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scintillyyy · 1 year

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so i want (finally after months of this sitting in my drafts) to say some things about dana winters-drake, because she, along with jack and janet fascinate me. and i'm going to preface this and say: yes, i know she was created and written by terrible sexist writers, a lot of her more negative traits are because terrible sexist writers don't understand or care about how to write women and write them as laughably wtf, and none of what i'm saying means that i think she deserved her ultimate fate (she definitely did not, and i am mad about it). but! she is more complex than just a generic good mom and she has some really interesting negative characteristics to me. and i'm gonna put this under a read more, because this is probably going to get long

#1 dana as the worst physical therapist in the world:

so i'm going to start with my main point of contention(? i don't know, maybe not that strong) with her: her introduction. she's introduced as jack's physical therapist, and i will not lie, this comes very, very close to absolutely ruining her completely for me and the only reason is doesn't is because i'm aware of who created her, so it's not her fault. i'm am absolutely biased about this, i will admit it. i find this personally abhorrent on every level due to personal reasons, and there is no way anyone will ever convince me that this is not that bad. there is no situation in which dana is not a total monster for this. and i am correct about this. i promise you i can argue every "but" you have about it. i'm sorry. (unless, of course, your argument is 'but this is comics and we don't ascribe that much real life morality to comics', in which case: fair. that's true.)

because i want to make it clear: jack sucks, but dana is the one in the wrong here when it comes to them getting in a relationship. i see a lot of "but she was way younger than him" kind of framing her as an innocent young ingenue to jack's older, predatory ways and i'm over here like...that's not how this works at all.

because dana was the professional in the patient-provider relationship. jack shouldn't have been weird or flirty with her, absolutely, please don't harass your health care professionals (but it also tracks! a survey of physical therapists showed that 84% reported being sexually harassed at work from a patient during their career. so yes, of course jack, a man in his 40s-50s would absolutely try to flirt with his PT, 100%) but the thing is...there's nothing actually stopping jack from trying to flirt with his PT. it's annoying and he shouldn't, but there's no laws against it. dana is the one who has the moral, legal, and ethical obligation to maintain a solely professional relationship with jack (yes, even if she is younger than him-also, i promise you, she was at least 24-25 even being introduced in the 90s. at that time physical therapy was largely a master's program following a 4 year bachelor program. she has a fully developed frontal lobe. she's old enough to know her responsibilities. you don't graduate from school for physical therapy or any other rehabilitation job knowing anything but getting with a patient is the #1 no-no, go directly to jail, do not pass go, etc). she is the healthcare provider in this relationship. jack can flirt with her until the cows come home and it's her responsibility to shut him down every time.

because!! there's a little thing called a practice act. it governs what a licensed professional is and isn't allowed to do. and look, i found new jersey's. highlighted just for you. no amount of ~but they're in love~ will help here. no excuses dana!!

i just live in a world where she loses her license to practice after she gets together with jack, okay. like, tbf, she doesn't get shown actually going on dates with jack until after he can walk again in robin #15, but this is nowhere near at least 3 months after he's done with his rehab. like. it's heavily implied that their relationship basically started while she was actively treating him. like. is he even done with his rehab at this point? he mentions he's almost there wrt his walking so is she still his physical therapist? it's never made clear when she stops. dana starts sleeping with him a few issues after this, so god, i hope so.

anyways, even if she had waited three months after terminating their patient-provider relationship, there's various other reasons why her choosing to get together with jack at all after being his physical therapist is a little morally sus even if technically legal. because here's a list of things that dana would technically probably have access to/know about jack as her patient:

does jack have erectile dysfunction issues as a result of his neurologic damage from the poison? she has access to his medications, so she knows.

does jack have depression/other mental health issues from the loss of his wife/is he getting therapy/is he on anti-depressants? it's probably in his chart as a part of coordination of care. is that mental health stuff relevant to his care at all? in this case probably, given the fact that his quadriplegia is wrapped up in the incident that also murdered his wife.

has she worked with jack at all about modifying sexual positions on account of his impairments? pts will discuss this with patients if it's relevant to their care. they actually learn in school on how to educate patients with quadriplegia on how they might have to modify their intimacy with their partners in case it's relevant to care.

patients tend to confide in their PTs a lot. a lot. since they tend to see their rehab providers a lot more than other providers, patients are far more likely to confide a lot of really personal stuff to them because of the rapport/trust that builds between them over time. has jack cried over janet in his sessions with dana? has jack talked about his insecurities about how things will never be the same for him or his mobility and how that makes him feel? has he discussed his frustration at his progress or lack thereof? i cannot stress how much dana has probably gotten to know jack over the course of their rehab together, really sensitive stuff, and then to turn around and get into a relationship with a patient after having been entrusted with that sensitive information about them? would be extremely sus on the part of that provider. would you feel comfortable if that was your dad? you shouldn't.

like, this is fundamentally a very intimate and delicate patient case given everything that jack has been through. which makes it even more important that a clear line of professionalism is drawn and maintained. and dana didn't do that, clearly.

#2. dana prioritizes her position as jack's partner over her position tim's "mom"

now, i don't think this is a bad thing, necessarily! she is, after all, tim's step-mom and she made it clear from the beginning she had no intention of taking tim's mom's place. and she and tim do see each other as family and clearly care about each other. i think she's a very good step-mom, actually! she's willing to listen to tim and she tries to be a mediator between him and his dad/advocate for tim.

that being said, she almost always will capitulate to jack's position in the end. she might try to get jack to ease up, but she never really actively fights against jack's final decision on what to do with tim. remember the tv ripping out of the wall incident? in robin #45?

this happens after dana came in and talked to tim and said she'll talk to his dad about jack hearing out tim's side of the ariana story. she does, because jack comes in hoping to talk things out and when tim is ignoring him he does this lovely move. so what does this have to do with dana? well here's the thing: dana is still only dating jack at this point. she's not married to him, she can leave at any time. if she's over at their house, there's no way she missed this happening. did she wonder why jack came back from his talk with tim with tim's tv at all? did she shrug it off when she heard him start screaming at tim (remember, drake manor is big but it's not that big)? she clearly accepted that jack grounded tim for weeks after this. she's clearly not opposed to staying in a relationship with a man who would do this to his son. which says something about her. no matter how awful jack treats tim (in front of her even) she maintains a very harmonious relationship with the man and continues to want to be in a relationship with him, so as much as she might try to surface disapprove of jack's treatment of tim, in the end she'll shrug and accept it because she won't implode her relationship with jack over his treatment of tim. she definitely prioritizes her place as jack's partner. see robin #66, jack yelling at tim for running away back to gotham city right in front of dana. she's still not married to him!! this could be a deal breaker for her and it's not!!

here's her being clearly fine and going with jack on a vacation to blizzard central chicago, il right before the holidays in the dcu holiday bash iii.

here she is being more concerned about when jack is going to ask her to marry him when he's sending tim to boarding school as punishment for no man's land in robin #74:

like none of this is mutually exclusive with her being a pretty nice step-mom to tim. just that is she's okay and is a person who wants to be in a very good relationship with jack drake, she has to be someone who accepts jack's treatment of tim. she doesn't want to actually rock the boat with jack in a way that would actually jeopardize her relationship with him, as much as she tries to soften his treatment of tim.

she's clearly okay with jack just calling tim in robin #78 to tell him they're getting married. she's popping toasting to celebrate as he does this. she never said, hey jack, maybe we should tell tim in person?

#3. dana is kind of judgemental about tim's girlfriends in defense of tim/lowkey a little sexist and she's a fair representation of a republican woman.

now, this one is fair to ignore because it was written mainly by dixon and willingham, but also the sexist things she's said/implies about them is actually fairly realistic imo because the republican older women i know have said things along the vein of things dana has said. in robin #45 she says this weird thing about ariana

by saying she is implying that she knows that ariana is actually the one at fault for this entire mess and tim has to protect her reputation and saying that ariana would have a "reputation" if it came out that she was actually the one at fault. which. maybe in the 90s, but also this is a very old, conservative viewpoint on women so.

and then in robin #124 where she defaults to blaming stephanie for corrupting tim (also, she's like "jack we shouldn't do this" but then. like. doesn't actually fight him and stop him from doing this she let's him do this. then is like sigh, guess i'll make tim's favorite lasagna rather than actually fight and stop jack from doing this).

which yea, willingham. but given that dana has defaulted to defending tim over his girlfriends in the past re: ariana, i actually think it's quite in line for a more conservative woman like dana to be super nice to their son's girlfriends up until their son potentially looks bad and then immediately turning their backs on them because or the idea that their sons ~could never~. like. i hear the following things from conservative women at least 3x/week (paraphrased):

oh, well, girls you know. they're so much more drama than boys.

my boys were so easy, but my daughter? oh god, i can't even begin with her

girls are so catty. boys are so much easier to deal with.

my son has this girlfriend. i just. i. hmmm. i just don't know about her. she's. she's. she's okay, i guess. i have some concerns.

as for how i know she's a conservative woman? she's happily and harmoniously married to jack and she's a PT in bristol township. i am 110% certain she's a registered republican. with her moral ambiguity and slighy sexism she reads as a fairly realistic conservative to me.

anyways in conclusion, i think she's actually a lot more complex than just generic good step-mom! she has a lot of failures and negative characteristics that makes her more interesting to me than just good sainted woman who puts up with jack and tim. she has her own faults. we do have to remember that she had a very good relationship with jack and saw how he treated tim and was largely okay with it. maybe jack was someone she thought she could change. maybe she agreed with him on a lot of things. jack and dana have the harmonious relationship that fandom wants jack and janet (a very volatile and ultimately ill-matched relationship) to have had!

anyways here's one final panel from robin #100 of dana saying that tim could just get a job and help out with the family finances after jack lost the company that i couldn't think of where else to put it (like, she's probably joking. but clearly this is something both she and jack find funny to joke about.)

#dana winters #jack drake #tim drake #batman #dc

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emilykaldwen · 11 months

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how do you make a original character for a fanfic?

Anon, I'm sorry for delay in answering this but you see, when you dropped this into the inbox, I legit sat up and went 'My Time Has Come'. You can ask my citadel girlies (gender-neutral) about my passion for character creation because I like to smack them in the face with it (affectionately) on the regular. And here's the thing, I'm nowhere near the Word on how to do this. In fact, I am genuinely surprised to have gotten this ask. So thank you? I'm glad you like my writing!

There's like, five million ways I could do this sort of breakdown, touching on internalized misogyny and why we connect with the media we do and how this all ties into our mental health at the time but I don't think that's what you're asking about, so I'm gonna pull back on myself and talk about how I create original characters for Fic.

I feel like character creation, especially in fanfic is such a nuanced discussion that I don't think has really been talked about but we'll be here for 84 years if I launch into this now.

ALL OF THIS IS MY OWN OPINION. I'm just a rando on the internet and have my own approaches and opinions on things. If you feel like I'm specifically calling you out, I can assure you, I'm not, and I will not entertain people getting snippy at me because they want to be offended because they think I criticized them personally on the internet.

SO! HOW DO I CREATE AN ORIGINAL CHARACTER FOR FAN FICTION?

Questions, my friend, and the most important one is:

Why am I creating this character?

You need to be honest with yourself. Only yourself. Not the answer you think people will want to hear, or the one that you'll be least embarrassed to share. There are no wrong answers here, creativity comes from so many places within us. THIS SETS THE EXPECTATION.

Why am I creating this character? Is it because you have a crush on the actor? Is it because you want to be the pretty princess and have everyone fawn and fall in love with you? Is it because everyone is stupid in this story and someone needs to clean up the mess? Is it because you see a gap in the story that you feel should be told? All? None?

(In my opinion, the only 'wrong' answer is that you're creating a self-insert avatar to punish yourself. I've been there. It was not a great place, but I wasn't in therapy at the time. I eventually got over punishing myself in fic form)

For me, character creation comes from trying to add something to the story. The existence of my character should have interesting ramifications through the story. For me, if I'm going through the trouble of creating a character that fits into this world, I want them to have effect and change. There should be change. If nothing is changing in the story, then I'll just go read/watch the source material than sit around making someone who basically boils down to a spectator of what's happening.

Characters in our stories are real. They are living and breathing.

Example 1: I have an OC, Myranda Greyjoy. Instead of flying to Storm's End, Aemond flies to Pyke and brings her back to King's Landing. You know what that means? Vhagar doesn't go chomp on Luke, and Luke likely makes it back home unharmed or stays the night at Storm's End until it's safer to fly. So that means blood and cheese doesn't happen, and the war doesn't kick off immediately (which follows canon in terms of Luke's death being the trigger for blood and cheese which in turn means no one is gonna back down).

Example 2: In one of my original drafts of The Maiden and the Drowning Boy, Abby was at Harrenhal when Daemon took the castle (in Fire & Blood, this happens before Storm's End). In the book, Aemond is sent to Storm's End to treat with Borros, but if I kept this event in the fic, it would be in character for Aegon to mount Sunfyre and grab Aemond to go fuck Daemon up because his wife, the Queen, is being held by the enemy. Now, while this is super interesting, it had the potential to cut the dance of dragons down real short and quite frankly? I didn't want to deviate too much from the original dance in terms of some major events because that means that i have to come up with all of that stuff too. My ass doesn't have time for that. (but it's a cool idea)

Okay, so you know why you're creating your OC for whatever reason. Here's the next thing to understand:

CREATING YOUR CHARACTER/STORY FOR POPULARITY/VIRAL/EVERYONE MUST READ THIS IS ONLY GOING TO LEAD TO HEARTBREAK.

You've heard it time and again: write for yourself! and you're like the fuck does that mean asshole? I know, I know! And I really have to thank the AO3 Subreddit for helping me clarify what this means and how it impacts me.

Engagement is Down across the board, across all fandoms. It has nothing to do with you as a writer, it has no reflection on the quality of your work.

Comments are rare. Sometimes they never happen. It fucking sucks. I hate it. I've heard friends go into the lack of comment engagement. Validation is nice. We thrive on it! It feels so good to be told how awesome your work is, what people connected with, etc.

You cannot write for the comments. You cannot write for the external validation. You cannot maintain a sense of stable mental health if you are focused on the feedback.

So find your people.

I found mine! I've been working on my fic since NaNo in November 2022 and am only just now getting ready to start publishing, and I wouldn't have made it if it wasn't because my fic made my one friend happy. Now? I have a handful of people that I've cultivated real friendships with that support and cheer me on just as I support and cheer them on. They're my audience. Everyone else? Are fantastically appreciated extra dessert.

(Perfectionism is a real thing that so many of us actually do struggle with and if you're not meeting the specific standard that you think you should be meeting because you're a better writer than that super popular fic, you are going to make yourself miserable)

So what does this all boil down to?

YOU ARE ENOUGH.

You do not have to put some deep political dramatic plot scaffolding around your story in order for your OC to be taken seriously and so you can be 'allowed' to have your OC and the canon character hook up. This is YOUR story. You get to write what you want! You get to see how this story will go!

but if you want people to be receptive to your OC and the story at large, then you need to work on making your character living and breathing in the story.

Rattle test! Have a few friends who are trusted to talk through your character and plot and make sure they aren't afraid to ask the hard questions.

Me: Should Jace accidentally punch Abby in this scene cause she tried to get between them Me and Friend at the same time: Aegon would kill him, let's not do that.

I had another possible plot line where this other character was flirting with Aegon. It sounded cool in my head! but talking through it, it just really didn't work out or make much sense.

Anyway, I can go on and on about this subject, and probably write a whole thesis on this delving into how character creation in fan works should be an act of love, not self punishment, and how internalized misogyny plays a huge role in why people are usually averse to reading OC fan fic (in that I mean, the OCs often hate other women, are 'not like other girls' but everyone loves them, etc).

It's hard creating OCs to get people to read them. There's a ton of people out there who simply will not read OC work on principal.

But a final note:

Original characters =/= Reader Inserts. By that I mean, the whole reader fic genre is written specifically for the reader to imagine themselves in the situation. Original characters may be an author insert, but they are not the reader cipher. also original character =/= author insert either, but also you should be totes honest with yourself if you are writing your own insert. It's not a bad thing, it just gives your expectations.

#characters #character creation #original characters #writing resources #I hope this helped anon!#thanks for asking!

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collecting-stories · 2 years

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Napoleon - Eddie Munson

Summary: you're back in Hawkins over winter break and you run into Eddie Munson at the grocery store.

A/N: This is actually, technically the first Eddie fic I wrote. I had it sitting in my drafts on my phone. It's not all that good so I apologize in advance.

Stranger Things Masterlist

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

Hawkins, Indiana wasn’t exactly a place that embraced too many changes. It was something you’d always hated growing up but something you were beginning to find oddly endearing, especially now, standing in front of the ice cream section at the grocery store and trying to find plain strawberry without the vanilla and chocolate. The same hokey Christmas decorations were out at all the same houses, the same displays were still up in the grocery store, even the same people were parked behind the registers.

You’d paid particular attention to lane 5. If anyone or anything in Hawkins hadn’t changed since the last time you’d been home, it was Eddie Munson. You heard from Gareth, because he lived next door to you and would brain dump whatever information you asked for simply because you were paying attention to him for five seconds, that Eddie was repeating senior year. It wasn’t surprising, per say. He wasn’t stupid by any means but he also wasn’t facing a future brimming with too many possibilities. Unless of course, he made it out to New York or something and Corroded Coffin actually took off (something you were totally convinced was possible).

