#House literally cannot live without Wilson

[twospiritstooprideful]

"I love topic yaoi!"

Just say you're into enemies to lovers

It's okay to be boring

[gracelaurie]

My Man | (Patrick Wilson x Female Reader)

ONESHOOT. Warning : smut, unprotected sex, Reader is a mistress, Reader is younger (around 25 y.o)

➡️ masterlist

“Please calm down...” you said while calming the baby you were holding. To be honest, you actually like babies, you even dream of having a cute baby when you have a family someday. But for more than 3 months now you have been taking care of your aunt’s baby who cries very often and peed his pants, making you think twice again about having your own baby.

You replaced the pants he was wearing, and calmed him down. The baby’s eyes were big and blue, “So gorgeous.” You said in a low voice. Instantly the baby stopped crying. You grabbed the still warm bottle of milk and gave it to the baby. The baby quickly fell asleep in your arms while he was drinking his milk.

You heard the sound of the doorbell. You immediately get up from the sofa, put Vera Farmiga's baby gently in the baby box, you walked over to the door, then you open it.

“Oh, hi Y/N!” Vera said with a big smile, hugging you tightly, her husband from behind walked ahead of her to put some things away, “I’m so sorry because I left this house for 2 days, and thank you so much for take care of him while I wasn’t here. I'm really busy… I don't even sleep enough…”

“Don’t worry, I understand. You are an actress, I understand you are very busy with filming, etc. I’m the one that should be thankful, Aunt Vera… because you gave me this job when you knew that I'm literally unemployed after graduating from college.” You said as you walked with your aunt towards the living room.

Vera smiled at you, then she approached her baby, "You should have a bright future, Y/N. You can’t be a nanny for my baby forever.”

“No problem…besides, I’m happy to help you. After all, you are my only family in this city, I feel the need to help you, considering that you have been paying for my sister's school fees.” you said, sitting next to Vera.

“You’re a good kid, Y/N. You know, I have acquaintances to help you start your career, you know…” Vera said with a smile that signaled something to you.

“No, I can't...” you said softly refusing while lowering your head.

“Why not? You're still young, it's not too late if you want to have a career in acting.” Vera grabbed your shoulder, “I’m not forcing you, but I think you should think about it if you’re interested.”

“No, but thank you, aunt Vera,” you said while smiling faintly. This is not without reason, you cannot accept the job, it is very risky.

Not because you are shy or doubt your abilities. To be honest, you could do all the work, because of your enterprising nature and totality in doing a job... but you can't let yourself to be an actress.

You are Patrick Wilson’s only mistress. Yes, he is Vera's co-worker. The Conjuring universe films- which they starred, were certainly successful.

This whole affair started 5 years ago. When your aunt Vera took you to the premiere of the film Anabelle Comes Home. That’s where you first met Patrick Wilson. Of course you didn’t become his mistress at that time, but you guys have shown interest, by looking at each other. However, Patrick was reluctant to talk more closely with you considering that you were Vera's nephew, and at that time you were still around 20 years old.

A few months after that, you met him at a bar. You, who was very drunk at that time, seduced Patrick and you two had sex afterwards. You swore that you would never fuck with someone else’s husband again, even though Patrick had a big-hard cock, and he fucked you really good that night. but you still feel guilty and try not to see him again.

But fate says otherwise, you meet him again in random places. When he was exercising, you saw his shirtless body, he was sweaty and sexy. And yes for the second time, he fucked you in the warehouse where you worked part-time while you were still in college.

He inserted his hard-wet cock to your pussy, mixed with the sweat on his body. But that’s not the end of it.

Since then, Patrick bought another phone specifically to contact you. He knows that if he uses the phone he usually uses, his wife will always check and of course that won’t make your affair last for more than 4 years.

That night Vera offered to stay at her house for the night considering that it was already late. But you politely refused, because you felt uncomfortable staying overnight at your aunt’s house again.

You walked through the night carrying your tote bag and wearing a thick scarf around your neck. The distance between Vera's house and your apartment is not too far, maybe because you prefer walking rather than taking public transportation, so you don’t have a problem walking for 30 minutes.

When you arrived at your apartment and opened the door to your room, you were surprised to see who was currently in your bedroom.

You saw Patrick still wearing his formal suit, he was standing beside the bed, staring at you sharply as if he was going to devour you right there.

“I left my wife and kids at home to see you tonight. I can't sleep, I can't work professionally, I’m a mess, I keep thinking about you.”

When you were about to reply to his words, Patrick quickly walked over to you, “I hope it’s all worth it. What’s inside me is like there’s no sign of life when we haven’t met, when I haven’t fuck you so hard.”

You and Patrick haven’t seen each other for the last 2 weeks because he was busy with work and spending time with his family. But what you see is the unhappiness shown on his face.

You were everything to Patrick, apart from sex. He really loves you, now that’s the problem. You both truly love each other. It wasn’t fair to his wife, but you couldn’t do anything, you were weak towards Patrick, you felt that you would be like this forever.

You dropped your tote bag on the floor, grabbed Patrick’s face and you two kissed. Patrick removed the scarf that was around your neck, he continued to kiss you as he carried you and placed you on the soft and comfortable bed.

Patrick took off his suit and tie with a rough movement. He kissed you aggressively and intensely. You kissed Patrick while holding his chest, then he removed his lips from yours, and opened your clothes and skirt.

Patrick kissed your neck hungrily, he cupped your breasts, “I love the color,” Patrick whispered as he rubbed your lacy red bra, “but I would rather see you completely naked.” Patrick took off your bra, then your panties.

Patrick licks your nipples while inserting his big-hard cock into your vagina.

You moaned as he started to fuck you on top. This time without foreplay, he fucks you so roughly and fast. “I've been waiting for this for a long time, you know that, slut?” said Patrick in a breathless voice.

You can feel, he’s already come in your vagina, but he doesn't remove his hard-cock from your vagina at all, he’s continues to fuck you.

He grabbed both of your legs then lifted your legs up, while speeding up his movements from before.

Patrick fucked harder while you moaning out loud. He kissed your thigh where your leg was now on his shoulder, “Fuck Y/N. I can’t let you sleep until morning.”

You can feel your bed sheets starting to get wet. you screamed, “Patrick…. I was a virgin before you fucked me the first time.” you said, which somehow came out of your mouth in the middle of your climax.

“I didn't know that." Patrick said then he kissed your neck very aggressively and bit your neck.

“…and I've never fucked anyone but you." you said while groaning in pain.

“I should’ve realized that." Patrick said then the two of you come together. But Patrick come inside. This is something he has never done before to you, because he doesn’t want to get you pregnant.

But hearing that you’re a virgin who has never fucked a man other than himself, it makes Patrick release a lot of sperm inside you.

“Forgive me,” Patrick whispered in your ear, he hugged your body and kissed your cheek gently.

“It’s okay Patrick, I can take the pills,” you said, touching Patrick's hair.

“I won’t force you to do that, Y/N,” Patrick replied, he looked at your face seriously, “I know you work as Vera’s babysitter all this time, I know you don’t have the heart to do it.”

You just stay silent. Honestly, what Patrick said is true, you are a typical woman who has a motherly heart, you wouldn’t have the heart to abort your pregnancy if you have Patrick’s baby.

“Hey, it’s up to you, okay, I don't want to burden you, you’re everything to me,” said Patrick looking at your worried face, “If you want to have the baby, I'll be responsible.”

“What responsibility? You will secretly support me and my child while you are still taking care of your child and your wife?”

“No...” Patrick lowered his head, “I haven't told you, have I?”

You don’t understand what he means.

“You haven't checked the news for the past 2 weeks?”Patrick asked then you shook your head, “I divorced my wife for you. We agreed to keep the reasons for our divorce a secret from the public, even though she initially didn't agree. Child custody is in her hands, we can start our relationship from the beginning.”

You smiled at his statement, then you two kissed in the middle of the sparkling night.

You know your relationship might surprise many people, but you are ready to face it all with Patrick by your side.

He’s your man now. Yours.

[castrovulcant]

[Image description: meme from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Two men stand next to each other and squint suspiciously at someone in the foreground and say: "That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about House to dispute it." /end image description]

i love how many ships there are featuring murders, cannibals, supervillians, w/e that nevertheless fail to hold a problematic candle to house/wilson. I mean like there are characters who have stabbed one another who have a healthier “thing” going on than those two. i don’t think about them often but I see a gifset and I’m like WOW remember the time when house——-

[captainsolocide]

the thing about hilson is that from the inside its like. they're a modern day tragedy. no one understands them like each other. wilson can only be himself around house but he's a worse person without the mask he puts on around other people. wilson will never leave house but he will always enable his destructive habits. they need each other, they quite literally cannot live without each other.

but on the outside its like. what the fuck is going on with these old men. why do they have a suicide murder pact what's going on

[aspd-culture]

what does "disregarding/ignoring/violating the rights of others" mean in aspd crit. can someone list some examples because i cannot think of anything except abuse, torture, s*xual abuse/assault (specifying cus theres also just physical assault/battery), etc (just cus its how i described my abuse/assault that happened to me and not cus i think all pwaspd are abusive lmao)

Well, yes I think we can all agree those would be included but sometimes it's more nuanced and less blatant than that. The thing about any of the above (plus stealing and stalking which also belong on that list I think) is the way it's done - little to no remorse, easily justifying it to yourself, etc. are a major part of this disorder so if someone were to do those things and have trouble being ok with the fact that they did it, then imo it wouldn't count as disregarding/ignoring their rights. With that in mind I think it becomes easier to the see the less obvious things.

Stuff like using a reserved parking space because "I got to it first" or "they don't need all these spaces", openly speaking about information told to you in confidence especially private things like medical information or outing someone as lgbt, intentionally making someone uncomfortable for your own amusement/ends, etc along those lines. Rights to privacy, solitude, peace, comfort, freedom of choice, etc are also included in this.

I talk a lot about Greg House as a [Spoiler alert for House MD seasons 1-early 6]

(diagnosed in canon) example of ASPD because there aren't many, and he's a particularly good example for this question.

Ways House violates others rights include putting a cochlear implant in someone who refused it because "he's choosing a disability which is messed up when there are many others who don't get to choose", manipulating information to get consent for procedures patients wouldn't have consented to otherwise, telling cashiers whoever he's talking to will buy his lunch and walking away immediately afterwards so they're pressured to do so, stealing SO MUCH of Wilson's food, walking into rooms not just even if the door is closed, but especially if the door is closed, encouraging/demanding his team break into patients' homes without consent including stealing their keys, going behind Wilson's back to question his exes about him, harassing multiple people who have made it clear they don't want to speak to him, turning a group of potential employees into numbers (cough cough 13 who stays that way forever by choice), making games out of both patients and employees' lives (he does this job exclusively for the pleasure of "solving puzzles", as he puts it, and is willing to break the law and violate ethics codes if it means solving the puzzle even if the patient ends up deceased for him to do so), disrespecting workplace safety practices in big and small ways, jumping his place in line for MRI/other machines and lab testing, setting up differentials in and refusing to leave others' offices to get things he wants/needs, and intentionally making everyone he employs and/or is employed by uncomfortable for the sole purpose of "making sure they're cut out to work for him" or making them worried about fighting with him so he can get what he wants, respectively, and oh yeah literally practicing medicine and sometimes surgery while high 25/8 and sometimes while hallucinating.

This is literally just off the top of my head there are so many more because it was a long time ago and if you think we are demonized now, just look back at the 2000's or before.

Out of context, any few of those may just make him selfish, a prick, or unconventional yet effective at his job, but combining that with both his feelings about doing those things (it is extremely rare that House feels any remorse and usually only if he crosses a line so badly that it risks his ability to continue his life as he knows it) and his other symptoms, you get ASPD. The fact that he has to actively try to remember others can have boundaries and deserve respect is what makes it ASPD, and means he isn't a prick or selfish, he's just struggling to understand what seems like an obvious concept to others around him.

The same goes with anyone else; these things are fairly insignificant by themselves but if its more a true personality trait (happens across multiple situations including to people you are close with and strangers etc) then it starts to hold weight as a symptom - sometimes moreso than the larger rights violations you mentioned above because hopefully those are few and far between while more minor things like this can be seen as a constant/daily thing.

Super good question and I appreciate you asking it. /gen A lot of people see that bit of criteria and jump straight to violent crime and just assume that's what it means and whilst it definitely can be, not everyone with ASPD is so disregarding of others' rights that they commit violent crimes.

[codenamed-queenie]

#BatsInQuarantine

I am going insane. So I poured my restlessness into one long and very detailed post and got super into it. Please enjoy this hot mess.

The Justice League, being the well-meaning virus-proof Super Friends that they are, took one good look at the news, one good look at their non-powered friends Ollie, Bruce, and their families, and collectively decided that these normal humans must be Protected At All Costs.

Now, keep in mind, Bruce is never one to roll over when it comes to being benched. 

However, he understands the importance of social distancing. He knows he needs to set a good example for his kids, and keep up appearances as Gotham’s Most Responsible Multi-Billionaire. 

So. Quarantine it is. 

But how are his kids handling it?

Dick - 

100% on board in the beginning. Gotta do the Responsible Thing. Gotta set a Good Example. Besides, guys, this is gonna be Fun. Quality Family Time is always a Must.

He lasted 2 days. 

Then he started to get twitchy. 

And as everyone knows? A Trapped Dick Grayson is a Feral Dick Grayson.

He bounces off the walls.

Literally.

“I have to climb.” 

“Dick, no.”  

“I have to climb everything.”

Has scaled the manor 16 times already. Has climbed the chandelier. The banister. Bruce. The roof. The Cave. Anything in the house that’s been bolted down and especially anything that hasn’t. 

Duke found him clinging to the wall 10 ft off the ground like Spiderman and screamed so loud it shattered glass. 

Desperate for news of the outside. 

He thrives off of it like a starving man. 

Was the one to suggest he and Barbara take a break to Social Distance from each other (”Sorry, babe, kissing spreads germs”) and experienced Instant Regret(TM) approximately 5 minutes after. 

The Family has labelled him a Flight Risk Level 1 (Most likely to say f**k it and make a break for the outside world)

Jason - 

Accidentally got trapped inside the manor with the others when Bruce called Shutdown. If he had his way, he’d be chilling in his favorite safe-house right now, binging The Witcher with Roy and Artemis, and not worrying about finding a stray brother in his sock drawer.

But he’s nothing if not an opportunist. 

The way he sees it, Jason has 3 options:

Self Improvement

Self Isolation (See Duke, Cass, and Damian)

Descension Into Madness (See Dick and Steph)

And, well, he always wanted to try a few things. Now he’s got the free time to do it.

So he settles on baking. 

Alfred’s got enough food and raw ingredients stored up to feed an army. (Not because he’s a Panic-Buying-Hoarder in times like these. But because he’s a Panic-Buying-Hoarder all the time. Just try feeding 11+ teenagers sometime.)

Uses recipes he finds off Google.

His first few attempts are, in a word, ‘tragic’.

Alfred slips him a few of his recipe cards, and Jason suddenly starts seeing Results. 

Turns out he’s pretty good at this baking thing once he gets the hang of it. 

