrlngtons]

new rules.

nancy wheeler x reader 

summary: break ups suck. especially when it happens to you and your best friend at the same time. but thank god for junk food, new awakenings, new rules and jake ryan.

word count: 3.9k

based off this song.

a/n: yay bi visibility! so, this is the first time writing for nancy (or a female x reader), so if it’s totally shitty, i’m sorry! i’m new to this. hope you enjoy and feedback is appreciated 

one: don’t pick up the phone, you know he’s only calling because he’s drunk and alone 

Life was undeniably bad for not only you, but your best friend, too. Somehow, within a two-week period, both of your relationships had imploded. Yours had ended because you were finally tired of your boyfriend being unfaithful. Two Fridays ago, you had caught him behind the bleachers with a girl on her knees in front of him.

“Oh, come on! At school? Really?” You had exclaimed, rolling your eyes and crossing your arms.

“Baby, calm down! I can explain!” Billy spoke quickly as he pushed the girl away by her forehead.

She let out a muffled “ow” before scrambling away from the two of you.

“How the hell can you “explain” your way out of this one, asshole?”

“She came onto me! I swear, okay?” He tried to approach you, but you stepped away.

“I’m sick of catching you either in some girl or some girl on you! I’m sick of your fucking excuse and I’m sick of taking you back!” You exclaimed angrily.

“Baby, come on…” He tried to woo you, but you weren’t having it.

“Don’t “baby” me! We’re done! For good this time!”

“Yeah, okay sure, see you in a week when we’re back on.” He scoffed at you, finally zipping up his pants.

“Not this time.” You muttered, turning to walk away.

“Sure! We’ll see how long this lasts!”

Nancy’s break up had been similar to yours: a long time coming. Her and Steve were like a small-town dream. Star athlete in love with a quiet brainiac. But little did anyone else but you know, that they were always either fighting or being passive aggressive towards each other because of said fighting. Looking in from the outside, you could see that their love was forced. They thought they should be together, so they were. They didn’t have much in common, but they had fallen into a comfortable routine of being together. Until last Friday, when all hell broke loose. Somehow one small fight had snowballed into all the fights they had been avoiding over the past six months. Which like your last fight with Billy, had ended in a final break up.

That’s why you and Nancy were giving yourselves full permission to have a complete indulgent night of junk food and cheesy movies. The only true cure for heart break: your best friend, junk food, and Jake Ryan.

“I bet Jake would never cheat on Samantha.” You grumbled as you watched the screen from your couch.

“Yeah, because Jake isn’t a total prick!” Nancy said through a mouth full of ice cream.

“Sorry…”

“No, it’s okay, he is a total prick. Billy would have never waited outside my sister’s wedding for me.” You sighed, shoving a couple gummy worms in your mouth.

“He never deserved you in the first place.” Nancy said, taking you hand in hers.

This wasn’t a weird or uncommon action for either of you. The two of you had a very affectionate. Holding hands during movies, cuddling during sleepovers, kisses on the cheek after long nights studying. It’s just how it had always been. You had never really been sure if there was anything more and you never pushed it, unsure about your own feelings.

“Thanks, Nance.” You rested your head on her shoulder as you both continued to watch the movie.

Right when Anthony Michael Hall had Jake’s ex cheerleader girlfriend over his shoulder, your house phone rang.

“Be right back,” You said, careful to not disturb any of the open containers that surrounded you and Nancy.

“Hello?” You said, hoping up to sit on the counter when you picked up the receiver.

“Are you still mad, gorgeous?” Billy’s slurred on the other end.

Nancy had glanced over to you after you had replied to the person on the phone and instantly knew by your face who it was. She sprang from her seat on the couch and ran to the kitchen. Before you could speak she snatched the phone from your hand and hung it up fast. The slamming sound reverberating through the kitchen.

“New rule, you aren’t picking up the phone alone without me here, okay?” She placed both her hands on your exposed thighs.

You slowly nodded.

“Even hearing his voice makes you want to go back to him. I know that. So, no more phone. Okay?” Her voice was stern at first but became gentle as she continued.

With her hands still on your thighs, you leaned forward and put your forehead on her collarbone.

“He’s probably only calling because he’s drunk, anyways.” You sighed heavily.

“Boys suck.”

“That they do.” She chuckled.

“Expect Jake Ryan.” You added, face still buried in her chest.

“Of course! We never mean him!”

two: don’t let him in, you’ll have to kick him out again

School had been your own personal hell the past two weeks. Billy flaunted every hickey, every scratch and every mark that any girl had left on him. He was also purposefully talking loudly next to your locker about every single girl he had had since the two of you broke up. This was his strategy. He’d do this after you broke up, you’d go running to confront him, you’d fight, he’d tell you they all meant nothing, that he loves you, and you’d be back together. But like you’d said the day of your break up, you were done for good this time.

