Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

bell15obsessions asked: Buffy Summers for the ask meme

MY LOVE BUFFY SUMMERS.  For this ask meme.  Also, buckle up for fucking Buffy/Angel hour, folks, I don’t truck with Buffy/Spike.

A:  what I think realistically

Buffy’s classmates…listen.  They’re not as oblivious as the adult population, because…obviously they’re not, they’re the rising generation of kids who go to school with the Slayer, even the most obtuse of them will pick something up eventually.  They don’t really know, either, and more to the point they don’t altogether want to know.  But they can kind of…tell.  

No one challenges Buffy.  Ever.  Buffy is a hunter of hunters, a killer of killers.  Even though they don’t know, something deep down in the mind of even the densest high school student looks at her and quails in fear, looks at her and says strength and danger and protection and fear all at once in a mad jumble.

Willow and Xander go from being regularly shoved around to not even touched.  People still talk shit for a while, sure, but by their senior year, the entirety of Sunnydale High would rather be shanked with a pencil and die quick than go toe-to-toe with Buffy Summers.

And God have mercy on you if you lay a finger on her little sister, because Buffy won’t.

B:  what I think is fucking hilarious

Early during that rocky first few months, Giles foolishly told Buffy that she should dress more practically.  Out of sheer spite, she went slaying in stiletto heels and club dresses for two weeks until Giles had to reluctantly eat his words.

Angel was planning to come talk to her, but listen.  He’s only human.  Sort of.  He has limits.  Buffy kicking back on a mausoleum in a little black dress with blonde hair loose over her shoulders and six-inch heels while she juggles holy water vials with the careless ease of someone with total confidence in her skills–that’s his limit.  He’s calling it right now.  He leaves, feeling mildly shellshocked.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

SWEET GIRL, Death sighs, sliding through the motionless candle flames of the cave.  The Slayer is weeping into her hands, horrible ripping sounds as she stands with the water of the pool lapping at her feet.  She is dressed all in white, and so is Death, and they could be twins.  The Slayer is still afraid of Death, this time.  IT IS NOT YOUR TIME YET.

“Thank you,” the Slayer sobs, and Death rests a bone-pale hand on her shoulder to press her back into the body in the pool.

***

The next time, it’s been a few years, and the Slayer–the Slayer, Death always thinks of her, even though there have been two, one gone through Death’s own hands and the other very close now, since last time–isn’t afraid of Death anymore.  They are friends, well-known and often met.  Almost twins.  She’s not dressed in white, she’s dressed in her own blood and vindication and black, and she’s sitting on the foot of a hospital bed.

DEAREST, Death croons, sitting down next to her and stroking her hair with a hand while she lets her fingers hover just above the hand of the body in the bed.

“I can’t die,” the Slayer says, looking at the unhealthily white skin of the body in the bed.  Even the golden hair looks washed out.  “The Ascension is tomorrow and I have to be there.  And–and he’ll never forgive himself.”

I HAVE MET LIAM, Death says, somewhat disapproving.  HE WAS RATHER QUESTIONABLE.

The Slayer almost smiles, but tears break over her lashes instead.  “I’ve heard.”

Death allows, HE HAS IMPROVED TREMENDOUSLY.

“I won’t die here,” the Slayer says, iron-clad.  “You can’t take me.”

Death laughs.  ALMOST I BELIEVE YOU COULD STOP ME, DEAR GIRL.  BUT IT IS NOT YOUR TIME YET.  And Death presses her back into the body, and the Slayer clutches gratefully at Death’s wrist before she goes.

***

It is longer, before the next time, and this time the Slayer does not resist, throws herself weeping into Death’s arms and lets herself be held close to the thin body under the white cloth, and buries her tears in Death’s neck.

DEAREST CHILD, Death whispers, YOU HAVE FOUGHT FOR SO LONG.  COME WITH ME, AND YOU CAN REST.

***

Death has never considered mutiny before, but seeing the Slayer torn back into life almost brings it to mind.

***

They meet again, and again, and the Slayer smiles when she sees Death and they talk like old friends, like family long parted.

