#they sometimes extend to the more innocuous stuff

[georgespaniel]

plagued by the thoughts™️

#mild vent feel free to ignore #but the intrusive ones woooo #they sometimes extend to the more innocuous stuff #so like all of them are focussed around the fear of me being a bad person #and the ungodly amount of hate and stuff for matty has set them off a bit #bc i rationally know that a lot of it is untrue and i still like him #but they just repetitively and constantly go that i am a bad person i should be ashamed etc. etc. for liking him #even though i don't think that #its like having a guilty conscious about things you haven’t even done/don't even believe lmao #a talks #vent

[noxexistant]

okay i’m talking more about hypermobile morris because it’s MY disabled pride month and I get to project

i lean to him having hEDS, which causes hypermobility in joints (meaning they extend too far, past where their range of movement is supposed to end) and frequent joint dislocations, joints being clicky and painful, fatigue, skin issues including scarring/splitting/bruising very easily, digestive problems, dizziness + heart palpitations after standing, and can cause issues with internal organs including heart problems. it’s caused by faulty genes affecting tissue connectivity, which - depending on the type of EDS - can be inherited from one parent, both parents, or occur in the affected person for the first time. it was first acknowledged as a condition in 1901 by edvard ehlers - so, two years after the strike.

morris is a nightmare about sitting or standing properly, he constantly hyperextends his legs because it’s comfy for him, despite oscar’s comments that that absolutely cannot be comfy. he sits in lotus pose out of habit, and bends his legs up over bannisters he’s stood beside like a dancer doing barre work, he stretches as a way to stim and as a way to try and mitigate constant discomfort. oscar always grimaces seeing how morris moves, stretching too far and clicking when he moves certain ways.

morris is constantly experiencing joint dislocations, though doesn’t really know what they are. just casually explains it to oscar as things “popping outta place”. his shoulders/elbows are the worst for it from years of abuse and fighting, sometimes he’ll just move wrong and his elbow’ll click out (same with his hips) but usually it’s him taking a punch wrong or falling during a fight and his shoulder dislocating completely. he’s so used to it that he’ll just force it back into place without a word, and shrug off oscar’s concern about morris then being in even worse pain than usual, brutal bruises blooming around the joint. his ankles and knees will sometimes go when he’s walking, and he’ll start limping beside oscar. have to grab onto his brother’s arm like a makeshift cane. he’s very good at pain management, will just push right though it and totally ignore it, aside from some extra irritability if anyone tries to start anything with him while he’s already trying to deal with pain. he’s happy to take it out on whoever, even if it only makes his pain worse.

oscar’s had to help him with a few more severe dislocations, particularly when morris is too weak or injured or wound up to click his joints back into place himself. oscar always panics. he hates having to hold morris down hard and wrench him while he wails in pain, but he knows it’ll be worse if he doesn’t. he just mutters a mantra of “‘m’sorry, ‘m’sorry, ‘m’sorry, mo, it’ll be over soon—“ as he works, then lays himself over morris while they both catch their breath.

morris bruises like a peach. he’s constantly covered, pale skin mottled with purples and blues and greens and yellows. some are from brutal hits from wiesel, some are from him bumping into things, plenty are from the most innocuous stuff like oscar holding his arm a little too hard. he once got a pretty brutal one from crutchie hitting him with a bit of crumpled paper fired from his slingshot, in a hit that would have hardly been felt by anyone else. his skin also splits super easily, oscar’s constantly having to wipe blood up with a rag where morris didn’t even notice he was bleeding.

his digestive problems affect his eating a lot, making him nauseous and causing pain so he’s unwilling to eat. he throws up a lot, or ends up doubled over with stomach pain, sometimes preventing him from being able to get up in the morning. wiesel always thinks he’s faking. he gets dizzy when he stands up, especially from crouching down, and that causes a lot of issues at work, but he forces himself to just power through even when he can feel the world start spinning and his vision darkening. he gets breathless, and also has bouts of arrhythmia where his heart will start racing or beat too slowly and make him collapse. oscar’ll try and guide him somewhere quiet to sit against a wall while oscar crouches in front of him, muttering useless comfort and trying to remind morris to breathe, praying that his little brother’s heart won’t give out. wishing he could take him to a doctor to find out what the hell is wrong before it kills him.

morris isn’t interested in his own suffering, though. as soon as he can force himself too, in whatever context, he’ll stagger to his feet and tell oscar they have to continue on. and oscar really has no choice but to let him, because they do.

#my headcanons #morris delancey

[thewolfisawake]

Other than Rukiya, Noita has one of the more unorthodox exorcist practices. And unlike Rukiya, they truly cannot teach anyone to do anything the way they do for the simple reason that it is simply a part of them. Any teaching or nagging they do is because they use normal exorcism discipline to conceptualize their own power. What is this power? Misfortune.

Noita was born with an aura of misfortune. It started innocuous but always present. It was thought to be a string of bad luck. Everyone gets down on their luck sometime. However it was their mother that had sensed this aura a long time ago but it was only thought to be a part of the mental break that led to her abandoning their family.

Unfortunately as time goes on and bad stuff continued happening, Noita was considered a jinx and bullied and generally unliked. Although it was thought to be from their heterochromia rather than an actual trait about them. Noita, being a quick-witted sort, usually could avoid their own misfortune hurting them. However they didn't know it extended to those around them and it is here where a lot of their negative life experiences came from.

It was their last physical fight with their brother that they truly started to consider if there was something about them that caused bad luck. They did this as more of thought exercises initially of thinking bad things to happen to others. Then they got more specific. Then they started seeing if they could imbue it into objects or create timing for when it goes off.

Noita mainly used this to aid with their theft, fights and escapes at a kid and adolescent. It wasn't until their run in and deal with the Bastion that Noita really expanded how to deal with their power. It was known what blood ran with Noita because of wisteria colored eye. This was from the Marufuji family, exorcists known in Japan but do not willfully associate with the family. Seeing as Noita is not affiliated with them and held strong spiritual power, they were an opportunity.

However it was difficult to figure out how to teach them. The exorcist study in Europe were not compatible with them as many are faith based and their faith...sucks. So they actually had borrowed materials from the Sumeragi family in the hopes that maybe they click naturally with the style similar to their birth family. And it paid off...sorta.

While Noita could execute exorcist abilities because of the virtue of having spiritual power, this is not what kicked their misfortune. What did it for them was when the manuals spoke about curses. Their reading led to them conceptualizing their power as a living, limitless curse. While by now it works basically instanteously because of their years of training, when Noita first started they considered their trigger like the bite of a snake or a shank. Because of how they visualize, their hits with their power is immensely quick. Both in execution and spreading of it.

How the misfortune manifests is not something Noita can always know. They have been doing it long enough to have a general idea of how it might act up. In its most harmless state, the target is basically afflicted with a bout of bad luck. They'll trip over things, run into things, randomly get smacked with something, etc. Noita might do this if they want to catch someone. Upping the ante is when they can run into weaponry failure, loss of use in limbs (temporarily), the building coming down on them. And truly bad misfortune...well, that hasn't been experienced to anyone consciously knowing.

Their misfortune is also ties into another aspect: chaos. It skews towards the part of chaos that no one likes, the discord and unpredictability. It is an aspect they have been exploring and so far only held back by their years. They can cause mild disasters and disruptions with their ability. And because they're petty this sometimes is done so that Bastion has to deal with collateral damage.

And as for how they use their power for their exorcism, depends on the being. For many Eastern spirits and they like they are manifestations of misfortune. So, Noita has some degree of control over them. This is usually to direct them away from the general populace. As for how to get rid of them, they somewhat attune to the being's 'wavelength' and then essentially dispel them. The stronger the being, the closer they have to reach a resonance.

For beings not directly dealing with misfortune, it's pretty straight forward. They basically curse it to death. The creature is cursed by a focus, usually straight up stabbing them or direct blast to them. Then it manifests like a poison, it spreads and destroys in all facets until one of the failures makes it fall dead.

Because of how their method works, Noita is considered very ruthless by other exorcists. Their method does not offer any way for vengeful spirits to move on or go in peace. And direct cursing is usually not pretty. So many hunters sent on missions with them are fearful of them. And it is for reasons like that that Noita often goes on missions with Tannim, the closest they have to a childhood friend and the one man that counters their misfortune.

What I mean by counter isn't like he can bat away their curses but he does balance their aura. When they are not in combat or doing work, Noita's aura remains active. It's not something they can shut off. And trying to suppress it ends up in a build up that causes some real calamity shit. So passively dealing with having a constantly shitty little things is better to them. But if their aura is misfortune, the closest approximation to Tannim's is 'good fortune.' Tannim despite his life story is passively very lucky. So him in proximity to Noita evens their fortune to basically average. It's something they both can enjoy and probably a sorta unconscious reason why they hang around each other a lot.

A lot of their control is considered discipline. As a person that takes learning and exploration as an interest, it isn't really considered a chore for them to hone their power. However in actuality, Noita's power is very much tied with their state of being. So like their will and their emotions all affect how it works. Loss of control isn't a heavy issue to them but it's not like they haven't and that time was...A Time.

#the bad luck charm #I was supposed to do a whole post #for all the losers of round 1 #and like their great power and its explanation #but a plotting idea has me thinking of Noita's #and it ended up really long #I would put more descriptive things but like... #just take any terrible thing that can happen in any horror #and they probably could do it

[ulfwolf]

Spider Angst -- Musing 275

Spiders hate dew it betrays their only way to make a   living/killing: Webs

I see them sometimes, on early summer mornings, glittering with dew. A sight for sore eyes—unless you’re a spider that is.

Then it’s “Damn this dew. Damn this sun. Damn this Mother Nature. Damn them all to hell.”

A lot of flying potential spider meals beg to disagree: the deadly web shines like a multi-diamonded beacon, screaming “Stay away. Stay away.” and that they do, while Starving Spider keeps cursing. All this brilliant overnight work for nothing, “Damn this dew to hell.”

I like spiders. I like spiders a lot more than I like ants.

I own and live in a fairly new Danish beach-style cottage (is what the seller—whose mother was Danish and whose father was Swedish, tells me it is, he designed it himself he says, to look like that; then he adds, I was conceived during a lull in their argument). This newish structure rarely sees ants, though far less rarely spiders.

I do like spiders. They, like I am, are loners. Solitary creatures weaving nocturnal food baskets while the sun lights up the other side of the planet.

Ants are the opposite: not loners. You see one ant, both his immediate and extended family are not far behind.

I really don’t want to kill ants though (I never kill spiders—instead I give them names and treat them as pets). One or two ants: usually tell them, “You stay out of sight and I won’t have to kill you.” Sometimes they get the message and scurry out of sight. Ten or twenty ants, I am so sorry, out comes the Raid. “I told you. I told you,” I keep telling them. This Raid stuff does give them the message—the smell does if nothing else (I hate that smell). They stay away for a while, sometimes for months.

And so, a few ant-less months roll by and all is well in my little cabin or cottage or whatever you want to call it; it’s not big: a six hundred square foot base (ground floor) and a four hundred square foot loft. That’s all.

Then, early one afternoon, while sweeping and vacuuming, I discovered that ants, the small seemingly innocuous type, like warm, snuggly places, say, under my wi-fi router. How did I discover this you ask?

Vacuuming around the router I see a black spot on the hardwood floor sort of dribbling out from underneath the router. It looks more than just dirt or what have you. I scraped it a bit and found more of it, behind the router. This is truly strange. So I lift the router.

Shock: These ants were not just visiting, hanging out on the beach so to speak, they had come to settle: the entire—very extended—family, queen included. Hundreds and hundreds (if not thousands) of them, along with small continents of little white hills that I realize are masses of eggs.

Truth be told, I didn’t have the nerve to look closer. I felt invaded, violated, and, yes, shocked. What the…?

I vacuumed them all away. All the while asking them to forgive me. This was not part of our deal, I keep telling them. You just cannot do this, I keep telling them. I am so sorry, I keep telling them. But I keep vacuuming until they’re all gone. Then I wash the spot, scrub the spot, with 409. I don’t like the smell of this 409, but it cleans well. Then I lift and shake the router to see a few more ants fall out of it and onto the floor. I vacuum them up as well.

Then I Raid the area, while I keep telling them I’m sorry. I really am. I make sure they’re all gone and that they won’t want to come back (Stay away, says Raid).

The vacuum cleaner is a Dry-Wet Vac, which in turn I cleaned really well once done with this genocide.

I still check under the router once or twice a week to make sure no one’s thinking of re-settling.

::

One morning I found a spider in one of my stainless steel kitchen sinks (the lefthand one). The sides were too deep to ascend so there he (or she, how do you tell spider gender?) was investigating (or pretending to—to shield sheer spider panic) the bottom of the sink.

Me, spider-lover that I am tore off a piece of paper towel and fashioned of it a spider-elevator which I invited the desperate little guy (or girl) to enter for a ride.

Enter he/she did, climbed onboard while I lifted the lift (I like that) out of the sink and placed it on the counter beside it. Well, spider had not stayed put on paper lift, he/she had climbed onto my hand and while my initial (reflexive—based on similar though unsavory freeloaders) reaction was to shake my hand or brush him/her off, but I caught myself in time and instead I let the spider take his time to traverse the top of my hand and jump off onto counter-safety.

Which he/she did, and I swear: the soft-shoe shuffle of eight hairy spider legs was the sweetest, gentlest, whisperest touch ever—made my day. I’m not exaggerating, they made my day.

The spider, once safe on the countertop shifted gears and was gone from view in a breath or two.

 I don’t wash my car very often (perhaps I should). I don’t drive it very often either. It’s a small car. A Toyota Yaris, 3-door, 2008 model. These days it’s not much more than a glorified shopping cart, though I never tell it this: he/she still thinks he/she is the cat’s whispers and I’ll happily let him/her suffer under that delusion as long as he/she is happy.

Funny thing is I still think of my car as new—going on fourteen years.

Mostly he/she just sits collecting dust (which is washed off whenever rain moves through my pacific coast region). What isn’t washed off, however, is the gathered collection of spider webs, between side mirrors and body, around the door handles, by the read license plate. And I’m thinking, as I notice the increasing webness of my little car, Who am I to deprive them of their livelihoods? Not me. And so I drive off, all webbed, sometimes wondering what other Walmart shoppers will think about her, my web-draped little brand new Yaris.

I am not a hunter-gatherer, I am pure gatherer, and I do my gathering at local produce sections (mostly Walmart—which I why I suggested to my realtor friend a great tagline for Crescent City, where I live: Crescent City, just like Big Sur but with a Walmart. He liked that he said, but I haven’t seen him use it yet. Then again, I haven’t seen him much lately.

This was an odd spring, though, and early summer. Not a single dewed spider web. Perhaps they’ve all cottoned on to dew-producing nights, and take those nights off.

::

P.S. If you like what you’ve read here and would like to contribute to the creative motion, as it were, you can do so via PayPal: here.

[jaeheewillalwaysbemyfav]

Ah, your work is so cute and it puts me in a good mood! You also have the characters personalities perfected! I was wondering if you could do a fic where maybe Mammon and MC are hanging out and MC comes out as trans (Ftm), but on accident (like Mammon sneaks a peak at his phone and noticed pride stuff and asks). Recently figured out I was and it’s been a bumpy ride and I just need a fic to cheer me up. Thank you if you do

You sir have been Most Patient, and for that I cannot thank you enough! This is super late, but I hope all is going well with you and your journey. ^-^ I also hope you still get some enjoyment out of this fic, even if it’s oh so very late.

Like… a year late. Maybe more. Probably more.

Sidebar, the setup for this feels kinda long but I also personally think it’s funny so I’m leaving it. I don’t have an editor to tell me no sooooooo :p

Content warnings: Accidental outing as trans, the mortifying ordeal of coming out, but otherwise this is gonna be pretty fluffy. 

Also, this isn’t a warning, but since I usually do gn stuff, I’m gonna be extra clear and say this fic is about a transgender male MC who uses he/him pronouns. Ladies and theydies, if you’d like your time, please wait until I’ve opened requests again and I’ll be happy to write ‘ya something.

Cis people who want to be transphobic? Why are you even here lmao

MC Comes Out as FTM By Accident (feat. Mammon)

It’s a (relatively) quiet day at the House of Lamentation. Satan is still firmly in the scheming phase of his latest prank; Lucifer is in some parlour somewhere, sipping Demonus and listening to a record that would “somberly vibrate the flesh off of your mortal bones, MC”; and Levi and the twins are livestreaming a bet about how many of the otaku third born’s figurines Beel can bench press (the latter two are under threat of 1000 years of torture if any of the merchandise is damaged).

This leaves Mammon and MC chilling on one of the House’s many frighteningly expensive couches, sometimes chatting, sometimes just silently sharing Devilgram memes with each other. 

(Asmo had been with them, but left after declaring that the sexual tension Mammon constantly radiated while around MC had become more pathetic than amusing. MC had just rolled his eyes and laughed, but judging by how many pillows Mammon had thrown his brother’s way and the dark blush on his face, he was taking the teasing more seriously.)

Personally, MC didn’t get why Mammon’s brothers gave him such a hard time. Sure he can be abrasive and his refusal to be honest despite how terrible he is at lying could get… frustrating, to say the least, but all in all he isn’t a bad person. Maybe demons are just bad at expressing genuine fondness for each other. Or maybe it just runs in the family, so to speak.

“H-hey, what are ‘ya staring at?!” Oops. MC didn’t even realize he’d been eyeing Mammon for that long. Not that he minds getting an extra eyeful of Mammon...

“Sorry, just spaced out for a minute there,” he says. 

Neither break eye contact for a long moment.

Shit, this is awkward. Think, MC, say something!