So, you suffered in silence, always having Nancy’s shoulder to cry on at the end of the day. She was always a constant in your life, always there to pick up the pieces. And you were that for her, too. You both supported each other fiercely and knew that their never would be an absence of friendship.

The last two weeks hadn’t been easy on Nancy, either. Steve was constantly trying to talk to her, win her back, do anything for them to be together again. You were always there to politely tell Steve to leave and to be a human blockade between the two. You could tell Nancy was struggling, and you would do anything you could to help.

“I don’t even think I love him.” Nancy said while the two of you laid on her bed.

You were taking a study break, and the inevitable topic of Billy and Steve came up. Your feet were by her head and her feet were by yours. You both rubbed lazy circles on the others skin in comfort.

“I mean I did, at one time… but I don’t know. I know I don’t now.” She sighed.

“I don’t think Billy and I were ever in love, I was just someone he could lean on. I was a glorified crutch!” You scoffed, Billy’s smug expressions filling your mind.

“We weren’t in love with them… so why does it hurt so bad?” Nancy asked, pushing herself onto her elbows to look down at you.

You did the same, “If I figure it out I’ll let you know.”

Just then, small pebbles began to hit Nancy’s window. The two of you shared a confused look and Nancy went to move off the bed to investigate. That’s when you a memory flashed through your mind, one of Nancy telling you this is what Steve would do every time they fought. You acted quickly, tugging her wrist back to the bed. She landed next to you and shot you a look. You pressed your finger to your lips, then mouthed Steve. She rolled her eyes and went to move away, put your hand stayed put, keeping her next to you. Nancy opened her mouth so speak, but a voice outside cut him off.

“I know you’re in there, Nance!” Steve’s voice said.

Nancy sighed, her body hunching as the two of you listened to Steve’s pleas.

“Come on, this is getting ridiculous! I know you’re up there!”

“Just come down here for fucks sake!”

“Your light is on, I know you’re in your room!”

“Nancy? Are you kidding me?”

This went on for what seemed like forever, but soon you both heard Steve scream a string of obscenities, then the sound of his car driving away.

The second you both knew his car was gone, Nancy collapsed into you, tears staining her cheeks and your top. You held her tightly to you, rocking her slowly as she sobbed into your chest. You ran your fingers through the ends of her hair and laid you cheek on the crown of her head. Your heart was aching at the sight of your best friend so broken.

“New rule, we never let them in our houses, okay?” You said, looking down at her.

“Okay.” Nancy replied with a sniffle.

 three: don’t be his friend, you know you’ll wake up in his bed in the morning, and if you’re under him you aren’t getting over him

By week three, things had gone relatively back to normal. Billy was still trying to get under your skin and Steve was still trying to win Nancy back, but their attempts were becoming feeble, and even those attempts were few and far between. For you, and Nancy when you mentioned your feelings to her, it was nice to be on your own for once. No man to report to or be anxious around. Just the two of you getting to know yourselves and learning to leave high school boys in the past.

Today, sadly, you were sans-Nancy. She had a dentist appointment at one, so her mother had come to pick her up early. So, you sat alone at lunch, sandwich in one hand and book in the other. You and Nancy were both reading The Bell Jar, but you were two chapter behind her, so today was an opportune time to catch up.

Full immersed in your book, you didn’t notice Billy coming to sit across from you until he knocked his knuckles against the table top. You darted your eyes above the pages to see who had joined you, and at the sight of Billy, you immediately moved your eyes back to your book.

“Alone today, are we princess?” Billy drawled causing you to shutter.

You said nothing. You just tried to keep your eyes trained on the page.

“Oh, come on, you really aren’t going to talk to me?” Billy sighed.

Again, nothing.

“How long are we going to do this, (Y/N/N)? Just forgive me already for Christ’s sake.” Billy said harshly under his breath.

“I’ll pass.” You scoffed and turned the page.

You actually hadn’t read any of the words on the previous pages, but you wanted him to think you had.

“You really going to stay mad at me forever? Over some stupid blow job?” Billy rolled his eyes.

“Yep.” You popped the word.

“I’m sorry, okay? Fuck.” Billy said lowly, so no one would hear him apologizing.

“Good for you.” You said, giving him a sarcastic smile.

His jaw clenched, “Listen, Max misses you. She does and so do I.”

“Well, tell Max she can call me anytime to hang out.” You shrugged.

“What about me?”

“You can call Rebekah anytime you want to hang out.” You smirked.

You mentally patted yourself on the back for that come back. You were proud of yourself for standing your ground. Usually at the sight of Billy’s smile and the sound of his voice, you were back to being putty in his hands. But you kept chanting in your head, not this time, not this time, not this time.

