#(( filed under: things he's probably literally said at some point

[redbatchedcumbermayned]

It all started under a duvet held up by an oar

Not so long ago I emailed Chris Tester, the voice of Heinrix van Calox in Owlcat’s recently released CRPG Rogue Trader, and asked if he would like to sit for an interview with me. Having some experience in interviewing people I like, most famously Oscar winner and all-around sweetheart Eddie Redmayne, this was not a completely nerve-wracking endeavour. And within a day of sending my email, Chris said yes. And what a pleasure it was interviewing him: Chris was so generous with his time, that the agreed upon 30 minutes turned into 50 minutes as we brushed upon many topics from his start as a theatre actor to his first voice-over role in a video game to his recently discovered hobby of playing D&D. Of course, we also spoke about all things Warhammer 40k, his new found fame brought on by voicing Heinrix and the insights he could share about the character.

I will publish this interview in three parts over the next week in text form and with the accompanying audio file (the audio quality is not spectacular but tumblr limits uploads to 10MB). If you quote or reshare, please quote me as the original source.

Part 2 of the interview

Part 3 of the interview

Fran: Thank you very much for taking your time.

Chris Tester: That's no problem. No problem at all.

F: So then let's start. You graduated in 2008.

CT: I did. Yes.

F: You started out as a stage actor. Did you always want to become a stage actor or an actor in general? Tell us a bit about your career.

CT: I always wanted to be a stage actor. Yes, as soon as I knew that I wanted to be an actor, which probably wasn't until I was a teenager. But yeah, my first passion was always the stage, and that was kind of borne out in my career. I would have been open to TV and film of course, if it had come along, I'm a huge fan of TV and film as well, but I never got an audition for any TV or film work.

I think I literally did about three short films in my 10, 12 years of actually professionally acting, and it is one of those industries where the more you do of one thing, the more you seem to find yourself doing the same thing to a degree. So yes, watching Shakespeare from an early age was one of my first passions.

And that was what first planted the seed of wanting to do it myself. The whole aspect of live performance is still something that I'm very passionate about. Up until 2020, when the world changed, I was trying to do two or three theatre shows a year, but since 2020, I haven't been near a stage and I doubt right now, especially with the way that the UK theatre scene is going, that I'm going to be back on stage anytime soon. I am resigned to that, but at some point in my career, I know I will be on stage again, because I can't live without it, but only for the right thing, both financially, but more importantly, creatively.

F: Your production company is currently on hiatus?

CT: I was the producer of a theatre company, which was run and was the baby of the director of the company, a guy called Ross Armstrong, who's one of the most talented writers and directors that I've ever worked with. I was helping out with a lot of the administration stuff so that he could still put me in plays. Instead of creating my own work because I'm not a very good writer or the best writer in the world, I support those people who will write me good parts. So yes, it is currently on hiatus, but never say never, we would always be looking to get back. It's difficult right now. It's difficult for all of us, because arts council subsidy, that way of being able to fund stuff, is drying up. We were doing a national tour of the UK when we were doing that [with the support of a subsidy]. There's even less money, there's even more people. I won't bore you with anything more than that, but it's kind of tough. We'd like to come back, but in the right way, and that's tricky to negotiate.

F: It's always hard as a stage actor to earn a living.

CT: Well, I've been spoiled by voice-over as well, and whereas when I was in my 20s and 30s then you're all about your art. And of course, I'm still all about my art, but I'm also about my wife and my cat and the mortgage and the bills and wanting to have nicer things to a degree as well. I've come to terms with that and voice-over does facilitate that as well as it opens you up to different roles and working with different people. So, I can't complain.

F: It's quite similar with making a living as a writer, because with a steady income you get used to a certain standard of living and once you have obligations and bills to pay, I think the stress on your mental health being creative and having all the stresses of regular life thrust upon you brings with it a challenge.

CT: It's a cliche we can very easily fall into: if I'm suffering, then it means I'm an artist. And that's not necessarily very true. It very often means that the art that we create only reflects one aspect of our lives, and it's usually a very tortured one. I am also about having wider experiences and broadening myself out. Whereas I think when I was in my twenties, I was thinking a bit more like: Oh, I'll experience the world and life through my art and just purely through my art. Whereas now necessarily I need to have a life outside of it as well, and then I can justify like I have the life so that I can feed my art or not, whatever. You know, I'll be a better artist by having a bit of a life outside of it. Maybe.

F: But that's what your twenties are for.

CT: Yeah, indeed.

F: Doing the crazy stuff, doing the band stuff 

CT: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, there was certainly an aspect of that in my twenties.

F: So, what brought you to voice acting or voice-over work initially?

CT: Money. Video game stuff is kind of sexy and cool, and I'm a gamer, so that's important. Before I was a video gamer, I was a board gamer and off the back of that, I was a voracious video gamer, partly because I wasn't very good at team sports at school. I was always the person who was picked last in the football team. So that becomes part of your identity for better or worse. But video games, I was pretty good at, not amazing, but I was pretty good at, and I enjoyed it. And it gave me a different form of escapism as well, and off the back of that I always had an interest in them. 

So, the very first voiceover job was a video game: Dark Souls, which is quite a big franchise. At that time, I was your very typically jobbing actor. My acting agent came in and said: I got something for you. And so, I went in with that. But it was only in 2016, 2017 that I realised it was something that you could actually do yourself. People had recording studios at home and they were contacting people directly, not just going through agents. Because I'd basically written to the same 20 voice agents in the UK, mainly in London for like eight years in a row and not received anything. So, you keep knocking on those doors hoping. 

Before I'd even graduated from drama school, I'd burnt a CD and made these cases with my headshot on it and sent them all off at what at the time felt like great personal expense and didn't get anything for eight years in a row.  So, I was a bit like, I'm obviously doing something wrong, but I don't really know what, because I'm doing these workshops and getting good feedback. Then I found out through a couple of online courses, that there were ways and means of doing it myself, and that was a bit of a game changer for me, and within six months of having started, I was earning more through voice work than the bar job and the box office job that I was doing combined. Within six months, I was kind of like: “I gotta quit because I'm actually holding myself back from things.” So that was quite a big shift.

F: Somewhere you said, you started out under a duvet and with an oar.

CT: Yeah. On my website, I do have an image of it. [Dear reader, I could not locate this elusive photo] I literally had to take the duvet off my bed and put it into the living room, which was the quietest space in my then shared flat. I also had to wait until after one flat mate had watched TV and another one had used the table that had their washing on it. One of my flat mates had stolen an oar from some night out and that was perfect in order to be able to erect it over my head and the duvet as a frame. 

I did probably the first four or five months of voice recording like that. Probably about 10, 15 voiceover jobs that I actually got paid for, I was using that because it worked well enough. Since then, I've gone through various different iterations of a setup in the bedroom, to a setup in the hallway, to my current setup. In 2020 we moved to our first house, and this is the spare bedroom which I've had converted into a studio, which means my cat can be here asleep on me or near me getting fur everywhere, but it's fine. I can thrash around and I've got natural light to work in at the same time, which I find quite important. [Pictured below Chris' current setup.]

F: Very pretty. That's good. Guide us through a typical day of yours, if you like.

CT: Oh, sure. I mean, there is no typical day. And yet, and yet, and yet. A typical day for me is, because I am spending the vast majority of the day sitting in this room or somewhere close to this room, because I may need to record at short notice, because the vast majority of jobs are quite short notice. My priority is exercise for mental health more than anything. I've got some weights at the bottom of the garden, and I will get up first thing, and I will go there and I will do that after breakfast. And that's my minimal routine of physical activity done. 

And then I'll come back, and this is so rock and roll. Now what I do is, I spend like an hour on LinkedIn. And that's what you dreamed of as a creative person. Isn't it as an actor? I spend time on LinkedIn regularly every day, because it's a really good networking place for a lot of my types of work, and first thing in the morning, I'm a bit mentally sharper. So that's when I come up with a quick post that may be inspired by a bit of content that I've made elsewhere. That probably takes about 20 minutes and then I spend another 45 minutes to an hour engaging with people and saying hi and introducing myself and asking questions, whether that's with video producers or game developers or documentary makers or pretty much anything and everything. There are a lot of people who are active at that time. And so I do it.

And then after that, if I already have some recording lined up, then I'll prioritise mid-morning, because I've warmed up physically a bit more then, and I'm focused. So, you're going through the scripts, annotating the scripts, recording the scripts, editing the scripts. But then there could be live sessions at any time within that as well. I try to keep hours from nine till six. But occasionally, like with Rogue Trader, that was recorded at various different times of the day because we had people in New York, we had people in mainland Europe, and we had people in the UK. So all different time zones, so that can happen at any time. 

And then I try to do other kinds of bits and pieces of marketing whenever I've got free time to. I do use really exciting productivity hacks, like time blocking. Again, not something that as a creative individual, I was like: Oh God, this gets me so excited, because it doesn't, but it works. It's finding a system that works for you, but still has a certain kind of flexibility and fluidity. I'm trying to make sure that I get outside of the house, and that kind of stuff. 

Recently, over the last year, I’ve started doing audiobooks as well. That long form type of thing is quite nice to be able to dip into because sometimes you don't record for two, three days. You don't get the work. Nothing’s coming in. So, you’re marketing, but it kind of connects you back to the performance side of things to go: I can do a few chapters and you know, that kind of thing. So that's probably it. I try to formalise it, but you know, every voice actor’s day is radically different. There are people, some of the biggest names, going into different studios every week or every day. I very rarely, despite being based in London, I very rarely go into external studios. Like I would say 99 percent of the work I just do from home.

F: So how do you find the right voice for the specific type of voiceover work you do, maybe start with how did you find Heinrix's voice?

CT: Thankfully, Owlcat sent through quite a detailed casting breakdown. So, you get a picture, and that's pretty crucial, as well as a short bio, in terms of the background of the character, but not too much, because you have to sign an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement. But even if you do sign an NDA, I think developers are always slightly hesitant of giving you too much info about the game because things could still be changed. But I think I did get a picture of Heinrix, if not in the first audition, then certainly on the second one. From that you immediately think about the physicality and what might affect the voice, and there was also some direction in terms of what they were looking for. Anybody who has heard the character and me, they do not sound radically dissimilar. There's not a transformative process that I needed to go through, other than his sense of authority and the space that he takes up and the sureness that he has in that he has a kind of divine right from the emperor, so that level of confidence being brought through.

The other part of the audition was about the void ship [the Black Ship] that he'd been raised in and the horrors that he'd seen. And you as the actor have to do the detective work to go like this is showing another side, the more vulnerable side, the side that underpins all of his life choices up to this point. It's essentially playing the opposite to a degree. So it was kind of knowing when to let those elements bleed through a little bit. I think I had probably about a page worth of scripts, quite a lot of script actually to audition with. 

But I don't like to listen back to it a lot, because I think you get into your head. My biggest thing is stage work where it's ephemeral. You say it once and it could be different the next night. The whole point is that there's no one definitive way of doing things. Not quite the same with voice acting, where it's being recorded and you've got to get used to hearing it back. But I try not to overthink it. Just like record it two or three times with different impulses and then review and go like, those two seem pretty contrasting. I'll send those along and hope and then never hear anything back unless I do.

[stobinesque]

talking could, if we'd just dare (you know that i'll forgive you), pt. 1

@steddie-week day 6: misunderstandings / "You Lookin' at Me Lookin' at You" by Ozzy Osbourne | ~5.5k words | G or T inspired by this post from @inklessletter!

If Eddie was being honest, he’d never actually paid that much attention to Steve Harrington. Sure, it was impossible not to know of him. But for most of his life it had simply been…unimportant, to know about the various goings on of the Class of ‘85’s royal court. Harrington was rich, a bit of a bitch, and kept company with other rich bitches, and so Eddie neatly categorized him with all the other pretty, rich jocks, and went about his day. Life was easier when there was an order to such things. Keep the smalltown, upper-middle class heroes to one side, and the freaks and degenerates to the other, and everyone could live in an uneasy sort of harmony until they walked the stage and left this rathole behind.

Of course, repeating senior year thrice had put a wrench in that plan.

Meanwhile, Dustin Henderson had thrown the whole damn toolbox into the whole not-paying-attention-to-one-Steven-MiddleName-Harrington plan.

And whatever the fuck was going on now had just blown everything out of the water. 

(Or into the water, as the case may be—except the freaky parallel hellscape they’d all dove into seemed to be utterly devoid of the substance, so maybe the original metaphor worked just fine.)

So now he had to contend with the fact that Steve Harrington was a) a pretty nice dude to recent victims of smalltown witch-hunts who had just been thrust into what was apparently a years-long government conspiracy involving monsters and mind-controlling wizards, b) a bit of a dork, c) friends with a whole bunch of dorks, most of whom were four or five years younger than him, d) admirably—though perhaps self-destructively—protective of said dorks, e) just as much of a badass as Henderson claimed, and, most distressingly: f) extremely hot while doing so. 

The being a protective badass part, not all the other ones.

(The other parts Eddie was retroactively filing under “adorable,” and “cute.”)

The expression Steve got on his face when Eddie lobbed his battle vest at him was also priceless, so at that point Eddie figured, fuck it. What did he have to lose from some harmless flirting? The chances of him making it out the other side of this both alive and un-incarcerated were dwindling by the second, and it’s not like he ran any risk of things going anywhere. (Harrington might be a good dude, and alternate dimensions and monsters and superpowers apparently existed, but Steve Harrington being anything other than a straight man with Traditional American Values™ strained credulity—and the Munson Doctrine—far past any acceptable limit.) 