“So did you see this video of a hellhound on a trampoline—”

A glass-shattering shriek echoes through the House of Lamentation, followed by — oh that is actual glass shattering — and the plip-plap footsteps of someone running with bare, wet feet. Seconds later, a furious and appropriately damp Asmodeus comes flying down the stairs, with a weird orange and white towel on his head… Aaaaand nothing else on. MC doesn’t get to process any more than that before Mammon pounces on him, straddling him and covering his eyes with a hand.

“Asmo! What the hell are you doing, running around naked and screaming?!”

“I think you know why, you stupid scumbag!” Asmo retorts with an affronted flip of his hair. Or at least MC thinks it was his hair, all he knows is he just got lightly splashed. Why does he smell citrus?

“What are you even talking about?”

“I was going to take a nice, relaxing bath to scrub off your desperation for MC’s affections—”

“I am NOT desperate!”

“— but when I washed my hair, you know what happened?”

“...You confused orange juice for shampoo?” Mammon drawls. MC doesn’t need his vision to picture the smirk on Mammon’s face.

“How dare you,” Asmo hisses at much lower volume than before, “I would never confuse any of my bathing products.” His voice immediately returns to its regular cadence. “No, someone snuck dye into it, or replaced it, or cursed it or something! Because now,” a towel smacks wetly against the floor, “my hair looks like this!”

Mammon howls with laughter, prompting Asmo to make several sounds MC semi-confidently determines to be swears in Infernal… or whatever the native language of the Devildom is called.

He paws at Mammon’s hand obscuring his vision. If Asmo’s hair has been turned into a creamsicle by some prank gone wrong, he very much wants to see the damage. Unfortunately, Mammon doesn’t budge.

“Not that this isn’t extremely hilarious, but what does it have to do with me?”

Asmo squawks indignantly. “What does it— It was obviously you, you idiot!”

Finally, Mammon removes his hand from MC’s eyes to point an accusatory finger at Asmo and proclaim, “No way!”

The brothers’ petty argument fades into white noise as MC beholds Asmo’s hair. It truly is something else. The demon’s curls have gone from a peachy pink to a swirled mess of neon orange, with pieces of the original colour peaking through here and there. It cannot be played off as intentional or good in any way. There are even patches of his skin that are dyed orange as well. It’s pretty hilarious.

MC is starting to lose feeling in his legs.

“Uh, Mammon? You mind getting off of me?”

Eyes enormous, the Avatar of Greed does just that, and instead presses himself into the other side of the couch like a startled cat. Asmo rolls his eyes and turns his attention to MC.

“You’re not overwhelmed with the most poorly hidden crush of the millenia, right? Would you mind helping me sort this mess out?” he asks. “Think about it. It’ll just be you and me, all glistening and—”

“Not helping your case,” MC retorts, carefully keeping his eyes above Asmo’s waist, “but yeah, whatever cursed soda got into your hair stuff is probably close enough to normal stains that my tricks will help get them out. But! You need to put on some clothes first.”

“Spoilsport~ But if you insist…” Asmo smiles beatifically and saunters back to his room, making absolutely no effort to cover himself as he goes.