Abandoning the search for strawberry you walked down the aisle and over to the registers, getting in Eddie’s empty lane. He wasn’t looking up, scribbling something in a notebook next to his register and possibly talking to himself.

“What are the odds you guys have just straight up strawberry ice cream hiding somewhere in the back?” You asked, finally catching his attention.

Eddie’s head snapped up and he couldn’t stop the stupid smile on his face at the sight of you. Okay, maybe he should’ve been embarrassed, even just slightly. He knew Christmas break would mean college kids back in Hawkins, he’d already seen some of his class of ‘84 and they’d been less than kind about the fact that he was still in high school. If he wasn’t a freak already with the hair and the clothes and the music and Hellfire Club than he was whatever else they could think of for being held back from graduating. Slow, stupid, or worse. Who knew college kids cared to be so cruel.

You’d always been nice to him in high school. In any grade really. He was pretty sure he’d managed to sit next to you 185 days out of the year from kindergarten to 12th grade. Elementary school was probably the best, he could remember playing werewolves and vampires with you (and the accidental time he got detention cause the teacher saw him try to stab you with a piece of wood despite him explaining the stake through the heart necessity when killing a vampire). Middle school was alright, you were still nice to him but you had different friends. Not popular friends, just different ones. High school was more of the same.

“Eddie?”

“What?” He blinked a couple times, eyes meeting yours.

“Do you have strawberry ice cream?”

“Me, personally?” He pointed to himself and you almost laughed out loud.

“The store, does the store have strawberry or just neapolitan?”

“Just neapolitan.” Eddie replied. He’d worked over night on Tuesday when the ice cream shipment had come in, freezing his ass off for eight hours to unload and stock ice cream in mid-December. “Which is a classic.”

“Debatable.”

“Debatable? No, you can’t debate classics. Is Black Sabbath’s first album a classic? Absolutely. Is Out of the Silent Planet a classic? Of course, non-arguable. I mean, vanilla and chocolate, again, classics.”

“Okay,” you nodded slowly, drawing the word out, “I’ve clearly been away so long I forgot you were nuts.”

“You just have bad taste.” Eddie replied, matter of fact and unbothered by your teasing.

“Well that can’t be true…I like you don’t I?”

He sputtered for a second, like his brain was working on a delay, and then pushed on, ignoring the comment in case he said something that made him look stupid. (No assumptions would be made about the meaning of your words, Eddie wouldn’t risk it).

Instead, he turned the conversation back to ice cream, “how can you not like them? What could possibly be better than three ice cream flavours for the price of one?”

“Strawberry ice cream? By itself.” You replied, ignoring the miniature outburst. He grimaced almost comically, his whole face scrunching up and a deep set frown marring his features. “I’ll tell you what Eddie-“

“What Eddie?” He repeated, jumping when you reached across the conveyor belt to smack his arm.

“Since I’m forced to get the neapolitan, you can have the chocolate and vanilla.” You offered.

“You could always get a different flavor?” Eddie suggested, the immediate offer going over his head.

“I see how it is,” you left your basket full of groceries on the conveyor belt as you backed out of his lane, plans of returning to the frozen food aisle on your mind, “been gone for like four months and you don’t wanna spend time with me. Just some loser college freshman. Guess I’m not cool enough for you now.”

“That’s not, no, that’s not what I said!” Eddie practically launched himself over the bags, foot catching on the end of the register and tripping him up momentarily until he was on your side of the lane. You couldn’t help laughing then as people looked over at the two of you. “You should definitely get the neapolitan. Good choice.”

“You know when I was younger I was convinced that it was pronounced napoleon.” You mentioned, dipping your spoon in the strawberry side of the Turkey Hill tub.

There was a fairly decent chance that Eddie would get written up (if not fired) for leaving early.

“What was pronounced napoleon?” Eddie asked, leaning back against the couch and turning his head to look at you. His hair had grown out even from the last time you saw him and you clenched your hand into a fist against your side to resist the overwhelming urge you were experiencing to run your fingers through the curling fringe covering his forehead.

“The ice cream,” you replied, dipping your spoon half into the strawberry and half into the vanilla.

“Whoa!” Eddie sat up suddenly, grabbing your wrist before you could take the bite, “what is this? Are you dipping my vanilla?”

“It’s like an 8th of the scoop! It was unavoidable.” You insisted, trying to pull your hand away, “Eddie; give me my hand, it’s gonna spill.”

Keeping eye contact with you and smiling that shit eating grin he always wore, he opened his mouth and stuck the spoon in, his lips brushing your fingers as he stole the bite of ice cream. You pulled your hand away, the spoon sliding out between his lips.

You would argue that you were incredibly exhausted from midterms and having to be at your parents house again after four months of stressful freedom but what’s your said in the grocery store was true. You liked Eddie, always had. When your friends were crushing over kids who looked like all their favourite celebrities, you were obsessing over everything Eddie Munson did as if he really was the heavy metal god he dressed like.

So it shouldn’t have come as any great surprise that as he licked his lips, brown eyes still looking right at yours, you leaned forward and kissed him. He tasted like vanilla, strawberry, and cigarettes and he kissed you back, cold rings and warm fingers pressing against your neck and jaw as he held your face in his hands.

“Holy shit,” Eddie breathed out as you pulled away, leaning into you as if he was chasing the kiss.

You opened your eyes first, watching the dazed expression on Eddie’s face change as his eyes fluttered open. He pulled his hands away, his fingers leaving sparks where they’d pressed into your skin.

“Told you I have good taste,” you joked, dipping your spoon back in the strawberry ice cream and smiling around a mouthful of the dessert as Eddie’s cheeks flushed all the way up to his ears. When he didn’t say anything after a minute, you leaned into his space again, “I haven’t rendered you speechless have I?” You asked in mock disbelief.

In all the years that you’d known Eddie, there weren’t too many times that you could remember him at a loss for words, if there were any. He took a deep breath in, holding it for a second as he shook his head, hair brushing against his shoulders, before he exhaled. “Can we do that again?”

You nod, eagerly, leaving the spoon on the coffee table and laying your hands on Eddie’s shoulders to give you better leverage to climb into his lap. He doesn’t object at all, instead he brings you closer to him, one hand behind your neck as he guides you into another kiss. This one far more insistent. You moved your hands from his shoulders to his neck, fingers brushing against his hair. When you’d gone to the grocery store for ice cream you hadn’t exactly banked on bringing Eddie Munson home with you or making out with him. But here he was, in your living room, tongue down your throat (not literally) and all you could think about was tenth grade.

“This is just like Barbie Haskins halloween party.” You mentioned when Eddie broke air. He pressed a kiss to your neck and laid his forehead on your shoulder, hands squeezing your sides affectionately. “Or it will be if you don’t call me after this.”

“How was I supposed to know you call a person after seven minutes in heaven?” He said, warm breath fanning across your collar.

“I said call me,” you almost laughed, “and then you never did.”

Eddie lifted his head to look at you, “we were both pretty drunk, I wasn’t exactly convinced that you wanted me to actually call you.” He made a decent point. You had downed at least four cups of Barbie’s famous red juice by the time she ‘begged’ everyone to play seven minutes in heaven. You weren’t even sure Eddie had been invited to the party or why he was there in the first place but you remembered clear as day, dragging him from the drinks to the middle of the living room.

“You wanna know a secret?” You asked, tucking a piece of hair behind his ear and leaning in so close that your foreheads were almost touching.

Eddie’s eyes narrowed, “what?” He asked conspiratorially, playing along as if you really had some sort of secret to tell him.

“I didn’t pick your name out of Barbie’s hat.” You confessed, remembering clear as day that it had been one of the guys on the basketball team. You’d looked at the name, grimaced, and figured no one would be any the wiser if you just, said Eddie’s name instead. Besides, he’d looked so good that night and you were so obsessed with him. Making out in a dark closet seemed like the perfect way to celebrate Halloween.

“What?” He bit down on his bottom lip, trying not to smile. He squeezed your sides again, fingers pressing into your hips.

You shrugged, “I just wanted to make out with you, kinda like we were doing now...” you kissed the left side of his jaw and then the right, “kinda like I wouldn’t mind getting back to.”

“We can get back to it. We should definitely get back to it.” He agreed.

“Definitely.”

taglist: @kenzi-woycehoski @bookfrog242 @milkiane

#eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson #eddie munson x gender neutral reader #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fic #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things fanfic #stranger things imagine #collecting stories imagine

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sky-high-my-beloved · 7 months

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Why did DR. COFFIN no longer continue publishing fanfics?

DR. COFFIN began publishing his fanfics about Sky High for the first time on Nov 3, 2005, this being "Flight" with Warren Peace as the protagonist since she is, in his own words, his favorite character.

May 18, 2006: It would be the day on which Sky High would publish the series: a synopsis compilation with his writing partner WARRENFIRE.

WARRENFIRE: I publish 84 synopsis. DR. COFFIN: published 78 synopsis.

(Remember that these are in no specific order.)

As it says in the same publication, they decided to only publish 5 stories chosen by the fans since they did not believe they could write them all. From the votes it was decided to change the number to 14 of which were going to be written but only a few arrived and others were deleted since they were published on the WARRENFIRE account which disappeared, leaving only the message below.

Published: Dec 18, 2006: but moving on to the controversial issue, WARRENFIRE showed a fanaticism for Sky High which is not known how it ended, since if we go to his account we can see that his love for the movie turned to hatred for it, it is not known why, perhaps a fight or a disagreement but as DR. COFFIN in the story "Sky High Christmas Special: Snow Ball Fight" disappeared.

DR. COFFIN, Note:

As many of you know, this idea was a joint effort by myself and Warrenfire to give us all something as close to a Sky High tv series as we're likely to ever get (at least until Paul Hernandez gets the rights back from Disney unless they wake up and realize they're sitting on a million dollar opportunity). It has been fun, and Warrenfire and I have bounced over a hundred ideas (EACH) off of each other to come up with a series. Sadly, things haven't worked out as well as we had hoped. Recent events at home have really screwed up my time to get anything written, resulting in long delays that have frustrated me to no end. Combine this with the fact that Warrenfire has apparently dropped off the face of the earth after deleting all the episodes he "produced" so far, and things don't look so good for this idea to continue. But that depends entirely upon you, the readers. Do you want me to continue this series of stories? There are a lot of good ones in the works (including ones featuring appearances by Disney characters such as Dr. Drakken and Shego, and the gang from "Hercules"), and we have yet to learn the plans of Royal Pain and Barron Battle. Warrenfire e-mailed me the rough drafts for a few of his stories from him, and I'd really like to put those out for you all to read, and there is a great cliff hanger "season finale" coming up as well. While I personally would love to continue doing this, my time is still rather limited, and there are three other projects I need to work on. These include the sequel to "We're Not In Kansas Anymore" (Sky High/Smallville) which takes place a year after the first story with Clark, Layla, Warren and the others in their sophomore year. Due to continued demand, I also want to continue the Sky High/Sharkboy and Lavagirl crossover I did as a couple of little one-shots over a year ago, turn it into a full blown story, and also add the characters from "Zoom: Academy for Super Heroes" (yeah, the movie was a bad Sky High rip-off but the characters have a lot of potential). Finally, I am laying the groundwork to writing a novel. Actually I have ideas for several of them, but I need to settle down on one idea and take it from there.

So there you have it. Please let me know if my continuing to work on the "series" is something you all want to continue to read, or if I should just wrap it up as a "miniseries" and go on to the other projects. I look forward to getting your feedback.

#skyhigh2005 #sky high 2005 #sky high movie #sky high #skyhigh #fanfic #fanfiction

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threadbaresweater · 9 months

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HI HELLO 🫶 if you are still accepting asks for the game: 🔐📝🍒? :3c

For you, Mao, I'd do anything! Well....almost anything. At least within the scope of our online friendship hahaha. But yes, of course I'll answer for you!

🔐 something no one would guess about you

Hm, something no one irl would guess about me: that I hang out here and go crazy over stories and art about fictional dick 😜

Something no one here would guess about me: That I'm an accomplished, respected musician who might be a little bit hometown famous for all the things I do.

🍒 what is your earliest memory

I couldn't have been more than two or three years old, but I remember sitting at the kitchen table in the duplex where we lived. Our upstairs neighbor was visiting, and I remember being aware of the fact that my mom did NOT like her. She brought a blender cup full of cut fruit and sat it in the middle of the kitchen table and we ate it while she and mom talked. I also recall the baby-shit green ceramic tile around our fireplace and pretending to be a witch while making my "brew". This was probably....1983? 84? The house we lived in was fresh out of the 60's.

📝 last thing you wrote

It's a bakery AU with Nanami and a music store owner. I actually wrote a little last night!! But it's super slow going. I don't have a lot of time to sit and write as much as I'd like anymore 😭

Thank you, Mao! I was thinking about you this morning and how we had started outlining a found family fic for Aki, Denji, and Power, and then we both fell headfirst into other obsessions. I think I still have the draft in my docs 😆.

#ask game!#my darling mao mao

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tinyunderwear · 2 years

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From Sandy Hook to the NHL Draft, one prospect’s enduring connection

Scott Wheeler

Jul 13, 2021

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the date of the Sandy Hook shooting. We apologize for the error.

At 9:39 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, Patty and Fred Samoskevich were sitting in the Blue Colony Diner on Church Hill Road in Newtown, Conn. They were eating breakfast when cop cars started flying through their quiet town.

“My God, there’s no reason why they need to be travelling that fast,” Patty said.

As they stepped out of the diner and into the parking lot, the wave of Newtown local police turned into a rush of Connecticut state troopers. They assumed the worst.

“Something has happened,” Patty said, turning to Fred, believing at first that the worst could be a fire, or maybe a robbery at a nearby bank.

Patty was supposed to hop on the interstate ramp adjacent the diner to begin the commute to her job of more than 25 years in the mortgage business. Fred, a tower crane operator, needed to turn right to make the short trip back to the family’s home down Riverside Road.

But before she got in her car and he in his truck, Patty turned to her husband again.

“You know what, before I get on the highway I’m just going to take a ride by the kids’ school just to make sure everything’s OK there,” she said.

So she went left to make the short drive to Reed Intermediate, a school for fifth and sixth graders where her twin children, Mackie and Maddy, had just begun that fall. When all was quiet there, she turned back and hopped on I-84, while cop cars continued to speed past her in the other direction.

Less than a mile from the diner, Fred came to a stop, hopping out of his truck where the cruisers had screeched to a halt outside Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Knowing that the road was a slow, meandering drive through the woods on a normal day, Fred, without talking to anyone and still believing he’d arrived at the scene of a fire at the school, decided to direct the traffic that had begun to back up, waving through fire trucks, town officials, and local post office security personnel he didn’t even know existed.

At Reed Intermediate, Mackie and Maddy, who’d celebrated their 10th birthday just a month earlier, were sitting in their science class when its lights were suddenly turned off and they were told they were going into lockdown. They remained there for four hours.

“It’s a day that I’ll never forget,” Maddy says. “I remember every detail about it, which is kind of crazy.”

“I just remember sitting in that dark classroom for the longest time and just not knowing what was going on,” Mackie says. “It was scary.”

Long before that morning, Sandy Hook Elementary held a place close to the hearts of the Samoskevich family and everyone else who called Newtown home.

Mackie and Maddy had been students there from kindergarten through fourth grade until their graduation that spring. Before them, their older sister Melissa was there, too. The school itself sits just a couple thousand feet from the Samoskevich family home through the forest that divides them, a walk Mackie guesses might have taken 10 minutes.

But none of the Samoskeviches yet knew of the tragedy that had just taken place. That a gunman had walked through the same school doors they had so many times before to murder 26 of their neighbors, including 20 children just 6 and 7 years old. That the lives of so many in their town had just been shattered. And that, though their family of five would escape unharmed, they would carry that day with them for the rest of their own lives.

Nearly nine years later, Mackie is set to be picked in the first or second round of the 2021 NHL Draft. And when people ask him about the town listed in his bio or about his family, he has a singular appreciation for what those things mean to him.

Newtown (or Sandy Hook as he calls it), Fred, Patty, Maddy and Melissa are his world, his everything.

There were two things that eventually made Fred realize it wasn’t a fire.

The first was when his kids’ former kindergarten teacher, Janet Vollmer, emerged from the school with her students. In the moment, he found himself thinking it was weird that her crying didn’t appear to be out of pain but as someone who was trying, desperately, to keep her composure.

“Mrs. Vollmer, are you OK?” he asked as she passed by him with her trail of children.

“We’re OK,” she said to him. “We’re OK.”

The second was moments later when one of the cars he asked to slow down, an unmarked old Ford van without windows, pulled right past him. Its driver made eye contact before stopping 10 feet from where he was standing to unload half a dozen men holding rifles. When the men leapt out, they didn’t pause to look for someone to talk to, like so many others had. They just sprinted down the street toward the school’s entrance.

Fred cries as he tells the story.

“I’ll never forget Mrs. Vollmer’s words,” he says, pausing to compose himself before choking them out a third and fourth time. “‘We’re OK,’ she said. ‘We’re OK.’ That hits me right now.”

He can still feel how the hair on his arms stood up and his heart sank when the men in that van unloaded.

After they arrived, he recalls how “everything went south” and cruisers made way for ambulances. Then came the groups of gathering parents who passed by with questions he couldn’t answer because he didn’t want to let himself believe that what had actually happened was worse than his worst fear.

“I didn’t really get a closeup. But I had to help out a lot of parents and I didn’t know what they were asking because I was convinced it was a fire,” Fred says between breaths. “That really hurts the most, knowing that I could have talked to one of the mothers that lost a child. That hurts. I couldn’t help her.”

