#my fanfics
Thank you @keykidpilipili for suggesting the name!
Prologue: Dive to the Heart
Weiss stared down the Arma Gigas. She readied Myrtenaster, rotating the Dust Chambers to prepare an Ice Glyph to ensnare and shatter the armored Grimm. Except she was out of Ice Dust. Perhaps she could melt the armor? She was out of Fire Dust. Create a barrier to deflect it’s next attack and disarm it? Out of Hard Light Dust. Perhaps a Gravity Glyph to trap the sword and propel it through the Armor? Out of Gravity Dust. Weiss’ breath became more and more frenzied as she realized that all of the Dust Chambers were empty. That’s when she noticed the Arma Gigas raising its sword to strike. She moved Myrtenaster to parry, only to realize she was no longer holding the weapon. She jumped back right as the sword dropped, the room shattering to reveal a dark void. The Schnee heiress screamed as she plummeted into the darkness.
Weiss pushed herself to her feet, noticing very quickly that she was in the middle of a featureless dark expanse, a bright light shining above but failing to illuminate anything.
“Just one normal day, it’s all I ask,” she grumbled as she processed the impossibility of her current scenario. She took a step forward, and a flock of birds flew out of the darkness beneath the heiress’ feet. Weiss shrieked and jumped to try and avoid the birds flying out of the ground, until they cleared away to reveal that she was now standing on top of a green and yellow stained glass platform. It depicted a pale-skinned woman in a blue and yellow dress, seven faces surrounding her in circles, the outer ring depicting woodland animals and an older woman.
So much to do, so little time, a voice announced, Take your time. Don’t be afraid.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Weiss asked.
The door is still shut, the voice replied, Now step forward. Can you do it?
Weiss rolled her eyes and walked into the center of the platform, prompting three podiums to rise out of the ground.
Power sleeps within you. A shield materialized on one.
If you give it form… A staff materialized on another.
… It will give you strength. A sword materialized on the last.
Choose carefully, the voice concluded.
“Choose carefully?” Weiss questioned, “Why can’t I just haveMyrtenasterback?”
The voice didn’t respond.
Tagged by @thepurplewriter333. Thanks Purple! <3
Rules: Post the last sentence in your current WIP, then tag your fellow writers.
Astrid shouted in frustration, swinging her axe into the deck of the sinking ship. It embedded itself in the wood with a dull crack. “He’s not here!”
Tags:@fanwriter02@animalsarepeople2@evilwriter37@elenathehyperactivefangirl14@funkytoes
Here, have a belated Happy Birthday Fic! I’m so sorry this took so long to get done, and it’s only part one of two, but I wish you a most excellent birthday and an awesome year.
Love ya, little lava sis! Happy Birthday!!!!
Anyway, without further ado ~
Lingering in the Ocean Blue, ~or~, Link and Sheik’s Excellent Adventure
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Part One
It had seemed like such a good idea. Sheik was overworked and exhausted, a day off was necessary, and Wind’s suggestion had seemed so reasonable. And now, here they were: together on Epona, with Sheik’s arms around his waist, and was it just him or did the temperature rise all of a sudden?
There was, of course, one pair of shoulders upon which Link could squarely lay the blame.
Dangit, Wind.
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He’d been noticing something amiss for weeks. For one, he’d barely seen Sheik at all. When he did see her, she was dragging herself into camp at odd hours of the day or night, shoulders drooping and gait one of exhausted stubbornness. Sometimes she’d stop by to drop an article of clothing into his lap for him to mend, and then collapse in a heap by the side of his tent to wait.
If he asked what was going on, all she’d do was bite off the word “Missions”, before promptly dropping her head onto her knees and falling asleep.
Link wasn’t the only one who noticed. Wind watched her stumble past with narrowed eyes, and Mask hovered in a grumpy fashion whenever she stopped by the tent, sitting close by and sneaking glances. That, or he and Proxi would come running to get Link whenever they found Sheik passed out in a tree or a wheelbarrow or something.
With every instance that passed, Link’s mounting concern grew, but the final straw came at breakfast one morning. Sheik had appeared at their fire, every muscle sagging with exhaustion, and dropped one of her shirts into Link’s lap. She then proceeded to sternly herd Wind and Mask away from the breakfast stew they were torturing and set about making it edible.
There was some protest from all parties, insisting Sheik sit down and rest, but the sheikah was insistent.
Link opened his mouth, paused when Sheik sent him a narrow red glare over the stewpot, and resumed his mending.