“(Y/N), come on, don’t do this.” Billy said, moving to come sit in the chair next to you.

His proximity made your breath hitch and your heart race.

Fuck.

“I know you’re angry. I don’t blame you anymore. Just, I miss you. If you don’t want to be my girlfriend again, fine. But can we at least still be friends?”

You pulled your eyes from your book and looked at Billy. His eyes were soft, and he looked heartbroken. You knew better than to reach out and touch him, but man did you want too. Your mouth was slightly agape as you looked at him in front of you, shifting uncomfortably after being so vulnerable.

You still did care about him, no matter how much you hated you. This was the least you could do, right? You had always been his only support system, and you really didn’t want him to navigate the world alone. Finally, you sighed.

“Okay, we can be friends.”

Billy gave you a small smile, “Thank you.”

You smiled back and went back to your book, Billy reading over your shoulder and ripping off small pieces of your sandwich to eat.

As lunch ended, the two of you started to walk towards your history class. It was silent between you, people were starting to stare, and you knew by the end of the day the rumors about yours and Billy reunion would be the talk of the school. Once you arrived at your classroom you said your goodbyes to Billy and he walked off to most likely go sit in his car and smoke.

When the end of the day bell rang, you headed out towards the parking lot, lost in your thoughts about your math test on Monday and what to wear this weekend. You almost didn’t notice Billy standing by your car.

“Hi friend.” He said to you around his cigarette.

You smiled and unlocked your door, “Hi Billy.”

“So, I was thinking,” He started as you put your things in the backseat, “That you should come over tonight.”

You furrowed your brows and leaned out of the cab to face Billy, “I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

“No, okay, I know what you’re thinking. Max is going to be home and everything, she’s missed you so much, no way she lets you out of her sight.” Billy said, moving a strand of your hair behind your ear.

His touch felt so warm and familiar.

“So, it would be the three of us, beers for you and me, soda for the kid.” He said quietly, his touch lingering on your cheek.

“Billy,” You said, your voice coming out as a whisper.

“Come on, we can even watch Bladerunner if you want?” Billy smirked, moving his hand to lay on your shoulder.

His words were so delicate, it was clouding your better judgment.

“Well, if Bladerunner is involved…” You smiled, and Billy laughed.

“Be at my place at eight, okay?” Billy said, walking back towards his car, letting his eyes wander your body.

“See you then.”

You left your house at seven forty-five, wanting to be a little early to Billy’s. You were wearing your favorite shirt and your best jeans, and you felt good. You got into your car and applied another layer of lip gloss to your lips. You switched on your radio and happily sang along, letting your hands hit the steering wheel with the rhythm. You hated to admit it, but you were really excited for tonight. Just to calmly hang out with Billy and Max and watch movies, it sounded so refreshing. You did really miss Max, and honestly you missed Billy, too. Hopefully after tonight, you and Billy could really be friends and be happy with just that.

You pulled up to a stop sign and hummed, seeing a few kids cross the street in front of you. But you stopped humming when you realized the kids looked familiar, and let out a shocked breath when one of those familiar kids was Max. Without thinking, you put your car in park and got out.

“Max!” You called out to her.

Max, along with Dustin and Lucas turned to look at you.

“(Y/N)!” She beamed, running towards you to give you a hug.

“Max, why aren’t you at home?” You asked, pulling the girl way to look at her face.

“Billy told me to beat it hours ago, told me to spend the night at someone’s house.” She said, looking up at you as your face turned to anger.

“That mother fucker!” You screamed.

All three kids looked at you in awe, “That actual piece of shit, I thought he changed, I actually thought he wanted to be friends with me!”

“Wait, you’re the reason he kicked me out? Are you guys getting back together?” Max tried to hide the hope in her voice.

“Not after this fucking stunt, we aren’t. God! How could I be so stupid?” You leaned against your car, breathing heavily after your outburst.

A car came behind yours and started to honk, and you weren’t in the mood.

“Go around asshole!” You screamed at them.

You pulled Max to you as the guy in the car raced around you two, flipping you off as he did.

“Fuck that guy and fuck your asshole brother!” You sighed and opened your car door.

“Are you going to be okay?” Max asked you before you got in.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. And since your brother is a massive liar, I’m assuming he didn’t tell you what I said earlier. You can still call me. If you want to hang out or get picked from somewhere, anything.” You said to her, smiling sadly.

“Thank you.” Max said, giving you one last hug before you got into your car.

You rolled down your window quickly, to yell at the kids, “Kick Billy in the balls next time you see him, will ya?”

Lucas laughed, “You got it ma’am!”