Hope everyone’s okay eating nothing but pie, macaroons, biscuits, and whatever else Jason whips up. 

Cause that’s gonna be the only food left by the time he’s done. 

Barbara - 

Self-quarantined with her dad. 

They’ve been binge-watching classic black and white movies together.

It’s a fun time, but she’s started to get a little antsy. Loving her dad and wanting to be around him 24/7 are, understandably, mutually exclusive. 

Calls the manor to video-chat every day.

For her sanity just as much as theirs. 

Gives everyone little challenges to film on their phones and send in. She makes compilations of everyone’s submissions so they can all watch and laugh together. 

Bonus points for Creativity

One comp shows the family trying to drop Mentos into coke bottles. 

Dick did a handstand, and dropped his Mento from the second story balcony. 

Tim did it wearing the Batman cowl. The soda exploded into his face, and the rest of the video is just Bruce’s Shrieking.

Stephanie tried it, but the bottle tipped. Everyone on camera screamed as the bottle rocketed through the front window. 

She spends most of her calls having one-on-one convos with Dick.

They’ve come up with little code phrases so they can be Cheesy even with family members lurking in the background. 

She thinks the way he clings to the monitor is cute. 

Almost like he’s giving her a hug through the screen. 

(It’s easier than letting herself worry about his mental state, at least)

Tim -

Oh this boy.

Freaked out for the first five minutes before he decided ‘hey wait, Bruce is letting me stay in my pajamas all day? Noice.’ 

Now he’s just vibing.

The rest of his family is Low-Key shielding him.

He Has No Spleen, you see.

Steph: “Someone could cough on him and he could die!”

He just goes about his day, playing Animal Crossing like there’s no tomorrow, tinkering on projects, taking naps, etc. Living his best life.

Meanwhile there’s always someone lurking behind him, keeping watch, keeping him safe. 

Dick sneezed within 5 feet of Tim once (the fact that he was on top of the dusty bookshelf Tim was perusing is irrelevant)

Jason still full-body tackled him the second Tim’s back was turned. 

No one with any symptoms--

Like, any symptoms. They don’t even have to be Corona-related.

--is allowed within 10 feet of Tim. 

Tim has been wandering the manor for weeks, now, without seeing another human being. 

(He sees Dick on the ceiling sometimes, but that doesn’t really count)

He’s been trying increasingly drastic pranks and shenanigans to draw someone, anyone, out. 

But it doesn’t matter how many times he steals Damian’s sword, or sets fire to Jason’s brownie bites.

Nobody wants to risk it. 

Cass - 

No one has seen her since quarantine started.

Everyone is approximately 87% sure she’s somewhere in the manor though

Because she does eat the meals Alfred leaves out for her.

Or at least someone does, at any rate. 

(Jason and Santa top the running suspects list)

Santa was Steph’s suggestion. For some reason it snowballed. 

It’s assumed that Cass misunderstood the meaning of ‘social distancing’ and took it too far. 

But no one knows for sure. 

She is Tim’s Guardian Angel. 

People who so much as clear their throats a little too loudly anywhere near him suddenly wake up on a different floor of the house four hours later. 

Duke came closest to spotting her while he was up in the attic. 

Either that, or there’s another Creepy Sister everyone forgot to tell him about living up there.

She is silent, and watchful, sticking to the shadows, but she does leave the occasional note out to brighten her siblings’ day. 

Things like ‘helo i love u’ and ‘hop u ar ok’  mostly. 

She is bound and determined to protect her family from this invisible threat, no matter the cost. 

Steph - 

Like Dick, she was Super Pumped at first. 

(Just kind of showed up at Wayne Manor before quarantine was enacted. The original purpose of her visit is unclear, but regardless, she’s Trapped.)

Also Like Dick, her descent into madness was swift.

She is impossible to pin down. 

Not like Cass or Damian, who’ve stayed off the grid, and are therefore Untraceable. 

No. She’s impossible to pin down, because she never stops moving. 

Switches seamlessly between Zumba on top of the Giant Dinosaur in the Batcave, and furiously knitting Alfred (the Cat) a sweater with a pair of Tim’s used chopsticks. 

Braided everyone’s hair while they were asleep.

Even Bruce’s. 

She tried to do Tim’s, but somehow blacked out and regained consciousness in the attic. 

When she woke up with a scream and a furiously twitching eye, she startled Duke out of his Makeshift Fort he built out of old cardboard boxes and antique furniture. He’s had to resort to finding a new hiding place. 

Sometimes, on the rare occasions she does sit still, staring off into the distance, she’ll suddenly start laughing hysterically. This may last between thirty seconds and thirty minutes, depending entirely on how long it’s been since she’s knitted a cat sweater or done cartwheels through every room in the house.

Blew up the greenhouse out back, somehow.

Everyone has agreed not to talk about it.

Some people were built to handle prolonged time inside their homes.

Stephanie Brown is not that way.

Damian - 

Damian Wayne Cannot Be Contained.

At least not inside the house. 

He took off thirty-six hours into quarantine. 

Thanks to the security equipment around the borders of the Wayne Estate, he can’t escape the grounds. 

(He’s tried and failed multiple times. Jason and Bruce have a running bet on how many times the perimeter alarms will go off per day.)

(Jason is winning.)

He wanders the grounds with Titus as his only companion. 

The two of them run laps, practice drills, and find ways to occupy their time. 

No one’s entirely sure what those ways are. 

In fact, nobody knows exactly where Damian is at any given time. 

Only that he is Out There. 

And he’s the best security system Wayne Manor’s ever had. 

So far, he’s stopped five groups of civilians scaling the perimeter walls before the lasers and electric nets even have a chance to deploy.

They were trying to break in and steal supplies. 

(Even ones they already had in surplus. Like Toilet Paper.)

He’s also stopped Dick from escaping twelve (12) times.

Drags him back by his shirt collar and deposits him on the welcome mat. 

Usually with a note for Alfred/Jason, requesting more fruit tarts. 

Duke - 

Did not leave the attic for two weeks. 

Then Steph discovered his hiding spot (read: was dumped there by Cassandra) which forced him to relocate to the basement. 

Yes, it turns out Wayne Manor does have a basement. 

This was a surprise to Duke, who always thought that the Batcave was Bruce Wayne’s basement. 

Alfred keeps him supplied with all the necessities:

i.e. food, magazines, assorted pastries from Jason’s latest batch, usually straight out of the oven.

Duke also snagged the Manor’s Alexa. 

She has become a sort of ‘Wilson’ to Duke’s ‘Chuck Noland’.

She is his only comfort. His only ally. 

He’s determined to wait out this quarantine, doing his best to avoid the others. 

Duke has seen these people under pressure. 

He knows exactly what he’s dealing with. 

Duke: “Alexa is the only motherf****r in this madhouse I ever respected.”

*offended butler noises from the other room*

Duke: “And also Alfred.”

[thinkingimages]

Joan Bennett in the film Secret Behind the Door

Sexuality and Space edited by Beatriz Colomina

Elizabeth Wilson

In the early 1990s the addition of “sexuality” seemed to take the vibrant debate on space into new territory. The very title of Sexuality and Space reflects this, and as Beatriz Colomina remarks in her brief introduction to the collection of articles it comprises, to insist on “sexuality” as a component of space can be, at one level, to insert feminist concerns into a masculine discourse—although it is dispiriting if sexuality is still perceived as women’s domain, somehow suggesting that anatomy still is destiny and/or that women are still equated with the bodily in a way that men are not. As Colomina makes clear, however, the volume, like the symposium at which the papers it contains were initially presented, aims to do more than simply “include women.” Nor does it aim simply to explore “how sexuality acts itself out in space,” although this would have been an interesting subject in its own right: how actually existing urban, architectural spaces are used intentionally or illicitly for sexual purposes. We could have had papers on the role of the “cottage” (public lavatory) in gay sex, on museums as pick-up grounds for intellectual singles, on the voyeurism of peep shows, and so on. But this would presumably have been too literal a project for the theorists gathered. Instead we are invited to treat architecture as a “system of representation” on a par with film and TV, and to ask how space is “already inscribed in the question of sexuality.” Gender is inscribed in space and space is never designed in a gender-neutral way.

Accordingly, the articles range across the visual arts in a fashion that at first glance seems not so much interdisciplinary as wildly eclectic—Atget photographs of Paris, Alberti’s writings, an Australian advertisement for real estate. The approaches taken by the authors are also widely divergent.

Jennifer Bloomer has missed an opportunity to explore the purported “effeminacy” of Louis Henri Sullivan’s architectural work. She raises the interesting issue of the assumed relationship between gender identity (and/or sexual orientation) and allegedly “feminine” architectural forms and decoration, but instead of developing this theme she flirts with it, creating a theoretical bricolage that fails to achieve intellectual coherence, her discussion of the function and symbolic importance of ornament not fully meshing with the problematic figure of Sullivan. A similar collagist approach is used by Catherine Ingraham, and I can see that it may be a kind of postmodern criticism; but while it permits the introduction of a variety of interesting, if only tenuously related, points and theories, it has a modish feel, especially when the usual theoretical suspects are rounded up for an airing, Lacan’s lavatory doors making repeat appearances. By contrast, Alessandra Ponte’s essay on the 18th-century antiquarian Richard Payne Knight is very focused (as is Molly Nesbit’s meditation on the absence of “la Parisienne” from Atget’s photographs of empty corners of his city), a piece of historiographical excavation revealing the phallocentrism of 18th-century theories of architecture.

Yet most of the articles, despite their apparent divergence of subject, are united by theoretical protocols as well as by the central concern of the book as a whole, which is not eroticism but gender, and not architecture but space in a variety of manifestations, many of them historical. The main uniting factor is psychoanalytic theory.

The material throughout is rich and detailed. Beatriz Colomina contributes an analysis of representations of house designs, particularly interiors, by Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier. She explores the way in which these houses are photographed, and some of the ideas informing them, drawing out the way in which these utopian, perfect rooms are—paradoxically—theatrical sets for dramas of domestic life. There is an implied contradiction between the architect’s dream of perfect space and the actually existing mess of daily life; but either way the woman is always positioned as hidden and within, object of the male gaze. Surprising similarities (or perhaps they are not so surprising) are revealed between these modernist architects and the Renaissance architect and philosopher Leon Battista Alberti. Mark Wigley shows how Alberti, both in his treatise on the family and in his architectural writings, describes the ideal house as a building that encloses, conceals, and ultimately fetishizes heterosexual intercourse; the separate rooms of husband and wife may be entered by a private intercommunicating door, so that other members of the household need never know when the partners engage in sexual relations. More generally the domestic interior becomes, in Alberti’s propositions, a prison house for women, although Wigley suggests that this architectural manifestation of patriarchy only fully came into its own with the 19th-century bourgeoisie.

Patricia White’s paper is concerned with the filmic representation of a house, “Hill House,” as explored in Robert Wise’s 1963 horror classic, The Haunting. As she points out, this film is truly terrifying, but achieves its effects without any special effects or any actual representation of anything horrific. White identifies the underlying horror as arising from the film’s exploration of lesbian sexuality, demonstrating convincingly how the film’s central character, Eleanor, played by Julie Harris, although destroyed by Hill House, whose “gaze” she cannot escape, yet manages to “exceed” the narrative, speaking finally in voice-over from beyond the grave. White’s deployment of psychoanalytic film theory seems particularly apt and nonreductive; she uses it to bring out the ambiguity of the film, in which lesbian desire is apparently defeated and yet remains disruptive, “exceeding the drive of cinema to closure.”

Patricia White inevitably refers in the course of her argument to Laura Mulvey’s well-known article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”1 I have never entirely understood why this article became so hugely influential, given its negative and pessimistic reading (especially from a feminist point of view) of cinematic pleasure. But perhaps that was the point: as this volume itself demonstrates, psychoanalytic theory (especially its Lacanian variant) has been the basis for a “criticism of suspicion,” by which I mean a criticism that not only deconstructs the way in which effects are achieved and exposes meanings that might otherwise be hidden from an “innocent” audience, but invests all aspects of any aesthetic work with doubt and dubiousness. The excavation of cultural products must always, it seems, uncover skeletons. In this regard, architecture and cinema are two forms of cultural production particularly vulnerable to what Martin Jay has termed a 20th-century “denigration of vision” that has supplanted its earlier (Enlightenment) celebration.2 Viewing and the gaze, the totalizing vision and the nobility of sight, have been comprehensively delegitimated as (white, Western) masculine methods of control and domination.

In Laura Mulvey’s original article there was no place for the female spectator to lay claim to the gaze other than by becoming masculinized. Mulvey has since sought to modify this view, while never renouncing the underlying assumptions on which it was based, and she contributes to the present volume a meditation that considers Pandora and her box (“the box can … stand as a representation of the enigma and threat generated by the concept of female sexuality in patriarchal culture”), the Hitchcock film Notorious, and the idea of female curiosity as a transgressive exploration of forbidden spaces. For her, psychoanalytic theory as used in feminist criticism is transgressive, for “curiosity describes the desire to know something that is concealed so strongly that it is experienced like a drive, leading to the transgression of a prohibition,” and feminist curiosity then constitutes an unmasking of the patriarchal structures of popular, or indeed any, culture.

Yet, as Victor Burgin argues in his essay on the photography of Helmut Newton, Mulvey’s original article has itself been fetishized; its influence has neither diminished nor evolved. Having made this statement, however, Burgin himself makes little further attempt to develop it, confining himself instead to an analysis of a Newton image, interesting enough, but much narrower in focus than his opening sentence had led this reader, at least, to expect. Burgin is rightly dismissive of the way in which psychoanalytic theory has been “sociologized” and collapsed into a vulgar-Marxist version of woman-as-commodity. He might feel that Lynn Spigel’s essay on television and the postwar American suburban home is too “sociological,” but this is one of the clearest articles in the collection, a model of structural simplicity and accessibility, in which the ambiguity between public and private, outside and inside, created by the plate glass doors and picture windows of the suburban home, is shown to be reproduced by the advent of television with its concomitant notions of the living room as theater and the TV space as a safe, sanitized public space introduced into the home. (Indeed, although television created fears of a new generation of what we now would call “couch potatoes,” the screen community of the sitcom often seemed preferable to the real-life communities of the new suburbs.)

With Elizabeth Grosz’s article on bodies and cities we return to a more euphoric postmodern take on the relationship between sexuality and space. Grosz moves the discussion beyond traditional metaphors of the “body politic” or the humanist idea that at one time people unproblematically built cities; instead she explores the way in which “the city is one of the crucial factors in the social production of (sexed) corporeal bodies: the built environment provides the context … for most contemporary … forms of the body.” But disappointingly she does not develop this idea, falling back instead on a familiar and arguably exaggerated vision of a cyborg future: “the city and body will interface with the computer, forming part of an information machine in which the body’s limbs and organs will become interchangeable parts with the computer.”