After all, if there was one thing that Eddie had actually learned from D&D, it was that a little bit of flirting and fun could take the sting out of any TPK.

🦇🦇🦇

If Steve was being honest with himself—which he’d been making a concerted effort to try to do since fall of ‘84—he could admit that his…jealousy…of Munson predated Dustin joining Hellfire. His whole climbing-on-cafeteria-tables schtick was kind of obnoxious, sure. But up until he’d wound up flunking his first try at senior year, Eddie'd had this sort of dorky-but-cool aura that Steve wished he was apathetic enough about other people’s opinions to achieve.

For a man who seemed to genuinely believe he was a coward, Eddie Munson was so…loudly and unapologetically himself. In Hawkins, Indiana—a place that quite literally wanted to kill him for how much of a freak he was. And, sure, some of that came down to the whole wanted-for-murder thing. But the man had also spent the better part of the past twelve hours flirting with a former jock—whom Eddie himself admitted to thinking was a douche up until a couple days ago!—so Steve had the sneaking suspicion that there was probably a corner of the town that already had it out for Munson long before Chrissy Cunningham’s body was found in his trailer.

And it wasn’t that Steve wanted to get into metal, or that Dragons game, or start wearing hand-printed t-shirts and attaching his wallet to a chain. He just wished that even after all the years of monsters, and government threats, and Russian torture, he didn’t still feel the need to hold himself to standards set by other people. 

If anyone was a coward, it was Steve.

And there was something kind of…nice—reassuring, even—about the fact that Eddie seemed to feel the same way—but in reverse—about him. Like together maybe they could take the bravest parts of the other and make them their own.

And underneath it all, Steve could admit, was the fact that Eddie was…pretty. 

So. Steve was having a bit of a crisis

“Robin, I’m having a crisis.” 

“We’re all having a crisis, dingus,” she shot back, slapping at his shoulder with the back of her hand.

“No— no, not that.” Steve started emptying one of the bottles of vodka they’d procured into the half-dead grass. “I’m talking about the whole—” Steve waved a hand over towards where Eddie and Dustin were horsing around. “The Eddie thing.”

“Oh, you mean the fact that he’s been blatantly flirting with you since you got eaten by bats?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Yes, Robin, I’m talking about the blatant flirting.”

“And…why is that causing a crisis?”

Steve fish-mouthed at her. “B-because…” He leaned forward with a finger held aloft, ready to waggle it in her face. He paused. Frowned. “Well, because…” Steve threw up his hands. “I don’t know! A few days ago the man thought I was a douche. Literally just yesterday he was, like, hot-and-cold trying to throw me at Nancy, while also ogling my chest hair, and now he’s calling me ‘big boy’ and trying to get into my personal space? It doesn’t make sense, Robin!”

“Welcome to the club, buddy.” She raised her brows at him pointedly. And, yeah, that was fair, he guessed.

“And,” He started again, “And– I’ve also got Henderson insisting that I win Nancy back—he does seem to have finally dropped the whole are-you-secretly-dating-Robin thing, though, which—”

“Oh, thank god.”

“Yeah. But, on top of that Nancy has also been making eyes at me, but she’s still with Jonathan so I don’t know what to do about that. And it’s all just a mess, Robs! I’m a mess.”

“Yeah, well, that’s been true for ages, Stevie.”

“Thanks, Robin. That’s very helpful.”

“What? I’m just saying, if you’re going to tell me that I’ve got to ‘be myself,’ and put myself out on a limb with Vickie, while you’re out gallivanting with Helen or Jackie or whoever—”

“Heidi—”

“Whatever.” Robin waved her hand dismissively. “My point is: you keep throwing yourself at all of these girls who only know the old you—even if you’re trying to give them the new-and-improved model—and you haven’t even tried to go after a guy, and I think we both know why. And now you’ve hit the jackpot of what every tragic gay teenager in smalltown America can only dream of: you’ve got someone blatantly, and undeniably into you, who you also like back, and you’re telling me that you’re having a crisis? Need I remind you of the tableau we were treated to back at The War Zone?”

Steve sighed. “I know, Robs. You’re right.” Steve jammed a funnel into the neck of the bottle he was working on, and the two of them kept building molotov cocktails in the dying evening light, as Steve tried to reassure Robin that she still had a chance with Vickie—which she did, and Robin took his mind off his own impending disaster. But, if Steve had even a shadow of a chance of getting to hook up with a guy, Robin deserved to have a romance of her own. As much as Robin was afraid to see it, Steve was pretty sure he recognized that conflicted look Vickie’d had in her eyes when she’d spotted Robin in the store. There was something there, he was sure of it.

But maybe Vickie was like him. Maybe she’d only just learned this new thing about herself. Robin—and presumably Eddie—had had at least a couple of years to sit with this knowledge about themselves and come to terms with it. But for Steve (and Vickie?) it was still so scarily and terribly new. With girls, Steve knew how to play the field. He knew what was expected of him—what role he had to fill. But with Eddie a guy, all the rules went out the window; all of his scripts: useless. He’d have to start from scratch, and build something completely different from anything he’d been taught to want or expect before.

Maybe he was getting ahead of himself, though. Because Robin was right: they had more important things—end-of-the-world shaped things—to worry about. His love life could wait. Eddie could wait.

They all just needed to make it out of there alive.

🎸🎸🎸

Eddie survived. 

They won.

Eddie survived, and so did everyone else, and they won.

Eddie kept repeating it to himself, because he couldn’t quite believe it. 

He couldn’t make heads or tails of the fact that in the end running away was exactly what he needed to do to make sure they all made it out in one piece—more or less. 

He’d walked right out of hell with nothing more to show for it than a few scratches up his sides, and a ring of bruises ‘round his neck. In the end, Steve was the only person other than Red who needed a hospital stay of any kind, because what would have been manageable wounds on day one, had become life-threatening after days of infection and improper care.

A future in a state penitentiary also seemed to be out of the cards. There was probably nothing any of them could say or do to convince the general Hawkins populace of his innocence, but Dr. Owens and his ilk had crafted a cover story believable enough to win over Powell and Callahan, at least. More to the point, though: all charges had officially been dropped, and the case was closed.

Now there was just the mortifying process of figuring out how to move on. Or at least forward. 

That was the part you didn’t see in movies. No one showed the recovery. Because what was so interesting about watching someone pull their life and body back together? As though healing wasn’t just as much a part of the story as the falling apart.

Eddie wasn't ashamed to admit that it was driving him a bit mad. Because these kids all seemed to be seasoned veterans at it. They hadn't just snapped back to their relatively-easy-going-but-bitchy baselines by any means—Lucas and Dustin especially seemed incredibly subdued in response to the extent of Max's and Steve's injuries, respectively—but they moved around one another with a care and familiarity that spoke to years of experience. 

“How did you do this?” Eddie scrubbed a hand through his hair, yanking at the roots. He and Robin were posted by Steve's bedside—he still spent most of his days semi- to unconscious. And while Eddie didn’t necessarily think it made a whole lot of sense for him to be spending more time at Steve’s bedside than the kids did, Robin was only ever dragged away from him kicking and screaming, and as the newest member of the apocalypse posse above the age of twelve, he was in desperate need of her guidance.

“How’d I do what?” Her typically-raspy voice sounded paper thin, and there were deep, dark circles under both eyes.

“I don’t know—!” Eddie flapped a frantic hand around, like he could manifest words and meaning into being. Something about it made the corners of Robin’s mouth twitch up. “Any of it? You–you dealt with a flesh monster, apparently, and you’re just...walking around on two feet, probably ready to graduate—which is more than I could guarantee for myself—”

“Hey, you will—”

“Not the point, Buckley! The point is, up until this new bout of freaky shit popped into existence, you seemed like you were walking around Hawkins without a care in the world. So how’d you do it? What’s your secret?”

Robin scoffed. “If you think I was walking around without being terrified every day, you either weren’t paying attention, or you’re a lot less smart than I gave you credit for, Munson.”

Eddie grimaced. “Sorry, sorry. That’s not what I meant, I just…you seem like you managed to pull yourself back together—whereas I feel seconds away from total collapse.”

“Yeah, that’s not just a you thing.” Robin twisted one of her rings around her finger. “But you wanna know what kept me upright? It was Steve. I don’t think I would have made it through the last eight months without him. And I know he’s gonna be alright, but I am still terrified that something will happen and he’ll get ripped away from me.”

Eddie frowned. He didn’t think he’d been picking up on those kinds of vibes between Harrington and Buckley, but the way she spoke about him… “Are the two of you, like, a thing?”

Robin barked out a laugh. “No! Not at all. I mean, he is the most important person in my life, and I would both kill and die for him. But, like, in a normal, platonic way.”

“...I’ll take you at your word for the ‘platonic’ part, but there is absolutely nothing normal about what you just said. You two are freaky for each other.”

Robin giggle-snorted, and it scrunched her nose up in a way that filled Eddie with warmth. Despite everything about his…everything, he’d never been short on friends—but it always felt nice to find another one. “Yeah, yeah I guess we are.”

“Mmm…Bobbie? ‘Zat you?” The beeping of Steve’s heart monitor picked up a little speed, and the man in question’s eyelids fluttered open. Robin immediately unraveled from the folded-up position she’d adopted in the hospital chair, and reached out to take his hand into her own. 

“Yeah, Stevie, it’s me.”

Steve squeezed her hand, before his eyes started scanning the room—going wide when they landed on Eddie. “Oh. Eddie.” A light pink flush broke over his face, and he averted his gaze almost as quickly as he met Eddie’s. That kept happening whenever Steve woke up, and Eddie didn’t know what to make of it, but it always left him off-kilter in a way he didn’t want or know how to put a name to. He always took it as his cue to leave.

“Well,” he started, with forced cheer, and a shit-eating grin. He pushed himself up from the chair and dusted off his knees. “I’m gonna leave you two lovebirds to catch up,”

“Not lovebirds—” Steve slurred, at the same time Robin exclaimed, “Ew, Munson!”

Eddie just cackled and sauntered off with a jaunty salute.

🦇🦇🦇

Steve felt like he was losing his mind. 

He'd been out of the hospital for a few weeks now, but he almost wished he was back there, because every waking second was just a never ending parade of pain and confusion. 

Fuck, why did almost dying always hurt so much?

The upside of being awake and ambulatory, was that Eddie had finally stopped running out of the room whenever Steve was awake for longer than two seconds. The down side—which was unfortunately directly connected to the aforementioned upside—was that Eddie was being weird.

And, okay, Steve had an admittedly shallow pool of evidence from which to draw his comparisons from. But the fact remained that Eddie’s behavior towards him pre- and post-Vecna-slaying were worlds’ apart. And he didn’t know how to fix it. He’d tried everything: playing coy, bringing him small gifts, finding excuses to talk to him one-on-one when the rest of the group was gathered together. But none of it seemed to work.

What Steve wanted was to just be able to rock up to the trailer with a bouquet of flowers and ask him out to a night at Enzo’s. But even without the whole recently-wanted-for-murder thing, the two of them going out on what was obviously a date in Hawkins was not only a bad idea, but actively dangerous. And without his typical romance rituals to fall back on, Steve was at a loss as to how to proceed, when the object of his affection was acting so damnably fickle.

“I just don’t get it, Rob. One minute he’s calling me ‘big boy’ and getting all up close and personal, and the next he’s looking like I killed his cat!”

“You have got to stop using other people’s trauma as analogies for your love life, babe.”

Steve waved a hand. “Mrs. Henderson’s not here.”

Robin threw up her hands. “And that makes it okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” 

“Fine, whatever.” Robin ruffled her hair in frustration. “Maybe he’s just nervous!”

“Nervous! Why would he be nervous?”

“I don’t know, Steve. Why are you nervous?”

“Because I like him, and I don’t want to get hurt again!” Steve shouted, startling himself by the force with which the words came tumbling out.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Steve sighed. “I mean, it’s not just that, though, it’s…” Steve waved a hand into the open air between them. “I don’t know how to do this, you know? If this was a girl, I’d be thinking ‘oh, she’s playing hard to get—’”

“I can’t believe that’s a real thing people do,” Robin deadpanned.

“I mean, sometimes it really is just that they don’t like you—except that then they don’t keep trying to, like, hang out and joke with you—which Eddie does, he’s just hopelessly awkward about it.”

“Steve. Eddie is a hopelessly awkward person. It’s like a defining character trait.”

“Well he wasn’t with me.” Steve wiped a hand over his face and groaned. “I’m just nervous I misread the whole thing, you know? And if I did, and I ask him the wrong thing in the wrong way…what if he doesn’t want to see me again? Like, at all?”

Robin reached out and took his hand. “I hate that you have to know what that feels like,” she said, soft and careful. “But even in the wild event that Eddie is either a: entirely straight, or b: just not into you, I don’t think there’s any version of him that wouldn’t want to talk to you at all. So you should ask him out.”

“Okay, Rob,” Steve sighed. “Only on one condition, though.”

“Oh, no. Ohhhh, no you don’t—”

“You’ve gotta ask out Vickie,” Steve finished, holding out his hand with a smirk.

“Uggggh, fine. Deal.”

🎸🎸🎸

Steve was acting weird.

He’d been acting weird since getting discharged from the hospital—acting all shy and blushy one second, and then turning around and bringing him a new set of dice the next—but it’d really been cranked up to eleven for the past week.

And, look, Eddie knew he was new to the monsters-are-real crew. He knew that in order to make space for him they had to alter whatever their established dynamics were to fit him into them. But that didn’t account for the fact that all of a sudden Steve seemed to be completely unable to string two sentences together in front of him. 