“How is Tara?  How is Jenny?  Tell me about Cordy, is she doing all right?  Did you see my mother, is she okay?  How is your work?  Is it my time?”  The Slayer asks her questions like there’s nothing to fear, and Death tries to keep a mental list, tries to check up on all her loved ones so that the Slayer can be assured of their wellbeing.  The Slayer’s list of loved ones is long.  Death hates to have to tell her, when the soul of Liam has passed through Death’s hands again, and always makes sure to let her know when it is restored.

LOVE, Death says quietly, every time, at the end of their talk, DO YOU WANT TO REST?

“No rest for the wicked, didn’t you hear?”  This is always the only time that the Slayer’s eyes glisten, her lips tremble.  “I still have so much to do.”

LET THE OTHERS DO IT, DEARHEART.

“Maybe next time,” the Slayer says, looking away, as ever, to hide the tears threatening to slide down her cheeks.  “Maybe next time I’ll rest.”

Death takes her face in bone-pale hands and kisses her forehead, a benediction.  They are almost twins.  YOU ARE THE BRAVEST OF YOUR KIND, SWEET GIRL.  And Death presses the Slayer back into her body.

D: what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

Honestly, AU where Angel/Cordelia doesn’t get shoehorned in and there’s no super uncomfortable Spike/Buffy plot and we get 100x more active pining.  Deliver!  My!  Mutual!  Pining!  Thanks!

In slightly more seriousness, though, (not that I’m not TOTALLY serious about that mutual pining thanks) you know how there’s that one time where Buffy accidentally demonstrates to a room full of morons that she can toss a dude over her shoulder like a paperweight?  In my heart of hearts, Buffy is shyly approached the next day by a girl who’s regularly harassed by jackasses and Buffy accidentally becomes the mentor to a bunch of random girls for how To Beat Up A Creepy Dude 101.  At work, Buffy walks other girls back to their cars on the regular, and she’s sort of surprised by how many of the people who try to mess with them are just…creepy dudes, nothing supernatural, because…like…very few people are suicidal enough to try shit with Buffy and her standard for comparison is like 99% vampires and 1% miscellaneous other.

Unrelatedly she and Angel are soulmates and they probably have a weird psychic pseudo-sire bond because of the bite on her neck and at some point a vampire asks her about it and she’s like “Well, I saved a master vampire from dying.”

VERY relatedly to the above, Angel is an actual master vampire and gossip is faster than wildfire and word Gets Around that the Slayer (because, much to Faith’s bitterness, Buffy is always the Slayer), one time saved Fucking Angelus from death.  The entire supernatural underworld simultaneously explodes with elaborate conspiracy theories, chief among them that the Slayer is actually a vampire.  Buffy hears about this after a really long day and the vampire who lets it slip is very confused when the Slayer sits down on the ground and laughs until she cries.  Not confused for long, though.  She stakes him before he can be confused for too long.

Anonymous asked: Can you do John Wick for that headcanon post you reblogged?

You’re darn right I can do John Wick!  For THIS meme!

A: what I think realistically

John didn’t get into trouble as a kid.  John was a well-behaved student, known for being intelligent and quiet and unremarkable.  John never got into fights and no one ever questioned where he got bruises, because no one ever noticed.  When John left high school, he joined the military and did a four year tour with very little action.  And then he fell off the fucking map.  He still has living family.  They believe he’s dead.

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

John definitely calls in, like, life debts to get people to watch his dog while Shit’s Going Down.

“I need a favor.”

“John,” the smiling English assassin says, “after that time in Bulgaria you know you only need to ask.”

“I need you to watch my dog.”

There’s a long pause, but the assassin’s smile doesn’t crack.  “Does he have a name?”

“…no.”

“Okay.”  John is a weird dude, even as assassins go.  The English assassin rolls with it like a champ.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

For the record, I don’t have any friends who have seen John Wick except for the people who have asked me about it on here.  