You drove off fast, making two turns that would effectively get you far away from Billy’s house and closer to the Wheeler residence. You needed to talk to Nancy, now.

When you pulled into the Wheeler’s driveway, you slammed your door loud, no doubt getting the attention of everyone inside. As you walked up the driveway, Mike opened the door before you could knock.

“(Y/N)? Are you alright?” Mike asked, taking in your angry demeanor.

“Is your sister home?” You asked, ignoring his question.

“Yeah, she’s in her room. But, really. Are you okay?” Mike said concerned.

“Mike, men are assholes. And I’m already proud of you for being better than every other grown man I know.” You said with a huff, walking around the boy and into the house.

“Uh, thanks?” He replied but you were already up the stairs and knocking on Nancy’s door.

“Come in.” Her quiet voice said, and you opened the door.

“Hey, what’s up?” Nancy asked when she saw it was you who knocked.

“Fucking Billy, that’s what’s up.” You said crossing your arms.

“Oh no,” Nancy replied, sitting up on her knees as she watched you pace.

“That asshole! He comes to me today with this whole apology and I just miss you so much (Y/N) can we please be friends, crap! And what do I do? I say yes! And I was just on my way over there!” You spoke hastily, almost to fast for Nancy to follow.

“Why did you come here then?”

“Because he said we were going to have a friendly movie night with Max, but I saw Max with Dustin and Lucas, on my way over there. She said he told her to get lost because I was coming over. He fucking lied! Again! And I fell for it! Again!” You threw yourself down on her bed in an angry huff, covering your face with your hands.

“Hey, it’s okay. We all slip up sometimes.” Nancy said, crawling to lay next to you.

“All that matters is that you didn’t go through with it.” She said softly.

“I guess so.” You spoke into your hands.

“Wanna feel better about your slip up?” Nancy said, nudging you with her elbow.

“Sure.”

“I talked to Steve on the phone today.” She sighed.

“Really?” You uncovered your face.

“Yeah, it wasn’t for long, but I didn’t hang up right away.” She laughed.

“We really suck at this, don’t we?” You laughed along with her.

“We really do.”

The two of you burst into giggles, which turned into gut wrenching laughter. Neither of you could stop, the second one of you did, the other would burst out laughing again and it would start all over. You were breathing deeply, trying to calm down as Nancy brushed away a few stray tears. You looked over at her and rolled onto your side, facing her. At your action she did the same.

Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was wild, and you thought that you’d never seen someone so beautiful. You let your eyes wander her face and bit your lip and smiled. Nancy hesitantly reached towards you, brushing your hair behind you neck. The feeling of her fingertips on your skin made your breath hitch. You swallowed quietly as she slowly moved her hand back to curl into her chest. You both just kept looking at each other, both of you clearly feeling the new tension that had risen in the room.

“You’re my best friend, you know, that right?” You said, your voice coming out as barley a whisper.

“You’re my best friend, too.” She said, her cheeks flushing even more.

“I love you, you know?” Nancy said, not looking at you.

“I love you, too, Nance.” You smiled at her and inched forward ever so slightly.

“Cool.” She laughed breathily.

Her eyes met yours again, and this time you felt a surge run through you. You couldn’t stop the feeling that was blossoming you your stomach or the thoughts in your mind. By the way Nancy was moving towards you, her eyes darting from your eyes to your lips, she must have felt the same way. This was the moment that you realized that all the times you had felt attracted to her weren’t as innocent as you had thought they were.

Nancy was so close to you now, you could feel her breath on your face and you could hear your heartbeat in your ears. As she leisurely got closer, you tilted your head slightly to the side and fluttered your eyes shut. You felt her ghost her lips over yours and you held your breath, waiting for her to actual press them to yours.

Finally you felt it, two soft lips press tenderly against yours. She moved away, giving you time to react, then you leaned forward to smooth your lips over hers, a little longer this time. You felt like your body was on fire, and you needed her to soothe you. Your hands reached for her cheeks and her hands found your back and the small kisses started to get quicker. Breath mingling, tongues gliding over each other, noses brushing.

It felt like heaven.

You had never felt this much adrenaline or excitement when you made out with someone before. Billy had always been good, but this was another level.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this.” Nancy murmured between kisses.

“I didn’t know how bad I wanted this until right now.” You said, pulling her back to your lips.

You felt her lips curl into a smile and you pulled away reluctantly to see why.

“What’s up?” You said, running your hand over her cheek.

“So, boys really do suck.”

You both burst into giggles, hands still gripping each other.

“They really do.”

“Expect Jake Ryan.”

“Well, duh.”

                                              you’re getting over him.