Meaghan Morris’s contribution, too dense and theoretically “over-egged” (i.e., incorporating too many ingredients) to summarize, rewards several readings, and is a serious attempt both at a critique of theories and at an analysis of two specific cultural events concerning property speculation in downtown Sydney. It is insightful and thought provoking; nevertheless it illustrates both the virtues and the flaws not just of the book as a whole, but of the general state of cultural studies. Simultaneously populist and obscure, such studies can become both incoherent and philistine (although the latter is certainly not an adjective I would apply to her essay or any of these contributions).

Indeed, this is a (probably rash) generalization, not a comment on any particular article in Sexuality and Space, but if I have seemed to single out some authors for negative criticism, it is less on account of their specific contributions than because they are the heirs of what for me are ambiguous, indeed dubious, tendencies in contemporary cultural criticism, in which the debunking of Marx and all Enlightenment thought is married (or at least engaged) to a fundamentally uncritical appropriation of Freud (or at least Lacan). I have gone terminally off Lacan since I discovered that, when Antonin Artaud was his patient during World War II, Lacan showed little interest in the deranged playwright3; an illegitimate ad hominem argument, I know—but the grip of his theory on academic critics has always been mysterious to me. Even worse is a practice, which I fear may have been on occasion my own, whereby a critic distances herself ironically or cynically from an assortment of postmodern theorists (Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, even Derrida and Foucault) while simultaneously appropriating their thought, not infrequently in the form of spurious generalizations—a feature, Meaghan Morris suggests, of the work of Deleuze and Guattari themselves in relation to Freud. The whole is then likely to be couched in dauntingly arcane and grammatically tortuous language. Faced with this bricolage, I am totally with Edward Gibbon—who identified one aspect of the decline of the Roman Empire as the decadence of its later literary tradition, when, he complained, “a cloud of critics … darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste”4—and I cannot but feel that this kind of postmodern criticism is indeed an index of decay.

But I suppose that postmodernism in general and contemporary psychoanalysis in particular is the theory our epoch in history deserves. Psycho-analysis has certainly been reconstructed to fit; in contrast to the highly moralistic and adjustive Freudianism of the 1950s, which was in any case a therapeutic and sociological rather than a critical tool, we have today psychoanalysis as an ideologically empty vessel, a theory without consequences. A fractured body of thought pleasingly open to endless reinterpretations and deconstructions, a detheorized (or perhaps etherealized) theory, it holds up a (splintered, it is true) mirror to assist in the contemplation of ourselves, one which can be thrillingly seen as “transgressive” while remaining devoid of any calls to action or any social or moral imperatives. Truly a theory for our postpolitical times.

1. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1975): 6–18.

2. Martin Jay, “In the Empire of the Gaze: Foucault and the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought,” in David Couzens Hoy, editor, Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 178.

3. See Stephen Barber, Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (London: Faber and Faber, 1993).

4. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), 83.

Elizabeth Wilson is on the faculty of the School of Information and Communication Studies at the University of North London; her recent books include The Sphinx in the City and Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader.

[raendown]

I return from the dead with a fic that isn't even for the Naruto fandom and I don't really have an explanation for myself.

Pairing: SamBucky Word count: 2317 Fandom: MCU Summary: Visiting Steve was always strange now that the guy was old and retired. Still, of all the things Sam expected out of today, witnessing a prime example of gay panic from the co-worker that's been mysteriously avoiding him was not one of them.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

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Honestly, the fact that Steve's house smelled like prunes was probably one of the funniest things that Sam had ever heard in his life. More than anything he would have loved to go back in time, to the days of reading about glorified heroes in history textbooks, and tell his fifteen year old self that Captain America, Steve Rogers, retired in a house that smelled like prunes. God, his best friend just had to throw himself in to being old the way he threw himself in to everything else.

"Is there a special reason for you visiting?" Steve's voice was more tremulous these days, less steady but no less warm. Just hearing him again after the shameful amount of weeks it had been since his last visit made Sam grin.

"Nah, just thought I'd pop in and see if you'd expired yet. Your birthday's coming up. Gonna be, what, three hundred? A thousand?"

Steve narrowed his eyes but there was fondness in them so it wasn't very scary even if he could probably still tackle Sam across the room if he wanted to. At this point it would hurt him too but he could do it. "You, young man, are-"

He looked chagrined at himself when Sam cut him off with a laugh.

"You shitting me? Did you really just call me young man? See if I ever let you live that down."

His friend grumbled but accepted the teasing as his due. That was just what he got for going back in time and doubling down on being so much older than his own best friends.

Since it had indeed been a little too long after they last saw each other there was quite a bit of catching up for them to do. Over cool glasses of sweet tea and a plate of cookies the two of them spent a pleasant couple of hours shooting the shit until Sam could almost forget the years that stretched between them now. It was jarring, sometimes, looking away from those clear blue eyes to realize all over again just how many wrinkles they were set in. Sometimes he hated it. Other times he could only smile to know that at least one of their ragtag bunch had found the peace they were looking for.

Eventually all that sweet tea went right to his bladder and Sam excused himself to use the bathroom. When he returned he took in the sight of his friend all snug under one of the blankets his late wife had knit and sighed, feeling maudlin suddenly for no good reason.

"I should probably get out of your hair," he said. "Let you get in your afternoon nap or whatever. No, stay there man, I'll clean up." His smile was easy as he snagged the dishes from their grazing and hauled it all over to the kitchen.

"You sure?" Steve's voice floated after him. "Nothing else you want to get off your chest?"

"Huh?"

Sam frowned at the cups he'd just placed in the sink, running back through his mind. They'd talked about pretty much everything he could think of.

"You didn't mention Buck once, you know. I thought the two of you were friends now."

"Ah. Yeah. So did I." The corners of his mouth twisted with a little bitterness, a little confusion. After everything they'd been through and the number of times Bucky had accepted his invitations down to Delacroix he'd thought they were well past the point of calling themselves friends. Maybe he himself felt something a little more than that but he knew better than to push.

That was probably why Bucky's sudden radio silence hurt so much though.

"Trouble in paradise?" Steve called from the other room and Sam snorted.

“Shit, I don’t know. One minute we’re fine and the next he just up and disappears on me again. I may or may not have checked a bunch of obituaries for your name just in case because I have no idea what I might have done to piss him off.” Sam pursed his lips. He’s already gone over all this with Sarah a half dozen times and in all the recounts he’d done of their last couple missions he still couldn’t find any particularly bad moment between him and his best friend. Unfortunately the sweet tea he was glaring at didn’t have any answers either so he snatched the pitcher up and moved to put it in the fridge.

“Have you tried, oh I don’t know, asking him what’s wrong?”

“You think I didn’t try that?”

Steve’s hum drifted down the hallway with a distinct note of sass. “Neither one of you is very famous for your communication.”

“Excuse you, I was a counselor. A certified veteran’s counselor. Communicating with people was literally my job until your overly buff ass came running around all ‘on your left’ and ‘everyone I know is trying to kill me’.” Sam huffed as he snapped the fridge closed. “I damn well tried to talk to him but he’s not answering my texts or my calls. Short of breaking in to his apartment I don’t really know what else you want me to do.”

Without any other excuses to keep him in the kitchen Sam heaved a sigh, knowing he couldn’t dawdle any longer. He could only get to the door by going though the living room so his choices were either run away out the back, which he would never ever hear the end of, or go back in to the living room and face Steve with his stupidly wise and knowing eyes. Seriously, let a guy live to almost two hundred and suddenly he thought he knew everything. Annoying was what it was.

He was only halfway down the hall when he heard the front door open. Sam very carefully swallowed down the jibe he’d just been about to deliver and hoped that meant what he thought it meant. Maybe Steve had finally gone vague after all and bailed in the middle of their conversation; he’d rather chase a crazy old coot down the street than talk about his feelings regarding one James Buchanan Barnes. Actually if he looked at it from the right angle then chasing an old coot down the street was pretty much his job description whenever he and his partner teamed up on missions. Sam was just glad they hadn’t been called in to one since this whole silent treatment had started because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know whether or not Bucky would still have his back even when the guy was mad at him over reasons unknown.

Two more steps and Sam froze in his tracks, eyes wide with disbelief. Bucky’s shoulders were hunched in to himself with something bridling on panic as he fit himself through the front door and kicked it shut behind himself, eyes wild and fixed on the ground between his feet, nervous energy pouring out of him in a way Sam hadn’t seen before. From his spot on the couch Steve watched his childhood friend let himself in with serene indifference.

“Didn’t know you’d be over today,” was all he said. Then he smiled benignly when Bucky let out a soft whine.

“Help,” Bucky pleaded. “I’m dying.”

Then Bucky slid down to his knees and face planted in the carpet, arms and legs splaying out wide. Steve hummed.

“You know,” he murmured, “no one ever believes me when I tell them you’re this dramatic.”

“Steve! I’m having a crisis!”

“I tell everyone you’re a drama queen and they just shake their heads at me.”

“This is important! You have to kill me, Steve. Or I’m gonna just- just-!” Bucky’s voice petered out with another extended whine muffled by the carpet that probably didn’t smell any better from that close up.

Crossing one leg over the other, Steve folded his hands in his lap with a great lack of concern for the ridiculous scene playing out before him. Sam remained frozen in the hallway, wondering if Bucky even realized he was there, but he got an answer to that almost faster than if he’d bothered to ask himself.

“What’s wrong, pal?”

“It’s Sam!” Bucky cried. His arms lifted up like wings to flail briefly before falling back to the floor in a boneless sprawl. “Please just crush my head or something. I can’t take this.”

“Ah, yes, I hear you’ve been avoiding him.”

Whatever kind of noise Bucky was trying to make, it came out sounding more like he was choking on carpet fumes. “Of course I’m avoiding him!”

“Now why on earth would you do that?”

“I want to stick my tongue in the gap between his teeth!” Bucky said, entirely unaware of the sparks that were suddenly running up Sam’s spine in the hallway. “Help me, Steve! I want to press my thumb in the little dimple on his back. He has a dimple on his back! Why!? Steve I want to hold his hand! What the fuck!”

Steve had both eyebrows up near his hairline and the most shit eating grin any human on the planet had ever worn when he turned his head to look at Sam. Frozen with his eyes on the figure currently panicking in to the floor, Sam paid him no attention. He was busy processing. After getting to know Bucky, inviting him to stay in Delacroix time and time again, the dramatics weren’t actually that much of a surprise. Obviously as they grew closer he’d gotten a number of glimpses in to who the real Bucky Barnes was under the grouchy veneer he presented to the world. Watching him starfish on the ground and whine wasn’t too far from what he’d already seen.

Hearing him say anything about his tongue in conjecture with Sam’s teeth, on the other hand, now that was a bit unexpected. More than a bit.

“I think Shuri called this ‘gay panic’ and honestly I’m in agreement,” Bucky went on mindlessly. “If I have to watch him go through one more workout and not grab his ass with both hands then I’m just going to rip both of them off. Who needs hands if I cannot grab Sam Wilson’s ass with them!?”

“You may be slightly exaggerating the situation, I feel,” Steve told him.

Bucky snorted. “I am not. I absolutely am not. Why is he so hot? And nice? I hate that. Except I don’t. Steve why is he so nice to me?”

“That might be a question you should ask him.”

“Oh yeah, sure, I’ve got lots of questions for him! Hey Sam, why are you nice to me? Hey Sam, can I lick your cheekbones? Hey Sam, how big is your cock?”

“Well. Not that I’ve ever thought to ask that myself but, alright. Go on, Sam, how big is it?”

Sam had just enough time to cross his arms over his chest and assume a very casual pose leaning against the wall beside him before Bucky’s head shot up off the carpet. If possible, his eyes were even more wild than before when he fixed them on Steve, full of the deepest betrayal. Then he very slowly dragged them sideways to see the man he’d just been panicking over. Sam gave him a very friendly smile.

“Depends on your frame of reference,” he admitted. “I’d say sizeable.”

“Nnnggggg.”

“Hi Buck.”

“Ggnnn.”

While Steve very poorly disguised a laugh behind one hand, Sam pushed off from the wall and sauntered further in to the living room. Bucky slammed his face back in to the carpet.

“Leave me here to die,” he pleaded in a very small voice. Sam tutted, reaching for the front door, only looking over his shoulder once he was halfway through it.

“Come on, Buck, can’t lick my cheekbones if you don’t get off the floor. It was a nice visit, Steve, but don’t be looking out your front curtains for a bit. I think I’ll let Bucky decide for himself what sizeable means.” He thanked god for the mercy of Steve’s house being situated out here so far from any other homes, surrounded on all sides by enough trees that you couldn’t see it from the road. A gorgeous little island of privacy. Sam was fairly sure he wasn’t the only one grateful for this, judging by the mad scrambling noises he could hear going on behind him.

Bucky’s voice garbled out something that sounded like ‘fuck you, thank you, bye forever’ and then Sam was listening to the slam of the front door barely a second before strong hands were wrapping themselves around his hips. He laughed even as Bucky’s face came in to view.

“Greatest assassin of several generations and you didn't notice my truck in the driveway?” he said.

“I may have been a bit distracted.” That was definitely a pout on Bucky’s lips.

“By being so hot for all of this”-Sam gestured vaguely down his own body-“that you literally ceased being able to function.”

He didn’t expect such easy agreement as the sheepish nod that followed his words. “Pretty much.”

Sam blinked slowly once, twice. For one long moment he considered teasing the man. Then he decided that their time was much better spent doing things they’d both obviously been wanting to do while assuming they would never get the chance.

“I was promised a tongue in my teeth. Are you gonna get to that any time soon or am I gonna sit here and pine some more for something I apparently could have had all along?”

Bucky keened piteously. Then he surged forward to follow through on his own promises and Sam really hoped that Steve had taken his words to heart about the curtains. The man was way too old to be seeing all the ways they were about to defile the side of this truck.