I’d kill for his confidence, MC thinks. He promises Mammon he’ll be back as soon as possible and takes his leave, following the trail of watery footprints.

~~~

Mammon remains folded into the corner of the couch, pouting. Of course Asmo had to come and steal MC away from him, he can’t have any time alone with him ever! There’s always some stupid shenanigans that interrupt it— 

MC left his phone. 

It’s sitting innocuously on the couch, face down. Unguarded.

Vulnerable.

He shouldn’t. He won’t! That’s MC’s phone. Mammon may be a demon, but he’s a demon with standards. He will totally respect MC’s privacy. He’s not even tempted. Who cares about some human’s phone anyway?

...What if it’s unlocked?

“Oh screw it.” 

The phone’s in his hand before the indent it left in the couch cushion can spring back in full. It is, in fact, unlocked, and open on the photos app for some reason. The photos are organized in time based folders. Mammon scrolls through the more recent ones, which consist mostly of pictures of the brothers, some with MC, some not — hey, when did MC take that picture of him?! — until he comes across a folder simply labelled “Pride”.

“Tch, they have a whole folder dedicated to Lucifer? Gross!” Mammon remarks as he opens it.

Jealous as he may not be of MC dedicating a folder to Lucifer instead of him anyone else, new pictures of Lucifer could sell for a pretty penny on the Devildom black market…

Oh. Oh. These are not photos of Lucifer. 

Mammon’s not the most knowledgeable about the human world, but he knows a Pride parade when he sees one. It looks like MC had a really nice time, smiling and laughing with a group of people in brightly coloured clothes. The album ends with a wide shot of MC and his friends in a line doing various corny poses. Each one has a distinctly coloured flag draped across their shoulders like a cape. MC’s is a 5 striped design of bright blue, pink, and white bars. The wrinkles on the flag/cape suggest it was recently unpackaged.

Something about those colours pings at Mammon’s memory, and with a bit of effort it comes to him: when MC first came to the Devildom, his phone background involved those colours! Asmo had seen it and asked him about the colour choice, to which he’d responded with some blustering nonanswer and then promptly changed the background.

Did MC… think that any of them would judge him for being trans?

“Okay,” MC declares as he re-enters the room, “Asmo’s given up and is bleaching his hair, apparently magic demon pranks go way harder...than…” 

Mammon freezes. The pair stare each other down for a few interminable seconds.

“...That’s my phone.”

“So it is…!”

“You saw the pictures, didn’t you.”

“Piiiiiiiicturrrrreessssss?” Mammon extends the word into several more syllables than is necessary. “What pictures?”

MC’s mouth does not say “Dude.” But the expression on his face very much conveys the sentiment nonetheless.

“Okay okay, I might have taken a little peek at your phone while you were gone. But it was just to make sure you didn’t leave it on! I locked it right away, I swear!”

“You’re still holding it.”

“Kuh-K-Keeping it warm! Cold phones lose battery faster!”

“...”

“Ugggggghhhhh okay! I looked a lot and saw everything! That what you wanna hear?!”

MC braces himself. “So…?”

“So what?”

“You don’t have any… questions?” he asks with a gesture towards himself.

“Uhhh, no?” Mammon pauses. “Oh wait, yeah, I have one.” Here we go. “ ‘MC’ and he/him pronouns are the right junk to call you by, yeah?”

MC blinks owlishly. “Yup— Uh, yeah, they are. Been that way for a while now… You really don’t—”

“MC,” Mammon says with a sharp toothed grin, “you really think humans are the only ones who get unsatisfied with what meat vessel or titles they’re assigned by the big man upstairs?”

Understanding bonks MC on the head with the same delicacy that Mammon carelessly tosses his phone back with. “Wait, r—”

“Let me show you how cool the Devildom trans flag is.”

#mrsketchydude #obey me #obey me mammon #obey me imagines #obey me trans mc #mine #my writing #mammon #happy pride month everyone #except where i live the parade is in august so it's more like pride summer #hot demon summer indeed lol #all the brothers are trans and/or nb bc i said so #but especially mammon #PS: i do not have a design for the devildom trans pride flag in mind #but if someone else does I Would Like To See It

[turtlethon]

Topps Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles trading cards series 1 (1990)

Previously on Turtlethon I looked at how Fleetway localised the Archie Comics adaptation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles season one for UK readers in some very condescending ways. Through the mists of time my recollection was that the Topps trading card series was a more comprehensive adaptation of those first five episodes that had been nixed from the televised run we received here.

One of the sobering aspects of Turtlethon has been discovering that the changes between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles extend far beyond the occasional removal of "the two Ns" - usage of the word "ninja" and Michelangelo's nunchucks. Sometimes significant portions of content ended up being altered or removed altogether to soften the image of the Turtles.

As part of this makeover, the first series of Topps trading cards featuring the Turtles went through some significant changes. The 88 cards of the US set were reduced to 66. Not all of the cards excised feature explicit use of those two "N"s - some feature more general scenes of violence, while others appear to be completely innocuous, possibly being cut as 66 was considered a nice marketable total to round down to.

In both incarnations Series 1 covers a lot less of the first season than I remembered, providing a general overview of only the first two TV episodes "Turtle Tracks" and "Enter the Shredder". There are a few details where the information on the cards varies from the established continuity seen - or at least suggested - over the run of the actual show. One appears on the second card, "Crime City!", where we're told that this is New York "a few years from now". This contradicts several instances in the show where it's at the very least heavily implied that each event is taking place in the present - or at least, it was at the time the show initially was broadcast.

Another oddity occurs a few cards later when April encounters Splinter for the first time and he's described as being a "five foot high" rat. Given that he's significantly smaller than the Turtles, who in turn aren't nearly as tall as April, this doesn't add up. For the record, Splinter's height is given as four feet in the Playmates line - about a foot smaller than all four of the Turtles - although I find attempting to make the heights and other biographical information provided with the action figures gel with the universe of the cartoon is an exercise in futility, so let's press on.

The cards move through the story of April being intimidated by Shredder's thugs, her rescue by the Turtles and the explanation of both their origin and that of Splinter. A significant chunk of the story leading up to and covering Hamato Yoshi's life in Japan is removed from the UK set. In the remaining portion, what was referred to as the ninja school becomes the "arms school".

Later we see Turtles and April work to infiltrate Shredder's criminal operation, including "Ninja Pizza", which is renamed to "Hero Pizza" on the UK cards. Similarly, cards where the Foot Soldiers are referred to using The Forbidden Word are variously altered - where before they might be referred to as "the ninja robots", here they frequently become "the ugly robots" or "the laser robots".

A much bigger change involves Michelangelo. Whereas in the TV edit of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles he would generally be allowed to hold his nunchucks but not explicitly brandish them, here any and all instances of him even holding them are gone. A significant number of the cards missing from the UK set are a result of this.

The story continues, depicting Rocksteady and Bebop's mutation, Splinter being captured by Shredder and the Turtles rescuing him, then it's all wrapped up fairly abruptly. I was genuinely surprised to see that the remaining three-fifths of the original miniseries weren't represented here. (On paper, this seems like a great idea for a series 2, but I'll get to that).

Both the US and UK sets would also come with a set of 11 stickers to collect. The majority of the images are identical (aside from the TMNT/TMHT name change and copyright info), with both sets forming a large picture of the team riding on the Turtlecycle when the sticker backs are collected. However, once again Michelangelo's nunchucks were a point of contention, and the three US stickers where he was seen holding them were removed from the UK set. They were replaced with images from three of the less remarkable cards that weren't retained from the US package.

Scanning all the cards from the UK set, and the stickers, and then going through each of them to figure out what had been changed from the US run has been a fairly daunting task, and one of the more frustrating sub-projects I've undertaken as part of Turtlethon, but it's definitely been eye-opening to see what an inferior product we ended up with to try and sidestep the moral panic that was being kicked up about the Turtles in the British press at the time.

Something else I didn't know was that there was actually a second series released in both markets. Rather than continue on and cover the remaining episodes of season 1, Topps chose a couple of seemingly random episodes from season 3. This time both the US and UK sets had the same number of cards, suggesting fewer changes. I never saw any of these in the wild; the first series appeared in the UK when Turtlemania was at its absolute height in the second half of 1990, and were wildly popular in my class at school. By the following spring, interest was long gone. I was actually gifted a full series one set by another kid who correctly identified me as being the one remaining person who was still on the Turtles bandwagon.

Thirty years on, I'm still here obsessing over this stuff. Plus ça change, dudes and dudettes.

Okay, enough distractions. Next time we'll ge back to looking at the actual TMNT cartoon, I promise!

#tmnt #tmnt 1987 #topps #trading cards #teenage mutant ninja turtles #teenage mutant hero turtles #1990 #ninja turtles #turtlethon

[damiensdemon]

The Perfect Patient

Words: 4.8k

Summary: One-shot first-person drabble about having an unfortunate dental-fetish and a hot dentist.

"As his gloves fingers brush your jaw to keep it open properly, you find yourself wishing that you did have dentophobia. In reality, fear had almost nothing to do with the pounding of your heart. Rather, you’ve been avoiding this appointment because of your attraction to it."

Warnings: Smut, Dental Kink, Praise Kink, Horny Dentistry, Light Bondage, Light Bloodplay, Tooth Extraction, Needles, Transmasc Protag

The longer you put off something important, the harder it is to get it done. Like weeding a garden or telling a secret, sometimes the mental emphasis you put on a task can make it infinitely harder, as it gets more time to grow roots in your mind.

In your case, you haven’t been to the dentist’s office in many, many years. Currently, you’re sitting in the waiting room of a local office, waiting to be called back. The cozy clinic isn’t nearly as sterile-feeling as you remember your childhood office being, but that doesn’t do much to soothe your nerves.

The door across the room from you opens, and you jump at the sound. Luckily for you, the soft-faced young man who steps out is too engrossed in his clipboard to notice your fear. His brown eyes flick up to yours, and he smiles as he calls your name, “We’re ready for you, if you wanna head back.”

“Y-yes, thank you…” You mumble as politely as you can, quickly collecting your things and following him into the office.

His cheery grin persists as he shuts the door behind you, then leads you off down a hallway. After a couple of turns, he stops in front of a strange looking machine mounted to the wall.

“How are you feeling today?” He asks pleasantly, double-checking his clipboard as he begins messing with something behind a little divider in the room.

“Fine! A little nervous... Um… How are you?” You ask, sliding your thumbs under the straps of your backpack. Nervous tick.

“Pretty swell.” He grins, then motions to the chair under the arm of the machine. “My name is Jamie, and I’m the hygienist on duty today. Since you haven’t been seen for a while, we’re gonna take a quick x-ray. This is just gonna take a second, if you don’t mind taking a seat for me.”

“O-oh, of course.” You sit down in the chair, holding your spine stiffly. Jamie steps around you, then slides a heavy, weighted bib over your head. The weight is oddly comforting as it settles against your shoulders.

He walks you through the steps of the x-ray patiently, and while Jamie keeps up an easy chatter. Despite his best efforts, you can’t help but get more and more anxious as the appointment goes on.

After he takes the bitewing out of your mouth and lifts the weighted vest off of you, you finally ask him something that you'd wanted to since you first realized you needed an appointment. “What’s the dentist like?”

“Doctor Langford? He’s a sweetheart. Nothing to be afraid of.” He shrugs, waiting for you to put your backpack back on before motioning for you to follow him. As you walk, he adds, “All his patients seem to love him, as long as he’s sitting down.”

You give Jamie a confused look. He catches it, then explains, “Oh. He’s really tall. He’s kinda got, uh, gentle-giant vibes, y’know?”

“Ooh, I see.” You mumble, letting yourself wander along behind him toward a dental treatment room. Your friend, who’d recommended you to Dr. Langford, had expressed the same sentiment. Though, they'd described him as 'dark and handsome' in addition to 'tall'.

As you turn into a small room with dark blue walls, Jamie goes on. “His daughter thinks he’s the best. She’s so little compared to him. And, I mean, compared to his ex-wife, I can see why she chose him over her. I have no idea why he’s still single, or why he was even with that woman in the first-... um…” He caught himself, clearing his throat abruptly. “...Yeah. Anyways. Take a seat whenever.”

Jamie nodded toward the chair in the middle of the room, with a dental engine built into one of the armrests. The metal tray beside it contained a few tools that you weren’t quite familiar with, but just the sight of them made you feel…

“So, I’m gonna clean your teeth, and the doctor will be in to check you out as soon as I’m done. Do you want mint or bubblegum flavored toothpaste?”

Stiffly, you force yourself to settle back into the chair. “... Bubblegum, please.” 

“Cool.” He said, pulling his medical mask over his nose and putting on a fresh pair of gloves. You have to turn away as he gets prepped, to keep the butterflies in your stomach from crawling their way up your throat.

“... Man, you got it bad, huh?” He asks with an unmistakable glint in his eyes.

“H-- Ghk… What?” You splutter, face flushing instantly.

“You’ve got like, dentophobia right? A fear of dental-stuff?”

You nod a little too quickly. “Yeah! I totally do. I'm super freaked out by all the, uh, mouth stuff. Maybe we should just skip the cleaning."

"I mean, we could, but the dentist is still gonna need to look in your mouth. And, uh… It won't hurt or anything, I promise."

"I'm not really worried about pain." You say with a nervous laugh, pulling on the strings of your hoodie.

Jamie scoots his stool up next to your seat, then puts his hand on your arm. He squeezes gently, waiting for you to relax.

"... Okay. Let's get this over with." You sigh, twisting the strings around your fingers in a self-soothing gesture.

He pats your arm happily, then picks up the brush connected to the chair. "You're a brave man, my dude. Okay, I'll be quick and gentle, promise."

You give a little nod and open your mouth for him. Jamie shifts into a more professional façade as he turns the brush on and begins cleaning your teeth.

Unsurprisingly, the effect on you is immediate. You have to drop the strings as your hands begin to shiver. Instead, you grip the armrests tightly. As your face burns hot once more, you steal a glance at the young man next to you. Jamie is, respectfully, keeping his eyes focused on your mouth, rather than your uncomfortable expression. … You have to keep yourself from thinking about that too much.

As his gloves fingers brush your jaw to keep it open properly, you find yourself wishing that you did have dentophobia. In reality, fear had almost nothing to do with the pounding of your heart. Rather, you’ve been avoiding this appointment because of your attraction to it.

“... Alright, we’re done with the cleaning! Want some water?” Jamie chirps, setting down the electric brush and offering you a small cup. You nod gratefully, taking a sip and swishing for a moment before spitting into the little sink he’d pushed closer to you.

“Is that it, then?” You ask hesitantly.

“Not quite. I’ve gotta floss ya, and check for any left-over nasties.” He says, swapping to a fresh pair of gloves. Idly, your eyes flick to the tray beside your chair. A container of floss sits innocuously beside an array of sharp implements. Jamie laughs quietly, “Uh, don’t worry. Those won’t hurt, either. Unless… you haven’t been flossing.”

Shamefully, you shake your head.

“Gotta get on that shit. Can’t have you getting gum disease. Then you’ll have to come here more often.” He teased, scooting up closer. “Alright, sit back, let’s do this.”

Somehow, you kept your cool through the remainder of the cleaning. By the time your gums had stopped bleeding, Jamie had already cleaned you up and left to fetch the dentist.

Your anxiety barely has time to spike before an absolute mountain of a human being enters the room. He has to duck his head to avoid bumping his head on the door frame. Despite the warm smile on his face as he approaches you, his intimidation factor is massive.

“Good afternoon, sir. I’m Doctor Langford, but you can call me Gabriel.” He says, extending a hand to you.

With your heart in your throat, you reach out to shake it. God, his hand is huge compared to yours. Shakily, you introduce yourself, and can only pray that you don’t sound as terrified as you feel.

“Pleasure to meet you. Now, I wanted to talk to you about your x-ray…” He says, folding himself into the chair Jamie had left beside you. He holds up a sheet of film, and points to a place behind your molars. “Your wisdom teeth are beginning to come in. As one would expect of a young man of your age... Now, I can’t remove those today, but you can schedule an appointment for that later.”

You nod along, but can’t really focus on what he’s telling you. Gabriel speaks with a soothing, deep tone, and a slight accent that you can’t quite place. … Australian, perhaps?

"Alright, I'll just do a quick examination of your teeth, and then we can get you out of here." He says with a smile, turning around to grab a fresh pair of gloves.

You swallow hard, watching him pull his latex gloves into place with a snap. No wedding ring, your stupid-awful-monkey-brain whispers. You tell it, politely, to sit the fuck back. 

"Can you open for me?" Gabriel asks gently. Almost embarrassingly quickly, you part your lips and let him look into your mouth.

Even with a mask covering half of his face, you remain very aware of how close he is to you. You can feel his presence looming over you as he adjusts a light to see inside your oral cavity.

He watches you with sharp, attentive eyes. Softly, he hums, then picks up a small mouth mirror and slides it into your mouth.

"Ah, excuse me…" He mutters, lifting his hand and touching your molar with his--

An embarrassing squeak leaves your throat, and he immediately retracts. If he registered the true nature of that noise, he doesn't make it obvious. "Oh. Pardon me. Are you alright?"

Your heart hammers in your ears as you nod. "I-I'm fine! I just, got overwhelmed."

"Ah, I see." He replies, taking off his gloves casually. "Your teeth look quite healthy, but you do have a small cavity in one of your molars."

"... What?" You mumble numbly. Oh fuck, oh shit--

"If you have an extra hour, we can fill that today. Does that sound alright with you?” His tone borders on velvety. Is he doing that on purpose? … No, of course not. He's a dentist, this is his job.

He remains silent and attentive, waiting for you to reply. You nod quickly, snapping yourself out of your thoughts. “... Oh. Yes! Of course, let’s… do that. Get it out of the way. Haha.”

“Wonderful. Jamie will get everything prepared for us, and I’ll be back shortly. Hold tight.” He says, rising to his feet and giving you an approving nod as he exits the room.

Shit. Goddamn it. He knows, he has to.

No sooner has that thought passed through your mind before Jamie pokes his head back in. The smug grin on his face tells you that he has instantly read you for filth.

“Shut up.” You bury your face in your hands, avoiding eye contact at all costs.

The hygienist has to duck back out of the room to laugh, then enters and shuts the door behind him. “So… Anything you wanna share with me, young man?”

Laughing gas, as you’ve discovered, has a strange smell. It’s vaguely sweet, like Jamie had told you, but there’s also a distinctive metallic scent, and perhaps a hint of rubber. Though, maybe that’s the mask strapped over your nose.

“Is it kicking in yet?” He asks, setting something down on the tray out of your line of sight.

“I’m not sure. Maybe?” You say, leaning your head back against the headrest. “I feel… comfortable, I guess. As comfortable as I can right now, at least.”

“That’s good. It shouldn’t take much longer.” He assures you, then glances back at the door. “Just, uh, try not to flirt with Doctor Langford too much when he comes in here, okay?”

“I’m not planning on it.” You say, rolling your eyes. “I don’t want my new dentist to ban me. I’d like to come back for checkups later.”

Jamie rubs the back of his neck, “It's not that he'd be uncomfortable, I think… But, the poor guy gets flustered real easy, and--"

Behind him, the door opens and shuts  effectively ending the conversation. You can’t turn your head much, but you can hear Jamie and Doctor Langford having a quiet conversation about your procedure. With a nod, and a "Be good!", Jamie takes a clipboard from Gabriel’s hands and walks out the door. Just like that, you’re alone with the dentist once more.

The stool beside you creaks as Gabriel gracefully lowers onto it. He addresses you gently, “As Jamie already explained, this is going to be quick and simple. After the local anesthetic kicks in, you may feel pressure, but you won’t feel any pain."

He leans forward slightly, catching your gaze. "... Jamie mentioned to me that you’ve been feeling some anxiety about your visit today, is that correct?”

You suck in a deep breath through your nose, and in an instant, a wave of something hits you. It isn’t quite the same sensation as you being high, really, this is more of an out-of-body experience.

Why were you even feeling anxious, anyway? “I was. But, I’m feeling much better now.” You reply, shrugging. 

“Oh?" He tilts his head. The picture of innocent curiosity. "May I ask what helped you relax? Beside the nitrous oxide, of course.”

You rack your brain. Well, when he came in just now, you felt more excited than scared. So, you tell him, “You, actually.”

“... Well, thank you.” He grins, laughing kindly. “I have a few patients with dentophobia, and it seems to help them to talk with me before procedures. Would you prefer that we have some extra consultation time in the future? Assuming you need it, of course.”

As he speaks, your eyes shut for just a moment. That warm, comfortable sensation floats through you… As your eyes flutter back open, that open and honest expression on his face just makes you melt. Why were you even afraid of this guy, anyways?