Maybe the two of them weren’t quite friends yet, but he missed the ease with which they’d been able to talk and be honest with each other only a couple of weeks ago. Hell, they’d had more chemistry together down in the Upside Down.

Oh.

Oh, fuck. 

Maybe that had been the problem all along. Maybe Steve had finally clocked his doomsday-flirting for what it was, and was trying to establish boundaries. Eddie thought he’d pulled back since they'd all crawled out of hell—broken, but alive. As soon as the danger was clear there was no reason to play the bit anymore, right? It’s not like his flirtation attempts had ever been more than a way to liven up what had been an unmitigated shitstain of an experience. Sure, Harrington was pretty, and nice—and there was clearly more to him than met the eye. Eddie had really enjoyed getting to know him over the course of the past few weeks. He wouldn’t mind getting to know him better, if he was being honest. But it looked like the door was closing on that chance if he didn’t straighten things out.

“Hey, Harrington?”

“I thought I told you to call me Steve, Munson.”

Eddie smiled his ‘malicious compliance’ smile and clasped his hands behind his back, rocking onto his heels as he said. “Alright: Steeeve.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but there was a little smile on his face that belied the general bitchiness of the rest of his demeanor. “What do you want, Eddie?”

Eddie spread his hands out in front of him like he was unfurling a map into the air between them. “Just figured I ought to clear the air.”

Steve frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You know—the whole reason you’ve been all weird around me lately? I figured it’d be best if I put all of my cards on the table.”

The frown dropped off of Steve’s face—replaced by an expression that Eddie couldn’t decipher. It wasn’t…bad? There was no apprehension to be found there. Steve looked almost expectant. Hopeful, maybe. Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense—but Harrington didn’t make a whole lot of sense, so maybe Eddie was just misreading whatever he was seeing there. 

“You know it was all just in good fun, right? That it didn’t mean anything?”

The frown returned. “What are you talking about?”

“Back in the Upside Down. You know I was just messing with you, right, man? Just a bit of good ol’ fashioned I’m-about-to-die flirting, you know? Nothing to get all worked up about.” Eddie kept a wide smile fixed in place, tried to really lean into the whole ‘non-threatening gay guy’ vibe—an uphill battle for him, specifically on one of his best days. He’d do jazz hands if it’d help sell the performance any better. But each word out of his mouth felt more like a lie than the one before.

A thin fissure appeared on Steve’s face—a crack that Eddie could almost see through, but not enough to be able to make any sense of what was on the other side. “Oh,” Steve said. His voice was shaking and Eddie couldn’t figure out why. It set off alarms in the part of his brain that was always primed to run at the first sign of danger. “So you’re…not gay?”

Eddie frowned in confusion. Of all the ways he thought Steve might react, that was not one of them. So Eddie forced a laugh, trying to disarm the question. “Oh no, I am a flaming homosexual. I just want to make sure you know that doesn’t mean I’m interested in you.”

The frown slid off of Steve’s face, and the fissure smoothed itself away like it’d never been there. The Steve standing before him was blank-faced as a statue, and it made Eddie want to puke. In all his worrying about Steve being uncomfortable with the idea that Eddie was hitting on him, specifically, he’d entirely forgotten to be worried about Steve being straight up homophobic. At least he wasn’t throwing punches. That was something, right? But Steve was looking at him with such a totalizing coldness behind his eyes that Eddie felt like he’d been left out to sea. 

Steve gave a stiff nod. “Right, of course not,” he said, but the words came out wooden. He threw a thumb over one shoulder and twisted on his heel, back toward the beemer. “I’ll just…I gotta go.”

And then Harrington turned his back to him, and walked away.

Eddie didn’t have a crush on Steve.

So why did it hurt so much to watch him leave?

⛵⛵⛵

Robin sped down the stairs when she heard the banging at the door. There weren’t many people who would bother turning up on her doorstep unannounced. Even fewer who would make such a concerted effort to try to knock it down with the force of their pounding fists.

She swung the door open to find a tear-stained Steve standing before her.

“What happened?” She gasped out. Was it back? It couldn’t be back. El and Will had both sworn on pain of death that it was over. Maybe there was a new horror in town? Maybe Nancy had gone missing? Or Dustin? One of the other kids? Maybe Eddie? 

Steve cut off the racing of her thoughts with a sobbing gasp. “Nothing, Robs.” Somehow, he looked worse than he had after the Russians. His head was hung low, and Robin could swear there was a shadow of phantom-bruising around his eyes. Like he’d been emotionally decked in the face. He took a step forward to come inside at the same moment that she took him by the wrist and yanked him across the threshold.

“What do you need?”

“Bathroom,” was all he said. And then Steve swapped his-wrist-in-hers for her-wrist-in-his and he pulled her further into her own house, toward the second-floor bathroom. When they reached it, Robin plopped down on the floor with her back against the tub while Steve took up his position with his back pressed up against the toilet bowl.

“What happened?” She whispered.

Steve was silent for a long stretch of time. He turned his head to the side, as though he was trying to look out of the small frosted window high up on the wall beside him. “He doesn’t want me.”

“Who? What? What are you talking about, Steve?”

Steve turned back to face her. “Eddie. He doesn’t want me.” Steve no longer sounded sad—he sounded vacant.

Robin’s nose scrunched up like she’d smelled something wrong, because that didn’t make sense. Robin might not be good at clocking other gay people—she wasn’t that good at reading people, period—but it’s not like Eddie’s flirting with Steve had been subtle. And even beyond that, he was always looking at Steve while he was asleep in the hospital bed, in a way that Robin thought meant something… There was just no way that Eddie didn’t have at least a little bit of a crush on Steve, right? So what had he said to make Steve so certain about that he didn’t? “How d’you know that?”

Steve laughed, half-hysterical, as he tipped his head back onto the lid of the toilet. “He said it didn’t mean anything—the flirting.” Steve wiped a hand clear across the length of his face—chin to forehead—before digging his fingers into his hair. He laughed again. Or—it was more a puff of air, than anything else. And there was definitely no humor behind it. Just a bitter kind of resignation. “And then—he said—he told me he was gay, but that he just wanted me to know that it doesn’t mean he’s interested in me.” Steve covered his face with both hands and let out a broken sob. “God, he and Nance should compare notes.”

Robin could feel the lines carving an angry space between her eyebrows, and a fire in her heart. How dare he? Maybe Robin had misread Eddie's whole vibe toward Steve—but how dare he just trample all over and discard his heart like that? It didn’t make sense—but it was happening, and she had to fix it, because no one was allowed to break her other half. 

“Hey Stevie?” She asked, trying to keep her tone light.

“Yeah?”

“Where do you keep your little nail bat nowadays?”

🎸🎸🎸

Let it not be said that Eddie Munson didn’t know how to pull off a top-tier wallow. Ozzy’s pleading vocals were pouring out the speakers, while Eddie was laid star-fished out on the mattress, staring at the ceiling like it might give him answers, and torturing himself with the memory of Steve Harrington biting into the tail of a hell-bat.

Is it me or is it you?

Things are so much different now

But nothing lasts forever

He really should have known that whatever kind of rapport he and Harrington had going was too good to be true. Once a rich dickhead jock, always a rich dickhead jock, right? He almost felt bad thinking that. But what else was he supposed to think? The second Steve Harrinton had found out he was gay he’d turned his back on him. That was pretty cut and dry.

A loud banging at the trailer door cut through his thoughts and over the sound of Ozzy singing looks and glances can't repair, talking could if we'd just dare.

Eddie had half a mind to just ignore it, but there were even odds that it was one of the UD Crew as it was a member of Hawkins’ resident angry mob. So Eddie peeled himself off the bed, leaving Ozzy blaring behind him, and yanked open the door. “What—?” He started, but came up short when he registered an absolutely livid Robin Buckley staring back at him.

Eddie hadn’t thought to take into consideration the idea that the person at the door might be a UD Crew member taking up the role of angry mob members. But Robin Buckley was standing on his stoop looking half-ready to commit a murder. The second the door was open, she shoved past him and into the trailer.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Munson?”

“Wh-what are you talking about, Buckley?” Covering his face with a piece of hair wasn’t enough—he wanted to melt into the floor. Had Steve really sent Robin to beat him up for being gay? That was some next level gymnastics in avoiding making physical contact with another man so that you don't seem gay.

Robin yanked at her hair and started pacing around the common area, glaring daggers into the floor (but thankfully not at him). “What am I talking about, he asks! You really are a medical grade idiot, aren’t you?”

“I—”

“No, shut up, I don’t want to hear it.” Robin abruptly swung around on her heel to rush at him and jab a finger into his chest. “You broke Steve’s heart. And I don’t care if you were never into him—because I know that you can’t help who you like, or love—but you had no right to be so fucking cruel about it!”

A penny dropped.

“Robin. What are you talking about?”

Steve was heartbroken? That didn’t make any sense. He should have been relieved, he should have—

Robin laughed, hysterical, and threw her hands into the air. “I am talking about the fact that you told my best friend who has been pining over you for fucking weeks that all of the very obvious flirting you’ve been doing ‘didn’t mean anything,’ and that you just had to let him know that you weren’t interested in him specifically.” Robin paused to take a deep breath and kept barreling on. “And I get not wanting to lead someone on, Eddie—but even I know that was the least tactful way you could have gone about letting him down.”

Eddie shook his head, backing up toward the nearest wall like a cornered animal, because what Robin was saying didn’t make any sense. “I— I don’t—I mean, I do like him. I thought he didn’t like me! I thought he was straight!”

That brought Robin up short. Her shoulders remained set into a tense line, and her brow was still furrowed in distrust, but some of the unrelenting ire slipped away. “You didn’t—? Did he not—? What the fuck, Stevie!” The last part Robin muttered under her breath.

“Did he not, what, Buckley?”

“He didn’t ask you out?”

“No. What? Was he planning to?”

“Yes, numb nuts! Steve’s been trying to ask you out for weeks! I mean I guess mostly this past week—but that’s because before then he’d just been trying to beam the knowledge directly into your head through your thick skull.”

“Oh, shit.” Eddie’s heart dropped into his stomach as the full ramifications of what he’d said caught up to him.

“Yeah, ‘oh, shit,’ Munson.”

“Buckley—” Eddie rushed over to clap both of his hands onto Robin’s shoulders. “Robin. I’ve gotta fix this.”

Robin rolled her eyes. They were still creased at the corners, but the rest of her seemed to have softened a bit. “Yeah, you do,” she said—all low and serious. “You’re gonna have to fucking grovel.”

Eddie nodded. “Can you help me?”

Robin narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But let me make one thing fucking clear, Munson: I am doing this for Steve, not you, capiche? You put one toe out of line and I’ll go to the Wheeler house and grab one of Nancy’s guns.”

Eddie held up his hands in placating surrender. “Message received, loud and clear.”

Robin nodded, satisfied.

Eddie grinned back. “Let’s go get my man.”

there is now a part two!

[autisticlalna]

okay. full episode analysis coming later because i have so, so much to say about that one clip, but:

so. Dominion references. that's the big thing. we got two of them back-to-back in a very hard to ignore way if you're familiar with season 2.

but it's not just been Dominion. that's been what we're all excited about, obviously, but there's been some other stuff blending in.

after all, we have Viking surviving the apocalypse and talking about how he has experience working with tnt bombers-- something said ooc, maybe, but he has been working with them on both Hardcore and Twitch SMP, and died on TSMP because of getting caught in the explosions.

there's also the moment earlier in the trial where M1G starts ripping into Milkman for what he did on Pleasantcraft. again, line between ooc and in-character is blurry here, but either way Viking recognized what M1G was getting at. (Viking also cut out the part where it got called into question if that should count as testimony against Milkman seeing as it happened on another server and Elffe said "let's get multiversal". god, literally everything elffe did in the trial was great)

but, speaking of multiversal, i'm going to bring up something i've been calling "multiversal bleed" for lack of a better term. sometimes the lines dividing the Vikings are... wiggly. history likes to repeat and mirror itself (as shown in the trial), but some stuff slips in regardless of reality echoing itself. this is the obligatory part of the post where i pull up the TSMP transcripts.

because, for some reason, this specific line from tViking sticks in my head:

Viking: [cat beckoning noises] Frickin’ cat, like the cat I had one time. C’mon.

the reason this is filed under multiversal bleed is because Viking had a cat in Gilded Hardcore. (Also in Dominion, but Cranberry is better remembered.) tViking also could've had a cat during the gap of time between his arrival in TSMP's world and tRuby's, but either way the reaction was "wait, Gilded?"

there's also an equally brief example in the solo Skyblock series, where Wanderer recognizes Avid despite neither of them having crossed paths on-camera before... or those specific versions, anyway. again, Gilded Hardcore.

multiversal bleed is kinda a consequence of mcyt in general when you have multiple series running with different iterations of your character. there's bound to be crossovers and quick jokes and the like. but, considering that Viking's lore has been steadily building up to his status as a universal constant, it's more on the table as "something with canon repercussions".

going off of what moxijunk has suggested before, Summertime might be having heavy bleed from other versions of himself. he's still a separate entity from dViking, or Hardcore, or tViking, but when things get a little too familiar, memories that aren't his start to spill through. it seems to be what's happening to Cherryby, after all.

there is another route, though. on some level, we know the Vikings are aware of each other... maybe. again, most of my evidence is going to be from Twitch SMP, seeing as that went deeper into the overall storyline that's been building since the introduction of V.P. as a concept.

