#whatever. i like religious characters and i think sky would absolutely be one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

what-gs-watching · 1 month

Text

If you wanna break my cold, cold heart...

It’s become very clear to me that I’m extremely lost in The Tortured Poet’s Department which I absolutely expected and it’s no fucking wonder my two hyperfixations are colliding. Because after ugly crying through it the first few handful of times about my own life, I’m now just telegraphing that emotion onto a tv character, which is super healthy.

Seriously though, is anyone else imagining Crowley somehow becoming obsessed with this album while he’s still trying to work through Aziraphale fucking off back to heaven?! Baby girl full on alternately sobbing and manically laughing in the back of the Bentley while Taylor Swift makes him feel hella seen? Compiling his own playlist of the tracks that just strip him raw?

Which, in my mind, have got to be -

“Down Bad”

For a moment I knew cosmic love… / Now I’m down bad, crying at the gym / Everything comes out teenage petulance / Fuck it if I can’t have him. / I might just die, it would make no difference. / Down bad waking up in blood / Staring at the sky, come back and pick me up / Fuck it if I can’t have us / I might not just get up, I might stay down bad…

Obvi the go-to track when he just wants to wallow in it. Just like drowning his sorrows in that pub after the angel was discorporated during the first Armageddon, ‘fuck it if I can’t have us’. Hard Crowley vibes.

“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”

There was a litany of reasons why / We could've played for keeps this time / I know I'm just repeating myself / Put me back on my shelf / But first - pull the string / And I'll tell you that he runs / Because he loves me. / Cause you should've seen him / When he first saw me…

My boy only breaks his favorite toys / I'm queen of sand castles he destroys / Cause I knew too much / There was danger in the heat of my touch / He saw forever so he smashed it up / Oh, my boy only breaks his favorite toys

I feel like this is their entire relationship; Aziraphale keeps him at arm’s length because it’s fucking dangerous but Crowley gets destroyed everytime. ‘He runs because he loves me’ - what a devastating thought. They both do, gang, and that’s so sad.

“So Long London”

And you say I abandoned the ship / But I was going down with it / My white knuckle dying grip / Holding tight to your quiet resentment and / My friends said it isn't right to be scared / Every day of a love affair / Every breath feels like rarest air / When you're not sure if he wants to be there

So how much sad did you think I had / Did you think I had in me? / How much tragedy? / Just how low did you think I'd go? / Before I'd self-implode / Before I'd have to go be free

This one has gotta be for those times that he’s ready to fight back a little bit, and feels pissed about how much he tried to keep their shit together. Aziraphale thinks he gave up, he thinks Aziraphale gave up, and sometimes he thinks about fucking off from London too. But he won’t. Hopefully?

“Guilty As Sin?”

What if he's written 'mine' on my upper thigh / Only in my mind? / One slip and falling back into the hedge maze / Oh what a way to die / I keep recalling things we never did / Messy top lip kiss / How I long for our trysts / Without ever touching his skin / How can I be guilty as sin?

These fatal fantasies / Giving way to labored breath / Taking all of me / We've already done it in my head / If it's make believe / Why does it feel like a vow / We'll both uphold somehow?

What if I roll the stone away? / They're gonna crucify me anyway / What if the way you hold me / Is actually what's holy? / If long suffering propriety / Is what they want from me / They don't know how you've haunted me / So stunningly / I choose you and me … Religiously

Baby needs a song about longing. 6,000 years of longing. And uncertainty about whatever they are. This one screaaaams Crowley’s questions about the group of the two of them. It’s so painful. Also, you know, the whole ‘sin’ thing. They spent so much time never touching, but y’all know Crowley feels that guilt anyway. Oof.

ALSO, you know Aziraphale would be wrecked by this one too. I feel like the worst part about the two of them is they're both suffering the same thing, in agonizingly similar ways. They're both carrying that horrible guilt. It's gutwrenching.

“loml”

Oh, what a valiant roar / What a bland goodbye / The coward claimed he was a lion / I'm combing through the braids of lies / "I'll never leave" … / "Never mind" / Our field of dreams, engulfed in fire / Your arson's match your somber eyes / And I'll still see it until I die / You're the loss of my life

More sadness about Aziraphale’s departure. What a shit way to end things, what a cowardly path he took (in Crowley’s mind) after poor Crowley tried his absolute-fuckin’-best to put his heart on the line. Definitely 'the loss of my life.'

“The Black Dog”

Old habits die screaming / I move through the world with the heartbroken / My longings stay unspoken / And I may never open up the way I did for you / And all of those best laid plans / You said I needed a brave man / Then proceeded to play him / Until I believed it too / And it kills me / I just don't understand

Now I want to sell my house and set fire to all my clothes / And hire a priest to come and exorcize my demons / Even if I die screaming / And I hope you hear it

This one is definitely for those times when Crowley wants to scour Aziraphale from his existence but yo, a habit built over literally ALL OF TIME isn’t going to die just screaming. If it can even die at all.

“Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus”

You said some things that I can't unabsorb / You turned me into an idea of sorts / You needed me, but you needed drugs more / And I couldn't watch it happen / I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools / Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules / All to outrun my desertion of you / And you just watched it

If you wanna break my cold, cold heart / Just say, "I loved you the way that you were" / If you wanna tear my world apart / Just say you've always wondered

Ya know our boy has guilt over letting Aziraphale go where he absolutely could not follow, and I feel like he’d probably spend a bunch of time trying to change a ton of things in his life just to avoid ‘the desertion of you’ but yooo, what cuts right to the core is ‘I love you the way that you were.’ All this poor demon wanted to hear, wants to hear.

“How Did it End?”

We were blind to unforeseen circumstances / We learn the right steps to different dances / And fell victim to interlopers' glances / Lost the game of chance, what are the chances?

It's happenin' again / How did it end? / I can't pretend like I understand / How did it end?

Definitely another one for wallowing. Have I found myself screeching out ‘how did it end?!’ everytime it comes up? Yes. And I feel like a drunk Crowley would too. ‘It’s happening again’ would definitely hit home to him, how many times have they been through this?

“The Prophecy”

But I looked to the sky and said / Please / I've been on my knees / Change the prophecy / Don't want money / Just someone who wants my company / Let it once be me / Who do I have to speak to / About if they can redo / The prophecy?

I'm so afraid I sealed my fate / No sign of soulmates / I'm just a paperweight / In shades of greige / Spending my last coin so someone will tell me / It'll be ok / Please

At some point it’s likely he figures out all of this was definitely always going to happen, right? Little snake has always been at the whims of the inevitable (ineffable), and all he ever tried to do was make his own choices but he’s stuck in circumstances he absolutely cannot change. This one is all about pleading. Bargaining phase, you know. But ‘just someone who wants my company’ absolutely kills me. Somebody tell this demon it’ll be okay.

And so yeah I’m imagining the Thin Dark Duke is just playing ALL of those on repeat forever, until he finally gets to this place:

“Imgonnagetyouback”

Whether I'm gonna be your wife or / Gonna smash up your bike, I / Haven't decided yet / But I'm gonna get you back

I hear the whispers in your eyes / I'll make you wanna think twice / You'll find that you were never not mine / You're mine

Bygones will be bygone eras fadin' into gray / We broke all the pieces but still want to play the game / Told my friends, "I hate you but I love you just the same" / Pick your poison, babe / I'm poison either way

Because you know it’s SO Crowley to be absolutely fucking furious at the end of it all, but resolved to get Aziraphale back under any circumstances. I love him running around with the energy of ‘Whether I'm gonna curse you out or take you back to my house, I haven't decided yet’ but he IS resolute in seeing his stupid angel again. This is as positive as he’s gonna get, and I love that for him.

Did I spend way too much time writing this out for absolutely no reason? Yes. But gang, I have to believe Taylor Swift can reach anyone, even ethereal entities. Joiiiiin the Tortured Poet’s Department, Crowley, you know you want to…

#good omens #crowley loves aziraphale #taylor swift #the tortured poets department #sad crowley #crowley x aziraphale #crowley's sad playlist

7 notes · View notes

olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 years

Text

Routines

Tim and Marinette lived busy lives.

It was by choice, of course.

They were both prominent figures in their fields that could pick and choose the assignments they wished to take, had more money than they could ever dream of using thanks to the hefty trust fund that being even tangentially related to Bruce Wayne provided, and no one would blame them if they were to lessen or give up their vigilantism. If they wished, there was nothing stopping them from taking a smaller workload, from using up all of their sick days, from taking vacations, from quitting their jobs entirely...

That being said, they likely never would.

And the tabloids loved to speculate on their relationship because of it. How could they spend much time together if Tim was always at work, developing new technology for Wayne Enterprises? Marinette was cheating, how could she not when so much of her job as a designer involved getting up close and personal with models? Not to mention all of the business trips. Surely, the relationship had some kind of monetary motivation, or maybe it was just to more seamlessly merge their companies, or it had only happened for PR reasons.

They let them speculate. They simply didn’t know better.

The tabloids didn’t get to see how they acted behind closed doors, after all.

There would be days where neither of them went in to work. It wasn’t due to some sort of sickness that Tim had caught thanks to his lack of spleen, nor would it be because Marinette had hit some kind of artist’s block. No, it was simply because they wanted to spend time together.

They took breaks. Technically. If you squint.

There would be days where neither of them went into work. It wasn’t due to some sort of sickness that Tim had caught thanks to his lack of spleen, nor would it be because Marinette had hit some kind of artist’s block. No, it was simply because they wanted to spend time together.

They would turn on the coffee machine and then make their way over to the sofa. Marinette would nestle herself into his side and smile as he wrapped his arm around her. He would pull her as close as he possibly could so he could still use both arms to type.

He usually took video calls like this. It was always so much easier to maintain a pleasant smile, even when people often looked down on him for his age, because whenever he felt it start to waver he could simply look down at his girlfriend and suddenly he would find that it would be back in full force.

She would prop her sketchbook on her legs and start on some new designs. The designs she did like this were always, inexplicably, more lively than the other ones -- full of vibrant colors and swooping curves in a way that some of her other works lacked. If asked, Marinette would joke that the secret ingredient was love.

And, sure, this wasn’t technically taking a break from work. They were still productive, still did tasks...

But they counted it. They always came back to work the next day with the same euphoric feelings in their chests, the same springs in their steps. How could they not? They’d spent the entire day doing what they loved with the person that they loved. Who could ever want a break from that?

Every time one of them came back from a business trip, they made sure to spend the night together.

Tim would lay back in bed, Marinette on top of him. Her head would come to rest on his chest, clutching the back of his shirt tightly. His fingers would find their way to her hair and she would huff a little, knowing that her hair was about to get hopelessly tangled as he fidgeted with the silky strands, but she would nuzzle into his chest all the same.

They would watch a TV show. It didn’t matter whether it was good or bad. As long as there were people and some semblance of a plot, they would gladly stay wrapped up in each other’s arms to watch it.

Tim would rattle off whatever theories he had developed as they came to mind. Some of them were absolutely insane, he knew, and would never happen… but it was worth making a fool of himself if it got Marinette’s face to light up or if he earned one of those little giggles that escaped her when he was instantly proven wrong.

Marinette would, at least, pause the show whenever she wanted to talk, though it wasn’t out of an understanding of how time works. No, it was so she could sit up a little in his lap and point at whichever character had offended her this time. She would go on long rants about how makeup was just as important as outfits in costuming, but it was often overlooked in favor of making the actors look pretty. And, maybe she had already said all of this before, but it’s important, Tim! And he would just nod his agreement. Because it was important -- a TV night certainly wouldn’t feel like a TV night without at least one rant.

And then the screen would go black, the most recent episode done.

Tim would draw back a little and then pretend to be shocked when his hands were stuck in her hair.

“Oh noooooo,” he’d say. “I guess I can’t let go yet.”

“How unfortunate,” she would deadpan.

He’d smile cheekily at her.

“Shut up.”

“But I didn’t even say anything!” He’d argue with overexaggerated offense.

She would smile, shaking her head as much as she could with the fingers in her hair. “You didn’t have to. You have a presence about you.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” he’d say.

And, sometimes, she’d bring her hands up to cup his face. “Not sure if it was a compliment, but I definitely wouldn’t have it any other way,” she’d whisper before pulling him closer for a kiss.

… but, most of the time she would just laugh and say: “It wasn’t one.”

Once a month, Marinette tried to teach Tim to cook. Of course, they both knew it was a hopeless endeavor. He’d failed to make mac n’ cheese once, and Marinette -- who had lived the first eighteen years of her life in a Parisian bakery -- wasn’t good at discerning which meals were ‘easy to do’.

But that didn’t stop her from trying.

She would come up with a new recipe, would claim that this one was truly dummy proof…

And then Tim, dummy that he was, would manage to mess it up. Without fail, he would find some way to do something wrong. He would leave the milk on the stove and then be surprised when said milk on the stove decided to revolt against the system. He would raise the temperature on the thing they were baking so it would go faster and then be shocked when the cake didn’t rise at all. He would put too much in the mixer and then not understand why the contents had exploded over the two of them.

Worst thing was, she was pretty sure he was actually trying. He just… couldn’t seem to do it.

So, she would just kiss the disappointed frown off of his face and promise that they would do better next time.

And, every time without fail, he would light up.

“There will be a next time?” He would ask.

“Yeah. You’re lucky you’re cute, I can’t say I love being covered in ingredients.”

Tim would kiss her cheek, and then draw back and lick his lips. “I don’t know, I kind of like it. Something about my girlfriend being covered in tasty food really does something for me.”

“Like I said: you’re lucky you’re cute.”

And, even though she would say that, there was no mistaking the amusement dancing in her eyes.

They weren’t particularly religious, it was hard to be when Marinette had a god living in her earrings that obeyed her every command…

Which meant celebrations for the two of them were few and far between.

But, at least, they celebrated their anniversary.

They would sit on the rooftop, the blankets doing nothing to keep the hard tiles of the roof from digging into them and they did even less against the chilly Gotham air.

She’d stare up at the sky with him.

And, since it was Gotham, there were very few stars to be seen through the dark red and black haze of clouds that hung over the city.

But they didn’t mind.

Marinette smiled. “It’s our colors.”

He didn’t look over, watching the colors swirl above them. “Even the sky thinks we’re a good couple.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. The sky god really does have a thing for love.”

He gave a short puff of laughter and finally tore his eyes away from the sky. “Really?”

She shrugged, grinning at him. “No clue. There might not even be a sky god.”

He scoffed and untangled his hand from its blanket prison to give her a tiny shove. She could have dodged the attempt with ease, but she allowed the hand to make contact.

To her surprise, he grabbed ahold of her shoulder and pulled her into him. She gave an undignified little squeak and, if it weren’t for the fact that he was right there, she would have probably faceplanted onto the tile.

But, instead, her face came crashing into his soft, pillowy shoulder.

She looked up at the crooked grin that she had come to love over the years and huffed, pulling her own arms free so she could shove him. For real.

He flopped back, the hand he’d managed to get out coming to rest over his chest as if he were hurt.

“How could you? Roofs hurt, you know.”

“Well, yeah, if you throw yourself down on tiles it’s not going to feel too great.”

He cracked a grin, though he quickly tamped it down to keep up the act: “Victim blaming at its finest.”

She rolled her eyes and leaned over him. One of her hands cradled his cheek, her thumb tracing the tiny scar on his cheekbone.

He looked up at her. And she thought, somewhere, that maybe the reason the pollution in the city was just some kind of coverup so no one would know that they all resided in Tim’s eyes.

And then she cursed herself mentally for thinking something so cheesy.

She had to make up for it somehow:

“You’re the worst, I hope you know that.”

“I am. But you love me anyway.”

Dang it. How was she supposed to feign being annoyed when he looked at her like that? With that soft smile and thick lashes and hair that framed his face just so.

She decided it wasn’t worth trying to pretend.

Marinette let herself match his smile.

“I do.”

“Save those words for our wedding,” he joked softly.

She rolled her eyes. “You haven’t even proposed yet.”

“I could be doing that right now. Who knows, this could all be my plan.”

“It’d be a good plan,” she said. “I’d probably say yes.”

He narrowed his eyes just slightly. “Isn’t that essentially you proposing to me?”

She tipped her head to the side, considering, then she laughed a little. “I guess it kind of is. So, Tim, will you marry me?”

His eyes widened to an almost comical degree.

And then his face lit up with a smile that made her heart flutter.

“I hope you know I want a ring.”

She giggled. “Just say yes, you idiot. We can always get the ring tomorrow.”

His smile only stretched further. “Yes. I’d love to marry you.”

“I love you,” she whispered, leaning closer until her lips brushed against his.

“I love you, too,” he breathed.

Marinette didn’t hesitate any longer, tilting her head to give him a proper kiss. He freed himself of the blanket and she gasped a little against his lips as he wrapped her up in it as well, drawing her close.

She pulled away just a little, her forehead coming to rest against his. She couldn’t seem to get the dopey smile off of her face, but she wasn't completely sure she even wanted it gone.

“I proposed first, so I won,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him playfully.

He smiled. “No, I did.”

#i did the impossible and got 100 subs on ao3 #so i figured id attempt the impossible again #its all fluff #not a single swear #AND its a oneshot #i did it i did the impossible we can all go home now #(please dont leave lol)#maribat #routines #shutterbug #timari #timmari #timinette #red robin #tim drake #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug

155 notes · View notes

herstarburststories · 3 years

Text

illicit love

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x reader

Summary: Jensen loves you, but sometimes love isn’t the right thing.

A/N: Hey, guys! All we needed was a newish fic to say that I was really back, here it is! This one goes for @negans-lucille-tblr 6k challenge. So glad you got to another millestone, honey. It's like I was posting my part for your 5k celebration just yesterday! xD Prompt in bold.

Warnings: age gap, cheating

Jensen Ackles kept squinting through the bricks of his memory in an attempt to recall where it all began. Maybe it was when he drove off the road he had known for years with the dumbfounded desire to take the trails yet traveled, threading his fingers through your hair on the night of September 7th. He could’ve chosen the easy out and say it all started to crumble with the first kiss, but no. The actor, father, and now horrible husband highly doubted that. No, as he unwound the convoluted wires in his mind, it wasn’t the first clandestine meeting that he saw as the beginning, not the first kiss or the primal stolen glances. It wasn’t even the lies or the way he pushed his body against yours in an act of illicit faith.

Like any grand mistake, it was way before that. Just like how the church not-so-gently advised, it all starts with craving something you never thought you would want.

It happened when he landed the job in a new series after leaving a fifteen-year-long rollercoaster, pushing away any real witness to the fact the old show that swallowed part of his soul was over. There was a certain shock of excitement misplaced by the fact he was going to be working with Eric again, and that the show was an abrupt change considering what he had been doing previously. Now, he believed it was his body’s particular way of telling him that — as the savage animals can sense rain or a calamity — this, baby, this is gonna change your life.

JENSEN ACKLES CAST AS SOLDIER BOY!

‘’Since when have you read comics?’’ Jensen arched his messy eyebrows at Dee’s curiosity about the Homelander and Soldier Boy panel making it to the screen. Shaking the comic book in his right hand slightly, he continued: ‘’Especially that kind.’’

‘’Never,’’ Danneel stated plainly, “but I have Google. It was pretty much the first thing that appeared.’’

‘’Well, Eric said that scene won't be on the screen. Besides, the portrayal won't be that Soldier Boy, but the original one who died in the war. ‘Course, he wouldn’t have died there in our show, but it ain’t the panel one.’’ He shrugged, bringing her closer to his side as she snuggled against him. ‘’There’ll be a bunch of Herogasm, which is basically drugs and sex. Just not with Homelander.’’

Danneel nodded at his explanation, humor clinging to her words as she added: ‘’Guess the only man I have to share you with is still Jared.’’

‘’Hey, you knew what you were getting yourself into.’’ Jensen scoffed playfully before kissing her cheek. ‘’Can't wait to start the show.’’

Jensen leaned forward to rest the comic that he had been religiously studying to form a psychological character profile on the dashboard of the Impala. The actor was spending plenty of hours inside his most palpable Supernatural souvenir -- Baby. His safe place. He sure as hell needed one of those, as molding a whole character that has a bunch of source material wasn’t as easy as he pictured. With Dean, he was putting himself and the script in one until it made his imaginary best friend. It was love at the first sight. Soldier Boy, however, was a long story short. Jensen figured he should do both, honor the character created and add his own special ingredients to it. It was a brand new kind of passion that he hadn’t done for a series in the longest time. Still, his glance trailed back to the woman by his side in the backseat.

‘’Let's hope it won't last another decade,” she mocked.

Jensen shook his head with a chuckle, relaxing against the leather seat. Even the mere smell of the Impala was enough to settle his nerves. ‘’Eric has plans for five seasons.’’

Danneel’s features contorted as if having war flashbacks. Sort of. She never imagined Supernatural would make it that far, and now with three kids, signing on for another excessively time-consuming idea for a new show didn’t seem too appealing either. Yet, she would support Jensen in any decision he’d take regarding his job. “Remind me the last time I heard that line before?”

‘’Come on.’’ He let out a wry huff, poking her side in a playful manner. She couldn't help but laugh, returning the gesture with tickles to start a very light-hearted battle. He seemed happy with the new job, something Danneel truly thought he would have more difficulty with. She’d pushed her weathered worries away with his easy-going laughter for now.

SOLDIER BOY’S LOVE INTEREST?

Eric Kripke threw the gossip magazine on the table, his eyes not straying from his long-time friend’s. He could’ve simply added the digital article to an irate email and be done with it, but he was a simple man with extravagant taste. That had been usual through his whole career, especially regarding the Supernatural aesthetic. Yet, in those mundane situations, Jensen almost found it too much. That wasn’t the case, though. If anything, the plain, yet still overpowering words that his green eyes scanned made his body sweat. He could even hear his organs working from the absolute silence of the blame that covered the room. Kripke’s room had never seemed more like an interrogation chamber than now.

The magazine in question held Jensen and your picture on the cover, his arms wrapped around your torso as he pulled you close. The most sequin smile hung from your lips like happiness was something that could be touched on that sunny day in the private park near the studio. Giant and garish letters made the headline along with the subline: Jensen Ackles wearing his Soldier Boy costume caught sharing a passionate kiss with the new arrival of The Boy’s Team: Y/N Y/L/N, also known on-screen as Cangaceira!

His voice came out as an accusation: ‘’What’s this, Jensen?’’

‘’We were…’’ The director just waved his hand to interrupt.

‘’Don’t try saying you were practicing a scene because I wrote the Soldier Boy and Cangaceira kiss, and it wasn’t here.’’ Acid tainted his words with no space for fake niceties on his set. Jensen remained in the chair, not even daring to make the most subtle move. Eric knew where he was hitting, and Ackles deserved a punch in the jaw. “The sex scene wasn’t here either, but you two added a lot of erotic subtext. Trust me, I know.’’

His shoulders fell in exhaustion. ‘’Eric…’’

‘’You’re lucky we were going to make those two a couple anyway. I can just put the kiss here and save your ass. What if that wasn’t the case, huh?’’ the director continued, more interested in spilling out his anger than listening to dumb excuses. ‘’What about Danneel, Jensen? You have a wife and kids, for God’s sake!’’