“I don’t have dentophobia.”

“Oh? … Then, may I ask you what specifically had been bothering you?” He asks, resting his forearm against your armrest.

“I have…” You take another breath, trying to collect yourself enough to find the right words. “... um… I have a d-... dental fetish…?”

“... A dental what?” He asks incredulously, those beautiful eyes going wide in… amusement? “D-did I mishear you there, or--”

“No, I’m serious. I have a huge kink for dental-stuff. All kinds of medical stuff, really.” You blurt. He blinks, then leans his stubbly chin against his palm. Taking that as a sign to go on, you explain, “Y’know, examinations, bondage stuff, blood-play, injections, even roleplay… Oh! And doctors are just, like, really hot to me. I like a dad who knows his way around a person’s body, y'know... And the authority, Jesus Christ…”

While you ramble, the dentist moves from being surprised to intrigued. By the end of your confession, he’s fully settled in, and smiling broadly. “Very interesting. Should I assume you mean me, then?”

“Oh, definitely. You’re super my type.” You giggle, grinning right back at him. “Handsome, sweet, intimidating… And your coat looks great on you.”

“You really think so?”

You nod, and your eyes sluggishly slide over his broad torso. He follows the movement of your eyes, and the tips of his ears flush pink.

After a moment of consideration, the dentist rises to his feet and crosses to the door. You feel your heart drop as you assume the worst, but it picks right back up as you hear the lock click.

In a beat, he’s back at your side, now looming over you with a syringe from the tray. The needle is long, glinting in the light above you. You can’t see his face clearly through the glare, but you can tell he’s pulled his medical mask up.

“Open your mouth.”

Without a thought, you do. He cups your jaw with his free hand, sliding his latex-covered thumb over your front teeth. The digit glides over your saliva-slick gums, gently pushing up your lip over your molars.

“Hold still,” He warns, leaning in close as he slides the cold steel into your gums and injects you with… something. After an uncomfortable pinch, he pulls the needle out and massages the area with his thumb again. You whine softly, tasting a hint of blood.

“That was good. You did well.” He murmurs. The praise warms your chest, making you feel more bold. As the pad of his thumb grazes the crown of your teeth, you lick the exposed back of his finger. Even through the shadows, you can see his eyebrows raise in surprise.

With a clatter, he drops the syringe back onto the tray and swings one slender leg over to the other side of your chair. His weight settles against you. He’s heavy, but not more than you can accept on your lap. As you rest your hands on his coat-covered hips, he forces your attention back to your mouth as he presses two fingers against your tongue. Reflexively, you close your mouth and begin to suck on him.

Gabriel made a noise deep in his throat, somewhere between satisfaction and amusement. “... Good boy. You're a wonderful patient.” He purrs quietly, rubbing your cheek with his free-hand.

As you work your tongue against him, you can feel him subtly grinding himself against your abdomen. Cheekily, you slide your hand down his stomach and press your palm against the growing bulge in his pants. In an instant, his hand grabs your wrist and presses it firmly against the armrest.

“Ah-ah." He scolds, a playfully cruel tone in his voice. "This is your appointment. We will be keeping our focus on you… For the moment."

“If you insist.” You mumble around his fingers. He takes them out of your mouth, and skillfully fastens a strap around each of your wrists. As you try to lift your arms, you find them both completely immobilized. Combined with the mask still pumping calming gas into your lungs, you find that your upper body is entirely at his mercy.

"You'll be a good patient for me, won't you?" He asks, his fingers caressing your jaw. You try to nod, but his hold on your jaw forces you to remain looking up at him. "Use your words."

"Y-yes, Doctor." You stammer. Your tongue feels sluggish in your mouth, slurring your speech.

"Very good." He smiles beneath his mask. Your heart stutters in your chest as he plucks a tool off of the tray. His thumb flips a switch, and a soft whir fills the room. He presses the end of the tool to your chest, and for a terrifying moment, you think he's trying to drill through your ribs. But, as a deep buzz resonates along your skin, you recognize it as the same type of brush that Jamie had used to clean your teeth. As he traces along your torso, you find the vibration to be powerful and surprisingly pleasant.

"Now, you'll need to be mindful of the other patients. If they hear someone in distress in my clinic…" He warns, slowly moving the tool lower. Over your stomach, and the waistband of your pants… "It wouldn't be good for business."

You roll your hips under him, subtly presenting yourself. "I'll be quiet. I promise."

He nods, satisfied with your response. Then, he presses the smooth back of the brush head where you'd been hoping he would.

With a sharp gasp, you strain against your restraints. With your pants acting as a buffer, the vibration borders between not quite enough and just right. You have to fight to keep still enough for him to keep the pressure where you want it.

As you swallow back the tiny noises of pleasure that keep rising from your throat, Doctor Langford's attention is completely focused on you. As a particularly strong jolt passes through your body, he carefully tucks a loose strand of hair back behind your ear. Even as you come undone before him, he's still keeping you together.

"... Even through the fabric, you're still responding that strongly?" He clicks his tongue in mock disapproving. "Perhaps you need more anesthetic."

"No, no, please--" You choke out as he withdraws the brush. His pale eyes lock onto yours, urging you to go on. With a hint of desperation, you plead, "I-I want more… Please, keep going?"

"Well… Since you asked so nicely. We will need to get on with your procedure eventually, though." He heaves an exaggerated sigh, then pushes the buzzing tool back against your sensitivity.

This time, you're braced for it. You bite back a moan, and you can see him searching your flushed face. While your hips grind back against the tool, he palms himself idly through his dress pants.

The combination of your dreamy high and the overwhelming stimulation puts your mind in a fog that you can't fathom a world outside of. That's probably why it takes you a moment to register Gabriel's voice as it filters through the haze in your head.

"... still numb?"

"Mmmsorry, what?" You mumble, shaking your head quickly.

Gabriel laughs quietly, adjusting his grip as he repeats, "Is your mouth still numb?"

You prod the injection site with your tongue, then report, "Yeah, almost… um, half of my mouth is completely…. numb… Mmh..."

"Perfect. Could you hold this for me?" He asks, pointing at the still-buzzing tool pressed into your sensitivity.

You roll your eyes at him, nodding toward your fingers drumming loudly on the armrests.

"Oh! How silly of me." He asks with a dry laugh. Then, he easily unbuttons your pants. "How about we try this, then?"

Before you can respond, he slips the tool down the front of your pants. The tight fabric holds the tool against your skin, and with just a slight tilt, it finds your--

"Pfthfucking Christ, OKAY!!" You cry, body shivering as your hips instinctively raise off the plastic-covered chair.

"Too much?" The doctor asks, watching you squirm with obvious amusement.

"Nnnnhhh~, um, no, I mean, it's-- oh fucking fuckfuckfuck, leave it!" You pant, biting your tongue to keep yourself quiet. If the sensation was bordering on perfection before, then this toed the line of too much. But, as your body adjusts to the buzzing, it quickly turns into delicious overstimulation.

Again, Gabriel grabs your jaw, forcing you to look up at him once more. You can barely keep your eyes on his. Your body wants to close your eyes and get swallowed up by the climax slowly building in your stomach, but the rush that his gaze gives you is too wonderful to give up.

For a moment, a silvery glint catches your eye, but his fingers dig into your soft skin. "Look at me." He growls, pressing a thumb to your lips once more, "And open wide."

Eagerly, you do as he commands. You expect to feel his finger run against your tongue, but instead, he yanks your jaw down lower. Your mouth is open as wide as you can hold it, and you just hope that you won't start to drool.

His other hand flits through the corner of your vision, but through the laughing-gas mask, you don't have a clue what he's holding. Something metallic… Another tool.

Cold metal brushes the warmth of your cheek, exposing the numb side of your mouth.  Then, there's pressure on one of your molars. The one with the cavity, you think.

"Keep your eyes on me, darling." Gabriel says, a slightly husky edge to his tone. He's leaning in closer now, and you can see how flushed he is under his mask. With your pulse pounding in your ears, you realize how obviously drunk he is on your mutual arousal.

Something pops. Pressure releases in your mouth. You don't feel any pain, but you taste iron.

With a grin, Gabriel pulls down his mask and holds up the molar he just pulled from your skull.

All at once, he tugs your own mask up and off over your head, then closes the distance between the two of you.  The dentist kisses you, deep and hungry. You can taste him; his mouth is clean and cool, and the rich warmth of your own blood coats both of your tongues. His gloved hands are all over you, running up your arms and over your chest, tugging at your shirt, then up your neck and into your hair.

And all the while, the buzzing between your legs pushes you closer and closer. When Gabriel finally pulls away, he's breathing harder than you are. His hands fumble clumsily with his belt, before he  shakily unzips his pants. In seconds, he's holding himself in hand and stroking with an obvious goal in mind.

Yours hands, still bound, grip the armrests so hard that you're sure the nail marks will never come out. Blood drips down your chin steadily, soaking into the front of your shirt. Doctor Langford's mouth is smeared with red, as are his gloves.

His tongue darting out to taste what's left of you on his lips. He breathes, "You look gorgeous. You're about to cum, aren't you?"

All you can do is nod frantically. You're almost there; your legs are tensed and your hips shiver with anticipation. Just a few more seconds…

With a gasp, Gabriel braces himself with one hand on your headrest. Just as you slip over the edge into a shaking, cursing orgasm, he brings himself to completion on your torso. If you had more presence of mind, you'd be upset at how many fluids have soaked into your shirt. But, as your eyes squeeze shut under the intensity of your pleasure, you don't have a care in the world.

As your own cries of ecstasy die off, you can hear Gabriel panting hard against your neck. Your whole body glows with endorphins, urging you to keep your eyes shut and ride it out.

After a few moments, the dentist's weight shifts, and buzzing between your legs slows to a stop. The pressure on your wrists releases, and the tall man climbs off of your lap.

The stool to your right squeaks as his weight settles into it. You take in a slow, deep breath, and your mental fog seems to lift. Suddenly, everything feels heavy… Distantly, you hear your name being called...

Slowly, begrudgingly, you open your eyes to see Jamie sitting beside you.

"... Wh-... Um. How long were you--?" You squeak, quickly sitting bolt upright and moving to pull the tool out of your--...

The coy grin plastered on Jamie's face doesn't fade as he asks, "Have a good nap, kid?"

There's nothing there. Well, not nothing, but there's certainly no dental tools in your pants. Confused, you touch your mouth. You're still a bit numb, but you're not missing any teeth, and there's no blood. Your clothes are as clean as when you came in, and there's no sign of Doctor Langford.

Jamie clears his throat to stifle a giggle, then goes on. "Your filling went well. You must have fallen asleep pretty early in, since you were out cold by the time I came back."

Your face is burning. Was all of that a dream? You don't remember falling asleep… And, if the wet mess in your pants is anything to go off of, you know that something happened. ...At least in your mind.

"... Um. Did I… say anything stupid?" You ask sheepishly, massaging the numb portion of your face idly.

"Not as far as I know. Doctor Langford said you were a perfect patient." Jamie snorted, turning to the counter to staple together a freshly-printed packet of aftercare information. "He did want me to ask, did you feel any discomfort while you were asleep?"

"N-... no?"

"Oh. M'kay. He mentioned that you got kinda… squirmy… Y'know, when he turned on the drill." Jamie says with an audible smirk. "... He said he hopes that your dentophobia hasn't given you a poor impression of him."

You can't even think of a response that won't damn you to a deeper layer of hell. Either you had a wet dream in front of your dreamy new dentist, or…

"Anyways… You do need to come back for a follow-up appointment soon. Your wisdom teeth gotta be taken care of, ASAP." He says, turning back around and handing you the packet. "Wanna schedule that now?"

You hesitate, tapping the papers against the armrest. Part of you wants to flee the country and never speak the word teeth again. But… Then again… Would it really be the worst thing in the world to see him again?

With a coy grin to match Jamie's, you finally reply, "... What's the earliest you can get me in?"

#self insert #reader insert #smut #drabble #writing #dentist #dental kink #medical #mlm #smile for me #original #doctor #dental #damiensdemon

[waitineedaname]

And Did You Know That You Were Always Like A Fantasy?

happy late birthday @notedchampagne! also on ao3

---

If someone had told Jon two years earlier where he would be and who he would be there with, he would have scoffed. Really? With him? It would have been too absurd to consider. If someone had told him two months earlier, he would have been scared to believe it. Really? And we’re safe? It was too perfect to even hope for. 

But here he was, standing at Martin’s side in the kitchen of a Scottish safehouse, rinsing the soap suds off the dishes Martin handed him and swaying gently to the soft music playing off of Martin’s phone.

The peaceful domesticity scared him sometimes. He would catch himself getting too comfortable, and he would be seized by a sudden terror that it was a trick or that it would all be yanked out from underneath him, that some fearsome monster was waiting for just the right moment to strike him down. He would count the doors and stare at the cobwebs in the corners and avoid his own gaze in the mirror. It couldn’t be real. After all that had happened, after all he had done and become, he couldn’t have this scrap of happiness.

It was real, though. Martin, if nothing else, was real. It was hard to deny that fact when he had Martin’s warm body brushing against his side as they went through the domestic motions of washing the dishes together. It was hard to deny the memories of Martin’s soft kisses on his cheeks or the victorious laugh Martin let out when he discovered a long forgotten bottle of wine in the cupboard or the dozens of pictures in his phone of Martin posing next to indifferent Highland cows.

Even if the worst was yet to come, it was hard to care during mornings like this, when everything felt still and quiet. Not the still quietness of a world holding its breath, but the peace of waking up naturally to light filtering in through curtains, with the arm of the person he loved around his waist.

Martin roused him out of his thoughts by leaning across the sink to turn up the volume on his phone. “Oh, I like this song.”

Jon huffed out a soft, fond laugh. He couldn’t help but think the song was the same as the last dozen he’d played; apparently Martin’s fondness for “lo-fi charm” extended to soft indie music Jon had never heard of, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

Jon didn’t realize he was singing along until he felt Martin staring at him. “What?” He said, caught off guard.

“I didn’t think you knew this song.” Martin said with pleased surprise.

“I don’t.”

“...Ah.” Martin said. “Well, I guess there are worse things to Know?”

“I suppose.” Jon sighed, unhappy despite the relatively innocuous nature of the Knowledge. It would never become less unsettling to suddenly Know things he didn’t ask for. Martin gently bonked his hip against Jon’s, distracting him from the downward spiral that seemed imminent.

“I’ve never heard you sing before.”

“It’s not like we hosted karaoke nights.” Jon smiled wryly.

“I’m fairly certain Tim planned one, but it never happened for… whatever reason.” Martin steered the conversation away from another uncomfortable subject. “You have a nice voice, you know.”

“I’m flattered.” Jon said, a sarcastic tone covering genuine happiness at the praise. “Would you believe I was in a band while at Uni?”

“No, I wouldn’t believe that, actually.” Martin’s expression was of surprised delight.

“We were quite eccentric.”

“Now that I do believe.”

Jon allowed that a self-deprecating huff of laughter. “A bunch of dramatic Oxford students singing about space pirates and cyberpunk Frankenstein and Arthurian legends retold as sci-fi westerns…” He smiled fondly at the memory.

“Jon.” He looked over to find Martin looking at him with restrained glee. “Please tell me you have recordings of this somewhere.”

“What, currently? No.”

“You don’t understand. I have to hear this right now.”

“I can’t help you! It was over a decade ago.” He laughed at Martin’s exaggerated pout and leaned up to press a kiss to his nose. “Sorry, darling.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’ll just lose sleep knowing there are probably pictures of my boyfriend dressed as a space pirate, and I can’t see them.” Martin heaved a great sigh, but there was a smile playing at his lips. He dried his hands and turned to place them on Jon’s hips. Jon followed suit by taking off his dish gloves and draping his arms over Martin’s shoulders.

“There are certainly worse things to lose sleep over.” Jon said, playing with a tuft of hair that curled over the back of Martin’s neck.

“I guess so.” Martin pressed his face into the top of Jon’s head, and when the song on his phone switched to something with a quicker tempo, he could feel Martin’s smile. He started swaying, hands still on Jon’s waist.

“Martin,” Jon said with a warning in his voice, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. I’m not doing anything.” Martin replied innocently. He stood up straight and smiled down at Jon.

“I’m fairly certain this is something.”

Martin rolled his eyes fondly. “I’m dancing. You know, that thing people do where they move in time to music? Surely you’ve heard of it.”

“I know what dancing is, I’m just- I’m not very good at it.” Jon protested, even though he was already matching Martin’s movements with only the slightest stutter.

“You don’t have to be good at it. Come on.” Martin stepped back and took Jon’s hands, pulling him into the middle of the kitchen. They weren’t even dancing, not really. It was more of a combination of sways and shimmies that made Jon laugh and shuffling footwork as they avoided stepping on each other’s toes. Jon felt more than a little ridiculous, but if he was completely honest with himself, he would do any amount of ridiculous things to keep that happy, adoring look in Martin’s eyes. An adoring look that morphed into one of mischief as Martin said, “I’m going to spin you.”

“Y- Oh!” Jon didn’t even get the chance to question it before Martin was guiding his arm around in a spin. It wasn’t exactly the most elegant maneuver, and he almost lost his balance for just a second, but it startled a laugh out of him all the same. Martin looked delightfully smug when he faced him again. Well, two can play at that game. 

Martin must have seen the look in Jon’s eyes when he decided his next move, but he only had half a second to look inquisitive when Jon slid his hands around Martin’s back. Martin leaned back with him as he was dipped, and Jon relished the surprised awe in Martin’s eyes for just a brief moment. 

And then they simultaneously remembered Jon’s limited upper-body strength. 

Jon’s arms gave out and Martin yelped as he fell, grabbing onto Jon, who let out a shout as he went tumbling down too.

The two of them fell in a heap on the floor, Martin letting out a soft “oof” as he took the brunt of the fall with Jon collapsed on his chest. Martin groaned quietly, and Jon scrambled upright. 

“Oh- Oh god, Martin, I’m so sorry. Are you alright?” Jon’s heart seized with panic as he saw Martin sling an arm over his face and start shaking. Oh god, was Martin crying? Jon would never forgive himself. Wait, no, not crying-

“That was so stupid.” Martin managed to say through helpless laughter. He slid his arm off his face to reveal bright eyes and a brighter smile. Jon gaped intelligently at him. “I’m twice your size, how could that have possibly gone well?”

“I…” Jon stammered for an excuse. “I thought it would be romantic.”

“Oh, it was romantic, sure. Really stupid, though.” Martin was still giggling weakly up at Jon, and some of the anxiety slid out of him. Still, he had to ask.

“You’re sure you’re alright?”

“I’m fine, Jon.” Martin rolled his eyes. “I’ve dealt with worse than a bruise before.” 

Jon slid back to sit on Martin’s shins as Martin lifted himself into a sitting position. He touched the back of Martin’s head gently, and Martin stalwartly did not flinch. “I can get you some ice.”

“I said I’m fine.” Martin grabbed his hands before he could get up, a laugh still playing in his voice. “You don’t need to fuss.”

“I’m not fussing.” Jon protested. Martin gave him a look, and he huffed. “Besides, that’s rich coming from you.”

“Alright, fair.” Martin smiled and kissed Jon’s knuckles, still not letting go. “If you really want to make it up to me… you can find your college band’s stuff?” He asked oh-so-hopefully. Jon laughed softly.

“I’ll see if there’s anything on YouTube. Satisfied?”

“Yes.” Martin looked pleased with himself as he finally stood and pulled Jon to his feet with him. “Now come on, we have dishes to finish.”

The peace might be deceptive, the happiness a trick to convince him to let his guard down, but when he shot Georgie a text requesting concert pictures from their college days while Martin chatted politely with a shopkeeper later that afternoon, Jon was convinced he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

#tma #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #the magnus archives #my writing #okay to reblog #I'm still getting a feel for their voices but man sometimes you just gotta write some fluff #hopefully there will be some more tma fics coming from me soon #I desperately want to write some archival staff antics... #I finish finals soon so if you guys have any ideas/requests send em my way!

[sepublic]

           As a teacher, Trexdis has definitely SEEN a lot.

           She was and is a spy, so she’s pretty good at observational skills, just quietly noticing others, keeping track of little clues or hints here and there, tiny puzzle pieces that allude to a bigger picture, to something else going on in the back of a person’s head.

           Trexdis also has a pretty good frame of reference for what decent parents should be like; Her and Will’s parents were loving and attentive. And of course, Trexdis knows what it’s like to grow up neglected, without parents to really look after you… And, she grew up alongside her handful of classmates and friends who hadn’t been as lucky. Kids who’d been neglected, didn’t get enough to eat… Had unhealthy pressures and expectations placed onto them, didn’t get validation, were afraid to speak up. Felt like their parents’ acceptance was conditional, that sort of thing… She quickly got a good eye for tiny little reactions to even the most innocuous gestures.