He was in the middle of frowning over the placement of the cut (rather too close to vital spots for his liking) when Proxi let out a cry of warning. Link glanced up, leapt to his feet, and managed to catch Sheik just before she toppled face-first in the stew pot. So there he was, arms full of the woman he maybe-possibily-we-shan’t-discuss-it had feelings for. Mask and Wind had leapt to their feet at the cry of alarm, and Proxi had grabbed onto Sheik’s braid in an attempt to help… but the fact remained that if Link hadn’t gotten there in time… she’d be severely scalded, if not worse.
And what would happen if this occurred again? Sometime when he wasn’tthere?
“What’s wrong?” He demanded, a tight band squeezing around his chest—squeezing all the tighter when Sheik didn’t answer him. He glanced down—only to find Sheik’s face squished against his arm, eyes closed and features relaxed.
Proxi dropped Sheik’s braid and fluttered closer, spinning circles around Sheik’s head. “Is she asleep?”
“Seems like it.” Link sighed, shifting his grip, making sure Sheik was propped more securely in his arms. “Mask, Wind, can you get my bedroll from inside the tent?”
“Aye, aye, Captain!” Wind snapped a salute, and he and Mask disappeared into the tent, rushing back out a minute later with arms full of bedding and blankets. Wind snapped out the mat and Mask dropped the thin pillow at the top, then both scurried back so Link could carefully set Sheik down and arrange the blanket over her. She was situated nearby but not too close to the fire, snugly wrapped in Link’s blanket and dozing away on his pillow.
His heart was acting funny again, but this was not the time.
He took a step back, running a hand through his hair as he turned back to the stewpot, frowning down at it as he poked it with the wooden spoon. Hopefully it was far enough along that he could finish the rest without irreparably ruining it.
There was a long moment of silence as everyone processed what had just happened. Finally, Link sighed again, looking up from the stewpot towards his informal information network. The three of them (Wind, Mask, and Proxi) ran wild all over the camp and were often privy to a vast amount of gossip, some useful and some not.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on with Sheik, lately?”
Mask and Wind exchanged glances, while Proxi bobbed nervously. Mask was the first to make a move, poking at the dirt with a stick. A distant part of Link warmed with amusement and fondness when he noticed Mask had chosen to situate himself right by Sheik’s head—and Wind was sitting at her feet.
It seemed Sheik had two faithful guardians watching over her as she slept.
“…she… she told me that she knows Impa doesn’t trust her.” Mask’s voice was quiet, a scowl on his face, and he aggressively jabbed at the dirt with his stick.
Wind and the Captain exchanged grim looks. “She’s trying to prove herself.” Wind said quietly.
Link felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest give an extra twist. He glanced over at the Sheikah—she laid limp on his bedroll, the slump of exhaustion draping her limbs even in sleep, preventing any restlessness.
“This can’t go on.” Link said, his voice firm with determination. She needs to rest.”
“Try telling her that.” Mask grumbled.
Link grinned back. “That’s the plan, so wish me luck.”
Wind hummed thoughtfully, fiddling with his wind waker. “If we want her to relax, we’re going to need to get her out of camp. Otherwise you knowshe’ll leap at the first opportunity to take a mission that she hears.”
Link ran his fingers through his bangs, huffing out a breath. “Fair point, but what on earth can we do to get her out of camp?”
There was a brief moment of silence.
“Hot springs.” Mask suddenly piped up.
Both older heroes turned to face him, eyebrows raised.
“What?” his shoulders hunched. “Those are supposed to be relaxing, right? And we’re near Death Mountain. There should be some nearby, right?”
“Hot springs are pretty relaxing,” Link acknowledged, and shot Mask a proud smile. “Good idea.”
Mask ducked his head, muttering something under his breath. Proxi, who was currently perched on his shoulder, heard everything, however, and her wings quivered with amusement.
“The question is, how on earth do we get Sheik to a hotspring?” Link mused, frowning down at the soup as he stirred.
Wind paused mid-twirl of his baton, a smirk flashing across his face before he wiped it away with the speed of his namesake. He cleared his throat, then said, his voice calm and casual. “You could go with her.”
Link nearly dropped the spoon into their breakfast. “What?’”
“Don’t give me that,” Wind sniffed. “There’s nothing wrong with hanging out at the hot spring with a friend.” He raised a challenging eyebrow at the Captain. “And you and Sheik are just friends, right?”
Link opened his mouth. He closed it.
He resumed stirring the soup with a vengeance.
“Yes. We are.” The words were bitten out through gritted teeth.
Wind smirked.
Mask looked very, very lost.
“Anyway,” Wind said, “You’re still recovering some from a couple days ago, right?”
Link’s hand moved to touch his side, head dipping in a nod. He’d caught a glancing blow from a moblin’s spear. He’d managed to half-deflect it with his sword, and his chain mail had held, but his right side had been one massive bruise. Fortunately (or unfortunately), it was a minor enough injury that the medics had prescribed rest in order to save potions for the more grievously wounded.