Patty turned around on her way to work that morning when word of what had happened began to hit the news.

“It was a rough morning. It affected us for a long time,” Patty says. “I don’t know to this day how the parents go on. I really don’t.”

Halfway across the country, Melissa was on a bus to Chicago in her first year as a student and hockey player at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in Minnesota when one of her teammates showed her the news on her phone.

The first thing she did was panic, nearly hyperventilating from the shock. Hours later, as she tracked the news and the number of deaths climbed, she allowed herself to cry.

That night, she told herself, “I’m going to play for my hometown tonight,” an experience she describes as out-of-body. The following day, she made arrangements to return home early before Shattuck started its Christmas break.

“I’ll never forget that day. I just felt so separated and so far away,” Melissa says.

When Mackie and Maddy returned home from school and walked through the front door, the first thing they saw was the television lit up with images of people and places that they recognized — and many others in uniform that they did not.

Into that first night and beyond, a world’s worth of news vans arrived and the police presence expanded.

“Helicopters were flying over our house all night. And I mean, tree height with guys on their landing thing with guns in their hands staring at me,” Fred says. “It was pretty heavy.”

Before putting the twins to bed, Fred and Patty sat them down to try to explain what had happened in terms they would understand. “The kids were young. They didn’t fully understand. And it was hard,” Patty says. “We were close with a lot of the faculty.”

When the names of those killed were eventually released, they learned that among them were 6-year-old Jack Pinto (the younger brother of one of Mackie’s classmates, Ben Pinto), 52-year-old Anne Marie Murphy (who taught Melissa in second grade), and 27-year-old Victoria Soto (Melissa’s favorite teacher).

When Melissa arrived home from Shattuck, Patty and Fred struggled with what to do next.

“We ended up bringing them to a rink outside of town to let them skate and try to get their minds off of it,” Patty says, laughing for the first time. “It was all about just trying to keep them safe and keep their minds in the right place.”

Hockey has always been the place the Samoskevich family goes to get away.

It was also the first thing that bound them together, before tragedy ever did.

Fred played the sport into high school and when Melissa was 3 years old, instead of installing a pool in their backyard, he constructed a year-round hockey rink, with concrete for ball hockey in the summers that he could cover in plastic and flood in the winters.

Fred’s backyard rink. (Courtesy the Samoskevich family)

My wife thought I was crazy and I did too when I was about halfway done,” Fred says, chuckling to himself.

By the time the twins arrived and Fred got Maddy onto the ice, she took off walking, her pacifier still in her mouth. Mackie was a different story.

“Mackie started bawling his eyes out,” Fred says. “It probably took him a week to get over it. But I tell ya, once he got over it, he just took over past there.”

Together, the three kids grew up spending their afternoons after school out back, with Melissa showing her younger siblings the ropes. When they’d get called in for dinner, Mackie would strap on goalie gear in the kitchen while Maddy took shots at him. On weekends, they’d follow Melissa to hockey tournaments with her travel team in Eastern New York, stickhandling their way in and out of arena lobbies.

“Part of the reason why they’re the best of friends is because we’ve been together every weekend for their entire lives,” Fred says. “That’s what we loved about it. We were on vacation pretty much every week. We didn’t go to Disney World, we didn’t go for a week to the Caribbean or anything like that. We were in Philly, we were in Boston, we were in Toronto, we were in Edmonton.”

The twins were always inseparable, with Mackie choosing forward and Maddy choosing defense so that they could practice against one another. Both Melissa and Maddy played boys hockey until their bantam years, so Mackie and Maddy also played on the same team until he began playing AAA up a year with the 2001 age group.

Mackie and Maddy also played spring and summer hockey together. (Courtesy the Samoskevich family)

Every step of the way, Melissa was always there to give them pointers after their games.

“She taught us a lot growing up. Just seeing her love for the sport made us fall in love with it,” Maddy says. “And then when she put the work into it, it paid off.”

That work carried Melissa to the pinnacle of the sport. Beyond Shattuck, she played for Team USA’s women’s under-18 team twice (collecting a gold, a silver, and a spot on the tournament all-star team in her second appearance). She then spent four years at Quinnipiac University, including two as captain. She was the second overall pick of the Connecticut Whale in the 2018 NWHL draft. In 2019, she won gold with Team USA again, this time at the women’s world championships. This past season, she was hired as an assistant coach with Penn State’s women’s team (though she’s not yet prepared to call herself retired).

Mackie and Maddy have always tried to follow in her footsteps.

After finishing fifth grade, they both also attended Shattuck. In 2019, Maddy played for Team USA at the under-18 worlds, just like her big sister had. She then also committed to Quinnipiac, where she has just finished her freshman year.

Mackie’s turn to represent Newtown is up next at the University of Michigan — and the NHL beyond that. He spent two years with the USHL’s Chicago Steel following his time at Shattuck.

“To see my sister in those spots, it’s something that I want to do, to be on TV and have everyone watching,” Mackie says. “Just seeing where she was and how she got there has been a huge thing in my life.

“And I also want to represent Sandy Hook. It’s my favorite place in the world.”

Mackie calls his two sisters his best friends, a bond that they all say was strengthened in the years after the shooting.

These last two years, Mackie has called his sisters every week from Chicago. This year, when he broke his finger crashing into the boards, they dreaded being away from him.

As a family, they found the pandemic most difficult because none of the five do well being away from each other. In a normal year, Fred and Patty would visit Mackie half a dozen times in Chicago. This season, they weren’t able to visit until they were both double-vaccinated around playoff time, as Mackie’s Steel chased and won the USHL’s Clark Cup.

As soon as they’d won, he couldn’t wait to get home to celebrate it with them.

“When I’m at home, I’m not usually out and about with other friends because we’re always together and I’d rather be with my sisters,” Mackie says. “Not everybody has that.”

Mackie and Melissa. (Courtesy the Samoskevich family)

None of the people who’ve worked with Mackie over the years have asked him about Sandy Hook. Not Ben Umhoefer, who coaches and runs the program at Shattuck. Not Ryan Hardy nor Brock Sheahan, who were his general manager and coach with the Steel. Not Michigan head coach Mel Pearson, who will welcome him to the Wolverines in the fall.

But they know all about Melissa, Maddy, Patty and Fred, because Mackie’s always talking about them.

And when you ask them to describe Mackie the hockey player, they can do that.

Owen Power, Mackie’s teammate in Chicago and soon at Michigan and the presumptive No. 1 pick in the upcoming draft, calls him the most talented player he’s ever shared the ice with. Pearson gets giddy when he talks about how he may be able to use him.

Umhoefer will tell you that Mackie’s game speaks for itself.

“From a skills, skating, talent perspective, there’s really not a lot to pick holes at,” he says.

Sheahan laughs about how often Mackie appeared in the videos he showed the Steel this season, both offensively and defensively, calling him a complete player. He and Hardy also said they saw Mackie do things every night for two years that nobody else could. Mackie, Sheahan insists, is “as elite as it gets” as a skater and puck handler.

“I think he was the most skilled player in the USHL,” Sheahan says.

Mackie Samoskevich is NHL Central Scouting’s 26th-ranked North American skater in advance of the 2021 NHL Draft. (Courtesy Chicago Steel)

But they’d all rather talk about Mackie the person.

“The way he treats everybody is awesome,” Hardy says. “He’s a very kind and genuine person and I think that speaks to the parents that he has and the relationship that he has with his sisters.”

Sheahan will tell you that he has learned as much from Mackie as he has taught him, something he says is rare.

“He’s a great kid,” Sheahan says. “He really burns to be a player, like he really works at it. He’s the type of guy I like to just sit there and talk with.”

Umhoefer talks about the Samoskeviches as a humble, hardworking, blue-collar family who have and will accomplish special things. Though he never spoke with any of them about the shooting, he and other faculty recognized that they were shaken by it and tried to go out of their way to check in on them at Shattuck.

“Mackie was a really quiet kid with us. He never really showed a lot of emotion. He’s one of those kids that’s sometimes hard to get a read on,” Umhoefer says. “But the shooting was a really sad time for everyone that worked in education and then there was a lot of focus brought onto those kids because as a school you feel a lot of the same emotions that they feel when you see that they’re hurting.”

Mackie’s quiet nature is one of the things that all those who’ve worked with him talk about.

“Mackie is identical to me and Madison is identical to my wife. I was the same way Mackie is right now, a little quiet,” Fred says.

But to Maddy and Melissa, Mackie is a different person than the one the rest of the world sees.

To Maddy, he’s a confidante who is easy to talk to.

“He was always there for me. If I had a question about hockey, he would spend a good amount of time teaching me until I got the full answer. I feel like I’m the player that I am today because of him,” Maddy says.

To Melissa, the reserved Mackie people see at the rink is someone else altogether at home.

“He’s soft spoken but it’s funny because he’s also a little shit around the house,” Melissa says, laughing. “He’s one of the funniest kids I know when you get him going. We make fun of each other a ton. So when people see Mackie and think he’s quiet, that’s because when he’s at the rink he’s ready to work.”

Melissa thinks that attitude has taken Mackie this far.

“Me and Maddy go to the rink and work but we like the social aspect of it,” Melissa says. “The quietness of him is because he’s a 24-hour athlete. And it has paid off for him and that’s solely because of him. He’s out on our outdoor rink for hours just stickhandling by himself. Watching his work ethic is amazing. I wish I had it.”

Whenever Patty thinks about her son’s draft day, she gets nervous.

“The butterflies just drive me crazy,” Patty says.

When Melissa and Maddy think about his big day, their octave changes in excitement.

“It’s going to be amazing. I’m so proud of everything he has accomplished,” Maddy says. “He has worked so hard for this and he deserves it. It’s going to be an emotional day.”

“I’m just,” Melissa says, choking up, “yeah … I’m really proud of him. He deserves all of the attention.”

But the draft won’t be the only thing on their minds. The first thing they’ll all think of will be Newtown.

“We love Sandy Hook … um,” Fred said, pausing to collect himself once more, “it’s just sad going forward. You see one of the moms out at the grocery store and it just brings you right back to it. We’re a resilient group of people here in Sandy Hook. We help each other out as much as we can. Plus, the help we received from the world. It was amazing what everyone did for us around here, it really was.”

“It was life-changing for so many, including us,” Maddy adds. “It brought our family a lot closer. After that day, our parents were there for us and we were there for each other.”

Not a day goes by where Mackie doesn’t think about that day or his hometown.

“It’s crazy to think about all of the towns in the world and your town is the one that this happens to. To see that people are willing to do that, I can’t believe it continues to happen to other people,” Mackie said, pausing himself for the first time. “But at the end of the day, it was a pretty amazing thing to see Sandy Hook come together. It was a positive thing in one small way, how everyone was able to come back from it the way that they did.”

And it’s that last part, that sliver of good, that he’ll carry with him.

It’s a reminder, he says, of how little hockey actually matters, and of how much his weird little hockey family does.

(Graphic: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Courtesy the Samoskevich family)

#mackie samoskevich #archival redundancy #you find ONE working paywall defeater and you go buck wild with power!#umich #love a boy who loves his sisters i really do #anyway sorry cleaning out likes it's busy in there

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pricetagofficial · 1 year

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I posted 553 times in 2022

86 posts created (16%)

467 posts reblogged (84%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@shinox

@internalsealpanic

@fkn-into-it

@clamityganon

@miraculous-heartssarts

I tagged 199 of my posts in 2022

#pricetagofficial asks - 33 posts

#costly affairs - 24 posts

#demon slayer - 22 posts

#fic rec - 19 posts

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#dc comics - 18 posts

#tengen uzui - 16 posts

#kny - 13 posts

#roy harper - 11 posts

#uzui tengen - 10 posts

Longest Tag: 81 characters

#if this isnt the most dick grayson thing to ever dick grayson i dont know what is

My Top Posts in 2022:

Approval Part Two -W.W.

Warnings: Language, bits of angst, bits of fluff, Dick is no longer a dick.

Masterlist Part One

Word Count: 3.2K

Check out my pinned post if you want to be on my taglist!

A/N: HAHAHAHA YOU THOUGHT I WOULD LEAVE YOU ALL HANGING LIKE THAT?! I can not stand when things don't get a proper ending so I had to make one before I even posted part one. This has been sitting in my drafts for a week now, just waiting until the right moment when you all thought that this was never going to happen.

Well guess what?

It did.

In the weeks that passed, you didn’t see Wally. Choosing to return to Gotham for a while, you moved back into the Manor to see the other people you considered family. Like usual, Jason came and went every so often mainly just to say hi to you and the other gremlins walking around now.

Bruce not only adopted you, Dick, Jason, Tim, Cass, and Damian, but now he took in another kid; Duke. Duke was the newest official addition to the Wayne family, with Steph and Barbara almost sisters to you. It had been almost two years since you last actively resided in Wayne Manor, with Duke moving in somewhere in the middle there. Even then, Duke could tell something was up between you and Dick. If Duke could tell, everyone else was painfully aware.

Growing up, you and Dick were attached at the hip. Bruce had gray hairs from all the times he tried to separate the two of you, and now you refused to be in the same room as him. You weren’t sure if he knew you broke up with Wally, not having checked in with either of them to find out.

Knowing you and Dick the second and third-longest, Jason and Tim took it upon themselves with the gentle prodding by Duke, Damian, Cass, and Steph. And by gentle prodding, it was more of an intervention they staged and threatened bodily harm if neither of them managed to fix what was going on with you and Dick.

Having drawn the shortest straw, Jason stood outside your door. Apparently, neither he nor Tim wanted to be the one to confront you about what was going on. Sure Dick had the scarier temper, but you were more likely to throw a fucking chair at their head when provoked.

Maybe it was better Jason drew the short straw; if you threw a chair he would be the one to survive it compared to Tim and his lanky complexion.

Raising his hand to knock, Jason rapped his knuckles against the door twice before waiting on a response. Moments passed and Jason knocked again, this time hearing your voice waft through the crack under the door.

“Go away Tim or I’ll chuck a fucking chair at your head.”

“If the Joker couldn’t kill me, I don’t think a chair would,” he called.

There was silence before you spoke again. “What do you want?”

“Is it so wrong for a guy to want to talk to his big sister?”

“Fine, get your ass in here before I change my mind.”

Jason let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. Maybe this wasn’t a bad idea. Poking his head in through the door, he watched for any flying objects to come his way before fully entering your room.

From what he could see, you haven’t left it in days. There was a stack of dishes off to the side for when Alfred came and took them to the kitchen. Your bed was unkempt, the curtains closed with clothes and items strewn across it.

“Y/N?” he asked, looking around for you.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move in the shadows and noticed you were curled up in the corner on the floor. Dropping his defensive act, Jason let out a sigh before walking over towards you.

Taking a seat next to you, Jason leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. “So,” he started. “You going to tell me what happened between you and Dickhead or am I going to force it out of you?”

Shrugging, you just curled into the warmth of his body and stayed silent.

“We all know something happened, you won’t even look at him. I’m supposed to be the moody one and right now the two of you are taking my vibe. I need it back.”

That got a reaction out of you. Snorting a laugh, you wiped your eyes. “Oldest daughter rights, I get to take your shit.”

Jason huffed and pulled you close. “Come on, talk to me. I can’t go kick his ass for you if I don’t know what happened.”

Licking your lips, you fiddled with your hands. “How much did you know about me–me and Wally?” you had to force his name out of you without sniffing.

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158 notes - Posted April 27, 2022

Haze of Envy -O.Q. [18+]

Warnings: language, NSFW Smut, jealousy, dirty talk, Bruce is the victim here.

Pairing: Oliver Queen x Reader

Masterlist

Word Count: 4.9K

Check out my pinned post if you want to be on my taglist!

A/N: HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope you all have a wonderful 2022! This is my first fic of the year! Big thanks to Elle, Fish and Batty for helping me with this one!

You watched Oliver from across the ballroom, the two of you were invited to a prestigious gala hosted by another elite member of Star City’s population and of course Oliver had to keep up appearances. Couldn’t risk someone tying him to Green Arrow after all.

He was deep in conversation with an old friend of his from school. Sporting a black suit, he had the jacket undone while his hand rested in his pocket with a glass of some sparkly liquid in the other.

There were other people you knew who attended, this was a high profile charity gala after all. You saw Bruce Wayne was lingering near the bar with his cousin Kate at his side who was deep in conversation with a reporter you almost didn’t recognize.

If you didn’t see the change in Bruce's stance, you would have written it off as some nosy reporter but you knew better. Some, both Lois and Clark had managed to get invites to come and do coverage on the event.

Maybe it was from your experience after dating Oliver for so long, but it was a big coincidence that three Justice League members, an associate of the Batman and Lex Luthor, were all in one room. Oliver promised you however, that this was strictly all pleasure and no business.

Bold words from the guy who treated you like you were porcelain every second you were together. Maybe it was the fear that he would lose you, or hurt you in some way; but you trusted Oliver with your life and just wished he would be a little rougher with you at times. Especially in the bedroom.

That’s what brought you to where you were now, dressed in one of the most revealing gowns you owned while leaning casually against the wall.

Oliver almost had a heart attack seeing the jade green dress; the slit that went up to your hip, the open back along with the plunging neckline. If you weren’t pressed for time, he probably would have tried to get you to change.

A glass of red wine was in your hand, taking a sip from it as Oliver caught your eye from across the room. One look from you had him excusing himself from the conversation as he walked across the floor to stand in front of you.