That being said: John hasn’t been to visit his wife’s grave since he buried her.  At first it was because he physically couldn’t make himself do it.  Those first weeks were such a grey haze of…weight, more than anything else–even the air seemed too heavy to breathe–that he couldn’t leave the house.  Even with Daisy, it was all he could do to get up and take care of her.  Going to the cemetery…no way.

And then once Daisy was dead…John was busy.  John was fighting.  John was killing.  John had a purpose and damned if he was going to turn away from it.  

He was planning to go see his wife’s tombstone the morning after he got home.  Instead his house gets blown up and he loses everything of hers that he still owned.

D: what would never work in canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

You’ll never tell me that John’s wife wasn’t a world-class thief.  Like, she is to the thief world what John is to the assassin world.  They called her the Wraith, and her Interpol file is almost as thick as his, but instead of being a trail of mercilessly efficient kills it’s a laundry list of precious paintings and jewels and artifacts stolen from uncrackable safes and impenetrable museums.

They met while she was stealing a Picasso from one of John’s targets.  A classic story: girl meets boy, boy murders target, girl takes painting, girl breaks into boy’s safehouse with champagne.  “To celebrate our mutual successes,” she says, and John is gone.

Instead of making a deal with the Devil, she stole the most cherished statue owned by a leading member of her own High Council, and ransomed her freedom back with it.  She would have been free for all her natural life–and, John supposes, she was.

It’s just they both expected her natural life to be a lot longer, is all.

things laid down

Hey y’all, for 600 followers here is some weird urban magic.

He blinked at the tiled ceiling, crossing into wakefulness from something…not.  There was a clamor of noise buffeting him, just outside the half-drawn curtain hiding him—a tiny besieged encampment against a hurricane in the hall.  The sheets crackled hard against his hands, more like paper than cloth, a sharp smell making the bone between his eyes ache, and it took a long moment before he could sort out the overload and look around. From where he sat, he could see two more beds, one in the room across the hall, curtain half-closed like his own, and one in his own room—a hospital, maybe.  He didn’t entirely recall what the word entailed.  Didn’t recall much of anything, now that he thought about it. He blinked away the concern and propped himself up on one hand to get a look around at the other residents. Kids, he noted.  Very young.  Younger than him?  He wasn’t sure.  

Across the hall was a boy, smooth-cheeked and round-eyed. He had one arm exposed to the shoulder, one sleeve cut away entirely, and halfway down his upper arm, the flesh turned abruptly into brass.  The metal threaded itself into the higher tissue, and the boy clutched his arm across his chest in numb shock.  The girl in the next bed over was sobbing, the blank sound of someone crying in an effort to soothe themselves, tears leaving glistening trails down the glossy porcelain of her cheeks.  Her eyes, when she blinked, were bright and lively, her black hair tumbling in thin dreadlocks around her face, but there was a chink as a bracelet knocked against porcelain—her hand, rubbing across her eyes.

He raised his fingers to touch his own face, but there was no metal or porcelain there, only the warm give of skin.  A touch of stubble on his jaw—older than these soft, scared children, then, but no lines, so still young enough—and chapped lips, but all living, perfectly human.  He looked down at his arms, sweeping fingers up from the thin skin at his wrists to the curve of his shoulders where they met the paper of a hospital gown.  He kicked away the sheet and performed a similar check, up the sinew-and-bone line of his legs, then tugged the hospital gown away from his neck and looked down.  All skin over muscle, blood racing at the crease of his elbow and the hollow of his throat.

Far from simply being entirely human, there didn’t seem to be a mark on him.  He wondered why he was here.  Hospitals were places for the terribly ill or grievously injured, that much he was sure of, and he didn’t seem to be either one.  If the noise outside was any indication, they hardly had the staff to spare for him.

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readera

replied to your

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:

Sabbatical

This was ….. Amazing! Can we have more? * holds up bowl ala Oliver Twist

Sephie opens her eyes and the woman is still standing over her, but the asphalt is…cold.  And dry.  It’s dark, no rosy dawn colors fingerpainted across the sky, and the woman is dressed all in white–different white, not, thick swathes of cloth like burial shrouds draping down her arms and falling to puddle at her feet like water.  Sephie thinks something might be on fire to provide enough light to see, but the light is pale and wan rather than being warm and golden.  The woman is leaning on her scythe, and her eyes glint like the blade when the light catches them, metallic and sharpened to a cutting edge.