“Then,” the sailor grinned, “it’s you going to the hot springs to accelerate your healing, and we’ll ask Sheik to come along to watch your back.”
The Captain blinked. “That… that might actually work.” He glanced down at the soup and gave it a sniff. No smoke, so it was probably good. He withdrew the spoon, tapped it against the side of the pot, propped it against the rock, and stood. He clapped his hands once. Wind and Mask snapped to attention, and Link propped his hands on his hips and surveyed his men with a thoughtful eye.
“I’m going to request a day’s leave of absence from General Impa. Wind and Mask, watch over Sheik. If she wakes up before I get back, fill her in, and ask her to gather some spare clothes she doesn’t mind getting wet.”
Wind casually snapped a salute, but Wind frowned. “So what are we supposed to do until then? Just sit and wait?”
Link beamed at him. “Excellent question!”
Mask shrunk back suspiciously, suspecting he had walked into a trap. He was right.
“While you’re waiting, why don’t you fix up something for us to bring along and eat, since we’ll be gone until late.” The Captain arched an eyebrow. “I’m sure between the two of you you can manage something simple.”
Mask puffed up at the affront to his skills. Wind muttered something along the lines of “I wouldn’t be too sure.”
It was good enough, however, so Link nodded. “Right. That’s all, so I’ll be off now.”
He cast a glance at Sheik. She was still firmly sunk in sleep, eyes clothed and breaths deep… and yet despite the fact she had a guardian seated on either side of her in the form of Mask and Wind… she looked lonely, somehow. Lonely and weary and sad.
He chewed his lip for a moment, lifted his chin, and strode over to her side. In a swift movement his scarf was unwound from his shoulders, and he gently draped it over Sheik’s shoulders. He paused, waiting to see if she was disturbed—but she slept on, the rhythm of her breath unchanging.
He let out an amused breath—she must really be tired—and tucked the scarf and blanket about her a little more firmly.
When he looked up, Wind was smirking at him. Link was a mature adult, however, so he stuck his nose to the air and turned away, reaching out and managing to ruffle Mask’s hair before the sprite’s affection-senses tingled and prompted him to duck.
Then Link swung to his feet, and strode off in the direction of Impa’s tent.
Wind and Mask, back in front of their own tent, looked at each other in silence.
“Sandwiches.” Wind said finally. “We’ll make sandwiches. You can’t mess up sandwiches.”
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It took a little bit of convincing, but eventually Impa caved, as long as it was restricted to one day of leave from camp.
Mentioning the combined wrath of Mask and Wind that would result if Sheik didn’t get her time off did wonders for the negotiations.
He returned to his tent to find Sheik awake and looking slightly bewildered, holding a small bundle of clothes and towels. Wind was holding a packed knapsack, and Mask was holding Epona’s reins.
Fi was also there, oddly enough. Link cast a swiftly glance around the area, but nothing seemed to be damaged, so he brushed it off.
“I got permission.” The captain said, grinning in thanks when Sheik pushed his folded scarf into his hands. Sheik didn’t seem to notice the grin, as she was determinedly looking the other way.
She cleared her throat. “Good. I’m glad you’re going to be able to give your body a chance to heal a little.”
“Well,I’m glad you agreed to keep me company. I’ll feel a lot better with you there to watch my back,” …and to give your own body a chance to rest, but that part was better left unsaid.
Her only response was a nod, but there was a faintest tinge of red crawling above her mask. Link’s heart stuttered unsteadily. In order to stave off dwelling on that, Link hastily turned and said hello to Epona.
Epona said hello back enthusiastically, letting out a billow of horsey breath and nosing at his hair. He could never quite tell if her sniffing his hair was out of affection or out of the hope that it was straw, but he chose to believe the former.
“Good to see you too, girl,” He murmured, and turned to Mask, cocking a brow. “Where’s Sheik’s horse?”
“I don’t have one.” Sheik said. Wind beamed a sunny smile at the captain.
“We thought that Sheik could just ride with you, instead.”
That sounded like an excellent plan, especially because it would save Link the time of having to go back and request an already-irritated Impa for a horse. In short order, Sheik’s bundle and the knapsack were firmly affixed to Epona’s saddle, and Link was astride his horse, pulling the sheikah up behind him.
She settled into the saddle, her arms wrapping around his chest in order to stabilize herself.
All of a sudden, Link realized just how close she was.
Had the sun just come out from behind a cloud, he wondered distantly, because the air seemed a lot warmer suddenly.