“You know, you could have joined me instead of hiding away.” he hummed, taking the glass from your hand before sipping it himself.

Looking down at you, he could see the liquid stained your lips a slight tint of red and had a view down the front of your dress. Swallowing hard, Oliver set the glass on a passing tray before sliding a hand around your waist.

“I didn’t want to interrupt, you looked like you were having fun.” Your arms slid up to wrap around his neck, playing with the loose blond strands.

“I’d rather spend my time with you beautiful,” he smiled, kissing your cheek. “How about a dance?”

“I like that idea,” you took his hand as he led you to the dance floor. Oliver wrapped his arm around your waist, before taking your hand in his. Using the hold he had on your waist, he pulled you into his chest and smiled before waltzing you across the floor.

This seemed like a perfect opportunity to rile him up, the close proximity was enough to make your thoughts muddled as the scent of his cologne invaded your senses. Your eyes locked with Oliver’s as his grip on your waist tightened, maybe he could feel the growing tension too.

A simple step had your thigh brushing against the front of his dress pants, pressing into his crotch ever so slightly.

Oliver’s breath stuttered as he leaned towards your ear. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

Batting your eyes, you gave Oliver an innocent look as if he was crazy to ask you that question. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Not believing you for a second, Oliver spun you slowly before pulling your hips against his. “You sure about that?”

Biting your lip, you tilted your head up to meet his while your hand rubbed his chest through the fabric of his shirt. “Positive,”

Oliver held you close as you continued to dance your bodies moving in sync, his eyes not leaving yours for a second. Keeping you trapped in his gaze, Oliver slowly dipped you before placing a soft kiss to the skin of your throat. Oliver pulled you back up, your breaths minging as you panted for air.

It had been a long time since you danced like that, and with other people around. Glancing around, you saw a lot of people were watching you both with intense stares. Maybe your dance gartered more stares than you anticipated.

“How about we take a seat and get some food?” Clearing his throat, Oliver kept an arm wrapped around your waist as he led you to a nearby table.

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199 notes - Posted January 1, 2022

Approval -W.W.

Warnings: Language, angst, Dick is a real asshole here folks

Pairing: Wally West x Batsis! Reader

Masterlist Part Two

Word Count: 3K

Check out my pinned post if you want to be on my taglist!

A/N: Look who’s back! About two months later and I am here to collect tears and revel in everyone’s pain. You all have Fish to thank for this by the way.

You and Dick stared each other down. Having grown up together, you knew all his tells and ticks and you could tell he was pissed. You couldn’t be raised by the World’s Greatest Detective with nothing to show for it.

Dick’s fingers tapped the table as his eyes refused to leave yours. Any other person would think that Dick was fine with his laid-back posture, direct gaze, and his signature smirk on his face. But you knew better. His steely gaze held you trapped in the chair you sat on, and you could see he was biting his tongue because his jaw was so tense.

“Are you gonna sit there and stare or actually say a word or two?”

Dick’s façade broke for a second before he huffed a laugh and leaned back in the chair.

“What do you want me to say?” his eyes flit to the door that had someone waiting behind it, Dick just didn’t know who.

“Oh, I don’t know,” you shrugged. “Maybe a ‘Gee sis! I’m glad you found someone that makes you happy!’ or a “Holy Boyfriend Batman!’ or a sign that you are the least bit happy for me?”

Dick sighed, of course, he was happy for you. All he wanted was for you to find someone who loved you for who you are and treasure you like you should be. It’s just, he knew no one was ever going to be good enough not for you and not by his standards.

He’s watched you get your heart broken more times than he could count, hoping to shield you away from the pain of loving someone only for them to not love you back. His biggest worry was that you would fall completely in love, only for the person to decide they didn’t love you anymore.

“I’m happy.”

You pursed your lips. “Yeah, I can feel the excitement just roll off you.” Looking out the window to your apartment, you sighed. “Do you at least want to know who I’m dating? Maybe that will put your mind at ease?”

“Sure, bring him in.”

“I’m not gonna bother asking how you knew he was behind the door.”

Dick laughed for the first time since you told him you have a boyfriend. “Maybe because we were raised by the same guy, and observe a lot more than the average human should?”

You rolled your eyes and stopped by the door. “Just promise me you won’t freak out?”

Waving his hand with a huff, Dick looked around. “Who said that I would ever–”

Dick’s words were cut short by the sight of the guy who walked through the door. Immediately his playful attitude changed and the air got tense again. Didn’t he just fucking say the day before his sister was off-limits?

“What the fuck is this?”

“Now Dick–”

“Oh don’t you ‘Now Dick,” me.” he snapped. “What the fuck Wally!? My sister!?”

Wally shrunk back slightly from the volume of Dick’s voice. “I know. I know you said your sister was off-limits, but–”

“I swear to God if you say you two were already dating I’ll–”

“You’ll what Dick?” you frowned. “Murder your best friend? Yeah, because that’s a smart idea. Kill one of the only people who can stand to be around you.”

Dick’s face got hot, clenching his fists, he stared you down. “We need to talk. Now.”

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205 notes - Posted April 20, 2022

Introductions -D.G.

Warnings: language, bit of violence, bit of angst, Dick is a total idiot and you all will find out why

Pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader

Masterlist

Word Count: 1K

Check out my pinned post is you want to be on my taglist!

A/N: Happy late birthday to me! You all can thank the lovely Fish for this and I hope you enjoy!

Dick scouted around the window, he could see the drug lords huddling around something. Hopefully, it was what he came here to retrieve. Narrowing his eyes, Dick tapped the side of his mask to enhance the built-in microphone.

“You’d think she would learn to shut up.”

“You had to grab one with a mouth on her, didn’t you?”

“How about the two of you shut up, ignore her and do your damn jobs.” a third voice said. “If she really is dating that dumb Wayne boy, then the ransom will get paid soon.”

There was a murmur before the voices quieted down, and the thugs parted to reveal your disheveled form, with a piece of–was that hot pink duct tape on your mouth?

Your eyes narrowed at your captors, all you wanted to do was just have a relaxing Saturday evening with Dick when you were nabbed outside the front door to your apartment. You weren’t sure why they wanted a ransom from Dick or Bruce, both being from the Wayne family, but whatever it was you were caught in the middle of it.

Glancing down, your feet weren’t tied down to the chair you sat in. Maybe if you were sneaky enough, you could try and scoot yourself towards the window. No doubt Dick was out there looking for you, if he wasn’t already.

Before you could get anywhere, the door into the room opened and another thug walked in the room. “Boss said not to touch the girl until Nightwing gets here,”

“That’d be pretty stupid of a vigilante to show up when we’re waiting for a ransom payment,”

“Well, we are in his territory. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to rescue the girl.”

“The boss said to stop him, so don’t let him in.”

“Kind of late for that one boys,”

Everyone in the room turned to look towards the window where you saw Nightwing standing there with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Shit!”

“How’d he get in!”

Nightwing shook his head and pulled out his escrima sticks, “Maybe next time make sure your hostage’s phone is off, and don’t leave them in sight of the window.”

“Get him!”

All the thugs in the room dashed for Nightwing, you were pushed out of the way and you fell back on the chair left with your feet dangling in the air. Some vigilante he was.

Wiggling around, you heard the sounds of fists and metal hitting human skin followed by the grunts of the men who had kidnapped you. Serves them right, Dick was probably worried sick about you.

Managing to roll on your side, you shuffled around to try and get your hands free. After a while, the fighting died down and a pair of gloved hands came sat you back upright.

“You alright, Miss?”

Looking at your savior, you gave him a glare.

Nightwing carefully pulled the tape off your mouth, wincing at the hissing sound you made.

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234 notes - Posted August 10, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Pound for Pound -D.G. [18+]

Warnings: Language, violence, mentions of blood, NSFW smut, Dick is unfairly hot here

Pairing: Boxer!Dick Grayson x Reader

Masterlist

Word Count: 2.8K

Check out my pinned post if you want to be on my taglist!

A/N: Here is a boxer au for our boy Dickie, because those Robin Variant covers made me go feral, especially Dick’s. You can ask my moots, I went nuts. But big thanks to Elle, Fish and Batty for proofing this and the banner! Love you guys!

You watched from the sidelines as Dick sat in his corner, swishing water to rinse the blood out of his mouth. Spitting it into an empty cup, he wiped his lip with his gloves blowing his sweaty bangs out of his face. His bare torso was covered in sweat and bruises were starting to form, caused by the other guy’s fist.

“Come on, Dick!” You cried, cupping your hands over your mouth.

The arena was so loud, you weren’t sure he even heard you but Dick knew you were in the crowd supporting him the whole way. You were his lucky charm, having you in his corner always drove him to win. It gave him the drive no coach or bribe could ever give him, maybe it was that you were always there to take care of him after.

The ref gave the two-minute warning, telling Dick and his opponent that they were beginning the next round.

All Dick had to do was knock the other guy out, without getting knocked out himself.

Dick’s coach rubbed his shoulders, keeping him loose to keep going. He could hear your screams and cheers, but couldn’t spare a look at you. It would break his concentration, and then he would lose for sure.

“This guy is nothing but a wannabe big shot.” Slade said, “You hit him in the right spot and he’s out like a light,”

Dick nodded in agreement, he’d been assessing his opponent all night to try and find a weakness. This guy was huge, almost a whole foot taller than Dick rightfully earning the title “Blockbuster”.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall right?

Well, this guy was about to fall and he was not going to get back up.

“The faster you knock him out, the faster you can get back to your girl.”

That put a smirk on Dick’s face, knowing full well what happened after every match no matter the outcome. You were always there to greet him with open arms, and legs. Dick rolled his neck, stretching out as Slade put the mouthguard back between his teeth.

“Knock him dead, kid.”

Dick got to his feet, shaking out his arms before getting into a defensive stance. A couple well-placed shots to the jaw and this Blockbuster would be down for the count.

He watched as his opponent got to his feet, beating his gloves together while staring Dick down with a menacing glare.

The bell rang, and Blockbuster swung his fist aiming for Dick’s already tender jaw. Blocking the hit, Dick ducked out of the way and hit his opponent in the side with a satisfying crunch ringing around the arena. That was a couple of broken ribs, making his opponent vulnerable.

Blockbuster grunted in pain, rounding his fist to catch Dick’s collar before swinging the other to connect with his face. Dick stumbled back, shaking his head. His vision was starting to blur, it seemed this guy was a lot quicker than he anticipated but Dick was faster.

Ducking the next hit, Dick wailed on his opponent’s stomach knocking the wind out of him before giving a final punch with each fist to the face sending Blockbuster to the ground.

The referee got on the ground and began counting, the crowd cheering on Dick while others cheered for Blockbuster to get up and finish him off. Wiping the blood from his nose, Dick stared down the motionless body on the ground as the referee hit the ground and got up.

Grabbing Dick’s arm, he lifted it into the air.

“Winner! Ladies and gentlemen, our reigning champ: The Flying Grayson!”

You jumped out of your seat, waving your hands in the air as Dick’s eyes finally landed on you. A smile played on his lips as his coach led him out of the ring and you ducked out of the crowd to meet up with them.

Walking around to the locker room that you were definitely allowed in, you stepped through to find Dick drinking a bottle of water as a first-aid team attended to his cuts and bruises. Picking up the pace, you raced over and stood beside Slade.

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370 notes - Posted January 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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emospritelet · 3 years

Text

Manifesto - chapter 10

It's been 84 years...

Last time, Sutherland convinced Belle to join in with a Government consultation. Cue snark and UST

[AO3]

Belle stared at Sutherland, her pulse thumping at the base of her throat as she met his eyes. He had that tiny smile on his face, his eyes glinting, and she licked her lips nervously.

“I - I didn’t think you’d be here,” she said lamely, and he pushed upright.

“Well, it is my house,” he said. “After a fashion.”

“No, I didn’t mean…” She closed her eyes, swallowed, and opened them again. “I just meant I didn’t think you’d concern yourself with a consultation, that’s all. I - I thought it might be one of your Ministers.”

“Ordinarily I wouldn’t,” he agreed, reaching for the coffee. “But we’ve decided to give this policy more priority, and given that it’s a cross-government initiative, I thought I’d show face.”

“Right,” she said weakly. “Great.”

“Oh, I won’t be here for the whole thing,” he added. “I suspect I’ll leave after lunch. Coffee?”

“Thank you.”

Belle looked around the table, spying pieces of folded card printed with names marking each place. She read over the names, trying to find her own.

“You’re here,” said Sutherland, placing both hands on the back of one of the chairs and pulling it out. “Please. Take a seat.”

For a moment she was frozen in place, but then she lifted her chin, stalking around the table and sitting down. He pushed her chair in, and she murmured her thanks, squeezing her thighs together as he reached over her shoulder and grasped a cup and saucer between thumb and forefinger, slowly pulling it over until it was in front of her. Belle watched the movement of his hand: long, tanned fingers above a perfectly white shirt cuff, and wanted to sigh. Nope. Still fancy him. Dammit!

“I trust your journey here wasn’t too tiring,” he said, crossing to the chair opposite the door and taking a seat.

“It was fine,” she said automatically.

“And the accommodation?” he went on. “I’m sure Anna arranged something suitable.”

“Yes, it’s - uh - lovely.”

He nodded, reaching for his own coffee, and Belle glanced down at the table. There was a folder of documents in front of her, a close-up picture of a smiling multiracial group of people with their arms around each other in front of a gleaming modern building of steel and glass. Shaping a Stronger Society was written in yellow font on a dark blue background. Belle opened the folder to reveal a sheaf of documents, the day’s agenda lying uppermost.

“I’m afraid it’s going to be a long day,” said Sutherland, making her jump. “We’ll do our best to keep you lubricated. There’s plenty more coffee, if you need it.”

Belle automatically took a sip of her own coffee, and was spared the ordeal of making conversation by the door opening to reveal Anna. She was followed by several men and women in suits, and there was a buzz of conversation as introductions were made and seating places indicated. Belle smiled at the man who was directed to sit next to her. He looked a little out of place in his tweed jacket with elbow patches, glasses perched on his nose and red hair curling back from a high forehead. Belle read his nameplate.

“Dr Archibald Hopper,” she said. “Are you an academic?”

“Oh, Archie, please,” he said, with a warm smile. “And yes, I was a practising psychiatrist for many years. More recently I’ve been teaching at Cambridge, so that and research take up most of my time.”

Belle sat up excitedly.

“Oh! I studied at Cambridge,” she said happily. “So of course I have to say there’s no finer university for you to be teaching at.”

“Well, I certainly won’t argue with that,” he said with a smile. “And everyone knows who you are. A modern day freedom fighter for literacy, which is an excellent cause. Miss French, I believe.”

“Belle’s fine,” said Belle, with a grin. “What’s your interest in this?”

“I’ve been studying the psychological impact of poverty and deprivation and its links to poor health and other life chances,” he said earnestly. “I think your interests and mine probably overlap.”

“I should think they probably do,” said Belle. “Although I imagine your credentials are somewhat more impressive than mine.”

“On the contrary,” said Archie. “You have experience in the field, as it were. I’d certainly be interested in hearing your perspective on the literacy programmes you’ve introduced.”

“You heard about that?” she asked, surprised, and he smiled.

“There were a number of pieces in the press after your - ah - meeting with the Prime Minister,” he said. “I understand you’ve created a useful community resource built around literacy for all ages.”

Belle opened her mouth to explain what she was doing, but was cut off by Sutherland clearing his throat.

“Right, well, good morning everyone,” he said, leaning on the table and glancing around at the occupants. “We have a full schedule, and I’m sure you all want to make the most of it, so I won’t be doing the creeping death of introductions around the table, as you’re no doubt relieved to hear. We can save the obligatory networking for the tea breaks.”

There was an appreciative chuckle from the attendees.

“You all have a pack of documents in front of you,” he went on. “This contains information on everyone here, including interests and expertise. I’m pleased to see such a range of talent around this table, and I’m excited to see what we can achieve together. I know you all take the development of this policy as seriously as I do.”

Belle found herself nodding along with the others. Sutherland certainly knew how to command attention.

“The documents also set out some of the initial research provided by the government departments leading on this policy,” he said. “Of course you all have your own experience, and no doubt your own sources to bring to the table. I fully expect this to be a challenging session with a lot of strong opinions being aired, but I’m confident that we can avoid too much bloodshed.”

There was a ripple of laughter, but Sutherland’s eyes lingered on Belle a little longer than the others. She met his gaze steadily, hoping she wouldn’t blush.

“You might well be wondering why I’m here,” he added, looking around. “The Shaping a Stronger Society policy will fulfil several key campaign pledges and lay the groundwork for lasting change. I thought it right that I give it the high profile it deserves, particularly when it cuts across so many Government departments. We need to be presenting a united front on this.”

“I’m sure the fact that it’s election year is a happy coincidence,” remarked a woman with a white-blonde bob over dark roots. Belle read her nameplate: Ella Deville-Waters. Sutherland grinned.

“Well, you know what they say, Ella,” he said. “Politics is eighty percent timing, ten percent luck—”

“And ten percent knowing how to lie with a straight face,” drawled Ella, making everyone chuckle.

“Thought that was at least sixty percent,” muttered Belle, and Archie laughed and managed to turn it into a cough.

“Let’s get started,” said Sutherland, glancing at Belle again. “I know there are a few of you with presentations to give on your own areas of interest, and I’m assured the technology is working, so I’ll hand things over to each of you. Anna, could you help Miss French set up the first presentation?”

Belle blinked rapidly.

“Me?” she said weakly, and Sutherland smiled.