“You’re awake,” the woman says without looking down, and it doesn’t sound like she’s asking.

Sephie sits up and it’s easy, blissfully easy, no pain or tacky blood sticking to her skin.  She’s wearing something unfamiliar, a plain dress in the same white liquid cloth that the woman is wrapped in, leaving her arms bare, and when she presses a hand against the floor, she thinks it’s stone.  Marble, maybe, with only a trace of gloss, stretching away in all directions until it meets the walls, where it seems to merge seamlessly into the vertical climb to the cave-like ceiling, dripping with stalactites.  The throne at the far side of the room is plain, barely more than a chair with a table beside it, both apparently sculpted wholly out of the floor.  

“I’m not, though,” Sephie says, and it’s only by speaking that she realizes her voice works.  It’s strong and firm and not at all lifeless, and Sephie closes her mouth, gathers her will to stand.

“You know,” the woman muses as Sephie considers the matter.  The stone is very hard–if she tries to stand and falls, she might hurt herself.  Or, of course, she might not.  She doesn’t know if it’s currently possible to hurt herself.  “I expected a great many things when I went on my sabbatical, but you were not among them.”

“I’m sorry,” Sephie says as she pulls her legs beneath her and nudges the dress out of the way.  “I think.”

The woman looks down at her at last, startled, almost distressed, and says, “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that.  My sister may have some adjusting to do, but you wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t quite attached.”

“Your sister,” Sephie repeats as she rises cautiously to her feet.  She doesn’t know if it’s that her mind still expects her body to be broken or simply that it’s been a very long day already, but she wavers dangerously, and the woman puts out a hand that Sephie catches hold of at once.  The hand is long-fingered and delicately calloused and pale–unhealthily pale, deathly pale, Sephie had always thought, and she bites back a titter now.  Deathly pale!  The hand is also strong, and the arm attached to it equally so, and the smile on the woman’s face is warm enough to make up for the cold stone still chilling Sephie’s bare feet.  “I’ve met your sister.”

“Yes,” the woman says.  “We fought in your coffee shop.  Or, rather, my sister came to yell at me in your coffee shop.  She has some strong opinions about my sabbatical.”

Sephie nods, slowly, and realizes that she’s still clutching awkwardly at the woman’s free hand.  The long, strong fingers hold her own in a grip as firm as stone, though, and so instead of trying to let go, she holds on tightly and asks the obvious question.

“Am I dead, then?”

“That’s correct, Persephone,” the woman says, apparently delighted.

“And this place is?”

“The audience chamber.”

Sephie nods again, even more slowly than before, and looks up at the woman.  It was less noticeable with the counter between them, but the woman is a full head taller than she is, her masses of white curls storming down her back like a crashing wave.  The scythe does not reflect light, for all its perfect polished shine, and the letters on it are in a language Sephie has never seen and yet seems to be a textual equivalent of a long-forgotten tune.  She can read them anyway, for all that they try to skitter from under her eye, and thinks of a Latin phrase she heard once.

“And…”  Sephie takes a deep breath with lungs that do not breath and listens for her heart that does not beat and thinks to herself–with neurons that do not fire–that she is hardly even surprised.  “And who are you?”

The woman smiles at her, and gives a small twist of their hands so that the grip is less awkward, and raises the knuckles of Sephie’s hand to her lips.  The touch is electric–quite literally.  It kicks through Sephie’s chest like the time she let a finger rest on the prong of a plug as she touched it to the outlet, her vision flaring brightly for a moment until the woman’s lips leave her skin.  

“I have many names,” the woman says as she lowers their hands again.  “Many of them forgotten, some of them remembered.  You can call me Death.”