[obliviouspoptart]

ngl, the more i watch house, the more i hate how everyone treats him

not in the “he’s an asshole, treat him like an asshole” way bc that’s deserved and honestly why i love him as a character

but everything else. he uses vicodin bc he has constant chronic pain that will never fade and never get better. everyone says he should be able to live life without medication and be fine! let’s force him into widthdrawals because we’ll feel better about a chronic pain patient not having to “rely” on medicine to live!

bc fucking personally, as a chronic pain patient, fuck you. do i use opioids to live a normal life? no, and i feel very lucky that all i have to do is slowly destroy my liver with nsaids to survive bc that’s a more “acceptable” medicine and even still some people will tell me “yoga” or “eating healthy” or fucking “healing crystals” will cure my arthritis that will never ever go away. if those things work for you, i am so happy, i wish you all the best and hope it keeps working for you, but it doesn’t work for me. and other medicine can’t work for house. and i am always very mad that every single able-bodied person in this show thinks his need of the medicine is a problem that needs to be fixed bc once he’s not addicted he’ll be magically healed!! or something because they really don’t actually consider his very real and very never going away or even getting slightly better pain outside of his addiction to vicodine.

another thing i hate, probably more than the abled characters telling house what is and isn’t acceptable for a disabled chronic pain patient to do, which is surprising considering how much i dislike it, is how they treat house’s relationship to his parents, specifically his dad. his dad is abusive. full stop. there’s nothing fucking redeeming about that man in any plot point in the show. he’s just straight up abusive. no real explanation, besides house was a rebellious kid and his dad was the typical Military Father™. like, he made house take ice water baths and sleep outside in the cold when he misbehaved. his dad spoke to him solely through typed notes for TWO MONTHS. WHEN HE WAS 12. house didn’t get to eat dinner if he was two minutes late (that’s a direct quote btw). and still, the very few people he considers friends try to force him to still forgive his dad and feel bad when his dad is dying and when he does die. like, no, fuck that. you should never, ever force someone with abusive parents to forgive them or mourn them. that should be their decision. but no, you literally drug house with a sedative to force him to go to his dad’s funeral! that’s beyond fucked up! like house does morally ambiguous things in this show for the sake of saving patients (and being an ass) but sedating a friend to force them to go to an extremely emotionally traumatizing event by use of sedation and kidnapping when he said he didn’t want to go is. i am so mad for house.

should house try and seek closure and come to terms with his extreme childhood abuse at the hands of his father? yes. obviously. house is fucked up from his childhood, he’s admitted that most of his emotional dysfunction is due to his parents’ abuse. which is a lot for house to admit, lbr. he literally cannot accept praise, and it’s always shoved off by him being an asshole, but he cannot accept praise. that’s textbook childhood abuse, esp emotional abuse! it cannot get more textbook than that! and they are forcing him to face probably the most traumatizing time in his life because they think they know what he needs. and considering everything else they “do for him” in this show, they don’t know shit.

i am just. look. i know house is an asshole. he’s meant to be an asshole. he doesn’t always make the good or right choice. he’d be knee-deep in about 5000 lawsuits if he were a real doctor and no one would actually want him as their doctor because of the risks he takes and how often he plays god thinking he’s right. he’s a plain asshole, and he needs wilson more than wilson needs him, but still does everything in his power to drive him away, short of actual evil things. but his needs are also constantly ignored by his friends bc they “know better” obviously. idk where i’m going with this but i am infuriated by how wilson and cuddy treat house and his personal issues, bc they forget he is still a person inside his shield of assholery. and they let him being an ass get in the way of actually doing the right thing by him, constantly, in every major house-centric character arc. that’s it. the whole post is just bc i am upset for house and, honestly, unpopular opinion, house deserved better.

thanks for coming to my ted talk

[lovingherwasgay]

can we just stop for a bit and talk about the difference between cuddy and wilson in house's eyes? because i can't anymore

Cuddy broke up with House because of his inability to care about her, what she wanted and what she needed. He wasn't there for her when she got her cancer diagnosis. And everything else he did for her, helping her daughter and doing nice things for her, he only did it because he felt like he had to. He forced himself to do it to show her he cares. He loved Cuddy, for sure, but he didn't naturally care about her.

But with Wilson, when he got diagnosed, House spent every moment of it through it with him. He even had him do the chemo at his apartment to take care of him and make sure he was okay. Then he literally faked his death so he could spend Wilson's last five months of life with him, because he didn't want to leave him alone. And because without Wilson his life is meaningless, empty. He's all alone. And he felt this way even before he lost Cuddy, too, all the way back to Wilson (the episode). Wilson is the one person House cannot live without.

And when Sam came back, he immediately defended and protected Wilson from her, because he didn't want her abusive ass to hurt him again. And he didn't do it to prove Wilson that he cares, he did it because he does. He didn't do it to be obnoxious either, or to screw Wilson up, he actually tried to keep it all a secret and help him silently even though he could've come clear about it knowing Wilson wouldn't just up and leave him for it. He just genuinely wanted to protect Wilson from her toxic ex because he knows how much she ruined him last time

And a million more examples I can't even remember right now. But just... Ugh. House loves Wilson more than anyone else in the world, he needs him more than anyone he's ever known, and he cares about him deeper than anyone else. That's true love right there.

[artificiallyimplantedmemories]

[ ooc: FINALLY got around to this, after the foible this morning with it, so this is try number 2 at ep5 liveblog/commentary... under the cut as always ]

this has a speedrun/summary version of impressions the first third of it because I’d already watched all of that before tumblr ate the post so I might miss stuff idk. and then after that it’s my typical sporadic livebloggy madness. this got SUPER long oops

We have a lot of motifs in this episode, including the bloodied shield, the use of the shield as essentially a giant blunt blade rather than a shield, the conflict between different people’s interpretations of what ‘fighting because one has to’ means.

Walker is running from himself at the beginning, but where does one run to when the war is in your head? Particularly poignant for me (because I know that in the comics he joins the army to emulate his deceased brother) is how deeply the loss of a brother-in-arms cuts, but even more so how much the thought that he’s disappointed Lamar hurts. I think that in some ways, Lamar may have been a part of John’s moral compass, and his sustained belief in him has always helped him. It’s a reversed parallel to Steve and Bucky, actually, and I could elaborate on that but it might turn into an essay.

John tries to walk away from the fight at first, partly because he has other priorities, and partly because I think he does genuinely recognize that Bucky and Sam are good people. Of course there’s also the layer that he thinks of them as the original Cap’s sidekicks and therefore as the new Cap shouldn’t fight them, but… anyway the fight sequence is interesting to watch because it does show John as fairly well matched with them despite the fact that MCU Bucky has the serum. Part of this might be their reluctance to kill him while John has given up the façade and is now willing to do that in order to further his own plans as long as he doesn’t get caught. He cannot lose the title he’s given or he’ll be lost, now that he doesn’t have his best friend.

“Don’t go down that road. Believe me, it doesn’t end well.” “I’m not like you.” The difference is that Bucky was brainwashed. Yes, he’s still ruthless even after he’s broken free of it, but he’s taking conscious steps to be better. And thus the determination behind the “Yeah we do.” The shield deserves better than being in John’s care.

I paused to write and stopped on this face I’m laughing

The “why are you making me do this?” is obviously coming from a place of delusion but also speaks to how John’s personal motives are super unclear. Why did he take on the mantle of Captain America when it was established from the very beginning that he wasn’t completely comfortable with it? Was it, as he told Lamar, because he wanted a chance to be good? (In which case, obviously he’s having a breakdown about not achieving that?) Was it for his ego? Because he was commanded to? Having a John muse makes this a very interesting thing to explore.

Seeing Bucky’s arm get electrified and him knocking out because that’s directly tied to his neural implants was not any easier the second time around oof

“This isn’t you, John.” Further proof that Sam Wilson has more heart than legit anyone else, he’s still trying to believe that John is good.

I find it interesting that they have John remove the cowl in order to growl “I am Captain America.” It speaks to a rejection of what the old Cap was (though the cowl is the US Agent / updated Cap one) and his insistence that his version of Captain America is valid. (It’s not.)

Also because my literary obsessed reads way too much into tiny things that the show runners probably didn’t really care about as metaphors, I definitely saw the ripping of Sam’s wing as a reference to the restriction of freedoms by the US government lol just ignore me on that.

Bucky and Sam repeatedly saving each other’s asses is my jam. Also Sam using the power from the wing pack keeps reminding me from my observation back at the beginning that he’d do so well with full out repulsors. Tony totally would have set him up with that if MCU hadn’t killed him alas.

More of me finding parallels where there shouldn’t be any: they broke Walker’s left arm, just like they took away Bucky’s left.

I took a screenshot of this image when I watched it in the previous round, and it’s still going to haunt me. There’s something so tired and haunted and defeated here.

Bucky gives Sam the shield, because there’s nobody who deserves it more. The look on Sam’s face when he takes it and tries to clean the blood off of it (physically and symbolically of course) is heartbreaking. It’s a man who regrets his decision not to take it on originally but also now has to deal with the implications of both taking on that responsibility (in a country that doesn’t treat him fairly) and whether people will approve of anyone carrying the shield after John has fucked it up so badly.

A note that carries over from my first watch: people don’t usually refer to their enemies by first name. It’s done in comic books and movies with some frequency to remind people who is who, and in this case may also be a bit of humanization for Karli, a reminder that she is a sympathetic character despite the vicious way she does things sometimes. I also appreciate them reminding the audience that she’s competent and has a lot of support.

ALSO TORRES MY DARLING I’VE MISSED YOU. I wonder if Sam letting him keep the wings will actually develop into something (a la comics) or if they’re leaving that open ended. Also his smile is literal sunshine I’m not even joking about this, please give me all the Joaquín content thank you. Just look at him!!

I think by this point most viewers are fairly convinced that John Walker is Not A Good Man, but I think that his rant about always having done what he was told and done it well is purposeful and poignant here. His motives have always been to serve, but the matter of who he’s serving (or more importantly what - the military machine, the government that simply gives orders without thinking of the personal ramifications for those who carry them out) is put in contrast to Sam and Bucky, who are also veterans. I can’t help but draw parallels to the Nuremberg trials, people who did heinous things under orders and try to use that as an excuse for their innocence. It’s a reminder that a person doesn’t have to be visibly part of an evil group in order to do evil things. I won’t outline everything here but at least as far as the US Military goes, more info can be found at https://www.thebalancecareers.com/military-orders-3332819 about how and when it is defensible for people in the military to disobey orders.

You can hear John’s voice break during his rant, the conviction that he was doing what he was supposed to. He could have gotten away with more if he hadn’t been such a public figure, but an “other than honorable discharge” lmao what a diplomatic way to tell him how badly he fucked up xD

Also hey it’s Olivia. Most people forgot that John has a wife. (I’m glad she’s telling him to visit Lemar’s parents, they deserve that.) Also is this Valentina or is this a Skrull? Only time will tell.  (She’s probably not a Skrull, FATWS is too short for that, but on the other hand I’m not sure how I feel about the implications otherwise. Is she a SHIELD infiltrator? Is she manipulating him on SHIELD’s behalf? Did they steal the name and get rid of her backstory?)

The resignation on Zemo’s face during his encounter with Bucky (especially with a gun to his face) is unnerving. Zemo calling Bucky “James” made Natasha outright glare though. Her priorities are a little odd. But I’m glad Bucky didn’t kill him, I’m glad he’s not allowing him to be a victim of his conditioning. The Dora Milaje are taking him to the Raft… oh wait there might be Skrulls after all.

“If you ain’t bitter, you’re blind.” I feel that. I feel that hard. But I also understand the misplaced blame, the tendency for people who have been Through It seeing anyone outside their minority as their oppressor.

For someone who has dealt with the immensity of the trauma that Isaiah has, including the experimentation, the social isolation, the experience of being in the jail system for so long, it’s no surprise at all that he would be quick to assign blame. Add to that the risk of being killed for being part of an experiment that you didn’t agree to partake in early on, followed by extensive experimentation after? There are so many factors at play: violation of self, lack of agency, lack of safety… D: and the physical reminders of them are everywhere. look at the scarring D: D: D:

The range of emotion in this is so good, the acting is so good, I’m just overwhelmed with how honest this feels. 

“They erased me. My history. But they’ve been doing that for 500 years.” OOF

The crease in Sam’s brow when he’s told that no self-respecting black man would wanna be Captain America, there’s such righteous indignation there, but he has to temper it in the face of Isaiah’s grief. Over and over he proves himself capable of putting compassion first and foremost.

This sibling dynamic has been really nice to see. There’s tension, there’s individual struggles, there’s support (not always in the ways it needs to be, but they’re trying), but more obviously there’s a depth of love there. Seeing it is so rewarding.

LOOK AT THE WHOLE COMMUNITY SHOWING UP!! Oh man so this gets me, because I grew up in a neighborhood where we supported each other and threw block parties and everyone trooped into our backyard to play on the swingset that had been left behind by the previous owner. It wasn’t family, sure, but we took care of each other. In India, it was even more so, and even now when I go there, I crash at my next door neighbors’ place instead of my family’s house most of the time. I miss having that sense of community, that closeness to people because we all had each other’s backs. Where I live now, I don’t even know most of my neighbors’ names. It sucks.

Ahh, there’s the part that I’ve seen the gifs of, with Bucky showing up at the boat. I like the idea that Bucky has slowly come to think of his metal arm as more of a normal part of him despite the ache and heaviness of it. Of course in MCU, he has the serum so maybe he doesn’t notice as much, but I can’t imagine he wouldn’t experience phantom pain in it until at least he internalized it as his own body part, and even then the shoulder joint would probably ache. Still, perhaps it’s more akin to an old injury than a foreign object now, and therefore Bucky still does what he would do naturally, using his dominant hand instead of the ‘enhanced’ one.

I have Feelings about Bucky saying “I’m Bucky” with a smile okay I HAVE FEELINGS

Bucky must have worked the docks a lot way back in the 40s. His level of competence is one of natural instinct, he’s just used to it. I wonder if he worked extra to help pay for medication for Steve after Sarah passed away… oh, more feels :(

Meanwhile Sam is over here doing his human best and I love that. He calls in the crew to help, relies on people, but it never stops him from being a part of it. He’s not taking a managerial role, he’s another tooth on the gear.

“They don’t care if you wear small tee shirts or have six toes or your mom’s your aunt” lmao my brain went ‘You don’t happen to have six toes on your right foot, do you?’ ‘Do you start all of your conversations this way?’ But also look how happy they look here!!!

“Don’t flirt with my sister. Because if you do I’ll have Carlos cut you up, feed you to the fish.” SAM YOU’RE SO RIDICULOUS. But also the way Bucky goes a little pouty after. <3

Lemar’s family! Okay so Walker is straight up lying to them about who it was that killed him, but given the circumstances, I don’t expect anything different. And perhaps part of that is to assuage the family about the fact that there’s ‘justice’ done, but part of it also has to be a slight ego play, and you can see on his face that when they talk about him resting easier, his jaw sets. He’s going to go after who actually did it, whether he has the jurisdiction to or not. He does seem genuinely regretful and I will reiterate the brother-in-arms bit above. Walker needed Lamar as a support system, a confidante, and a nudge in the right direction.

What is Bucky thinking about when he sees the kids playing with the shield? Is he remembering his own childhood? Is he thinking about a future where the shield will be valued and honored and carried right again? Is he thinking about what it’s like to have a family, and missing his own? I need to know these things -_- -> WAIT I THINK IT GOT ANSWERED DURING THE TRAINING MONTAGE. Oh it’s even more than I thought augh. The closest thing he’s got left to a family is the shield because Steve was as much a part of it as it was a part of Captain America dfsjhdgfsd

Sarah telling the boys off! Good for you, girl. (Also I’m laughing at “she’s a very mean person” and “there’s a prowess that goes into my madness” pfft Sam)

“You gotta stop looking to other people to tell you who you are.” is SUCH AN IMPORTANT SENTIMENT. And “You want to climb out of the hell you’re in, do the work.” As someone who deals with a lot of mental illness bullshit, this is the TRUEST statement. Yeah, you might need help. It might be therapy, it might be meds, it might be other coping skills and distractions, but if you don’t want to be better and do better for yourself and face the rawest and most uncomfortable parts of your psyche, you don’t improve. You stay complacent, stay stuck in that rut, doing the same things that didn’t work before. I need to say it doubly because you know some people are going to say that Sam’s not giving Bucky the support he needs to climb out. IT’S NOT HIS JOB. He will choose to give support when Bucky asks/needs because he’s a compassionate person, but this speech right here is compassion, it is exactly the tough love he says it is. Bucky needed to be called out on not coping and I’m glad that it happened.