“Gets it out of the way, hmm?”

She supposed it would.

Standing up in front of a sea of expectant faces turned towards her, Belle momentarily wanted to run from the room. Once she started speaking and concentrated on her passion for the subject, however, she forgot that she was presenting to a bunch of politicians and academics in Downing Street. The fifteen minutes she had been allotted went by more quickly than she thought possible, and prompted a number of questions that she was able to answer easily. She sat down with a thump next to Archie afterwards, feeling an odd mixture of exhaustion and exhilaration, and he sent her a reassuring smile before turning his attention to the next speaker, Ella Deville-Waters. It turned out that she was Undersecretary for Education, and she spoke eloquently about the importance of early years learning.

There were other presentations, each followed by an opportunity for questions, the final talk being given by Archie. Belle scribbled notes as he spoke, and made a note of the papers he referenced; they sounded like something she would be interested in reading at a later date. When the questions were finished, Sutherland announced that they would break for coffee, and Belle felt herself sigh in relief. She was surprised to see that it was eleven-thirty already; the morning was almost over.

The rest of the day went reasonably well and the group generated some robust discussion; despite Sutherland having said he would be leaving after lunch, he showed no sign of doing so, and took the lead in steering the conversation. There was general agreement on the merits of expanding opportunities for all, and the desired outcome of the policy. Disagreements arose when it came to discussing how to get there. There was a frank exchange of views between Belle, Ella, and the brusque Sir George King, who worked for the Treasury. He seemed to take any suggestion that money would have to be spent as a personal affront. Anna had to step in and smooth things over more than once, and Belle could feel her patience draining away as the day drew towards evening. The draft call for evidence that was produced was the last straw.

“This doesn’t go nearly far enough,” she said bluntly, lifting the paper and dropping it on the table. “The questions skirt around the real issues, and there’s no meat on the bones of this thing. Whatever responses you get won’t address what we’ve been talking about all day. It’s papering over the cracks at best.”

“This is merely a scoping document,” said Sutherland mildly. “And a first draft at that. You can’t expect the policy to be fully-formed at this stage.”

“No, but if this is the direction we’re being nudged in, the whole thing is pointless,” she said. “How can you expect us to even start to make a difference if you refuse to fund it properly?”

Sutherland took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“We’ve been over this, Miss French,” he said, sounding weary. “Budget constraints—”

“Yes we have been over this, and as I’ve said, budget constraints only ever seem to apply to policies that benefit the many over the few,” she said tartly. “Your Government may have managed to sweep the whole Pennine Consortium debacle under the rug a couple of years ago, but I remember the reports about the amount of public money that was being poured into that project, and it turned out to be going into the back pockets of the Home Secretary’s relatives!”

“Paying out according to contractual agreements is normal practice in business, I believe,” he said, in a bored voice. “The matter was investigated and the Home Secretary was cleared of all wrongdoing, as I’m sure you’re aware. ”

“My point is that billions were paid out for defence contracts with no questions being raised about whether they were affordable.”

“Clearly you didn’t watch the Select Committee hearings,” he remarked. His voice was a flat drawl that was doing nothing to stop her rising irritation.

“They were held after the money had been spent, not before, that’s my point!”

“And of course the purchase of tanks is entirely analogous to the development of literacy programmes.”

“I’d argue that the purchase of tanks is of decidedly lower value, actually,” she said.

“Then it’s a good thing you don’t have to make these decisions, isn’t it?”

Anna cleared her throat.

“Perhaps we can get back to the matter at hand?” she suggested. “Ella, what were you saying about school opening hours?”

“Oh, we can talk about that later,” said Ella cheerfully, waving a hand. “I’d much rather listen to this argument.”

“No one’s arguing,” said Sutherland coolly. “Miss French has a passionate nature, it seems.”

“Thanks, that’s not at all patronising,” said Belle, in a dry tone.

“Passion for public service is to be commended,” he said, matching her tone. “I thought I was giving you a compliment.”

“No you didn’t.”

Sutherland fixed her with a dark-eyed stare, his mouth flat. It was strangely arousing, and she could feel her breathing quicken. She told herself it was irritation.

“Your input here is valued, Miss French,” he said, his jaw a little clenched. “But I’d be grateful if you would allow us to guide you through this process, given that you know nothing about the way Government works.”

“No, I don’t,” she agreed, losing the last of her patience. “I don’t know about policy-making and contract negotiation and tendering and public procurement. And likewise I’d say you and most of the people that work for you don’t know what it’s like to worry about where the next meal is coming from.”

“Which is why we’re seeking the input of a wide range of stakeholders such as yourself.” He was trying for a smooth tone, but his eyes were flashing, and she could sense he was getting as annoyed as she.

“If you’re not prepared to listen to us, then it’s all empty gestures, isn’t it?” she protested.

“Wanting your input and allowing you to set the parameters of this thing are two entirely different things,” he said coldly. “I’m sorry if your expectations are out of step with reality.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

“Right!” said Anna briskly, slapping the table and making everyone jump. “That seems like a good place to break until tomorrow. It’s been a long day and I’m sure everyone could do with some fresh air.”

“Could do with a stiff drink, I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Ella, and there were appreciative murmurs from the others.

Belle sat back in her seat, listening with half an ear as chairs scraped back and papers were gathered up. Sutherland had already gone, stalking out of the room, and the others were throwing curious glances at her as they pulled on coats and drained cups.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Belle,” said Archie, tucking his folder of papers into a battered brown leather bag. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re right about the scope being too narrow.”

She gave him a grateful look, and a smile, and he ducked his head a little and sauntered out. Belle sighed, toying with the cold cup of tea in front of her as the others began to file out. She felt drained, wrung out. Was this what it was like every day for politicians? She wondered how they coped. Maybe it was why so many seemed to go grey so quickly.

“You settling in for the night?”

Anna’s voice made her look up, and Belle realised they were alone.

“Sorry, I was miles away,” she said. “I feel as though my brain’s been scrambled and stuffed back in my head all wrong.”

“Welcome to Whitehall,” said Anna, in a deadpan tone, and Belle giggled.

“Sorry for letting my temper get the better of me at the end,” she said. “I’m not cut out for politics, it seems.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Anna. “You have the ability to see to the heart of things. He wasn’t joking when he said your input is valued, you know.”

Belle sighed, running her hands over her face.

“It just - it feels like I’m wasting my time here,” she said. “I know I don’t have much longer before the library has to close, and - and yet I’m down here in London, in what seems like a hopeless uphill battle! Maybe I should just go back to Avonleigh and try to do what little good I can.”

“You may have longer than you think,” said Anna, gathering up some papers. “The Prime Minister approved a scheme for local authorities a few days ago. It offers grants to support providers of breakfast clubs and after-school learning.”

Belle sat up.

“Like the library?” she asked, and Anna shrugged.

“Seems likely, doesn’t it?” she said. “Oh, we’ve made sure that local authorities have to use it for the intended purpose, by the way. The scheme is due to launch next week. I’d keep my eyes peeled to the website, if I were you.”

She put the papers in a leather satchel and took out another folder before slinging the satchel over one shoulder. Belle was smiling, her heart swelling with what felt like hope for the first time in months.

“A reprieve for the library?” she said. “And it was his idea?”

“Like I said.” Anna hitched the satchel on her shoulder. “He does listen. You might not think so, but he does.”

“Listening’s all very well,” said Belle. “It’s the choices that are made that are the issue.”

“There isn’t always a choice,” said Anna firmly. “Or at least, not one a Prime Minister can make.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Difficult decisions have to be made,” she added. “Sometimes hundreds each day. Everything’s urgent, everything has an impact, and he tries his best to make the right call based on the information given by people he trusts. He doesn’t always get it right. No one could.”

“Maybe not, but—”

“He has to balance fifty competing interests with almost every decision he makes,” she went on. “The papers turn on a dime and whoever’s lauded one week gets pilloried the next. Everyone around him is looking to him to lead and half of them are willing him to fail so that they can step into the spotlight. I won’t let that happen if I can help it.”

She picked up the folder of papers, turning on her heel.

“I’ll show you out,” she said over her shoulder. “I expect you’ll want an early night after today. Or a large drink. Or both.”

“You care about him,” said Belle, and Anna stopped dead before slowly turning back to face her.

“Yes,” she said simply. “He’s a good friend. And whether or not you believe it, Miss French, he’s a good man.”

Belle was silent for a moment.

“I haven’t made up my mind on that score,” she said eventually.

“Oh, I didn’t say he wasn’t a stubborn bloody pain in the arse at times,” added Anna. “He’s definitely that.”

Belle couldn’t help giggling.

“Well, bearing all that in mind, and in the interests of cooperation,” she said. “I suppose I really ought to apologise for snapping at him.”

Something in Anna seemed to relax at her words, and she smiled again.

“He’s used to being snapped at,” she said dismissively. “He gets far worse in the Commons, let’s face it. But an apology would probably make him more inclined to listen to you, so I certainly won’t stand in your way.”

Belle nodded agreement, and Anna jerked her head towards the door.

“I was going to take these reports to him before I head off,” she said, holding up the folder. “If you felt like going there now, I’d be happy to tell him you want to have a word.”

Belle hesitated, but nodded, and Anna smiled briefly and headed for the door. The interior of Downing Street was busier than Belle had expected at that time in the evening, aides hurrying with laptops and drinks and phones clasped to their ears. Anna led her down a wide, thickly-carpeted corridor and paused outside a heavy office door, where two Special Branch officers nodded to Anna and eyed Belle suspiciously before stepping aside. Anna rapped smartly on the door, and Belle heard a muffled bid to enter from behind it. She could feel her heart thumping in trepidation, and when the door opened she could see a room with a high ceiling, dark green carpet and a dresser in dark, polished wood where several cut crystal decanters sat, their contents gleaming in shades of amber and ruby. There were two leather armchairs and a couch around a coffee table in the same dark wood. Bookshelves stretched around two walls of the room, and Sutherland was sitting behind a heavy desk opposite the door, scribbling something. His eyes narrowed as they met Belle’s, but Anna walked forward, cutting off his view.

“Brought you those updates on the infrastructure options,” she said breezily, holding up the files. “If you want to go through them later let me know. I thought I’d go and get something to eat.”

“So I know why you’re in my office,” he said evenly, sitting back and putting down his pen. “Not too clear on the presence of Miss French. Unless she thought of something else she wanted to call me.”

“Actually I’m here to apologise,” said Belle, making his brows lift in surprise. “So I’m not about to insult you unless you start something.”

Sutherland’s mouth worked, as though he was trying not to laugh.

“Uh - thank you, Anna,” he said, glancing away. “Yes, go and get some dinner. I think Miss French and I can have a conversation without it coming to blows.”

“Good,” said Anna. “Behave.”

Belle was unsure who that last comment was directed at, but Anna left the room before she could ask, shutting the door behind her with a click. She turned slowly on her toes to face Sutherland, who was leaning back in his chair and tapping his papers with a pen, staring at her.

“Anna told me about the local authority grants for educational services,” she said. “That should help a lot more libraries stay open.”

“That’s the idea,” he said, with a shrug.

“Providing librarians know it’s available, of course,” she added.

“There’ll be an announcement when it’s launched,” he said. “Of course there’s nothing to stop you contacting your peers and explaining the process.”

“I guess not.” She fiddled with a button on her jacket before smoothing her hand against her skirt. “What made you change the policy on local grants?”

“I didn’t,” he said abruptly. “Just provided - clarification around eligibility.”

Belle took a step forward, until she was almost touching the desk.

“Well, that clarification should mean I won’t be closing the library doors this year,” she said. “Lucky for me, hmm?”

“Surprising as it may seem,” he remarked. “I do actually take into account the views of interested parties when making decisions. Where I can.”

“Hmm.” Belle leaned on the desk, pursing her lips. “Well, I’m sorry for yelling at you. I don’t like losing my temper and I try not to if I can help it.”

There was a tiny, amused grin on his face.

“A pity,” he said. “It was rather refreshing.”

“Yeah, well it wasn’t all that satisfying from my perspective,” she said. “Dealing with politicians is making me more cynical than I’d like to be.”

He gave her a twisted little smile.

“Well, that’s no bad thing,” he said. “The moment you start wanting to be cynical it’s probably time to run screaming for the hills.”

“At nine this morning I almost did run screaming,” she admitted, and he chuckled.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” he said. “I enjoyed your presentation. It was delivered with your usual passion, and I think you may have brought some of the others on board.”

“I think Sir George King would rather I’d stayed at home,” she said, and Sutherland shrugged.

“If it was up to him we wouldn’t spend any money at all,” he said. “On the whole, today went rather well, I thought. No physical blows were exchanged, and there was almost no profanity. One of the more sedate policy meetings I’ve attended, truth be told.”

Belle smiled.

“We’re all here for the common good, I suppose,” she said. “Although in some cases I’m not sure how much common good they’re really interested in doing.”

“First rule of policy-making,” he said. “Try not to kill off half your contributors in a fit of righteous anger. Tempting though it is.”

“Hmm.” She was amused. “I don’t remember reading that one in the welcome pack.”

“Unwritten rule,” he corrected, raising a finger. “I think the pack said some bollocks about understanding motivation and managing expectations.”

Belle bit back a grin.

“I guess I’m not cut out for a career in diplomacy,” she said, and he smiled.

“Gets easier the more you do it.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Well, thank goodness you’ll believe one thing that comes out of my mouth.”

It was said in a dry tone, but he was still grinning, and she returned the smile. There was a moment of silence, and he pushed up from the desk, crossing to the dresser.

“I was going to have a drink,” he said. “May I offer you one? There’s whisky, port, brandy… If that��s not to your taste I could easily have something brought in.”

“Uh - okay.” Belle was beginning to feel as though she had stepped into a strange parallel universe, where small town librarians sat and drank with the leaders of nations as a matter of course. “Thank you. I’ll take a brandy.”

“Excellent choice,” he said vaguely, and opened one of the doors of the dresser, taking out two brandy glasses.

Belle watched as he reached for one of the decanters and poured two small measures. His suit pants fitted him very well, skimming his rear as he moved. She shook her head, telling herself to stop ogling the man. Sutherland turned, glasses in hand, and nodded towards the armchairs.

“Take a seat,” he said.

Still feeling as though she was dreaming, Belle took the glass he held out and sat down, crossing her legs and watching as he put down his glass and lowered himself into the seat opposite. She took a sip of her brandy to take her mind off how good he looked, and how much better he might look if he lost the tie and unfastened the first few buttons of that crisp white shirt. The brandy was very good, far better than she was used to, and she licked her lips, enjoying the taste of caramel and spice and the pleasant heat on her tongue. Sutherland took a drink, sucking in his cheeks and setting down his glass on the coffee table. He looked tired.

“Are your work days usually this long?” she asked, and his eyebrows flicked upwards.

“It’s barely six-thirty,” he said. “I still have a few hours left in me.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a work-life balance,” she observed. Sutherland pulled a face.

“Gets a little quieter at recess, but no, I don’t suppose it is,” he said.

“Are you married?” she asked, and Sutherland shook his head.

“Divorced.”

“Oh,” said Belle. “I’m sorry.”

“No no, it’s fine,” he said, sitting back. “It was amicable. We’re still friends.”

“Oh.”

“She’s engaged to a High Court judge now,” he added. “I wish her every happiness.”

“Oh.” For God’s sake, Belle, say something intelligent. “You have kids?”

“A daughter,” he said. “Grown up now. Early twenties.”

“Oh.”

Sutherland took a drink, seeming to savour the taste of brandy on his tongue before swallowing. His gaze was steady, his eyes dark, and she could feel faint stirrings of desire in her lower abdomen. She looked down into her brandy glass, watching the ripples in the amber liquid and telling herself to snap out of her crush.

“What about you?” he asked then, making her look up. “You married? Children?”

“You mean you didn’t have me checked out?” she asked dryly, and he shrugged.

“Maybe you’re good at hiding things,” he said. “Or, as is more likely, Anna told me and I forgot about it.”

Belle bit back a smile.

“Well, hiding a husband and children would be beyond me,” she said. “Luckily I have no need. No family. Well, there’s my dad back in Melbourne, but apart from that I’m on my own.”

“No large, intimidating boyfriend?” he asked. “Or maybe a girlfriend, what do I know?”

“Neither,” she said. “Last relationship was pretty crappy, to be honest. Made me want to take a break for a while.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “I understand.”

“I thought you said you were on good terms with your ex.”

“Well…” He waved a hand. “I vaguely remember what it was like to be young. Aeons ago.”

She scoffed.

“Come on, you’re not that old.”

“Bloody feels like it, sometimes,” he grumbled.

“Well, that’s what comes from running the country,” she said pertly. “It’s why I stick to running a library.”

“No doubt that comes with its own stresses.”

“Only when I’m threatened with closure by arrogant, shortsighted politicians,” she quipped, and he snorted in amusement.

“Well, thank fuck there aren’t many of those around.”

Belle giggled before catching herself, and he was grinning as he leaned further back in his chair. His eyes gleamed when he smiled, and she couldn’t decide whether it was more or less arousing than when he was angry. A dangerous path for your thoughts to take, Belle.

“Did you say your daughter was in her twenties?” she said, trying to steer the conversation onto a safe topic. “Is she at university?”

“No no, she’s finished studying,” he said. “She’s started work in the City. Not in politics, thank God.”

“You wouldn’t want her to go into politics?” she asked, and he wrinkled his nose.