           So, by the time she became a teacher at Arkley’s… Trexdis has a pretty good eye for this sort of thing. And, she’s wizened up, cooled down, she knows how to approach things properly, subtly, carefully. She doesn’t call the kid out on it- Instead, she approaches them in an almost deceiving kind of way… Where she’s hiding her true intentions with some mundane and innocuous, but really she’s getting at slowly unrooting the truth from the kid, without actually confronting them, not making them uncomfortable, etc.

           The kid’s comfort is VERY important to Trexdis, the whole idea is to give them a safe environment where they can feel like they can open up- If Trexdis deprives that, what’s the point? But at the same time, she has to make sure… She can’t take any chances, she won’t and refuses to. So of course Kate will take matters into her own hands… She’ll quietly get to the root of things, and then subtly do what she can to help, without calling attention. Maybe having an impromptu pizza party, claiming that the Spirius Drones or some friend of hers accidentally made too many pizzas, she’d REALLY appreciate if the kids could clear it out before it goes bad…

           Not really calling attention to it, not making a big deal as she commends a kid’s progress, gives them good notes on their work. Or else makes sure not to call on them to speak in front of class, watches her body language… Reads the general room and environment, and if she can tell some kid is lowkey panicking and having anxiety over an assignment that’s due, she’ll admit to the entire class that whoops, she made a mistake, and now she’s extending the deadline to compensate! If kids come to her with questions, Trexdis is ALWAYS incredibly patient and attentive, thorough, making sure to give as many answers in anticipation, so the kid doesn’t have to speak up much.

           And of course…

           Like I said- She doesn’t want to get the kid involved. Not make them uncomfortable, not make them feel at fault for ‘causing a mess’. But Kate HAS to know and be reassured, because she can’t make assumptions in good faith… And, well- Her time in the Monster Realm taught her that sometimes, you’ve gotta do morally dubious things, for a greater good of sorts. Privacy is important, so of course Trexdis isn’t going to immediately go off and spy on some kid at home using her invisibility; Well, not always. Instead, sometimes she’ll arrange a meeting, under the innocuous guise of just ‘checking up’ with the parents or guardians, whichever, let them know how the kid is doing, it’s all routine and normal.

           And, Trexdis will drop small hints, little verbal cues, and gauge the reaction of whoever’s she talking to then. She’ll make it clear the child’s having a GREAT time at school, but it really depends on the situation. And, if she feels like it’s appropriate… Well, she might have a chat- Just bring up her curiosity. Allude to just how observant and careful she is, her wild imagination that goes out of control, there’s literally nothing the kid could be blamed for about this… Then, she might ask. Or not. Trexdis might allude to it, say she noticed this, she’s just a bit concerned, and depending on the reaction… Well, she can figure out a LOT from the reaction.

           Trexdis respects privacy, but she also CAN’T take any chances when a kid is at stake here. Especially if the issue in question IS as bad as she thinks it is, if it’s something Trexdis can’t just remedy at school, if it’s something that requires her to immediately step in, to put a STOP to this adult ASAP… Then, yeah- She’ll use her invisibility to check on a kid back home, and make sure they’re safe. It’s wrong and intrusive, but Trexdis is used to doing bad things for a better purpose. In some cases, the kid’s privacy is already being violated by someone else, so at the very least, Trexdis can make sure that when this is all said and done, she’ll never have to invade their privacy like that again, because they won’t need her to. It’s necessary closure.

           For peace of mind, Trexdis watches and quietly observes, totally unnoticed- And if she sees something that confirms the worst, then… Depending on just HOW bad it is, who knows? Maybe she’ll just outright step in to stop it. But probably not, that’s only rarely… Instead, she’ll arrange another meeting with the parents. Again, just a follow-up… And this time she’ll be a lot more direct about her curiosity and paranoid ‘imagination’, and outright ask if something’s the matter, if this kid is having issues. Trexdis can’t exactly call social services, her status with as a member of the Arkley Gang is kind of complicated… But amidst what cruelty she must inflict, Trexdis is determined to do at least some good, wherever she can.

           Trexdis will call out the parent. She won’t reveal the bombshell yet, if ever… But she’ll make it clear that yeah, there’s CLEARLY an issue here, and it’s her responsibility to check. Some ask her what right she has, that this isn’t Trexdis’ jurisdiction, but she’ll bat that aside, because hey, SOMEBODY has to step up when the parent clearly isn’t! And she can and WILL get serious… Trexdis wants to, and she only reins herself in for the sake of the kid. She doesn’t want to disrupt things for them, but sometimes…

           Sometimes, you just gotta do what needs to be done. Trexdis will get her point across, clear and bluntly- You do anything wrong, you make that kid uncomfortable… You make them feel responsible for this change of behavior, you do ANYTHING that isn’t to make their life better…

           …And she will know. She always does, she always finds out. Sometimes she’ll even drop the reveal that, yeah, she knew and SAW what happened last night, too!

            Usually, Trexdis makes the point while she casually, wordlessly reveals her own sword collection, or something like that. Yeah, she’s used to making threats, and the unusual status of Arkley’s as a school… It gives her a LOT of leeway to do plenty of things, she’s pretty high-up in a criminal organization, so Trexdis exercises plenty of resources and minions at her disposal. Normally she prefers to do it by herself, on her own, but you know how it is.

           If the parents still aren’t getting the point? Try to get mouthy, threaten to call the police on her, or something? Again… Trexdis has spent a LOT of time not being nice. Doing horrible, terrible things, and she’s accepted this by deciding to contribute it towards something greater and worthwhile in the end. She can and WILL get physical and kick someone’s ass, to get her point across; Because sometimes, nothing enrages her more than what she sees a parent do their own child. Sometimes she remembers how they took advantage of this kid, someone so vulnerable and dependent…

           And a part of her just snaps, decides screw it, the time for formalities or that stuff, it’s all done and gone- These people are twisted and need to be put in their place ASAP, as brutally as needs to be done, because no chances can be taken at the kid’s expense! Trexdis can and will get physical to prove her point, she’ll utterly terrify and thrash the abuser, and make threats that she will ALWAYS follow through on, if her conditions aren’t meant. Long ago she stopped worrying about who had the right to do this or that, now all she cares about is settling this, and doing what needs to be done.

           When the parent crawls back home, after being reminded by Trexdis not to let their kid know ANYTHING happened… She’ll of course follow them. Follow them the whole way through, invisible and undetected, to make sure they don’t break her rules. Trexdis will silently stalk and decide if the parents are trying to go behind her back, keep an eye out for them trying to abuse the kid, trying to take things out or accuse them. 

          If she catches them doing something wrong, she might just knock on their front door very loudly, as a reminder that SOMEBODY is watching… And again, if push comes to shove- Sometimes she HAS to step in personally and manhandle the abuser. She’ll of course be invisible, for anonymity and confidentiality, the kid has no idea what’s going on, and in some ways that’s more terrifying… But regardless, after the first time, the parents truly realize just how serious, just how far Trexdis’ eyes and ears can reach- And then they finally, truly, permanently stop.

           The poor kid is of course terrified, and it breaks Kate’s heart- But what else can she do? They were always going to be terrified no matter what happened… This way, the terror can finally end and stop, once this moment is over. And once Trexdis ensures everything is going along nicely, as she so kindly demanded… Sometimes, she’ll take matters into her own hands, and have Arkley just take the kid. If an environment is THAT toxic, Trexdis has no choice… And yeah, she knows what Arkley eventually has planned for those kids, too, she’s no idiot- But that’s why she has that plan to backstab him, to kill Arkley before he has the chance to really begin the torture and indoctrination.

           She’ll make an ACTUAL safe haven out of Arkley’s assets and resources, and to the kids there- Hopefully, nothing will have really changed, except for the better. In the meantime, Trexdis is busy, so a lot of times she’ll have an agent of the organization do things on her behalf, the Spirius Drones such as Nine or Ten prove useful in that regard. She can pull her strings well and subtly, to the point of being untraceable- And in some cases, she might just ask a student she trusts to befriend the kid, to give them support and much-needed solidarity.

          And, if Trexdis deems it necessary, if she deems the environment for the kid comfortable enough- She might drop the hints that, yes, things ARE going to get better and stay that way, and she knows- Because she’ll personally see through to it. Because that’s what she’s been doing. Trexdis of course prefers to operate in anonymity, but sometimes the kid wants or deserves an answer, and sometimes they feel better, knowing a trusted teacher is keeping watch over them. It really depends and Kate handles it with all of the tact she can, she’s not perfect… But in the midst of some mistakes, sometimes you just gotta keep trudging on stubbornly to get it over with and do what needs to be done, all temporary and momentary feelings or morality be damned.

#kate trexdis lasher #abuse tw #child abuse tw #neglect tw #child neglect tw #lore #characterization #found family

[mnetruinedmylife]

Untitled Gang AU

This is just my need to write an AKB Gang AU combined with shameless Yuunaa. It’s written in mostly stream of consciousness writing, so the topic jumps to whatever connection my brain jumps to, it can get a little disorientating at times.  It’s also kind of unfinished, but I didn’t want it sitting in a file collecting dust, so here it is.

Warnings: this piece includes: mentions of violence, though nothing too graphic; traumatic flashbacks; mildly sexually charged scenes, though nothing truly nsfw.

 _____________________________________________________________

The town of Akihabara is a place of conflict and contradictions.

Located in the central ward of Tokyo, it has the highest rate of organised crime activity in all of Japan. The police will claim that there are no gangs in Akihabara – after all, the businesses are flourishing and the tourists come in droves, there is no safer place. Yet, every denizen knows that the infamous 48 Gangs originated in there, and it’s even a point of pride for a few.

If the press interviews a resident, they’ll swear up and down that they’ve never felt safer anywhere else. But more than once has a tourist revealed that they’ve been told by locals scuttling about to either stay on the nearby streets north and west of Akihabara train station after dark, or else not go wandering about at all.

The Akihabara sect of the 48 Gangs themselves are full of conflicting information too.

Sometimes, when the residents manage to acknowledge that they exist, one may hear them whisper in hushed tones about how they’re vigilantes, heroes who do the right thing when the police can’t or won’t. But in the same breath they’d tell you to stay away from one particular café in the Hanaokacho district, and the theatre near Taito station. The members of the AKB sect themselves would laugh themselves sick at the term, all the while shooting a defenceless man in the head without batting an eye, because they’re not heroes. They have their own goals, their own plans, most of which revolve around protecting their own, their members, their family, and if some things extend towards heroism, than that’s just a coincidence, and if some things stretch closer to the other side, well, that’s fine too.

Word on the street says it starts during the days when multiple factions ran rampant all over Tokyo. When kids were recruited right out of high school (and some still in it) into the Project gangs and prostitution rings. Some say a man rose up to create a force that could clean up the streets and keep the gang violence where it belongs – between gangs and not involving civilians.

Aki-P they called him, the man who swept up the capitol’s underbelly.

People say also he’s the same man who created the Sakamichi Syndicate and started the bloodiest turf war Tokyo has ever seen. Some say he did it because he gave up on the AKB sect, when they started losing their way and becoming more dangerous than the gangs they rose up against. Others say he did it after losing control of the 48 Gangs, that he was ousted from the inner circle and so created a rival faction as vengeance.

No matter how different the stories get, they all have one similarity. The 48 Gangs are dangerous, the sect in Akihabara doubly so, and anyone who gets in their way, or harms anyone in their sphere, or dares to challenge their grip over Tokyo, take heed and be on the lookout.

They’ll come for you.

__________________________________________________________)

Okada Nana is fifteen when she boards a train from Kanagawa to Tokyo and doesn’t look back.

Kojima Mako and Nishino Miki are similar ages, and in similar situations when they run into each other, having decided to pickpocket the same mark, and the three of them decide to run together. The streets are a little less intimidating with two sets of eyes to watch your back, and two bodies to keep you warm at night.

Mako’s the devious one, with her heart-melting gummy smiles and disarming laugh, she’s able to charm any passer-by and con them out of their hard earned money.

“Sorry sir, I’ve lost my parents, can I please borrow three hundred yen for the train fare?”

It works more often than not, there’s never a shortage of businessmen willing to play hero and help out a stranded school girl. And if she steals the rest of their wallet when they’re not looking, well they usually don’t notice until it’s too late.

Miki is bolder. She takes items right off of shelves when she walks by, and isn’t afraid to go after other street kids who wander into the space they’ve claimed as their own.

Sometimes she’s a little too bold, “Let’s get lunch from there.”

And that’s where Nana comes in. She’s the cautious one, the voice of reason, the brains behind the operations as small and simple as it is.

“We can’t go in there,” Nana hisses, grabbing the other two by the backs of their collars before they do something stupid.

“Why not? The foods cheaper in there than anywhere else in the city,” Miki points out, not unreasonably.

But Nana is adamant, “Yeah for good reason. That café belongs to AKB.”

The innocuous street side café about a minute’s walk from Akihabara station is something of a local legend in the area. Anyone above thirty avoids it like the plague because of the rumours of it being owned by the 48 Gangs, or perhaps it simply just serves the members of AKB. The little number 48 carved into the brickwork above the café doors is a symbol of that.

However, it is popular amongst the youth of the city for that very reason. With many hanging out there to bask in the rebellious feeling of danger, or on adventurous dares from friends. Whispers fly about AKB recruiting from the youth who flock there. A few yankees even claim to be initiates recruited from there. They’re all bald faced liars. No prospective recruit would be stupid enough to loiter in a known gang-owned establishment.  

A few have, however, been known to have been recruited around the station. Our little trio of street rats like to linger around the area, pickpocketing the stupid school kids, the otakus heading to the Gundam café across the street, and the rich folk visiting the golf club on the other side of the block.

They do that for months before they’re approached by a member of AKB.  

Okada Nana is sixteen when Minegishi Minami approaches her and her friends with an offer they can’t refuse.

Her first job is with Mako and two other recruits. They’re tasked with the simple job of delivering a package and Nana has to wonder what’s so important that there needs to be four of them for this. Or maybe it’s not so important, considering there are four barely trained, fresh faced initiates on the job.

They scuttle about the train line, Mako skipping along merrily, Hikari following behind quietly, with Nana and Ayana bickering the whole way. They deliver the package without any issues worth mentioning to one Itano Tomomi at an upscale bar in the heart of the city. It turns out to be cold hard cash, and Nana goes white at the thought of possibly losing that much money. Or rather, what the gang would do to them if they lost that much money.

The next few jobs follow in a similar manner. Nana gets to know the names and quirks of her fellow runners. Innocent, seemingly useless things like:

Iwatate Saho is stronger than she looks.

“Oh god he’s unconscious…are you planning on joining Team K?”

“No, too dangerous. I’m thinking Team B. You know, manning the cafes and the casinos and stuff.”

Mogi Shinobu doesn’t do so well under pressure.

“What the-!? Mogi-san why didn’t you just shoot him?”

“I panicked!”

“I can’t believe you want to join Team A, you’ll die in a week.”

Murayama Yuiri is stupidly pretty.

“Yuiri-chan…We’re half an hour in the wrong direction. You had the map upside down.”

“Sorry! I’m sorry, usually Naa-chan corrects me when I do this, I mean, I’m not blaming Naa-chan! It’s just she…Naa-chan what are you looking at?”

“Err nothing. Nothing, I got distracted.”

Takashima Yurina has somewhat of a crush on her.

“Naa-chan I bought drinks.”

“Where’s one for the rest of us?”

Uchiyama Natsuki knows a ridiculous amount about the law.

“Article 13: every individual has the liberty of protecting his or her own personal information from being disclosed to a third party or made public without good reason.”

“Somehow I doubt beating him up would fly as ‘taking the liberty to protect our property’.”

Apparently they do a somewhat of a good job, because Nana finds herself selected as part of a joint project between all the 48 Gangs. She, Mako and Miki are the representatives of the Akihabara sect and Nana wonders how the hell the upper echelons decided on that.  

“So, what are your specialties?” somehow it falls to Nana to lead this ragtag group.

The Namba sect representative Shibuya Nagisa is actually the oldest (by a few months) but she’s no more experienced than they are – Nana finds out later, the reason why all of the sects sent their freshest recruits. It’s all internal politics, and a mission too important to turn down, but not important enough to ensure successful. In short, they’re expendable and they weren’t even expected to make it home.

The job is in Tokyo, so Nana takes the reigns by default.

She finds that leadership suits her.

It feels like a natural extension of what she was already doing when they were just three idiots on the street, planning operations meticulously so that they come back in one piece, and utilising the skills of her teammates in the most efficient way possible. There are three more idiots to account for now, but she is familiarised with them soon enough.

Nagisa is the strongest in hand-to-hand combat amongst the seven of them, Sakae’s Ryoha the most accurate shot, Hakata’s Meru joins Miki in being the loud charismatic distraction, while Mako and Hakata’s Mio are swift and sneaky with their hands. It’s the perfect team for covert operations. Which makes sense, considering they’re being sent south of the Kanda river, into Sakamichi territory to gather intel on the new gang that’s popped up by the Roppongi hills.

It seems like a simple mission.

Get in, look around for suspicious activity, get out. There isn’t supposed to be confrontation or combat involved.

But no plan survives contact with the enemy, and no one cares about supposed to be’s when there are guns pointed at their heads.

When she’s desperately wrestling with a knife that wants nothing more than to dig into her flesh, when she’s slammed against the wall, breath knocked out of her, when a pair of hands wrap around her throat and squeeze, and her lungs scream as her legs thrash uselessly underneath, her vision blurs, and the terrifying realisation that she won’t actually get out of this situation alive sets in – oh god is that Miki screaming she hears in the background? – the air is rushing out her lungs and –

“Naa-chan. Naa-chan! Snap out of it, you’re not there anymore.”

Nana eyes fly open, as she dashes up, heart still thudding in her chest. She has to make sure everyone’s okay, what happened to Miki, and oh god Mio was stabbed, and where the hell is Mako, and they lost contact with Ryoha half an hour in, and Nagisa is unconscious, and no matter how deep a breath she takes, it doesn’t seem to be enough. Her chest burns, she can’t breathe and – a hand lands on her shoulder, the accompanying scent of hinoki pine only just barely manages to stamp down the instinct to lash out.

Yuiri’s concerned face drags her back to reality, “It’s okay. You’re home. You’re not there, you’re safe now,” to the little hole in the wall apartment she has (firmly on the AKB side of the Kanda river), to the bed she’s sharing with the pretty distraction on her team. Though, perhaps that would be unkind to say, even if she refuses to think of what they’re doing as anything more than just stress relief, blowing off steam.  

Belatedly Nana realises that she has a death grip on Yuiri’s upper arm, she loosens her grip but doesn’t let go, “S-sorry,” her hands are shaking, she’s trembling and she can’t get it to stop, and Yuiri’s murmuring nonsense things in her ear.

“Why are you sorry? I’m sorry, I’m such an idiot,” Yuiri apologises with a grimace. They’ve established early on that Nana does not like hands anywhere near her neck, that one horrendous mission spoiled that forever, but sometimes Yuiri forgets, and the resulting post-traumatic flashbacks are the most mood-killing thing possible in the bedroom, or sometimes out of it too.

The first time it happens is in a street by the AKB theatre of all places. It’s after a job with just the two of them, when they’re both high on adrenaline, breaths heavy, eyes glazed, still in the heat of violence, fresh from a near-death scuffle. Nana’s not sure who jumps whom first, but suddenly they’re in each other’s space, hands tangled in hair, and tongue against teeth. Yuiri tastes like citrus that night, some kind of lemon mixed, and the deeper she kisses her the more she can taste the metallic tang of blood and the salt of sweat mixed in.

Nana closes her eyes tightly, a low, throaty moan of approval rumbles deep in her throat as her back hits the wall with a light thud, the moan turning markedly louder as the elder girl’s fingers slip inside the waistband of her shorts and shoves them down over her hips. Strong, forceful fingers dig into her and pull her in even tighter as her mouth is once again claimed in a desperate, hungry kiss.

“Yuu-chan,” she moans, gasping at the feel of the other girl’s tongue against her throat.