The breaking point. Jensen rose to his feet with sudden frustration, a growl leaving his lips as he pushed the chair to the side with uncharacteristic brutality. How could Eric bring up his family like this? And how could Jensen’s heart not bring them up when he kissed you before? It was all a fucking mess, and he had no choice but to choke down whatever came out of it, even if it was poison and spite.

‘’Fuck, Eric! Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think it doesn’t pull me apart every time I go home and know I’m lying to the people who love me?’’ The vein on his neck popped as he spoke, emotion gushing thicker through his arteries than blood. Woe remerged under his skin as he swallowed dryly, resting his hands on the table and looking down. That wasn’t him. He had done a lot of things that weren't him lately. ‘’I have enough guilt here, pal.’’

Eric just glared down at the man’s outburst, furrowing before asking, ‘’What’s going on, Jay? You don’t just get up and cheat on your wife. That ain’t you.’’

He shook his head. ‘’I don’t know. Y/N’s just…’’

‘’At least 20 years younger than you,” he stated. ‘’Just starting her career and might be getting the homewrecker title if someone finds out.’’

‘’I won’t let that happen.’’

‘’How? You are gonna be more careful or will you cut it out and go back to your wife and three kids?’’ When Ackles didn’t respond, Eric sighed. ‘’Just stop this, Jensen. Let her go.’’

Jensen scoffed humorlessly. ‘’I can’t.’’

Kripke felt like talking to a teenager. He shook his head as he got up. ‘’Do you have any idea what you’re doing here? This could destroy your family, destroy Y/N’s chance to make a name when you already have your own. That’s selfish in all proportions, Jensen!’’

‘’I know, I know.’’

‘’She deserves more than this and —’’

‘’I know.’’

‘’You are gonna mess up everyone’s lives —’’

‘’I know!’’ He slammed the table and winced, turning around with his hands on his head. If only he could stop his thoughts for a second and reorganize his feelings. ‘’Do you think it doesn’t rip my heart out that I can’t love her?’’

‘’Who?’’ The burning question was ready to set everything ablaze. ‘’You can’t love Y/N, or you can’t love your wife anymore, Jensen?’’

He couldn’t love you in public. He couldn’t love Danneel anywhere. Love just escaped through his reaches when you spoke his name like a prayer, and it was time to accept that.

‘’Both.’’

NO CHICK FLICK MOMENTS: SOLDIER BOY AND CANGACEIRA TALK ABOUT WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THEIR RELATIONSHIP

‘’It's amazing to portray with Jensen. I’ve watched Supernatural since I was like twelve, which probably isn't advisable.’’ You chortled, answering the reporter’s question. Your body could barely contain your excitement under your skin, although, why would you want that? You did it. You got the job you had dreamed and worked hard for. To a bonus, you were working with Jensen Ackles! If there was someone that had earned the right to scream to the sky until your face was the color of the red carpet your heels currently stood on, it was you. ‘‘I was even a Samgirl!’’

Jensen faked a gasp next to you, a light spectrum surrounding the interview. ‘’Really? Me too!’’

You pushed his shoulder playfully while he chuckled. ‘’Anyway, I'm very excited to be here and portray a strong latina superhero. The representation’s very important, and to be able not only to cherish it, but to be a part of it doing what I love and inspiring people like me is… mythical.’’

‘’Wow, woman!’’ Ackles pursed his lips, clapping a little before shifting his gaze from you to the reporter. ‘’She likes the big words. I swear, dude. She’ll just come and in like, a casual conversation, say something like gelid or whilst, and then she's gonna say dumbass. Both sound smart as heck.’’

You winked. ''It's the accent. Makes everything sound nice.”’

Jensen nodded but was quick to sprinkle in an incendiary remark to his compliments. ‘’Yeah, I have never seen someone confuse coach and couch before. Go sit on the coach got a lot of wrong ideas.’’

‘’Hey, you sat on the coach!’’

‘’Because I’m a good boy.’’

You rolled your eyes despite the grin on your lips. ‘’Sure, mister hours-to-get-ready.’’

‘’Hey, plenty of face masks are needed to keep this — ’’ He pointed at his face. ‘’at fourteen.’’

‘’All I hear is that you’re old.’’ Your eyebrows knitted together. Jensen licked his lips at the sight. On any other day, he’d pick you up, say I’m gonna show you who’s old, and enjoy where your teasing had gotten you two, but he couldn’t do it now. You’d get what was coming to you after the event, perhaps even under the table if your dress allowed it, or in the bathroom, if you kept going.

The mischievous smirk on your cherry-stained lips proved that you knew what was going through his mind. God, you were his sweet death. Nonetheless, Jensen sighed dramatically and looked at the camera. ‘’This is what I have to deal with every day.’’

The reporter went on, happily surprised about how comfortable you and Jensen seemed together. Usually, new coworkers were timider around each other during interviews, especially when they were a romantic pair. The journalist decided to try getting a little sneak peek of the couple aspects of Soldier Boy and Cangaceira.

‘’It's definitely interesting.’’

‘’But not in the best way.’’ The only thing more messed up than Jensen’s relationship with you was the correlation between your characters. At least you and he had the purity of love, even if it was twisted enough to turn heads and churn stomachs

‘’Certainly not in the best way.’’ You agreed, bringing him back into reality as always. ‘’It's really nice to explore a couple that doesn't consist of two white people getting to it like most main characters of the shows in our current climate. It’s not the kind of relationship you should be rooting for — not because it's interracial or anything, that's pretty much the biggest, if not only, positive aspect about those two — but because they aren’t healthy at all, just as all main relationships in our show. It's not a romance series, and we certainly don't treat our couples like it.’’

‘’Told you she is the beauty and the brains.’’ His cheeks dimpled with joy and pride as he looked at you. Jensen knew how excitedly nervous you were about that interview. He couldn’t wait to tell you how great you were like you were born to sell dreams and magazines. ‘’But yeah, it’s a messed up relationship like any other in The Boys. After all, it's not a respectful, wholesome show. It's about gritty superheroes that ain’t got heroism. Soldier Boy isn't a good guy, and it translates in his relationship too.’’

You nodded in agreement, brushing his arm to keep you sane. ‘’It’ll be an interesting dynamic to see on-screen to our show standards, but it's not an actual picture of how a relationship should be.’’

THE BOYS 100TH EPISODE PARTY!

The glimmer of his green comet eyes caught your undivided attention in the throngs of people. The crowd had gathered for his family, his arm around his wife's waist as you both shared a tender, stolen look. You savored her wine and yearned for the man in her arms.

It was just a small celebration due to COVID’s lasting effects on public events. People from the set and their significants together were in the Ackles house for a couple of drinks, small talk, and a cake with The Boy’s comics printed on it.

‘’Aunt Y/N!’’ JJ tugged your dress, her mix of Danneel and Jensen’s features almost haunting your soul. Almost. You would never despise a kid for that — you didn’t even have the right to. If anything, JJ was the one that would graduate to hating you someday. You didn't have enough youthful stupidity not to know the risks of being in love with a married man. ‘’Auntie!’’

You leaned in the most that you could with the red skirt, glancing at the child. ‘’Yes, honey?’’

‘’That’s my new Barbie! I bought a beach one! She looks like you!’’ the blonde kid said with a childish joy that ached in your heart. You could end up destroying her family’s stability if Jensen went any further, yet there she was; buying dolls that looked like you and so happily babbling about it.

You were a monster. Love opened you up and planted greedy seeds, and now you were a monster growing like a beautiful tree that could never be strong enough to hold a kid as they climbed up. The fact that you could sense Jensen’s eyes on your ass didn’t help one bit.

‘’She does! That’s so cute, JJ.’’

‘’You can be her. I have one who looks like mommy, I’ll be her, ‘kay?’’

Your nausea was replaced by a pageant smile and a nod, and so you spent the night sharing longing stares with the dad and playing dolls with the daughter. It was a role that was never yours.

ILLICIT AFFAIR? JENSEN ACKLES SEEN ON THE BEACH WITH Y/N Y/L/N

‘’I can’t believe you did this to me, to our family,‘’ Danneel screamed exasperatedly as she threw her clothes in a bag and heart on the wall. Jensen just stood there, accepting the deserved fury. ‘’Ten years of my life, Jensen, and you just threw it away for a mistress! I gave up on my job to be a stay at home mom because you didn’t want a babysitter. I supported you in every moment. I loved you!’’

‘’I’m sorry…’’

‘’You don’t get to be sorry,” she howled, glaring at him with the hatred of an overthrown nation. She felt like he got to the podium and forgot to say her name. ‘’You let that woman get in my house, drink my wine, talk to my children…’’

Reflexively, he said, ‘’Our.’’

‘’Shut the fuck up! There’s no ours anymore, no us!’’ Her words had garnered a learned violence, much louder than the sound of the zipper closing her duffel bag. She threw the CC exclusive on the floor, holding onto the handle for dear life. He didn’t deserve to see her breaking, only her anger. ‘’You destroyed our family, you destroyed me!’’

He pleaded, unable to discern if it was for her or the guilt: ‘’Dee.’’

‘’I hope you’re happy. I hope you go to her, get her to sleep on our bed, and be happy for a month.’’ She gulped, pursing her lips. Her glossy eyes coupled with the pink hue of her lipstick brought back a treacherous memory of their wedding day. ‘’And then, I hope she cheats, like you did to me.’’

The next headline didn’t call it love.

Comment & reblog. Feedback is magic! Check my masterlist ♡

TAGS IN REBLOG!

WANNA BE TAGGED? SEND ME AN ASK/DM

312 notes · View notes

alaenawrites · 4 years

Text

Soon You’ll Get Better- Coops

Hi!! I’m the anon who is doing a sweater weather x folklore mini-series!! I have a few already in the making right now so keep an eye out... but before I do that I have to do this. I was listening to my favorite sad Swift songs (as one does after a breakup) and this one came up (of course) and there is no other song in the entire world that will make me cry more about the end of SW chapter 16 right now, so... you get this, set over a few days a little after that! I promise some of these will be happy haha.

Characters of course by the absolutely amazing @lumosinlove !!! <33

~~~~~~~~~~

The buttons of my coat were tangled in my hair In doctor's-office-lighting, I didn't tell you I was scared That was the first time we were there

Remus barely made it through the door, hair messy, coat definitely buttoned wrong, before collapsing into a chair by Sirius’s bed. Sirius, who was hooked up to at least five machines; Sirius, who had his eyes closed and, he had been told, hadn’t opened them in hours. Sirius, who was laying pale in a hospital bed, looking so much like he had that day, years ago, that Remus felt his heart rip into even smaller bits.

He remembered that day, of course, still had nightmares about it. He remembered Sirius’s eyes, steely gray and focused on his own as he was carried away on a stretcher, he remembered the waiting and the pacing and the sitting and the waiting some more.

He remembered their first physical therapy appointment. Remus had tried to keep his voice calm as he stretched Sirius’s ankle and helped him stand. The lights had been too bright, everything had been too loud- or maybe that was just the fear. He had tried his best not to let his worry show, but-

But, Remus thought with a shaky breath. That was then. This is now.

Holy orange bottles, each night I pray to you Desperate people find faith, so now I pray to Jesus too And I say to you

Ooh-ah, soon you'll get better Ooh-ah, soon you'll get better Ooh-ah, you'll get better soon 'Cause you have to

Remus had never really been religious, but now felt like a good time to try. He ran his fingertips over his watch, pressing his lips to the words etched underneath- mon vœu.

I wish, he prayed silently, to who knows what, or who, I wish for Sirius. I know I have him, but- but I need him to be okay. I need him to be okay. Please. That’s my wish.

Sirius’s hand was cold- well, colder than usual- when Remus intertwined their fingers. He squeezed gently, resting his forehead against Sirius’s.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” he whispered against the tears forming, “But... I love you. I love you so much. You’ll be okay. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to wake up and you’ll be fine and you’re going to come home soon and I’m going to make you dinner, whatever you want. I’ll make you sandwiches, or pasta, or I’ll get Sid’s, anything. You hear me?” Remus squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in Sirius’s hair. He smelled like doctors and rubbing alcohol. “You’re coming home soon. You have to.”

You like the nicer nurses, you make the best of a bad deal

Remus was shaken awake gently by one of the nurses, holding out a bottle with a kind smile. He rubbed his eyes and glanced around frantically.

“Is everything okay? Is he- He’s-”

“He’s fine, love. Well, as fine as he was yesterday,” she said softly, writing something in Sirius’s chart as she checked the monitors. “It’s been a few hours, I wanted to let you rest, but I figured you’d need something to eat or drink.”

Remus twisted the cap off the bottle, eyes focused on Sirius’s hand on the bed. He took a sip and vaguely registered that it was Gatorade. Blue.

The nurse nodded at him before making her way to the door, and Remus looked up, grabbing her arm gently as she passed by. She looked down in surprise.

“I just- Thanks. Thank you.”

She just smiled, a little sadly, and patted his hand.

I'll paint the kitchen neon, I'll brighten up the sky I know I'll never get it, there's not a day that I won't try And I'll say to you

Ooh-ah, soon you'll get better Ooh-ah, soon you'll get better Ooh-ah, you'll get better soon 'Cause you have to

“I’ve been thinking about our home, baby,” he whispered into Sirius’s hair. The nurses hadn’t let him get much closer than pulling a chair up to the side of Sirius’s bed, but Remus was making it work.

“We could paint the kitchen yellow... I think it would look happy. I need a little happy right now, I think we both do." Remus smoothed the hair back from Sirius’s forehead and pressed a gentle kiss there.

“Actually,” he laughed softly, “I just need you, love. I need you to get better, because I’m horrible at matching colors. You have to get better so we can go paint shopping, and furniture shopping. We could buy some picture frames. You can hang up all your pictures, and we can take some more, of the two of us- together. No more frameless photos on the dresser. No more hotel houses.”

And I hate to make this all about me But who am I supposed to talk to? What am I supposed to do If there's no you?

Remus’s phone buzzed from his coat hanging by the door, but he couldn’t be bothered to check. He felt bad- it was probably one of the boys, James, maybe, checking up on Sirius, checking up on him. Half of his brain was yelling at him that Sirius didn’t belong to him, Sirius wasn’t just his. They cared about him too, they just wanted to know how he was doing, they just wanted to show their love for their captain.

He didn’t pick up his phone.

Remus tucked his knees against his chest, laying an arm and his head on top, the other hand still holding Sirius’s.

“What am I supposed to do, Pads?” He fought back the tears in his throat and wiped his eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”

This won't go back to normal, if it ever was It's been years of hoping, and I keep saying it because 'Cause I have to

He’ll be fine, Remus told himself over and over and over. He’ll be fine. He was fine last time-

A small voice in the back of his head interrupted. But last time wasn’t this bad-

Shut up. He’ll be fine. This time isn’t that bad either-

That’s a lie and you know it.

He was fine last time, so he’ll be fine now. He has to be. He’s going to be okay.

Ooh-ah, you'll get better Ooh-ah, soon you'll get better Ooh-ah, you'll get better soon

Ooh-ah, soon you'll get better Ooh-ah, soon you'll get better Ooh-ah, you'll get better soon 'Cause you have to

Remus had finally convinced the main nurse, Ana, to let him get into the bed with Sirius, as long as he promised not to touch any wires and not to move him.

He laid his head on Sirius’s shoulder, running his fingers through his dark hair. His lower lip trembled, and he bit down to try to stop crying. It didn’t work.

“You’ll be okay, you’ll be okay, you’ll be all better soon, you’ll be alright...”

The words tumbled out of his mouth almost as fast as the tears falling into Sirius’s hair, but he couldn’t seem to stop mumbling them under his breath. Maybe this was his new superstition. His way to keep his good luck charm.

As Remus drifted off to sleep, the only thing he dreamt of was the boy next to him, happy, awake, laughing and holding Remus’s hand as they watched the sunrise from Sirius’s balcony. Better.

~~~~~~~~~~

:) nope :) I didn’t make myself cry :) Whatever do you mean :)

P.S. I’m starting my sw x folklore series! One anon said Logan as betty (YES) and if you have any requests just send them to me (asks, messages, idrc) and I’ll see if I already have that song for someone :) xo

#lumosinlove #coops #cap and loops #sweater weather #not me crying #i need to go the fuck to bed #soon you'll get better #taylor swift #this is what happens #when i listen to sad music at 4 am #someone make me sleep #not me listening to this song on repeat for an hour

147 notes · View notes

invisibleinorange · 3 years

Text

Chapters: 22/? Fandom: Bridgerton Rating: M Warnings: Presumed Character Death, Violence Descriptions (In This Chapter) Relationships: Colin Bridgerton/Penelope Featherington, Eloise Bridgerton/Penelope Featherington(besties), Bridgerton Family Dynamics, Simon Hastings/Daphne Bridgerton Characters: Colin Bridgerton, Penelope Featherington, Eloise Bridgerton, Anthony Featherington, Benedict Bridgerton, Portia Featherington, Violet Bridgerton, Pretty Much Everyone (at points) Additional Tags: Bridgerton, Polin Summary: Unexpected bad news arrives for the Bridgerton Family (and friends) regarding Colin's travels. This will be a series that is set after "The Duke and I" or season one of the show. It is a companion piece to "Goodbyes".

It was a simple affair that lacked the formality and solemnity that such a wedding might have had should it have been performed back home in London. Country weddings, especially elopements weren’t exactly known for their stark adherence to the religious doctrines. The fact of the matter was that the men who performed such rites were hardly true clergy.

Penelope could hardly believe that this had become her life and that she was indeed marrying Colin. After everything they’d been through, he had deemed her worthy to be his bride and the sentiment wasn’t lost on her. She couldn’t but look back seeking the safety and approval of Anthony and Benedict as she uttered her vows though.

Hearing Colin say the words and knowing that he meant them had been everything that she’d ever wanted before he’d gone missing and when he’d come back she’d been so caught up that she’d failed to really take notice of the fact she wasn’t quite the same infatuated girl she’d been before. She had changed as a person. She could hardly ignore the loudness of her thoughts against the quiet of his words and her own.

She certainly didn’t intend to regret this though, even if the whole thing felt a bit like an out of body experience. She wasn’t unhappy but she had imagined that she would feel more joy flittering through her veins, excitement at spending the rest of her life with the man she’d deemed as her soul mate. She felt something deep inside that she couldn’t quite explain though and she wasn’t quite willing to investigate.

To be perfectly honest she was terrified of what she might find if she did explore it. She loved Colin. She always had. God knew that she always would but a part of her couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she hadn’t made the right choice. Maybe they should have taken it slower, maybe they both needed more time to grow before they had their happy ever after if it was meant for them. It didn’t make sense to her when it felt so right though. She’d been so sure moment ago.

The smile she’d plastered on her face through the aftermath of the ceremony felt like a cover for the sheer and utter panic she was trying to keep down. There was something she felt deep down inside that she couldn’t quite explain, some feeling like something had to go wrong. She’d felt like that most of her life whenever something was going right. It didn’t normally take hold of her quite so strongly. She could feel it wrapping around her life a vice.

They were all to walk together to the local inn to eat and celebrate the occasion. Her arm was held steadfast by Colin and she was trying desperately not to have him catch on to the fact she was a bit shaky.

“It’s not like you to be so quiet,” Colin finally told her after a moment. His eyes gazed over her appraisingly from the side, his grip on her all the tighter. His normal smile was still there, never ceasing but there was concern etched in the depths of his eyes.

“I was just thinking,” Penelope told him though she didn’t choose to expand upon it. She nodded sympathetically, patting a hand on his arm to provide some sort of reassurance that she was okay but she wasn’t sure if it was believable or not. “Perhaps, I’m just a bit hungry.”

“Well… we’re going to fix that,” he insisted. Whatever skepticism he had over her words didn’t seem to last as he went back to smiling, holding conversation with Anthony as they walked. The words sort of managed to blur together until they’d found their way to their destination.

There had been food and dancing. It was definitely not the kind of thing that would have gone over as a social event in London but it was comfortable and homey. Penelope did feel full and the dancing did happen to calm her nerves and as the sky began to transition from day to twilight, she felt sure that maybe she’d simply let her mind get the best of her.

When Colin excused himself to go ensure that they had a proper to sleep on their wedding night, she’d let herself be left amongst the mix of stranger and Bridgertons. Anthony had certainly had allowed himself to partake of the libations to the point where he was a bit sloppy. She couldn’t help but feel a bit like she was intruding on a bachelor’s night with the way he was carrying on with a random woman.

Benedict for his part was keeping a respectful distance though every so often she would feel his eye on her and know he was more concerned with her safety than finding someone to spend the evening with. She was grateful for it honestly.

“You can actually converse with me, you know?” she told him, decisively moving so that she could sit across from him at a table. “You don’t have to go back to ignoring me.”

The fact he couldn’t quite meet her eye told her that it might have actually been his plan. He forced his gaze up after a minute though.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” he lied.

She knew he was lying and she fully intended to call him out on it. She would have if she didn’t hear a crack of the door that pulled both of their focuses away.

A tall, broad shouldered man came barreling into the room. There was something about the presence of him that commanded everyone’s attention.

“Clara?” he bellowed.

The woman that Anthony had been carrying on with pulled away from Anthony and seemed to practically disappear into the wood of the floors. She paled and it became quite clear who Clara was.

The man’s next actions were to move toward her and raise his fist to strike. Anthony, for his part, attempted to stop it. His drinking had made him unsteady and he took the punch himself. Like any man of honor, he decided it appropriate to strike back.

Goosebumps formed on Penelope’s skin as she watched in absolute horror at what was taking place, the world slipping away. Before she could try and stop Benedict, he was up moving to try and get the giant away from his brother.

Anthony was most definitely losing. It wasn’t an even or fair fight by any stretch and he was going to be bloodied and bruised come the next day. Benedict simply wanted to stop it from being worse than all of that.

What she didn’t realize was the man was reaching for a knife and neither did Benedict until he was in the process of trying to get in the middle of them. The whole thing happened so abruptly that there was little she could do to stop the blood curling screams that escaped her as Benedict’s eyes widened and he crumpled to the floor.

The man clearly realized his mistake as soon as it happened, taking off running just as he’d came leaving a bloody mess in his wake. The woman who’d caused it all taking one look at everything before following after.

Penelope didn’t think, didn’t breath as she moved to try and see the extent of the damage. Anthony was trying his best to get up and be helpful but he was in no condition to go get a doctor when he needed one himself.

His voice broke as she demanded someone go find a doctor before crumpling to her own knees, accessing the wound. She ripped the fabric from her dress, trying to use it to compress the bleeding at his abdomen as if it might be enough to hold him until a physician could arrive.

“Hold on,” she demanded.

Benedict was still awake. His eyes were open and he was breathing. Those were all things to be hopeful for. He opened his mouth to speak a few times but the words seemed to be a struggle for him, the fact he wasn’t speaking only alarmed her all the more.