“Well?” Sheik said, and Link nearly jumped, not expecting her voice close to his ear. There was a part of him that was appreciating the sound; the rest was running about, routed, panicking, and leaderless.
In other words, he was paralyzed with embarrassment.
In the storm of his confusion, Wind’s eyes caught his.
The sailor was staring at Link, arms folded, a smirk on his face, and everything suddenly became clear to Link in one brilliant blaze of realization.
Wind had set him up.
Thankfully, this was enough to shake Link out of his confusion. He firmed his grip on the reigns and cleared his throat. “All right, let’s be off!”
“I wish you a restful trip, Master Link,” Fi intoned, and Link barely managed to bite down the hysterical laughter that wanted to escape. He resorted to nodding instead.
Then, with a touch of his heel, he pointedly turned Epona away from Wind’s smug face and trotted off towards Death Mountain, trying very hard not to think about how close Sheik was right now.
Wind, Mask, Fi, and Proxi watched them go.
“There is a 98% chance you are planning something, Master Wind,” Fi said pointedly.
“Yep!” Wind stretched an arm above his head, grinning in satisfaction. “I’m hoping that with the atmosphere being “romantic” and all that they’ll be forced to stop being so freaking oblivious.”
Mask shot him a look, confused. “What’s that supposed to mean? What are they gonna do?”
“Hmm.” Wind hummed thoughtfully. “Dunno. Kissyface, I hope.”
The sprite’s face twisted in a grimace “…Gross.”
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.
.
.
On the Subject of Sandwiches
“We have bread. We have cheese wedges. We’ll slice the wedges thinner and make toasted cheese sandwiches for theme. It’ll be easy!” Wind announced, and so he and Mask did just that.
They sliced the cheese wedges, arranged them on the bread, sandwiched the slices together, and set them on flat stones by the fire to toast.
It was, in fact, incredibly easy.
If, perchance, if the word ‘easy’ in the sentence referred to ‘setting things on fire’.
Three minutes later, there bread sprang into flame.
Proxi screeched.
The boys screamed.
In a panic, Wind twirled his baton, sending a breeze to extinguish the flame. It might have worked, if the breeze hadn’t been just a tad too strong and blew the sandwiches straight into the fire instead.
The boys screamed again.
By some miracle of severe exhaustion, Sheik slept on, oblivious.
The boys sat in front of the fire, staring at the blackened remains of the sandwich as the cheese bubbled and the bread slowly crumbled away into ash in the midst of the fire.
“We need backup.” Wind sighed.
Mask grunted.
“I’m getting Fi.” Proxi announced. “She knows everything.”
The fairy darted off to do so, and returned with the sword spirit in short order. She floated before the two heroes, head cocked slightly in curiosity. “What is it that you require of me, young masters?”
Mask didn’t say anything, as he usually avoided talking with Fi, but Wind had no such qualms. “Sheik and Link are going off to the hot springs relax, and we need your help in order to make them some food to pack.”
Fi was silent.
“Yes?” Wind prompted, shifting impatiently.
“The Goddess provided me with many functions in order to assist my Master in his quest,” Fi said, “But I am afraid it is not within my abilities to perform miracles.”
Wind wilted.
“I knew she wouldn’t be any help,” Mask muttered, and Fi’s head shifted slightly. Her wings fluttered for a moment.
“However, there is little logic in surrendering before even attempting a task.” There was the faintest modulation in Fi’s voice. If one listened closely, one might even hazard she sounded slightly miffed. “Allow me to serve you to the best of my capacity, young masters.”
And, despite Fi’s rather dour predictions of success rates lying around 27%, with Fi and Proxi teaming up to watch both soup pot and replacement sandwiches like hawks, the second pair of sandwiches lived beyond the toasting process. They were wrapped carefully in napkins and tucked in a knapsack, along with two canteens.
With Fi’s instructions, they even managed to add more ingredients for the soup, so there was enough for breakfast andfor Wind could fill two bottles and pack them with the sandwiches as well.
“I think you have something to say to Fi,” Proxi whispered in Mask’s ear. The sprite pouted, but shuffled over to where Fi floated, eyeing Wind’s packing process to ensure nothing failed in the final lap.
Mask hunched his shoulders and said, not particularly loudly, “Thanks. You helped a lot.”
Fi stilled for one moment, and then turned slightly, just enough to face Mask. “Of course.” She said, her tone soft. “It was my pleasure, Master Link.”
Mask looked away, somehow unable to bear the mixture of fondness and… something… in the sword spirits’ gaze.
“THERE!” Wind proclaimed, buckling the knapsack shut and patting it proudly. “See, I told you guys it’d be simple.”
Fi, Mask, and Proxi sighed.