“Yes?” Yuiri’s lips curls into a smile against Nana’s, she groans low and deep as Yuiri’s hips grinds into her own.

“Don’t stop.”

It’s easier with Yuiri, they understand each other in ways her other teammates simply don’t. Maybe it’s because the most of the others are like what Nana was at first, just street kids and lowly thieves dragged in way over their heads. When Nana and Mako come back from that FUBAR recon mission with their hands soaked in blood, the others look at them different. With wariness in their eyes, with guarded stances, with hints of fear in their faces.

Mako’s stupid grin thaws their hesitance soon enough. But Nana has never been that kind of charismatic. Not in the way that makes other at ease. She’s always been harder, more serious, and that only makes her look much more intimidating now.

“You’re still here?” Nana raises an eyebrow when she realises that Yuiri is still lingering about. These days, most of her team disappear faster than a blink of an eye the moment the job is done, not wanting to be around for longer than necessary.

But Yuiri only looks at Nana like she’s the one being unreasonable, “Don’t we usually go for kakigori after a job?”

“You want to have desserts with me? What, not afraid I’ll snap and kill you?” Nana asks, sadly only half sarcastically, because with the way the rest of the team treat her, it seems that’s exactly what they’re thinking.  

The other girl snorts and actually has the audacity to chuckle, “You’re going to have do a lot more than be traumatised to scare me. I’m sure I’ve killed more people than you.”

Yuiri wasn’t some street kid when she got recruited. She was born into this world, her family neck-deep in the underbelly of Japan, and she’s no stranger to violence. There’s only one other like that on their team, Nana would’ve overlooked Mion entirely if Yuiri hadn’t pointed her out.

“You can always tell when someone’s killed before,” Yuiri says, “It’s in the eyes.”

The months blur into years, and before Nana knows it most of her team have the same eyes, the ones who are still alive anyway. The ones who are left split off into the different teams of AKB eventually. Mako, Ayana, Mogi and Komiharu are sent to Team K, with their dangerous combat orientated jobs and Nana just hopes they keep coming home. Saho and Saki are off in the relatively safer B, the front jobs, manning the café and the casinos and the above-board stations. Yukari and Mion end up in A, and Nana hopes beyond hope that they don’t lose themselves in there.

Nana and Yuri themselves never leave 4. They’re the ones chosen to train up the newbies, and she has no idea who thought that is a good idea. She never actually does anything too important in the gang – up until the moment she accidentally founds an entirely new sect.

She’d been in Fukuoka visiting Mio and Meru, and it’s in Hiroshima, on her way back to Tokyo that Nana manages to get herself recognised and chased. She hated cults with a passion. Why did they have a problem with her anyway? It’s not like the 48 Gangs had territory claimed in Hiroshima –

Ow.

She falls off the fence the she’s attempting to climb over and lands on her back with a dull thud. The grass is soft at least. She spends a few moments just staring up at the night sky, it’s actually quite breathtaking when you’re far away enough from the city lights to appr—

“Are you okay?”

Oh, there’s a kid in pink and purple. A teenager really. Nana can’t tell ages anymore.

“…m’fine. Sorry didn’t mean to land in your backyard,” she says. An apartment complex’s backyard anyway, she realises when she sits up. It’s a rundown building that’s clearly not in official use. It appears there are kids squatting in it.

It’s difficult to tell in the dark, but when Nana squints she can make out maybe two more teens peeking out from behind a window.

“Wanna come inside?” the girl asks, and Nana really really shouldn’t.

A gunshot sounds in the air though, and Nana quickly scrambles to follow the kid inside. Being noble is all well and good, but it definitely doesn’t beat being alive.

When Nana awakens the next morning, she hears furious whisperings back and forth between the teens – and there’s clearly more of them this morning than there was last night.

“—it’s dangerous, she’s clearly a member of the 48 Gangs! You saw that tattoo!” an unknown voice hisses, and Nana wonders when and how they saw the little 48 tattoo on the back of her neck. That’s not usually visible and she’s usually a light enough sleeper to wake up if they touch her.

“Yeah, that means she can help us!” that’s Chiho, one of the girls she remembers half-heartedly greeting the night before. The one with the bruises on her face.

“We can’t trust a gang member!”

“So what else are we going to do? They took Yumirin, we’ll never get her back ourselves!”

Nana’s always had a soft spot for stupid kids. It’s probably why they never took her off Team 4, and how she finds herself hopping all over the setouchi region, rescuing girls from a fox worshipping cult.

Girls who somehow end up forming the Setouchi sect of the 48 Gangs – Sashihara-san comes down from Fukuoka to make it official and everything.

Mogi never lets her forget it.

“Hey Naa-chan, remember the time you went to visit Mio and Meru and ended up playing prince charming and rescuing ten damsels in distress?”  

 _____________________________________________________________)

Might finish it later, might not. Who knows...

#akb48 #gang au #fanfic #yuunaa

[autumnslance]

Heyyy! I have a question! But first I would love to share how I love your work ^^! It's mostly why I come to you with this question... See, I uh- would love to have the courage to share my writing, and my OCs to the world. But I never found the courage to. Do you have any tips? Or do you know any good tags where I can show my work at, so that one day I will just "accidentally" press the submit button? ^^'

Thank you~!

Honestly, I still feel anxious about sharing my stories and blurbs. I still feel like my OCs are pretty basic and not super interesting for others to read about.

But they're my characters and I like them anyway, so I'll keep writing about them. Even if takes me time to put some things out. I've always needed to write and share what I write, and sometimes that need overwrites the fear and anxiety--but it can still be hard.

And you know me, this rambles, so have a cut--

I have a buncha prompts and Ao3 threads with an "unnamed generic WoL" that were in some ways me testing the waters, figuring out what worked. Eventually the "unnamed WoL" in those bits leaned more and more towards being Aeryn, until I was just now writing about my own WoL (and her friends) directly without apology. But even then...Even knowing people like my characters, even knowing people like my OC/NPC ship somehow, it can be a struggle

One reason I like prompts and challenges is they make me write something and post without dwelling too hard on it, in theory. That "Rak'tika Rendezvous" piece? I've been sitting on that for at least nine months. I have other WIPs and Drafts, some even older than that! Some are unfinished--and some I'm just too nervous to post, like that one, which was edited often and heavily revised at least once.

I could just leave my writing in a drawer or a doc folder on my hard drive--and for many years I did. I discovered fanfiction in my teens on some of the earliest sites and webrings in the 1990s. It was a different existence; I didn't have a home computer or know how to make accounts or post. I just wrote, having realized the stories I told in my head could actually exist on paper. Literally, at the time. But they also are all gone, not archived anywhere or saved where I can find them again.

Roleplaying helped me, in learning how to make characters and write about them, and then posting about them. Tabletop, LARP, and online, I've done it all. I got pretty good at editing chat logs into something readable, and sometimes even looking like a story. The forums and Livejournals they were posted on were meant for the specific communities I was in--friends catching up on story beats. My WoW server (Shadow Council) had a community-run website, RP-Haven, for years. I posted modified RP logs and stories about my WoW OCs there; a bit more open than my immediate RP group/guild, but still people whose interests I knew were somewhat shared. So the move to posting on Tumblr and Ao3 for me feels like another step, for a wider audience of people who inexplicably like what I write about. It's been mostly positive in my experience, but I write fairly innocuous stuff and my audience is still pretty small and contained.

The internet has changed over time, so any baby steps process will be different. On Tumblr, sharing writing is a lot of knowing how the Search and Tag functions work. So far as I know you can keep something in Drafts indefinitely, until you're ready to hit that "Post" button. Tags should be simple, direct, and consistent, and only the first 5 show up in the general tag search (though can pull up on your blog easily when going to that tag). Which is why I always go "Final Fantasy XIV", "whatever challenge I'm doing", "NPC Name", "own writing tags", etc. I end up following and getting followed thanks to the FFXIVWrite challenges in the last 3 years, where we're all throwing down whatever springs to mind within a 24 hour deadline to break those anxiety-induced perfectionist habits that keep people from posting. Many folks rewrite/revise their entries later, too, because why not?

On Ao3 a draft can only exist for a certain amount of time, before it auto-deletes or you have to post it to save it from oblivion. I don't know if changing the draft extends that deadline; I don't tend to save things in drafts in Ao3, keeping those in GoogleDocs. Knowing tagging on Ao3 is also a thing (I've yet to figure out as fully). Sometimes I'll share a draft from Gdocs with a friend or two for feedback and encouragement before posting ("That Green Umbral Wind" was one, and "Please" was because hooboy).

Pillowfort is a lot like Tumblr, but has features like making a post non-rebloggable, and also any edits to the post reflect in reblogs. There's a bit more control of one's posts there. Also communities, which are like collectively following a public feed people can post or reblog directly to. Pillowfort's also still smaller/less used than Tumblr, and gives out invite keys regularly. Sometimes starting small, with more controls over how it's seen and shared, can help with the anxiety.

I'm also in a largish writing Discord where there are channels for sharing snippets of one's writing, and people can react with emojis and discuss it in the related channels. That's always nice for feedback, for brainstorming, for encouragement. There are even rules now about self-deprecating and putting down your own work--it doesn't help you or anyone else to put yourself and your writing down. We're all learning and growing the more we practice and try new things, like any other art.

You can only get better by keeping on writing, but there's only so far you can get without any feedback. Even if it's just a Like/Kudos, someone read and cared. Comments and tags like "I like this line" or "I love you wrote X part" or "I like how they interact" can really help figure out your strengths, maybe what of the other bits could be worked on more, and of course bolster the confidence to simply keep posting. Trusted friends or finding good beta readers to ping things off of can make a difference, depending on how you write.

But in the end, it's making the love of your OCs and wanting to write matter more than that fear/anxiety. Giving yourself the freedom to make changes when needed, to know it's not written in stone and can be edited, or even rewritten and reposted when you know you can do it better--I see it often. Sometimes you sit on something for awhile tweaking it until it's ready, sometimes you yeet a new piece into the void as soon as you finish typing.

Knowing that if nothing else, on a day when you need to, you can go to that page on your device and reread that thing you posted and remember you still love your characters, even years later, and maybe even think of something new to write for them.

#blogging #writing #characters #about me #roleplaying #OCs #Anonymous

[bananaairplane]

You Already Know What To Do

Shortly after I arrive in Oregon for harvest, I got an email from an editor asking for the manuscript of my dissertation, which I had described as being ready in my book proposal but was, actually, filled with notes to myself and the random rough patches left behind by cutting and rearranging. My first goal, however, was to find a cheap, old Toyota to buy. This was how I found myself sitting in the back seat of my roommate’s car, in the parking lot of an auto mechanic, typing footnotes on my laptop and glancing up every few minutes at the rear view mirror to glimpse the back of a pale green Camry perched on a lift in one of the bays behind me. Its wide fenders framed the horizontal red bars of the taillights like parentheses. As I gazed upon it, I knew this was my car. It was perfect: not beige, with leather seats, and the owner lived in the same suburb where I found my mattress, also on Craigslist.

It was not perfect: The “check engine” light was on, the radio didn’t work, and the A/C vent made a clicking noise. After the inspection found multiple oil leaks, I couldn’t come to an agreement with the seller on price and I walked away. I was so sure it was the one, but after all I don’t believe in superstitions like that. I reasoned that it only felt like my car because car buying is stressful and I just wanted it to be over.

The next day, I drove four more Camrys. Two of them were beige and most had the kind of busted suspension that makes it feel like you are driving an ox cart through a Thomas Hardy novel. One of them had a broken driver’s door handle, which seemed like a dealbreaker: What if I were being chased by a bear, and needed to leap to safety? Also, if no one has bothered to fix something so superficial, what kind of shape can the car be in?

I almost bought one of the beige ones from Adem, the salesman at a crowded car lot pressed up against a two-lane road on the outskirts of Portland. Relaxed, unflappable, cheerful, Adem had a careless air that telegraphed supreme confidence in his trade and also a certain disdain for it. When I returned to the lot a second time and explained that I wanted to drive the car 20 minutes away for an inspection, which would take at least an hour, he shrugged and waved off my offer to leave my license as surety. “I know you’ll come back,” he said easily. When I did come back, we sat in the Adirondack chairs outside the little office and reminisced about Turkish food. He told me about his vacation home in Anatolia and invited me to use it sometime. He smoked a cigarette and sighed as he looked out over the dense thatch of Subarus and Nissans on the lot.

Two days later, I set out to buy the car. I got a sense of what kind of day it was going to be when Andrew, the teller at the bank, began listing the Zodiac signs of all the actors who have played James Bond. It started innocuously enough. I asked him for $3,300 in cash. He took my ID and started typing things into his computer. “Oh, I see you have a birthday this month.” I assumed this was the prelude to some kind of security check, so I said yes, and was going to confirm the date. “You’re a Leo,” he mused. Was he hitting on me? He named two celebrities who were born on August 16th. Did their shared birthday yield other similarities, I asked? They were both in superhero movies. I offered that Madonna is a Leo. He was filling out the request slip for the money when he got to the James Bonds. Sean Connery: Virgo. Timothy Dalton: Libra. He needs a supervisor’s approval to give me this much cash. I make a comment about Libras being calm by nature, so he serves me Hugh Jackman, another Libra. Leonardo DiCaprio: Scorpio. He met Leonardo DiCaprio once, at the Aerospace Museum of California. The manager has come by and now Andrew is counting out the cash, spreading out the bills like he’s setting up a magic trick. I glance around the lobby nervously to see who may be observing. I sweep up the bills and stuff them into bank envelopes as quickly as he finishes counting. Now he is telling me that he paid $300 for a 3-minute video meet and greet with John Cleese, one of the members of Monty Python. He used part of his 3 minutes to tell Cleese that he didn’t really like “Holy Grail” very much. Cleese told him to watch "Fawlty Towers.” A line was forming for the teller windows. It seemed rude to just leave, so I waited for him to finish his story.

I don’t exactly remember how things went sideways at the car lot. Adem and I sat inside the little office, on either side of his desk. I brought up that the struts on the car were original and overdue for replacement. The owner of the dealership, sitting nearby, got wind of what was happening. “What is the issue? The what? Struts?” He called over. “What does that cost? $50? $100? We’ll replace them for you.” Immediately he had his phone out and he was dialing. “This guy is the best front-end guy in Portland, only the best work,” he was saying. “He gives me a discount.” He had the phone on speaker and held it before him like an old-timey movie star in her dressing room with a cut glass atomizer of perfume. The front-end guy quoted him $450 for the struts. “How much?” He exclaimed. He began dialing another number. “Hector is a grease monkey” he explained, “but he does good work.” Hector quoted $350. “With the savings,” the dealer assured me, “we’ll also have him change the oil.” I ended up taking my envelopes of cash home in an Uber.

Reader, I bought the pale green Camry. The owner was a somewhat disgruntled, wiry man who lived in an ostentatious tract home in a subdivision whose streets all bore the names of European cities. Except, incongruously, for Iceland Street; I guess they decided no one wanted to spend their life trying to spell Reykjavik over the phone: “ROMEO ECHO YANKEE KILO JULIET ALPHA VICTOR INDIA KILO.” When I texted him abjectly offering to buy the car, he surprised me by texting back that I could have it for $200 less than we had discussed, if I bought it the next morning. When I rang his doorbell, accordingly, at 10:00 the next day, he looked shocked to see me. He had deleted our previous text exchange and thought I was someone else. But, seeing as I was there with one of my envelopes of cash, he went inside and got the paperwork.

As the global pandemic and West Coast wildfires have upset my plans for this year of adventure, I’ve been flying by instruments, making up my itinerary as I go along. Where will I go next? What will I do? How will I spend this year, and what if the pandemic, having killed my round-the-world plans, extends what was meant to be one year of adventure into two? With little to guide my choices, I inevitably look for signs to signal which way to go next. When things fall into place, it feels like the universe sending me flowers: Sorry I screwed up your plans, here’s a Toyota.

Outside a cannabis dispensary in Santa Cruz on the side of Highway 1, a letter board sign reads: YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT TO DO. I drove past it on my way to Big Sur to camp in my hard won car. Those words stuck with me as I drove down the coast, and resonate now, as I stay with friends in San Diego and contemplate my next move. On the one hand, I feel baffled: where to go next, what to do in a pandemic? On the other hand, this trip has revealed to me that I know the answers to those questions. I already know what to do. It’s time to make it happen.

#adventure #my writing #writing #road trip #travel #cars #my car

[go-foxes]

01/BASICS

Full Name: Colin Nicholas Jessup Nickname: None Birthday: July 27th Gender: Cis Male Sexual Orientation: Gay Astrological Sign: Leo (Leo I, The Week of Authority). Libra Moon.  Spoken Languages: English Birthplace: Las Vegas, Nevada Relationship Status: Single 

TRIGGER WARNINGS: references to drug abuse, abuse, and prostitution/sexual abuse

02/PHYSICAL TRAITS

Hair Color/Style: Brown, usually “artfully tousled” (meaning he spends a lot of time on it but he doesn’t want you to know, but you can totally tell—no one’s hair defies gravity like that all on its own) Eye Color: Blue Face Claim: Maxence Danet-Fauvel Height: 6′0″ Tattoos: None (but considering something trashy, Exy-related, or both) Piercings: None Unique Attributes: Small scar through his left eyebrow, the result of a mugging during his senior year of high school

03/PERSONALITY TRAITS/TYPES

Positive Traits: Charismatic, fun, loyal, adaptable, quick-witted Negative Traits: Manipulative, selfish, jealous, dishonest, impulsive Hobbies/Interests: Exy is the cornerstone that he’s built his life around, the one thing he tried to keep constant in all the years he spent moving around as a child. It wasn’t always possible: some of his schools didn’t have teams, or weren’t willing to let a new kid onto them in the middle of the season, but he was always determined to play. He’s always been an extrovert: that same feeling of always running out of time made it important for him to make an entrance, make a good first impression, and make friends quickly. When it was just him and his mom, and everything that came with that, things like being on an Exy team and being popular in school made him feel normal—something he desperately wanted to be. He loves gossip of all kinds, whether it’s prying into his teammates’ personal lives or collecting random knowledge about celebrities he’ll never meet, he loves being the person who knows things. And though the road was something he both loved and hated—often at the same time—in all the years he spent with his mother, he still has an affinity for exploring new places, bad roadside attractions, and tacky souvenirs. He sleeps better on the team bus than he does in his own bed—after an hour or so of the familiar feeling of wheels underneath him, he’s out.  Major/Minor: Sports Communication Insecurities: Colin has a near-compulsive need to be the center of attention, and to be liked. He tries hard to read people and situations and molds himself to fit them, but then he worries that people only like him because he’s somehow tricked them into it. He tends to feel threatened by other people’s relationships and friendships, and to have an all-or-nothing approach to relationships: if someone doesn’t like him best, then it’s almost like it doesn’t count and they don’t like him at all. He’s intense about people: he wants to find the cracks in their defenses, worm his way underneath, find out what makes them tick. It’s interest, but a selfish kind: he likes feeling like he has power over people, likes being able to predict their reactions. He knows that he’s manipulative, and worries that, deep down, he isn’t a good person, and that if people really know him they won’t like or love him. More than anything, Colin has the urge to make something of himself, to be remembered. Nothing scares him more than the idea that, if he were to disappear tomorrow—as he disappeared from so many schools and so many cities growing up—people would forget about him, that it’d be like he was never there, or like he never existed at all.  Quirks/Eccentricities: He likes to fit himself into small spaces despite his not-so-small size (especially cuddling, he’s the german shepherd who thinks he’s a lapdog), and is extremely touchy-feely with anyone who will put up with it. He has a tendency to take innocuous items from his teammates’ dorm rooms (batteries out of a tv remote, a spoon from the kitchen) just to see if they’ll notice. He really loves knickknacks and assorted kitsch and will make sure to get something from every city they travel to for games, even if it’s just an airport keychain or a mini plastic snowglobe.  MBTI Type: ESFP-T, “The Entertainer” (More so than things though, Entertainers love to pay attention to people. They are talkative, witty, and almost never run out of things to discuss. For people with this personality type, happiness and satisfaction stem from the time they spend with the people they enjoy being with.) Enneagram Type: Type Seven, “The Enthusiast” (Sevens are extroverted, optimistic, versatile, and spontaneous. Playful, high-spirited, and practical, they can also misapply their many talents, becoming over-extended, scattered, and undisciplined. They constantly seek new and exciting experiences, but can become distracted and exhausted by staying on the go. They typically have problems with impatience and impulsiveness.) Moral Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Temperament: Sanguine