His hand moved to rest on top of her own, becoming increasingly caked in his blood. He didn’t have to utter the words for her to know what he was trying to say. She knew that he wasn’t going to make it but it wasn’t something that she could stand for. She wasn’t sure if she could live with herself if that was the outcome of this.

“Please don’t,” she begged.

Word had apparently gotten back to Colin about there being a problem. She didn’t hear his footsteps but she did know when she heard his horrified voice and saw him there kneeling beside her.

There was so much blood, it wasn’t completely clear who was hurt now.

“Are you hurt?” Colin asked her.

“No, Ben – he was trying to protect Anthony,” she couldn’t even finish the words. Colin tried to take over her task of holding the wound, trying to order her away with his hands.

“I have this,” he tried to tell her.

She didn’t move.

“I’m not leaving him,” she uttered. She was near hysterical anyways. She couldn’t unseen what she’d seen. She’d never be able to get the imagery out of her head.

“Pen, you shouldn’t have to - I’ll stay with him,” Colin insisted, trying to keep a calm exterior but he was far from it. The little cracks in the normally calm exterior were on full-display.

“No,” Benedict uttered, giving Colin a look that made him relent and completely give up on any ideas he might have had about sending Penelope away from the carnage. The damage was already done.

By the time they’d actually managed to get a physician there, Benedict was already beginning to fade. He was going in and out of consciousness. Every time that he went there, it began to feel as though he might not come back.

Anthony had begun to sober up thanks to water and the horror around him. If it was possible, he looked worse than Benedict. The guilt was clear on his face. He blamed himself for the whole damn thing.

“Not your fault,” Benedict had told him a few moments of alertness. “I’ve always had your back in a fight.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Anthony told him solidly as the physician attempted to examine the wound. The grim look on his face made it clear that Benedict wasn’t going to be okay.

“The wound penetrated the spleen,” the physician informed them, cleaning the wound with liquor which caused Benedict to writhe in pain. He was paler than usually the shirt that he’d been wearing long discarded to be used to help try and stop the bleeding.

Penelope had read enough books that she knew that the odds weren’t in favor of anything being able to be done here except provide comfort, drown out the suffering until the brutal end. There was a choice to be made here. They could either selfishly keep him alert or allow the physician to allow him to sleep until the end.

One look at his face and she knew the path he wanted.

“We need to get him to a bed,” she uttered. Colin and Anthony could get it done, especially with a little assistance. Benedict deserved a little dignity and not the floor of this place.

There was no argument from the two of them either, especially as they moved to help with Anthony taking the feet and Colin taking the torso. There was a room with a bed not far off from there so they made their way, physician in tow.

When they managed to get him there, she moved to help remove his boots and socks. She was trembling but there was a mission to be had here. She’d spent most of the last year grieving in one way or another and she would spend more of it doing the same but for now she needed to keep it together.

“Help him with the rest of his clothes,” she ordered to her new husband, turning away to provide him a little modesty.

Colin did precisely as instructed, Anthony fetching extra blankets to keep their brother warm. They were far too shell-shocked to offer much argument over what they should be doing.

When she turned around, the physician was mixing some ingredients in a mortar and then pouring it into a drink.

Benedict’s eyes were closed but the shift in the sound of her dress, made him open them again. He nodded through the pain, offering her a silent thank you for taking control of this.

“I want you all to leave me,” he said resolutely after a long moment. It was the strongest his voice had been since this whole nightmare had began. “He will let you know when it’s over.”

“I will not,” Penelope said firmly.

“We will not,” Colin chimed in.

“You will. You can’t deny a man’s last request,” he said trying to offer a weak smile. The wince made it clear it was a struggle for him. “Take her away from this.”

Colin and Anthony exchanged looks. As men, they had no choice but to honor the request.

Penelope wasn’t going to go as easily.

“Your last request is denied,” she told him firmly.

“I’m going to miss that fire,” he murmured after the doctor gave him the concoction. It was already starting to make him feel drowsy. Whatever words he had left would be slurred. His gaze moved between his brothers and then Penelope again. “I’ve loved you all. Take care of each other and… the others. Go.”

Bridgeton men were not above overly sentimental moments but Anthony touched a hand to his shoulder and nodded as if to silently say he loved him too. He then turned heel and left, following direction.

Colin followed suit, attempting to grab Penelope by hand at first but when she refused, he picked her up and outright carried her while she kicked and screamed to be allowed back down. He didn’t put her down until they were all outside to where they could get fresh air.

While the men handled this with stoicism, she absolutely fell apart. She crumbled into Colin’s arms, crying and screaming until her voice was gone. She had known something bad was going to happen and now it had.

#Bridgerton #colin bridgerton #Penelope Featherington #benedict bridgerton #⚜ writings — polin

8 notes · View notes

iamalivenow · 4 years

Note

Hiya! I gotta ask, do you have any podcast recs? I'm into anything as long as it's interesting and from my dash I see you're into some really cool stuff. Thank you for your help and I hope this finds you well!

always i always have podcast recs yes absolutely. i have actual plays, fiction and nonfiction in that order

not another dnd podcast: if you watch dimension 20 stuff this is a must listen imo, and even if you don’t i would consider this to be the platonic ideal of just a dnd podcast. it follows the rules of the game and has a story thats sensible to the game setting, but the characters are just so phenomenal. its filled with so much kindness and humor. its about three people trying to save the world from the ‘people’ who saved the world the last time it needed saving. i love it. it’s first full season is completed.

dungeons and daddies: this is for people who have listened to too many dnd podcasts and/or hate dnd. it’s about four dads from like real life who got sent to dnd land to try and save their sons. i think it took them 29 episodes to have a real like a real to the mechanics dnd fight? it’s extremely comedic but then also gets too real sometimes, you know, the perfect balance.

campaign: they don’t play dnd but its still an actual play podcast. they have two games, the first one is a star wars game, the second one is about sky pirates. you will laugh you will cry youll be mildly horrified, it’s great, every day im deep in my feeling about this one. the second campaign has real good music and cats the musical musical parody. otto van von veen....

friends at the table: friends at the table is... so powerful... unbelievably powerful... they have a lot of games, fantasy, scifi, whatever bluff city is. this is definitely the longest option, you can jump on anywhere that isn’t the later heiron seasons. their current season, PARTIZAN, is about a revolution and also a little mechanical god murder on the side, and not to give into recency bias but imo the best. it also has original music playing and its chef kiss perfection.

fiction time

wooden overcoats: its a comedy podcast about english funeral directors. it has two full seasons with their last one coming out soonish. one of the main characters is a mouse who is a best selling author. its one of those. very light hearted (except for when it rarely isn’t). i think its the podcast i’ve listened to the longest technically?

dreamboy: its weird, its dark, its gay, its unrepentantlly horny. it’s a meditation about sexuality and also destiny and also the evils of capitalism and also its a musical. its finished and not very long and just astonishing. listen to it with headphones on though if you live with people.

brimstone valley mall: its about four demons stuck working in a mall a month before y2k happens. remember y2k? its pretty funny, with some pretty decent character writing. the first season isn’t complete but what is out is pretty enjoyable. also the demons are pretty original as far as demons in a story go so points for that.

the magnus archives: i’ve been shilling for this since 2018 and its’ gotten big enough that i dont really need to do that anymore, but if you like horror and tragedy this thing is pretty good.

hey what about real life now

meddling adults: its a game show where grown adults try to solve mysteries like scooby doo and encylopedia brown for charity. it’s fun, the host and the guests are all peppy and its fun to see if you can either a) remember or b) figure it out before they can.

waypoint radio: its a video game podcast that talks about video games and also the video game industry and also politics sometimes. five star podcast five star run time there are episodes that are four hours long. i listen to it religiously

emojidrome: its described as an emoji aesthetics podcast but its basically those tumblr posts that rank different brand’s emoji in audio form. i think its funny. the hosts are great.

desperate acts of capitalism: this is just rich hubris the show. its good in a fun fact kind of way. or if you like laughing at rich people ignoring the obvious signs of a company’s downfall and doubling down on bad choices.

sorry if this is too much, but also would you believe i have more if you need it?

#podcast recommendations #podcast recs #recommendations #i listen to very many podcast #iwocrack #thank you for asking!!!

73 notes · View notes

surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

Text

Survey #388

“i wanna stay inside all day / i want the world to go away / i want blood, guts, and chocolate cake / i wanna be a real fake”

Name three people who you'll never forget: I doubt I'd forget Jason even if, God forbid, I had dementia. That's trauma for ya. I HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHLY doubt I could EVER forget my mom, either. In many different ways, she's literally kept me alive and has done so, so much for me. Then there's also Sara, whose friendship with me matches no one else I've been friends with. Have you ever been told you are fake? No. What was the name of the last pet of yours that died? Teddy, my dog. Do you like pineapple? I do. When was the last time you wished the day would just get over with? I know this sounds seriously depressing, but that's... pretty much every day. My life is just currently such a drag that being awake bores me senseless. But it's funny, because then some nights I stay up late for like... no reason. My existence alone is confusing. Is there any specific number that has any significance to you? No. Do you remember much from high school? I remember a lot from high school. Where would you go for the ultimate honeymoon? Isn't there a black sand beach in Iceland or something? Take me there, man. I'd also love to go to the Bahamas, but ew humidity and also I'm afraid of the Bermuda Triangle lmfao. If you had to get a tattoo tomorrow, what would you get? The big piece I want to get on my left upper arm; it's called "Denialism" by NukeRooster on deviantART. I got her permission forever ago to get it tattooed. Do you have any alarms set? What time and what for? Not currently. Have you ever had to work while there was a film crew at your work place? No. Have you ever supported anyone’s Kickstarter? If so, what was it? No. What do you like in your omelet? Ham pieces and cheese. Have you ever boycotted something? Yes: Chick-fil-A. Homophobic, transphobic pieces of shit aren't getting my business. Has anyone ever borrowed something from you, and not returned it? Yes. Most notably a video game I LOOOOVED as a kid. I was mad salty and still am lmao. Do you vent a lot on social media? God no, not anymore after embarrassing the everliving FUCK out of myself with a suicide note. What was your first bill you started paying on your own? I don't pay any bills bc unemployed. .-. Do you watch ASMR videos? No. What is your favorite charitable cause to donate to or volunteer for? The Trevor Project. Have you ever received a misdiagnosis? Yes. A psychiatrist I had in middle school thought I had ADHD, which was ABSOLUTELY ludicrous. Most recently, my long-time bipolar 2 diagnosis has been questioned, but I do think I have it. I think. Does it bother you when others don’t share the same religious beliefs as you? No? Freedom of religion is a thing. What was your last argument about? Ummmm... I don't remember. Probably something with Mom. Have you found your first gray hairs yet? No. Somehow. You'd think all the stress would have me pure gray by now, lol. What are the names of all the pets you’ve had? Dude, I've had WAY too many for this. What’s the most you’ve ever spent on a cosmetic or skincare product? *shrug* Who was the last person that invited you to go somewhere? Did you accept? Mom invited me to come with her to Nicole's to get out of the house because at the time our A/C was still out. I didn't want to go, even though damn did I suffer, haha. What was the last food item that you toasted, other than bread? That's... a great question. I don't know if I toast anything other than bread. Have you ever named any of your pets after a cartoon character? I remember I had a cat named Taz when I was younger. What was the last thing that someone else recommended, or suggested you try? My TMS doctor is like SUPER friendly and makes the treatment go by so fast (it's exactly 22 minutes and 30 seconds; don't ask why), and recently she was fangirling to Mom and me about the show Once Upon a Time, haha. I saw very little of it with Jason, but Mom did check it out. When was the last time you wore a hat? What kind? I have zero idea. When was the last time you ate a bowl of ice-cream? What flavour? Oh wow, it's been a long time. It was probably vanilla with chocolate syrup? If you menstruate, has your cycle ever synced with anyone close to you? Yes. Tell me something positive about the town or city that you live in. ... You said "positive," right? Did your parents have high expectations for you to excel in school and go to college/university? Yes. They were pretty serious about going to college when my sisters and I were younger, but they opened up to the concept that maybe it wasn't for all of us (coughmecough). Are you a polite person? I genuinely think I am. I definitely try to be. Have you ever been in a relationship where everything with your partner felt natural and effortless? Sigh. Yeah. Have you ever been in a relationship where everything was difficult and rocky? No. That's not the kind I'd stay in very long at all. I mean yes, there are always bumps, but there comes a point where you gotta say fuck nah and find something better. When you were a teenager, did your parents set rules about dating? Other than keeping age gaps in mind, no. Have you ever committed a crime that directly harmed another person? No. Did you grow up in an urban, suburban, or rural area? My childhood home was suburban, but leaned towards rural. We were on the very edge of the town. Which disease do you personally think is the most horrible? After seeing my mother suffer from borderline stage 4 ovarian cancer, I've gotta say cancer. My mother is the strongest person I know and yet she cried so frequently from chemotherapy. It broke my fucking heart. The person I copied the survey from mentioned especially childhood cancers, and I have to agree. Like just... why. "Everything happens for a reason." Bull. Fucking. Shit. Just TRY and convince me why a young child has to deal with CANCER. Do you remember where you first drove to after getting your license? I still don't have my license, as I've said in many a survey before. What did you get into trouble for the most when you were a kid? Being on the computer too much. What is your biological sex? Female. Do you use online dating? Or do you use another method for finding dates? Nah. I'm at the point in my life where I wanna let love just find me and not actively search for it. What is the oldest gaming console you own? We MIGHT still have our old Atari? If not, it'd be a GameBoy Advance. Which accents can you emulate pretty well? Just British. Do you think you'll ever manage to do everything you want to? No. But then again, I think that sounds pretty realistic? I doubt most people check off everything on their bucket list. What do you fear most? Probably becoming truly homeless, living on the streets. Do you wear shoes around the house? No. Are you a good driver? If you can't drive yet, do you think you'll be good? I mean, I'm not the worst in the world. My mom's always pointed out though that I ride on the brakes (which I do out of fear) and I tend to speed up and slow down quite a bit. I also stop kinda abruptly sometimes. What is/was your favorite thing about school? Seeing friends. What are you most likely to spend money on? My own personal money, tattoos, lol. Have you ever been a complete fangirl/fanboy over anything? @_@ Do you hate how, when the public like a celebrity, they overpublicize them? I feel bad for them, more than anything. You breathe wrong and suddenly it's news-worthy. It's like your every inconsequential action is under heavy surveillance and judgment, and it seems so unfair. Have you ever became attracted to someone you weren’t at first because their personality made you find them physically attractive? That was Jason for me. I never thought he was ugly, but regardless, he became THE most attractive man in the world to me. Have you ever worked in retail? Yes. -_- Are you even a little bit racist? Nah man, it's 2021, baby. Were you more fond of swings, monkey bars, or seesaws as a child? I was all about the swings. Do you believe in a near-future apocalyptic event? I don't know or care, honestly. A gamma ray or whatever they're called could incinerate us all tomorrow. A black hole could swallow the earth in an hour. We don't know. Do you have a chandelier in your home? No. Do you have a bar with stools? No. Is your Christmas tree faux or real? If faux, what color? We use a fake green one. Do you eat the crusts of your bread? Yes; it's the first part I eat. Which body type would you say you had? Did you know whales can survive on land? :^) Have you ever flown a kite? Yeah! I used to LOVE doing that with Dad as a kid when the field across our house wasn't in use (tobacco was grown there). What’s your preferred flavour of jam? I just like grape. What kind of animal did you last pet? My cat! Name a celebrity that you admire that nobody would expect you to: I massively admire Jeffree Star's work ethic. Do you prefer to shave or wax? Shave. I used to wax my eyebrows, but now I just don't care. Would you ever have sex in a public place? Uh, no. Do you think Jenna Marbles’ videos are funny? I've actually never watched her. Your favourite pasta dish: Just your normal spaghetti with meatballs. Strangest thing you’ve ever seen? Probably what I'm assuming was a star (but it was green???) flickering and then fizzling out of the sky kind of like some sort of backwards firework. I'd been watching it literally grow over a few nights, so when this happened, it was a big "?????? the fuck??????". It honestly scared me for some reason so I went inside after that. Aliens? I say aliens. Ever had a crush on somebody of the same sex? Yes. Has anybody ever called you a bastard? I don't think so. Who is the last person you ignored? uhhhhhhh Would you wear feathers in your hair? So actually, for my first prom, I wanted to wear a blue jay feather I had in my hair, reason being Jason's nickname from his parents was always "J Bird." It ended up not working out because we couldn't make it look natural with what we had. When was the last time you were well and truly scared? Hm. Favourite member of your favourite band: Ozzy, obviously, haha. Who’s your favourite female rapper? I don't have one.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''teen idle'' by marina

2 notes · View notes

razorblade180 · 4 years

Text

OC test:Speech!

[everyone shall be put in front of crowd and say something. Think of it like rallying troops, orientation, declaring war, whatever. The crowd is 500 strong.]

All the characters stand on a stage, overlooking the wave of people. Jacquelyn stands behind a podium with a microphone while everyone waits their turn.

Jacquelyn:Ummmm, sup? Not much for speeches so I’ll keep this brief. I don’t know what problems you all have, your background, or where you’re heading. What I do know is I’m down to listen to all of it. A traveler loves a good story, so make it your best.

The crowd of people seem a bit caught off gaurd, yet enlightened. They lightly clap and nod as she bows before letting Sienna take the spotlight.

Jacquelyn:Good luck!

Sienna:(How the hell do I follow that up!?)

Sienna:*clears throat* Yo, my name is Sienna Frost. The lovely lady before me was my mother if anyone was wondering. I might have two sets of ears but I assure you, story time isn’t my favorite thing. You wanna show me who you are, then do it instead. As far as mine goes, don’t worry where I’ve been. Just watch where I’m headed. I just might surprise you.

She held up a peace sign and made her exit, leaving the crowd with nothing to say. It would’ve felt like going against her words. Jael came up next. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. The girl chose to back away then began to float up to draw everyone’s direction.

Jael:Remember, on the ground or in the air, look up to me.

That’s all she said before leaving. All the characters were absolutely stunned. Even Carmine. She was sure she’d be the only one to say something wild. Yujin awkwardly walked up next. People immediately started to smile and seem pleasantly surprised.

Yujin:By the looks of some of you, I take it you see my mother’s face in me? That’s fine, it’ll make this easier. Yujin Xiao Long, the girl that’ll be in future text books. Until then, watch me do my thang!

She gave the crowd a prideful smile and a fist bump into the air to hype them up. The crowd did it back and cheered. Tenzen used that energy and added it to his own charisma, choosing to stand on the podium.

Tenzen:Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about. Those with heart of fire and wild dreams, stick around! We’ll have the time of our lives! Never stop doing what you want!

The crowd got even more hyped as him and Yujin high fived before running off stage into the crowd itself. Everybody was given a high five and watched both leave as they laughed. Nick was next to go up. To get their attention, Nick made a glyph in the sky that made it snow. A quick change in the crowds attitude was immediately noticed as they stared at the dignified young man show his usual charming smile and kind eyes that made the women blush and most of the men jealous.

Nick:Good evening, I’m glad to see everyone so lively. As heir to a company you would think I’d be good a speeches. To be honest, I’m panicking inside right now. I made it snow, who just does that!?

The question got the crowd to laugh a little. Jealous faces unknowingly got a little softer.

Nick:Anyways, I just wanna tell everyone here that no matter the situation, lean on me. If not, then those you care about and have better spending habits. Hehe, I think I’ve said enough. Thanks and I hope you all have a good time listening to everyone else.

Crowd:(He’s so polite...)

Snowflakes crew:(There he goes, charming the masses like usual.)

Summer walked up next. Much like her twin brother, a glyph formed in her hand that quickly mixed with fire dust in her clothing. The warm of brace of embers flew out of it like a flicker camp fire that was drawn toward the snow. The gentle blend of fire and iced danced in air around the crowd, leaving them amazed. Summer was no stranger to a crowd or a stage. This might be her easiest test yet. The girl sung a simple word that enchanted everyone like a siren spell. “Mirror~”

Summer:I hope you all enjoyed that little tease. I typically like to warm my voice before addressing an audience so I though of that on the fly. Anyways-

The crowd interrupted her with applause. She hadn’t even spoken what was on her mind and they were hooked! Summer chose to accept it and made her way off the stage. It was even easier than she thought. She turned to Veronica and stuck her tongue out. The faunus responsed by flipping her off and walking away.

Eliza:You’re not making a speech?

Veronica:No, I hate people and do this sort of thing too much. I’m goons go draw or some shit. (Summer can’t say she had a better speech if I never do one.)

Valerie:Wait, this is optional? Guess I’ll leave too.

Eliza:At least day a sentence you two!

Both girls rolled their eyes and walked up together.

Veronica:Sometimes being the change you want and the change the world needs are two different things entirely; acknowledge way and take the step forward, not backwards.

Valerie:A jack of all trades is an ace to no one. Not that it’s a bad thing. Just find the other playing card.

The girls waved to the crowd and went off. Valerie started thinking, which card was she? Nick clapped for the two of them like he always does. Eliza took the opportunity to step forward. A snap of her fingers negated all the semblances still at play. Eliza took a running start to hop off the stage and land with a mighty thump that started a wave of sprouting flowers. This was beginning to be more of a talent show then a public speaking test. What was once winter had turned into spring!

Eliza:Sorry, but I think being eye level and warm with you all is far more appealing. I doubt many of you have heard of the a Marigolds but that’s fine. All you have to know is I’m the one who will elevate their status. Playing nice with others isn’t my strongest quality but fairness is. If by any miracle fate comes to join us together for a purpose, I promise I’ll stand by to the very end and pull out all the stops. I simply ask to put in all the effort you can as well.

A gust of wind came by and swept petals into the air as Eliza did a curtsy. As far as theatrics go, it was show, but more than that. It was the truth. A fair and honest truth. Like a gentle breeze on a spring day. Sparrow stood up to go next.

Sparrow:I....do not care about outcomes.

Crowd:.....What?

OCs:Yeah, what?

Sparrow:Good, bad, surprising, or boring; those concepts don’t apply whenever I’m sailing across the seas with passengers and crew mates. Everything that happens is apart of epic journey. Now I’m not gonna stand here and act like I’m anything special, because I’m not. All the same I am a captain and a damn good one at that. For those who passing through life with ambition in their hearts and freedom through their veins, sail with me. You might just be surprised. Thank you for your time.

The ex-military man put on his captain’s hat and walked away, never looking back at the crowds faces. All he heard were the footsteps of those who dared to follow him. The allure of his words reached some of the young men and women. 500 became 450. Kovu felt nervous, but a bit more confident as he went up to go next. All the women, children, sons and daughters, he looked at them in a different light because of Sparrow.

Kovu:Before Sparrow went up here I had the idea of talking about my family and how they motivate me to do my best. While that is true, now I can’t help but sing a different tune. This isn’t my first time with a microphone in front of my face and it probably won’t be the last. It’s what happens when you’re a Belladonna and your other mom is a top rate huntress. Still, it doesn’t feel real that I should get a microphone and a podium because of that; I’m just a regular guy. Being down there feels more comfortable to me than being up here ever will. Average strength, intelligence, normal qualities, but I guess that last one is debatable.