Navigator, local Viking that knows about the multiverse and is very involved in keeping it on-rails, told Sapphire at one point:

Navigator: You won’t tell me anything. And none of the others seem to know… or know even he exists.

and Sapphire later brought up:

Sapphire: Well. I am me as much as this one… is nothing. Hm. Y’know? Me, myself, and I… always work together. We’ve always have. Just as all Vikings. And… Navigator: So you work together… Sapphire: Even to an extent, VP, back before… Well. He didn’t, anymore.

...so there's some level of communication going on between the Vikings. Navigator keeping himself hidden from tViking probably has more to do with "tViking being an unknown and dangerous variable" rather than "Vikings aren't supposed to interfere with each other". maybe. basically anything with Navigator involved is vague, though.

and then, of course:

Viking: So for me, [laughs] I may not build these things myself, but I wake up and they’re done, and I know it’s me, because me wants to help me. Vikings help Viking. That’s how it works.

Vikings help Viking.

this hinges on Summertime being aware, either consciously or subconsciously, of his other selves.

in a TSMP stream i don't have a clip of at the moment he did swap places with tViking / Navigator, but there was no meeting of the Vikings and we don't know if he understood what was happening or if he even remembers it. most of the evidence here is from Navigator, who is an outlier and probably should not be counted, and tViking, who has been voted "most possessable Viking" since near the start of TSMP's storyline.

good lord this post got long. i'm going to go get coffee. draw your own conclusions because i forgot mine

[cultherent]

An Accidental Email [Ch.3]

𝕄𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕥

TW: a little bit of smut, alcohol

Chapter 3

Thursday:

“Y/N, today I need the finalized video of the commercial. It needs to be uploaded tomorrow morning. If you two need to stay after work, file the correct paperwork for overtime.” You nodded at your boss with determination. “Please send me your final draft. I’ll leave edits, then after you revise, that should be all.” You left your boss’s room, making a B-line to Katsuki.

“Okay, I just met with Aizawa. He said when we have our final draft to send it over to him.” 

“Alright. I’m almost done with the editing. I’ll send my part over for you to stitch it together.”

“Perfect.”

“The commercial is looking good, so I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”

. . .

“Fuck me,” you groaned, your head in your hands. You had only one strand left of living. Your boss had so many revisions, it crushed both of your spirits. So much to the point that you basically had to refilm a whole new commercial. It was around 7 at night, your job had ended several hours ago and everyone was gone. 

Hearing a bang from the desk beside you, you saw how irritated Bakugo was. With a reassuring glance, “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll get this done.” He glared at you, not saying a word but instead clicking furiously with his mouse. You chuckled which caused him to stop and look at you again. 

“Let’s take a break.”

With his lips scrunched to the side, “That’s probably a good idea.”

You guys ordered some fast food for pick up then went to put on your coats. “You dropped your scarf,” Bakugo stated, staring at the floor. 

“Thank you for the informative comment. Are you gonna pick it up?” His nose flared and he just stared at you. “You’re literally closer to it,” the corner of your lips extended as far as they could go. “Seriously?” Bakugo grinned and started to turn around. “Bakugo, hand me my scarf.”

“No.”

“I said hand it to me.”

“I have better things to do like pick up my food.”

“My?” In an instant, you picked up your scarf and wrapped it around his body, pulling him into you. His back laid on your chest and your lips met his ear, “So, you're just being outright rude, huh?” Bakugo’s breath hitched when he realized the predicament he was in. “Y’know what happens when you aren’t nice to me, you’re punished.”

“You wouldn’t,” Katsuki challenged as he turned his head to face you.

Your hand curled around him and you placed your hand on his neck. “I wouldn’t?” You whispered. You quickly tied his wrists together with your scarf before pushing him onto the ground, he sat at your feet. He looked up at you, a mixture of irritation and lust flowed around his irises. 

You bit down on your lip, he looked hot sitting below you. You bent down slightly and grabbed his hair at the base of his scalp. Yanking it slightly, he let out a moan. Smirking to the sound, you stood straight and slipped your shoe off. You pressed on Bakugo’s cock, a little surprised he was already hard.

You chuckled, “Really?” You grabbed onto him, causing him to fold over a bit. Moving his coat off, you flicked his nipples with your toes; he shivered. You caressed any part of his body that made him react. “No way, you’re extremely sensitive.”

Bakugo groaned, not really wanting you to know about that. You unzipped his pants, revealing an aggressive tent in his boxer briefs. Your foot lazily caressed his clothed cock. You took this time to take your chair and sit down, grinning at the comfort of the cushion. You fastened your pace and it seemed like he was getting to a point of climax. “Are you going to cum already?” You grabbed his hair, pulling him closer to you as he spat out nasty profanities from your stopping motions. 

“Just keep fucking going, cunt.” 

“Sorry, forgot who was taking orders,” you crouched down, pumping him with your hands. Feeling how fast you were going, he was going to bust in under a minute. You watched as his legs clenched and his eyes rolled back, but you stopped and placed your finger over his hole. He yanked himself from almost falling back and stared in disbelief. “This is a punishment, what did you think was gonna happen? And the fact you still bad-mouthed me. You should know who you’re speaking to.”

Walking behind him and picking up his coat, you throw it onto his head. “Let’s go, the food is almost ready.” Bakugo choked back words as he looked at you. “Now, I would've said the food is cold, but you were about to cum in 3 minutes.” You smirked, knowing you were able to take a jab at him. Walking closer to the door, “Chop, chop. I’m hungry and we have work to do.”

. . .

Friday:

“Did you hear about the company party going on tonight?” You looked up from your monitor, Todoroki beaming. You raised an eyebrow causing him to continue. “Aizawa has paid for us to go to a bar not too far from here as a reward for our hard work.”

You nodded with a smile, “So he’s paying for the drinks?” With a nod, your smile turned into a devilish grin which caused a confused look on Shoto. 

“Also, what did Aizawa say about the video?”

With a sigh, “After redoing it, he liked it.”

“Don’t tell me you guys were here all night.” You nodded in defeat. “Well, this night goes out to you and Katsuki.”

. . .

“MORE SHOTS!!!” One of your coworkers screamed as others drank their drinks in one sip. You chuckled as you danced, the background music making you sway. Before coming to the bar, you went home to change, and you wore a tight-fitting dress that showed off your best assets. You did your hair and makeup and took photos outside with the other ladies you worked with.

“Let’s fucking send it!” Katsuki downed a purple vodka shot, his head shaking from the burning of his throat. He wore a loose button-up, his cardigan discarded beside him. He glanced at you, smirking.

You rolled your eyes, your attention focusing on Shoto who approached you. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel amazing, honestly. I needed this after last night.”

“I’m glad,” he smiled. “I didn’t say, but you look lovely today.”

Your cheeks heated, “Thank you, Shoto. You look great as well. I love the design on your shirt.”

“Thank you.”

“Hey Y/N, come here,” Bakugo stared at you, his eyelids heavy, he looked tipsy. 

“In a minute, I’m talking with Todoroki.” He glared at you and sat on the barstool right next to you. He pouted to himself, sighing loud enough that you could hear him over the music as you tried your best to continue your conversation. “Give me a second,” your eyes apologized and your coworker understood. “What is it?”

Katsuki looked at you and grinned, walking away from you to do God knows what. Your eyebrows scrunched, your palms flipping to the air to your confusion. As you turned around, Shoto was gone, talking to someone else. You groaned as you sat alone at the bar.

. . .

“Woah there, I think you’ve had too much to drink,” a male coworker held Bakugo up by his shoulders. Bakugo slurred his words as he held a cup in his hand. Frowning, you walked over, changing his alcoholic drink for water. Sitting him down, you grabbed a water as well, “I bet you can’t chug this concoction.”

His eyebrow raised, “You’re going down.” He drank the whole cup, cheering to himself that he won. You chuckled to yourself as you motioned him to get up. When he did, his knees gave way. You held him up with all your might, not wanting him to fall. “I’m gonna take him home!” You told your coworkers.

“Do you need help, he’s pretty heavy.”

“No, don’t worry. I got him.” You were pretty strong, you had to be. Sometimes you have to carry heavy equipment around for work, you can’t just simply say you can’t do it. “I’ll order a taxi.” Bakugo stood on his own, but he rested his head on your shoulder. “Can you give me your address Katsu?”

“I like when you call me that,” he nuzzled further into your shoulder, his smile forming from ear to ear. “It’s way better than Cocksuki. That one is mean. But, I do like it sometimes…” You felt something press against your side, and your eyes immediately darted to him as he started moving it against you.

Moving him off you softly, “Bakugo, address.”

“Can we go to yours?”

“No, give me your address, that’s an order.” He stayed silent, pretending he was asleep. “You’re lucky you're drunk.” You put in your address on your phone, the taxi came shortly.

Verifying it was your taxi beforehand, you helped Bakugo in then you went in yourself. You listened to the sound of the car driving as Katsuki’s head fell softly onto your shoulder. You looked over to see his eyes shut, his chest moving up and down. He snored quietly. 

“Right here is perfect. Come on Bakugo, we’re here.” You helped him into your apartment and plopped him onto your couch. “Wait right here.” You went to grab him some blankets and pillows, but when you arrived you found him on the floor. Placing the things on the couch, you moved towards him, “Are you alright?”

Katsuki crawled to your leg and looked up at you, his eyes bright and puppy-like. His cheek pressed against the side of your calf, “I want to be yours. Do whatever you want to me.”

“Bakugo-” you blurted, shocked by his words. You thought to yourself that he was only like this because he was drunk, so you motioned for him to get on the couch. He clung onto your leg, not letting up. “Katsu, you're drunk. You're not talking right, you need to rest.” His head went between your dress as he kissed your thigh, “Hey!”

“Call me that again, I love it,” he purred, his hands slowly moving up your legs. Pulling back, Katsuki fell onto his hands. 

He looked up once more, “I could be your pet.” Your mind raced, you were extremely overwhelmed by everything going on. He crawled over to you on all fours, “Let me please you. Let me serve you.” Your hands covered your eyes, you couldn’t take any of this anymore. 

It wasn’t right to do anything he said without his consent. Funny how you thought this, look at your situationship. You’re blackmailing him into sexual punishments which were for your own satisfaction, yet this was your line breaker. 

“I’m sorry, Bakugo. I can’t do this. You’re drunk.” The man pouted as he sat up on his legs. 

“I’m not even drunk, just a bit tipsy.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t. Have a good night, Katsu.”

[fluffypotatey]

Say what you will about Arthur and his utter lack of game, but always appreciate the fact this man looked at Morgana, duchess of drip, and decided a dagger would be the best gift for her.

And when it was pointed out that it might not be her style, he went "ah shit you right" and just had the fucking thing tricked out. That was his solution. That was his thought process. Not that a knife was inappropriate, but that it needed to be a custom piece. No basic bitches in this household.

Mans said "what shall I get my significant annoyance this year?", shook his braincell like a Magic 8 Ball, and came up with "knife."

We stan one princely himbo.

ngl i like to use this as proof for Arthur and Morgana being so close and knowing each other so well because i have such a soft spot for my pendragon siblings 🤧

(thoughts under the cut bc….*coughs* i suffer from pendragon sibs brainrot)

listen, listen to me: these guys really did only have each other when they were younger and surrounded by nobody but stuffy nobles and an emotionally repressed/abusive father. Arthur lost his mother king before he got to know her, and Morgana lost a father whom she knew and loved so dearly. they were children who never really got to grieve what was lost from them (although, in some way, Morgana was given some time to grieve and mourn but never for too long).

Arthur has known Morgana for her spunk and rebellious nature against the status quo King Uther enforces since they were children. She was always trying to learn to fight (see her bragging about beating Arthur when they were younger in 1x10) and probably taught herself secretly how to use a sword (or had some help as well 👀 but that’s just a headcanon). She was always at odds with Uther about magic (while Arthur would receive severe punishment for disagreeing with his father, Morgana’s anguish was treated like the flights of a lady’s emotions).

It would be offensive (towards Morgana) if Arthur were to ever gift her something so stereotypical and stuffy on her birthday. He most likely knew that she would have wanted something to use to protect herself: ergo, dagger.

Fuckinnnnnnng, read what Arthur says about his gift omfg 🫠

ARTHUR Beautiful, isn't it? Feel the balance, feel the sharpness of the blade.

I AM PUNCHING THE WALLS 🫠🫠🫠🫠

This man put so much thought and care into this gift for her. Listen, she was his first friend, the first person to not treat him like he was fragile or the fault of his mother’s demise. She was Arthur’s sister before he even knew that’s how he saw her and their relationship. Morgana meant so much to him, your honor, I fucking can’t. They loved each other so much despite the gradual rift that he gained when we first meet them in s1, your honOR—

But then you have Merlin’s comment:

MERLIN Well, I'm no expert, but don't women normally go for pretty things? Like, maybe, jewellery?

(yes he said this as a way to deter Arthur from sticking with a dagger bc of the vision he saw but still)

And so Arthur Dumb-of-ass & bi-of-sexual Pendragon takes Merlin’s advice, realizes that yeah, Morgana still likes feminine things like dressed and jewelry and pretty shit. LET ME BEDAZZLE THIS DAGGER JUST FOR HER

LOOK AT IT

THE FUCKING PENDRAGON COLORS YIU CHEEKY FUCK ARTHUR 🤧 AND LOOK AT HER REACTION TO IT

SHE LOOKS ENTRANCED BY IT???? MAYBE TOUCHED (<- fluffy is reaching, she has gone insane) MAYBE EVEN CONSIDERING THAT ARTHUR DOES CARE AND MAYBE SHE COUOD TURN HIM AGAINST UTHER TO JOIN HER???? (<- fluffy.exe is suffering malfunctions. delusion file has been corrupted)

Literally every other noble gifted her a fancy hairbrush (those fucking posers) and you would think! With how much this show presents Arthur as emotionally repressed and very obtuse when it comes to women, you would think they would regress his character (again) to make a joke out of him (again) not knowing what to give Morgana for her birthday

BUT THEY DONT!!!!