….also now kiss, thank you.

“We’re partners.” “Co-workers.” “But we’re also a couple of guys with a mutual friend.” “Friend’s now gone.” “So we’re a couple guys.” XD -cue vine- two guys chilling on a boat and…- wait that’s not how it goes.

“This is our history. We can’t lose this fight.”

“But what would be the point of all this pain and sacrifice if I wasn’t willing to stand up and keep fighting?”

Training montage! I hope he doesn’t slice his fingers off on that shield yeesh. Also my Clint muse is watching those flips like oooooh the dude’s got moves on the ground too now, oh no.

Okay we get that the Flag Smashers are going for intimidation but the trope of the red lighting makes me laugh every time. Nobody is going to turn out the lights and then turn on a different set of conveniently red lights that probably weren’t normally installed in that building. Even emergency lighting wouldn’t look like that. It’s just funny, I dunno. And of course we get a cliffhanger ending.

Post-credits we get John’s new shield being built, and all I can say is 1) if he’s able to pound that out, clearly his new shield isn’t vibranium, and 2) LEARN HOW TO WELD NEATLY AUGH THAT WAS AWFUL XD

Overall thoughts: Good episode! Not a huge amount of plot furthering, aside from the very last bit, but good insight into characterization and believably building the relationship between Sam and Bucky while also reading into motivations and differing views from people who come from similar circumstances. I’m really enjoying the compare & contrast I’m getting to do between Isaiah and Bucky and Sam, because there are so many overlaps and stark differences between them. The first half also gave us some great headway into understanding John as a person, though it’s possible some of that is me overanalyzing because I have a muse for him.

[marquiswrites]

Out of Time [7/25]

Masterlist

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)

Characters: James “Bucky” Barnes, Sam Wilson, James “Rhodey” Rhodes, Shuri, Doctor Strange, Original Female Character/OC

Relationship: James “Bucky” Barnes/Reader,

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 1038

Warnings: Language

Author’s Notes: This chapter is a lot more easy going, something a little fun in the midst of all our mystery. Is there an actual plot? Who knows. But it sure is sweet finding it along the way. For @panicfob​ ‘s 25 days of christmas fics

Chapter 7: Ice Skating

The rest of the evening progressed in a rather similar manner, though with you learning the stories of the others as they each gave themselves time to process what it was that you had explained. Sam and Rhodey opened up about their time in the military. Bucky talked about life before the war. Shuri went on about the new discoveries that Wakanda continued to share with the world. Stephan spoke about the new students that had come to study under his order. 

Apparently knowing the literal gods of Asgard and a Sorcerer Supreme gave you a bit more leeway that you had originally been expecting. Which was something of a comfort, if you were going to be honest. A worry easing from your chest.

Sam had immediately turned from cautious to open and welcoming, more so than even when you had been at the mall together. Going into the story of how he and Bucky had been taken out by a boy of only sixteen with the ability to climb walls and throw webs from his hands. Passing out drinks freely. 

Bucky groaned with the story, then turned around to tell about the first time Sam and he had crossed paths. You caught the edge that the story put, however amusing it was to think of a man they claimed was called a ghost just openly throwing about bombs and cars. 

Shuri laughing brightly from the couch behind everyone. “You should have seen him with the goats..”

“Quiet little sister before I tell them abou-”

“Don’t you dare.” 

“That’s what I thought.” Bringing another round of laughter from the group. Each clinking their drinks together in some sort of victory against the young genius. Your cheeks almost hurting from how brightly you had been smiling through it all. 

“Alright, alright… but I have one question for our Ice Queen here.” Shuri nodded to you. Still recording everything on her phone. “The ice powers, are they on demand? Like Thor? Or is that just an exaggeration? Because even Thor’s abilities can be quantified by-”

“No.” Rhodey waved a hand. “I fly around in a giant metal suit that shoots rockets and laser beams, we are not going into the magic versus science conversation.” Shaking his head with a heavy sigh. “I’ve already heard enough about this to last me a lifetime.”

You laugh softly with that. “All science can be marked as magic, and all magic is just science that cannot yet be explained.”

“Magic is just science that we haven’t explained yet.” Stephen dropped in as if quoting something. Though you didn’t recognize it, the sentiment coming from an actual sorcerer brought another smile to your lips. 

“Yes. However, my magic is simple. I maintain the ability to create ice, whether with a touch or a gesture.” Turning your gaze to the living room, concentrating on it for a moment before sweeping your arm in a wide arc. Creating a thick layer of ice across the floor’s surface. 

“Hey! Not cool! How are we going to mop that up later…” Sam pouted before heaving a sigh, Shuri giving a delighted squeal. Jumping down from the couch to slide across the surface with her sneakers, almost falling in the process. Barely managing to catch herself by grapping to one of the floor lamps. One arm windmilling about to help her balance.  

“Okay, you can stay. And then we are going to get my brother here. I will not be the only one embarrassed.”

“I am glad to meet your approval. And I can help to banish it later Sam.” You hop down from the barstool, blinking through the sudden wave of dizziness, the drinks hitting you all at once. Then a hand at your elbow helped to steady you, knowing that it belonged to Bucky even before you turned your gaze to meet his. 

“Well, we gonna waste this?” Raising a brow down to you, before nodding towards the ice. “It’s here, might as well enjoy the private ice skating session.” 

“I’m calling it a night. Not going to risk breaking my back, again.” Rhodey waved to the group, dipping his head to you as he left the rest of you to the impromptu ice skating. You kneeled down by everyone’s shoes as all but Stephen lined up, creating a quick blade on the bottom. Shuri taking off almost immediately on the ice, only to fall onto her rear with a soft oof. “Right.. Never done this before.”

“I’ve got you kid.” Sam glided easily onto the ice, picking up Shuri and helping her find her balance. 

“Come on, Doll.” Bucky offered you his hand, curling his fingers to yours as you made lazy laps around the furniture. Falling into a steady rhythm side by side as the buzz of the liquor slowly burned off with the activity. The both of you steering well clear from the Wakandan Princess and the Falcon as they navigated the room like a pair of fresh born fawns.��

A part of you wondered when Bucky had learned to skate, pulling you along in circles and twists as you let him take the lead. Each lap around the room growing the confidence in each other’s skills. Until soon Bucky was leading you through throws and lifts that would put an olympian skating pair to shame. Naturally picking up on what each of his motions meant, a hand at the hip was a prelude into a lift. A slightly lower grip meant he was about to toss you into the air for a spinning jump. Your breathing picking up with the effort, though Bucky seemed to remain unaffected by it, other than the impressed smile that he was toting. 

“Show offs, the both of them… you’ll be feeling that in the morning, asshole.”

“Shut up Birdbrain, you’re just jealous you can’t break out the wings inside the house.” Bucky snarked, even as he swept you into the air without breaking his stride, catching you moment’s later and cradling you to his chest while you found your footing once more. Chuckling up at him. “One last round the bend, doll, then we can get you off to rest, and give Sam’s ego a break, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

[itsthecupbros]

Afraid of Your Own Shadow: Muse is unnaturally skittish and afraid of everything around them.

What Are You, Chicken?: Muse gets the chicken pox. Anon decides if there are any magical side effects.

Man Overboard!: Muse develops an intense fear of water.

Feeling Guilty: Muse is convinced they are wanted for a crime they have commited. Anon can decide what the crime was.

?yako uoy erA: Muse is cursed to speak backwards.

Happy Days: Muse is forced to keep a permanent smile.

Do Not Pass Go: Muse is put in a small prison without escape or bail.

All About the Money: Muse becomes obsessed with money and refuses to spend any of it.

My Big Day: Muse believes they are to be wed to the person of anon's choice.

I'm Melting!: Muse cannot stop bleeding from the mouth, nose, or eyes (anon's choice). Muse cannot pass out from blood loss.

Holy Halo: Muse is dressed like an angel and can float.

The Living Dead: Muse dies and becomes a living corpse. Comes back to life when time is up.

S-S-Stop!: Muse develops a bad stutter.

The Invisible Man: Muse's body becomes invisible; this does not apply to clothing.

Thou Wretched Fool!: Muse believes they are a medieval knight.

Poet In Hiding: Muse can only speak in rhyme.

Awkward Stage: Muse becomes a teenager. If Muse is already a teenager, they become an adult.

The Reaper Crys!: Muse becomes obsessed with death. Anon decides if it is another Muse's death or their own.

Frozen to the Core: Muse becomes extremely cold natured and seeks any form of warmth.

Shut the Blinds: Muse becomes allergic to the sun.

1ST JUL 2013

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2,049 NOTES

Baker Baker: Muse won't and refuses to stop cooking.

Russian Roulette: Muse is given a gun with one bullet that must be used to shoot someone/something of Mun's choosing. Ends when shot is executed.

All That Glitters: Muse becomes obsessed with shiny objects.

Just Shut Up!: Muse hears voices in their head. Anon can pick whose voice it is.

Bury the Hatchet: Muse believes they have a murder weapon, and will try to hide it at all costs. Anon can choose the murder weapon.

Achoo!: Muse becomes allergic to something precious to them. Anon can decide what this is.

Just Like Rapunzel: Muse has extremely long hair that cannot be cut.

For Science!: Muse suddenly has the urge to become a test subject. Anon may choose who's subject he is.

That's Not Punny: Muse feels inclined to make a pun about almost everything.

Nice Boxers: Muse believes they are stripped down to their underwear, even if they are fully clothed.

The Fairest Queen of Kings: Muse must dress in drag/drab.

Mankind's Best Friend: Muse feels the need to keep their pet or some animal with them at all times. Anon may choose which animal Muse desires.

Insomniac: Muse desperately wants to go to sleep, but cannot.

It's Pouring!: Muse keeps a cloud over their head, which will rain depending on their mood. Anon can decide what mood it rains on.

Technologic: Muse is turned into a robot.

You've Got Mail!: Muse believes they have an important message for the person of Anon's choosing. Anon can also choose what the message says.

Sufferin' Succotash!: Muse develops a lisp.

The Life of Mime: Muse becomes a mute and is forced to wear a mime outfit, along with proper mime makeup.

Freeze!: Muse freezes up for a few seconds whenever a certain word is said. Anon may choose the word.

Round and Round: Muse develops vertigo, and cannot stand, walk or run too much without feeling dizzy and/or sick.

1ST JUL 2013

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439 NOTES

The Premature Burial: Muse has catalepsy, thought to be dead, and is buried alive with no provisions and no hope, for ____(duration specified by anon)

The Black Cat: Muse is a perpetual drunk prone to abuse, be it animal or domestic, for ___(duration specified by anon)

The Pit and the Pendulum: Muse is a convicted felon and sentenced to death. Anon specifies form/duration of torture.

The Raven: Muse is masochistic for ___(duration specified by anon)

Annabel Lee: Muse loses their one true love and suffers from a broken heart (duration specified by anon; muse can die from broken heart should the anon choose it).

The Masque of the Red Death: Muse is afraid of death and has a lethal disease whose symptoms include sharp pains, dizziness, profuse bleeding, and red stains, causing him/her to be shunned from society. Lasts for____(duration specified by anon)

The Tell-Tale Heart/Murders of the Rue Morgue: Muse is paranoid of others and upon killing them, tries to hide the bodies of his/her victims, all while evading arrest through use of wiles. Lasts for____(duration specified by anon)

Fall of the House of Usher: Muse becomes a shut-in consigned to the hospital, incapable of caring for him/herself and in need of special, degrading attention. Lasts for ___(duration specified by anon)

Ligeia: Muse is deathly ill and dies, but resurrects in the body of another person. Anon specifies duration and the body of the other deceased.

William Wilson: Muse is manipulated by their alter ego and believes his/her rival to physically exist; but being unable to escape his/her personal demons, ultimately commits a murder-suicide in an attempt to vanquish said rival.

1ST JUL 2013

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122 NOTES

Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites: Your muse feels the need to hide from everyone. Anon specifies the time length.

Rise and Shine Little Bitch: Your muse has just woken up from an excruciating hangover that lasts one day.

Pretend it's a Video Game: Level up! Your muse is now a video game character. It lasts for 5 days.

With you, Friends (Long Drive): Your muse suddenly feels extremely adventurous. Anon specifies the time length.

Bikinis and Big Booties Y'all: Whoo! For one entire night, your muse suddenly wants to get drunk and party.

Never Gonna Get This Pussy: Your muse is feeling so fragile that if anyone touches them, they're mentally impure. Anon specifies the time length.

Smell this money: For one night, your muse has an urge to go and rob something. Anon Specifies where they rob.

Park Smoke: For one night, your muse stays outside {with an optional cigarette}, due to their belief that if they go inside their settlement, they'll get sick of slow suffocation and die.

Your friends ain't gonna leave with you: Your muse is afraid that everyone they care about will forget about/leave them.

Ride Home: Your muse gets extreme nostalgia that doesn't go away until {Anon specifies}

Son of Scary Monsters: Muse acts like a stubborn child that must scare everyone for {Anon Specifies the time length}

Big 'Ol Scardy Pants: Your muse is afraid of everything. Everything. Lasts 2 days.

Scary Monsters on Strings: Your muse is a puppet on strings. 3 days.

Lights: Turn the lights on! Your muse has a sudden addiction to lights. All lights are beautiful. Must look at lights. Lasts a full week.

1ST JUL 2013

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32 NOTES

Castle in the Sky Your Muse see a Castle in the sky and goes up to the sky and see it real For__

Angel of Darkness Your Muse become evil with dark powers and become The Angel of Darkness and Try to take over For__

Earth Wind Water & Fire Yous Muse Have power(Ex.Earth powers) For__

Roses are Red Your Muse Is love with (anon tell to who) For__

Bumble Bee Your Muse Has a feeling love for(anon tell to who) For__

Superstar Your Muse Become Rich and Famous For__

Dam Dadi Do Your Muse Dance Non-Stop For__

1ST JUL 2013

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1,204 NOTES

The classiest M!A list you’ll ever see compiled by yours truly and Tomas mun. All times are specified by anon or mun.

Taming of the Shrew: Your muse turns into an obstinate, headstrong person who has to be tamed into being compliant and good again

The Tempest: Your muse has been caught in a terrible shipwreck and is stranded on a seemingly uninhabited island (other muses can be on island too if mun agrees)

Romeo and Juliet: Your muse has fallen /desperately/ in love with the one person they know they can’t have

As You Like It: Your muse has to pretend to be the opposite gender for whatever reason the anon or mun think is appropriate

Macbeth: Your muse is convinced they have killed someone-or maybe they really have- and is going mad with guilt

A Midsummers Night Dream: Your muse is now some strange part them part animal hybrid (anon specifies animal)

The Merchant of Venice: Your muse owes a large sum of money to someone on pain of death (anon specifies when the money is due by)

A Comedy of Errors: Your muse either develops an evil twin /or/ the muse goes around pretending to do loads of things and blaming it on their 'twin'

King Lear: Your muse is descending into complete madness

Richard III: Your muse wants to trade really important items for really menial ones

Winter's Tale: Your muse is frozen and can’t move but they can hear and see fine.