#both nancy wheeler and i are hella bi and thats the tea #super nervous about this but oh well #nancy wheeler #nancy wheeler x reader #nancy wheeler imagine #nancy wheeler imagines #nancy wheeler reader insert #nancy wheeler fanfic #nancy wheeler fanfiction #nancy wheeler one shot #nancy wheeler x you #stranger things imagine #stranger things one shot #stevesharrlngtonswrites

[thehappyscavenger]

Books Read June & July 2018

The Girls by Emma Cline 

So this was huge when it came out, and like all books that are huge when they come out I ignored it for a couple of years. Also I heard from several people that it was really bad and basic so I avoided it. 

I’m glad I read it in a skeptical frame of mind because I ended up really liking it which I’m not sure I would have done if I had read it when it was super hyped. 

The Girls as it was described to me was about a group of women in a Manson-like cult and being exhausted by how much coverage the Manson cult gets AND by how exploitative and fawning that coverage feels I also went into this with extreme reluctance. But even though it IS technically about those things, it’s actually more about what it’s like to be a girl in a man’s world, or more specifically a young white adolescent girl in that world. Growing up the 60s were always presented to me as the time of feminism going into the mainstream but this book seems part of a wave of art dedicated to that time that now looks back on how exploitative that era was. All that free thinking was designed to sexualize young teenager to the max. 

A thoughtful, interesting read. While I found the beginning overly stylized and annoying I really enjoyed it by the end. 

The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish

So this is a celeb memoir. I was expecting something trashy and fun and it did not disappoint. Haddish came to prominence because of the movie Girls Trip and she capitalized on it by writing this memoir. It’s written in a light breezy conversational way but there was a depth to it because Haddish has lived through some serious shit. Physical abuse, sexual abuse, foster homes, etc. Her life is more twisted and crazy than a soap opera. She has a positive attitude despite all her heartbreak though so the book, which could have been a major downer, is surprisingly sweet. 

The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery

I heard this referred to as Montgomery’s only book for adults (found out after it’s not) and decided to give it a shot. I loved it! 

It’s a short romance novel set in Ontario in the 1920s about a woman from a “proper” family who is an old maid with zero romantic prospects. When she learns that she has a heart condition that means she’s going to die she decides to live life to the fullest and love and romance quickly follow. 

I’ll admit that it took me a while to get into the one. It’s not a long book but there are bits that are reallllly repetitive particularly the beginning where the main character is bored, and the end where she’s happy. That being said it’s a sweet romantic book and the twists when they come are fun even if they are predictable. I’m also super shocked that this hasn’t been turned into a film yet, but that’s the English Canada film industry for you. No one cares about our classics. 

Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta 

This got a lot of praise which frankly left me baffled. It’s about two women who meet in high school and both go on to become directors, one a more experimental documentarian and the other a director of popular comedies. If you’re into film, which I frankly am, this novel is kind of cool because of all the references but also kind of not because they don’t really go anywhere. The whole thing also feels really thin because for a novel supposedly about friendship the two characters are basically growing apart the whole novel and barely interact or even really think of one another.

There is an interesting subplot with this woman who catfishes people over the phone who becomes the subject of one of the documentarian’s movies. Weirdly the jacket blurb made it seem like there was going to be a lesbian love triangle between these three characters which never comes close to happening. Anyway the catfisher had the most interesting arc even though her story ends up not mattering all that much. Kind of disappointed in this one. 

Deerskin by Robin McKinley

This is a novel length interpretation of the fairy tale Donkeyskin, which is this creepy seldom talked about fairy tale about a princess who runs away when her father wants to marry her. I think it’s much more common in France because Catherine Deneuve starred in a film version, but where I live it’s so uncommon that as an adult I thought I had just been a twisted child who had made it up because I couldn’t find it anywhere for years. 

Anyway Deerskin is about a princess who is neglected by her gorgeous stunning beloved parents who are incredibly attractive and seem to have narcissistic traits. When her mother gets ill an loses some of her beauty she loses the will to live and as a result the princess suddenly has more attention thrust on her including attention from her father. 

I found this to be a mixed bag. The writing is really good and McKinley doesn’t really shy away from rape and incest and how awful it is. On the other hand a lot of the novel drags. There are two long mystical type moments where the princess flees the kingdom and spends time alone with her dog hiding out and healing. And these sections are looooong. It probably would have taken me two days to finish the book except when I hit the first 70 page or so section where the princess is just alone and hunting and not interacting with anyone I put the book down and read little bits over several weeks until it was finally over. Some of those pages could have been invested in the ending which felt a little rushed, or in some of the myth building that happens in the end. All in all its a decent book but it’s one that could have been so, so much better. 