Shiek slept on.
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read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2uTtHMpHyde thinks he wants to kiss her properly as she wishes him a happy birthday, before Kelso has to open his big mouth.
Words: 312, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
Series: Part 8 of T70S Tumblr Ask Prompts
- Fandoms:That ‘70s Show
- Rating:General Audiences
- Warnings:No Archive Warnings Apply
- Categories:F/M
- Characters:Steven Hyde,Jackie Burkhart,Michael Kelso
- Relationships:Jackie Burkhart/Steven Hyde
- Additional Tags: Season/Series 04,In Episode Study,Light Angst,light fluff,Pining,Hyde Pining,Pre-Relationship,Drabble
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2uTtHMp
The Sooner, The Betterbypoetdameron
Hyde thinks he wants to kiss her properly as she wishes him a happy birthday, before Kelso has to open his big mouth.
RatedG|312 words | Hyde/Jackie | Season 4 Compilant
Related to this: reading Echopraxia has given me inspiration for a fanfic exploring what prehistoric Blindsight vampires were like. I wrote a short fanfic about that years ago but I’m not satisfied with it and I think making a second attempt at the premise is going to be my first project when the repairs on my computer are finished (I’m told they should be done around May 10th).
I’ve actually got a halfway-solid plot for it by now. I may post a few mostly worldbuilding-related ideas and thoughts for it here over the next few days. I’ll be tagging them “project Blampire fanfic.”
Re:this: I wonder who’s going to end up being the Theoden to Elle’s Saruman?
Maybe Lieke? Lieke has surely fought many wars and assailed many who defied her!
On that note, if it comes up, I’ve decided Lieke’s mysterious superpower is just being very smart, coupled with immunity to vampire mind control (both mind whammy and blood thrall). Lieke is what happens when an arrogant boss vampire transitions a very high IQ prodigy thinking they can exploit her intelligence by controlling her through thrall and ends up accidentally creating somebody who’s most of the way to being a Pak Protector and is immune to mind control, resulting in the “Not as planned!” moment of the century. She’s a unique one-off because her “power” is the result of a unique interaction with her very unusual neurodivergence. Possibly her intelligence isn’t even a vampire ability, her human self was just like that (or in that case, rather, to the extent that her intelligence is a vampire ability it’s just an immortality ability: IQ 200 + 200 years of experience as a politician and general = seriously scary opponent).
One thing I definitely had on the brain writing this post is… when I get around to actually writing that The Sisters of Dorley/Glow, Worm crossover fanfic, I think probably the hardest thing about doing so will be imitating the original author’s narrative voice. For starters there’s the fact I’ll have to learn British spelling, but it’s more than that. That person writes very differently from me. I tried writing a small bit of rough draft of the fanfic I had in mind a while back, as an experiment, and it came out very jarringly not being at all like the original story stylistically. That is definitely something I’ll have to work on!
I think what I’ll probably do is try my best to write characters I read as neurotypical in their style and then write characters I read as kinda-sorta cousin-y to me kind of neurodivergent in my own natural style, to create a sense of different characters having different internal mental voices and processing the world in different ways. This will correspond probably not perfectly but pretty heavily to “characters from the original story get their internal point of view sections written in my best facsimile of the original author’s writing style, OCs get their internal point of view sections written in my style, the more they’re noted as visibly neurodivergent the more I lean into things that are ‘weird’ about the way I write while writing their internal point of view sections.”
I mean, I’m not sure if “neurotypical” is quite the right word here, cause I think transness itself is probably a neurodivergence, and itdefinitely will be in this setting, but, I mean, like, neurotypical aside from that.
Like, yeah, I’m not sure this is exactly correct, but when I try to articulate how their writing style is different from mine a phrase that pops into my mind is “they have neurotypical writing.” My impressions are:
It’s very workmanlike. I don’t mean that as an insult, it’s in a sense very elegantly functional. It doesn’t draw much attention to itself, it gets out of the way and serves as an efficient mechanism for telling the reader what’s happening and how people are interacting. It uses very ordinary “how regular people talk” vocabulary and phrasing and sentence structure. It’s kind of efficiently terse; it moves quickly and smoothly. And there’s differences in the way we treat physicality/the body that I find interesting.
It’s interesting, because I’ve seen notes in Glow, Worm and things on the author’s Twitter about her being a chronic pain sufferer; she says right in the introduction of Glow, Worm “I also may or may not be exorcising some of my demons, as a woman with chronic pain, through Viv,” but to me most her characters read as, like, really healthy-coded (I wonder if it’s the product of a deliberate effort to write normal people from someone who knows their experience is not typical).