Hamlet: Your muse is overcome by a death or tragedy in their past, and seeks revenge on whichever character/person they believe to be most responsible for it.

Much Ado About Nothing: Your muse unashamedly attempts to seduce as many characters as he/she can

Henry V: The muse embarks on war/battle against a character/threatening force

Julius Caesar: Your muse thinks everyone is stabbing them in the back, literally or metaphorically

Othello: Your muse thinks his/her lover is cheating on them with their best friend. Alternatively, if you prefer / if your muse has no lover, your muse plots to convince /another/ character that /their/ lover is cheating on them with their best friend

Twelth Night: Your muse disguises themselves as the opposite gender/as someone else, which either directly or accidentally creates an awkward love situation or a love triangle.

Sonnet: Either your muse can now only speak in sonnet form /or/ they are going around pronouncing their undying love for everyone.

1ST JUL 2013

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50 NOTES

Ico: Muse now has horns protruding from their head.

Yorda: Muse has to be literally led by the hand everywhere. If left alone, they will just stay in one spot.

Queen: Muse wants to take over someone's body to continue living. (Anon decides who)

Wander: Muse slowly becomes paler, and dark splotches will form on their skin and clothes over time.

Mono: Muse is dead, and will only wake up after a certain amount of time.

Dormin: Muse is disembodied and can only go back in their body when they are given sixteen of a particular item. (Anon decides what item)

1ST JUL 2013

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131 NOTES

All M!As are inspired by the tv show "Animalia"!

The Mists of Time: There are ancient, elephant-sized, ravenous frogs everywhere. Perhaps your muse is hallucinating, perhaps not, but either way, they're scared of being eaten. 7 hours.

Catcher in the Rhyme: Your muse suddenly can't stop speaking in rhymes. If they say a word without a rhyme, their muscles cramp up and they get cold, freezing themselves stiffer each time. 5 hours.

Forget Me Not: Long-term and short-term memory loss. Who are you? Oh, ok. Wait, who are you? 3 hours.

Long Story Short: Did you hear about...? Gossip is being spread from the mouth of your muse, and it keeps getting worse and worse because they aren't really listening to anyone but themselves. 3 hours.

Speechless in Animalia: Your muse just wants some peace and quiet! And they get it... in spades. Deaf and mute. 1 day.

Don Iguana: Your muse just started reading Don Quixote and is inspired to fight crime! They become d'Avenger of d'Whatevercountrytheylivein. They lose sleep while fighting crime, eventually being to hallucinate. They really should have finished that book first... 2 days.

Over and Beyond: One day your muse meets a unicorn. And the next they are held captive by a dragon. 2 days.

Being Peter Applebottom: Your muse suddenly thinks they're a genius. A condescending, pompous, arrogant genius who hates laughter and playfulness. "Comedy is low, sophomoric, crass. I don't practice it." 2 days.

Brain Drain: Your muse swaps intellect with another muse. 1 day.

The World According to Iggy: Your muse is a hero! Well... in their eyes they are! They've got a sudden desire to tell everyone of fantastical tales -starring themselves- that are extreme exaggerations. 1 day.

Gettting Over the Glums: Your muse inhales the pollen of a strange plant. They become lethargic and depressed, and slump on the nearest couch. The only cure is a good, long laugh. (And ticking won't work!) 12 hours.

The Day Zoe Listened: Your muse makes a vow to go a day without talking. But as the silence goes on, your muse starts to hear whispers in the trees. Hallucinations? Dryads? Who knows. 1 day.

Alex's Treasure Island: Time for a treasure hunt! Your muse is searching high and low for Captain Flint's hoard, getting greedier all the time. That pretty necklace around that other muse's throat... why, it's a part of the trove! 16 hours.

The Animal Within: OOOGAAAAH. Suddenly, your muse is acting like a wild animal. Eating with their face, scratching themselves, grunting... 7 hours.

Scary Story Go Round: Your muse is now the hapless victim in a horror movie. Tripping, screaming, rallying the rebels to take on the monsters. 1 day.

The Ballad of the Creeper: Your muse is a blethering ninny. "Whacka-doo, whacka-doo, whacka-doo!" 3 hours.

From 'A' to 'Z': Your muse starts forgetting words. "Could you please move that ch... ch... that thing! That thing that you sit on! What's it called again?" 12 hours.

The Dragon and the Night: Your muse is afraid of non-existent trolls and the dark, and is too embarrassed to admit to either. 12 hours.

Tomorrow: Your muse thinks the world is going to end tomorrow. 1 day.

Guardians of the Core: Your muse can't stop singing and dancing. Whatever song pops into their head, they will perform. 3 hours.

Back to the Present: Your muse is traveling back home, perhaps one day to return, perhaps not. 12 hours.

What the World Needs Now: Your muse gains the powers of a god. They can change the world to their ideals... but should they? 7 hours.

1ST JUL 2013

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3,876 NOTES

Paint it Red: Muse becomes blood-crazy. They want to see it, taste it, and feel it in any way or form.

Overprotective: Muse becomes obsessive of the next person in their inbox.

Over the Edge: Muse's mental health has skyrocketed down, making them very unstable.

Burning Up: Muse feels extremely hot and can't seem to get cool.

Hypochondriac: Muse thinks they have an illness (chosen by anon), even though they are completely healthy.

Heartache: Muse feels a sharp pain in their chest every time they think of their lover (or someone/thing they love).

Not Yourself: Muse has the personality of a character of anon's choice.

Double Trouble: Muse has an exact copy of themself to deal with. Only the copy secretly wants to kill them.

Heavily Accented: Muse's voice has an unfamiluar accent to it, which is chosen by anon.

Night Owl: Muse has trouble staying awake during the day and going to sleep at night.

A Holy Man?!: Muse takes everything literally.

A World of Color: Muse becomes colorblind. If Muse is already colorblind, they can now see colors.

Congratulations!: Muse is given a baby and told it's theirs. Anon can tell them who the 'other parent' is.

A Haunting I Will Go!: Muse becomes a ghost that must haunt the person of anon's choice.

Bittersweet: Everything Muse eats turns to candy in their mouth. The reverse effect goes for actual candy, which turns into a random food.

[master-sass-blast]

Wade. No. Stop.

Sometimes, I write fluff. Sometimes, I write angst.

Sometimes, I write crack

Welcome to the drug trip.

Summary: Wade finds out that Piotr grew up on a farm and teases the two of you relentlessly about enjoying cow play. He crosses an unforgivable line, and you decide to get revenge.

Pairings: Piotr Rasputin x Reader, Nathan Summers x Wade Wilson, and Ellie Phimister x Yukio.

Rating: M for utter sexual inappropriateness, vague descriptions of vomiting, and strong language.

Many thanks to the CACAT discord for helping me come up with some of Wade’s various pranks.

Being best friends with Wade Wilson comes with a number of advantages.

First, if you ever need someone to help you hide a body at 3:48 in the morning during a tornado watch, he’s your guy. He’ll even take you out for pancakes afterward.

Second, his extensive knowledge of the Internet and all things Golden Girls makes him a surprisingly valuable ally on trivia night.

Third, he always has a vast supply of junk food on hand, hidden in little stores around his room --in airtight containers to keep bugs out, thank you Nathan. Snack nights with Wade are the best.

Fourth, he’s genuinely everything you’d ever want in a big brother. Severely inappropriate sense of humor with a gun collection he’s happy to let you borrow from and the best taste in spike heels? Uh, yes please!

You know, not to mention the fact that he loves on you at any given opportunity like the touch-starved octopus he is, will happily waste a day watching YouTube or movies with you if you’re feeling down, and always checks before each shark week to make sure you’re stocked on everything you might need --even though he knows that you and Piotr manage that just fine, he says you deserve to have someone checking in on you.

Which is wonderful. He’s wonderful. In his own weird, mildly stabby sort of way.

However, there are times where being friends with Wade comes with... challenges. Let’s call them challenges.

First challenge: Wade is a purely destructive force of nature when he gets bored.

And not in the ‘I-tried-to-do-wood-shop-things-and-broke-a-few-power-tools’ kind of way.

He’s most liable to go to Blind Al’s and get high on cocaine. Which was unnerving the first couple times he did it, admittedly. Wade gets extremely wound up when he’s on coke, and while his dust bunny catching skills are impressive, the French maid’s outfit he prances around is not.

That particular incident had been a distinct feature in your nightmares for several weeks. You’re still not sure you’re over it.

Fortunately, though, now that he and Nathan are together, most of Wade’s coke episodes are handled by the time-traveling cyborg. He simply scoops Wade up with some telekinesis, takes him to their shared room, and stays in there with him until Wade comes down from his high.

Unfortunately, however, Wade’s boredom fits don’t always involve coke --and, when they don’t, Nathan’s ability to circumvent Wade’s destructive tendencies runs out pretty quickly.

When Wade isn’t coking himself out, he’s shooting things. Or blowing things up. Or lighting them on fire. Or... doing unspeakable things to them.

And, since none of the telepaths in the mansion can read Wade to figure out what he’s doing ahead of time, there’s no stopping him beforehand. It’s always follow the sounds of destruction and clean it up afterward.

Which is what the ‘flaming pool incident,’ the ‘juggling chainsaws incident,’ and the ‘whipped cream in the fire suppression sprinkler system’ are all categorized as. As are the ‘carpet of actual kittens, Wade how did you even get this many kittens, oh god Remy’s allergic to cat hair someone get his Epi-Pen,’ the ‘mac and cheese overflowing from all the toilets,’ the ‘how did Poptarts get glued to the ceiling?’, the ‘wait, you aren’t actually barbecuing a person, oh shit you are, WADE NO, I don’t care if it was for a job and you only need a picture and you weren’t actually going to eat it,’ and the ‘en masse tp-ing’ incidents. Not to mention--

Perhaps the list ought to be left for another time. You know Scott has a file cabinet or two devoted to Wade’s exploits, and there’s no way you’re going to make it through all of them right now.

(Though, in Wade’s defense, if he had known Remy had allergies to cat hair, he wouldn’t have brought cats into the mansion.)

Second challenge: Wade will argue with anything.

True story. It doesn’t even have to be breathing. You’ve watched him carry on a two hour argument with a plastic ficus at Sister Margaret’s. And he lost.

Admittedly, this comes in handy when the game of the night at the X-Mansion is ‘debater’s table.’ You and Wade have an unbroken winning streak.

Unfortunately, that winning streak is only a total of one because everyone decided --aside from you and Wade--that ‘debater’s table’ would be banned henceforth. Possibly maybe definitely because you tried to supplex Scott through the table when he called one of your points ‘uninspired.’

In your defense, Wade tried to help.

In both of your defenses, they really should’ve known better than to put two of the most combative people in the house on the same team --let alone play such a competitive game with them.

Extra unfortunately, Wade’s argumentative streak is the literal biggest pain in anyone’s ass at any other given time.

Especially when rules are involved.

“Wade!”

“Hang on! Hang on!” you shout as you hear your boyfriend tromp through the mansion in defense mode. You grab your bag of insta-popcorn from the microwave and run in the direction of Piotr’s angry stomping, swearing as you toss the searing bag from hand to hand. You sprint towards the clinic room Wade is being patched back together in and dive into your chair, perched between Ellie and Neena.

Neena opens the bag without burning herself, somehow. “Thanks. These are a pain in the ass to sit through without a snack.”

Ellie reaches across you and grabs a handful for her and Yukio to share. “Try to get the Parmesan cheese kind next time. The generic flavor is boring.”

“I tried, but I think we’re out. We’ll have to restock.” When you realize Piotr is watching you four with a mildly exasperated expression, you wave your hand at him. “You can start now. We’re ready.”

He shakes his head, then refocuses on Wade --who’s still regrowing a leg and several bullet holes. “Wade. How many times do I have to say--”

“You can say my name as much as you want, you big silver stud,” Wade interjects before your boyfriend even had a chance to work up a head of steam. “I never get tired of hearing it.”

“Down, boy,” Nathan mutters in his seat next to Wade’s hospital bed.

“What is first rule?” Piotr asks, arms crossed over his chest.

“Label everything in the refrigerator.”

You wince internally as you watch Piotr restrain himself from yanking Wade out of the bed and slamming him against the nearest wall. “Why does he keep opening with that?” you whisper to Ellie. “It never works.”

“Because he’s hoping it will someday,” Ellie whispers back. “Pass the popcorn.”

“You know that is not first rule,” Piotr growls --and damn if that doesn’t do something for you--accent thickening with his anger. “As much as you play idiot, you are not one.”

“Oh, honeypie, I’m touched! But not in the way I’d like to be, if you know what I me--”

You cough pointedly, and Wade relents with an apologetic gesture of his hands.

“Point stands, Tin Man on steroids, I genuinely don’t know what I’ve done wrong or what I’ve done to deserve this raging Russian display of restrained passion --not that I’m complaining, mind you--”

“Rule One: No killing. Ever.” Piotr’s jaw flexes, and there’s a slight metal scraping noise as he grits his teeth. “How is that so hard to understand?”

“Uh, because some people deserve to die. Specifically, the actual child traffickers we were fighting today. Because they’re actual. Child. Traffickers.”

“You do not have right to take lives!”

“Uh, like hell I do! Did you miss the part where they were child traffickers?”

“Who’s winning?” Yukio asks quietly as she scoops more popcorn into her mouth.

“Unfortunately, I think Wade is,” Ellie murmurs.

“You can’t honestly look at me and say the world is worse off for me having killed those guys. Honestly.”

Piotr’s hands clench into fists. He’s on the losing side of the argument, and he knows it. “Your actions reflect on all of mutant kind.”

“Not a mutant, my comrade. I’m a reject science experiment. Come on, the first movie literally covered this in extreme, nude detail!”

“Your actions still reflect on X-Men. We can’t afford to have easily misconstrued actions on our hands.”

Wade shrugs. “Hey, you asked me to come with. You know how I handle people like that, and you asked me anyway. Frankly, I’m not sure I like that you’re willing to let fuckers like that live for the sake of your image.”

Piotr’s jaw tenses.

“Holy shit,” Neena breathes. “He’s winning. He’s literally regrowing a limb. How is this even possible?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” you mutter. “Wade fucking Wilson.”

“Need I remind you that staying at X-Mansion is privilege,” Piotr says, tone icy. “Those who cannot follow rules cannot stay.”

“Fine. I know where the door is. Say the word and I’m gone. I’m still gonna deal with the irredeemable assholes of the world the way I always do whether I’m here or not: scrub them out, one at a time, until there aren’t any left and I can finally retire for the rest of eternity.”

You’re starting to see just exactly why Nathan fell for Wade.

Piotr glares at the mouthy merc for a moment before turning on his heel and storming out of the room.

Wade flops back against his bed with a wince and sighs. “I take it that one goes to me?”

“Amazingly, yes,” Ellie says as she stands, hand already wrapped around Yukio’s. “Stop killing people, dipshit.”

“No can do, Negasonic Beetlejuice. Bye, Yukio!”

“Bye, Wade!”

You toss the empty popcorn bag into the trash and brush your hands off on your pants. “I’m gonna go find Piotr before he implodes on himself.”