04/FAMILY & HOME

Immediate Family: Dawn Jessup (Mother), Scott McClain (Father) How do they feel about their family?: Colin didn’t meet his father until he was around ten years old, and hasn’t seen him since he was eleven. His feelings towards his father are uncomplicated contempt: his father was verbally and physically abusive toward Colin’s mother, and occasionally Colin himself, and used Colin as a pawn to attempt to control his mother. His feelings towards his mother are much more complicated. For most of his life, she instilled a belief in him that it was them against the world, and their transitory life prevented him from forming other strong relationships, meaning that Colin felt like she was the only person who really knew, understood, and loved him, a sentiment that she encouraged. His dissatisfaction with their lifestyle, and his anger with her, grew throughout his teen years, and reached a breaking point when she pushed him into prostitution to pay their debts—she argued that it was nothing that she hadn’t done for him in the past, and he tried to believe her and not feel angry and betrayed. His own anger often made him feel selfish: she often told him how much she had suffered for him, struggled for him, that he was older now and it was his turn. He left his mother at eighteen, partially in an effort to leave before all the love he’d felt towards her turned to hatred and keep what good memories he had of her intact. He hasn’t spoken with her since, as they have no means of communication. Though sometimes he considers trying to find her, it’s not an impulse he’s followed through on, and he generally considers those desires a sign of weakness. He feels like, if he does, then it’d be admitting that she was right. That it wasn’t that bad.  How does their family feel about them?: His father likely hasn’t thought of Colin in many years—when he couldn’t find Colin’s mother and Colin, it was only a matter of time before he found someone else as vulnerable as Colin’s mother, and perhaps easier to control. Even when Colin went back to his hometown, they didn’t cross paths. He’d stopped looking for Colin; and going back to Vegas wasn’t about his father at all, for Colin. Colin’s mother harbors a lot of guilt: she’s always wanted her son to have a better life than she could give him, and most of the arguments that she and Colin got into were her trying to rationalize her own behavior—to herself more than to him. Colin doesn’t hold much hope of ever seeing her again: he believes that, since he was the one to leave, she’ll respect his decision and not track him down. That is, of course, if the life she lived—the one that he used to live with her, the one that was always on the edge—hasn’t killed her. He tries not to think about it, but the possibility always lingers in the back of his mind.  Pets: None. Sometimes they crashed in places with dogs, or his mom dated someone with dogs, but they were never really his. They always felt like what he wanted though, what he thought he might get when they first moved in with Colin’s father: the stable life, the solid family, the dog. He still thinks about it, mostly on his summer road trips, or when he needs to get out of Palmetto for the weekend and just drive, what it’d be like to have a dog in the seat next to him, hanging its head out the window.  Where do they live?: Colin’s suite in Fox Tower is the only semi-permanent residence he has. After one summer spent in Palmetto, Colin prefers to spend his summers on the road: crashing on teammates’ couches or sleeping in his car, pretending that he has somewhere to go. He usually ends up back in Vegas, where he still has some friends from his high school team. He doesn’t have a home there, but it’s as close as he comes to the feeling of home, of belonging somewhere.  Description of their home: See above Description of their bedroom: Used to living out a backpack and not having many possessions, he’s collected a bunch of odds and ends since coming to Palmetto, some of it functional and some of it not. He’ll take the odds and ends that graduating Foxes have left behind, or other Palmetto students have left outside of their dorms at the end of the year. Loves the free section of Craigslist. Everything he’s accumulated has a tendency to spread itself out throughout the suite’s bedroom and into the living areas. His clothes are never in their hamper, whether they’re dirty or clean, and the rest of his belongings seem to spread themselves out like they have a life of their own. If you ask him about it, he says that he likes having his stuff where he can see it. Or that he likes marking his territory.

05/THIS OR THAT

Introvert or Extrovert? Extrovert Optimist or Pessimist? An optimism at heart, even though he tries not to be.  Leader or Follower? Leader Confident or Self-Conscious? Externally confident, Internally more self-conscious than he lets on Cautious or Careless? Careless with his actions, Cautious with his expectations Passionate or Apathetic? Passionate Book Smarts or Street Smarts? Street Smarts Compliments or Insults? Compliments

06/FAVORITES

Favorite Color: Green Favorite Clothing Style/Outfit: His style is actually pretty basic. Outside of practices, he wears a lot of Palmetto gear, sweatpants and obnoxiously orange sweatshirts. His going out clothes tend to be a uniform of jeans and plain v-necks, tight but otherwise nondescript, so it’s less notable that he doesn’t have a ton of clothes outside of the Palmetto swag he’s accumulated as a Fox. When it gets cold in Palmetto, he’s the douchebag that will resist wearing a coat for as long as humanly possible. Favorite Bands/Songs/Type of Music: Will listen to just about everything, but has a special affinity for classic rock/Americana that makes him think of his mother, and likes pop/EDM to work out to and listen to psych himself up for games. Will sing terribly without any shame, and always fights to be the one controlling the music during gym hours or bus rides. Favorite Movies: Most of the time, if it isn’t funny or full of explosions, he’s not sitting through it. Secretly loves romcoms, though he’ll pretend it’s just to heckle them.  Favorite Books: Colin has a very short attention span, and doesn’t really read for fun. If asked, he’d probably say Harry Potter, but that’s mostly because he’s actually read it and he knows everyone else has too Favorite Foods/Drinks: He’s a growing boy: bring on the french fries, pizza, and ice cream. No one ever made his vegetables and he’s still a somewhat picky eater.  Favorite Sports/Sports Teams: Exy—that’s about it. He’s loyal to the Foxes, of course, and the U.S. Court.  Favorite Time of Day: He’s absolutely a night owl, and has his alarm in the mornings timed perfectly so that he gets as much sleep as possible before rolling out of bed and making it to practice on time. Favorite Weather/Season: Summer, but he lets everyone know that he’s from a desert, and doesn’t fuck with humidity. Favorite Animal: He loves any and all dogs.

#COLIN. #COLIN: INSP

[advocaado]

Day 19: Dragons

Another late one! I’m so sorry about this. I just have very little time to write now with the holidays so close. Please bear with me. 

@thirtydaysofzutara @zutaramonth

Find the whole collection on fanfiction.net User: Advocaat

It was an accident. It was a single, teeny-tiny, barely-noticeable mistake. It was the sort of trivial miscalculation that was so seemingly innocuous that the great spirit Barnaby could be forgiven for not catching it. After all, it was nothing that affected him nor anyone who resided on his plane of existence. It was the sort of minor error that happened daily to the best of spirits; the kind that was so utterly inconsequential that it normally wouldn’t even be worth the small amount of energy it took to fix were it discovered.

The problem is, you see, that screw-ups made by the divine have a nasty habit of manifesting in the human world as divine screw-ups. And when the Fire Lord suddenly and inexplicably popped out of existence and was replaced by a two-ton, fire-breathing dragon in the middle of giving a speech at the annual peace summit in Ba Sing Se, there was, quite honestly, no more fitting description.

This, of course, caused no small amount of panic. After all, the last time a dragon had been seen by anyone was at least thirty years ago, and to have one suddenly spewing fire and carrying on inside the Earth Palace was not the sort of thing any reasonable person would generally be equipped to handle. This, unfortunately, included the Avatar and his friends.

Now, as we all know, dragons are famously interested in only two things: treasure being one.

The other being princesses.

So it was that when the dragon-fied Fire Lord swept over the crowd on leathery wings, snatched up the daughter of Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe, and promptly flew straight through King Kuei’s favorite decorative window, nobody could fault him for it. Katara was the closest thing present to a princess, after all. And the window was very shiny.

What follows is a series of snippets showing the events that transpired between Fire Lord Zuko absconding with Katara of the Southern Water Tribe and the Avatar journeying to the spirit world to fix this dragon-sized debacle.

oOo

“Really, Zuko? A cave? You could’ve picked anywhere to be your lair—the Fire Palace, an air temple, a tropical island, a laundromat—but instead you picked a stupid cave. You know I’m going to freeze in here. I’m not dressed for spelunking.”

Zuko snorted and tucked his nose into his wing. He was, apparently, entirely unconcerned by her complaints.

Katara was about to be very offended. She opened her mouth and prepared a finger for some very stern wagging, but she was abruptly knocked off her feet when Zuko’s tail snaked around her from behind and pulled her against his warm body. Katara’s lecture died on her tongue. “I guess that works,” she grumbled. Jabbing a finger into his side, she added, “But don’t think this suffices as a long-term solution. If you’re going to keep me here, you at least need to get me some bedding.”

Zuko made no motion to reply, He merely closed his eyes and began to breath evenly and slowly.

oOo

“Why’d you kidnap me, anyway?” Katara asked as she drew little doodles in the earth outside the cave with a stick. “I mean, not that I don’t enjoy hanging out with you, but I’d think your animal instincts would drive you to more familiar behavior, such as trying to capture the Avatar. You know, I bet Aang would even think that was cool.”

Zuko’s canine lips parted, showing off a row of long, wicked-looking teeth and he tossed his head. His bright gold eyes rose to the ceiling briefly before falling back down to look at her.

Katara stopped sketching and placed her hands on her hips. “Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

Zuko snuffled his great nose and managed to look noncommittal despite his severely limited facial mobility.

Katara’s eyes narrowed. “Just how much man and how much beast am I talking to right now? You seem to understand me, which means you’re intelligent. But are you actually aware of what’s going on right now? Do you know what happened to you?”

Zuko just stared down at her with large, catlike eyes.

Katara frowned back at him. “You’d better not be playing dumb. This is a huge mess, you realize. We can’t go on living in this cave forever. I mean, you’ve got a country to run and I’ve got… Well, I’ve got stuff. I guess.”

Zuko’s nostrils flared and he exhaled a puff of steam that engulfed Katara in a muggy cloud.

Katara crinkled up her face and swatted the cloud away. “Stop that! You’re going to make my hair frizzy.”

oOo

“Zuko!”

A poke.

“Zuko!”

A jab.

“Zuko! Wake up!”

This time, Katara smacked his scaly neck, hoping it would be enough to rouse the slumbering dragon. Her effort was rewarded when one of Zuko’s large eyes opened slowly and he gave her an annoyed look.

“Thank goodness you’re awake. I need to use the bathroom and you’re blocking the exit.”

Zuko looked like he wanted nothing more than to drop back into dreamland, but he hefted his heavy serpentine body off the floor and slithered out of the way so that she could reach the cave mouth.

Katara thanked him with a pat. “Jeez, why couldn’t you have turned into something more manageable? Like a cat? Or a hamsterkeet?”

Zuko snuffed and lowered his head back to the floor, shutting his eyes again.

Katara left her friend behind to step out into the chilly woods. She shivered and rubbed her upper arms, feeling gooseflesh under her palms. It was dark still, but she could tell by the pale halo on the surrounding mountains that dawn was approaching.

She took care of her business quickly and hurried back to the cave, determined to get some more shut-eye before the sun rose and turned Zuko on. Night was the only time she ever got any peace. As long as the sun was out, Zuko was an unstoppable force of dragon energy. He hunted, he terrorized the local wildlife by dive-bombing them from the sky, he tromped around scraping off tree bark with his enormous claws, and La help her whenever she chose to go to the river for a bath. He loved water and he would dive in and out of the river, tossing water this way and that while she attempted to wash her hair. He was so unlike his normal, human self that sometime Katara wondered if the beast really was Zuko or if Zuko had been sent somewhere else and this dragon had been deposited in his place.

But Katara knew that wasn’t the case. Though his facial scar was missing, likely due to the fact that dragon skin was impervious to fire, his lightning scar was still very much present, as she’d seen when he’d rolled onto his back to scratch his shoulders.

So, then, where was her Zuko? Was his personality still there, but buried under layers of dragon instincts? Did he even know who she was, or had he kidnapped her completely by coincidence?

She wished he could talk. That would make all this much easier. She also wished she had some window to the outside world. She could only imagine the chaos the Fire Nation was facing with their ruler up and vanished. By now, the story of what had happened at the summit in Ba Sing Se would’ve spread and everyone no doubt knew about the Fire Lord turning into a dragon and absconding with her. Katara was sure the rumor mill was having a field day.

There had already been plenty of rumors about her and Zuko to begin with. This would do absolutely nothing to help that.

As she reached the cave, she decided that when Zuko woke up she was going to have a chat with him about going back to check on the world situation. At the very least, they needed to reassure their friends that they were okay.  

oOo

It turned out they didn’t need to do any reassuring after all because the next day, Aang, Sokka, Toph, and Suki showed up at their cave.

Katara had been attempting to convince Zuko to throw out a sapling he’d ripped out of the ground and was gnawing on as if it were some kind of chew toy when they arrived. He was shaking leaves all over the cave and she was not at all relishing the idea of having to clean up after him. It was as she was in the midst of wagging her finger at him and giving him a talking to in her most stern tone that Appa descended from the sky and landed a few feet away with a groan of greeting.

“Katara! Zuko! There you are!”

Katara turned around in surprise. “Aang?” she greeted the young, bald monk, shocked to see him there. Her gaze moved past him to the others who were in the process of jumping down from Appa’s saddle. “How did you guys find us all the way out here?”

“We followed reports of dragon sightings to find the general area and then we used Appa to search from the sky until we spotted you,” Sokka answered, coming up beside Aang. He smiled widely then and enveloped Katara is a hug. “I’m glad to see you’re alright. We were really worried.”

Behind her, Zuko snuffed and lashed his tail, apparently offended by the insinuation that she’d been in any danger.

The movement caused the group’s attention to turn to him and Katara watched her friends study Zuko with interest and wariness. The weight of their scrutiny caused him to extend his neck to its full height and shake his fluffy head at them like a peeved rabbiroo.

“So, that’s Zuko?” Suki asked disbelievingly.

“Gained a few pounds, that’s for sure,” Toph remarked from the side of the group.

Aang frowned and approached Zuko with his hand out. Zuko watched him warily but didn’t do anything to stop his advance. When Aang placed his hand on Zuko’s shoulder blade, Zuko made a short, thoughtful rumbling noise deep in his throat. He seemed to decide Aang wasn’t a threat because he lowered his head, relaxing out of his defensive stance.

“Do you know how this happened, Aang?” Katara asked, joining the young monk at Zuko’s side. “If we don’t figure out how to return him to normal, the Fire Nation’s going to have a real crisis on their hands.”

Aang shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of a person changing into an animal.” He squinted up at Zuko and crossed his arms.

Sokka stepped forward then, scratching his chin as he appeared to inspect Zuko up, down, left and right. “Doesn’t this whole thing sort of reek of spirit world shenanigans?” he postulated. “I mean, the only times I’ve ever seen one thing turn into another thing were when the spirits were involved. You know, like Yue turning into the moon and you turning into Koizilla.”

Aang nodded. “You have a point. Humans can’t just transform all on their own.”

“Well, why don’t you go ask you friends in the spirit world?” Toph suggested, raising her hands palm-up. “Even if they don’t know what happened, they might know of a way to fix it.”

Again, Aang nodded. “Yeah. That sounds like the best course of action. I’ll go right away.”

“Well, then,” Sokka said, turning back around to look at the group. “I guess we’d better get comfortable. This could take a while.”

oOo

While Aang meditated outside the cave, the rest of the group sat in a circle and thought about what they were going to do if Aang couldn’t find the answer he was looking for.

“I mean, I guess he could still lead the Fire Nation,” Sokka posited. “There aren’t any laws saying a dragon can’t be Fire Lord, right?”

“And just how exactly is he supposed to govern when all he wants to do is scrape up trees and eat squirrelmunks?” Toph argued. “Not to mention it’s difficult to give orders when you can’t talk.”

“Well, what do you want to do? Hand the throne over to Azula?”

The whole group cringed visibly. That was definitely not an option.

Zuko, who had been lying quietly with his head on the ground beside Katara, suddenly came alive and opened his mouth, displaying his rows of daggerlike teeth. He coiled his neck back and his throat moved, producing an odd growling rumble. They watched his lips and tongue move in a way that looked very unnatural on his canine face and he cycled through a collection of sounds, none of which anyone in the group could extrapolate any meaning from.

“Is he…trying to speak?” Sokka wondered aloud, his eyebrows shooting up nearly to his hairline.

In response to his question, Zuko gnashed his teeth in frustration and wagged his head up and down violently.

That was a sign all of them could understand.

Sokka’s mouth dropped open in shock and he scrambled to his feet to lunge comically over to Zuko. He grabbed Zuko’s great snout and leaned forward to look him in the eyes. “Whoa! Zuko! Are you in there, buddy?”

Zuko made an annoyed barking sound and tossed his head to shake Sokka off. His tail rose off the ground and lashed the side of the cave, leaving a mark on the stone.

Katara rose to her feet as well and placed a hand on his neck, causing him to still. He craned his neck around to look at her and she could read frustration in his large, gold eyes. He made a noise that sounded almost like a whine and one of his feet scraped at the ground, creating five parallel lines in the dirt. “Zuko?” she questioned tentatively. “Is that really you in there?”

Zuko tossed his head again and a jittering growl rose out of his throat. Katara’s brows furrowed in confusion and she looked beseechingly back at her friends. “What does that mean? Was that a yes or a no?”

Suki shrugged helplessly and Toph raised a hand to her chin. “I don’t know if it was either. It sounds like he’s fighting his dragon instincts. It’s like he wants to communicate with us but he can’t.”

Katara turned back around to look at Zuko. Was that true? Was his personality in conflict with the dragon’s? That sounded awful.

Zuko made another whining sound and dropped his head back onto the floor.

“Well, it seems like he wasn’t too pleased by Sokka’s suggestion to let Azula take over,” she submitted. “I guess if he feels strongly enough about something his human self can override his dragon side?”

Toph snorted and turned to look vaguely in the direction of Zuko’s shoulder. “Sorry, Zuko, but I don’t think brief flashes of personality are going to be enough to run your country. You could always consider becoming Katara’s pet, though.”

Zuko crumpled his snout up and snapped his jaws at her. Katara as well levelled Toph with an unimpressed glower. “Toph…”

“Listen guys,” Sokka spoke again, walking into the center of the circle. “We don’t even need to be having this discussion because Zuko is going to turn back to normal. Aang will figure this out and we’ll have the old Zuko back in no time. So let’s stop trying to turn him into a pet and instead think about how we’re going to explain this whole mess after Zuko gets re-humanfied.”

oOo

“Well, guys, I have some good news and some bad news.”

The members of Team Avatar exchanged wary glances. This can’t be good, was the thought on all their minds.

“Why don’t you tell us the good news first?” Katara suggested, raising a hand imploringly.

Aang nodded and the straight line of his mouth curved upward into a smile. “Okay. The good news is that Zuko can definitely be turned back.”

A sigh of relief rose up through the group at Aang’s announcement and Katara’s face broke into a pleased smile. “That’s great!”

Sokka nodded his agreement. “So, then, what’s the bad news?”

At once, Aang’s smile faltered. “Um, yeah. The bad news is that I don’t know how to do it.”

A period of silence followed this statement as the group looked at Aang uncomprehendingly.

“What do you mean you don’t know how to do it?” Toph asked the burning question. “Didn’t the spirits tell you?”

Aang smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. “Well, the spirit I talked to said that the solution was super obvious and not worth his time to explain. Then he shooed me away.”

Sokka slapped his forehead with his palm. “Shooed you away? You didn’t try asking again?”

Aang held his hands up helplessly. “I couldn’t! He shooed me right out of the spirit world.”

Katara exchanged a baffled look with Suki. Spirits could do that?

The next one to speak was Suki. She crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight onto one foot before saying, “Well, he said the solution was obvious, so maybe it’s something we can work out for ourselves.”

Upon Suki’s suggestion, Aang and Katara adopted contemplative expressions while Toph and Sokka looked immediately at a loss. “Like what? Ask him?” Toph asked, brandishing her arms. Stepping up to Zuko who was pawing the ground impatiently, she shouted, “Turn back into a human!”

Zuko snorted and flicked his tail but remained quite clearly a dragon.