Anyway I’ve been attempting to Novel for almost five hours now and I’ve decided that clearly I am too aggravated to write an emotionally wringing trial and sentencing.  All I really want to do is talk about Shiko wearing flower crowns made by her girlfriend and Brenneth and Crispin sitting on a roof and looking at stars while they mutually get drunk on the most expensive wine Crispin can get his hands on and the fact that Brenneth and Krei are actually legally family according to Alleirai law.

So if you also wanna talk about that, hit me up so that I can pretend I’m being productive.

Anonymous asked: So your rant on Supernatural? Also I fell in love with the story you're talking about and basically want to know more. Sorry.

My buddy, you have made An Error, but let’s do this shit.  To any SPN fans who have wound up here through Ye Olde Search Function, I encourage you to stop reading now.

I watched up to about halfway through Season Five before I decided that I could Do It Better (I think this is the novel you’re talking about, anon, unless it’s Earth is where the trouble comes from), and dragged myself up to about halfway through Season Seven before I packed it in and gave up, resigned that the parts of the show I loved were about four to five seasons dead.  So like that’s the information I’m working on here.

So, obviously, lots of people have lots of legitimate complaints about Supernatural, including treatment of queer characters, characters of color, and women, as well as their fairly rampant history of queerbaiting.  And lots of people have covered this in more competent detail than I could ever manage, so like google “sexism in Supernatural” or something and you can do your own reading there.  Hell, if you want to do it the lazy way, you can knock out two of the above with this one article in friendly, easy-to-read Buzzfeed format.  To the nominal credit of the people involved, I will add that the cast seems acutely aware of these problems and finds it distasteful, HOWEVER the problems persist and therefore that credit is minimal.  Anyway. These things are covered much more thoroughly by many other people who are far more cogent than I could hope to be, so I’m going to leave those alone.

Instead, my rant is mostly summed up as “YOU CALL THIS SHIT STORYTELLING.”

So there are four basic parts to this rant, or rather four basic flaws that form the fundamentally weak foundation of Supernatural as a narrative.

1. Failure to commit to a single cohesive narrative arc, also known as “SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THOSE” syndrome
   
2. The persistent and erroneous belief that character death = character development and narrative progression
   
3. Inability to commit to a major change of paradigm, also known as out and out narrative cowardice, which I personally call “flinching during Plot Roulette”
   
4. Total incapacity to put their characterization where their script is regarding the Winchester brothers and the other major players
   

*cracks knuckles*

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Right, so, there’s been some interest in this?  So here, this is like a 1.5K snippet that I wrote yesterday, a conversation between the main character (Brenneth) and Crispin, with a little bit of Krei (the Tall Tree Lesbian) at the end there.  I think this is…pretty much self-explanatory, but here is the ‘Earth is where the trouble comes from’ novel explanation.

Crispin was in the last cell to the left of the door, with the wall beside him, and on the side facing the entrance—no windows. His hands were bound with fresh apas cord, the wrists pressed together tightly enough that he could struggle if he attempted to break free.  He seemed in good health, uninjured from what I could see. His hair was even clean, the curls falling around his face like copper wire in the lantern light.

Crispin, I thought with a bitter rush of guilt, probably had not been given the luxury of fine soaps and a private bath.

He seemed to catch the thought on my face and pointed at me.  “Hey, none of that,” he said in his most commanding voice.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I said automatically, and scowled when he grinned at me.  “And don’t be an ass, I’m trying to help you.”

Crispin’s good humor faded, leaving a small, sad smile behind as he glanced me over, eyes lingering on the spike in my hair and the new belt around my hips.  “They got you a sword,” he noted quietly, and my hand dropped to the pommel at my side, smoothing over the unornamented hilt.  

The weight of the sword was a strange dual sensation—it was intrinsically familiar and reassuring to the part of my that had hated to walk unarmed for a decade and a half on Earth, but my muscles didn’t remember how to compensate for it, had never learned how to walk without bumping the scabbard with my leg.  I was feeling the ache from the time I had spent in the training grounds, trying to force my body to accustom itself to the weight of a blade again, and I would pay for it tomorrow.  My palms would blister and my legs would tremble.  For the first time in years, I felt like a stranger in my body again, hating the way that my hands hurt from the hilt and the way my shoulders complained bitterly at me. The sword was a small token comfort against it.