#currently reading #The Girls #Emma Cline #The Last Black Unicorn #Tiffany Haddish #The Blue Castle #Lucy Maud Montgomery #l.m. montgomery #Deerskin #Robin McKinley #Innocents and Others #Dana Spiotta

[hexdream18243]

Fanfiction: Crush

Little thing: This fanfiction I wrote only in English. So PLEASE tell me if you find mistakes (or typos)! It’s everything. Enjoy your time!

Relationships: analogical (friends), logicality Warnings: mention about car crash? Nothing much or significant. Please tell me if I should add something. Word count: 1772 Summary: Virgil stole his roommate’s phone and found out that he has... a crush?!

Part two

AO3 link

Virgil was bored. So unbelievably bored. So he did the most logical thing he could do. He stole his roommate’s phone. Well, not exactly stole. He came to their room (they were there), stood next to their table and took the phone without question. Logan just looked at him and went back to work. He hope it was work, not some new strange obsession about something. Logan’s obsession were hard to deal with. If he found something interesting, he wanted to know everything about it. Just. Everything. It was no way to have a normal conversation in days while he was doing his “research”. For “Do you want coffee?” or “Do we have a milk?” Logan answers always led to random information about his “topic number 1”. Virgil knew that these information were interesting, really, but he started to hate the phrase: “Do you know that…”

But it looks like Logan was just working. What a relief.

Virgil came out of Logan’s room and sat at the kitchen table in the living room. They had too small kitchen for furniture beside necessary like fridge, sink or oven. After getting himself comfortable, he got to work. First, he had to unlock the phone. It was their unspoken game. Logan changed his password, PIN or code and left hints about it around their apartment. Every time Virgil was bored or had others troubles he could take Logan’s phone and play as detective. It was fun for both sides. This time Logan had a password. Unfortunately, Virgil immediately knew it, because his roommate’s favorite jam brand released a new taste recently. Jam was in every corner of the kitchen. An answer was obvious. He wrote “Crofters” and was welcomed with a photo of Pluto with text “Pluto is a planet! Viva la Pluto!”. So puzzle were solved what’s next?

He know that Logan’s phone also was boring. Of course not if you didn’t know about his obsessions and others things like interesting music choices (Classical music, rap, rap to classical music. He didn’t have many songs of the last, but just because they were a little uncommon. Also he has a folder with songs from probably all genre from Disney to hard metal, at least one of each genre.) or strange high quality of organization. So Virgil started to look into contacts. It was nearly impossible that Logan met someone new recently but maybe? Some minutes passed but suddenly… Here it is! A new contact! And description was… interesting at least. “Crush”. Did Logan has a crush on someone? And he didn’t mention it?! Okay, they were roommates but sort of friends also, he guess? Usually Logan would say something, but not this time, he had to hide it. Virgil checked if they were texting. Nothing. Not even one call! So… Why not to text the mysterious crush? Virgil considered it. Logan wouldn’t kill him for that and it will be fun to watch this nerd flustered. Yes. He’ll do it.

What to write? If he was Logan, what he would write to his crush? Hm… How would Logan flirt? That was a good question. It definitely won’t be normal flirting or some simple pick up lines. It’s not his style. In his style is using big complicated words and strange comparisons. Or random information. Virgil looked into folders to find inspiration. He found something named as “Love”. He opened it and saw enormous amount of documents, photos, videos, charts and voice files. Everything had a connection with love. One of documents was named: “Pick up lines”. More out of curiosity, he opened it. Ok. He didn’t expect this. Of course, he saw document full of pick up lines, but some of them had a small note: “Can be used”. Seriously?! Logan thought that he could use them? HE? Virgil could not imagine it. But… It could be funny. Now he should just find a proper line.

He scrolled through them.

“I’m not an astronomer, but I still promise to give you the sun, moon, and stars.” – No. Line was crossed with comment “But I AM astronomer”. And it could be too much for the beginning if you ask Virgil. Other one: “You seem to be traveling at the speed of light because time always seems to stop when I look at you.” or “You must be a red blood cell because you take the oxygen out of my lungs and bring it right to my heart.”

He wasn’t sure which line will be the best, but one of them drew his attention. Yes. It will worked.

He sent a text just in time because suddenly Logan came out from his room, calling:

“Virgil? I need my phone, where are you? I have to check something on my e-mail but I’ve already turned off my computer so if you… Oh, here you are.” – He entered to the living room. Virgil raised his head and smirked.

“Catch” – He threw a phone. Logan was surprised but he caught that (with difficulty).

“You knew password?” – Logan asked, looking at the screen.

“It wasn’t hard to guess.”

“I see. So I have to change it. I hope you had fun playing with my phone.”

“Yeah. I hope you didn’t mind that I texted your crush.”

Logan stopped in his tracks back to his room.

“What do you mean by ‘my crush’?”

“Stop pretending. I know you know what I mean. I saw your folders.”