Carmine:Yeah, you dork!

The crowd and Kovu chuckled at the call out. Carmine didn’t know people too well, but she knew Kovu well enough to know when he’s being hard on himself. She spoke up more for his benefit than anybody else.

Kovu:The point is I’m stunned that despite me just being some normal person, I’m very thankful for the fact that you all stand before me to listen. That’s what motivates me most. Thanks, I’ll keep doing my best.

The crowd happily applauded for him. No fancy tricks or even something to leave the biggest impression. Just a boy who made a speech. On a stage full of giants in their own right, having Kovu being so relatable was a breath of fresh air in its own way. Carmine gave him a thumbs up and finally stepped forward. She ignored the podium entirely, choosing to project her voice to all who looked. The commanding yet calm presence she gave off was already at play.

Carmine: Once upon a time my mother Ruby Rose saved the world. She did it with strength, intelligence, and kindness above all. Her dream to protect others fueled her keep striving towards a happy ending. That same compassion wasn’t paid forward unfortunately and my mother suffered a loss some time later that nearly broke her. My mother wasn’t a very religious person until that incident from what people tell me, but it helped give her peace of my. Everyday she prayed to her god for the strength to press and breathe new life into her symbolically. Until one day it became literal. She asked her god for strength and he gave her me. I’m hopes and dreams given flesh. Not just hers, but I’m yours too. *points to the crowd* To all of you good people wanting peace and needing a defender of your normal life, pick whatever god you worship and thank him for me. To those who decide to rot the world they live in with hate and malice, choose a god and make your peace when you meet me. My name is Carmine Arc Rose, the greatest huntress, no, the greatest huntsman in general to ever walk Remnant. I’ll move forward first to keep you all safe. See you at the finish line, eventually.

Her body faded away into rose petals that were carried into the wind. She was never there to begin with. Carmine had more important things to do. The crowd once again fell silent as the petals kept scattering. All the other testers were at a loss for words themselves, except Kovu.

Kovu:Oh boy, as blunt as ever. To think she’d declare her standing among them like that? She might’ve just told them out right how far away they are compared to her.

Yujin:That was badass!

Sienna:More like cocky. She said she’s the greatest huntsman ever. What does that make her mom?

Kovu:The greatest hero. There’s a difference between the two in Carmine’s eyes. Try not to bring it up though. It’s a can of worms she won’t answer. Ruby is no doubt a Great huntsman but....Carmine has feelings about that title.

A petal gently fell into his hand before taking flight again. Aero still silently resting in the question tree with Carmine sleeping under it. Her little brother fast asleep in her lap. An exceptional huntsman yes, but an even better big sister.

#rwby #oc test #rwbabies #jacquelyn frost #sienna frost #jael frost #yujin xiao long #lie tenzen #nicholas schnee #eliza marigold #val valkyrie #veronica belladonna #summer schnee #sparrow branwen #carmine arc rose #kovu belladonna

19 notes · View notes

happymetalgirl · 4 years

Text

Rating Christmas Songs

Yep, it’s that time of year we get inundated wherever we go with mostly shitty Christmas music, usually the same stuff as the years before and the many years before. There are some songs among the barren crop of overplayed tunes that I think are pretty enjoyable, but for the most part I feel pretty confident that most of us are just putting up with the vast majority of the holiday playlist (I mean no one is dying to play any of these songs any other time of year, so they can’t be that great), so it’s time to set the record straight.

Here’s a rating of a few of the season’s musical staples and some brief reasons behind them. I’m sure I’m missing a few classics, but do feel free to bring them up and I will offer my thoughts on them. Granted these songs all have dozens, of not hundreds or thousands of versions, so I’m kind of going by an average of what I generally hear, not the dubstep remix version or even my favorite version necessarily.

“Jingle Bells”

The classic, easy to sing, easy to play on whatever instrument, upbeat childhood Christmas song. It’s hard to mess this one up, and I’m just glad it’s not trying to get all overly serious about Christmas as many of the songs further down this list do. But I mean, it’s fucking “Jingle Bells”, who actually gives a shit about this plinky-ass song.

5/10

“O Holy Night”

This one’s cool the first several years you hear it because it sounds pretty grand and epic, but it does wear off after awhile. Still, I’d rather hear this song than most, and I’ve yet to hear it truly butchered. So cheers to that!

7/10

“Jingle Bell Rock”

The failed swaggering “update” or cousin of the classic children’s Christmas song, it’s one of those songs that sounds like a bunch of upper class white folks sipping wine and putting on the usual façade of in-person Facebook-style humble bragging and life-highlighting about their year for the family they’ve not flexed on all year or since Thanksgiving. The song though is so drab and seemingly intentional sucked of lol the fun the kid’s song had, and in its place is just overly drolly Sinatra-imitation with no spirit at all. It’s the definition of background music, and it’s for the worst kind of background. Dancing to it sure as hell sucks. If you’re hearing this song, you’re probably not having as much fun as you’re supposed to be for a song that’s supposedly more “rock”.

2/10

"O Tanenbaum"

While his semi-jazzed-up approach that characterizes the rest of the soundtrack still seeps into this song, I’ve always loved the more stripped back piano-centric approach that Vince Guaraldi takes with this song on the classic A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. The simple and sweet lullaby-esque melody at the core of the song really works well with the instrumentally minimal approach (which I do hear most often) and it evokes a sense of very sweet nostalgia (for me at least), and I can’t not like it.

9/10

“Angels We Have Heard on High”

You know I’ve heard some pretty alright versions of this song when it’s pushed toward its more energetic side. That over the top run on “glOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoria” tends to be the make-or-make moment of the song, and when a singer or choir commits to it and goes all out, it can sound pretty rad; I’m sure some power metal band somewhere out there has put a decent spin on it. The rigid, traditional delivery I hear more often, though, sadly sounds more often like it’s had the life sucked out of it.

7/10

“Silent Night”

Probably my favorite of the soft Christmas songs, just soulful melodies abound here and written in a way that hasn’t encouraged too many stupid renditions.

9/10

“Santa Baby”

This song is just fuckin’ weird, and I get the place of romance it’s coming from lyrically: finally dropping the charade of Santa Claus and being romantic with the speaker’s husband after putting on the act for the children. It’s cute and endearing, but god is it always so weirdly sung, in a hyperseductive baby voice, not subtle at all, and kind of not fitting with the kind of sweet endearing romanctic tone you would think it’d be carrying if you just read the lyrics. There are definitely worse Christmas/holiday romance songs, and I can definitely imagine this song being performed more sweetly than it usually is.

6/10

“Hark! the Herald Angels Sing!”

This. Song. Is. A. Banger. Glorious and triumphant as shit! It sounds good slow and fast, but definitely best when it’s played bold and loud, as opposed to some contrived-ass attempt at a ballad. This song feels like finishing a marathon. I’d pay to hear Khemmis do this fuckin’ song.

10/10

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

Sinatra’s version of the song is probably the most famous at this point, and as a consequence, the very title I think tends to invoke his signature smooth delivery on its own. I used to hate this one, but these days I find its naturally soothing character much more welcoming, god, especially this year. I can see why some find it to droll and sloggy, but I think it’s a nice wind-down tune.

7/10

“Last Christmas”

You know, the original synth-pop version by Wham! isn’t too bad on its own; George Michael’s delivery is pretty heartfelt and I can see why it’s become such modern Christmas staple. However, in the context of Christmas background music, that repetitive chorus refrain that seems to be the only lyric anyone knows in the song, gets really grating when it’s the only thing that sticks out, the more scaled-back delivery of the verses aiding their being buried in the chatter with your eggnog-sipping relatives. Furthermore, I’ve yet to hear a cover of the song less dry than sandpaper. Positive points to the original only.

6/10

“Away in a Manger”

This song certainly gets points for its strong narrative consistency, but aside from the “the stars in the sky” line, the melody is really really lame, and infantile in a bad way, and I have yet to hear a version that doesn’t sound like it was done by or similar to an apathetic children’s choir. It’s that quintessential song that every church kindergarten choir gets forced to sing because it’s nice and slow and narrow-range that all the kids look absolutely braindead singing. Not that it’s ever the kids’ fault or anything, it’s just a boring-ass song whose weak-ass strategy hinges on a bunch of 5-year-olds getting into something they clearly don’t give a shit about.

4/10

“The Little Drummer Boy”

You know, I could envision a slow-building post-rock-esque version of this song being pretty cool, but to date, all I have heard is stiff corny solo vocal delivery a la Angela from The Office and haphazard attempts at injecting tons of energy into the song that don’t really fix the kooky melody at the core of it. I swear you can always hear whoever is singing it getting red in the face from the needless intensity.

3/10

"Christmas Time Is Here"

Another solid cut from the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, its rather simple instrumental foundation serves as a pretty solid introductory piece for the season; it feels so much like welcoming in the winter. And then of course the jazz embellishments on the instrumental version are some of the best in the Christmas genre, though listening to the soundtrack these days makes me wonder what it would be like if a more bombastic and dynamic jazz band took these songs on a more wild ride. I would love to hear that.

8/10

“Joy to the World”

It’s a little bit cheesy, but I kinda appreciate how ridiculously celebratory this tune is. It’s another one that I think would be interesting to hear Khemmis do a quick cover of, despite the religious theme that doesn’t really fit into their style. At the very least, it always sounds fun or, indeed, joyous.

7/10

“We Three Kings”

I’m not convinced anyone cares about this song.

5/10

“The First Noel”

This is another one of those songs whose runny melody tends to lead to it being delivered so often way too seriously, never really all too fun or worthy of the seriousness either.

3/10

“O Come, O Come Emanuel”

This is another one of those songs that, on the surface, seems more genuine with its minor key and often stoic delivery, and that definitely makes it better than the vast majority of Christmas songs, but the melody and lyrics are a bit oddly mismatched, and the melody that serves as the key appeal in the song does wear thin as the years go on. Nevertheless, I always do seem to find a cool new version ever year or two.

7/10

“Do You Hear What I Hear?”

Goddamn this is such a goofy-ass song. Who the hell made this? I cannot take it seriously. One point for all the kids for the apt “do you smell what I smell?”

1/10

“Mary Did You Know?”

Again, who wrote these lyrics? Like, in the story Mary made up to explain her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, that was kind of the main thing, that this kid would do some crazy shit. I can’t take this song seriously either, especially when it gets the goofy overly operatic treatment.

3/10

“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

It’s another one of those songs that literally just says what Santa Claus does. Musically it’s catchy-ish, but I mean it’s about Santa Claus, and it’s so often sung in that overly serious, toned down Motown style that no kid likes. I never liked hearing it then, and I don’t now.

3/10

“12 Days of Christmas”

Structurally iconic, this song really doesn’t offer anything beyond that; have you ever tried listening to someone doing the whole thing? It gets old really fast, and the fact that the “halfway” point in the song, the six geese a-laying, isn’t actually the halfway point, because the verses get longer and longer... fuck! The only thing this song is good for is for structuring workouts around, nothing regarding listening to the song. It gets one point for its utility.

1/10

“It Came upon a Midnight Clear”

We really are in a stretch of trash Christmas songs right now. I don’t think this is anyone’s favorite Christmas song. It’s so lethargic and sleep-inducing, I’m falling asleep just thinking about it.

3/10

“We Wish You a Merry Christmas”

Eh, it’s kinda not a really important song. At least it wakes you up, but apart from throwing some energy into the Christmas playlist that many are often desperate for, it’s just a cheery addition of holiday-themed white noise.

4/10

“What Child Is This?”

Finally some good fucking food. I’ve heard some baller versions of this captivatingly grand song, whose accidentals and minor key really make it one of the more interesting listens during the holiday season. I would dig an Opeth cover or a Pallbearer cover, or... a Khemmis cover.

8/10

“Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”

This is just one of those standard, old-timey, inoffensive season-themers. It’s alright, I’ve never heard any version of it that really blows my mind.

5/10

“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”

This one is almost indistinguishable from, but significantly less annoying than, “Jingle Bell Rock” and is similarly stiff in a way that it’s clearly not meant to be.

3/10

“White Christmas”

This might take the cake for the sleepiest Christmas song out there. It is SLOW, like Bell Witch should ironically do a 20-minute-long cover of it just to see how it goes.

4/10

“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”

The shopping mall theme song. It’s always given that Sinatra treatment and it only barely fits well enough into that style.

4/10

“Feliz Navidad”

This one always feels like it needs to be sung with a big, cheerful group to capture the liveliness that its main appeal is based in, which puts it at a distinct disadvantage this year. Still, it’s always a fun, sometimes even bouncy song to play during the holiday season.

7/10

“Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer”

I do actually welcome the absurd narrative that has somehow made itself one of the season’s ironic staples, and its slightly dark humor makes for a nice change of pace in the playlist with its upbeat, campy humor.

6/10

“Deck the Halls”

Fa la la la la, la la la no.

Annoying as fuck: 2/10

“Frosty the Snowman”

God, this song should be way more cheery and kid-friendly than it is. I mean, I’m sure kids don’t mind it, but it’s just yet ANOTHER one of those songs that can’t escape its old-timey suit-and-tie incarnation for the liveliness it desperately needs.

4/10

“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”

One of the more compositionally clunky of the well-known minor-key Christmas songs, this one unfortunately tends to show why minor-key songs are generally a weird fit for theme. I have heard a good few modern renditions though that make the song worth keeping around.

6/10

“Jingle in the Jungle”

This one’s for the real ones out there. “Jingle in the Jungle” is not a real Christmas song per se, but it pushes the boundaries; it’s courageous. The song comes from the television series, Bob’s Burgers, in a stressful Christmas-themed episode where the musically adventurous son of the titular character, Gene, burns out his dad’s cell phone battery waiting on hold for a radio station to request this song. The phone dies and he does not get the chance to request the song, but a Christmas miracle occurs, and the station decides to play the obscure, bongo-laden song anyway, and it sure is a fun minute-long diddy.

8/10

“Wonderful Christmastime”

Paul McCartney’s peppy Christmas tune that only kinda accomplishes its light-hearted goal is simply one of many throwaway inoffensive modern Christmas songs that seems to have only gained cultural traction due to it being repetitive and simplistic af, and being made by a Beatle.

5/10

“Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”

Well it would only make sense to have the battle of the Beatles here with John Lennon’s standout Christmas track, a far more soulful, bombastic, and triumphant song that echoed his idealistic spirit in a way that makes this song not all too different from his standout solo works and compositions with The Beatles. It’s a warm, hopeful song that draws from a grounding in the harshness of reality rather than some escapist fantasies about Santa or religion. Despite the acknowledgement of the ills of the world, Lennon’s vision of Christmas and his wish for the world is a day of recognition of love and unity, which is purer than 99% of the dogmatic or materialistic Christmas music above, and definitely the song right below this one.

9/10

“The Christmas Shoes”

Alright, rubbing the hands together, we’re coming to the end here, with this fucking song. It’s not the most famous Christmas song, thank God, but when I heard it for the first time, I was immediately repelled by the saccharine melody, uncannily blank-faced delivery, and sappy lyrics, but it’s one of those special songs that gradually reveals several layers of shit the more you fixate on it. For the uninitiated, the song came out in the year 2000, from the Christian band NewSong; it’s an aggressively sentimental holiday ballad with a bit of pop country vocal flair that only adds to the sinister hokey-ness of the lyrics. And that really is the ugliest facet of this song; as sickeningly cheesy as the music is, the simple lyrics here are more morbid and more disgusting than the grossest brutal death metal songs. The song is a simple narrative about a poor boy buying his sick mom some nice shoes on Christmas Eve so she can look nice for Jesus when she dies, tonight, on Christmas Eve. Yeah, it’s fucking sickening. The song is narrated from the perspective of a man in the store when the boy is buying the shoes and the narrator offers to buy the shoes for him, and he muses vaguely and confusingly on his generosity and Jesus being the “true” meaning of Christmas. Yes, there are so many questions being begged by this narrative. Why would Jesus give a shit about the shoes? Why is getting shoes this divine Christmas gesture? How do these shoes even come close to offsetting the pain and suffering and loss this family is suffering. This is like the opposite of John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas” in that it’s offering a pathetic consolation for the cruelty of a world where a loving God apparently offers only a stranger’s mild and momentary generous gesture for a poor family in the thralls of a mother’s illness. It’s grounded in the same reality that John Lennon presents, but it whitewashes it and minimizes the suffering in a manipulative way to shoehorn a rather cliche reminder to adhere to religious dogma and to keep your mind pure and holy and only on Jesus. A plain-faced telling of the narrative on its own makes it seem kind of benign, but the weirdly sappy tone of it all does a pretty poor job of hiding how contrived the emotion is and how unnatural it all is. Every facet of the lyrics is crafted to maximize the superficial primal tug at the heartstrings; it’s supposed to feel extremely tender and sweet, and aside from being completely transparently manufactured, the response it delivers to the story it sets up is creepily unhuman, the opposite of a natural response to the details of what the song presents, and its misplaced sense of justice makes the song a pretty apt representation of so much wrong with evangelicals’ attitudes surrounding Christmas.

0/10

“All I Want for Christmas Is You”

by Mariah Carrey. Ending on a positive note. Probably the best and most classic modern Christmas song to come out in my lifetime, it’s a sweet, romantic, upbeat love tune that really captures the best aspects of the holiday season. Never mind the relatives and their dumb political views and drama or the religious nonsense that people get so disingenuously up in arms about, or the consumerism. Christmas at its best is a time to appreciate love, and this song gets it.

9/10

And that is it, for me, I obviously know I will never be able to rate every Christmas/holiday song ever.

I had some time, so I had a little fun and charted the 38 semi-serious ratings of Christmas songs here, which I will also be doing with the 200-something metal albums I’ve been reviewing and now rating at the end of the year. Should be interesting. Now 38 isn’t a particularly huge sample of the huge swath of Christmas songs, nor was it random (I just listed a bunch of songs I was familiar with). It didn’t produce the normal curve I somewhat expect for the larger sample of metal albums later at the end of the year; rather, it shows a two-peak pattern, which could be due to the sample size, or maybe it just illustrates a somewhat unsurprising polarized sample of opinions on Christmas songs. The songs that I remember that are (mostly) pretty common, I either really like or really don’t like, most of the songs are not in the middle. These were songs I have heard for a long time and remembered pretty vividly, so I’ve developed some relatively strong opinions on them. Anyway, look at this graaaaaaphh.

#Christmas #Christmas songs #Christmas music #Holiday songs #holiday music

5 notes · View notes

consumedkings-archive · 4 years

Text

ancient names, pt. vii

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt vii: anything that touches

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~6.4k (sorry I’m a clown)

Rating: M for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop.

Warnings: Language, some “light” religious blasphemy (it’s Far Cry 5). Strong canon deviance from here on out. Uhhh brief mental breakdown that implies disassociation, and also some weird Joseph/Deputy if you squint real hard. Like REAL hard.

Notes: This chapter was a blast to write, mostly because I got to revisit that ICONIC scene (iykyk). That's pretty much the last in-canon thing we're going to have; the dialogue is essentially the same, but it felt important for me to have Elliot's experience of what it was like, when she was still soft and new.

Y'all the HOPELESS romantic in me is SUFFERING through these two but. I swear!! I swear. I SWEAR. Also anyone who tells me John doesn't want a partner who can put his ass in the dirt can fight me in hand to hand combat, because home boy needs it.

Thank you, as ALWAYS, to my sweet talented beautiful incredible @starcrier for proof-reading when this stuff is still in trash stages, and the ever-dutiful and perfect @empirics, who doesn’t even go here and yet???? Still stans and ships like she do. We love.

As always, thank you again to everyone who reads/comments/whateva! I’m so grateful for anything and everything and I just want to make it clear that I would not continue writing without you. Tysm!

John had never felt dread like this.

It was strange, the way it crept upon him as they walked to the trees. It was dark out, but the clouds had cleared so the moon and stars above were perfectly visible; it wasn’t as though he couldn’t see, and the closer they got to the trees, the more assured John felt that the van was there, or had been there. He supposed he didn’t know if the cultists had made off with it or not.

No, he wasn’t feeling dread about the fact that they were on foot, or that Boomer was nowhere to be seen, or that it was dark, or that he didn’t know for absolute certain that he was going in the right direction.

He felt dread because they were alive: because they were free, because there was no cultist in sight. He felt dread because Elliot was clutching his hand in hers, and her other hand was gripping his forearm, and she no longer moved with the surety of the apex predator she had made herself out to be in a very short period of time. Her feet hit the ground with heavy, unsteady thuds, their progression through the field and to the trees painfully halting. He had a very vivid memory of Elliot telling him, I’d rather you let me eat shit when he’d tried to steady her from falling, just a few days ago.

She wouldn’t look at him, either. Not directly in the eyes. He didn’t know if this was another side-effect of whatever they’d laced her with, or if it was Elliot, or if it had anything to do with the way she’d tried to pull away from him when he’d first found her in the field.

“Elliot,” John said, trying not to sound frustrated as her nails dug into his arm, “loosen your grip a little.”

Her lashes fluttered. She said, “Okay,” but then nothing changed, even though she looked like she was trying, as though the faculties with which she normally operated were so severely hindered that she wasn’t even aware if her body was doing the things she was willing it to.

He didn’t bring it up again. Even when he thought certainly her grip was going to bruise, even when his arm began to ache.

By the time they got to the trees, the moon was high in the sky, and John’s legs burned with the effort of merely walking. That was all it had been, walking, but the longer he turned it over in his mind that they were headed into a trap, the more laborious the movements became. They waded through the trees, the moonlight only barely filtering through now, until he saw it: the van.

At first, he felt relief. And then, immediately after, crashing into any good mood he might have left, was the paranoia. Why did they leave it? he wondered, hesitating. A trap. They want us to get back into the van.

But if they were trying to trap them, why wouldn’t they have just... kept them?

“John.” Elliot’s voice dragged with exhaustion. When he looked at her, her cheeks were flushed with fever, and her pupils were still huge—but not as much as before. “I’m so… tired.” Her body swayed a little, her eyes struggling to stay open; she was crashing, hard and fast.

“Stay here.”

Carefully, John pried his arm out of her grip, sitting her down in the nook of a tree’s roots before creeping his way over to the van. It was empty, and open, as though the cultists had just taken them and left it as it was. He wasn’t about to get caught a second time, so he moved quickly—climbed into the back, grabbed the backpack Elliot had filled with food and Tylenol, and reached for where he thought the guns were.

“Fuck,” John said. Gone. Everything else was left, except for the guns. And his glasses. Fuckheads.

He stuffed the pack of cigarettes and the lighter into the backpack before he slid out of the back of the van and made his way back to Elliot. Her face was buried in her knees, her fingers absently curling and uncurling, something that John knew was just an Elliot thing—he’d seen it when she was at her most stressed, when she was trying hard to stay rooted.

John reached out and touched her shoulder. Even though he’d been clambering through the brush, the gesture startled her, her head jerking up and her eyes looking at him for just a second before diverting.