NO! THEY SHOW HIM BEING CONFIDENT IN HIS DECISION FOR IT TO BE A DAGGER THEN NERVOUS ABOUT HIS CHOICE BC MAYBE IT’S NOT A GOOD DAGGER THEN PROUD BECAUSE NOW IT IS A BEDAZZLED DAGGER

WHAT THE FU—

Not only that, BUT SHE TAKES THE DAGGER WITH HER WHEN MEETING MORGAUSE (s3’s big bad villain who is the new up-and-coming High Priestess after Nimueh, whom Merlin smited (smote? smitten?) and does not give any fucks about Uther or Arthur. Both could just die for all she cares.)

I would never lie to you. Transcript speaks the truth. Also, what other dagger would they speak about??? It’s Arthur’s gift and she was so touched by it that she decided to use it for her nefarious schemes of regicide!

OH YEAH AND AFTER THIS WHEN SHE’S IN A COMA YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT ARTHUR SAID

ARTHUR To lose her now, like this...I've grown up with her, she's like a sister to me. I'd sacrifice my place on the throne for her to see another sunrise.

*deep breath*

So much shit could have been avoided if these dumbass Pendragons just talked to each other T^T Jfc, Arthur loves those close to him so deeply. He is so loyal to them that it blinds him, that he would willingly give up anything just to keep them alive and happy.

ough, yeah I’m okay (<- liar)

[transingthoseformers]

So, I once said that Too Sweet by Hozier would be a PERFECT song from Mirage and Noah and their dynamic, and I have scaled TikTok and found something that would potentially be in Mirage's POV if he was singing this song, I modified it a little but bear with me while I pick it apart: "My friends like say that I'm an early bird, I'm up at seven with my vision blurred" So boom, first line. I once talked about Mirage not being able to dream, but instead plays memory files. However, he can't willingly choose which files play - and majority, it's bad ones. So, his "vision being blurred" could say how it takes longer for him to refocus his vision after being put in a memory of being in the middle of a war. Also, people saying Mirage is such an early bird because of how he gets up from recharging just as the sun is rising, when in reality, Mirage's battery is on 87% at best T0T

"Why care what hour I'm awake? Baby, your mistake: You keep saying that I'm living right, just 'cause I sleep before the daylight." Now, this line would probably be a little directed towards Noah. I can imagine Noah or his Ma saying how Mirage must be going to bed at earlier times, hell maybe Noah's mom telling Noah that he "could learn a thing or two from Mirage" and Mirage just awkwardly laughing like he didn't start recharging until 3 in the morning.

"But I'm awake at every sunrise. I taught myself how to pretend." It's in his name. Mirage, which means an illusion or something not real. And this could go with Mirage who used to be a spy, being taught and teaching himself how to pretend to get a mission done. Or in this case, so people don't see how actually dysfunctional and bitter the real Mirage is.

"But again and again: Dude, I seem wake up, dark as a lake. My wires just dangling, my mind in a haze." This brings into my HC that Mirage dissociates as a coping mechanism. Whether that be from memories or from himself, thus how his mind feels like it's "in a haze" or some kind of fog.

"I'm not drunk of life, babe. I just hide in the taste." THIS. Mirage literally admitting he doesn't enjoy life one bit, but sees it as an end-all, be-all. He could care less about his own life, but won't actively try to take it. Mirage is most likely always lectured by Optimus about how he doesn't cherish or take care of his life, and at one point, Mirage just outwardly said "I don't give a shit about my life." but managed to play it off later as a way to get under Prime's skin, and definitely not because he genuinely wouldn't care if he died the next day.

"But while in this world; I just can't take my whiskey neat, or my coffee black in my bed at three. I need something sweet; I need something sweet." This is the other side of the coin of Noah's bitter-drink addiction. How he literally needs his coffee in the morning, or he cannot function, it's the same with Mirage. He needs something sweet, needs something to distract from the bitter taste in his mouth every time he gets another memory file of how he put another autobot offline, ripped another person from their family just to get a mission done and distract himself from the fact he wasn't even in the ballpark of a good person BEFORE that. Maybe that's why he made such a great spy, he was already used to worming people's secrets out with ease.

"But you take your whiskey neat. Sipping black coffee while you fix a tv, and I've got places to be. Acting like I'm just so sweet." This is also in reference to Noah, how he's more dysfunctional and more "bitter" while other people and bots don't notice it from Mirage. Notice how sometimes his jokes land a bit different, fuller in malice when he's in a bad mood, how his tone grows dark when Cybertron is mentioned, how once Noah saw Mirage fully awake at 4 o'clock in the morning when he was supposed to be recharging, the dry sarcasm when he gets comfortable with Noah during late nights in the garage. Everyone expects Mirage to act a certain way but sometimes that's all it is; a mirage. And Mirage could stop at any time, but acting is something that he's used to. It's his comfort zone, and stepping out of it, that would be more vulnerable than anything he's ever known.

Exactlyyyy, they've got such a dynamic and the song is a good song (even though I don't know too much about Hozier, only two songs)

[bainofjustice]

Kitty's Notes On Episode 1 Of The Payday 2 Web Series

According to Bain Crime.net is a organization which is a notable definition of the group & program, it isn't just a program but something with structure to it.

Bain says he seeks out the top theives, thugs, drug dealers & hustlers for the organization.

To me this implies a heavy focus on contracting work out to contractors (thugs) and some independent work, possibly with members having to pay to be a member but get some benefit like being directed to targets or having costumers pointed to them, along with protection from the law (theives, drug dealers & hustlers) (starting scene)

He does outright say he hookups them up with contacts & “sets the stage”, so my immediate thoughts are right on that.

Also he says “they think they are working for themselves but they just can't see the bigger picture”, given this there might not be a membership fee but more splitting what they make with Bain since he “did them a favor”

Bain in this starting scene says that he is training the Payday Gang for the greatest heist of all, which my interpretation is he is either speaking of the White House pardons which I remember is mentioned to have been one of the first heists he planned or perhaps a heist involving the Katrau, maybe not a literal heist and more stealing it's secrets.

When starting the real part of the episode it says “DC, Present Day” which means First World Bank happened around when the episode came out, but given that would have been around 2012 & 2013 but FBI files indicate that the first batch of heists take place 2014 it is likely this was retconned

They do use the in-game escape van within the show

Houston starts off strong with talking about his ideology which includes the following 

Banks are stealing from the people 

Houston says that some call the gang modern day Robinhoods & seems to agree with that, this leads me to assume that he either is under the belief that Bain redistributes the wealth the gang steals or that Houston himself is doing that & assumes the other gang members are too

He also says others don't understand that they/we have a choice, which he doesn't follow up on instead saying that Newton said for every action there is a equal & opposite reaction and that The Payday Gang is their reaction, this ties in more to how Houston views the banking system & likely government systems as corrupt & hurting the general population 

“Am I a criminal? I don't think so, everyone needs a job, right? We all need a payday.” -Houston, to me this really suggests he sees working with the gang as a means to survival aka what money tends to be used for most, that it isn't the thrills but that message from above and also his own need for money to do things like pay off debts & pay for things.

Wolf seems concerned with hiding his identity taking steps such as a likely real human wig to 1. Give him “cool recognizable hair” & 2. Fasle DNA to be left at the scene, this is probably why in canon no one seems to know his previous identity at the time of Payday 2's end (perhaps this will come up more in 3's story?)

Houston is shown as the planer for the team on First World Bank, directing Wolf & Chains on what to do & explaining what Dallas is doing, at the start of 2 it seems likely he was second in command to Dallas, Chains doesn't seem the happiest about this as he rolls his eyes after the fact

Wolf does a literal wolf howl before the heist in the escape van, I just find this sort of cute/a interesting part of character 

Chains seems to be the voice of the gang when Dallas isn't around as he's the one to tell civis to get on the ground at the start of the heist

Later though Houston also does some speaking for the gang, which is a little less threatening and seems like more a set up for Dallas's speech, so pretty internally for planning had a different purpose for the heist.

We hear/see early in the heist one of the guards within the bank be directed by a female voice who has some camera access, this is probably a GenSec guard & operator like how the pagers work

I have to assume given that Dallas/”Natehen Steele” isn't arrested during his questioning later at FBI HQ that the director wasn't able to see him attack this guard.

The security cameras go down before Dallas attacks so that explains the above

We see that Bain is able to detect when silent alarms have been triggered, this is probably a normal part of his set up during Payday gang heists 

Houston is the one to give a speech once the civis are on the ground, given how calmly it's delivered and how it's a good lead in to the First World Bank speech it is probably written by Bain or Dallas & Houston memorized it alongside the plan

We see that the gang checks money packs for tracers & dyepacks before bagging them, using some sort of scanner, saying clear before each one is bagged, we have to assume that there is also a word like “skip” or “traced” to indicate to skip a money pack for bagging.

Houston is shown using what looks like a normal smartphone as a timer during the bagging section, I don't even know how to begin to explain how bad an idea that is irl, so we can probably assume that the phones the gang uses have been altered in some major ways likely by Bain & Wolf (Bain on software & Wolf on hardware)

Wolf in the credits section which shows who plays who is “Wolf as Himself” funnily

[somerandomcryptid]

Ok so the plot point connected to this art might not stay because I know it's treading on Cala's boundaries and I feel really bad about that (but I fucking forgot about it when I was drawing this so sorry, I'm just dumb like that) so Cala absolutely feel free to tell me no that's too far, I'll absolutely rework it, but I wanted to at least post the art because I'm really happy with the art

So uh possibly triggering context under the cut

Tw for brief SH (scratching, though not to the point of drawing blood, and filing horns down, with no lasting or major nerve damage, just grazing it a bit, I don't even go into any of it actually, am very vague) and generally just, lots of Cryptid's mental state being absolutely totally fucked up

Basically, the short version, is a few weeks after Cryptid moves back into the artic commune, Dream and them have a big fight. This is post The first bottle, not the last.

A very big fight, a lot of hurtful things are said, mostly by Cryptid, because they are still rightfully pissed about everything. Dream insists he cares about them, Cryptid is skeptical. But eventually convinced. This does not make them any less angry and resentful.

Infact they just decide, "you care about me? Fine. I'll make that one of the worse mistake of your life." Because as they logically conclude, hurting themself will hurt Dream. You can probably see where this gets bad.

Thankfully they don't really get to hurt themself much. And they are talked down by Wren, but this is when everyone realizes just how hard they're spiraling.

Anyway yeah that's about it for context, I get if it's too much and overall Dreaming of death spiraled into something way darker then I originally intended and I honestly didn't even realize it, which I feel bad about given this is an au of someone else's work.

It turned into a bit of therapy for me and that was very unintentional, but I think it's honestly so connected to some of my plot points that I can't really separate that. I would be majorly changing the story if Cryptid didn't become an emotional mess of a person at some point, but certain things like the SH is definitely something that can be removed for everyone else's(and especially Cala's, since they're the author of penpal) comfort. I have my reasons for adding it, but I don't want to be violating any boundaries.

Anyway sorry for rambling, I kinda did this art and then realized, 'oh fuck idk if this is ok actually' so I just wanted to make clear that this might change and I'm completely willing to change it based on if Cala's alright with it or not

(I've literally mentioned them like 4 times but I'm tagging them here, @calamari-minecraft-corner is the creator of penpal, the fic Dreaming of death is based on, as we all know by now)

[totally-not-a-cannibal-hannibal]

To My Taste

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Part 1: Small Potatoes

⚠️Warnings⚠️: Murder, mention of rape. For this part there is talk of bodies. It's nothing too gory if you can stomach the show this part should be fine.

        All I could hear was the sound of my heels clanking against the linoleum floors of the office building.  I was incredibly late. Jack would have my ass for it this time. It really wasn't my fault, I'm still not used to how heavy traffic can get downtown. As I reached the right floor I saw the team's heads bobbing above the cubicles so I slowed down and crouched. Maybe I can just blend in with the group and Jack won't notice that I came in late.

        I sneak behind Price and Zeller to make my way over to Will. He normally didn't say anything when I was late. I stood up next to him as if I had been there the whole time. Beverly smirked at me from across the room. She tapped her watch and pointed down to the body. 

        It sounded callus but it hardly noticed her when I was on my mission to not be seen. Jack was speaking with a tall, well dressed man who must  be Dr. Lecter. This was probably what saved me from being spotted when I entered. Will handed me the file. 

        "Foot got stuck in a storm drain again?" He whispered. 

        "No, I was caught in traffic." He let out the smallest chuckle. Jack looked over at the two of us with a raised eyebrow. 

       "Is something funny? We got a third dead girl in a month and we have nothing. I don't find it very funny, Will." Will lowered his head and scratched his nose. Clearly feeling a bit embarrassed. "And don't think I missed you coming in late again Lydia." He said as he pointed his finger at me. 

      "There was stop and go traffic, I'm really sorry." 

       "I don't care if the earth opens up and swallows the road. If you are late one more time your ass is out of here." He said as he put his glasses on to read something Zeller handed him. 

       "Yes sir." I say, it being my turn to look down at the floor now. After the tongue lashing I crouch down next to the body. Just like the ones before her she was in her early thirties, white, some shade of blonde, around 120 lbs and shorter than 5'5. She worked a white collar job pretty high up in her industry. And just like all the others she was stabbed, raped then murder. It was a little tough to stomach for me, this group has seen stuff that can only be described as the 10th circle of hell so a simple rape and murder serial killer was probably like a vacation. 