“I don’t think she’d be happy,” he said. “It can be a lonely, painful existence, and you make as many enemies as friends. Probably more, if I’m honest. She has a gentle heart, and I wouldn’t want to see her harden it to survive.”

“It seems a shame that people have to,” said Belle. “I think politicians could stand to be more compassionate, not less.”

Sutherland took another sip of his drink, eyeing her as he licked an amber bead of brandy from his lower lip.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “Alas, we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we might want it to be.”

“So why did you decide it was what you wanted to do?” she asked. “Did you always want to end up running the country?”

“No, I can’t say it was a childhood dream,” he admitted. “I started out as a barrister. The politician wasn’t born until I was in my late thirties.”

“So why politics?” she asked. “I’m guessing it wasn’t for the money.”

Sutherland pulled a wry face, taking another drink.

“I was earning more at the bar, certainly,” he said. “Far better work-life balance, as well.”

“Ego, then?” she suggested, and he grinned.

“That was certainly part of it.”

Belle waited, and he sighed, turning the brandy glass between his hands.

“Would you believe me if I said I thought I could make things better?” he asked.

“My new-found cynicism wouldn’t,” she remarked, and he chuckled.

“To the tragic death of innocence.”

He raised his glass in a mock toast, and Belle grinned, raising her own before sipping her brandy. The drink was almost gone, and she found herself regretting having drunk it so quickly. She would have to leave as soon as it was done, and to her great surprise she was enjoying their conversation.

“Do you think you have?” she asked. “Made things better?”

Sutherland hesitated, turning the glass between his fingers.

“I suppose it’s a work in progress,” he said. “But I’m trying. Perhaps not in the ways you would want me to.”

“I don’t suppose what I think matters,” she said, and he shook his head.

“You might be surprised at what matters to me, Miss French.”

He took another sip of his brandy, his eyes fixed on hers, and she could feel herself shiver. She drained her glass, setting it down on the table with a loud clink.

“Well,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I should go. I feel as though I’ve been wrung dry and turned inside out, and I could really use some sleep before I have to do it all again tomorrow.”

He smiled at that, setting his glass beside hers.

“In that case, I’ll show you out. Anna will expect me to have read those papers by the time she gets back.”

“She seems very committed to her job,” observed Belle, and he grinned.

“Couldn’t do my own without her,” he said. “I need someone to keep me in line.”

“I won’t argue with that,” she remarked, and he chuckled, a deep laugh that made her belly clench.

“I can see why she likes you,” he said, and strode to the door, opening it up and nodding to the Special Branch officers outside. “Good evening, Miss French. It’s a pleasure to be working with you.”

Belle nodded, slipping from the room and heading back along the corridor. A smiling woman with a dark ponytail and a brisk manner showed her out, and she stepped into the street with a sigh of relief. The press pack had gone, and she walked down towards the gates, smiling thanks to the police officer that let her out into the street beyond. It had been a long day, there was another to come, and her crush on the Prime Minister was developing into full-blown lust.

#fic: manifesto #sutherelle fic #sutherelle #rumbelle fic #rumbelle #my fic #anyelle

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simply-not-an-egg · 3 years

Text

Cobra Kai, Future Season/s Dump Because I Have Many Thoughts

I’m gonna split this up into sections because oh boy are there a lot of things I’d like to see in the future of this series from these characters. DISCLAIMER; THIS ISN’T COMPLETE YET, SO KEEP CHECKING BACK TO SEE WHEN THIS DISCLAIMER DISSAPEARS BECAUSE AT THAT POINT IT SHOULD BE COMPLETE. I COULDN’T BE BOTHERED KEEPING IT IN MY DRAFTS.

Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso

So where we left off in Season 3 is Daniel and Johnny joining their dojos to become one to defeat the big enemy, Cobra Kai. But what does that also mean for them? They’re pretty much friends now, as much as either would them would probably hate to admit it. Anyway, these dynamics now presented, it opens up a lot of potential plots for them, the biggest of which being Lawrusso becoming canon at some point in the future, which I’d say is HIGHLY likely considering, as we all know, Ralph Macchio is the captain of said ship, and William Zabka, as far as I’m aware, is fairly supportive of this ship (FYI, Macchio has also said in an interview before that Johnny and Daniel have a very will they, won’t they? Ross and Rachel relationship, and imo, that’s not something you’d say about platonic friends). Anyhoo, below is pretty much what I’d love to see of them, and how it all happens, because trust me, there’s a long road to get to the point where we all want Lawrusso to be.

Personally, I would think neither Johnny or Daniel bat an eye about this whole potential relationship between the two of them until certain kids in their dojo start pairing up, and by certain kids I mean Eli/Hawk and Demetri, which would likely happen at some point during Season 4 after they’ve talked through their trauma and, for the most part, forgiven each other (mainly Demetri forgiving Eli/Hawk).

The reason I say this is because I don’t think either Johnny or Daniel would have ever expected such a relationship to be considered normal, or for one just have it be accepted, because the two of them grew up in the 80s, where it was still shamed upon to be anything other that cis and het.

Such a thing leads me to the next point of internalised homophobia and repression, and the absolute confusion and probably shame that would come with realising that they aren’t straight, more or less on Daniel’s end. I feel as though Johnny wouldn’t have as much of a problem with it though because a) he’s a free agent, and yes I know he’s had an almost on/off thing with Carmen, but they’ve never actually, you know, laid the cards on the table and said, ‘yeah we’re a couple’, and b) I, like many others, are inclined to believe Johnny may be bisexual, which therefore gives him the crutch of ‘well I also like girls so I must be normal to a degree’. I also think Johnny would be in some way learning through the kids that all is well, and that’s it’s alright to feel the way he feels about people, because, I mean, let’s face it, literally no one in that dojo is straight. The show’s not Cobra Kai, it’s Cobra Queer. Now, Daniel, on the other hand, would have so much more trouble coming to, and accepting the conclusion that he may have a thing for dudes.

The biggest reason for that being, of course, his marriage to Amanda. I think that would definitely be the thing that messes with him the most, and I feel as though he’d be doing a lot of self-questioning, you know, such as things like ‘did i ever love her?’ or ‘have i been faking it all these years?’, which to both, we know, the answer is no, because, even if he was a straight A gay, it is possible to love someone without being attracted to them as per say. But anyway, I digress.

Daniel would probably end up questioning Amanda a lot too, whether she feels he’s good enough for her, or if he’s done right by her, et cetera, et cetera. This would likely make her question him, obviously, because her husband’s acting stranger than normal, and I feel like all that questioning on her part would likely lead to a breakdown on Daniel’s end in which case he would spill out all these emotions and feelings and realisations about him liking dudes. And obviously, all of this would absolutely crush Amanda’s heart, and he knows it, but she takes it in her stride, and does what she can to help him.

With this though would obviously come the divorce, something which is mutually agreed on, but they remain good friends. Course, they also have to tell the kids then why this is happening, and Sam is terribly accepting, of course. Anthony I’m not so sure about, but I think at the end of the day he loves his dad, nonetheless. I also think that Anthony would be inclined to live with his mother post-divorce, although he’d still come round on weekends to see his dad, meanwhile Sam lives with her father.

Following their sexual awakenings then, along with personal acceptance, comes the realisations of the crushing. The way Johnny cares so much about the kids and how Daniel smiles at that, the way Daniel is always so calm and collected and how comforting of a feeling that is for Johnny. And I think, as an added bonus, the kids realise their senseis have a thing for one another before they even do themselves.

Their friendship grows though, one step at a time, and I think at some point there’s a night where Johnny and Daniel are sitting out on the deck at the dojo, drinking and reminiscing and laughing all the while. And it is that exact night that changes everything. Because at some point, when they’ve become substantially intoxicated, they let both their walls down completely, and in Johnny asking a question about Daniel’s divorce, the latter opens up as to why it happened. Because he’s gay. And I swear to god Johnny almost chokes hearing that, because, deep down in his subconscious, he’s been waiting to hear something like that from Daniel since they were in high school.

Suddenly, after that, the metaphorical blindfolds come off, and Johnny and Daniel actually, properly, begin to realise now that they are crushing on one another and hard. They’ve fallen head over heels and there’s nothing they can do about it. But they are both timid, and I feel Johnny more than Daniel in this case.

Eventually Daniel gets the guts to ask Johnny out, on a date, to which the latter agrees, and they likely just spend their night eating gas station food (to Daniel’s begrudgement), and driving around various spots in town, including the sports hall where the All Valley Tournament of ‘84 was held. There I think they also really talk, for the first time, about everything that went down that night. Daniel thanks Johnny for giving him the trophy again, and Johnny ends up in tears when he talks about Kreese and what he did to him. And all the while Daniel comforts him, and probably gets a bit cheesy in saying they’ve got each other now, and they’ll take him down together, at which Johnny makes a snide comment about the cheesiness, but they laugh together nonetheless. They end the night with a very tentative first kiss outside Johnny’s apartment before Daniel drives home, smiling all the while.

Of course, as fate has it, and schedules, the next day there is a karate session, and it’s likely a bit awkward between the two then because their stuck in that position of ‘we’re not friends but we’re also not in a proper romantic relationship yet and we’re also basically gay so like what do we do’. To fix said awkward tension, Johnny ends up asking Daniel out on a second date on the weekend, and Daniel agrees, granted he chooses what to do and where to go (because Johnny did that last time).

I feel like Daniel takes Johnny to the forest he took Robby to for that karate training session, because it means a lot to Daniel, that spot. And much like the last time, they find themselves talking more and more about whatever deep, unresolved trauma the two have, whether that be because of each other or because of external factors (family, friends, shared enemies, et cetera). I think this date also has them gaining a tad more confidence with each other when it comes to physical things, like kissing and holding hands and just all that relationship stuff (because they enjoy it a lot, they’re both just still afraid to do these things, because, again, this stuff was taboo when they were growing up).

They end up going on a third and fourth date, the latter of which they discuss their respective families (aka the children), and what and how they’re going to tell them, along with Johnny’s own fears about Robby and, if and when he comes back, how he’s going to feel about this.

Following the fourth date they decide to make things official between them, and once again, there is a bit of tentativity when it comes to calling one another ‘boyfriend’ but they get over it soon enough, and in time the two are happily commiting to soft PDA whenever they see each other. All the karate kids(TM) are of course happy and accepting of their senseis.

And I’m just gonna say, the moment their relationship becomes truly public is at the All Valley Tournament. They’re holding hands, their giving comforting hugs, and when their kids kick Cobra Kai’s asses, you bet they give each other the biggest, most public kiss ever.

And following all of that, I just wanna see the domestic karate dads just being happy??

Oh and Robby has a great reaction to this relationship, because, you know, Daniel was like a father figure, so him just being with his dad is great (not to mention, it probably makes him more open about discussing his feelings to them about Miguel)

Demetri and Hawk

Miguel, Robby, and Sam

Robby getting chokeheld by Kreese after losing the All Valley. That’s it. I want that parallel between Robby and Johnny. Adding to that, Johnny then beats the sh*t out of Kreese, and as Kreese has made the mistake of trying to choke a minor in front of a crowd, this gets him arrested

Tory

Ali, Carmen, and Amanda

Kreese and Silver

As much as I hate it, I would like to see this Daniel’s trauma pop up in season 4, better yet if it affects Daniel to a point where it worries Johnny, because then perhaps there’ll be a good understanding between the two that they’ve BOTH had traumatic senseis in the past

What I’d also like to see is for Silver to continue Cobra Kai, if Kreese gets arrested for whatever public displays of violence, because that would create quite a large fear plot for Daniel’s part, and it would be really cool to then explore all his trauma

I’d love to see more of Kreese and his Sugar Daddy in general. Like I never thought I’d say it but I do ship them. Do I like them? F*ck no. But they are husbands imo, and I need to see more of those type of scenes in S4

Something I thought of was Silver showing up at Daniel (and Johnny’s) dojo while they’re doing a class, and I want that to be the first time Daniel sees him. It will make him freeze, I know it, and as much as I hate watching Daniel suffer, I also love it

The Lawrusso Dojo

Cobra Kai

The All Valley Tournament

LaRusso Auto Group

Other

#karate kid #cobra kai #daniel larusso #johnny lawrence #lawrusso #demetri deservesalastname #demetri cobra kai #eli moskowitz #miguel diaz #robby keene #samantha larusso #tory nichols #ali mills #carmen diaz #amanda larusso #john kreese #terry silver #miyagi-do #eagle fang

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wandaswigglywoes · 3 years

Note

Junksen - Aubrey takes care of lil werewolf Emily

Don't know if Aubrey is also a were

This took me some time to figure out what I was doing. Thank you for prompting me!!! :3 I hope you enjoy!! I’m going to try and let this be sort of ambiguous— let the reader decide if they wish to ship them romantically. (If my muse will let me. We’ll see where the girls decide to take it lmao) Haha, just kidding-- this has been sitting in my drafts for 84 years. basically ignore that above, i can't do ambiguous apparently. bye

“Why me?!” Emily winces at the shrill voice on the other side of the door, but only for the fact that it’s loud and causes the sharp pain behind her right eye to pulsate. “Why do I have to take care of her? I should be out in the trenches!” The voice continues, outraged. Emily thinks under normal circumstances, she would feel hurt, and guilty that this woman would rather be out fighting then to have to deal with her, but the only kind of emotion that Emily can muster is a sort of throbbing numbness.

“Aubrey!” A warning growl. “Her entire pack was brutally murdered before her eyes, and she was taken captive only to be tortured. Have a bit of sympathy!” Something sharp digs through the numbness and suddenly, as if she’s being submerged into an icy fjord, it all hits her at once. She has nothing— no one left.

There is silence on the other side of the door, but Emily’s exceptional hearing picks up heavy breathing. “I— I’m not saying that what happened isn’t terrible and despicable,” The shrill voice from before is much softer now, remorse evident in her tone. “I’m saying that perhaps I’m not cut out to be the one to take care of her. Someone like Chloe could—“

“Chloe is unavailable, and you know that, Aubrey. She is dealing with our spy that brought Emily in.”

“But daddy, I—“

There is a low growl and the hairs on the back of Emily’s neck stand on end. “Are you challenging me, Aubrey? I know I am your father, but I am also your alpha, so are you challenging my authority?”

“No. Of course not.” This time the voice is tight and controlled.

“Good, then you will do as I say.” The sound of someone retreating is followed, leaving no more room for argument.

Emily stares down at her bruised and raw wrists, waiting for the door to open, but it doesn’t. Not right away at least, but she knows that someone is still standing on the other side of the door.

Finally, the door creaks open, sounding so much louder in the quiet bedroom. Emily keeps her gaze downcast, wishing for all the world that she could disappear. There’s a sharp intake of breath that Emily knows has to be about her appearance. She hasn’t been able to bathe in— well, she isn’t really sure. Maybe a week? Her wrists and ankles are raw and bloody from where they had kept her shackled in pure silver, and there were fang marks at her neck where they had fed from her.

Werewolf blood was said to be warm and intoxicating to vampires, and not only that, but they lasted a lot longer than normal humans. "How are you feeling?" The voice sounds much softer now, though Emily can still hear the strain underneath.

Anger burns the back of her throat. "You don't have to be here if you don't want to," Emily says darkly, still unwilling to look up.

There is a sharp inhale through flared nostrils before it's exhaled shakily. "You heard that..." Emily chuckles derisively, but says nothing. "Right, of course. Look, I'm sorry. I'm just-- I'm not good with--" The voice trails off and Emily finally brings her gaze up to put a face to the voice.

It's a mistake. The woman is beautiful, blonde hair pulled into a tight bun with wisps of it framing her pretty, delicate features. Her eyes are a piercing green with flecks of gold, and behind them is remorse. Emily feels all the anger melt from her body in that moment. The woman's hands are clasped together tightly in front of her, as if to keep them from fidgeting. She's wearing a pair of form fitting jeans and a maroon colored Henley shirt, the whole outfit making her look effortlessly beautiful.

Emily clears her throat. "It's fine." She finally murmurs, eyes dropping back to her bloodied wrists, feeling as if she's been staring for too long.

"I'm Aubrey," The woman says gently, slowly approaching the edge of the bed where Emily sits rigidly.

"Emily," She mumbles, a shaking hand coming up to push a few greasy strands of hair out of her face.

She looks up to see Aubrey smile gently and Emily feels her insides clench. She has a nice smile. "Emily, is there--- is there anything I can help you with? We should probably clean up your wounds so that the healing process doesn't take more time than it's already going to."

Emily feels herself blush, realizing she's going to have to ask Aubrey to help her with bathing. "I--I'd really like to wash up, but-- I don't think I can stay standing long enough."

Aubrey nods. "Of course, and then we'll tend to those wounds." She approaches slowly and then holds out her arms for Emily.

Emily slowly reaches out, gripping both of Aubrey's forearms and allows herself to be pulled into a standing position. Her body screams in protest at the movement, but Emily manages to keep from crying out in pain.

Emily sits in the warm bath, knees pulled up to her chest and head tipped back slightly as Aubrey carefully pours water onto Emily's hair. Some of the tension leaves Emily's broken body as Aubrey's fingers massage shampoo into her scalp. The last time someone else washed her hair, Emily was a small child and it had been her mother.

This is-- it's different. The air feels charged, the action too intimate for two strangers.

Aubrey had respectfully kept her eyes averted while Emily struggled to undress, using Aubrey's outstretched hands to keep herself upright. They hadn't spoke since Aubrey had agreed to help her, the silence somehow louder than anything Emily had ever heard.

"Are you okay?" Aubrey finally asks, voice quiet, as if afraid to break the previous silence.