“Did you really think that was going to work?” Katara asked her, crossing her arms over her chest.

“What? The spirit said it was obvious. That seemed like the most obvious solution to me.”

“Yeah,” Sokka agreed. “What else are we supposed to try? A kiss from prince charming?” He puckered his lips and made obnoxious kissing noises.

The suggestion was obviously meant as a joke, but Suki’s eyes widened and she clapped her hands together. “Wait! Maybe that’s it!”

Sokka turned around to eye her skeptically. “Suki, it was a joke.”

Suki shook her head. “No, it’s a valid suggestion,” she argued. “Think about all the fairy tales where a cursed prince or princess is cured by a kiss.” She turned to point at Zuko. “Zuko’s not technically a prince anymore, but he’s still cursed royalty. Maybe he needs the kiss of a princess to turn him back into a human.”

The group looked around at each other as they considered this. Suki did make a fair point.

“But I thought it was supposed to be true love’s kiss,” Aang disputed. “Won’t it not work if the person who kisses him isn’t in love with him?”

Toph waved a hand dismissively. “Love schmove. Most of the kisses in those stories are from people who literally just met each other. I’m pretty sure just being a princess will be enough.”

Aang didn’t look convinced. “I dunno… I still think it’s supposed to be true love.”

Sokka called the group’s attention to himself by clearing his throat. “Why don’t we just try having Katara kiss him. She’s the most princess-like thing around here. If it doesn’t work, we’ll go find Mai or something.”

Katara made a face at her brother, unappreciative of being called a thing. Still, she couldn’t argue that the three nations were a little short on princesses at the moment. They certainly weren’t about to go and fetch Azula.

“But—”

Aang started to protest, but he was cut off by Katara. “Fine.” She uncrossed her arms and marched over to Zuko. Giving him an unimpressed look, she said, “I’m subjecting myself to dragon slobber for you. I hope you appreciate that.”

“Hey, are you sure you don’t want to maybe think this over for a moment? Maybe there’s another—”

Katara once again ignored Aang and beckoned Zuko to lower his head with a finger. Zuko did as instructed and when his head was within reach she leaned in and pressed her lips to the tip of his snout.

There was a moment where nothing happened. Katara was about to pull away when there was an audible pop! and suddenly the mouth pressed to hers was very much more human than it had been a moment ago.

Startled by the noise and the change, Katara took a step back, breaking the contact. A gasp rose up from their onlookers and Katara’s eyes widened in surprise.

There, standing in front of her as if he’d always been there, was Zuko, back in his proper form and looking just as surprised as they were.

Save for one very noticeable change.

Zuko blinked in astonishment and then lowered his chin to look down at himself. “Oh, thank the spirits, I’m clothed,” he pronounced with a great deal of relief.

Objectively, it was an odd choice for a first sentence following being de-dragonfied, but none of Team Avatar were of the right mind to give it a second thought because they were very much focused on something of far greater interest.

“Zuko…” Katara started, lifting a finger to point at him. “Your face…”

Zuko blinked again and gave her an uncomprehending look. Confused, he raised his hands to his face and touched it with his fingertips. “What? What’s wrong with—” He stopped abruptly when the fingers of his left hand ran over the left side of his face. Katara watched him prod the area first in confusion then shock. “My scar,” he uttered disbelievingly.

“It’s gone,” Sokka finished for him, sounding just as amazed.

Sure enough, Zuko’s left eye, which had previously been warped by angry scar tissue, was now whole and completely unmarked. He also sported two matching eyebrows and a wholly formed left ear. He moved his two good eyes around to look at each member of Team Avatar one by one and Katara noted that he didn’t have to turn his head to see Toph, who was standing in his periphery. As the reality of the change registered, Zuko’s lips turned upward into a smile and then stretched all the way into a grin. “It’s gone,” he echoed Sokka, excitement lacing his tone. “It’s gone!” He laughed out loud and touched the locale again in joyous wonder.

Katara found herself grinning as well. “Zuko, that’s wonderful.”

Zuko removed his hand from him face and turned his pleased expression on her. Without warning, he took a step forward and grabbed her waist with both hands, lifting her high into the air and spinning her around elatedly. Katara made a noise of surprise upon being removed from the ground but laughed when she saw Zuko’s happy face grinning up at her. He set her down after two spins and grabbed her in a tight hug.

“It must be because of the transformation,” Suki posited when he let her go.

“Yeah, speaking of which,” Sokka chimed back in, “Zuko, you were just a full-sized, fire-breathing dragon. You do know that, right?”

Zuko turned from Katara to look at them. His happy smile faded into a more serious expression. “Yeah, sort of.” He crossed his arms and his eyebrows pinched together. “It’s kind of hazy, but I’m aware that happened.”

“And are you aware that you kidnapped Katara and have been hiding in this cave for the past few days?” Aang asked, pointing to the cavemouth at Zuko’s back.

Zuko turned around to look at the cave and Katara saw a confused look appear on his face. “I did?”

“Yeah, you definitely did,” Sokka confirmed. “The whole world’s in a panic about that, by the way.”

Zuko’s cheeks colored slightly and he shot Katara an apologetic look. “Oh. Uh, sorry.”

Katara shook her head. “Don’t mention it. Really.”

“Well, then,” Suki said, her tone portending a topic shift. “Now that Zuko’s back to normal—er, mostly—I think it’s about time we get him back to Ba Sing Se so we can explain what happened to the Earth King before things get any more out of control.”

Zuko nodded vigorously. “Yes. That’s a great idea. Let’s go immediately.”

Spurred into action by Suki’s statement, the group left the cave behind and made for Appa. They had a dragon-ton of damage control to do.

As the members of Team Avatar clambered up into Appa’s saddle, Aang hung back, an uncomfortable look on his face. To himself, he muttered, “Wait, that worked because Katara’s royalty, right? It wasn’t true love.”

“Aang, get over here!” Toph shouted from Appa’s saddle. “Bison’s leaving!”

Aang shook his head and jogged over to Appa.

No, surely not. Katara and Zuko? In love? Psssh. Not in a million years.

#Zutara #Zutara Month 2018 #zk month 2018 #30 days of Zutara #i really enjoyed writing this one #this is the kind of crack story that makes my joker heart glad

[bookenders]

11/11/11 Tag Game: Round 12

This is a very popular tag game, it seems! Tagged by @ren-c-leyn! Thanks, friend! I am evidence that you can do this game thousands of times, as I have answered 12% of 1000 questions by now. 😋

🎶🎵Hit me baby one more time🎵🎶

My Questions (running out of creativity, must consume more media):

What baseball positions would your OCs be in if they all had to be on a baseball team? What’s the team name? What’s their mascot? What do the uniforms look like? (If you hate baseball or prefer a different sport, substitute said sport for baseball.)

How good are your OCs at bowling? How good are you at bowling?

Rewrite this in your style: “I picked up the book and read the back. He took it from me before I could protest. He never lets me have the cool stuff.”

What do you love about the last book you read?

What are three things you love about your writing?

What’s a word you love the sound of? What’s a word you really don’t like the sound of?

How do you like to begin your stories?

What other forms of writing have you tried other than the one you’re working with now? (i.e. playwriting, screenwriting, poetry, interactive, novels, short fiction. etc.) How do you feel about them?

What’s your favorite play/musical? Why? What’s your favorite part?

What kind of stories do you like to read? How different are they from what you write?

What’s your favorite bit of worldbuilding from a story someone else wrote?

Frodo Taggins:@cawolters, @mvcreates, @a-story-im-writing, @cvrmillas, @ink-flavored, @aslanwrites, @the-real-rg, @bookish-actor, @toboldlywrite, @pens-swords-stuff, @tangoswips and legit anyone else who wants to do this. Especially you.

Answers under the cut!

1. Why did you chose to write the genre you do? If you don’t write in any particular one, why do you bounce?

I grew up writing literary fiction, the undergrad program I studied in prioritized literary fiction, and I like it best. Sometimes I get fancy and branch into fantasy. 

I do not write sci-fi because it’s too hard for me. I’ve tried, it didn’t turn out well. I also don’t usually do horror because it’s a lot of effort for me to make my brain go that kind of dark. And I tend to stay away from YA because the voice is tough for me to write in.

2. Favorite name?

Lydia! 

3. Type of music/ambiance you listen to while writing?

I make playlists and loop them or put the same song on repeat for however long the writing session lasts. Usually a cello/violin piece. Sometimes I’ll hit flow state without anything playing and come out weirded out by the silence. That’s always fun.

4. Best feeling you’ve ever had while writing? (example: filling in that one plot hole and not making another one. Or dropped a tiny detail in and it connected all of the subplots Perfectly.)

I get one in just about every story. Each one has a line/section that I wrote, stopped, and looked at it while going “yisssss” in my head. Usually it’s my last lines. That’s when I love to bring everything together. For my war story, it was finding the perfect song to include that referenced both a character and his journey (”Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” for those wondering). 

A few others: Finishing my last thesis story after having to rewrite it one day before my last draft was due to my committee because computer errors ugh (but it was way better the second time and I got some good bird imagery in there so it’s all good). Putting in a callback to a character’s old desk by using her new one. Getting the dream scene tense shift perfectly paced in the story I’m working on now. Hitting the perfect emotional beat and satisfying the whole dang emotional arc thread in my artist short story.

5. Is it easier for you to write comedic situations or serious ones?

Serious, by far. My funny doesn’t translate well to the written word. I mean, I can do both, but my serious emotionally heavy scenes are far easier for me to bust out than the funnies. 

6. Do you tend to use symbolism a lot?

Unconsciously, all the time! I think it’s almost impossible for a writer to not use symbolism. On purpose, slightly less than all the time. I prefer rhyming actions than what a lot of people think of as symbolism. I don’t do the “x person is represented by the color red and it gets more washed out as the story goes on symbolizing their internal crisis of conscience.” I’m more of a “here’s a thing they both liked and an innocuous detail about it but now that one of them is gone the detail means something different and the weight of the symbol changes.”

I like extended metaphors a whole lot.

7. Think fast: Which book inspired your writing style the most?

Uhhhhh The Things They Carried? Or Wintergirls. Or Hooked on Phonics (heh). I’ve found that Anne Valente’s style is kinda similar to mine, too. Possibly Where the Red Fern Grows. I dunno. There are so many!

8. Last book you read?

I just finished Autoboyography, it was lovely. I recommend it for anyone who wants a coming out story that helps you learn about Mormonism and the LDS church. Also the main character is a wonderful disaster.

9. Book you’re currently working on?

So many. But I just started reading Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. It’s an odd style that I’m super not used to reading in longer fiction (it reads like a short story, which is neat) but I’m trying to get into it.

[Edit: yeah, I gave up and swapped it for Once and Future, which is good.]

10. Do you ever regret deciding you wanted to be a writer?

I have. I do sometimes. But I never really “decided,” per say. It’s just been what I’ve always done and I keep doin’ it. 🚂 That’s why I’m gonna study and have a career outside of writing. It’s the thing I love to do and I’m good at it, but I know myself, and it’d be tough for me to become a career writer. Unless some miracles happen.

11. Something besides writing or reading that you like to do for fun?

I started getting into graphic design, which is a lot harder than I thought. I like going to art installations and ren faires. I love theatre, watching and participating (I’ve written, directed, and acted before!). I like going to local art events, festivals, faires, and supporting local businesses. 

#11/11/11 tag #tag game #writer tag #about me #11 questions #11/11/11 tag game #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writers of tumblr #it's Frodo this time because I think 12 tags merits a second journey

[theoscout]

do not reblog

There's a channel called misha miraculous who uploads ancient film reels about a character named Whirl, who looks like a fantasy version of an anglerfish. He's a MASSIVE JERK for a cartoon, and I'd say he was made in around 194x (AFTER wwii). Acts like Woody Woodpecker does. According to his creator (Paul), he's a berberoka. Paul was originally aiming to be a horror artist to try and put the trauma he's suffered through life into artwork, however at the time most publishers only published horror comics of a particular style. Paul couldn't make his drawings that style, but he tried very hard and was left with a series of drawings that looked the same. Realising he could get into animation instead of horror comics, he repurposed the stories he had written about Whirl (real name Whirlpool but no one aside from Paul knows that) and began to make short films about Whirl.

Whirl is obviously a villian protagonist that people aren't intended to sympathise with. Instead, according to Paul, they are intended to sympathise with the people he hurts along the way. Paul said in interviews in the reels that sometimes there are villians in life that you can't escape from no matter how much you hate them or wish you could, and he wanted his work to show that. But he also wanted to show that said villians could be beaten and weren't invincible. Paul explains that berberoka in mythology are cryptids that would suck the water out of swamps and let all the dead fish lie at the bottom, to lure in fishermen to collect the fish. Once they were within range the berberoka would release all the water and attack and eat the fishermen while they were struggling with the influx of water. He designed Whirl to look like an anglerfish because they too lure in their prey before eating them. Whirl was never seen directly killing anyone in the cartoons, but he was a tricky kind of sadist who liked to pull people into playing awful kinds of games. (Whirl is magic and goes by whatever gender suits him at the time btw) She would do things like make miraculous inventions that in secret would make the lives of the person she sold them to far worse.

Whirl's inventions were like Wile.E.Coyote in terms of absurdity, but the difference was that they almost always worked perfectly until the victim figured out a way to turn them against her and escape his influence. So Whirl was quite a bit darker than most cartoon protagonists at the time.

Paul said that he had based Whirl off many people he actually knew, and that he didn't feel confident enough to write other central characters. He had anxiety which gave him self confidence issues and often led to him thinking of only the worst case scenarios which he would then fuel for his cartoon series. He argued against people who thought that having a berberoka as a character in a cartoon would be too dark for audiences by saying that the brothers Grimm would write tales far darker than what he did, and people tell them to their children all the time anyway.

Now for more on Paul and his family. Paul Fernsby was the middle child of a pair we shall call Mr and Mrs Fernsby. Their oldest child, Sean Fernsby, passed away around 5 years ago due to organ failure caused by severe stress and alcoholism. Their youngest child, Carrie Fernsby, is a mechanic. She struggled frequently in her job and school due to the stronger gender discrimination there, and as a result had to share a home with Paul in order to be more financially stable. Mr and Mrs Fernsby are AWFUL people. They aren't evil, they're the kind of insufferable pricks that think they're morally above everyone and that they're always right. Sean always wanted to be a dancer, for instance, but Mr and Mrs thought that was a job unsuitable for a man and refused to let him dance, instead forcing him to cut contact with all of his friends and force him to study to become a mechanic. Carrie and Paul both strongly believe that this played a major role in Sean's fall into alcoholism, but Mr and Mrs are still in denial. They insist that they *extended* Sean's life, and that Sean was just unhealthy to begin with and that a life on the stage would have killed him quicker. So they haven't learned anything about his death. What's more, despite opposing Carrie's early attempts to be a mechanic and trying to force her into being an obedient housewife for a future husband, when she finally got successful they took all the credit for her success and said that she was delusional and complained too much.

As for Paul? Well, Paul's a special case.

From a young age he had a special gift. The ability to see and hear things that no one else could. As a child he would frequently point out ghosts and fey that he occasionally saw in gardens or staring from nature reserves from a distance away, but no one else saw them so he kept his mouth shut. Originally his parents would yell at him for drawing when he could have been studying, so as a teenager he left offerings for the fey and asked for advice. And one day... something ancient and powerful began to answer him.

The creature identified itself as a pelagic god, but more specifically a ghost of one. According to the creature, it was once extremely powerful and was a tyrant of the land with it's powers thriving off the spread of fear. but eventually the people who once knew about it moved or passed away and it faded into weakness and irrelevency. So in exhange for making people fear it again, the god would grant Paul the power to live life as he pleased. Paul knew enough about fey to keep himself safe, and he kept the god a secret from everyone. The god didn't care what was going on in the cartoons, only provided that people feared her avatar. And Paul could provide for that just fine.

Eventually, Paul felt safe enough to confide in Carrie about the existence of the god, and Carrie built a special machine that would allow the god to communicate easier with people. They set very strict rules about how much communication there was, because neither of them trusted the god enough to let it close to them. Plus, with the success from the cartoons, the god was growins stronger.

The god granted Paul with massive viewer success the stronger it grew, and a lot of luck. No one knew about its existence, but the fear and awe from the cartoons would be enough to sustain it. Though they worked for each other in a mutually beneficial way, they still held a great deal of mistrust. Paul did not trust the god and some of her suggestions to problems he had were extremely disturbing. Plus, she had threatened to curse a number of people who 'got in the way' of Paul, and Paul had retaliated by threatening to stop producing the cartoon if she did that. Meanwhile, the god had been asking for Paul to reveal its existence so that more fear would be caused, or commit a crime, which he obviously refused.

Actually you know what? Forget the stuff I wrote about the pelagic god earlier, I got something that makes more sense.

Paul nicknames the deity the Unsiren because sirens are mythological creatures who sing to lure people onto rocks to drown, and the deity is a creature that screams from a cave to frighten away people and warn of dangerous currents. Unsiren was the deitiy who lived by the sea and was associated with fear, loud noises and the ocean. The tribe who lived there were constantly in danger from the sea, which they relied on for food but was too unpredictable for them to approach safely. Due to the geography of the underwater coastline, the tides were extremely unpredictable at random times of the day with little to no pattern. Think of the Bolten Strid from Britan- an innocuous looking stream which is actually a massive canyon filled with rapids that sucks you under and kills you the moment you set foot in it. That was how dangerous the water around the coast was.

But there was one way to tell about the danger. There was a cave in the side of the cliff, and at certain points when water would rush through it a certain way, the sounds produced sounded like whispering or roaring from some terrifying beast. At first the tribespeople feared the unseen creature, but eventually they learned to intrepret the noises of the ocean into ways that would lead them to fish safely. Their explanation for the sounds was that a massive creature who was too frightening to look at was trapped behind the raging rapids by some malicious fey, but then learned to use its frightening voice for good by warning people of the dangerous tide. So they prayed to the sea cave and the monster murmering behind the rocks to be there to warn of any changes in the tide, and would throw offerings of food into the sea in order to earn its favor.

But centuries of erosion meant that eventually, the sea cliffs that mutilated the dangerous currents and gave the sea cave its voice no longer existed. So with that, the stories of the great beast hiding beyond the rapids began to fade away, and so did their desire for the Unsiren to speak for them. The stories began to grow increasingly obscure, until one day the tribe went to war with invaders and suffered heavy losses. The few who still retained knowledge of the beast beyond the cave no longer existed to spread the story, and the creature faded into a strange purgatory.

The Unsiren isn't evil, but she is frightening by nature. She will go for the hard truth over any sugarcoated encouragement any day, and isn't afraid to speak up. Paul's ability to see into her realm and speak with the inhabitence there interested her greatly, and so did his desire to create. She made a deal with him to prevent herself from dying completely: provided that he could create a series that carried on her life's work, she would reward him with safety and stability whenever she could.

Her life's work was simply warning people about danger. More specifically water related dangers, but she could adapt to that. Paul designed Whirl in mind as a personified representation of the dangerous currents which now no longer existed, choosing him to be a berberoka because that seemed like the best fit. And Whirl's cartoons were made to warn about a variety of dangers, to children and adults. Abusive relationships, kidnappers, dangerous situations, peer pressure etc. The Unsiren had an avatar within the cartoon series, but that wasn't Whirl as the audience might be lead to believe at first. Instead, she's the narrator character. The voice of reason that usually goes unlistened to until the very end. The one who existed in title cards, and as a kind of voiceover narrating the episodes sometimes while using Paul as a medium. No one figured out how Paul was able to make himself sound like that, not even him.

Paul still didn't fully trust Unsiren at first, but she acknowledges that it was wise on his part. After all, it's in her nature to be frightening. Even if she is anything but evil.

#posting for convenience's sake here #my writing