“I am not pretending anything. I know meaning of the word “crush” but I do not know who you meant by using that term.”

“Really? Are you kidding me? You saved their number in label ‘Crush’. I don’t know who it is.”

“Wait. You texted ‘Crush’?” – Logan seemed a little panicked. - “What have you wrote?”

“I wrote only one of your pick up lines. Nothing much, really, only something to start.”

“Which one?!”

“Jezz, Logan, calm down, please. Look at your messages. It was something like: ‘Hey! You know, I think you must have a charge because I am finding myself feeling very attracted to you’. It’s not so bad.”

“IT IS! Listen, Virgil, do you remember last week?”

“Yes, of course, it was eventful week, a meeting, I got a job, you had a car crash…”

“Exactly! A man from the second car gave me his phone number and I gave him mine, because it was my fault and I asked him to text me about price of repair. And look again” – Logan put phone to his eyes. – “How I wrote a word ‘Crush’?”

“By ‘u’.”

“What?!” – Logan looked again at the screen with wide eyes. Then he muttered under his breath: “Stupid autocorrect”.

“So… It isn’t someone you’re interested in, I guess? Sorry…”

“O, I wouldn’t say that I am not interested in him. He…” – Logan stopped when he realized what he just said. He tried to dismiss it but Virgil already was smirking.

“You say so?”

“Please, forget it.”

“Never.”

Logan shook his head.

“Anyhow, you’ve already texted Patton. I think now I should explain ‘my’ behavior to him.” – He sighed looking at his phone. He started writing an apology.

“If you remember his name why you didn’t named his number like that?” – Virgil asked.

“Because I would remember his name but I wouldn’t remember who it is and how I met him. I am not forgetting names. However autocorrect…” – Just when he hit button to send a text, ring interrupted his saying so he stopped. And paled.

“What?” – Virgil asked.

“He answered for your message.”

“WHAT?!” – Virgil jumped from his place to stand next to his roommate. – “What did he write? Tell me!”

It took a moment for read a text. Next Logan locked a phone with blank expression.

“I didn’t saw an answer. He took it bad?” – Logan gave device to Virgil. A message said: “I didn’t know that but I would love to stick to you like glu-cose <3” It left him speechless but he had a big grin. Logan was irritated.

“Stop smiling! Okay, he responded but maybe he likes pick up lines and he doesn’t take them seriously. Anyway I just wrote him that all was a big mistake! What should I do now?!”

“Wait?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.” – Virgil leaned on the wall with crossed arms. He tried. He fell because there was no wall behind him.

“Vigil! Be careful!” – Logan caught him just in time and pulled back on the feet. – “You can’t get hurt, you have to go to the job today.”

Vigil looked at the clock above them and cursed.

“Job! I have to go now! Good luck with your crush, Logan!” – He ran out the living room, caught a backpack from corridor and left a flat. Logan stayed alone in silence. The silence was broke by ring.

[You]: I’m sorry for that message. My roommate took my phone and texted you because he was convinced that you are my crush. Unfortunately, autocorrect in phone changed my description.

[Crush]: I didn’t know that but I would love to stick to you like glu-cose <3 <New>[Crush]: Oh! I didn’t expect this…

Logan winced.

[You]: I’m sorry again. [You]: Since we are talking, can you tell me if you went to mechanic with your car? I hope you did, it would be dangerous if you didn’t.

[Crush]: Um, yes! I went! It wasn’t a big damage, only a mirror.

[You]: So can you tell me about cost of repair? I promised that I will cover the costs.

[Crush]: Stop kidding, it’s nothing big!

[You]: I insist. Eventually, maybe I can make it up to you in another way?

The answer was almost immediately, but it didn’t make any sense.

[Crush]: hfmcdsvsd

[You]: ?

[Crush]: Sorry, my phone fell down. Perhaps we can have a dinner together? Tomorrow’s evening?

Logan’s eyes widened. He hesitated few minutes but finally typed an answer.

[You]: If you want, I do not mind. I can look for a good restaurant in the city and book the table. What time?

[Crush]: 5 pm?

[You]: Perfect. I’ll send you a name of the restaurant and an address. Should I pick you up or you want to go there by your car?

[Crush]: I don’t want to be a trouble, I can go by myself.

[You]: You wouldn’t be. Just text me an address and I’ll pick you up.

[Crush]: Okey dokey!

Logan sat down at the couch and sent Virgil a quick message.

[You]: I don’t know how but I guess that I have tomorrow a date.

[Virgil]: Cool. Does it mean you won’t change “crush” to “crash”?

[You]: … Probably not.

Quick note: I probably will write a second part of it from Patton’s perspective, because... This is how writing works. But I don’t know when I’ll finish, because I have exams at my university ^^”“ EDIT: I did it!