Emily swallows the dryness from her throat. "Yes, thank you."

"Close your eyes, I'm going to rinse your hair." So Emily does, barely suppressing a shiver as Aubrey's fingers comb through her hair.

After Aubrey had helped Emily get dressed (Some borrowed sleep clothes of Aubrey's), she lead Emily back into the bedroom at had her sit at the edge of the bed once more.

Aubrey is very gentle as she wraps her ankles and wrists, before looking her over for any other wounds. They still hadn't said very much to each other, which is fine with Emily. She doesn't have the energy to try and make conversation, too emotionally numb to think.

It isn't until Aubrey's fingers gently trace the fang marks on her neck that Emily's mind buzzes to life quite suddenly, pain shooting down her neck. Emily jumps and in turn, so does Aubrey. "S-sorry, is it painful?"

Emily blinks, suddenly realizing how close Aubrey's face is to her own. "I--a little," She squeaks, a soft blush coloring her cheeks.

Aubrey's fingers are still on her neck as she stares into Emily's eyes. "I'm sorry, the ointment should numb it." She finally says, and Emily realizes that Aubrey's fingers are coated in something thick and that the pain is slowly receding.

"T-thanks," Emily says, eyes quickly finding somewhere else to look other than Aubrey's probing gaze. "For everything, for doing this even though you didn't want to."

"I'm sorry you heard that," Aubrey looks ashamed as she finally pulls her hand back, wiping it on a towel. "It had nothing to do with you, I hope you know. I'm just-- not very good at any of this."

Emily smiles for what seems like the first time in a while. It doesn't quite reach her eyes, but it's gentle and earnest. She reaches out and takes one of Aubrey's hands in her own, ignoring the way her heart picks up speed as she does. "You've done a pretty good job so far."

She isn't sure if it's a trick of the light or not, but Emily thinks Aubrey blushes at the compliment, eyes falling to their joined hands. "Thank you, Emily."

Emily wakes up screaming, her neck burning and her ankles and wrists aching painfully, and the haunting screams of her family echoing in her mind. For a moment, Emily isn't sure where she is, chest heaving as she chokes on her own tears.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Hands are on her shoulders, stilling her thrashing, and when that doesn't work, arms wrap around her. "It's just a dream, Emily, you're safe."

"A-Aubrey?" Emily sobs, her world slowly coming into focus, nose picking up Aubrey's scent.

"Yes, it's me. I have you." Fingers comb through her sweaty hair.

Emily's body sags into Aubrey, nose burying into a slender neck and allowing the now familiar scent to push away the image of her family being murdered in front of her. "They're all dead," Emily hiccups, her arms wrapping around herself. "I'm-- I'm alone."

Aubrey pulls Emily practically into her lap, fingers trailing up and down her spine. "I'm so sorry they're gone, Emily," Aubrey murmurs, her voice thick with emotion. "But you aren't alone, I promise."

"Y-You don't even kn--know me," Even as she says it, her fingers grip the edge of Aubrey's sleep shirt as if she might disappear.

Aubrey sighs softly. "It doesn't matter. I have good instincts, and I can tell you're a good person. So, I mean it when I tell you that you aren't alone."

"Will you-- will you stay with me?" Emily doesn't think she can be alone again. True, Aubrey had made it into Emily's room in record time, but the thought of laying in this big bed alone with her thoughts scares her.

Aubrey doesn't hesitate. "Of course I will."

Emily sits with her back against a large tree, basking in the sun. It had been months since she was rescued and the war was getting closer to ending, and though Emily's heart still ached for her family, she had adjusted relatively well in this new pack.

A shadow crosses over her face and Emily frowns, opening her eyes to find Beca staring down at her-- the one who had rescued her. "Hey." She offers Emily a crooked grin before settling beside her.

"Hey, what's up?"

Beca lulls her head to the side to look at Emily. "Just checking in on my favorite little wolf."

Emily chuckles, nudging Beca with her shoulder. "Are you sure that title doesn't belong to someone else?"

Beca flushes slightly. "Shut up."

Emily's grin grows wider. "Pretty blue eyes, red hair--" Beca shoves her playfully and Emily laughs.

"If you're going to tease me about Chloe, then I can tease you about Aubrey."

Emily's smile drops. "Aubrey and I are friends." She says mechanically.

"Why don't you just tell her?" Beca asks gently.

"Why don't you tell Chloe?" Emily counters, annoyance evident in her voice.

Beca sighs resignedly. "I plan to... Later today. So you've got no reason not to to tell Aubrey."

Emily whips around to stare at Beca in shock, before something dawns on her. "You're going on another mission, aren't you?"

Beca inhales slowly, seeming to hold the air in her chest for a moment before exhaling. "Yeah, and life's too short to keep this shit bottled up."

Emily swallows the sudden burn of tears in her throat and nods jerkily before dropping her head to Beca's shoulder. "You better be careful, or else." She murmurs.

"I always am." Beca lets her own head drop onto Emily's.

Emily smells her before she sees her, the scent of lavender and earth growing stronger the closer she gets.

Aubrey stands outside her room on her balcony, leaning against the railing and staring up at the moon. "Hello, Emily." She says without turning around, probably having both scented and heard Emily.

Emily steps up beside her, heart in her throat. "Hi," She replies quietly, leaning against the railing next to her. Their arms brush against each others, and Emily allows it to calm her racing heart. "I uhm-- I wanted to talk to you."

Aubrey turns slightly to look at Emily. "Oh? Is everything okay?"

Emily visibly swallows as she brings her own gaze to meet Aubrey's. "Yes-- I mean, I think so." She can feel her cheeks heating up beneath Aubrey's concerned eyes and hopes it's just dark enough that Aubrey doesn't notice. "It's just-- I was talking to Beca earlier, and she said-- well, she said something to me that made me realize that I should tell you how-- how I really feel about you."

Aubrey's eyebrows draw together in confusion. She turns fully to face Emily. "How you--"

"Life's too short to keep these feelings bottled up, and I should know that better than anyone. So even if you don't feel the same, I wanted to tell you that I-- that I have feelings for you."

"You have feelings for me?" Aubrey stares at Emily in shock.

"Yes. Well, technically, I'm like-- a little bit in love with you. Which--- I don't want you to feel pressured to love me back, or feel guilty if you don't. I'm perfectly content to be your friend, I just-- I felt like you should know. So don't--"

"Emily," Aubrey's fingers press against Emily's lips.

"Hmm?"

Aubrey grins, eyes watery. "I'm a little bit in love with you, too." And before Emily can try to say anything else, Aubrey kisses her.

#junksen #junksen fanfiction #fanfic: mine #pitch perfect fanfiction

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ambrosiaicecreem · 4 years

Photo

93 Fun OC Asks Because Why Not ( Pt 2 / 2 )

oops i’ve had this sitting in my drafts so lets go ahead and finish! courtesy of @natolesims

PHYSICAL PROFILE cont:

47. What’s their pain tolerance like?

Extremely high, due to being a vampire.

48. Do they have any tattoos? What are the stories behind those tattoos?

No tattoos

49. Do they have any piercings?

Just one on both her ears.

50. How would you describe their style of clothing? How would they describe their style of clothing?

EXPENSIVE. If it looks like it came off a runway, odds are it might have just been from the runway.

51. What is their height? Weight?

Serafina is 6 ft and 165 lbs

52. What is their body type? Are they muscular, chubby, skinny, etc?

Toned and slender

53. What is their hair color? Eye color? Skin tone?

Serafina has dark brown hair, red eyes, and dark brown skin.

54. What is their current hairstyle? What have been some of their past hairstyles? Which was their favorite hairstyle?

Her current hairstyle is long, thick, wavy brown hair that reaches her lower back. She’s gone through plenty of hairstyles, all depending on what was current for what time period. Her favorite is her natural curls pulled into a ponytail.

55. What is their alcohol tolerance like? What kind of drunk are they? How bad are their hangovers?

Being a vampire, she’s got a slightly higher alcohol tolerance than a human. She definitely doesn’t get drunk easily, but she’s a loud giddy drunk. Her hangovers are terrible though. She’s in a shit mood and refuses to talk to anybody until she’s over it.

56. What do they smell like? Why do they smell like this? Is it the things they’re around or a perfume they wear?

Serafina totally uses perfume. Her go to is Giorgio Armani Si Eau de Parfum, which smells like blackcurrant nectar, rose, and white cedarwood.

57. How do they feel about sex? Are they a virgin?

Serafina is not one to be shy about sex. She doesn’t view it as a big deal, but its because she separates sex and making love. She’s had PLENTY of sexual partners before, but she’s only truly made love to a select few where she allows herself to be vulnerable and not in control.

58. What is their most noticeable physical attribute?

Her height and her eyes

59. What does their resting face look like? Do they have RBF?

She’s got THE RBF. She’s where Kass inherited hers from.

60. Describe the way they sleep.

Serafina prefers to sleep in big beds, no smaller than Queen.

ENVIRONMENT:

61. Which season is their favorite season?

Summer

62. Have they ever been betrayed? How did it affect their ability to trust others?

She’s totally been betrayed multiple times throughout her long life. Overall, she doesn’t trust people very easily. Being a mother has made her a bit more softer and open to trusting others, but she still has her walls up regardless.

63. What is always guaranteed to make them smile?

Her kids. Always.

64. Do they get cold easily? Do they get overheated easily?

Right in the middle. Not too hot, not too cold.

65. What’s their immune system like? Do they get sick often? How do they react to getting sick?

Vampire immune systems are different than human’s. It’s not often she gets sick, so she’s usually surprised when she does. She usually hides away in her room until she feels better.

66. Where do they live? Do they like it there?

As seen in the Season 1 finale, Serafina has moved to New Brando to be close to her kids. She thinks its nice, but she’ll always prefer her home island out of everywhere she’s lived.

67. Is their bedroom messy? What about their bathroom? Kitchen? Living room?

Mess doesn’t exist in Serafina’s house if she has anything to say about it. But unfortunately, she does live with 9 year old twin boys, so it’s expected sometimes.

68 & 69. How did their environment and the people in their environment growing up affect their personality?

She loves the outdoors. Specifically, she loves island life. It’s part of why she was able to make Jamaica her home so quickly. She prefers to be surrounded by plants and water if at all possible. Due to her upbringing amongst the Amazons, she’s headstrong, confident, and has the skills to be a leader.

70. How do they feel about animals? Do they have any pets?

Serafina doesn’t really have much of an opinion on animals. She doesn’t feel the need to have a pet, especially a domesticated animal like a cat or a dog. If she had to have one though, she’d want some tropical bird. She does have an aquarium full of fish in her house, just for the kids.

71. How are they with children? Do they have any? Do they want any?

Serafina’s pretty mixed when it comes to kids. She’s had MANY children over the span of her life. Even before her kids with Silas, actually. She only ever really saw it as repopulating the island for generations of new Amazons. She never truly grew attached to any of them UNTIL she began to have kids with Silas. Ajax is the first son she’s actually even raised herself. She’s perfectly content with the kids that she has now, and adamantly refuses to have any more.

72. Would they rather have stability or comfort?

Comfort

73. Do they prefer indoors or outdoors?

Outdoors

74. What weather is their favorite? Do they like storms?

Ironic since she’s a vampire, but sunny weather for sure. Storms are a nuisance more than anything.

75. If given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?

She’d come up with a list of things that she needs to do for the house.

76. How organized are they?

Extremely organized. Everything has its place.

77. What is their most prized possession?

She’s kept a drawing that Helene made for her of their family at the time. It was just before Serafina began her affair and before her relationship with Helene deteriorated the first time around. It’s a reminder of simpler times, really.

78. Who do they consider to be their best friend?

This may come as a surprise.. but Silas. The feeling may not be mutual, but their relationship truly was at its best when they were just friends with each other and not at all in a romance. She would trust Silas with her life, her family’s life, and all of her secrets.

79. What is their economic situation?

LOADED. It comes from 1. Being alive for nearly 3,000 years and having a bunch of treasures from history and 2. Being a doctor.

80. Are they a morning person or a night owl?

Night Owl

MISCELLANEOUS:

81. Are they bothered by the sight of blood?

Not at all.

82. What is their handwriting like?

Just like everything else, her handwriting has to be perfect. It’s quick cursive, but not messy. Always done with a pen, as well.

83. Can they swim? How well? Do they like to swim?

She’s extremely good at swimming, considering she swam in a storm to save both of the Montolvo brothers all by herself.

84. Which deadly sin do they represent best?

Pride

85. Do they believe in ghosts?

“If vampires can exist, anything can exist.”

86. How do they celebrate holidays? Birthdays?

She LOVES to throw parties. Whatever occasion she can, she’ll do it. It’s a whole different story though when it comes to her birthday. For one, she doesn’t even remember her actual birth date so her kids just picked one for her. She just doesn’t think her “birthday” is all that special, but she’d do everything to make everybody else’s birthdays special.

87. What is something they regret?

The affair. Now, she doesn’t regret falling in love with Vittorio or anything like that, but she wishes she had just handled everything differently. Her relationship with her kids and Silas would have been so much different if she had just been honest from the start.

88. Do they have an accent?

Yes.. but it’s kinda like two accents in one? There’s her Greek one, but then it sorta started to blend in just slightly with a Jamaican one. You can really only hear it if you’re paying attention, but once you’ve noticed you can’t unhear it.

89. What is their D&D alignment?

Chaotic Neutral

90. Are they right or left handed?

Left

91. If they were a tweet, what tweet would they be?

92. Describe them as a John Mulaney gif.

93. What’s the most iconic line of dialogue they’ve ever said?

"Mommy’s home.”

#answered asks #aic: the montolvos extras #ask games #serafina myrina

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sienna27 · 4 years

Text

Me / My Writing

Once again, faithful, patient, readers, I will be putting up a story that is not what you’re looking to see. I am genuinely sorry for that, and because I honestly don’t know when/if I’ll be able to get back to my TWD stories, I felt like I should explain what happened because it wasn’t the usual ‘hey, life happens’ bullshit which led me here. Some of you might have noticed that I’ve hardly been on Tumblr this year, and it’s all related to the following. In brief, in the early spring my mom had a psychotic break, and she tried to kill my dad. Started with verbal abuse, escalated to physically hitting him, finally went after him with a hammer. A hammer.

He’s 86, she was 84.

Weeks and weeks of hell, with her in and out of hospitals, back home on new medication, all to deteriorate to violence again and again, finally after the fourth time she had to be removed by emergency services we all, my dad included, accepted that after 63 years of marriage, my mom was going to finish up their remaining time together in a psychiatric ward. So that’s where she’s been since May. My dad, the stress has nearly killed him. Literally. He’s been in the hospital five times, in August he had a heart attack where he was technically dead for 28 minutes. Only alive now because our neighbor who was with him was a paramedic and started CPR immediately, which kept oxygen going to his brain. But the call I got at work was basically my sister sobbing, ‘dad’s dead.’ Fun drill! And my mom isn’t my mom anymore. The medication does nothing. It’s some kind of organic dementia presenting as psychosis. She has no affection for any of us. She is hateful and cruel (told my oldest brother that his birth ruined her life) and suicidal, and her brain is completely broken. I haven’t talked to her since July. I miss her. Sometimes I sit and sob I miss her so much, but the exasperating, ‘crazy,’ woman that I loved and hated and argued and fought with for forty years, isn’t the person that lives in that brain anymore, so cutting off contact is all I could do for my own sanity. I mail her cookies and send my love along with the family who still visit, and that’s all I can do.

And then in October, my cat died. My Stevo. It wasn’t sudden because I had about a week to prepare, and yet it was sudden, because it was just over and he was gone. Sixteen years he was my boy. Sixteen years he ran up to greet me at the door when I came home, and slept next to my pillow on the bed, and now he’s just not here anymore. And it’s killing me. It’ll be two months next week and I still sob uncontrollably, randomly, for about five minutes every day. Then I get my shit together and go on with my life like I’m supposed to be doing. And the five minutes of sobbing is completely separate from random ‘normal’ crying or tearing up. I’ve been doing that every single day, since the spring. I have literally cried every day for the past eight months. There is no medication to make that better because it’s not simply an ‘imbalance’ (which I had before all this anyway), this is now just my reality as it currently exists. It’s a constant grieving for everything slowly falling apart in ways that you just don’t really imagine happening. And it sucks.

So, that’s my life, right now. And as such, with this never ending shitstorm of 2019, the characters and fandoms that were previously offering me some ‘respite’ from real life, have ceased to do so. I don’t know why that is, but I haven’t been able to write in anything I had going. And with life as it has been, and still is (literal, never ending pit in my stomach - my dad is back in the ICU as of last night so I’m listening to Chopin and stress eating Christmas cookies) I needed to find something to break up the emotional maelstrom before I hit a complete breakdown. To my surprise, it ended up being the Harry Potter fandom that has kept me from slipping off the cliff. First the books, then the movies, then the fanfic. I devoured this world that I had felt only a casual affection for in the past. And when I say that I tried SO hard to ignore any flutters I had for story ideas here, it was ridiculous. I didn’t want to start writing in a new fandom when I have unfinished stories over in TWD, but the brain does what it does. And once the spark came, and the story began to flesh out in my mind, inevitably, I had to start writing it down. Once I had ten thousand words I realized it was coming into existence whether I wanted it to or not. It’s helped some as a distraction, so in that respect it has done its part, and beyond that I hope it will bring some diversion to others as well. So if you want to stick with me for a little longer, I do have this new story. It’s focused in nature, maybe seven chapters I’m thinking. I have the first two done, third drafted and final fleshed out, so it’s a project I believe I can complete. You know, barring some other horrible event happening which splinters my world in another fun, new way.