You could technically add in Wade’s less than lucid days and grumpy pain-slash-feeling suicidal days in as challenges, but you don’t think there’s anyone in the mansion that would have the heart to assign that to the him as a consequence of his own behavior and choices.

Which, by default, only leaves one other challenge: Wade’s perverted sense of humor.

Wade’s sense of humor is like a fire hydrant: all or nothing. Unstoppable once it’s started. Overwhelming in every sense of the word.

Unlike a fire hydrant, it’s also largely sexual.

Which happens into some less than stellar moments where Wade hits on anything in sight --including your boyfriend--not so much because he wants to fuck whatever he’s laid eyes on, but because he loves the reactions his increasingly horrifying innuendos get.

And, admittedly, he’s funny ninety-nine percent of the time. He has a mouth that won’t quit and he’s not afraid to use it.

However, he does happen into that one percent of the time where it’s just. Too. Much.

Cue the cow-play incident and your revenge on Wade for all his related wrong doings.

You’re all sitting around the kitchen table when the fateful bit of information comes out.

“Wait, hold the fucking phone for a minute.” Wade stares at Piotr, shocked. “You grew up on a farm?”

Piotr nods. “Da. In Siberia.”

“What did you farm? Ice?”

That gets an eye roll. “Nyet, Wade. Cattle, mostly. It was easiest to maintain.”

“Well I’ll be darned,” Wade says in an offensively hickish Southern accent. “Ol’ Petey-pie’s jus’ a regular cowboy, ain’t he?”

“Stop it,” Ellie says flatly as she scrolls through Tumblr. “You sound stupid.”

“That was the point, Negasonic laser canon, thank you very much.” He refocuses on Piotr with a familiar glint in his eye. “So, is it stereotypical of me to ask if you two do the cowgirl position a lot?”

You flick a Cheeto at him while Piotr sighs heavily. “Stop it. Stop being gross.”

“Okay, that’s fine. I don’t want to know about all your cow-play activities anyway.”

And that’s... not a term you’re familiar with. You dig your phone out of your pocket and type in the term into your search engine.

Across the table, Ellie sucks in a breath. “Y/N, no!”

It’s too late.

It’s all too late.

Your precious brain will never be the same.

You stare down at the Urban Dictionary definition, unable to tear your gaze away as your brain tries to comprehend the horrors of Wade’s implications.

Next to you, Piotr drops his head into his hands. “Wade, no--”

“So you do know what it is! You kinky fuck! Here I thought you wouldn’t want to be milked--”

That mental image makes you scream. You drop to the floor and cover your face with your hands. “Oh God, why? Why! Wade, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Hey, no kinkshaming! As long as you two are both consenting--”

“Shut! Up!” You roll to your feet and glare at him. “I didn’t need to know about any of that! I was fine just the way I was without learning about that corner of the world!”

“Oh, but you so weren’t!” Wade cackles. “Man, your reaction was priceless--”

You charge after him, hellbent on beating the ever living shit out of him.

You do, but it’s too late.

Wade’s hooked on the joke.

It starts with texts. Usually late at night, when Wade’s still up and normal people are trying to sleep.

The first one comes in the same night at two in the morning. 

It takes a moment for your eyes to focus on the small lettering, but when they do you wish they hadn’t.

Bro: So, how did the milking session go tonight?

Piotr groans when you toss your phone across the room. “What?”

You flop down next to him with a huff. “Don’t even ask.”

From there, it just gets worse. Not only do the texts become at least a daily feature in your life, but Wade starts tormenting you and Piotr in other ways.

Bro: Question. Does Colossus ‘moo’ when he climaxes?

You: Fuck. Off.

You hadn’t thought anything of it other than Wade was hellbent on being an annoying prick, and had shoved your phone into your pocket.

Until later that night, when Wade loudly, dramatically shouts “I can’t find my phone!”

And Piotr, being the kind and gentle soul that he is, says “I can call it.”

You spy Wade’s phone on the kitchen table, in very obvious and plain view, which isn’t anything suspicious because Wade could lose anything, anywhere.

What is suspicious, however, is the devious grin Wade’s wearing.

You almost tell Piotr to hang up, but the call connects before you can say anything.

Wade’s phone vibrates across the table, playing the distinctive sounds of cows mooing in chorus.

You smack your palm against your forehead, while Piotr merely sighs and hangs up. “Just stop it already!”

After that, it’s just unstoppable.

You find cow everything everywhere. Black and white pictures taped inside the covers of books or tucked in your shoes. A bundle of cow fridge magnets addressed to your boyfriend in red crayon --not subtle, Wade, by the way. An email with a couple’s Halloween costume set of a farmer and --you guessed it--a dairy cow.

The subject line of the email reads “Because milking should be an equal opportunity pastime,” which really should’ve been all the hint you needed.

And the texts. Holy fucking tits, the texts.

They’re horrible. Obscene. They use entirely too many emojis in ways that the app creators never intended!

Bro:  philly cheesesteak all in that order, chili cheese fries as a starter got the steroids keeping me stronger bitch im a cow, bitch im a cow, i am not a cat, i dont say meow bitch im a cow, bitch im a cow

Bro:  ca$h rules everything around me ice cream ice cream you a calf bitch, you ma daughter i ain't bothered get slaughtered got the methane, i'm a farter with my farmer mcdonald and they feed me real good, it's a honor

Bro: I took the liberty of doing a little redecorating before leaving town for my job. Hope you like it!

Okay, that last text isn’t necessarily obscene, but it is... concerning.

You meet Piotr right by the main staircase. He looks just as panicked as you do, which means he got the text, too. “How bad do you think it’s gonna be?”

He looks up the flight of stairs, expression fearful. “Probably worse than what I could imagine.”

The two of you climb the stairs in silence, proceeding like prisoners to their slaughter --execution.

Dammit Wade.

There’s a trail of straw in the hallway that leads to your shared bedroom.

“Oh God no,” you whisper. “Please. No.”

Piotr groans. “This will be impossible to clean up.”

“I think there are other priorities to think about here.”

“I can’t. If I do, I might go insane.”

You walk together to the bedroom door, which has a note attached to it.

You’re welcome for fulfilling all your kinky dreams! --Wade

Piotr tears the note off and crumples it. He put his hand on the door knob, then looks at you. “Like bandaid, da?”

You take a deep breath, steel yourself, then nod. “My body is ready.”

He pushes the door open, and--

It’s worse than you could’ve imagined.

The floor is covered with straw, from corner to corner. On the desk is a machine that looks extremely suspect--

Piotr groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. “...blyad.”

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Da.”

“Dammit, Wade.” You spy a Hello Kitty sticky note attached to the side and peel it off.

Fun fact! You can buy Dairy Cow milking machines at Walmart! Who knew? --Wade

Perhaps most suspect, however, is the massive cardboard box sitting on your bed.

With a sigh, you walk over and tear it open. “May as well get it over with. How bad could it be?”

So much worse, is the answer. Apparently.

Sitting right on top are a cattle prod and a branding iron.

You close your eyes and try to breathe through the aneurysm you’re suffering from right now. “Life Lesson Number One: It can always get worse, especially when Wade’s involved.”

There’s also a pack of gloves that go all the way up to the shoulder, a coupon for a free septum piercing, and a book.

On.

Artifical. Fucking. Insemination.

Your phone buzzes in your hand, and it takes all your will power not to chuck it out the window. You inhale deeply and look down at the screen.

Bro: You like it?

You: FUCK. YOU.

The final straw, believe it or not, actually comes a few weeks later. Because you draw the line at being made to vomit.

You’re in the kitchen, innocently pouring yourself a glass of milk to go with a few cookies you’d swiped from one of Wade’s snack stashes when the merc himself walks in.

He stops, waits for you to eat one of the cookies and drink half the glass of milk, then cocks his head to the side and says, “You know, I may have not expected you to milk Pete, but I sure as fuck didn’t think you would store it in the fridge and drink it.”

And that sentence --along with the mental image it conjures up-is enough to make you gag. Your eyes water and your stomach churns, and you have to set down your glass of milk to keep from spilling it all over yourself.

Wade’s waiting, grinning deviously, clearly expecting you to give him hell for what he just said.

Except you don’t. You can’t. You can’t get the mental image of... that out of your head, and it’s making you nauseous.

You sprint past Wade and to the nearest bathroom. You throw open the door, flip the toilet lid and seat up with a resounding smack, and brace yourself for the oncoming storm.

Halfway through puking everything in your stomach, Piotr darts in and pulls your hair away from your face. “Myshka, is everything alright? Are you sick? What happened?”

“She can’t talk,” Ellie says somewhere in the background. “She’s puking. And Douchepool’s looking pretty guilty.”

You can almost hear the glare Piotr gives Wade. “Wade. What did you do?”

“I wasn’t trying to make her puke!”

You dry heave once, twice, and then when you’re sure nothing else is coming up anytime soon you glare over your shoulder at the merc and point an accusing finger at him. “This means war. I’m going to fucking murder you.”

Wade, at least, has the decency to look sheepish. “Yeah, I probably deserve it.”

You’re in the middle of plotting what exactly you’re going to do to Wade --high road be damned, Piotr, some things just required a strong response--when you happen upon a calendar and realize what’s coming up in three days.

It’s perfect. Fated by the universe. There was never a better time for revenge than now.

You fish twenty dollars out of your wallet and go in search of Nathan.

The older man’s in his room, sitting at his desk while he glares down various monitors with findings about various corrupt politicians, black markets, and skeezy billionaires.

You knock on the door frame. “Got a minute?”

“Sure.” He swivels in his chair and takes off his reading glasses. “What can I help you with, kid?”

You hold out the twenty dollars to him. “I made a deal with you about six months ago. You helped me escape Wade’s rant on Halloween in exchange for me promising to help you prank Wade. And twenty bucks.”

He accepts the cash with a sly smirk. “You did.”

“I take it I don’t have to bring you up to speed about Wade’s latest bullshit?”

“You don’t.”

“So, here’s what I’m thinking: I help you prank Wade, and I also get my revenge. Sound good?”

He grins. “Mutually beneficial. Good way of thinking.”

“Great. Do you have a driver’s license?”

“I have a fake one.”

“Close enough. We need to get some supplies.”

There are, of course, a few ground rules.

“One, no destroying anything. Two, nothing about Vanessa; I don’t want to give him a mental break down. Three, nothing I can get in trouble with the Professor for.”

Nathan nods. “Sounds reasonable.”

The first stop is Whole Foods, where the two of you get the blandest, healthiest, boring-est stuff you can find. 

Quinoa. So much quinoa. You never want to see this much quinoa again in your life.

The next stop is Home Depot. You clean them out of leaf blowers.

The stop after that is Lowes. You clean them out of leaf blowers, too.

The average person might find it suspect that your plan requires so many leaf blowers. You really don’t care about what average people think.

After the hardware stores, you stop at a craft store and buy as many plain t shirts as you can and enough fabric markers and puff paint to stock a summer camp.

When you drag everything into yours and Piotr’s room --sans leaf blowers, you leave those in the trunk of Nathan’s car for the time being--you boyfriend gives you a puzzled look. “Myshka? What is all this for?”

You grin up at him. “Revenge. Duh.”

He sighs. “Moya lyubov’, I thought we talked about taking high road.”

“I promised Cable I would help him prank Wade for April Fool’s! You wouldn’t want me to go back on my word, would you?”

It’s a bullshit argument, granted, but it’s not one he can technically out talk you on without giving himself a headache. He sighs and gives you his patented “dad look.” “Y/N.”

“Piotr. We’re not destroying anything, we got our own stuff to make sure we weren’t damaging X-Men property, and we’re not doing anything that relates to Vanessa. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

He relents with a sigh. “Very well. Since you are being responsible about it, I will not complain.”

You lean up on your toes and kiss his cheek. “Thank you, honey. Can I ask one little favor, though?”

“...Da.”

“Can we use your forty-eight hour or less delivery thing with Amazon? There’s some stuff we couldn’t find at the craft store that we still need to get.”

The night before April Fool’s, you and Nathan put everything into motion while Wade’s out of the house on a job.

You switch out all his snack stashes with the healthy, delicious, bland shit you got from Whole Foods; you commandeer the food, hiding it in yours and Piotr’s room.

“It’s just for a day or two, and then I’ll give most of it back!”

“All of it.”

“Ugh, fine!”

Next, you hide all his shirts and replace with them blank ones you’d gotten from the craft store --after writing “I hate Bea Arthur” on all of them with fabric markers and puff paint.

The cherry on top, though, is the death gauntlet you and Nathan construct in the backyard. You tarp off the sides and the tops, put a spraying rig at the very front filled with aerated spirit gum, and attach the leaf blowers at regular intervals down the length of the gauntlet.

And then you fill the barrels of said blowers with glitter.

“Where’d you even get this idea?” Nathan asks as he eyes the fruits of your mutual labor.

“Wade,” you say as you pull the final piece of the puzzle out of your backpack --Wade’s unicorn, Mr. Fluffykins. “He wanted to do this to Scott.”

Nathan chuckles, sharp and gravely. “Nice.”

You carefully carry Mr. Fluffykins down the gauntlet, careful not to disturb any of the glitter canons on your way. You set him on a pedestal out of range of the canons, give him a pat, then creep back down the gauntlet again. Once you’re free, you exhale and grin at Nathan. “I think we’ve got April Fool’s day pretty well in hand, don’t you?”

He grins back. “I’m inclined to agree.”

The day starts, delightfully enough, with Wade wailing at the top of his lungs.

You snicker as you sit down at the kitchen table while Piotr rummages around in the fridge --having anticipated the absolute hell today would bring, he’s already in defense mode. “Do you think it’s the shirts, the unicorn, or the snacks?”

He shakes his head, but you can just barely see the corner of the amused smile he’s wearing. “No comment.”

Wade storms into the kitchen, looking pissed off. “What the fuck did you do with Mr. Fluffykins? Where is he?”

You smirk. “Good morning. How’d you sleep?”

“Perfectly fucking fine, until I realized that my one and only unicorn love was missing. Where. Is. He.”

“Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.”

Wade flips you off and storms upstairs. Less than five minutes later, you hear him shriek again. “Quinoa? I hate quinoa!”

You revel in self satisfaction as Nathan’s cackling and Wade’s bitching float down the stairs. Strap in, bro. It’s gonna be a rough fucking day for you.

Wade throws an absolute shit fit when he finds the shirts --“How dare you! How fucking dare you!”--but largely spends the whole day searching the mansion for Mr. Fluffykins.

After a quick confer, you and Nathan decided to not tell Wade about the outdoor gauntlet until he notices it or gives up.

It isn’t until three in the afternoon that Wade finally notices the giant tarped structure outside, which is a record even for his track record of obliviousness.

You and Nathan stand a safe distance away as Wade scampers around the construction, looking for a quick way in and out. “You remembered to hide his knives too, right?”

Nathan gives you a look that says ‘yes, what kind of idiot do you think I am?’

“And you can handle the glue sprayer and the leaf blowers with your telekinesis, right?”

“Relax. It’ll be fine.”

“For us. Not for Wade.”