#Sanders Sides #Thomas Sanders #humanAU #fanfiction #my fanfiction #logicality #analogical #as friends #Virgil Sanders #Anxiety Sanders #Logan Sanders #Logic Sanders #Patton Sanders #Morality Sanders #crush

[televinita]

Reading Triage

All-new and fully updated since the last triage post. Maybe if I hype the books to myself in a public way, they will STOP DISAPPOINTING ME.

(In no particular order, which makes the second word of my title a lie)

The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book: I first checked this out 3 years ago, ran out of time and/or wasn’t quite in the right mood for it then, but always meant to go back. I’m definitely in the mood to read about opening a bookstore in a small town right now...

[verdict: 5-stars-amazing]

Freshman Year and Other Unnatural Disasters - Meredith Zeitlin: OK, this is probably a 3-star read, but the good kind of 3 stars --light and cute. I’m really into thinking about people entering high school right now, kinda wishing I was back in that stage, so this is the headspace I want to be in.

[verdict: accurate]

Sophomore Year is Greek to Me - Meredith Zeitlin: Same, but this one is set in Greece, and summer is a fun time to imagine being there (even though that’s not when she goes). Comparisons to Anna and the French Kiss have already poisoned the well (am not a fan of the former), but maybe it will surprise me!

[verdict: see previous book, but this one was better[

Plague Land - Alex Scarrow: I’m always down for plague apocalypses! Except when I’m not. So I might not get to this one after all, but perhaps a desire for a thriller will strike. ...unless it’s a trilogy. Then I am less willing to commit.

[verdict:  super enjoyable! i also read the sequel immediately, and would have finished the trilogy except book 3 was just published this year and local library does not have it.]

Mariam Sharma Hits The Road - Sheba Karim: Lured by the bright cover, I came for the road trip aspect. Unsure if conversations about sexuality and/or cultural/religious identity will overwhelm  it. Pretty leery that they will. Reviews are not promising, but oftentimes people are morally outraged about things that I don’t notice. The same things can still annoy me for different reasons, though.

[verdict: threw it out after 5-10 pages. full of obnoxiousness]

The Opposite of Love - Sarah Lynn Scheerger: High potential for hurt/comfort: good! 272 pages of small print: bad. I am lazy, yo. It would help if I could figure out which teen characters from TV I would like to cast in this. Why do I literally always forget everyone except the kids from Glee when I need them for books, and remember them only when it’s too late?

...d’ya think I could run this with O.C.? Ryan/Marissa? I need a “wild child” rebellious girl I won’t hate and a considerate boy with abusive/drunk/absent parents from the wrong side of the tracks. I’m liking this hypothetical character slate, but I also truly cannot remember a single other fictional teen right now, so.

(update: Southern CA setting and the guy’s best friend with a “house that feels like home” is Jewish. You are not even slightly putting me off here.)

(update 2: maybe not, w/ repeatedly being reminded the guy is 200 pounds and suggestion that the girl is not white, but that’s okay, I’m into the characters on their own merit now.)

[FINAL VERDICT: um, it was all the hurt/comfort I could have desired and I immediately bought the $1 copy off the library’s sale shelf after reading]

Girl Online On Tour - Zoe Sugg: I enjoyed the first book last year more than I expected, and as my heart was filling with hate @ the mediocre books last week, I decided that finally continuing this trilogy (I had to order it via ILL) would at least make reading fun again. Reviews are...not promising on its ability to continue to deliver the best aspect, Brooklyn Boy and their romance, but it should still hit at least 3 stars and be fun enough.

[verdict: continued the 4-star streak and was super enjoyable! book 3 is where it faltered, but even that was still enjoyable.]

POTENTIAL FUTURE TITLES IF ALL OF THE ABOVE FAIL ME

[Blanket verdict: as of 10/22, I only got around to reading the last two. Summerlost was crap -- thankfully I did NOT suffer the audio -- and Hooked was, I think, worth it, but also put me into a second reading slump when it took me over a week to finish pushing through; the latter half is better than the first]

-The Geography of Lost Things - Jessica Brody (I’m still in the breathless anticipation stage and happy there, but if this isn’t 4 stars with potential to go up I will be shocked)

-The Wonder of Us - Kim Culbertson (will have to order via ILL)

The Possibility of Now - Kim Culbertson

-Tokyo Heist - Diana Renn (loved her last armchair vacation thriller, just not sure if Japan is the country I want to be in)

-Hooked - Catherine Greenman (a reread, perhaps setting myself up for disappointment as I rated it 3 stars before, but I can’t remember anything except that it REALLY feels like that cannot be right and I would like it more now)

- Summerlost - Ally Condie (oooh, also available as an audiobook!)

#reading triage #queued