“We can’t stay,” he said urgently. “Come on.”

She nodded numbly before she took his offered hand, hoisting herself to her feet and trailing after him past the van and out closer to the road side. He thought, briefly, about yelling for the dog, or trying to whistle the way Elliot did, but the idea of making a violent range of noise to fetch a beast from somewhere deep in the woods—if he even was there—did not sit right with him. So instead, he found them a spot that was still within the trees, but pressed into the slope that led up to the road, and sat Elliot down again.

Now that he had a moment to sit, a moment to think, his brain flipped a switch into a necessary, self-preservation panic. Just a little adrenaline, to keep him awake, surely; because he didn’t want to be sleeping any time soon.

John couldn’t push the image of Elliot, pressed against the earth, crying , out of his mind. What had she seen? What did they do? His mouth burned with the itch to ask, but he couldn’t bring himself to, not when her eyes couldn’t stay on one place for more than a second.

“They didn’t—they didn’t do it to you?” Elliot asked him, after she took the tylenol he gave her dry and picked a chocolate chip out of a granola bar. John turned his gaze to her, cocking his head to the side. She still carried with her that dreamer’s sway, that soft loopy tone to her voice that reminded him she wasn’t yet quite herself again, but he thought it sounded like she was clearing up. Hopefully.

“Do what to me, deputy?”

She blinked down at her hands. “Drug you.”

He hesitated. He’d certainly gotten something , though he didn’t think it was anything like what they’d given Elliot. “Not the same,” he said after a second. “But I was asleep, for a while. For hours. I don’t know how long.”

“I wish I had been sleeping.” Elliot’s voice was miserable. She had never been so small, he thought, than in that moment, and she tipped her body over until the side of her face was on the ground. And then, after her eyes had drifted shut and a lapse of silence had passed, she mumbled, “They probably thought I was a bigger threat than you.”

John fought the urge to smile. It only barely worked, and he was glad, because he didn’t need Elliot getting a bigger ego than she already had.

“Yes, Rook, you’re very scary and intimidating. All—what, four feet, eight inches of you?”

“I’m five foot four, you fuckhead.”

A wave of relief washed over him. He rested his head back against the tree, exhaling softly.

“Go to sleep, deputy,” he murmured, “so you can go back to being the bigger threat.”

For the sake of both of us.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

For the first time in what felt like years, Elliot slept.

It was fitful sleep, to be sure, plagued by a strange, blurring color-scape of nightmares and fever-dreams that haunted the corner of her sleeping vision. It all just lurked around the edges, never an image that she could pin down or find, only ever something that was present enough to fill her with a persistent terror. Voice melded into each other, overlapping; fragments of noise and color drifted in and out of her, like a tree shedding petals in a fiercer wind.

When she woke, light was just beginning to try and creep over the distant mountains. It wasn’t enough to feel like a real morning, like the day time , but enough that the milky glow of it filtered through the tops of the trees; the earth smelled wet and fresh, and her clothes were a little damp from sleeping on the wet ground. The sky stretched, gray and soft as wedding silk, through the tops of the trees. She wiped the water from her face.

I smell: the earth, the rain, the grass and wind. I see: the light, the sky, the tops of the tress. I feel —

“Ah, sleeping beauty awakens,” John said. His voice sounded gravelly; maybe he hadn’t slept at all, this whole time, which somehow made her stomach twist a little even though she didn’t want to care about what John did or didn’t get to do.

“Fuck off.” She groaned, coming into a sitting position and feeling her head immediately swoon with the effort. The back of it pulsed with a splitting pain, and she remembered the red-haired man from before, telling her to go back to sleep just before he slammed her head into the floor of the van. “God—what the fuck —”

“It’s so lovely,” John intoned, and she got the impression maybe it wasn’t lovely at all, “to have you back at full capacity again, deputy.”

Elliot pressed the heel of her palm to her head. “That asshole that works for Ase smashed my head in before he drugged me.”

John’s eyes narrowed. “Let me see.”

She stilled and closed her eyes against the splintering pain at the back of her head; she heard John shift where he was sitting, and then his hands against hers, brushing them away from the back of her head. Elliot tried not to think too much about how warm his hands were, how comforting the calloused feel of them was, or how gentle they were when he combed the hair out of his way. He clicked his tongue a little, hands dropping from her hair, and suddenly Elliot’s stomach plummeted, too; the loss of contact sent her poor little drug-addled lizard brain reeling.

“Well, you’ve got a nasty cut,” John said after a moment, “which is mostly scabbed over. And a bump that will probably be the size of an egg by the time it’s done.” His voice slid her out of her strange little panic, her desire to grab his hands and put them back on her face, even when that exact nightmare she’d had was stopping her from being able to meet his eyes for very long.

Elliot swallowed thickly. “Goody.”

She thought she could hear a smile in his voice when he said, “I’m sure you’ve had worse, Rook.”

“Don’t call me that.” She tried to force more heat in her voice, but she was so tired ; it felt like she hadn’t slept at all. John made a mild noise that might have been amusement, and then shifted where he sat before coming to a stand and stretching. Elliot asked, “Did you sleep?” and then immediately kicked herself ( because why would she care ), but it was too late to take the words back.

Her gaze flickered to John’s face and then immediately away. The strange dream—nightmare?—that she’d had of him, cradling her face, his touch searing through her, my Elliot , lingered on her skin still, heavy like a cinder block tying her down. It made it hard to look him in the eyes; she was afraid she’d see the flowers again.

“No,” he replied, and if it bothered him that she wasn’t looking at him very much, his voice didn’t sound like it. “Someone had to make sure those crazies didn’t come back.”

She scoffed, struggling to her feet. “The term crazies coming out of your mouth is impeccably comedic.”

“I’ll be here all night.”

Elliot shouldered the back pack and glanced around. The forest was quiet, and there was no sight nor sound of Boomer anywhere. She could only hope that he’d been out and away from the van when everything happened, and that he’d had the good sense to stay hidden. He was a smart boy. She tried not to worry too much.

At least, she would keep telling herself that, until proven otherwise. But she wouldn’t be whistling for him anytime soon—not with how easily they’d been tracked down by Ase and her fuckhead assistant.

“I suppose we should go on foot from here,” she said, a little mournfully, regretting the reasonable nature of her statement. She saw John grimace out of the corner of her eye.

“I suppose so, deputy.”

She heaved a sigh, fingers fluttering over the cut on the back of her head absently before she nodded. Her clothes were wet, she was nursing a raging hangover from whatever the fuck she’d been drugged with, and she’d eaten half a granola bar in a little over twenty-four hours. And if the drag of her breaths in her chest — even when she was taking a normal inhale — were any indication, sleeping in wet clothes had done nothing to improve her sickness.

Elliot set off, marching through the underbrush to get out of the woods and closer to the road. They passed the van again on their way out, and she thought, fuck, I’d kill John to get one more cigarette out of there, but she knew she shouldn’t. They probably had some kind of—bomb, or tracking device, or—

But in her heart of hearts, she knew that wasn’t true. They didn’t utilize machinery the same way that Eden’s Gate did. And if they wanted her and John dead, well. They would have killed them already. So even though she knew this, and thought it to herself, she couldn’t bring herself to go back to the car.

I see your color, mor, Ase had said, her voice like a thousand whispers against her skin. Elliot’s throat felt tight. She turned to John suddenly and said, “Hey, do you speak Swedish?”

John brushed past her. “What do you think?”

“How are you so unhelpful, and all of the time? Don’t you get tired of being useless?”

He laughed, and Elliot felt a little spark of indignation light in her chest. All of John’s strange tenderness—and she hadn’t forgotten, even if it was fuzzy, the way he’d held her face and said it’s me, Elliot, like he was supposed to be a comfort to her—

(and he was, now, what a sick thought, )

—was gone, and instead she kept thinking about the stupid fucking expression on his face when he’d said, so you think I’m attractive, then , because there was nothing more irritating than John Seed knowing he was attractive. It wasn’t like he needed her to tell him, so why he’d tried to wriggle the words out of her was beyond her comprehension; although Elliot supposed it could be explained that John hadn’t had anyone chant yes at his face for perhaps twenty-four hours, so how was he still sustaining himself? He must be craving attention, starved for it.

“You are the most annoying fucking person I’ve ever met,” Elliot announced, so that she could abruptly shove any and all thoughts of John’s hands on her face out of her head, huffing a little as she worked to catch up with him.

And then John turned around so suddenly that she careened straight into his chest, his hands landing to steady her shoulders—( warm, she thought absently)—and he said, “I know,” with all of the arrogance that she knew him to have. “Give me the backpack, deputy. If they are tracking us in some sick game of hide and seek, they’re going to hear you huffing and puffing from fifteen miles away.”

Elliot mustered all of the spite she had in her—which was not as much as she would have liked—and said, “I hate you, John Seed.”

“You’re going to have to find a new slogan,” John rumbled, sliding the backpack straps off of her shoulders, “because that one just doesn’t ring very true anymore.”

She let him take the backpack; not because she liked that he was being helpful, but because her shoulders screamed in relief. The more and more sober she became, the more her muscles ached, like she had been involuntarily tensing all night, and now they burned . John might as well have punched her entire body over and over again, with his stupid rings.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she replied, fishing the tylenol out of the bag and swallowing two. John rolled his eyes.

“Look, I can tell when you’re lying to me,” he said. “And I know that I’m irresistible, not only because I saved you—”

“Do not —”

“—but because, as a man of God, I am infinitely more wise than you, as well. If there is one thing that I would know about a woman of wrath, Deputy Honeysett, it’s that the one thing she wants is to feel in control of herself, and I’m exactly the man who can give you control.”

Elliot could have, perhaps, not picked a less-Godly man than John Seed; the only exception would be one of his brothers. His words rattled around in her skull. Was this the stupid shit he told himself? That he could give her control? Here, in the woods—soaking wet, sick, split open, walking for God knows how long on foot—and that’s the sales pitch he was going with?

Her jaw clenched, blistering the headache behind her eyes under an impossible heatwave of pure ache , and she pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re—fucking—”

John waited, patiently, much to her fury: but the words would not come to her, color fractals splintering even when her eyes were closed, driving frenzied neurons to fire off pain signals over and over again. When she opened her eyes, for a second, an aura stretched across her vision, like someone pulling saran-wrap tight right over her face. She thought she might puke.

“I’m fucking...?” John prompted, and when she only shuddered a breath, his tone shifted a little. She couldn’t tell what to , but his voice was different when he said, “Deputy?”

He sounded, quite suddenly, like he was very far away from her. She tried to open her eyes again. The world wobbled unpleasantly, and the ground stretched beneath her until it felt like she was on a moving conveyor belt. She saw herself , standing there numbly, heels of her palms pressed against her eye sockets in a desperate attempt to quell the migraine.

“Elliot.”

John’s hands came to her face, yanking her back into a painful reality. He was too close now, smelling like wet earth and forest and a little bit like sweat, the rough, warm palms of his hands holding grounding her back to reality. He said, “Earth to Elliot.”

“Yes,” Elliot managed out. She couldn’t muster up any vitriol; one of her hands gripped John’s wrist where it cut through her peripheral. “I’m here,” she added, and she didn’t know why she said it like that , like she’d been somewhere else—maybe because she had. “Just—this head wound is really fucking with me. We have to get moving, and—”

She heard, a few feet away from them, the sound of a car door slamming. Her brain immediately jumpstarted; first, she thought, oh those fucking Swedes, and then her brain tried to say, or maybe it’s Jerome, or Grace, or —

It was neither of them. Through the haze of pain, Elliot heard the sound of Eden’s Gate’s radio playing, the sound of boots hitting the pavement.

“Well,” Joseph sighed, “if it isn’t the lamb and her shepherd.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Joseph Seed is a particularly difficult man to pin down.

She never meets him once, either before she goes off to the Academy or after, and she’s glad for it. After she gets back to Hope County, after she gets cleared by the psychiatrist, after she gets back to life-on-normal, she thinks she’d be happy to never see Joseph Seed. Not because she isn’t religious, but because she doesn’t like his brand, because the doomsday-ing and the wriggling past legalities of owning land or, perhaps, even people make her skin crawl.

Elliot doesn’t think she’d ever be able to walk herself into his compound. She doesn’t think she’d ever be able to look Joseph Seed in the eye, but she doesn’t have a choice , the helicopter planting them squarely in the compound.

The ground is wet, fresh from a recent rain, and slips underfoot. The night is clouded above with no stars in sight. She feels almost like she’s in a dream, Joey walking ahead of her as the U.S. Marshal bickers with Sheriff Whitehorse, back and forth. She’s barely listening. She feels eyes on them, burning, angry and defiant shouts coming from the onlooking Eden’s Gate members, and she hears the sound of dogs barking in the distance.

They get to the church. Inside, the congregation is singing Amazing Grace, and the crickets match its feverish pitch, sliding along her skin.

“Hudson, on the door and watch our backs,” Whitehorse says, when the Marshal— Burke , Elliot thinks absently, that was his name —acquiesces to doing things the way Whitehorse wants to do it. “Don’t let any of these people get in. Rookie, on me.”

Elliot nods, her gaze focusing sharp again. Whitehorse has taken a risk, bringing her out when she was still so green; she wasn’t going to let him down.

Not that he has much choice. They’re short-staffed as it was anyway.

“And you—” Whitehorse looks at Burke, his expression faltering, tired. “Just… Try not to do anything stupid.”

Burke claps him on the shoulder. He is all easy confidence, surety of foot, the kind of confidence Elliot wants to have some day. She hopes she doesn’t become tired, like Whitehorse. “Relax, Sheriff,” Burke says, “you’re about to get your name in the paper.”

But Elliot isn’t paying attention to them. She’s thinking about the armed men and women skulking around, and the dogs barking in the distance, and the sound of the singing from the inside of the church.

Joey’s hand briefly touches her shoulder. Her dark gaze is soft, and she squeezes Elliot’s shoulder before she says, “You’ll be fine.”

Whitehorse doesn’t look pleased by Burke’s comment. He doesn’t even look assuaged, mildly. He pushes the door open, and Elliot sticks close to his heel, as the singing comes to an abrupt stop; the church is dimly lit, with most of the light coming from behind the man at the front, his silhouette carved obsidian so that his features are obscured to her.

They walk slow. The man says, “ Something is coming. You can feel it, can’t you?”

His voice is a rich-willow timbre, decadent. The gathering of the cultists turn, their eyes piercing into the trio. Elliot’s heart is slamming against her rib cage. She doesn’t have a gun pulled—would never, not without Whitehorse’s blessing—but she wants to, not to fire but to warn. To keep them away.

“We are creeping toward the edge, and there will be a reckoning. That is why we started the Project—”

They’re dirty, and bedraggled. Elliot’s throat tightens. Why would they choose this? Why would they want to be like this?

“—because we know what happens next. They will come. They will try to take from us—take our guns, take our freedom, take our faith.”

Burke looks back at her, his hand floating and tense, ready to pull his gun at any moment. But he beckons her with a crook of his fingers and she does as he bids. Closer now, Elliot can see that the man is not alone; to the left, a tall, rugged red-head, his arms crossed, his expression stony. To the right, a soft young woman, dressed in white, dreamy. And just behind Joseph, a handsome, dark-haired man; a man that Elliot recognizes as John Duncan, but now is told by Joey is John Seed .

Joseph’s shirtless, which should be ridiculous and comedic but only serves to make him look both polished and feral in equal amounts. Golden light from outside drenches through a window cut to be the same shape as the emblem of Eden’s Gate, and it bathes him; he is golden, soft and sharp all at the same time.

“Sheriff, c’mon,” Burke says, because he is not charmed; he, too, thinks it is ridiculous. Whitehorse holds up a hand to steady him.

“We will not let them.” Joseph Seed’s voice flexes, furious and controlled. “We will not let their greed , or their immorality or their depravity hurt us anymore. There will be no more suffering.”

Burke is furious that the sermon —if it can be called that, which Elliot would argue that it cannot, knowing the Seeds—has continued this long. She hears him say, “No, fuck this,” and he pulls the paper out and holds up in front of the man’s face.

“Joseph Seed,” Burke bites out, “I have a warrant issued for your arrest, on the suspicion of kidnapping with the intent to harm. Now, I want you to step forward and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Elliot’s gaze flickers. She feels sick to her stomach. Joseph lifts his hands; he is soft, again, no longer fervent, no longer yelling, and his gaze fixes on her.

“There they are,” he says, his voice quiet. “The locusts in our garden.”

Members of Eden’s Gate—armed, ragged, feral —slide their way between them and Joseph.

“You see, they’ve come for me.” Other members are beginning to get angry. They’re yelling, now, as Joseph says, “They’ve come to take me away from you , they’ve come to destroy all that we have built,” and the voices raise in volume, and Burke puts his hand on his gun and Whitehorse yells for him to stand down and Elliot’s fingers itch and she thinks, oh, no, this is when I’m going to have to shoot someone.

But Joseph steps down from his platform. His hands brush the shoulders of his supporters, and they part for him, quieting the crowd, quelling their noise. Behind him, John steps across the stage, his eyes narrowed and sharp, studying them; he moves like an animal, prowling.

“We knew this moment would come. We’ve prepared for it,” Joseph says, gentle. He ushers them away; they brush past Elliot, her head turning after them, thinking certainly one will grab her, choke her, kill her, but they don’t.

“— and I saw, ” Joseph is biting out, pointing at Burke, and then looking at the sheriff, “ and behold, it was a white horse. ”

And then Joseph is looking at her. He lifts his hands to her. His eyes are fixed on her, and she feels a strange, uncanny thrill slide through her. Joseph looks at her like she is the only person in the room, like all others have blinked out of existence and it’s only them.

That’s why, she thinks, the feeling of it making her heart ache a little. That’s why they choose to be this way. To belong to someone.

She knows that’s what it is. She knows that’s how he’s gotten these people to follow him: because he looks at them like this, with longing, like there is nothing in the world that he wants more than to take them into his embrace.

His voice is breathless, soft, covetous, jealously cradling her in velvet swathes: “ And Hell followed with him.”

Elliot feels frozen. Petrified. Her stomach churns. She can feel the eyes of the Seed siblings on her. Burke jerks his hand at her, breaking her out of her reverie.

“Rookie, cuff this son of a bitch.”

Joseph is holding out his hands, obedient and compliant. “God will not let you take me.”

Burke says it again, maybe different, she can’t remember because the blood is rushing through her head, so she does as he asks. Her hands might be trembling. She takes Joseph’s hands and slides the cuffs on them, and he leans into her like he’s going to breathe her in or swallow her whole and almost purrs —

“Sometimes, the best thing to do is to walk away.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

John’s hands slid from Elliot’s face. The first thing he felt when he saw Joseph was relief —sheer, pure relief, that it wasn’t the Resistance that had found them and that it wasn’t Ase and her man again, but that it was his brother. Over his shoulder, too, John could see Jacob in the driver’s seat of the truck, his face stony and hard as always.

The second thing that John felt was dread.

Joseph’s expression was unreadable. It almost always was, he supposed, but now the fact that he couldn’t tell what Joseph was thinking struck a hot cord of fear inside of him, because he was reminded—now and painfully—that Faith was still lost to them.

“Joseph,” John managed out, his hands drifting now from Elliot completely, where before they had slid to her shoulders. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“You could sound like it,” Elliot muttered, and he shot her a look before he turned back to his brother, immediately crossing the gap from him to Joseph, standing on the road. Joseph watched him steadily, and once he was within arm’s reach, John stopped, hesitating.

“We were on our way to you,” Joseph explained, his voice steady, a soothing balm to John’s frayed nerves. “We heard talk on the radios that our sister had been taken, but we didn’t get a response when we tried to contact you at the ranch.”

John nodded. “Yes, it’s—there’s so much to tell you—”

Joseph’s hands came to rest on his shoulders for a moment; and, much the same way that John had done to Elliot, Joseph took his face in his hands.

“We’re so glad you’re alive,” Joseph murmured, his expression softening just that much . John felt the relief flood his system immediately at the gentle contact—merciful, healing, the way Joseph liked to be. “And that our dear deputy is still with you. Compliantly, too, it seems.”

Elliot’s voice was hard as flint when she said, “Yeah, well, you missed the last twenty-four hours where this fucking idiot had us cuffed together.”

Behind the yellow lenses of his glasses, Joseph’s gaze flickered to wherever Elliot lingered behind John, over his shoulders. His brother stared at Elliot for a moment; there was something in the way Joseph locked his gaze on the blonde that made John’s stomach twist uncomfortably, and he couldn’t quite pin it down, either, couldn’t get it to stop squirming long enough for him to figure out what it was.

“And yet,” Joseph said after a moment, his voice a low drawl as his hands dropped from John, “you are here, unburdened.”

John turned to look at Elliot. She still had to be in pain; she might have been trying to hide it, because of Joseph, or maybe even still because of him , but he could see it on her face, in the way her fingers curled and uncurled themselves absently, absently digging her nails into her palms. But this little give-away of hers meant nothing to anyone else, because the lines of her face were sharp and unrelenting.

Elliot’s gaze did not once leave Joseph. John recognized on her face that same odd, cold calculation she’d had when she’d thought about choking that Eden’s Gate guard out. If there was, he supposed, one person that Elliot hated more than himself, it was Joseph; perhaps she was thinking about all of the ways she wanted to kill him , now.

“Well, coincidental, we were on our way to you , Joseph. There’s now a problem one size bigger than your little cult.” Elliot said, her shoulders relaxing. She crested the hill up to the road, her feet hitting the pavement with more surety than she’d had since she’d woken up. It was like seeing someone that she hated had poured adrenaline straight into her body, and now she moved with the same precision she always did—though if the weariness in her expression was any indication, she was only half capacity. “How lucky .”

Joseph gazed at Elliot, as though John didn’t exist—as though no-one and nothing else existed, in that moment, except for her. John’s stomach lurched again, once more, with feeling! a wicked voice shouted in his brain, rattling around, keeping him nice and distracted so that he couldn’t figure out quite what it was that it made him feel.

“Fated,” Joseph agreed. His voice was almost sly. “One could say.”

“One could,” Elliot shot back, “but one shouldn’t, if they don’t want to sound like an idiot.” The words shot a jolt of fearful anticipation through John—not only because he thought, Joseph is only so merciful , but because he was sure that it reflected back on him, the way she felt so comfortable insulting Joseph.

“Deputy,” John snapped, and she glared at him, her brows knitting together at the center of her forehead. Joseph smiled pleasantly.

“Mouthy,” Jacob said from the truck, his voice clipped, “for someone who wants our help.”

Elliot bit out venomously, “Fuck you,” just as John said, “ Elliot ,” their voices overlapping furiously, and she looked at him again. There was something accusatory in her gaze. John wanted to pluck it out of her, break it apart so he could figure it out: but there wasn’t any time for that now.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides, like she was going to fight Jacob right then and there, and John wasn’t entirely sure that she wouldn’t, pushed enough. He turned back to his brothers and said, “She’s agreed to help and get Faith back.”

“Not for nothing.” Elliot’s add-in was sharp. “I get to use the radios to contact the resistance and tell them to get the fuck out of Dodge.”