But anyway, it’s an AU where Snape survives and something happens that brings Hermione back into his life a few years later. There is a specific plot, and romance will also ensue. To be clear, this is an ADULT Hermione/Snape story because don’t be gross. If you aren’t locked into her as soulmates with Ron, Hermione with Snape actually makes a lot of sense with them getting together post war. And I realized that the pairing fits for my own pattern of writing couples with the Emotionally Repressed/Brooding Male and the woman who brings an unexpected bit of light into his life. Historically, it’s the Mr. Darcy/Elizabeth Bennett template, in case you hadn’t noticed. So stepping back, after the fact, I realized how logically I fell into this Snape/Hermione ship that I had given zero thought to prior to three months ago.

And that’s all folks. Hope your lives are well, and if they’re not, I hope they get better. I’ll be around ❤️

cc: @sesamesquirrel cpmv71

#caryl fanfiction #mcreedus fanfiction #caryl #had to tag it so I could find it later if need be

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wafflesetc · 5 years

Note

Could you possibly do a continuation of 4x05 when Murtagh arrives and surprises Claire? They go back in and then what?

500 years later, nonnie. I forgot I wrote this and it’s been sitting in my drafts since FEBRUARY. I bet @missclairebelle forgot she even read this. If you’re still frequenting my blog, well here you go. I am sorry it took me 84 years to get it out there.

After all these years you'd like to meetA/N: missing moment, canon compliant with 4x05.

“And where is the lad, then?” Murtagh took a bite of his bread and sat back in his chair. His voice was warm and welcoming in my ear.

Family. I thought to myself, this is what it’s like to entertain family .

“He went up into the mountain…” I finished drying the pot and hung it on the rack above my head. “He left early this morning. He is usually home shortly after the sun descends over the tip of the crest…”

I heard a familiar sound of Scottish amusement leave Murtagh’s chest and wiped my hands on my apron.

“Jamie always did love the outdoors…”

“That he did.” I reached for the whisky. “The first few months we were here, we slept in a little lean to. Brought me back to when we were first married and out on the road with Dougal.”

“Ahhh,” He leaned back in his chair and I caught the slight edge in his voice, “Those were the days.”

“They were… A whole lifetime ago.” I admitted, pouring two drams of the amber fluid.

“Ye said he should…”

There was a loud bang on the porch, a rustle of some materials, and a soft ‘Iffrin’ that made me smile.

“Speak of the devil,” I half whispered to myself knowing Jamie was home. I stood and walked over to the door, reaching for the knob.

“Christ, Sassenach, I think I broke my finger again.” Jamie said with a hint of pain as I opened the door. As he came into my view I searched his face and saw the small hint of pain he was willing to show me.

“Come here, love.” I took his cold hands into mine. “We have a visitor.”

“Och,” I could hear the edge in his voice. By the lines on his forehead I knew he was more exhausted than he’d admit. “Who is here? I’m no’ in a mood to entertain.”

A laugh bellowed from behind me, as I watched Jamie’s face recognize who had made the sound. His eyes went wide and a look of recognition lit across his face.

“That’s no’ a way to speak to yer godfather, ye dolt.”

Jamie quickly tugged his hands out of mine causing me to roll my eyes at him.

“Close the door, ye dinna wanta be lettin’ the draft in!” I could hear the smile on Murtagh’s face as my husband stepped in side and closed the door.

“You,” I pushed his shoulder and pointed to the table, “Sit and have a drink. I will look at that finger.”

“All these years later and the lass is still just as bossy and mendin’ ye up. It’s good to see things havena changed.” I could see the faint smile on his face with a hint of nostalgia- no doubt he was recalling memories from a lifetime before, just as I was.

“Old habits die hard apparently,” I sat in the chair next to Jamie and motioned for him to put his hand on the table. His hand hit the oak with a thud and in an instant I could see the swollen knuckle in his middle finger. Gingerly, I touched it on either side taking stock of the injury. I gave it a quick pinch and watched him squint in response to the pain.

“Just as a I thought,” I raised his hand to my mouth and kissed the blue and purple flesh. “It’s a most likely a small fracture right in the joint here. I’ll splint you for a couple of days and you’ll have to take it easy..”

“Aye, Sassenach. I ken what I will have to do.” My husband smiled at me warmly taking his hand from mine and running his fingers down the contours of my face.

“Welcome home.” I whispered into his touch- forgetting we weren’t alone for a minute.

Murtagh let out a cough and I could see the tips of Jamie’s ears go pink.

“Tis good to see ye both like this…” His voice caught for a second and I could see the emotion well in his eyes, “Ye both deserve this. It warms my auld decrepit heart to see ye both together again… I thought I wouldna live to see the day.”

“Mmm.” I nodded agreeing, reaching for a glass to pour some more whisky into the empty glasses.

“I am blessed,” Jamie was looking at Murtagh, their eyes having a silent conversation across the table. “To ken my daughter is alive and well, to have my wife by my side. ‘Tis all I ever needed in my life.”

I nearly choked at his words, “He knows?”

“Of course I know about your child, Claire. Now, why don’t ye tell me about her?”

I took a sip of my drink feeling myself torn between the centuries once again. For a fleeting moment my heart stopped, oh how I miss you, Bree, I thought to myself. I felt Jamie’s hand on my thigh as it gave me a reassuring squeeze pulling me back to reality.

“Well, for one, she’s definitely a Fraser. The red hair, the cat-like brow, and not to mention the stubbornness...She’s just like her father.”

“God help her then.” Murtagh laughed. “What else about her?”

I took a breath and nodded, feeling myself in two planes. I yearned to be able to touch her, give her a hug, yet with the men that filled my dining room I knew, deep down, that the price of all that we had been through would always be worth it.

“She was raised in Boston and was an amazing student…. Smart and conniving, yet though comes from a long line of true Scots, she doesn’t like to drink whisky…”

“Mmphm.” Murtagh let out a disapproving grunt. “Ye dinna try to change her mind, then?”

I laughed, shaking my head. “Do you remember what it was like telling Jamie that he couldn’t do something when he was in his twenties?”

“Aye, I did. He never listened to me.”

“She’s very much the same…”

“When she was little, she used to sit by this one window- her hair would be caught perfectly in the light and Bree would turn and face me. It would take my breath away, she would look just like Jamie...”

We sat and it poured out of me, for hours as we finished the large jar of whisky. I told them about her first day of elementary school, her first dentist appointment, our trip to New York City, and more. They listened intently with open minds and hearts.

And when I saw that Jamie had fallen asleep in his chair, Murtagh stood and walked around the table, kneeling by my side.

“Ye did well, Claire. I will always wish to meet yer child, but I ken she was loved and taken care of. Thank ye for what ye did.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “And thank ye for coming back to Jamie.”

#Outlander #Outlander Fanfic #Jamie x Claire #Jamie Fraser #Claire Beauchamp #Murtagh Fitzgibbons #myfic!#OL: Drums #OL: Missing Moment #Anonymous

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annmargarette0809 · 4 years

Text

How to Become a Successful Freelancer (A 5-Step Guide)

Did you know that according to PayPal's 2018 Global Freelancer Insights Report, at least 2% of the Philippines' population is said to be freelancers? The report also found that 84% of freelancers use a freelancer online platform such as Upwork and Freelancer.

Working on a freelance basis can feel incredibly liberating. Being your own boss, a relaxed working schedule and cherry picking your projects are among the most alluring benefits. You're in complete control of your own destiny and have more control over your working life than most people who work a 9:00 to 5:00 office job. Well, reality is a tiny bit different. Freelancing is no Cake Walk! Self-employment may come with the desired flexibility. But, such flexibility has its own downsides, not to forget. You have to figure out how well are you ready to treat yourself like a business owner? Where do you begin? What processes and structures do you need to have in place? How do you find clients? And how do you know how much to charge?

Freelancing is not just sitting at home and work comes to you. The reality is you have to fight for it, and fight hard. As freelancer, you have to maintain your dignity as being a boss of your own and practicing patience radically increases your capacity for success.

In this blog post, I am going to share with you the Top 5 secrets to Becoming a Successful Freelancer coming from an expert view. “First: you must strive. Nothing good is ever easy.” says Emil Lamprecht, an avid startup and personal advisor in Berlin. He has 7 years of freelance with clients across the globe. He shares the most essential tips on becoming succesful freelancer in your chosen niché.

1. Contact everyone you know.

Literally. Everyone.

A robust network is a freelancer’s best friend. The goal is to start your business with “a group of people who really care about you” and who are ready to support you along the way. Reach out to the people closest to you to let them know what you’re doing.

This doesn’t have to feel like you’re begging for work though. In fact, taking people you like out to coffee or lunch “before you have an ‘ask’” and offering to help them out in any way you can. “It’s the equivalent of doing informational interviews. You’re just making clear the kind of work you’re doing now and that you’re available to help anyone who might need it.

Being in touch with your network isn’t just important at the beginning. It’s crucial to build time into your schedule going forward to continue networking. You never want to be so busy that you can’t reach out to the people who can help you.

2. Work on your Personal Brand.

The reason is that as a freelancer, YOU ARE YOUR BRAND.

So help me god [or deity of choice], this is a truth among truths, irrespective of whether you’re a web developer, a user experience designer, a writer or a marketer.

What do I mean when I say you are your brand?

I mean that when you are selling your services, you are actually selling yourself. So how you come across online or off is reflective of your success, your ability, and your professionalism. Your personality counts. Big time. If people don’t like you, they won’t buy what you’re selling.

So, how did I build my personal brand?

1. I got myself on LinkedIn and I fully filled out my profile. Every single detail of my experience. Every relevant job I ever had. Every morsel about me that could be interesting.

2. I then did the same thing on Facebook. I joined relevant groups for my field and started asking questions, lots of questions, as well as answering any I could.

3. I did the same on Twitter.

4. And on Instagram.

5. And when it was made available I did the same with Quora, which has become the fact-filled platform for experts.

6. I then went to every industry-relevant event I could find, afford and get to, and hustled like a maniac.

If you’re someone who still believes social media is the devil, you’re in trouble, because it’s never a single tactic that will get you anywhere, it’s a combination of many intelligently coordinated pieces.

Asking and answering questions is the easiest way to get people involved and invested in what you do, and while you could meet 15 people during a night out, you could meet 100 online. And perhaps yes, the contact is “shallower” but you can be a hell of lot more targeted. So I recommend starting online, understanding who’s important for you, pre-empting offline events by connecting with people via Twitter, and leveraging LinkedIn connections into meetings for coffee.

If you combine a strong digital brand with meeting people in person, you’ll make yourself:

Easy to find

Easy to remember

Good to know

You want to be understood as an expert and an influencer in your field, and in a world where most industry communication is digital, you better be all over it!

Just remember not to get discouraged if you don’t get 1000 Twitter followers instantly, because what’s important here is that quality wins over quantity every time. Stay focused, stay targeted and talk to every new connection like they’re your best friend.

And vice versa, if you’re awkward and depend entirely on social media to drive your network, you’re doing it wrong. You have to get out, you have to meet people and confirm that you’re real and worth investing in. As Jon Norris explained:

“Although it can be awkward attending networking events, it’s a great way to build contacts. Get out there, hand out business cards and make friends.”

3. Write a Plan of Action.

I want you to pay very close attention to the next statement.

Never, ever, undervalue time taken to plan. Never.

For each of those 30 days before I quit my job I had a goal. Sometimes that goal was to email a relevant contact in my field asking for advice. Sometimes that goal was to expand my network by X number of people, answer a certain number of questions, or attend a meetup.

And sometimes it was simply to plan out the next steps.

For each of those 30 days I wrote down my trials and tribulations into a short (often emotional) blog post, charting my ups and downs in that final month before taking the leap.

I also carefully drafted and redrafted a personal business plan, including my financial requirements, goals, and how I thought that would actually translate into work. I realized that if I landed the equivalent of 2 short projects a month, I could survive. Well barely, but it’s good to know where your survival limit is, because when push comes to shove, it’s accomplish that goal or be stuck eating dry toast for a month.

Unless you’re one of these eternally adventurous types, freelancing is no fun as a hand-to-mouth game. Nobody chooses this path with the goal of living on a financial knife edge. And by the way, it’s ok to be scared, in fact if you’re not, you’re either invincible or a dumb ass, so keep your eyes open, know your limits, and plan accordingly.

I also used this as another excuse to grow my network, reaching out to experts in my industry to ask for advice:

· How much should I charge?

· Where do I best find my clients?

· How difficult is it to close a deal?

· Should I template my pitches or create new ones every time?

This created an opportunity to learn, improve and perfect the skills I would need in a month while growing a power-network of professionals in the field. Two birds in one stone at its finest!

Do your research and pay attention to competition.

Whether it was hours scanning social media, reading blog posts like this one, offering my services to friends, or just generally building a network however I could, I absorbed as much information as possible.

Sure, it’s overwhelming; anyone who has spent a 4 hour stint on a single topic online knows that the rabbit hole is deep, and easy to get sucked into. At the end of the day, you have to pick and choose what’s important for you, but what I found most helpful was taking a real good look at what my competition were doing. And there is always competition.

Looking closely at what others were doing, I found out 3 things that helped me a lot:

1. I had local competition, and I mean local. As in down the street from me. But even if they had been doing it for a while, they didn’t seem to be effectively marketing themselves, it took effort to find them.

2. People who were looking for someone of my expertise had no central data bank to find me, or other freelancers like me. I had to be in the right place at the right time.

3. I could easily differentiate myself from my competition by having an attractive personality, and a digital presence.

Leif Kendall likes to tell people to:

“Deliver work that is better than anything your competitors are doing.”

and truthfully, I couldn’t agree more. Maybe you have a lot of experience, and maybe you don’t, but your job is to perform better than everyone else in your field, both in the work you do, and the way you act.

But how did I know what my competition were actually doing?

Remember that old adage “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”? This is one way of looking at it, but in a world of freelancing where your network is everything, you can’t afford to have enemies at all. So try this instead: “Keep your friends close, and make friends with your enemies.”

Don’t be guarded, don’t be defensive. Share, trade, and exchange what you can from your own knowledge and then keep doing it better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better.

In the end, you’ll find that some people have big egos, but a lot of people are happy to have a friend. Freelancing can be a bit lonely sometimes as by its definition you often lack those daily colleagues who understand the work you do. A lot of people out there are just like you, and happy to have someone they can relate to about work, and even share a bit of knowledge and experience.

Get yourself a mentor—and your first client.

The best piece of advice I ever received was simple in theory and tough in practice:

“Don’t burn any bridges.”

If you’re a freelancer, this quote should be read in all capslock and underlined, because you can’t afford to. Every contact counts , and on behalf of your reputation and livelihood, although it’s very tempting to give your boss the finger as you storm out the door, it’s not something you can afford to do, ever.

No one likes “kissing ass” and I don’t really recommend it, but now that you’re leaving you need your employer more than ever before, because face it: your current employer is your strongest link to your first job as a freelancer. If your job is at all related to what you plan to do, they may themselves be your first client.

In my case, the karaoke bar owner would eventually make it very clear that he “didn’t give a flying f&%$” what I was doing beyond his bar. But I needed something, so I went and found myself a mentor. Aka, I willingly became a slave to an influencer in my industry. It was the smartest decision I ever made because despite totally over-working myself, I sure enough gained Experience, made Contacts, and walked away with one hell of a Reference.

Oh, and yes, I did this on top of the study, the job, and the prep. If you want something, don’t half ass it.

So how did I manage to get myself a mentor?

Well if you have a boss who knows anything, that’s the best place to start. But if you’ve read this article then you can probably guess how I did it: I networked like a maniac, showed my plan of action, and proved I knew how to work like the competition.

In the end, I convinced my would-be mentor that I was worth that little bit of time and effort, and sure enough Richard Levy passed me my first client after only a couple weeks. And Bam! I was officially a freelancer, on schedule and making money.

Whether it’s a boss, mentor, professor, uncle, slave driver, or homeless dude with good advice, the people you see daily are most likely to have the biggest impact on your transition. So be accommodating, be thankful and be willing to work your ass off for an opportunity to do what you love.

As Rik Lomas wrote in his blog post about freelancing on Medium:

“Do not piss people off. Remember that you’re a professional and are soon to be leader of your own company. Act like it.”

So finally….

So what’s my last piece of advice? What’s that final nugget of understanding you need to open the doors to your new career, new lifestyle, and impending financial freedom?

The simple answer is that there isn’t one. There is no one solution, there is no one path. Your puzzle is your own! And understanding how the pieces fit together is what will guarantee your success.

If you’re hunting for that single piece of magical advice that will get you out of your job and thousands of clients a year, let me tell you, it doesn’t exist. Like in life, relationships, and all other forms of comedy, it’s your ability to understand the big picture and refine each detail to pixel-perfect clarity that makes you who you are and good at what you do.

So my advice is don’t forget that, don’t get hung up on singularity in a world full of complication, because what will make you successful is knowing how to apply who you are to what you want to do to the best of your ability.

As for the rest of what you need to know? Start by reading this article! People will say you’re crazy to set out on this path of uncertainty, which if you’re like me is just confirmation that you should be doing it! Freelancing is something you really have to want, and be prepared to work hard for. And the result of that is a lifestyle, and a sense of freedom that is unrivalled by any other job in the world.

So prep it, work it, and then LIVE IT for all your worth!

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