       I pulled on a pair of gloves and started looking around her body. My job was always simpler when it came to a serial killer like this. I was a victimologist so normally I'd be looking for what made the killer pick these victims in particular. The motive seemed simple enough, sexual sadist who has a type. Perhaps some past trauma with a blonde woman, probably an ex or a mother.

       Beverly helped me move her to her side so I could see under. 

      "Kinda creepy huh?" Bev asked, looking at me in particular. 

       "Yeah bodies always give me the creeps, I don't want to meet the person who isn't creeped out by a corpse I guess." Stab marks could be seen on the linoleum under her. He was using a huge knife and must be really mad. 

        "No, I mean how much she looks like you." Bev says as someone comes over to take a picture of the stab marks. We set her back down and take off our gloves. She did look kinda like me but not enough to cause alarm or at least I thought. 

        "Bev she's literally just another strawberry blonde lady." I say dismissively. 

        "Will thinks so too." She says as she nudges him. He was doing that thing he does where he sweats and gets a 30-yard stare. 

       "Leave him alone, he's doing his Nancy Drew thing." 

        "I don't remember reading this part in Nancy Drew." Bev says as she motions to the body. I grin agreeing. 

       The whole time I felt eyes on me. At first I thought it was Jack, keeping a very close watch but he was yelling at Price for something. The feeling only got stronger as we cleaned up to leave. Eventually I turn around and see Dr. Lecter looking at me. Once I noticed him he started to walk over.

       "Hello Agent Trew, I didn't have a chance to introduce myself formally. I'm Dr. Lecter." He says as he holds out his hand. 

        "Oh hi! Yeah I know who you are, Will and Jack mentioned you." I say as I take his hand to shake. He seemed so polite, so civil. I couldn't see why Will wasn't fond of him.

      Will snapped out of his episode and walked over to us. 

        "Speak of the devil, hello Will. Are we still on for tomorrow?" Hannibal asks Will who looks a bit disheveled. He looked almost out of breath. Whatever he did must be hard on him. 

         "Yes. Excuse me." Will says as he squeezes between us to get to the exit. 

         "That's right, you are his therapist?" I ask finding it a little odd a therapist would see someone from the team he was also being a consultant on. 

       "Yes, Jack thinks I can help Will process his feelings towards the Job." Dr. Lecter explains as we walk down the stairs with the group. 

       "Well that's good, we all need someone to talk to I suppose. Will seems like a good guy. You guys get along?" I say probing for a little more info. It was a bad habit of mine, I could be so nosy.

         "But of course, we have a good working relationship. Why wouldn't we get along?" He asked as he held the door open for the majority of the crew exiting the building. I stood at the other door taking his lead, opening the other swinging door. 

         "I didn't mean anything by it. I'm sorry, I'm just trying to get a feel for everyone still." In truth I was getting a bit suspicious. Will was an odd guy sure but he didn't seem to outwardly dislike someone for no reason. Why on earth wouldn't he be friendly with Dr. Lecter who by all accounts seems perfectly charming. 

        "Of course no offense taken. You just started, correct?"

        "Yes siree, got a laminated badge and everything. This is my first case ever actually." I say with an air of pride. I worked hard to get into college early. I have always known I wanted to be here even at a young age. 

        "Well I'm sorry you had to be christened with such a grizzly case." He said as we walked to the parking lot. I hadn't expected the conversation to last so long he was just so easy to talk to. 

         "Oh not at all, I have seen some old case files this group has solved. This is small potatoes, we just need one crack to break the whole dam on this case." The guy had an uncanny ability to leave no trace. He bleached the women's insides and panties post mortem to get rid of any DNA. He was a ghost but I had no doubt we'd get him. 

         He gave me a strange look. His face is so hard to read normally I can tell in an instant what someone is thinking but Dr. Lecter was unreadable. 

        "Small potatoes." He repeats back to me. It dawned on me how horrible that sounded. 

        "Oh my gosh, not that these women are- were small potatoes. That sounded bad. I just meant this isn't as gnarly as like what the Chesapeake Ripper does." I say practically stumbling over myself trying not to sound like a monster. He nods and gives me a soft grin. 

         "I understand what you mean. I just thought the expression was interesting." He seemed to get a small amount of amusement out of my desperate attempt not to not be perceived as some kind of weirdo. 

         I got in my car to go back to the headquarters with everyone else. I was so embarrassed I didn't even properly say goodbye to Dr. Lecter who seemed to have carpooled with Jack. As if Jack didn't have enough reason to fire me now I've gone and sounded like a total jerk to his favorite person. 

          Maybe Dr. Lecter wouldn't mention anything, he's foreign.  There's a chance he just thought the saying was funny. I was sure I was overthinking it at this point. It was said and done, no taking it back so there is no reason to dwell on it still. If only that worked to tell yourself.

         The rest of the day was full of theory building and chasing whatever small leads we had. So far this guy could be half the men in Virginia. Frankly we are not even sure if it's a man yet. All we know they are strong, strong enough to stab through a body hard enough to leave chips in the ground below. We have a bruise in the shape of a large hand around one's neck and another on a different girl's hips but aside from that we have nothing. 

         Jack was torn whether or not to alert the public. It's always a tough call; you could risk spooking the killer or agitating them. Unfortunately the media got hold of the story before it could be squashed. It was a shit show.

          It was getting late and Will and I were staying behind to bounce some ideas off each other. Unfortunately my bad habit reared it's ugly head. I had to ask about him and the good doctor.

       "So what's the deal with you and Dr. Lecter? You act like you can't stand the guy." I say as I tack some evidence to the board. 

        Will doesn't answer me at first, his nose buried in a file. "Will?" 

        "I don't get along with psychiatrists. I don't like to be psychoanalyzed." He says not looking up from the papers. 

         "Oh I see." He was an interesting one. Maybe he has a thing about psychiatrists like I do with dentists. Will didn't seem like the type to have an irrational hatred of someone for their career choice but I suppose I haven't known him for very long at all. 

         "You want the rest of my sandwich?" He asks, still not looking up from the file. It was a turkey and cheese cold sandwich from the vending machine. My upper lip curls in disgust but I didn't want to be rude.

         "Oh no thank you I'm full." I say, still working on the board. Finally Will's eyes are pulled from his work to take in the site of the whole board. He shifts in his seat and gets an uneasy look on his face. He kept looking back to me then to the board. 

          "Beverly might have been right… You look like they belong on that board with them." I knew he didn't mean for that to sound so intimidating but it still made my skin crawl the way he spoke, his eyes grazing over me. He clicked his pen over and over as he thought. 

         "Do you know how many blondes are in this city? He's not even picky about the shade. We have a dishwater blonde, bottle blonde, strawberry blonde. Maybe he's a collector. He's not going to be looking for another strawberry blonde Will."

         "It's more than hair though. Your faces, jobs, ages. You all could have been friends. All the victims grew up in Virginia, just like you right?" He asked as he stood up. His tone changed and I couldn't place what it reminded me of.

       "Yeah in the southern part." I specify. He turned me by my shoulders to face him. 

       "You're what 5'3?"

       "And a half." I say with a grin. He didn't return the favor. He was working at something. He took the pen and held it above his head like he was going to stab it down at me. I stood there letting him do his mime show. I would have thought it was funny if he didn't have such a dark look in his eyes. 

        "He stabbed the first victim before she was on the ground. All the others he took to the ground then stabbed." He was starting to sweat again. I leaned past him to check the board if he was correct but he pushed me back in place. It wasn't forceful per se, it was almost like he was setting a cup back on a table that had fallen off. 

        "Get on your back." It wasn't a request. I laughed at him. 

        "Will, I'm in $120 dry clean only, Pants from Anne Taylor. You have lost your damn mind if you think my ass is getting on that dirty floor." His face didn't change. He looked like he does when he zones out at crime scenes. I take a step back from him. There wasn't something quite right with how he was looking at me. Honestly I wasn't sure if he was even looking at me; it was like his eyes were looking right through me. "Will…" I said as I snapped in his face. The light came back on behind his eyes and he looked at me confused. 

        "What's wrong, I was reenacting the first murder. You have done a reenactment right?" He said softly as he swallowed hard, he wiped the sweat off his brow. His body language didn't match his calm voice. 

        "The reenactment is useless, you are nowhere near this guy's height." I said as I took the pen from his hand. I brushed it off. He was just an odd guy, who took his job very seriously as we all should in this line of work. 

         "Ouch, I'm above average I'll have you know." He says with a grin as he leans against the table. I was gathering up the files and organizing them for tomorrow. 

       "You live alone?" He asks as he hands me an envelope.

        "Yep, just me and my love birds, Ricky and Lucy." He chuckles a bit. 

         "Why don't I drive you home. You can leave your car in the parking lot for the night. I'll pick you up in the morning. We could even grab breakfast." He suggests as he helps me carry the boxes of files to a cabinet. I roll my eyes and smirk. 

         "Oh is this a come on Agent Graham?" He laughed and held the door open for me as he made our way to the dark dank parking garage. 

         "No no nothing like that I promise. You just fit this guy's type so I want to make sure he doesn't get a 4th victim. The time between the murders is only getting shorter." He walked me to my car and opened the back door to make sure no one was hiding. 

        "I appreciate it Will I really do but I'm pretty sure he's a collector. He is not looking for another strawberry blonde. If he sticks to his accelerating timeline we have at least a day or two before starts his hunt again. I'll be fine." Will begrudgingly let me drive home alone. 

         My house was a small yellow one bedroom home I was renting from a sweet old lady who lived down the lane. It fitted my needs perfectly, I even had a view of a small lake from my bedroom window.  

          It was a warm night for September. I got in and opened my windows to save money on the power bill. My love birds were happy to see me. I fed them then myself. I hadn't had time to hook up my cable so I just watched them preen each other lovingly. I have always liked birds, my mother would tell me drunkenly about how birds are our dead loved ones watching over us. I hope that wasn't the case because I will often change in my living room. 

          They were very considerate birds and normally slept through the night so I never had to put a sheet over them. I filled their water before closing up the cage for the night. A nice cool bath sounded really good so I drew a bath for myself.

         Beverly and Will had gotten to me a bit. I kept my service weapon on the edge of the tub while I bathed. Will has a seemingly supernatural connection with the killer's they hunt so maybe I should take more stock in his worries. 

          I finished my bath and wrapped myself in a towel. I was in my own head now and took my gun with me to close all my windows and make sure my door was locked. Once I was sure my home was as secure as it possibly could be I got changed. It was going to get unbearably hot tonight with the windows closed so I elected to wear underwear and a tank top. If I was sure the nice old landlady wouldn't let herself in if I didn't answer at the first knock, I would have just slept naked.

          I laid my gun on the bedside table and tucked my phone under my pillow, a habit I kept from my college years. I got comfortable and found it surprisingly easy to sleep in the heat. 

         A sound from my living room woke me up. It was the sound of my love bird's cage rattling softly. It wasn't uncommon for them to have a small lovers quarrel in the middle of the night so I didn't bother checking on them. It wasn't till I heard one start to chirp that I sat up. They only sing in the morning or at a person. That's when it hit me. I got up and went to grab my gun to investigate. To my horror I couldn't find it. I knew I had put it arm's length away but it was gone without a trace. 

        My stomach sank as I heard a snapping sound just as the love song stopped. 

[butchsophiewalten]

haii i like JUST watched the walten files… idk if this blog is still alive, but im tryin to learn the lore and if u could give me a run-down of like the timeline/lore i would rlly appreciate it ^_^ TY!!!

Well i'm definitely still active, but this is kind of a tall ask! Also pretty complicated since there's a lot of fringe stuff that I care a lot about but probably isn't actually that important for a new fan to familiarize themself with right away, and sometimes it's hard for someone like me to differentiate that from the essential stuff. That said, I've written a lot here so it's going under a cut.

Just to cover all my bases: If you've just watched the series for the first time, be sure that you're also checking out the two hidden videos. They're both present in the Official Playlist in the order you're meant to view them, but there's really nothing wrong with watching both of them last, you shouldn't be that confused. These are technically and literally bonus content, but they ARE lore-important.

Also, a mutual of mine, @gir-posting put together a neocities site a while ago specifically with the intention of helping people who are new to The Walten Files get their bearings with it, and you can find that here:

Just as a note and to add my own pedantic criticism, this page eventually guides you towards the series' companion website, Findjackwalten.com, and provides archived links of all* the iterated versions of that site's pages. It's a LOT, don't worry about catching up on everything, it is literally all just bonus content to make the wait between episodes more fun. The Twfinfo page here also calls it an ARG, which i would not consider it by any stretch of the word's definition. It's just a website.

*some pages were never archived and Twfinfo is also missing the most recent findjackwalten update from August 15th.

I recognize that literally none of this is what you asked me for! This is because I honestly have a really difficult time trying to summarize the events of The Walten Files. But this is the part where I try:

In the late 50s, two college friends named Jack Walten and Felix Kranken came up with an idea for animatronic performers that, through the years, would eventually morph into the concept for Bon's Burgers. Sometime between 1968 and 1972, Jack and Felix's company, Bunny Smiles Incorporated, would partner with a company called CyberFun Tech to assist them in their Bon's Burgers project, providing them with resources and engineering expertise to create those animatronic performers they had envisioned. After lots of work, Bon's Burgers was set to open on June 1st, 1974.