Joseph’s gaze fluttered between them, just for a moment—landing on Elliot for a heartbeat longer than it did on John—and then he stepped back, gesturing for them to get into the back seat of the truck. The blonde stepped on without John, brushing past him and flinging the door of the truck open before hoisting herself inside.

“How much do you know?” John asked as he climbed in after Elliot, shoving the backpack behind one of the seats. He tried not to think about the way Elliot’s eyes stayed pinned on Joseph, or the way her body had gone rigid, like at any moment she was ready to throw her fists in the direction of the nearest Seed brother—and certainly now, she had her pick if that were the case.

“Enough,” Joseph replied. He closed the passenger seat door and Jacob pulled the steering wheel of the truck until it was turning around. “But I’m certain you’ll be of more help.”

John opened his mouth to elaborate and give what information he had at the top of his brain when Elliot said, abruptly and without pretense, “You’ve come so unguarded, Joseph. Doesn’t that make you nervous?” and John turned his head to stare at her in disbelief.

Fucking insane, he thought. She wants to die. Does she ever stop?

But Joseph only laughed. Through the rearview mirror, John saw his eyes make contact with Elliot’s, and he said, “Jacob is sufficient protection on his own.” He paused, something slick and cool in his voice when he added, “But your concern is touching .”

“That’s an interesting choice of word. Not what I would have picked, though.”

“When we heard the radio chatter,” Jacob interrupted, before John could will himself to tell Elliot to shut the fuck up while he was still within hitting range, “Joseph told everyone to hunker down while we identified the threat. For once, it wasn’t a little girl playing with a shotgun.”

The accusation lay there, unspoken: Jacob had made it clear many times that he was certain he could snuff Elliot out faster than anyone else, either deeming her useless or shaping her into the perfect killer. If Joseph would just let him, he’d said, he would see.

But Joseph had told him to wait. To let John—persuasion was his specialty. Let John show us.

And John didn’t miss the way that his brother said it; Joseph told everyone. An opinion had been overruled, and it wasn’t Joseph’s, and Jacob hadn’t forgotten.

Elliot’s mouth opened, rearing up to say something; the indignation had been lit in her gaze, furious. He would have been comforted that she was back to normal—no longer trembling, no longer somewhere far away from him—but he knew that Jacob had much less tolerant than Joseph did.

“I grabbed the cigarettes from the van,” John said tartly, before she could get going. “Smoke one.”

The unspoken words lingered. Chill the fuck out. Occupy your mouth with something else. Something that John didn’t think he’d say to her, out loud, unless he was feeling particularly confident that she wouldn’t strangle him to death in front of his brothers.

“Good thinking, honey ,” Elliot drawled. His eyes narrowed at her. She stuffed her hand into the backpack, searching until she found them. The blonde only looked mildly surprised through her rage that they were actually there.

When she rolled down the window and lit it, John relaxed a little and continued, “We’ve had a run-in with their leader. They’re armed and organized.”

Elliot stayed quiet. She settled back against the seat, deep into the corner of it, closest to the window, as though she couldn’t stand how close to them all she was, and took a long drag of the cigarette. The orange end of it burned until it was a sunspot in his vision.

John’s gaze drifted over her for a moment. Still, she wouldn’t look at him; she only spared him furtive glances through the corner of her eye, but never met his gaze, never going farther than his mouth.

“Ah.” Joseph’s gaze remained fixed on the road, his voice interrupting John’s thoughts. “So there’s now one more breed of locusts in our garden, it seems. Easy enough to exterminate, I think.”

“And how, pray tell,” Elliot asked, her voice sly, “do you plan to get rid of a new breed when you can’t even get rid of the old one?”

Jacob’s fingers tightened and flexed on the steering wheel. John could see a small smile tick the corner of Joseph’s mouth.

“If you get one flat foot on the devil’s wing,” Joseph replied, “you can get him to do just about anything you want.”

#far cry 5 #john seed/deputy #john seed/ofc #fc5 #my writing #fic: ancient names #ch: elliot honeysett #ch: john seed #but WHERE IS BOOMER #I SAY #THE AUTHOR #also like 2 instances very close together of john looking at elliot and joseph wanting to kill each other but ignoring him at the same time #and going #*hmmmmmm*#*don't like that*#so you know #idk what's even going on anymore i'm just in this wild ride with yall

11 notes · View notes

phantomphangphucker · 5 years

Text

Ectober Day 10: Exorcism - Mimicry

Ghosts aren’t that different from demons. And Danny’s got no problem fucking with a priest.

Danny’s sitting, curling his ghostly tail around, on a rooftop building when he spots him. He shows up in an arguably insanely pompous Mustang, the kind with wood side panelling. Danny tilts his head as he watches the car park, at least whoever wasn’t enough of a stick-up-the-ass to double park. The guy stepping out in head to toe black, nearly looking like he’s wearing a dress. At first, Danny figured it was some goth, but sticking his head invisibly through the hotel lobby ceiling -curious about this stranger in his town, his lair- the guy spoke like his car looked; professional but egotistical. Spotting the little white on the guys neck only makes Danny internally groan. Priests. Well, technically only one but still. Though he is a little curious, there had never been one of their types here before. Probably thought ghosts were demons or something.

For whatever reason the guy seems to intimidate Jamey the receptionist, watching as she’s clearly trying to get the guy away from her and is trying not to touch the guy. Which only seems to make priest dude suspicious, intentionally grabbing and holding onto her hand and looking like he’s searching her eyes. Danny floats down closer, invisible of course, at this, in case this guy is legit dangerous and tries to attack her or something.

Thankfully, he lets go and heads to his room with a smile. Jamey shaking herself off after a bit. Danny hangs around the lobby for a bit to make sure she’s fine and priest guy doesn’t come back.

Danny sniffs out the guys' room and promptly puts a SpookSpot, a camera that looks like a little black ghost sticker, to watch priest guys door. And heads back to proper patrolling and enjoying the late afternoon sky.

Two day’s later Danny’s pretty well forgotten about the guy. He just seems to be wandering the town, muttering to himself, and nodding at things. The only real beef Danny had with the guy was that he was creeping people out.

But apparently, the guy was just patient, or spent a lot of time plotting. As Danny comes upon him doing...something? to the Box Ghost of all ghosts. He was seemingly chanting and making erratic hand motions. While the Box Ghost just looks really confused. Eventually, the Box Ghost, seeing a lost cause, shouts, “BEWARE!!!”, and promptly flies off.

The priest looks pleased with himself for whatever reason.

The next day Danny groans at spotting the priest, with a visitors badge, wandering the halls of Casper high, hands clasped behind his back and occasionally nodding at things.

Tucker pokes Danny, “you know, your folks aren’t the weirdest people here anymore”.

Danny sighs, “yeah, guy’s super weird. I think he tried to exorcise Boxy. It was...really sad. Boxy took pity on him”.

Tucker snorts, “that is pretty sad”.

Danny’s ghost sense goes off just as they start heading to class. Danny sighs dramatically, “so much for first period”, Tucker pats him on the back as well slinks off. Never noticing the ever so slightly wide-eyed priest watching.

Danny gets up with a yawn in the morning, struggling into a sweater and ruffling up his hair before heading down for breakfast.

Danny looks around the table, slightly caught off guard. The priest guy, who Danny has figured out was named Jospeh which honestly was a stereotypical as Hell name, is just sitting at the table; letting Jack and Maddie talk ghost at him with a pleasant smile, though it felt rather fake.

Danny shrugs loosely, and goes to make his cereal, “mornin’”.

Maddie smiles, “morning sweetie. This fine man was curious about the ghosts in town, so Jack decided he could stay for tea”, looking to Jospeh, “you’re named Jospeh you said right?”.

“It is”.

Danny sits down with his bowl, nodding at the guy, “mine’s Danny. And if you wanna talk ghosts then yeah, this is the house to do it in”, Danny decides to fuck with the guy a little, “who knows, maybe my dad’ll pull out the portal photo album”.

Jack grins wide, “yes! We should!”, springing up and rushing off.

Jospeh squints ever so slightly at Danny and turns to face him more, “portal?”.

Danny leans back and puts his hands behind his head nonchalantly, “yup, ghosties come and go through it sometimes. Dad fishes trough it”, deciding to be the mild to colossal idiot that he is, “I've come and gone through it here and there”.

Maddie shakes her head, “I remember that time you stumbled out with a knife in your leg. Didn’t you trip in that time?”.

Danny chuckles, ignoring the priests staring, “yup. Dad left some stuff on the floor and you know how clumsy I am”. Maddie giggles at that before going back to drinking her coffee.

Jospeh stares at him a bit before Jack returns with the aforementioned photo album and Jospeh changes to staring at that.

Danny chuckles and fills up a large thermos with coffee and promptly leaves. Only walking for a ways before slinking into an alley, turning invisible and intangible, then going back to the house.

Danny tilts his head Jospeh seemingly convincing his parents to go out hunting extra long and letting Jospeh help house sit so that he can ‘get a feel for ghosts’. His folks were way too easy to trick sometimes. If Danny’s stuck with this stuck up religious nut then he’s gonna mess around, moving closer to make creepy breathing sounds and blow air at the guy; who shivers from the cold temperature, before looking around for the source. Danny facepalms as Jospeh subtly throws salt out in one direction, clearly thinking there’s a ‘demon’ there. Danny absolutely was going to torment this poor prick. He was creeping all his humans out, would probably grow bold enough to interrupt fights, and he was a pompous twat. The last was honestly reason enough.

Danny comes home that night and as soon as he closes the door, Jospeh is staring at him. Danny waves at him, “sup priest boy”, pointing at the guy, “you know you’re creeping out pretty well the whole town? What’s your issue?”.

“Am I now”.

“Yup”.

Joshep squints but takes a sip of tea, “good. The Fenton parents seem to be the only not under demonic influence in this infested town”, Jospeh slowly walks closer to Danny, “but of course you already know that, don’t you demon”.

Danny makes a show of looking overly offended, “me? Some powerful being from another dimension? Why I never”.

“Hell is hardly another dimension, beast”.

Danny chuckles, “well look at you, able to come up with not one but two insulting names to spit like venom”.

Joseph walks closer and pushes a large silver cross into Danny’s chest, “that’s enough from you. Give it up and release the boy who’s body you’ve stolen and this town. You should have known your time was numbered as soon as you saw me”.

Danny rolls his eyes, utterly unaffected, “of a pompous twat who’s so greatly out of his depth? Hardly”

Joshep pushes the cross in hard and glares, “you're using protections, Foul thing. No matter, there’s seals everywhere, you’re trapped”.

Danny chuckles and makes it sound a bit threatening, “sure, whatever you say buddy”. Pushing past the guy to fetch himself some coffee. Pouring it but giving Joshep dramatic side-eye as the guy starts chanting at him.

“Princeps gloriosissime caelestis militiae, sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio et colluctatione, quae nobis adversus principes et potestates, adversus mundi rectores tenebrarum harum, contra spiritualia nequitiae, in caelestibus“. Danny watching as the guy flips a coin with a cross hollowed out of it and clutches at rosary beads. This guy really was going there wasn’t he? Danny chuckles and smirks, fine, Danny will give this weirdo a damn show.

Joseph continues his chant prayer, “Veni in auxilium hominum, quos Deus creavit inexterminabiles, et ad imaginem similitudinis suae fecit, et a tyrannide diaboli emit pretio magno“.

He holds up and waves around the rosary, making sure the light glints off it. While Danny starts pretending to be in agony but like he’s trying not to show it. As Joshep continues, “Proeliare hodie cum beatorum Angelorum exercitu proelia Domini, sicut pugnasti contra ducem superbiae Luciferum, et angelos eius apostaticos: et non valuerunt, neque locus inventus est eorum amplius in coelo. Sed proiectus est draco ille magnus, serpens antiquus, qui vocatur diabolus et satanas, qui seducit universum orbem; et proiectus est in terram, et angeli eius cum illo missi sunt“.

Danny’s just letting out his fangs and ears at this point, curled up on the ground and pretending to be pissed off at the priest. Who only narrows his eyes with resolute determination, “En antiquus inimicus et homicida vehementer erectus est. Transfiguratus in angelum lucis, cum tota malignorum spirituum caterva late circuit et invadit terram, ut in ea deleat nomen Dei et Christi eius, animasque ad aeternae gloriae coronam destinatas furetur, mactet ac perdat in sempiternum interitum“.

Joshep splashes a container of holy water over Danny, who has to try really hard to not laugh and break character, “Virus nequitiae suae, tamquam flumen immundissimum, draco maleficus transfundit in homines depravatos mente et corruptos corde; spiritum mendacii, impietatis et blasphemiae; halitumque mortiferum luxuriae, vitiorum omnium et iniquitatum“.

Joshep starts aggressively pointing the cross at Danny, “Ecclesiam, Agni immaculati sponsam, faverrimi hostes repleverunt amaritudinibus, inebriarunt absinthio; ad omnia desiderabilia eius impias miserunt manus“.

Danny makes a show off grabbing the guys ankle and letting Joshep shake him off. Though taking amusement in the ever so slight startled waver in his voice, “Ubi sedes beatissimi Petri et Cathedra veritatis ad lucem gentium constituta est, ibi thronum posuerunt abominationis et impietatis suae; ut percusso Pastore, et gregem disperdere valeant“.

Danny starts abortedly duplicating, only letting the duplicate start forming or splitting for seconds before snapping them back. Joshep near bellowing now, “Adesto itaque, Dux invictissime, populo Dei contra irrumpentes spirituales nequitias, et fac victoriam“.

Danny once again has to resist laugh as the guy throws salt at him again, “Te custodem et patronum sancta veneratur Ecclesia; te gloriatur defensore adversus terrestrium et infernorum nefarias potestates; tibi tradidit Dominus animas redemptorum in superna felicitate locandas“.

Danny lets a duplicate form halfway but seemingly attempting to snap back ‘into’ Danny. Catching the slight smile on the priests face, “Deprecare Deum pacis, ut conterat satanam sub pedibus nostris, ne ultra valeat captivos tenere homines, et Ecclesiae nocere“.

Danny lets the duplicate fly out of him and slam into the back wall, letting his originally body collapse and pretend to be unconscious. While Joshep stalks after the duplicate, waving the cross and slashing holy water, “Offer nostras preces in conspectu Altissimi, ut cito anticipent nos misericordiae Domini, et apprehendas draconem, serpentem antiquum, qui est diabolus et satanas, ac ligatum mittas in abyssum, ut non seducat amplius gentes“.

Joshep grins wide at the duplicate, pushing the cross into his face, “I cast away any devout dismay, that child in these Christ blessed arms of mine shall never fall at the hands of hellish beasts”.

The duplicate chuckles into the cross, “he’s mine old man”.

Joshep grits his teeth, “you shall evade the one of holy youth, the blessed one of creators uncorrupted, malevolent apparition. Vade retro Satana”.

The duplicate smirks, “ah so foolish, you think you’re some great knowing thing. How much longer till your facade breaks down?”.

“Truth and God shall never waver Beast”.

Original Danny gets up and stretches. Walking over and tapping on Joshep’s shoulder, “if I may turn you away from this rather pathetic display. This child was never one to fall. And I’m only in my own hands”.

The duplicate sits up and pretty well pushes over Joshep. The duplicate roles his eyes, “dude come one. There ain’t no demons here. And do you really think shit like salt and water is going to work on a being bound to eternity?”. The duplicate simply dissipates in the air while Joshep stands up and whirls around to see Danny just standing there and picking at his nails.

Danny pats him on the shoulder, “that was fun, good acting lessons on my part. Anyway, you got that whole need to exorcise out of you system?”.

Joshep sputters, “w-what are you?”.

Danny, deciding to be a dick and really freak this guy out, let’s his transformation ring form around his forehead like a halo for a split second and makes his eyes glow icy blue.

Joshep goes slightly wide-eyed but composes himself quickly. It’s obvious he now thinks Danny’s an angel as he dips his head slightly, “Dânêl. Concede nos famulos tuos, tu pro nobis intercedere dignentur in solio mixtum commiscere divinae miserationis in praesentem necessitatem, quod tu vis quemadmodum nuntiare Mariae in mysterio incarnationis Christi, ut per tua suffragia et patrocinia sentiamus in caelis perpetuae capiamus beneficia eiusdem, et laudem Dei usque in aeternum cantabo in terra viventium“.

Danny holds his hands up and waves the guy off, “you’re freaking my humans out. Stop that. This place is in good hands”, smirking slightly, “as for the shit that just happened. I’m a trickster”.

Danny walks up and pats the guys shoulder with a chuckle, “there are so many things in this world that you’ll never understand. Do not fall to the faults of assuming you know what you do not. Nor that the truths you know are all there is to know. There are no demons here”.

Joshep looks into Danny’s eyes, seeing nothing but fierce protectiveness, twinkling of amusement, and soft kindness. “Then what be they, should you bless me with that knowledge? Could it be that this is why I am here?”.

Danny chuckles and walks to look out the window. Snickering at the seals, “in all the forms of existences there’s bound to be a few you’ve never seen, you could try to achieve it. Become one of the beings of the Infinite Realms. But most of them can never leave or it will be a long time. So I don’t really recommend”, turning to look at Joshep before Danny gestures out the window, “most of them were once living mortals. Some were not. Souls unable to move on granted powering and purpose. Some protect and guide, watching over mortals or time itself. Others try to keep order and punish those who miss-use their power. Others do what you see here in Amity. Scare. Goof around. There are very few who are what you may call evil”.

Joshep walks up next to Danny, and looks out, jerking as all the seals burn away win blue flames. Side-eyeing the chuckling Danny, “you are a well humoured one”.

Danny smirks, “very much so”, nodding his head at the window, “the ones who are dead’s. They all died in brutal fashion. So horrid that existence itself decided they deserved another chance to live free and strong. Make no mistake priest. I protect them as well”. Danny makes his eyes blue and the frost creep across the window to make his point clear.

Joshep nods and dips his head, “but of course. I did not expect my wrongs and I have much to ponder. To none will I bring hassle nor harm”.

Danny chuckles, “good. I will continue keeping an eye on you regardless”.

Joshep blinks but nods with a small smile. And while this was highly enlightening and a blessing, he had zero intentional of imposing on or hanging around an Angel. Angel’s often said ‘be not afraid’ for a reason, they were not truly pleasant creatures and this one had firmly pretended to be a demon and be in agony. So Joshep bows with clasped hands, “blessed you”, before heading out the door.

Danny chuckles, “oh I’m very blessed indeed”.

End.

#Danny Phantom #phandom #ectober #ectober2019 #exorcism #exorcist #danny's a little shit #latin #christianity #danny fenton #tucker foley #maddie fenton #jack fenton #fanfic #phanphic #have a fic suck my dick #phantomphangphucker #My writing

58 notes · View notes

lostbutterflyutau · 4 years

Text

Still in Love

Note: Written for the EoA appreciation week prompt of the same name, the beach used to be a fun place. Sun, sand, laughter... memories. Now, a year after the dissolution of her marriage, Carla only finds reminders of what used to be.

Part of the For My Broken Heart songifc collection.

*** We walked side-by-side

Leaving footprints in the sand

Now only my footsteps remain

When the tide rolls in

Now time is moving

Faster than before

And now we can’t even

Seem to find the shore ******

Carla stared down at her still-untouched wine glass as the chatter around her continued. Somehow, the conversation had gone from frustrations regarding recent events at work to plans for Lila’s wedding. From the bits and pieces she was picking up, Carla learned that Lila wanted something big and extravagant on the beach they were currently camped out on. It wasn’t what she would have picked, but then again, what did she know? It didn’t matter how beautiful her wedding had been. Not when it was nothing more than a memory long gone.

She flicked her eyes up briefly, the reality of the situation setting in as, with a quick glance around the fire, she realised she was the only single person in the group. It was the same when she hung out with her friends, most of whom were married and, if they didn’t already have children, were talking about having them. But these people weren’t her friends. They were just colleagues. People she had to associate with due to her job. It wasn’t that she minded. Not really. They were nice enough both on and off the clock and had been more than helpful in getting her into the swing of things during the first wedding she assisted with, but they also weren’t her friends.

With a silent sigh, Carla set down her glass and grabbed her shoes, keeping them in her hand as she stood. Luckily, no one said anything. In fact, she’d wager they didn’t even notice. Not that she expected them to. She had only agreed to come because of how nice they’d been in inviting her. For a moment, she wondered if her mask had started to crack. Did they finally notice how fake her smiles were? Or how she avoided questions about “true love” when brides asked?

One last look back at the group around the fire told her that no, they didn’t notice she’d moved. Nor did she think they had any inkling of the mess she hid with cute dresses, ribbons, headbands, and professional smiles. On the one hand, it spoke to her acting skills, something she’d not only spent years perfecting, but had recently put into practice through a side gig at the local theatre. On the other, not having anyone to talk to only brought to the surface the loneliness she worked so hard to bury each and every morning as her reflection stared back at her, eyes filled with a lingering sadness that she had yet to come to terms with.

It had been a rough year since she signed the papers and took off. After that night it was a few months before Elena finally tracked her down to reconnect, something that she was grateful for. Initially, she thought she would be fine on her own -- and she was, in a sense. It took weeks to secure both her jobs, but she luckily had saved up and brought enough money to cover the rent on her little cottage on the water. In truth, she probably didn’t even need the two jobs, but she liked working. As hard as it was to spend hours a week looking over and discussing wedding plans while rehearsing for her bit parts and helping out at the theatre, it kept her busy and gave her more to focus on than her thoughts. Those first few weeks were miserable. All she remembered about them was unpacking interspersed with bouts of what felt like endless crying as she grappled with her new reality and trashed much of her old one.

Carla stopped, took in a breath as she tilted her head up towards the sky to look over the stars, the smallest of smiles forming when one shined back at her. She liked to think it was her mother telling her that it was okay. Her conflicted and complicated feelings were more than valid. She then turned from the sky to the path ahead.

Luckily, the group had settled in a place not far from her home, so she was able to escape when she did without worrying about how she’d get back. It wasn’t right in her backyard, but she didn’t mind the walk. The location was beautiful, and she considered herself lucky to have found such a nice place at a reasonable price, which she figured was probably due to how isolated it was from the city.

Isolated. Alone. Solitary.

Different words that all held the same meaning and said exactly how she felt. It was almost like when she was younger and being moved around from place to place with only her father for company, ‘almost’ being the key word. This time, it hit so much harder. Back then, loneliness was the only thing she’d known. She even believed at one point that she didn’t need or want friends. But now that she’d experienced having not only them, but a bigger family who was there for her alongside her father and the fairy-tale romance she had always dreamed of as a child – or, rather, what she had believed was the fairy-tale romance of her dreams – it was hard to steel herself back to accepting a life of solitude.