Like, I’m thinking of this post that’s floating around that’s like “friendly reminder that the average person’s normal pain level is zero” and my reaction to that is “sounds fake but OK, guess I’m an unfortunate outlier.” And I think about my impressions of how The Sisters of DorleyandGlow, Worm treats the body, and I’m like “oh, it’s describing the internal experiences of people who have a normal pain level of zero! That’s how you relate to physicality if that’s your lived experience!” And, like, Viv feels like an exception that proves the rule here, like she and Jill feel like the only people with hurty uncooperative bodies in a cast otherwise full of people who have smoothly functioning mostly pain-free bodies (in Dorley, the only person who comes across as having that sort of body issues is Aaron - it’s briefly mentioned that he has a damaged arm). Probably most fiction reads like this and I just don’t notice it much like 99.99% of the time, but it’s really noticeable here because embodiment and the vulnerability of the body is so extremely relevanttoDorley.
And it’s not necessarily about pain per se, it’s more like, if you have a smoothly functioning body with a normal pain level of zero and there’s nothing hard to deal with going on in it, you aren’t stimulated to think so much about the fact that you’re fragile and an animal and made out of meat, you experience your body as in a way unobtrusive. And, like, it’s not that everyone there has an unproblematic relationship with their bodies, of course Gemma and like just about everyone in Dorley are going to have some kind of complicated and fraught feelings about their bodies, but they’re mostly about the social body, the ways other people react to their bodies, whether they think their bodies are beautiful or not. And the idea of damage/injury to bodies definitely shows up (Bea’s and Maria’s old scars, Dorley’s whole… thing), but it’s past damage, it’s… not really the same thing as what Viv has or what I wrote Annaliese’sandRuth’s human selves as having.
And, like, one thing I’ve been mentally pulling on a little here that I think shows this is the way Elle is originally portrayed vs. the basically an OC I’ve extrapolated out from her canon portrayal. Like, thinking about what I said about there being a lot of parallels between the way I’m writing her and Brett Devereaux’s analysis of Saruman…
One parallel I didn’t mention there is one I see specifically with movie Saruman. One thing I like about Christopher Lee’s performance is he really gives me a sense that Saruman enjoys the experience of having power; that he really enjoys the experience of telling the Uruk Hai what to do and having them act subservient to him and talking about the powerful creatures and powerful army he controls. And I’m absolutely writing Elle as having that. It’s more hidden with her, but she absolutely likes power in that way. 100% she’s the sort of self-aware where when she watches the LOTR movies her reaction to watching this scene is “Inshallah, basically me in ten or twenty or thirty years, and I think I’m going to have about as much fun with it as he’s having.”
And she’s personally a very physically strong and resilient person with superpowers, so this extends to her own body. She absolutely loves the fact that she is strong and resilient even by vampire standards. Like, there is a reason her elevator pitch for vampirization is smashing up a concrete pillar with her fists, stabbing herself in the stomach and letting the other person watch the wound heal in like five minutes while she calmly stands there, encouraging them to dig their fingers around in the wound to confirm that it’s real while being like “this doesn’t hurt much for me, my pain threshold is set at a level appropriate for my physical resilience,” and then when that show’s over telling the other person “as a vampire you will be about as strong and resilient as I am.”
And this is very much a reaction to past vulnerability, she remembers being human and being both socially and physically weak even among humans and being abused because of that and those are not good memories for her, she enjoys being strong and having power like this because it comforts her, she associates that kind of power with safety. Like, yeah, that’s definitely a subtext I intended for that bit with Grandmother, she intensely did not like that moment of physical vulnerability.
And obviously this is all my invention and extrapolation cause canon keeps her portrayal as totally compatible with her just being a weird human, but, like, it’s interesting to compare this with how her power is portrayed in the original story, where her power looks like this:
“Bea’s had a long time to perfect her womanhood, to understand it, to claim it and inhabit it, but Elle Lambert has a way of making her feel like an ingénue. Her heels announce her presence, crisply clicking on the flagstones outside, and by the time she reaches the kitchen doors, Barb — another one of Maria’s circle, who adopted the rather old-fashioned name Barbara with an enthusiasm entirely familiar to Bea; God only knows what Grandmother and the sponsors call her, but it’s unlikely to be anything like as wholesome — has already stepped smartly forward to let her in, as if she’s royalty, and the abused girls of Dorley her retinue. Elle steps elegantly through the door and smiles at the girl, inspiring in Barb a blush Bea thinks could probably cook an egg, and passes to her a shopping bag.
“Gifts for the girls,” Elle says to her, and Barb rushes back to the women standing by the wall, who all look equal parts delighted and scandalised.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Barb says, as the other girls rifle through and pull out tops, skirts, shoes. She performs an exaggerated curtsey, which earns her a glare from Frankie that no-one bar Bea seems to notice.