This is the part you probably know. On May 2nd, 1974, Jack asked Felix for a favor he was needing. He was doing overtime at the workshop trying to get things ready for the opening, but his two youngest kids, Edd and Molly, needed someone to drive them to a school party they wanted to attend. His wife, Rosemary, couldn't take them, because she was taking his eldest daughter Sophie to the dentist. Felix agreed to the favor. You know what happened then.

This is where it gets fuzzy. After Edd & Molly's disappearances, the Bon's Burgers opening was postponed to June 28th. It seems like Jack and Felix more or less continued to collaborate on the project until Jack's disappearance on June 11th. We have no idea what happened to him after that.

The restaurant opened. At some point presumably between Jack's disappearance and the 30th of June, the animatronic Bon went strange. The lead engineer, Susan Woodings, decided to examine him after noticing some "irregularities" during his performance during the day, and he violently attacked her, then stuffed her damaged-but-still-living body into the animatronic Banny, where she eventually starved to death.

Bon's massacre would continue with the elusive employee, Charles B., who we continue to know next to nothing about except that he ended up in Boozoo, and would finish with Rosemary Walten, who had been returning to the restaurant regularly with hopes of finding her missing husband. The screams heard during Rosemary's attack and dismemberment were reported by the neighborhood and led to the restaurant's immediate closure. All of the restaurants assets, including its animatronic performers, were relocated to a storage unit in the middle of a nearby forest.

Over the years Felix pulled a lot of cheap merchandising schemes to try and keep the Bon's Burgers and Bunny Smiles brand relevant in the consciousness of Brighton. Lots of toys and direct-to-video cartoons and even a reasonably popular television series. In the late 70s he put forward a plan to fix up all the animatronics and reopen the Bon's Burgers restaurant in a new location. The first version of the plan went really terribly, since they just went and hired some teenaged engineers and put them on crunch time to try and fix everything wrong with four half-decade old complicated machines. One of those engineers, Ashley Parks, ended up poking around in some back hallways she wasn't supposed to see and was killed by Bon for snooping. She ended up in the animatronic Billy, who was present at the old Bon's Burgers location but has been kept suspiciously separate from the other animatronics for years.

Flash forward to 1982. Sophie Walten, the only living member of the Walten family, has been living with medication-induced amnesia for years. This is until her girlfriend Jenny introduces her to the BunnyFarm arcade machine, which has just been installed in the basement of the hotel where Jenny and she live. Through the machine, the spirits of her dead friends and family begin communicating with her, and she learns a lot of the information I just relayed to you. And that's where we are, really.

[guillemelgat]

Hey hello I made a thing! As perhaps a few of you know, I have spent the last half a year being completely unhinged about Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin books, and I’ve always been particularly interested in the character Stephen Maturin and his relationship to Catalonia. I saw that there was a lack of stuff about this part of his identity, and, being me, I felt the need to fill it in the only way I could: compiling music and yelling about it for thirty pages. Hence this playlist.

You really don’t need to know anything about these books to listen to this playlist. You also don’t need to know anything about Catalan (I hope). Catalonia and the Catalan Countries in general (including Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and parts of southern France, Aragon, and Sardinia) have a really interesting musical and literary tradition, and I wanted to make that more accessible, so I put together a few songs I liked, translated them, and wrote a bit about each of their significance, including the most important cultural tidbits I could. Some things don’t translate super well, and I hope my Catalan followers will forgive me for trying to adapt them more for English-speaking audiences than perhaps would be preferable; I usually don’t choose to do that, but in this case I wanted to open the door, and not to intimidate people.

Now that that’s out of the way, here is a link to the PDF of the liner notes (graphic design is my passion, as they say): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MUpRM84W8aypznEIrt0eA1jG5OxaRZvz/view?usp=sharing

Under the cut I’ve included the ephimera and unnecessary commentary that you know and love, feel free to read or ignore it as you will

These roughly follow the order of the songs and are varying levels of seriousness

If you like "Sant Joan, feu-lo ben gran" then I'd highly recommend listening to the whole Tornaveus album. I almost included the “Stabat Mater de Sudanell” and the “Goigs de Sant Julià de Lòria”, which are both from western Catalonia, and they also have more cançons de pandero, in perhaps a slightly more traditional style. A lot of the other songs have interesting cultural commentary in them, especially on feminist topics, and they’re very well-researched because literally one of the members of the group is basically the ethnomusicologist of Catalan music at the moment. Anyways, if people would like the liner notes perhaps next time I’m home I’ll scan them, they’re in Catalan and English and very well-written. Also note the legendary Lluís Llach song which has been turned into a polyphonic piece lol (and I did not include the “Goigs de la Nostra Senyora de la Llibertat” but tbh that might have been a mistake on my part) (Blorbo side note that I think this fits Stephen’s childhood very well which is mostly why I chose it)

“L’Hereu Riera” is one of my favorite Catalan folk songs I love it so much and if you want to hear the Catalan version (as opposed to the Valencian one included here) and see the dance and also see a cobla, I am including a link to this version by Germà Negre which is tragically not on Spotify. I chose the Valencian one because (1) Al Tall and (2) I think it fits The Blorbo better (specifically I was thinking of his fiancée who dies before Book One who idk if anyone ever remembers shdjfhskf). That being said, Stephen would probably know the Catalan one (and almost certainly not the Valencian one). Also, on a memey-er note, Hereu Riera bisexual king and literal icon <3 love how he has to remind his girlfriend on her deathbed that actually he'd technically be interested in both her sisters AND her brothers if he wasn't so into her that he never wanted to marry anyone else

I literally did put in Roger Mas just so there would be at least one person with a Lleidan accent, #diversity win

Many points about the “Cançó de pandero de l’Urgell” and “Jo no canto per la veu” so here we go:

I put these two songs in mostly because I got very obsessed with the cançó de pandero from Alcarràs (which is a great movie that came out last year about a farming family in a village near Lleida that is winning all the awards atm). Anyways, since Carla Simón has been too busy winning things to put up the gotdam soundtrack, I did a bit of digging and it turns out that it was written for the movie?? By her brother??? It's excellent and very anticapitalist and you can listen to it here and see the trailer for Alcarràs all in one! (Includes English subtitles)

The original “Canto per un amic meu que per mi daria la vida” is probably from a Valencian cant de batre, although I could not get any confirmation on that. But regardless everyone should listen to Pep Botifarra's version of it, which I would literally marry if it had a physical form it’s so so good. (I posted it here back in ye olden days but it's been long enough I think I can post it again)

Valencian music side note because I can’t stop myself: the second pair of verses in the "Cançó de pandero de l'Urgell" (starting with “vos esteu ben acotxada…”) are sung by Miquel Gil, who is a very famous Valencian traditional singer, anyways you should listen to this version of him singing “Del Sud” by Obrint Pas (you want to go down a Valencian music rabbit hole so so bad)

I firmly believe that Stephen would canonically be obsessed with Ausiàs March, and the fact that he has not yet recited any of his poems is Patrick O’Brian’s biggest failing in my eyes. Anyways I have more thoughts but I’m saving them for other posts shdfjsd

If you read this before listening to the playlist please just listen to "El testament d'Amèlia" and follow along with the lyrics in real time before reading the blurb, it's such a good experience to let that song hit you as it comes. I won't say more than that but you'll get it when you get it. (Also obligatory listen to Marala they're so good <3)

From the Càntut album, I also quite like the songs "El pomeró" and "El divino vull cantar", and Càntut in general is an incredible resource, it's a database of folk song field recordings from northeastern Catalonia.

Brief pause to scream about the fact that Maria Arnal and Marcel Bagés WERE ON NPR??? AND NO ONE TOLD ME???? Anyways link in the sources section, also they're great and you should listen to their whole discography

As the #1 Roba Estesa stan blog on Tumblr, listen to Roba Estesa. And Ebri Knight. And El Diluvi.

I chose this version of "La presó de Lleida" because I like it but here's a more traditional one sung by Joan Manel Serrat, another Catalan legend. Here's another one in Catalan rumba style with Sílvia Pérez Cruz singing, the sound is a bit wonky but it's also one of my favorites. The Valencian version of this song is called "La presó de Tibi" and El Diluvi have done a very explicitly anti-monarchical rendition of it (the Balearic one is "La presó de Nàpols").

I'm sorry for never putting the Sílvia Pérez Cruz version of "Corrandes d'exili" but if you want it here it is. Also note that the statue of the Virgin in the poem is a reference to the Virgin of Montserrat, it literally all goes back to her shfjkshdf (also apologies for being very bad at Christianity and Catholicism, if I mistranslated things let me know)

HOO BOY SARDANA TIME

Okay so I have a whole essay to deliver on this that I've been holding inside for the past like two months or so, I apologize in advance for my excessive pedantry on the topic.

In Master and Commander, Stephen delivers this speech:

"‘Then I must tell you that on Sunday mornings it is the custom, in that country, for people of all ages and conditions to dance, on coming out of church: so I was dancing with Ramon Mateu i Cadafalch in the square before the cathedral church of Tarragona, where I had gone to hear the Palestrina Missa Brevis. The dance is a particular dance, a round called the sardana.’"

I hate to be a hater but it is very, very unlikely that anyone would have been dancing a sardana as far south as Tarragona in this time period. The sardana as the symbol of equality and brotherhood emerged in the Renaixença and would not yet have been a thing; Stephen could well have heard sardanas in Ullastret, but they would have been a more typical folk dance, and not anything like the way they're described in the book. It's very ironic, then, that they've become THE Catalan music style for Aubreyad readers, but hopefully this playlist can change that a bit :)

(also sorry for being a sardana-hater on main, someone bring me to dance a sardana and maybe I'll feel better)

Songs that didn't make the cut: La cançó del lladre, Rossinyol que vas a França, La balanguera, La gavina - I'm always happy for more recs!

Originally, this list was also going to include songs in Irish; I quickly realized that I was in over my head with that one, but the working list of songs is here (may be subject to changes so save songs elsewhere if you like them!). Also I would add "Fé Bhláth" by Imelda May and Kíla if it was on Spotify but alas it is not; and "Amhrán na Leabhar" which I have not had time to add but was kindly recommended by someone. I'd love it if someone was interested in actually doing a proper playlist for Irish though—it's a gap in my knowledge that I'd love to start filling.

Aaaaaaand that's a wrap. I hope. Final comment to say thank you to everyone who voted in the cover image poll, turns out you all won :) (Pirineus did win and take the cover of the liner notes though)

[keikakudom]

Agsudisg I'm so glad you liked it, Kazi, I literally sat down the moment I finished reading and started drawing cuz you freaking killed me, I MEAN, vox being stubborn and denying help, and Alastor stubbornly giving him the aid he needs, but crouched in their respective toxic egos and self-image? So delicious. Alastor, who needs to know why he was left behind, and vox who's desperately pouring himself into the new thing... Ahhhh...

The part where he implies he really was running off to die...and Alastor goes all soft...the shared frequency, the antenna petting... I reread that multiple times bc it's so good...and the claws, the claws, vox denies wanting help from alastor to the last, but the claws!

(also we tots need full seasons and reruns of 'Let's Shit on Vox', I bet Alastor even encourages to call in with more info, not that anyone would bc they're too scared. Hey, does carmilla have to listen his obsession LOL)

Btw for the artist questions, if you want, 9, 14, 30?

YOU NEVER FAIL TO MAKE ME GUSH, ES AAAA...oh lemme tell you when I lock-in, i do NOT fuck around with toxic old men yaoi. When I get better at writing, I hope to capture all their glory✨

I have never really written in this particular weird genre, I don't even know what to call it? Disgustingly intimate love/hate? At least, that's what I aspire for it to be XD

Heheh the part where "Alastor goes all soft" is also a little on the part of RR!AU characterization, so it's a bit exaggerated. He's trying to ween his way in appealing to Vox again, but RR!AU Vox is just so tired. Alastor keeps bringing up the past....This was kind of a wacky scenario to write because it does skip/make you infer a lot of stages of development, but the AU is close enough to canon that I think it's not far to imagine filling in the gaps hhh....

LMFAO yes, Alastor def encourages call-ins, "The 'Let's Shit on Vox' show, your one-stop opportunity to diss Hell's most saturated overlord!" -- on the rare occasion someone actually called in, Alastor killed whoever said something off about Vox that wasn't to his "flavor" of hate.

Carmilla has already read through these two idiots and just rolls her eyes at their immaturity. If she's there for Alastor's radio show, she's just in the background, utterly done and convinced they're playing everything up for entertainment at this point. Now that has me thinking, if Alastor ever started feeling something unfamiliar and god-forbid genuinely *good*(????), he would probably consult Rosie or Carmilla for it first........and Vox would ask Charlie.....oh..........

Aaaand Artist Questions under the cut, TYSM for the ask <33

9. What are your file name conventions?

I have terrible file organization. Many of them are named "a", "aa3", "asgv", "fhgh", or other random keyboard smashes. Recently, I have a bad habit of naming files "sketch1", "sk1", "skht1", or some misspelled way-- it's gotten so bad I'm up to "sketch22".... I find things by icon only.

14. Any favorite motifs?

Straight edges and shapes, maybe? I started drawing with an anime style though I'm mostly into western media-- I think it's very satisfying to have nice shape design/silhouettes though, but I don't draw in a super cartoony or exaggerated style so it's kind of hard to tell that I like and have fun doing it. I'm kind of scattered and like to dip my foot into everything unfortunately.

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated?

None really, but if I had to pick one for HH, maybe this one.

For my older art, definitely this one. I mean, I don't love it anymore, but I really thought I ATE with the concept at the time.