She supposed that she hadn’t truly lost all of those things. It was true that her relationship with Gabe would never recover in any shape or form, no matter how much she still loved him, but she did still have her other friends. Sort of. Moving across the kingdom meant that she rarely saw anyone from her old life in person. They mostly just wrote from time to time and she wrote back, which she preferred. It was so much easier to lie in her letters and play things off. But she also knew deep down that those relationships wouldn’t be the same as they were before. Everyone was grown now with families of their own. Well, almost everyone. Both Naomi and Moana revelled in their singleness. Neither were in a rush to settle and both loved their chosen ventures. And that was fine. Fortuna had been the same and even marriage didn’t faze her. Her stepmother was still as headstrong as ever, which Carla figured was one of the things that drew Victor to her.

Carla took in a shaky breath in an attempt to ward off the tears that always came at night. She wished so much that she could be the same. That she could be okay with being ‘single and free’ and ready to jet off at a moment’s notice. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She wanted a relationship. And now she had almost none of any kind. Her friends were barely in her life anymore and she doubted they would ever be again. Not because they didn’t care, but because they had their own lives. This mess was hers.

Mostly.

As she trudged on, vaguely aware of the familiar feel of the sand against her feet, she thought not for the first time about how he was handling it all. She wanted to hate him. God knows she did. It would be so much easier to just be mad. To kick and scream and throw her rage into the ocean in front of her. But she wasn’t.

“Why?” She said to herself, kicked at the sand. “Why couldn’t we make it better? I tried. I really did.” Carla sighed again, dropped her shoes so she could free her hand, using it instead to help climb her way up onto the large rock she’d stopped in front of. It was a place she was attracted to shortly after arriving. One to just sit and relax and dip her feet in the water without the annoyance of sand in her dress. Once she reached the flat surface at the top, she brushed it off with her hand and took her usual place. She gave a fleeting glance up to that star again as she reached into her pocket before turning her attention to the locket in her hand.

“Mama, I know I ask this a lot, but does it ever get better? When do I stop loving him and start loving myself? That’s what used to happen in my books,” She looked up again, turned her focus back to that star and, with shaky breath, gave in and let the silent tears fall.

She used to spend hours poring over romance books and dreaming about what her ‘Happy Ever After’ would look like. Stories littered with cliched plots and characters that provided nothing more than an escape from her rough-and-tumble lifestyle. She knew they were stupid and cheesy and mostly fake, but she had loved it at one point. It had been a long time since she even picked up one of those novels. The last time it wasn’t even to read them. It was to pack them away with the other belongings she had shipped to Nueva Vista. She hadn’t opened them since, but also didn’t have the heart to give them up or throw them out. Not yet. There were too many good memories intertwined with those pages.

She’d instead starting reading books about magic – which she studied almost religiously – and adventure and whatever her friends sent her way. Anything to get away from the lies about true love and eternal happiness.

“I don’t get it,” Carla found herself saying as she kicked at the water. “You and Papa found it. Heck, Papa even found it again.” She frowned at herself for even entertaining the idea that, if he could learn to love again, maybe she could too because she knew she couldn’t. Papa was different. He was widowed and had his daughter to focus on after his wife’s death. What happened was no one’s fault. And while it hurt him deeply, it was also a special circumstance. He hadn’t been neglected and then dumped and forced to start all over while having the stigma of a broken marriage on his back. Something she hid from absolutely everyone that wasn’t in her inner circle.

As far as her colleagues knew, she was a single lady who’d never been married and, though she tried, just hadn’t found “the one.” Her only one.

She reached up at the thought, wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. A person only got one chance at having the one. Their one big love. The kind of whirlwind romance described so often in novels. Others may come and go, but there would always be that one. The one you always remembered and held onto years later, if only in your heart. She was so sure she’d had it. After all they had been through before and after marriage, there was no way it was all a fluke.

She kicked the water again, looked up and out at the ocean. She couldn’t see much, only a few waves dancing in the moonlight with the occasional blip of shimmer that told her there were Sirenas out and about. Though she didn’t often talk to them – or anyone outside of her work colleagues for that matter – she saw them a lot. The same rock she was currently sitting on was a favourite spot of theirs as well and there’d been many a morning where she’d stepped out on her back porch to see two or three of them sitting and conversing. It was something that – if she had more talent in that area – would make a great painting. She saw it so clearly in her mind. The sun, the sea and the fun air popping off the canvas and adding a stark contrast to the dark vastness she often stared at in these moments.

What used to be as much fun for her simply wasn’t anymore. At one time, the beach was a happy place. The sound of the waves was both an excellent lullaby and a calm reminder of what used to be. The last time she’d visited for more than a moment of contemplation was over a year ago.

Carla recalled waking up that day with high hopes and smiling as she wrote out the message detailing her plan. She hoped and prayed that it would work. It had to work. The beach was a special place for them. One filled with laughter and light and memories of picnics and sunset walks. Unfortunately, she found that hope wasn’t enough. After waiting for two hours, she picked herself back up and trudged home. It wasn’t until days later that she found out that while he received her note, he never read it. Or any of the ones she’d sent over the past few weeks. She remembered so clearly the way she felt the cracks in her heart growing as she stared down at the stack of envelopes Armando had given her. He hadn’t meant to find them. He’d actually been searching for another document when he opened that desk drawer by chance. Not that she ever blamed him. He was just the messenger. In fact, she was glad that he said something. Then she knew to stop writing them. She never confronted her husband though. Didn’t see a point in it, really. It wasn’t until she made up her mind to leave that she bundled up the letters and tied them together, leaving them with the signed dissolution paper as a last trace of her presence.

She gave another heavy sigh, wiped her face a second time before finally shifting to climb down. As hard as it was to come by some nights, she needed to sleep. It was getting late and she had an early morning rehearsal before working a bridal shower the next afternoon.

Once on the ground, she swiped up her shoes, turned to head up the path home, looking back only once to see the single set of footprints in the sand and wishing, not for the first or last time, that she could turn things back to when there were two. *****

So, tell me…

Why can’t we make it better?

Because all that I know

Is found in you

I’m missing your love

I’m missing your face

All of our past…

You let it erase

#Elena of Avalor #Carla Delgado #fanfiction #My fanfic #My fanfiction #angst #For My Broken Heart #sad beach scene

2 notes · View notes

initcne-arch · 4 years

Text

@consequntial asked : all of them :)

1. how does your character think of their father?? what do they hate and love about him?? what influence - literal or imagined - did the father have??

Darlene’s feelings towards her father are incredibly complicated. We all know that Edward Alderson is the scum of the earth, but pre-canon and during the timeline of the series, Darlene has no clue what he was doing to Elliot. She was four fucking years old when he died. So let’s start with her feelings towards Edward Alderson pre and during canon, yeah??

She has few memories of him, but they’re mostly positive memories. Darlene mentions a few times throughout the show that she misses him, she wishes she had gotten to know him better, “what happened to Dad fucked me up too”, etc. I’ve discussed this before--I think growing up Darlene really idolized her father. Again, because the few memories that she has of him are positive, she wasn’t aware of what he was doing to Elliot, and her mother was blatantly neglecting her and berating her and occasionally beating the shit out of her. In Darlene’s mind, Edward could have protected them from Magda. I don’t know if Darlene ever really loved her dad. I think she had an idealized image of him because her mother’s abuse was so much more apparent.

Which leads us into post canon, whenever Elliot decides to tell Darlene about the sexual abuse. Again, incredibly complicated. It doesn’t change the fact that for twenty-five years, Darlene wanted nothing more than for her father to be there protecting them, that for twenty-five years she had this idea that if he were still around, things would have been better. Not great, but maybe he could have saved them from Magda, who’s abuse is much rawer in her mind.

She’s furious with Edward. She hates the man. Despises him. She feels a tremendous amount of guilt for wanting him to be there. Realistically, she knows that she wasn’t aware of the abuse he was inflicting on Elliot, but she still feels guilty for wishing that he hadn’t died. She hates that their whole revolution was in his name. That they started all this to get back at the people who killed him. And those people needed to be taken down, just not for Edward Alderson’s sake. She hates that he had that influence on her. She wants nothing more than to beat him to death again with his own bones.

2. their mother?? how do they think of her?? what do they hate?? love?? what influence - literal or imagined - did the mother have??

Darlene hates Magda!! Hates the woman!! For all the shit Darlene has been through, she doesn’t think anything was worse than being in that house alone with Magda between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. She is, however, the only mother figure Darlene knows, and so she does regard Magda as her mother. Never mind the fact that Magda didn’t actually regard Darlene as her daughter. She loved to remind Darlene that they shared zero actual relation and the only reason Magda even “parents” Darlene is because she signed some paperwork claiming Darlene as her daughter. Darlene hates Magda for treating her and Elliot the way she did. She felt no guilt, no remorse over Magda’s death. It’s unclear exactly when Magda’s health started to deteriorate but Darlene sure as shit didn’t help out with getting her into memory care. Zero relation, remember, Magda??

As far as her biological mother goes, whoever she is, Darlene’s feelings about her are at a zero. Darlene doesn’t even know the woman’s name. Darlene was only a few months old when she dipped out of Darlene’s life. She does think about it from time to time--what is she like, what would have been different if she hadn’t left, does Darlene get her fire and anger from her or does nurture conquer nature??

3. brothers, sisters?? who do they like?? why?? what do they despise about their siblings??

Elliot!! Ultimately, Darlene loves him. They’ve been through thick and thin together. They work very well together. Both of them have a lot of their own unresolved shit that gets in the way of their relationship. Post canon they have a lot of work to do, both individually and between the two of them. Their relationship has ebbed and flowed over their lifetimes. Despite what canon says about them never being terribly close, I think they were close when they were younger, at least until Elliot was an older teenager. I seriously doubt that siblings who weren’t close would share the same bed or spend all day at the movies and arcade together or have goddamn code words with each other. Darlene was the only person who knew someone else was fronting from 2014-2015, the only person who knew her Elliot was gone. But they “were never close.” Bullshit.

I get the impression that Darlene used to take it upon herself to take care of Elliot, when she was younger. Make sure he was getting out of bed in the morning, making both of them breakfast, packing both of them lunches.

They grew up in an incredibly abusive and tumultuous household, each of them with their own unaddressed mental health concerns, and it doesn’t surprise me that they drifted apart as they grew older. Clearly, there was a period of time where Darlene attempted to rekindle their relationship, but it was too difficult and she ran away. It’s...a little more difficult to say if this rings true for Elliot as well, but Sam / the Mastermind blatantly admits that he’s treated Darlene like shit, that he’s been a shitty brother. I don’t think Darlene has always been the best sister, either. They’re never outright cruel to each other but again, lots of unresolved and unaddressed issues on individual levels. They aren’t always kind to each other. I do think Darlene idolizes Elliot to an extent as well, but considering he was the only person in their household who wasn’t absolutely awful, I can’t say that I blame her.

4. what type of discipline was your character subjected to at home?? strict?? lenient??

Inconsistent discipline. Depended on whether or not Magda wanted to deal with her on any given day. On Monday Darlene could get away with murder without Magda so much as glancing in her direction and by Tuesday, Magda would be slapping her for putting her dishes in the sink instead of the dishwasher. I’ve said before that based on Darlene’s behaviors as an adult, I’m pretty sure Magda was more emotionally / verbally / psychologically abusive and negligent towards Darlene than she was physically abusive but that didn’t stop Magda from smacking Darlene around from time to time. There was also a lot of restriction going on, like food restriction and medical restriction. For the most part, Magda just didn’t pay much attention to Darlene, and therefore, Darlene was not a well-disciplined child ( or adult, for that matter ).

5. were they overprotected as a child?? sheltered??

No. Again, Magda paid no mind to Darlene. She practically raised herself. Magda likely tried to shelter Darlene from things, given the woman was pretty staunchly religious, but since she didn’t want to be bothered with Darlene most days of the week, Darlene was free to do whatever she damn well pleased ( until those rare days Magda did pay attention. then there was hell to pay ).

6. did they feel rejection or affection as a child??

Big time rejection!! Starting with her biological mother leaving, someone who was supposedly genetically programmed to give a damn about Darlene. Then the woman who willingly married Darlene’s father and willingly adopted Darlene rejected her. Darlene was always kind of that weird, loud kid who no one really knew how to deal with, so a lot of her peers kind of left her alone, too. The only people Darlene really had were Elliot and Angela. They eventually had to grow up and start leading their own lives. As a young teenager, this certainly felt like they were cutting Darlene out of their lives. It was when those two went off to college that Darlene went really far off the deep end.

7. what was the economic status of their family??

Given the cozy little house the Aldersons lived in, they seemed to be upper-middle class. Edward obviously worked for e-corp for a time and I assume the pay there was decent. There’s no indication that the Aldersons moved somewhere else after he passed away. Perhaps the mortgage was already paid off. Who’s to say. Upper-middle class.

8. how does your character feel about religion??

Darlene hates religion as an organization--Magda was an Evangelical Christian and loved to shove that down her children's throats. Above all, religion was used to shame Darlene, and thus, she despises it, despises that people will blindly follow some invisible being in the sky and be so cruel to others on the basis of what their invisible friend in the sky allegedly tells them. Spiritulaity, she believes, is very individualized, and if people get some comfort from it, then good for them.

9. what about political beliefs??

Tag walls, punch fascists, eat the rich, fuck the GOP, ACAB, BLM, etc. etc. Money is the invisible hand puppeteering all of our politicians and influences just about everything. She’s one whole entire lef.tist-social.ist-anarchist. Next question.

10. is your character street-smart, book-smart, intelligent, intellectual, slow-witted??

Darlene is definitely street-smart. She has to be, given her lifestyle. She’s a hacker and a con-artist--she has to be a smooth talker and she has to know her way around. She’s a pick-pocket, a lock picker, a smooth talker. She’s incredibly intelligent and quick-witted. Look at everything she’s accomplished!! She took down the most powerful people in the world!! Good for her!! I think Darlene could be book smart if she wanted to be, and I think she is to an extent. She talks about politics freely and clearly knows what she’s talking about when she does discuss them. There’s a certain amount of math involved with coding but she’s definitely not the scholarly type.

11. how do they see themselves: as smart, as intelligent, uneducated??

“I happen to be really smart and good at things.” Yes you are, baby.

12. how does their education and intelligence – or lack thereof - reflect in their speech pattern, vocabulary, and pronunciations??

Darlene speaks very casually. She’s not peppering all these flowy, prosy words into her daily vocabulary, and god knows this woman has some colorful language and is an artist in profanity. She doesn’t speak like someone who’s uneducated nor someone who is educated. She says what’s on her mind. She is quite articulate and she can have quite the silver tongue when the situation calls for it. She scripted a handful of fsociety’s videos and completely adlibbed one in the span of ten minutes, for fucks sake.

13. did they like school?? teachers?? schoolmates??

Darlene only enjoyed school when it was an excuse to get out her house. As I previously mentioned, Darlene was always kind of the loud, weird kid that no one really knew what to do with. She liked to be around her schoolmates but she didn’t like to get too close to them. Her teachers were fine. Her schoolmates were fine. None of them were influential enough for her to remember particularly well.

14. were they involved at school?? sports?? clubs?? debate?? were they unconnected??

Darlene was largely disconnected from school. She showed up often enough to pass her classes and graduate. Her after school activities consisted of ballet and getting high with others.

15. did they graduate?? high-school?? college?? do they have a PHD?? a GED??

She did graduate from high school. She completed exactly one semester of community college when she was nineteen, decided academia was absolutely not calling her name, and promptly dropped out.

16. what does your character do for a living?? how do they see their profession?? what do they like about it?? dislike??

Hacking and con-work. Darlene likes it well enough. She’s dead set on sticking it to the man. It’s also what she’s comfortable with. Darlene doesn’t like staying in one spot or doing one thing for too long. Maybe one day she’ll settle down and do some sort of freelance work--she did have a brief stint with freelance graphic design and she did enjoy doing that. She does desire some sort of stability. WIth how turbulent her life has been thus far, stability isn’t something she’s familiar with or comfortable with. So be gay, do crime.

17. did they travel?? where?? why?? when??

She skipped around the east coast when she was with [ REDACTED ]. That was mostly their decision, though. Running from whoever or whatever. Darlene won’t get into it.

18. what did they find abroad, and what did they remember??

If you ask her, she’ll say nothing. Darlene doesn’t run for the sight seeing. She remembers many nights in shady motel rooms and countless fights with her own personal Humbert followed by her running away from them again until they either found her or she either came back because she had no where else to go. Rinse, lather, repeat. That’s what Darlene saw while she was “abroad.”

19. what were your character’s deepest disillusions?? in life?? what are they now??

That everything would magically be better once she turned eighteen. Darlene was fourteen years old when Elliot and Angela exited stage left. At that point, she had this fantasy that when she turned eighteen, she too would go to college, maybe live with Elliot or Angela again, and everything would go back to the way things were when they were kids. Her brother would be okay. There would be zero strain on their relationship. Elliot would be the same person he was in when he was fourteen / when he was fifteen / when he was sixteen / before he quietly started to remove himself from the home more often and gently distanced himself from Darlene, perhaps for his own sake, because he couldn’t take her with him. That she would be the same person, that she wouldn’t be this jaded, cynical adult who quakes at the thought of someone getting to know her too personally. That Angela would be the same person.

Darlene is pretty grounded in reality. She fantasizes of a better world, certainly, but she did create some change in the world. Is that really disillusionment??

20. what were the most deeply impressive political or social, national or international, events that they experienced??

Repping the entire millennial generation here--Darlene has lived through a number of political catastrophes. 9/11, pandemics, the 2008 recession, and then she helped drive one of the biggest economic downfalls of them all with 5/9.

21. what are your character’s manners like?? what is their type of hero?? whom do they hate??

Darlene is like...make rude gestures at authority figures but tip your barista 20% every time and it’s not the end of the world if you have to wait 10 minutes for your food to come out. That pretty much sums up how she treats other people.

As for the second part of this question...it’s hard to say. She didn’t have a lot of great influences in her life. Her brother, certainly. Pre-canon and during canon, her father, but he has absolutely zero rights now. People who can look injustice in the eye and do something about it. The anarchists and the socialists. She definitely opposes celebrity culture and putting strangers on pedestals based on a public persona. So it’s hard to say.

22. who are their friends?? lovers?? ‘type’ or ‘ideal’ partner??

So Darlene very much needs people around her, because focusing on others is easier than focusing on herself, but when they get too close, she pushes them away. She doesn’t have many “friends”. She has acquaintances. She has people she sees from time to time in the same spaces. I think about the girls at the party she threw at Angela’s old place in 4x1. They’re not really friends, they clearly don’t know each other very well, but they know of each other and seem to hang out with the same circles.

And she doesn’t have the most stable romantic relationships, either. Canonically we see her with Cisco. We know she breaks up with him when he makes her mad and then she goes back to him. She hit him with a fucking baseball bat when he was sending her photos to Dark Army. Before Cisco there was humbert, an awful and traumatic endeavor for her. I adore dom.lene but that wasn’t a relationship, and they both have a lot of their own personal shit to work on before they could even play with the idea of a relationship.

I think Darlene’s ideal partner is someone who can match her intensity but has the ability to bring her down when she’s too intense. Someone who will call her out on her bullshit, but do it gently. Someone who brings out the best sides of her while also embracing her bad sides. Someone patient but firm. That’s a lot to ask for but Darlene is complicated and deeply flawed. At the present time, what Darlene really needs is to take a step back from everyone and focus on herself, because she is incredibly unstable in relationships and that’s simply not fair to the other person.

23. what do they want from a partner?? what do they think and feel of sex??

Again, Darlene doesn’t have the healthiest romantic relationships. She thinks she needs someone to take care of her so that’s what romantic partners are at her beck and call for. She wants someone around but only on her terms. As previously mentioned, what she really needs to do right now is take a step back and focus on herself. Go to therapy and what have you.

She enjoys sex for the most part, though obviously, that’s partner dependent. Her relationship with sex isn’t the healthiest either. It’s often used as a distraction or as a means to get her way.

24. what social groups and activities does your character attend?? what role do they like to play?? what role do they actually play, usually??

For the lack of close friends, Darlene is a social butterfly. She enjoys clubs, parties, hackerspaces, etc. She can often be found in the center of the room dancing with a drink in hand, until she’s completely overwhelmed and screaming at everyone to get out or hiding in an empty room until she calms down. Aside from these spaces, Darlene doesn’t really have any other social groups.

As a sidenote, I thoroughly enjoy that mid-credit scene during the season 3 finale where she apparently just strikes up a conversation with a random sex worker and they have a full blown conversation about politics and money while walking back to Elliot’s apartment. Darlene is very social, she does enjoy talking to people. She simply is not comfortable with people Knowing her.

25. what are their hobbies and interests??

I was joking the other day about how Darlene needs to get more hobbies and I still stand by that. She has ballet, and she still greatly enjoys that. It’s very controlled. It forces her to focus on one thing at a time. She likes that. She’s good at it. She does enjoy gaming to an extent, though she mostly sticks to Nintendo and portable gaming because she’s constantly on the move and simply cannot be expected to carry a PlayStation in her backpack. She would probably jive with some multiplayer online games. She had a brief stint with freelance graphic design and she still enjoys graphic design.

Darlene is big on the classic horror and sci-fi films and media. I do not think she has seen a single movie that has come out since 2005. She likes going to the movies, though. The movie theater was a comfort zone for her at one point and it still is.

26. what does your character’s home look like?? personal taste?? clothing?? hair?? appearance??

Darlene does not have a steady place to live. She couch surfs and crashes at different friend’s places. Thinking about her apartment that she was staying in during season 3 when the FBI had eyes on her, it was...deeply depersonalized. There were no touches of Darlene in there. Even with a semi-stable place to stay, she couldn’t be bothered to decorate the place, add some of her own touches. She left Angela’s apartment as is in season 4. She has zero attachment to the spaces she stays in and treats them as temporary, just like she treats most things in life.

Darlene’s sense of style, though?? Absolutely impeccable. There is so much of Darlene in her clothing, hair, and makeup. She’s got the cool grunge look going on for her. Thrifted clothes that she alters and upcycles, boots for stomping, tastefully wild hair, and dark makeup. Darlene takes great care of her appearance. It’s the one thing she does have, the one aspect of her life that she can control. When everything else is out of her hands, at least she can have kickass winged eyeliner.

27. how do they relate to their appearance?? how do they wear their clothing?? style?? quality??

Literally just said it--Darlene’s appearance is one thing she can control and she puts quite a bit of effort into her appearance. She’s very eclectic with her clothing!! She pulls off so many looks!! I love in 1x2 where she makes a whole outfit out of clothes from Elliot’s closet and it’s probably her most iconic look to date. She rocks that old, musty looking jacket that belonged to Magda. Darlene’s clothing is largely thrifted, partly because fuck fast fashion, partly because she doesn’t have a ton of money, partly because she tends to leave clothes behind when she moves and doesn’t want to waste money on anything crazy expensive when she knows it will likely get lost in one of her many moves. She largely wears dark and neutral colors but we see her in a few bright colors. I, for one, adore that cozy looking colorful sweater she wears after the heist episode. Goes to show how she can pull off pretty much any look.

28. who is your character’s mate?? how do they relate to him or her?? how did they make their choice??