“Please call me Elle.”
Elle steps forward and deposits a portable hard drive on the kitchen table. She’s short — shorter than Bea and the younger Dorley graduates; shorter even than Grandmother and most of her people, too — but she commands the room effortlessly, with a manner that belies her twenty-five years and which Bea, despite being over a decade her senior, has been trying to emulate since the day they met. She’s pale and subtly made-up, and her rich, thick waves of dark hair break on the shoulders of a suit worth enough, in Bea’s judgement, to feed a family of four for a year. The only woman in the room who doesn’t look dowdy in comparison is Maria, who has today assembled with unexpected skill an elegant outfit from the meagre scraps allowed the girls; Grandmother’s coterie, already given to a particularly English variety of rural tweed anti-fashion, look positively antique.” - The Sisters of Dorley, Chapter 16.
And, like, there’s totally connective tissue! I very much see her enjoying that sort of power in a Saruman-like way too. And, like, “as if she’s royalty, and the abused girls of Dorley her retinue” - absolutely not a long stretch at all from that to relating to the graduate school girls in something like the way Saruman relates to the Uruk Hai, and yeah very on-brand if her equivalent of the “you will taste manflesh!” stuff involves this sort of small kindnesses.
But, you know…
There’s definitely a difference in the way I and the original author approach her embodiment in a way that I think goes beyond me making the vampire thing explicit.
60 fics for “The Mummy”, not including those that are multiple chapters, such as “Snapshots”, which contains fifty (50) short scenes and assorted one-shots, bringing the total number of fics for this fandom up to…one hundred and ten (110).
It was a, uh, long pandemic.
Friday I’m in Love (chapters 8/8 - completed!)
fanfic by: zuzsenpai (reliablejoukido
summary: A few glimpses into what it’s like to fall in love over the course of many Fridays.
Thanks everyone for an amazing @daikenweek 2022!
Post link
Since it’s 8 days in a row, I won’t spam you all with updates for my Daiken fic. I’ll post another promo on the last day
//Catch me crying in the club from reading Adopted. A stunning fanfic. Superb.
Hang in there buddy XD fix your mascara, it’s gonna be okay
Show Chapter | Archive of Our Own
Adopted is being retold!
Do you remember that Rise of the Guardians/Coraline crossover fanfiction I wrote like three years ago?
Thaddeus thinks about his family while on the famous ‘arrowhead discovery’ camping trip.
Takes place in September 1890, when Milo is 8 years old.
“Want one, grandpa?”
The question startled Thaddeus awake. He’d been seated by the fire in a camp chair, dozing comfortably in his after-dinner lethargy, enjoying the sounds of the forest surrounding the camp.
He looked to his right and saw Milo sitting cross legged, holding out a freshly made s’more.
He sat up and shook off the haze that had enveloped him only moments before.
“Oh, no thank you, Milo. I had quite enough at dinner.”
Dinner had consisted of tinned beans, beef jerky, and the biscuits Thaddeus had made the day before. A good hot meal had hit the spot, a perfect end to a long and adventurous day in the woods.
Thaddeus smiled to himself as he watched Milo take a bite out of the s’more. Much like himself in his younger years Milo had a voracious sweet tooth and s’mores had quickly become a campfire staple since his discovery of them a few years before. Personally, Thaddeus found them a little too sweet for his liking and would only have one occasionally. Milo knew this but still offered an extra every time he was making one for himself. He was a good kid. Kind, generous, loyal, with an eager mind, always keen to learn. Thaddeus could see he had the makings of a brilliant scholar and knew he would go on to do great things. Though Thaddeus hoped the future would be kinder to him.
The flickering and exaggerated shadows cast by the campfire highlighted the barely visible scar on Milo’s forehead. It was a stark reminder of the tragedy that had occurred only a few short years before.
The train wreck had nearly claimed the lives of all Thaddeus’s remaining family members and not for the first time he wondered at the fact that Milo had survived when so many others including his parents had died.
Milo’s injuries had kept him in the hospital for several weeks and by the time he had been well enough to leave all funeral services had long since concluded. Milo had never gotten to say a proper goodbye to his parents. Though he’d really been too young to understand what had happened.
He vividly remembered Milo sitting on the porch of the house in the weeks after he’d come to live with him, waiting day after day for a mother and father who would never return. Thaddeus had done his best to help Milo understand what had happened. He’d taken him to the cemetery to see Augustus and Lucille’s graves, but it had still been several years before Milo had been old enough to fully grasp the concept of death. To little Milo it had seemed as if his parents had only gone out for a short while and would return any moment.