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littlestartopaz asked: For the fic you'd never write: Diana/Steve Rogers "Running Parallel, but Never Meeting (Until Now)"

(YES GOOD)

AO3 summary: By the time she sits down at his table, Steve thinks he’s aspired to be this woman for his entire life.

Actual summary: As a little boy in New York, Steve hears from his mother, who was a nurse in the Great War, about the people she worked with.  A man in a greatcoat, his sleek black hair tied into twin braids, runs into them one day and she hugs him and introduces him (the Chief, Stevie, he kept us all smiling) and he tells Steve fantastic stories about a woman who could charge a trench all on her own.  

Steve grows up and remembers her and tries to join the Army and gets the 4F stamp a lot before Erskine finds him.  He asks Erskine, curious, about what inspired the super soldier formula, and Erskine tells him about his sister’s daughter, who lived in a little village in Germany and who saw a woman in a black cloak and armor demolish an entire occupying battalion.  (Diana hears about the man who saved a child by using a taxi door as a shield–no sharp edges–and she smiles as she lays out a map and tries to decide where to go, where the war needs her most.  This…this is a worse war.)  Steve thinks about the woman, about the shield the Chief described (the Chief is in his sixties, now, but he still keeps the soldiers smiling), as he breaks into a HYDRA prison with a dinky tin shield, and again when he picks a vibranium disc rather than Howard’s high-tech alternatives.  (Diana hears about Captain America and laughs a little–they have started to call her Wonder, the Wonder Woman, so she can’t laugh too much–and wishes that the war didn’t need her so much elsewhere, so that she could meet him.)  Steve and the Howlies pass through a little village in Germany one day, and there’s a picture in their tavern, in a place of honor, like a shrine, of a woman in armor looking stern and triumphant, with a much-younger Chief at her shoulder, and it makes Steve smile.  (Diana wanders to the States, after the war is over, because she has heard the tragedy of Steve Rogers and she wants to see the place that produced that man, and she meets a woman with sad eyes and dark curls.  They talk about their respective Steves and kick some ass and maybe one time Peggy kisses her and maybe Diana kisses her back.)

Diana arrives from her job in London (it’s hideous, but she’s used to it) three days after the Chitauri destroy a huge portion of New York.  She works for two weeks straight, moving debris, searching for the missing, reuniting families, doing whatever she can to help, sleeping for as little time as she can manage.  The Avengers are out helping too, and she smiles to see them, even when Tony Stark treats her like something of a fool and Dr. Banner mistakes her for a patient.

She goes to an old diner that she remembers from the last time she was here, in Brooklyn (Peggy always said to start in Brooklyn, in New York), and sees a blond head propped on a fist and she smiles, slipping into the booth opposite him.

“Hello, Captain Rogers,” she says, and he startles to attention.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I–oh my God,” he blurts.  “You’re her!“

Anonymous asked: Is your magical gf's thing from your fantasy book? Sorry if this seems rude but I am like SO invested in your novels from what you've given us.

NEVER RUDE NEVER RUDE NEVER RUDE

ALWAYS TALK TO ME ABOUT MY NOVELS

And yes, my magical gf’s are from one of my fantasy novels, which I generally call Alleirat because I’m a lazy fuck who doesn’t title things until the last available second.  This novel is also called the “Earth is where the trouble comes from” book, which sums it up pretty well.  The Very Tall Tree Person is the right hand woman of the main character, and the Smol Death Machine…um, starts the novel as the bad guy buT IT’S A NOVEL ABOUT REDEMPTION AND IT’S NOT HER FAULT AND I LOVE HER V MUCH.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know what’s going on: THIS is a basic rundown of the story, and THIS is some basic outlining of the way magic works, and this and this are about the couple in question.  The novel is currently like 35K and I’m doing it for Camp NaNoWriMo.

And like, IDK y’all I feel guilty forcing my weird original stuff on you, but if you’re interested I could post a section I wrote yesterday that I’m…pretty pleased with.