She doesn’t have one. Maybe one day Darlene will settle down but I’ve said it several times already and I will say it many more times, she is taking the time now to focus on herself. She needs to.

29. what is your character’s weaknesses?? hubris?? pride?? controlling??

Yes.

Darlene has a weird dichotomy going on, where she’s both very confident in herself while also constantly seeking validation from others. She knows what she’s doing, she knows what she needs to do, but she thinks she needs approval from others before going forward with it. She is prideful. She is controlling. She desperately needs someone else to tell her it’s okay before she will do something.

30. are they holding on to something in the past?? can he or she forgive??

The great thing about Mr. Robot (2015-2019) is that it says you don’t have to forgive your abusers. You do not owe them shit. Darlene holds onto a ton of resentment for her mother, for humbert, for her father, for many other people who have wronged her. Maybe one day she’ll be able to let go, but she sure as hell doesn’t have to forgive them for what they did and how they treated her.

31. does your character have children?? how do they feel about their parental role?? about the children?? how do the children relate??

Nope, nope, nope, nope.

32. how does your character react to stress situations?? defensively?? aggressively?? evasively??

All of the above. It depends on the situation, who’s involved, and she tends to cycle through all three. In 4x6, I think, whenever Dom has Darlene at gunpoint in the bathtub, I think about how Darlene kind of cycles through defense and aggression and evasion. She screams at Dom, tells her where to stick it, but then she cowers and cries and says, “you don’t have to do this, it’s okay, you don’t have to do this, it’s okay, it’s okay, Dom.” It’s an incredibly interesting cycle to watch. Hell, even clear back in season one, when Vera’s brother and his other goon have Darlene in their clutches. She’s very loud and aggressive until they actually have her, at which point she falls silent. Yet when Janice has her and Dom, she’s pretty openly defiant. Calls Janice a cuntstick and, once again, tells her where to stick it.

33. do they drink?? take drugs?? what about their health??

Haha yeah!! As far as drinking goes, she’s more of a social drinker than anything ( although her little flask in season one absolutely kills me, what a legend--we don’t see her drink in private after that, though ). She does use party drugs ( ecstasy, acid, etc. ) but again, only socially. I don’t think she’s dependent on cocaine in the same way Sam / the Mastermind was dependent on opiates, but it seems to be her drug of choice. She’s strung out on it a few times through the series. She likes to smoke weed, and she’s a heavy cigarette smoker.

Despite all this, Darlene’s health is weirdly pretty stable. She has awful sleeping habits and nutritional habits. She smokes cigarettes like her life depends on it. She’s definitely at least a little underweight and could stand to gain a few pounds. She catches an occasional cold and she’s maybe had the flu two or three times during her life. She doesn’t have any chronic conditions though.

34. does your character feel self-righteous?? revengeful?? contemptuous??

She sure does!! When Trenton said, “You want momentary anarchy,” she was 100% correct. Darlene is incredibly vengeful and contemptuous. Her entire reason behind fsociety and 5/9 was to get revenge on the people who killed her dad and therefore made her life a living hell. She specifically sought out Susan Jacobs’ home because Susan Jacobs was the lawyer who destroyed her family’s case against e-corp. There’s another meta here somewhere about the absolute whirlwind of emotions Darlene goes through when she learns about what an absolute scumball Edward Alderson actually was but the fact of the matter is, it was retribution for his death that she initially wanted and that’s what drove initially drove her.

35. do they always rationalize errors?? how do they accept disasters and failures??

Yes. For her sake, I think she has to. She would absolutely spiral if she couldn’t rationalize errors. Again, Darlene doesn’t have a ton of control in the things in her life, and she has to be able to rationalize that.

When thinking about the second part of this question, I think about the buildings blowing up, and I think about Elliot’s reaction to that vs. Angela’s reaction to that vs. Darlene’s reaction, or rather her lack of reaction, to that. Elliot and Angela were absolutely broken up over it and Darlene was...not. This is a revolution and sometimes people die and it’s for the greater good. It’s not ideal, but shit happens.

36. do they like to suffer?? like to see other people suffering??

Hell no, but she doesn’t really know any other way of living. She’s not always having fun but she doesn’t know what else to do with herself.

Darlene does not like to see other people suffer. That’s precisely why she brought down ecorp, Whiterose, and the Deus group. Humanity doesn’t deserve to live in the shadows of evil rich corporations and to be controlled by a handful of the most powerful people alive. Darlene enjoys seeing those people suffer. Lowkey she had a blast fucking over Susan Jacobs the way she did. She straight up said so to Susan Jacobs’ face.

37. how is your character’s imagination?? daydreaming a lot?? worried most of the time?? living in memories??

Darlene is clearly very creative and quick-witted, which leads me to believe she does do a lot of daydreaming. She has the drive to make those daydreams a reality, though. She desires a better world for herself and for other people, so what does she do?? Co-founds a hacktivist group, crashes the economy, and then doxxes and redistributes the wealth of the most powerful people on the planet. With that being said, she is very grounded and present. She does have one foot in the past, but most of her energy is in the now.

38. are they basically negative when facing new things?? suspicious?? hostile?? scared?? enthusiastic??

Once again, for her own sake, she has to be enthusiastic about change. Darlene’s life is constantly in motion. She’s constantly on the move, jumping from one thing to the next. Things aren’t working in the world, things need to change with the world. For as cynical as she is, Darlene does enjoy experiencing new things and she is often hopeful that things will be better this time around.

39. what do they like to ridicule?? what do they find stupid??

Anything, everything, most things. She’s mean. Big April Ludgate energy over here, honestly. Darlene never hesitates at the opportunity to absolutely decimate someone or something.

40. how is their sense of humor?? do they have one??

Very dry and deadpan and sarcastic. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when she’s joking or being serious. She’s always saying something about eating the rich and guillotining the president and she’s both joking and being very serious. I have absolutely referenced this tik tok before, spammed everyone I know with it, and I will post it again because it is pretty much PEAK Darlene’s sense of humor. She absolutely has a spoof twitter account where she just @ Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Zuckie 24/7, I do not make the rules.

41. is your character aware of who they are?? strengths?? weaknesses?? idiosyncrasies?? capable of self-irony??

Darlene has a lot of self-awareness but she lacks the ability to make much change. She knows what her strengths are and she knows what her weaknesses are. She’s confident, but she’s prideful. She’s very sure of herself, but she craves validation from others. She makes jokes about all of her psychological dysfunction but she has very little insight into how off the rails she actually is. She knows she’s a bitch but she doesn’t care and she will remain that way, thank you very much.

42. what does your character want most?? what do they need really badly, compulsively?? what are they willing to do, to sacrifice, to obtain??

It’s hard to say what she wants most. I do think Darlene craves stability. She’s not a stable person in really any sense of the word. At the same time, she enjoys the freedom of drifting from one place to the next. I think she wants a balance of that. The ability to do as she pleases while maintaining relationships with the people she loves. She’s only barely figuring out what she needs to do to obtain that. Therapy, for one, and actively working on her own shit, actively utilizing whatever coping mechanisms she’s taught, actively making changes to her lifestyle. She’ll eventually fall back into her ways of petty crime because she enjoys it and would rather perish than work for the man. But she wants to be able to do so without compromising her relationships anymore.

43. does your character have any secrets?? if so, are they holding them back??

Darlene keeps most things in her life a secret from others. You don’t ask, she doesn’t tell. Even if you do ask, she might not tell. It might not be as surfaced as Elliot, but Darlene is fairly paranoid herself and reveals very little about herself to others. She doesn’t own any credit cards and aside from her SSN and a driver's license, there’s little documented information on Darlene. Lord knows she’ll try and wipe her information from whatever database the FBI has.

44. how badly do they want to obtain their life objectives?? how do they pursue them??

She doesn’t have any life objectives, really. Traumatized individuals have difficulty comprehending the future and Darlene is certainly one of those people. She can’t make herself see anything more than a few weeks into the future because who knows where she’ll be in the next hour?? She very much lives in the present and takes things one day at a time. She doesn’t plan for the future, she doesn’t have any life objectives. Whatever happens happens and she doesn’t necessarily like that but again, she can’t make herself future trip.

45. is your character pragmatic?? think first?? responsible?? all action?? a visionary?? passionate?? quixotic??

Pragmatic, visionary, and passionate, yes, very much so. Think first, sometimes--there is a lot of thought, tact, and planning that has to go into programming and con work, but one has to be prepared for everything to wrong at the same time. All action?? Absolutely!! Responsible?? Fuck no. Quixotic, from time to time. Darlene’s a thinker and then she runs with what she has.

46. is your character tall?? short?? what about size?? weight?? posture?? how do they feel about their physical body??

Darlene is 5′5″ and weighs in at about 125 lbs. Average height but somewhat underweight. She’s quite petite and thin--if she wraps her hand around her wrist, she can touch her thumb to her pinky. She doesn’t have a lot of curves. She definitely has the posture of a ballerina. She holds herself very upright and the way she walks is very calculated. Her feet turn outwards slightly when she’s standing and when she walks, her steps are nearly parallel to each other.

47. do they want to project an image of a younger, older, more important person?? does they want to be visible or invisible??

I wouldn’t say Darlene wants to project an image as being younger or older or more important. She definitely wants to come off as powerful and intelligent. Frankly, she achieves that. But she does like to remain anonymous. She doesn’t need people knowing what she’s all about. She’s fine with being underestimated because it means people are in for an even ruder surprise when she completely destroys them, and she gets a lot of satisfaction from that.

48. how are your character’s gestures?? vigorous?? weak?? controlled?? compulsive?? energetic?? sluggish?

Definitely very energetic and grand, often times erring on the side of aggressive. That’s simply a condition of Darlene’s existence.

49. what about voice?? pitch?? strength?? tempo and rhythm of speech?? pronunciation?? accent??

Darlene is loud as fuck and good for her, honestly. She has very little volume control. Her voice can be shrill and it has the tendency to break when she’s overwhelmed or excited. She has a bit of that smoker's rasp, too. Her tempo is very controlled, though. She speaks at a pretty average pace, though she slows her speech when she’s being deliberate. There isn’t much to say in terms of an accent, though I still think it would be hilarious if she had a strong Jersey accent. There’s a lot of emotion in her voice and it fluctuates greatly.

50. what are the prevailing facial expressions?? sour?? cheerful?? dominating??

For as much as she emotes in the way she speaks, Darlene’s facial expressions are rather constricted, which is very interesting. She has a chronic case of resting bitch face and her facial expressions are rather subtle.

#Good GOD #┆❛ OUTGOING. / answered.rar #┆❛ SHE SAYS YOU DON’T WANT TO BE LIKE ME. / abt.doc #consequntial #y'all better read every single one of these this took forever #also u can tell i said massive 'fuck it' around question 45 and gave up

2 notes · View notes

once-and-future-alaskan · 4 years

Text

The Elder Scrolls is a series that I find incredibly frustrating for lore reasons. Not in a Fallout way where it’s because it’s being actively butchered and certainly not because I find it uninteresting. Quite the contrary! Elder Scrolls lore is full to bursting with incredibly interesting and unique Ideas. There are tons and tons of absolutely wild parts that were literally written by people high off their asses to fantastic results.

My frustration is that it’s just too fucking well defined.

Literally everyone worships the same gods across the entire continent, there are no other religions worth mentioning. All the gods are real, from Deadra to Aedra we have fundamental proof they are. Space is just an abstraction for the mortal mind to comprehend the fact that it’s staring at literal hell. The planets and moons are the actual corpses/plains of the Aedra. The sun and the stars aren’t actually a thing, they’re just tears in Oblivion created when a group of deities ran away from Mundus to Aetherius.

How do we know this all for a fact? Oh because like 3000 years ago the first empire had fucking astronauts who went up there and confirmed that, yeah, everything’s exactly what they thought it was.

and that is so fucking boring.

Not to mention all the other instances of direct interference by the Aedra and Daedra in the games themselves. Can you imagine if we didn’t have 100% undeniable proof? If it was like an actual religion where you just had to go on faith that yeah, you aren’t just praying to nothing.

Or maybe you keep the Daedra, because they’re genuinely pretty interesting for the most part, but never prove the Aedra. Maybe you leave that lingering doubt that the Aedra are just something people made up to believe there’s something else out there that wants to protect them from the dark. Instead of just using religion as set dressing or plot devices, you could actually make the historical issues inherent to religions the focus. The conflicting interpretations, the competing belief systems, the violence against non believers.

Dragon Age Inquisition had a fucking terrible plot and a pretty uninteresting antagonist, but there is one thing about him that stood out to me. His main motivator is that he committed a big religious no no and tried to go to the city of the gods like 1000 years ago and when he got there he found it empty before he was cast down or whatever. That created an interesting motivator for him, the man of faith who’s confronted with undeniable proof his gods are false.

Situations like that just straight up aren’t possible in the Elder Scrolls though which is part of what bothers me about it.

Honestly my biggest gripe is that the night sky is somehow so much less interesting when you know it’s not actually real space. It’d have so much more potential if they didn’t have any actual basis to say the planets are the gods and it was just like actual ancient religions where they’re just trying to explain the world around them with myth.

Can you imagine if they set a story in a hypothetical future Tamriel where they didn’t truly know? One where science has advanced enough to go to space and everyone thinks they’ll come face to face with the gods or something but instead, every planet they go too is just a barren and desolate rock or giant ball of gas. The sun isn’t some big ass tear but just a burning fire ball in a void. There are no planes of oblivion, just inky blackness. The crisis of faith that would put the characters through could be fascinating! The idea that everything they knew their whole lives is wrong could create for excellent characterization. It’d be a revelation that’d shake their civilization to its core!

But nothing like that can ever happen in TES without pissing off neckbeards and loreophiles.

Honestly my real point here is that I feel like stating all your gods are real in your text is ultimately incredibly limiting. There isn’t much you can do with that other than grand prophecies and great crises, It just feels like a lot of wasted material.

#The Elder Scrolls #tes #Skyrim #long post #idk who this post is even for it's just something that's been bothering me for years now.#i remember when i first started playing skyrim and I was looking up at it's night sky and thinking #''i wonder what space is like in this setting?''#and then finding out it's some convoluted fantasy thing just making it feel so much lamer and so much more hollow #also don't interpret this as some bizarre atheist rant about how gods bad #I'm just kinda tired of fantasy relegating religions to the background or focusing on it's version of I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Catholicism!#like #religion was so stupidly important in the actual period fantasy draws from it’s insane #it was omnipresent and a defining part of life #so for it to almost universally just be lore is ridiculous and u feel like a lot of the problem lies in things like this #stating ''god real'' in the text kinda defeats the whole point?

1 note · View note

steve0discusses · 5 years

Text

Yugioh S3 Ep 19: Seto and Mokuba are Turned Into Inanimate Objects...Again

Last we left off on the world’s most awkward family reunion, Moki was being used to take advantage of Seto again, which happens at least 2 times a season.

What’s kind of wild about this, is that everyone jumps to the conclusion that Seto is absolutely going to murder his little brother. Seto. The guy who 2 seasons ago was willing to absolutely jump off a ledge for his little brother.

And then suddenly, Duke makes his feelings known about just life in general at this point.

Duke in the background just spiraling deeper and deeper into his IDGAF apathy. And to be honest, Duke might not be fully aware of who Mokuba even is. It’s not like they’ve ever had a conversation, other than maybe “ah, you work for Pegasus, he locked me in a tower for weeks and then killed me by turning me into a little paper card and then tried to seize control of my company. Nice. Nice that he isn’t in jail.”

In fact, since Duke does work with Pegasus who probably is still doing his best to compete with/work with the Kaiba business...Duke actually has a lot to gain, business wise, by killing Mokuba. Like, I’m pretty sure Duke isn’t a mole but he could be. He has...a lot of motive, actually.

If bro hadn’t straight up told me that Duke isn’t a mole like I suspected, than I’d still be waiting for that other shoe to drop. But it won’t. A shame.

Anyways this shows up:

All I’m saying is that a black hole is an astronomical region in space and a dark hole is very often a butthole, but youknow...maybe that’s just a very particular English language thing that no one will ever teach you from a textbook and it just didn’t quite get translated over correctly. But yeah, in my eye, Noah's just up there holding up a sphincter. It’s very fitting, he is an asshole. Congrats, Noah Kaiba, you’ve found your card.

Meanwhile, Yugi is doing his very best to try and backseat, even if Kaiba instinctively slaps it out of his hands at every opportunity.

So I figured that he’d mention that both of these boys carry these card lockets around their necks with a little picture of the other brother inside--a little thing they carry for no other reason than to remember eachother. Which makes sense, because Kaiba forgets things SO OFTEN. The necklace around their necks is almost like those bracelets you wear to let police and medics know if you’re prone to narcolepsy--it even has a nice picture inside to indicate “please return this boy to this pictured person in case you find him wandering about completely lost.”

I kinda figured that necklace would be used at some point but nah, we’re gonna talk about cards. Which is fine, because we get to see this good drawing Mokuba made once.

Which, PS, it was sort of hard to pick up on the first time Kaiba talked about this period of his life, but this time when he talked about this incident it like...left quite a bit highly implied there by what Seto meant when he said Mokuba “saved me.” It’s some pretty heavy stuff that kind of gets blown over by the massive magic dragon that shows up in the next scene and then just flies Mokuba, who is wearing very cute fuzzy socks, up into the sky and into the moon like ET.

Nowadays they do this by hanging off of Helicopters, but flying on dangerous things to escape their horrible childhood has been their Fantasy for a very long time. These kids and their obsession with heights and dangerous ledges.

And apparently it was this moment in his youth that Seto decided he wanted to be “worthy enough to hold a Blue Eyes.” And like...I remember S1 Seto. That was the worthy Seto?

I guess “worthy enough” doesn’t really imply any sort of moral code, just if you have enough money and can like play cards pretty OK.

Anyways, it was a lot of new stuff applied to this card that I just only recently accepted as a GF and so it was like “All right show, I see what you’re doing, I guess we’re going to walk slowly out of the paper romance realm and into...some sort of card-honor brother realm.”

So, using the Blue Eyes, Kaiba destroys a bunch of Gradius ships, which Noah was like “These Gradius ships represent our Father’s company!” in case you’re a child and didn’t see the symbolism. And, along the way, he destroys what he thinks is Noah’s Game Master card but like...it’s this show, so apparently inside the Boat was another dude and the game is going to keep on going, fml.

Ah buckle up this...this is going to be a long one. This is going to be a lot more cards, huh?

Anyway, when I saw this card that is clearly based on a couple of Gods I was like “so um...isn’t that a...God card?” so I looked it up, also because it was BS and I was frustrated that it was even here after the boat thing ended, and this card is a...get this...a Fairy card.

Cuz it has wings? Like a Seraphim? Everything about this looks like a conglomeration of different Gods but--I guess since God Cards can only have the 4 God Cards, this is a...Fairy card. Interesting. That is a huge ass Fairy. Yugioh biology really eludes me.

Anyway, First thing Noah does as a fairy is destroy his younger brother who is also older than him, don’tthinkaboutit. He’s again sporting the poorly photoshopped glowing romper that the dub gave us in order to spare us.

Hey!

Question!

So when Noah’s wearing the game Master outfit, he’s ass naked underneath--but the Big 5 weren’t? Like wouldn’t the Big 5 have had the same issue of Noah here where they have no body, so whatever they’re wearing is just whatever they’re in?

Meaning that when they were all shoved in Tristan’s body wouldn’t they have just been 5 naked fat old guys hanging out like a European sauna?

Or is this just Noah’s preference? To be ass naked when no one’s looking? Because he’s been here all alone for 6 years, so why the hell not? Like, no one cares. No one’s looking. You can’t get splinters or whatever. Just let it all hang loose, man, it’s not even a real body.

Like, if you look closely, Noah only has ... one outfit he’s had here for 6 years. I’ve noticed this maybe more than most because...it’s not a great outfit. He had that same suit and shorts combo right after he woke up and got out of his jammies from the accident all those years ago. He also wore a space suit once, but that was a Birthday present from Dad and I haven't seen the suit since.

Did Noah recognize that People Are Coming and was like “oh dammit, dammit, I have to cover the goods” and just throw on literally the only thing in his closet? The office shorts combo from 6 years ago? Is that why? Is that the big secret of the baby boy suit shorts? That he, in reality, never really wears them?

Questions about nudity aside, out of freakin no where Noah just turns the Kaibas into this:

Noah spent like 20 episodes saying no one is ever allowed to cheat and then just flippin does this and is like “What? It’s almost legal enough.”

I mean, it’s not like there’s any official rules for Duel Monsters anyway but apparently you can just turn each other into statuary and it’s like...fine. That’s fine.

Also, fun fact, about Yugioh statues, they come with eyeliner built in.

So much dedication to the guyliner in this show, mad respect.

And yes, I have sort of thought that Moki’s been sporting a teeny tiny Adam Lambert line this whole time. Like most our cast, honestly. But not Joey. I feel like Joey would never have the patience to learn how to waterline.

I mean the Kaiba’s are essentially brain dead, yes? Their brain functions have been removed and uploaded to the cloud to never be downloaded back into their vegetable bodies? That counts enough for me.

Seto Kaiba just 2 corpses away from 169ing the Hell out of that death scene. A shame.

Bro was like “well at least this crying statue stuff is more like something that normally happens in a kid’s show.” and I was like “THIS? So this ever happened in Pokemon?” and bro was like “It did actually, Ash Ketchum was turned into stone and then cried as a rock statue, and then Pikachu hugged him to make him all better” And as you may be aware my bro is full of spicy headcanons so I’m not sure if that’s actually true but it was like

“Bro, was Ash Ketchum ever turned to stone because his abusive Father’s secret son, who has been turned into an evil computer, wants to kill his brother and then take over his body to run the Patriots from Metal Gear? That happened on Pokemon?” And Bro admitted “Ok, maybe not so much.”

Anyway, Pharaoh awakens to put a stop to this nonsense by bringing up the long list of things that Noah did just now that is absolutely cheating.

Anyway, this is Noah now.

He’s just this...huge 100 story tall person with very bored judgy eyes just floating in the sky with vaguely religious iconography going on and bunch of wings like that one character design that we all have in our portfolio. Yeah, you know the one. It’s this guy. We’ve all drawn this guy. Anyway, it’s going to be very hard to take him seriously when this guy has Noah’s voice.

Again, he is not, he is ass naked in there, though the dub did try and cover it up.

Anyway, next episode we get to basically start this entire duel over.

That’s nice. That’s nice of them to do to me. At least these kids finally got a chance to do some duel prep for the actual tourney they’re supposed to be doing later this season. Yeah. Remember that apocalypse? That’s still going on somehow. Maybe by the time they’ll get to it, most of the competitors will be dead?

Here’s a link to read the recaps in order from S1 Ep1

#yugioh #yu gi oh #episode recap #photo recap #S3 Ep19 #tw suicide #seto kaiba #noah kaiba #yugi muto #joey wheeler #duke devlin #Noah is now a giant 6 winged angel #The Kaibas are rock statues #unfortunately this time they are in a much harder to transport state #you can't put a statue into your pants pocket so rip

28 notes · View notes