He never spoke of the accident, of whether he remembered anything of that fateful day, and Thaddeus could never bring himself to ask about it. But he knew it had left a lasting impression on Milo’s young mind. He had nightmares occasionally and would wake screaming in terror for his parents. Thaddeus would always take Milo to sleep in his bed afterwards and for the next day or two Milo would be quiet, his natural exuberance and enthusiasm tempered by what he’d relived in his dreams.
Thaddeus did his best to make sure Milo had a happy and carefree life filled with all the books, camping trips, and museum outings a boy could want. And he knew Milo was, for the most part, happy though there were times when he caught him staring longingly at families, at children with parents. And whenever he noticed he reminded himself they were simply a different kind of family, a family of two, but a family no less.
It was difficult to try and be mother, father, grandmother, and grandfather all in one but it was a job Thaddeus gladly accepted.
He was no stranger to grief. His wife, Ella, had passed years ago. The birth of their son, Augustus, had been difficult and she had died when he was just two days old leaving Thaddeus with the responsibilities of parenting. It had been hard raising a child on his own. He’d expected to have his wife by his side for years to come, to raise their children together, to grow old with her and enjoy their grandchildren side by side. But that dream had been cruelly cut short and the joyous occasion of the birth of his son had been tempered by heartbreaking loss. He’d gained a son but lost his wife. And then he’d lost his son and daughter-in-law too.
He’d had twenty-two short and wonderful years with Augustus before the train accident. He remembered sitting at Milo’s bedside in the hospital wondering how life could again be so cruel as to take the ones he loved. Milo was his only remaining family and while outwardly he put on a brave face and did his best to give Milo a happy childhood, inwardly he harbored a deep fear of losing Milo as well. It was a fear that sometimes filled him with anxiety, but he hid it well and never let Milo know how deeply it affected him, how when Milo would wake screaming from his nightmares it left Thaddeus unable to sleep afterwards. How he would lie awake long after Milo had fallen back to sleep if only to reassure himself his grandson was still breathing.
It was a wonder he’d even agreed to their camping trips, but it seemed his grandson was a chip off his block in a way not even Augustus had been. One rainy afternoon several years ago Milo had been scouring the bookshelves in their house for reading material to stave off boredom and had discovered Thaddeus’s old adventuring journals. He’d been young enough to be uninhibited by the thought of intruding on someone else’s private thoughts and had begun to read. He’d come running to his grandfather excitedly and there had been no going back. So, he now did his best to keep Milo safe while cautiously encouraging his love of adventure. And truth be told he’d had been delighted to have his grandson take an interest in the same things he did.
Somewhere in the trees an owl hooted softly, and Thaddeus smiled fondly to himself as he watched Milo happily eating his s’more with one hand and beginning to sketch his newest treasure with the other. Earlier that day while they’d been hiking along a stream Milo had discovered what he thought was an arrowhead in the water. He’d been so thrilled, carefully cleaning and wrapping it in a handkerchief, then tucking it lovingly into the pocket of his vest. Thaddeus hadn’t had the heart to tell him it was only a rock that had compressed and fractured into a misleading triangular shape. Instead, he’d exclaimed in delight and amazement, promising to have it framed to commemorate the extraordinary find.
Thaddeus wasn’t sure where the drawing talent had come from. No one on his side of the family had ever displayed any artistic abilities and he himself was only able to draw barely passable stick figures. He wondered not for the first time if the skill had come from Milo’s mother’s side of the family. Lucille hadn’t known much of her family having been orphaned herself when she was a teenager. A sad smile crossed his face. There had been so much tragedy in their family. If he’d been a superstitious man, he might have wondered if they were cursed.
Milo seemed to sense he was being watched and looked up suddenly, catching Thaddeus off guard. “Grandpa?” he asked, face serious. “Are you alright?”
Thaddeus shook himself out of his melancholy thoughts and smiled in earnest. “Just thinking.”
Milo studied him for a long moment, his glasses reflecting golden light from the fire. And Thaddeus wondered if Milo had guessed what had been on his mind. He was a perceptive kid.
Finally, Milo spoke. “I love you, Grandpa.”
Thaddeus felt his eyes prickle. So perceptive. He cleared his throat. “I love you too.”
Milo smiled then and finished the last bite of his s’more before lowering his head and continuing with his sketch.
Thaddeus settled back in his chair and a comfortable silence fell between them broken only by the crackle of the fire and the hooting of the nearby owl. He firmly put all thoughts of the past out of his head and concentrated on being present and enjoying this quiet moment with his grandson.
It was the only thing that mattered.
Reblog and put in the tags something that your first fanfic and your most recently posted fanfic have in common