[meatriarchived]

sometimes i think about how things were in the weeks that maria first went missing, but back home - not her while she's under johnny's thumb but rather how her mother and ana and other family took her going missing.

the dread that settles in when you get a knock on the door and its a pair of detectives / officers who've come to tell you that they've found your childs' car abandoned off in the middle of nowhere, with most of her things still inside but zero trace of her. how it looks like its been sitting out there, seemingly for just shy of how long it had been since they last got a call from her letting them know where she was, that she was alright. how the worry over the weeks from not hearing from her turns into horror and fear and panic and grief at all those what happened scenarios flooding the mind - of peoples speculations being voiced crassly in front of them.

how desperate ana must have been for literally any trace to come forward about maria, that she took it upon herself to track down where her friends from uni were probably in hopes initially that maybe they'd heard from or seen her at all. and then to let them know that the searches aren't going well, that theyve heard whispers that they're planning to simply stop them altogether. the anger she must feel that her sister isnt being cared for as a person, just another file some badged man can toss into a file cabinet and forget about.

and then i think about the broadcasts. of the pleads from maria's family to continue looking for her, to come forward with literally anything at that point. how their mother probably could barely sputter out any words, but ana takes over and so clearly begs and demands that her sister not be forgotten, that they keep the searches for her going, that she isn't just a number or a piece of paper she's a living breathing person who deserves so much more than to be shelved and scoffed at. how ana probably said things along the lines of "we aren't giving up on you, we will find you - we are going to keep looking for you we are never going to stop, even if it takes months, even if it takes years, we will find and bring you home".

how hard of a hit on their mothers' health all the stress probably took, ana having to juggle trying so desperately to find maria while also trying to be reassuring and positive with their mother to keep her hopeful, keep her healthy.

how their father showed up after word of her going missing reached him, guilt-ridden and angry but just wanting to help in any way he could.

how danny grabbed all his things and returned to town the moment he was updated from being down by the coastlines for his trade school. how he left within the hour and drove cross-state to get there and help however he could. his anger and frustration so evident on him, fighting with it to try and stay a pillar for ana and mrs flores given his long-term friendship with maria and her family.

just. all of the absolute chaos of those weeks, the floating in nothingness, waiting by phones for it to ring with really any news at all. the friends getting together to scour over all the recent places they all knew or could speculate she may have gone to and traveling so aimlessly to every single one of them - looking for literally any kind of scraps they could possibly find.

the hopeless feeling after so many of them turned up with nothing.

and then tie all of this up with the idea that local sheriffs / police depts are covering things up - hiding or destroying evidence, silencing any potential witness, doing everything in their power to not let anything get out because they already know whose involved, and theyre already bent at the knee in submission to these people out in the middle of nowhere with scrawling acres upon acres of property.

its just all heartbreaking to me.

[bitterkarmaa]

"so being a father to Blood Twins is actually also helping him overcome some of trauma he sustained from The Incident :)" Hhhh see I keep thinking about this, or the related this-- YOU KNOW THIS I've said I'm gonna put Eclipse under a cup and study him like a bug.

Cos like... gosh. Eclipse's trait is anger, of course. It's what he defaults to, it's what he's forged into both armor and weapon. It's what he used fuel himself up to the point where it literally couldn't anymore (ie laying broken and practically dead in the woods for like a week).

And you've just shoved so much trauma under there, man. I'm living for the glimpses we get of what Eclipse used to be like, what still might be under there somewhere.

He was genuinely good with kids. He likes making things pretty and solving puzzles and sharing silly cat memes. He's got a drive to protect and adopt that didn't even get suppressed while he was being an antagonist, considering he made two other AI during that time. He wants to help others (I noticed that in the Christmas special, Eclipse was the only one who was mentioned to get everyone else a gift, and also got everyone except Lunar something that was useful to them). Heck, there's still that generational trauma thing in that he cares about KC like how Lunar cared about him prior to his defeat/death (as in he probably shouldn't, but he does).

He is so very scared, too. He's afraid of not being in control and of losing control. He's afraid of asking others for help and of being vulnerable enough to need even small help (given how he was acting around Moon with the emails prompt, I assume it was not wanting to be berated for not knowing something as 'simple' as sending a file). It's been made painfully clear how he's afraid of being abandoned again and doesn't like isolation. He's scared of being around kids most likely because of that unprocessed grief and whatever came after.

And just the picture I'm getting here of like. The Incident happened (which we know from the Nightmare) and then whatever happened after that involved the Room just destroyed him, and he was left trying to recover from that all on his own. And the best he managed to do was to stuff all the broken bits inside that armor of anger and try to forget about them, which at least sort of worked for him while he had a clear goal to focus all of his energy on. But all the broken bits are still THERE, and he's finally in a place where they can start being processed.

Clip is just an angry pathetic bastard who's favorite pasttime is shooting himself in the foot 8(

Monsters aren’t born the way they are. They are forged and destroyed and built up from the ashes, made so that they will never be broken again.

But they are built with the same pieces they were the first time.

Eclipse doesn’t know others very well. He knows himself- at least, he thinks he does. That’s a comforting thought, because he knows what he’ll do before he does it. He shares that knowledge. With others, he doesn’t. He is at the mercy of their reaction.

Houses are built on foundations. Lessons are learned the same way. You get a basic idea, and build up from there.

But some foundations crumble.

Water damage, termites, and many other things can destroy the house before it is even finished.

But the main thing that makes everything fall apart?

Neglect.

How do you understand an unfinished product?

You break it down and find out what’s inside.

[flatstarcarcosa]

bopping around a bit as things come to me. will compile this into the larger doc file later.

The sound of the security room door shutting is, albeit momentary, a sweet relief. Reese plops down in the chair in front of the computer monitors, tapping impatiently at the keyboard as Slade slides the door lock in place.

"So the computers are password protected," they say.

"Of course they are," he says, coming to lean over the chair. "Try Murkoff."

Reese enters three different variations and spellings they can think of. Nothing.

"Yeah, fuck this," Slade murmurs. "Virtual Wintergreen, audio only."

"Oh, now what?" the suit AI asks. "You're done being pissy with me and decided I can be useful?"

"Since you didn't keep my ribs from breaking, can you override the damn computer?" asks Slade.

"Oh sure, shall I just patch into the mainframe while I'm at it? Would you also like some nuclear security codes, since you seem to think that's how this works?"

"Billy, I am not in the fucking-"

"Oh, I got it," chirps Reese. "Someone taped the password under the keyboard. It's literally Madmin01".

Silence.

"Deactivate virtual Wintergreen," mumbles Slade.

"We're just gonna pretend you didn't show an embarrassingly boomer understanding of computers for a minute," says Reese, "y'know, for your sake."

"Why don't you find out if someone taped instructions on how to raise the blast doors under the other keyboard?" he says sarcastically.

"C'mon it's basic corporate security, there's probably a file path marked BLASTDOORCONTROL in the- what the fuck is that?" Reese freezes, pointing at a security monitor in the corner. Slade turns.

"Is that that fucking priest?" he asks, frowning.

"That weird guy that showed up after you went through the window was a priest?" asks Reese.

"Close as you get in a place like this, anyway," he says. "What's he doing?"

On the monitor, the priest looks up at the camera as he reaches for a breaker box. He holds a finger to his lips, and pulls the breaker. The room plunges into darkness, pairing with the sound of computers dying as red emergency lighting blooms a few seconds later.

"You shit sucking CUNT!" Reese yells at the blank monitor. Slade clamps a hand over their mouth and drags them still in the chair away from the window that oversees the hallway.

Seconds tick by.

No one, and nothing, emerges from the dark.

"Sorry," they mumble into his palm. He drops his hand.

"Those stairs by the elevator go to the basement, that breaker box is probably down there," says Slade. "I'm gonna go turn the fucking thing back on, you stay here."

"You are not suggesting splitting up," they hiss. "What happened to 'arm's length'?"

"It's pitch black and I don't know what's down there," he snaps. "I can handle myself but I can't keep tabs on both of us if I can't see."

Reese clenches their jaw. It's not said directly, and they know logically now is neither the time nor place to be concerned with it, but the unspoken meaning of the sentence is that they're now added baggage he doesn't need.

"Besides," says Slade, "this door has a manual lock from this side, even with the electronics down you can still keep it barred."

"I don't think that big fucker from the library gives a shit about locks," they say.

"Then you should stop arguing and let me go so I can be back before he shows up," says Slade. He unlocks the door and slips out before they have a chance to argue otherwise.

Despite it, they still stand and lock it behind him.

"At least this window is lower," they mutter to the shadows.

[anoddreindeer]

went to see a play called Orlando last Sunday, and had some Thoughts:tm:

First off, I’ve never read the book the play was based on; I went to see it purely because I felt like I needed to get out of the house more and one of my online friends was in it. Orlando the play is based on Orlando the book by Virginia Woolf. Like I said, I’ve never read it or any of her books but maybe that gives context for other people.

Second, the theater was tiny. I’ve-been-in-bigger-locker-rooms kinda tiny. There were five actors all together, three pieces of movable flooring things on wheels that were moved by the five actors at various points in the play, a box, and a stool. One actor played Orlando, and the other four were literally every other character including the Chorus providing narration to the audience.

Honestly, it didn’t suffer much from being pared down. All the actors were on point, and the only thing they could’ve maybe used a little help for were the scene transitions when they had to move the big pieces.

So the play was in five acts, each act supposing to cover an Age of Orlando’s life. The Elizabethan Era through the 20th century, though I forget the exact Act titles. Basically, each Act spanned about 100 years and the whole thing ended in the 1970s or 80s (I couldn’t tell).

Anyway, it was good and I had a good time but like. People go to plays to get something out of them, I guess? So I applied what analytics skills I remembered from English class and got a couple of observations:

1. Orlando starts the play as a young man. The first two Acts are dedicated to that portion of his life, with the Queen taking him to adorn her Court and making him some kind of nobility - a duke, I think, though it wasn’t exactly clear. The exact rank probably isn’t important, just what he was doing at Court.

He dallies with the Queen, and then branches out to dally with the rest of the Court as well. The Queen catches him at his other dalliances by seeing him reflected in her mirror while he was macking on a serving-maid. She attacks and shatters the mirror, but apparently doesn’t expel Orlando from Court because the next little while has Orlando dallying with various ladies of the Court. The mirror’s interesting, because we never see Consequences happen to Orlando for this particular bit of knavery, only to his reflection; Plato’s Allegory, anyone?

There’s a whole bunch of romance fluff that is shattered when Orlando meets Sasha - a Russian noblewoman who spends a lot of time remembering how wonderful Russia is and not very much time on anything else. She also hits a recurring theme; when the play opens, Orlando is trying to write a poem but only has one line: “The grass is green.” Sasha also is called green; green, green eyes, green dress, green green green.

Green is the color of life and growing things, of hope and the future in its positive aspect. In its negative aspect, green is the color of jealousy and decay, of the loss of ruins to time as the forest covers them over.

In this case, green starts positive as Sasha takes Orlando astonishing places and seems to have great promise for the future. In a bit of narrative foreshadowing, however, they pass by a performance of Othello right at the point where Othello is strangling his wife in a fit of jealous rage. File that away for later.

But not much later, because Sasha cheats on Orlando with a Russian sailor and ends up going back to Russia with the sailor. Green again, this time in the negative aspect; Orlando goes back to his ducal(?) estate to work on his poem.

The poem’s another touchpoint, of a sort. Whenever Orlando is overset, and at least once an Act, Orlando would go back and try to write more on his poem. “The grass is green. The grass is...green.” Green again, in its positive aspect. And writing it always takes place under an oak tree - possibly THE oak tree, though once again that isn’t very clear and probably doesn’t matter (the fact that it could be the same oak tree, not the fact it is an oak tree, a tree known for its longetivity). There’s probably more symbolism in oak trees but I can’t be bothered to look it up.

Orlando then ends up on the sharp end of an unwanted courtship, and runs away to Constantinople (not Istanbul). At the end of the second Act, in Constantinople, Orlando metamorphoses into a woman.

One of the themes for the play seems to be gender, expression, their intersection, and societal expectations. At no point after Act 2 does Orlando wish she was a man again because she dislikes the way she is. She does make complaint that things were easier as a man because of the difference in societal expectation, including that she was disinherited from her ducal lands because women couldn’t be Dukes, that she was expected to be quiet and demure - though even at that point she notes that when she was a man she had enforced those expectations on the women she had known at that point.

Then of course societal pressures encourage her to get married; the play has it that her finger aches for a wedding ring or whatever, but I’m pretty sure that it’s just growing to a point in her life where she wanted a single person to spend it with, rather than the dalliances that had marked her boy/teenagerhood.

She ends up finding a guy whom she likes because of what society at the time would call feminine qualities - ie emotional intelligence, a love of soppy romances, and a couple other things I can’t remember off the top of my head - and who likes her because of her “masculine qualities” - an ability to speak her mind, etc. So they get married and he goes off sailing the seas to make money and she tends house.

The last act is the shortest, and Orlando spends a lot of it thinking about days gone by. The specters of the Queen and of Sasha make their way around the stage, and Orlando ends the play by settling down under the oak tree and writing what is, apparently, one hell of a poem.

So we have a through-line of green, oak trees, poetry, gender expressions, and societal expectations. The Chorus doesn’t speak in rhyming verse - maybe in iambic pentameter or something, I can’t tell that as easy as I hear rhyme schemes - but it does narrate a lot of what’s going on. The grass in green, Sasha is green, the fair shores of England are green, the ducal estates are green.

I dunno, I just feel like I have a lot of goddamn puzzle pieces and no picture to show for it. Fucking frustrating.