By the time Wade figures out just what he’s looking at, a small crowd including the X-Force, Logan, Remy, Scott, Jean, and Hank has gathered by the back door.

Wade jabs an accusing finger at you. “You! You did this! You traitor!”

“This is what happens when you take your jokes too far!” You retort. “This is what happens when you joke about things that aren’t meant to be joked about! You dig your grave, and you lie in it!”

Nathan simply holds out a pair of lab goggles and a dust mask. “You might want these.”

Wade gapes at him. “Et tu, Brutus?”

“Take them now or spit up glitter for the next decade. Your choice.”

Wade snatches the goggles and mask before Nathan can take them away. “Just for this, buster,” he grumbles as he puts on the goggles. “You’re sleeping on the couch for the next two weeks.”

Nathan chuckles. “Sure thing, princess. Whatever you say.”

Wade flips him off as he adjusts the mask over his mouth, then walks over to the front of the gauntlet. He inhales deeply, stretches, then mutters “maximum effort” before sprinting down the gauntlet.

There’s a series of screams as Wade flails around inside. They pause when he reaches the safe zone and procures Mr. Fluffykins, then start anew --with added vigor now that his unicorn is being exposed to the glitter death run--when he bolts for the only exit.

A chorus of laughter erupts behind you as Wade emerges, covered head to toe in every conceivable shade of glitter and a sheen of glue.

You smirk triumphantly at him as he tries --and fails--to brush the glitter off him and Mr. Fluffykins, then spin on your heel and strut inside.

Victory to you.

Later that night, when your sitting in a pile of Wade’s snacks, watching YouTube videos and shoving Keebler Fudge Stripes in your mouth, someone knocks on the door.

“Come in!” You smile deviously when Wade shuffles in. “Ah! Have we learned our lesson?”

“I had to take a three hour shower before I stopped rinsing glitter out of my ass! How is this fair?”

“You bought us a milker, a book on artificial insemination, and covered our floor in straw. We’re still finding pieces of straw everywhere.”

Wade grimaces. “Okay, fair enough.”

“Also. You made me vomit!”

“I said fair enough!”

You cross your arms over your chest. “Wade, I’m serious. I love you like a brother, but there are times where you go too fucking far--”

Wade holds up his hands in a calming gesture. “I know. I figured that out when I made you puke. I’m sorry.”

“I just... I really don’t appreciate you joking about my sex life to that extent. I know it makes Piotr uncomfortable on any level, but it really crossed the line after the cow magnets.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I wanted it to be funny, not traumatizing.”

“I know.” You smile fondly --albeit somewhat exasperatedly--at him. “And I forgive you. I really do. But Piotr needs to hear you say that, too.”

“What do I need to hear?” Piotr asks as he walks into the room.

“I’m sorry for taking the cow play stuff too far,” Wade says without prompting. “I took it too far.”

Piotr blinks, clearly shocked by the freely given apology, and then he smiles and pats Wade’s shoulder. “All is forgiven. Just... don’t do it again. Please.”

Wade nods. “Trust me, I won’t. I know when I’ve had my ass handed to me.”

You smirk triumphantly. “You mess with the bull, you get the horns.”

Wade opens his mouth, closes it, then groans. “I can’t comment, can I?”

“Nope. Suffer, bitch.” 

Wade looks like he’s about to physically explode, but manages to contain himself. “Can I at least have my snacks back?”

“Da,” Piotr interjects before you can say anything. “Please. Take them.”

You sputter, outraged. “What? No! Not fair! My tastebuds are in heaven.”

“Myshka, you promised you would give everything back.”

You continue sputtering as Wade starts scooping his goodies back into his boxes, then start squawking when Piotr starts helping. It devolves into a tug of war over a box of Cheez-Its that end with Piotr holding you out of reach of the snacks and with the three of you laughing.

Yeah, being friends with Wade comes with challenges.

But, for as many downs as there are, there are at least as many --if not more--ups.

It’s a friendship you wouldn’t trade for the world.

[fizzingwizard]

I reread the Sherlock Holmes stories at least once a year. Every time, I’m impressed with something new. I’ve really got to start a Holmesian side blog.

For now, enjoy what is basically me live-tweeting “The Problem of Thor Bridge,” although I actually read it a few days ago. Holmes is in his late 40s.

The story in short: A woman has been killed, and the family’s governess is accused, because the woman’s jackass husband is totally into her.

It was a wild morning in October, and I observed as I was dressing how the last remaining leaves were being whirled from the solitary plane tree which graces the yard behind our house. I descended to breakfast prepared to find my companion in depressed spirits, for, like all great artists, he was easily impressed by his surroundings.

We start off with an image of the moody, artistic, disconsolate Holmes, and a depiction of Watson, the guy who knows everything about him.

On the contrary, I found that... his mood was particularly bright and joyous, with that somewhat sinister cheerfulness which was characteristic of his lighter moments.

"You have a case, Holmes?" I remarked.

"The faculty of deduction is certainly contagious, Watson," he answered.

Every. Little. Thing.

Also, please note, sinister cheerfulness.

Watson: Holmes, you’re... happy. Good Lord, who’s been murdered!?

"... We may discuss it when you have consumed the two hard-boiled eggs with which our new cook has favoured us. Their condition may not be unconnected with the copy of the Family Herald which I observed yesterday upon the hall-table. Even so trivial a matter as cooking an egg demands an attention which is conscious of the passage of time and incompatible with the love romance in that excellent periodical."

Ooh. Victorian burn!

"I am getting into your involved habit, Watson, of telling a story backward."

Holmes’s pastime - casually insulting Watson.

Watson’s probable reaction:

By the way, let’s keep track of Holmes burns, shall we? So far he’s roasted both Watson and the poor cook at Baker Street.

"... A revolver with one discharged chamber and a calibre which corresponded with the bullet was found on the floor of her wardrobe." His eyes fixed and he repeated in broken words, "On—the—floor—of—her—wardrobe." Then he sank into silence.

Sherlock Holmes abruptly cutting off, repeating himself in staccato, then getting lost in thought and forgetting he was talking to someone. Just a day in the life of Dr. Watson.

When this sort of thing happens for a prolonged time, Watson has a habit of... falling asleep. Lol. Not that I blame him

Enter Bates, who is a manager for today’s client, Gibson, a gold mining magnate. Bates does not like Gibson.

"Those public charities are a screen to cover his private iniquities."

A breakdown of big business if I ever saw one.

Holmes doesn’t like Gibson either.

"What the devil do you mean by this, Mr. Holmes? Do you dismiss my case?"

"Well, Mr. Gibson, at least I dismiss you."

Holmes Burn Count: 3.

I sprang to my feet, for the expression upon the millionaire's face was fiendish in its intensity, and he had raised his great knotted fist. 

Gasp! Someone makes a threatening gesture at Sherlock Holmes, something that surely happens with regularity!

Watson:

We learn Gibson has a crush on his governess, who is accused of killing his wife.

"I could not live under the same roof with such a woman and in daily contact with her without feeling a passionate regard for her. Do you blame me, Mr. Holmes?"

"I do not blame you for feeling it. I should blame you if you expressed it, since this young lady was in a sense under your protection."

Holy cheese whiz, Batman! Don’t hit on your employees! See! Even in a world without bills against sexual harassment in the workplace, this was understood!

"I've been a man that reached out his hand for what he wanted, and I never wanted anything more than the love and possession of that woman. I told her so."

"Oh, you did, did you?"

Holmes could look very formidable when he was moved.

Sherlock Holmes:

"I said that money was no object and that all I could do to make her happy and comfortable would be done."

"Very generous, I am sure," said Holmes with a sneer.

Holmes Burn Count: 4

On a side note, more Holmes actors should sneer.

"Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offences."

PREACH IT BROTHER.

"And women lead an inward life and may do things beyond the judgement of a man."

I love how this is just accepted in this time period. Gibson is speaking, and Holmes and Watson are gentlemen, but no one’s going to contradict this statement.

Man: does something completely against his character. Everyone else: How strange! There must be some reason. Meanwhile, Woman: does something completely against her character. Everyone: Well, she’s an illogical woman, what do you expect?

I mean dude. They talk this way in the original Star Trek, which had female character working in high-level positions (albeit not starship captain). And the “illogical woman” line appeared pretty much every time a plot involved a woman. It’s crazy how persistent a stereotype this was. At least “female hysteria” was still considered a Thing in Holmes’s time - by Star Trek’s time it had been dropped since the 1950s.

Anyway, I can’t understand a thing men do.

"[My wife] was crazy with hatred and the heat of the Amazon was always in her blood."

Whenever a character isn’t English, they are assigned some ethnic trait that usually makes them more passionate and unreasonable than English people. The English don’t escape critique, but foreigners definitely feel the burn the greatest. If an excuse can be found to blame something on a character being “tropical” or “fiery” because they’re from the Mediterranean or overseas, it will be used. And it’s usually a female character. (Though probably the one who gets it the worst is the poor Andaman Islander in The Sign of Four, who is a man, but barely even afforded humanity by the text.)

Holmes and Watson travel out to investigate. They meet the local police, who’s grateful to work with Holmes.

"And your friend, Dr. Watson, can be trusted, I know."

This is just how you react when Holmes shows up with Watson, since Holmes’s modus operandi is “Anything you say to me will eventually get back to Watson anyway.”

"Well now, Watson, suppose for a moment that we visualise you in the character of a woman who, in a cold, premeditated fashion, is about to get rid of a rival..."

So there’s an episode of House MD where House asks Wilson to envision himself as his patient, who is a middle-aged Chinese woman. Wilson is like “ok” and House says “Say it.” So Wilson says “I’m a middle-aged Chinese woman.” And House is like, “good.” And clearly it’s from “Thor Bridge” bwahahahaha.

"Your best friends would hardly call you a schemer, Watson, and yet I could not picture you doing anything so crude as that."

Watson Cannot Lie. It Is Known. At least, he cannot lie convincingly for more than a few minutes. Also, he is a Good Guy, Whom Holmes Trusts Implicitly.

(The Casebook has quite a few Watson-validating moments.)

"I can see now that I was wrong. Nothing could justify me in remaining where I was a cause of unhappiness, and yet it is certain that the unhappiness would have remained even if I had left the house."

^This is the governess, Ms Dunbar, teaching us all that a good deed never goes unpunished. I disagree with calling Ms Dunbar the “cause” of unhappiness, as the cause is clearly the husband. Ms Dunbar’s one bad decision was in not putting some form of distance between herself and Gibson. She seems to have thought they were safe as long as they were not being physically intimate, but other forms of intimacy were okay. And, to be frank, it seems not unlikely by the end that for all Gibson’s lack of morals, and in spite of her own, Ms Dunbar loves him back.

At the same time, she’s also right that no matter what choice she made, Gibson and his wife were not going to be happy together. It’s completely Gibson’s fault though. And the fault of a society where leaving a marriage left a black mark.

"How do you know [the murder weapon wasn’t already planted in your room]?"

"Because I tidied out the wardrobe."

"That is final."

Who is she, Marie Kondo?

Holmes did not answer. His pale, eager face had suddenly assumed that tense, far-away expression which I had learned to associate with the supreme manifestations of his genius. So evident was the crisis in his mind that none of us dared to speak, and we sat, barrister, prisoner, and myself, watching him in a concentrated and absorbed silence.

More of Silent, Pensive Holmes and his Rapt Audience. Watson won’t fall asleep when others are around, so instead they all stare at Holmes. Literally. That’s what it says. No one dares speak and they all just stare at him.

Suddenly, as we neared our destination he seated himself opposite to me—we had a first-class carriage to ourselves—

I like that Watson feels compelled to explain this to us this.

and laying a hand upon each of my knees he looked into my eyes with the peculiarly mischievous gaze which was characteristic of his more imp-like moods.

The body language in this passage. Holmes getting all silly and excited. Watson still just staring. This scene is probably the most Guy Ritchie-like it gets.

Also, please note imp-like.

Watson: Get your hands off my knees Sherlock Holmes you adorable fucker.

"Watson," said he, "I have some recollection that you go armed upon these excursions of ours."

It was as well for him that I did so, for he took little care for his own safety when his mind was once absorbed by a problem so that more than once my revolver had been a good friend in need. I reminded him of the fact.

"Yes, yes, I am a little absent-minded in such matters."

Holmes: Hey Watson, are you packing heat?

Watson: Well YEAH, you careless bastard. Someone’s got to prevent your death, since you won’t.

Holmes: YOLO

(Although, it’s more like YOLT, in this specific case.)

"See, Watson, your revolver has solved the problem!"

^After using Watson’s revolver in an experiment which results in the gun falling off the bridge into the depths of the river.

Watson: Thank you, Holmes. I liked that revolver.

Holmes: Psh, quit your bitching, we’ll drag the river for it.

In the end, it turns out the wife concocted a plan for her own suicide that would make it look like the governess murdered her. Although this story would definitely have been better without the racism and sexism, one thing that I can’t help but appreciate is that Gibson, a Generally Bad Guy, is not The Bad Guy, and gets to continue living his rich and ruthless life. On top of that, he’s even rid of his wife who wasn’t beautiful anymore, and potentially going to marry the beautiful younger woman. So he gets no consequences for treating his wife terribly, putting the moves on his employee, or just for being a jackass. Instead, he gets even More. It’s hyper realism. ACD ain’t pulling his punches with this one. /cynicism

And that’s it for “Thor Bridge!” This was very fun for me to do though I doubt anyone will read it! But I’ll almost definitely make more so I can continue to share the running inner monologue that goes on in my head whenever I read Holmes stories. I enjoy snickering to myself with or without an audience.

Our Holmes Burn Count was only 4, though I could have included a few more barbs he threw at Gibson.

This probably doesn’t need mentioning, but all the Sherlock Holmes stories are in public domain so y’all should go read them.

[violetbeachpod]

1x02 / incorporeal girlfriend

CHARLOTTE:

Hello Violet Beach! Charlotte Cranor-Liu here to keep informing the general public–or, the not-general not-public–about how terrible everything is!

So! Let’s talk.

I’m Char, I’m sixteen, junior at the Corielli Academy For Creative Youths, and your new best friend. Unless, like, we’ve already met, in which case, you already know what I think of you.

So. Where to start? Cuz I got stories. Uh. At fight call today, I hit Andrew Meyer for real, which was pretty satisfying. Cuz he’s the worst? AJ high-fived me afterward, and actually told me where he worked? Which was super satisfying, cuz I got kicked out of the Starbucks for fighting in the alley by it? In fairness, the guy stole tips, it was–it was morally an obligation. But the assistant manager was like, “oh, but now he’ll sue us, and why did you claim to be an employee,” which, like, has she never heard of getting into character to add more feeling to a situation? He would be more likely to give it back if he thought he was stealing my money? Just—whatever. I needed a new coffee-source and now I have one.

But, anyway, AJ took me to the Bean Zone today, which, cool, I didn’t know they were even open. Neither did anyone else, though, I don’t think because it was empty. Which might also be because their coffee is kind of the worst? Still.

I kept AJ busy, though. He used his employee discount, so, I only paid, like, ten bucks total for my thirteen drinks. So. After I was properly caffeinated and his two-hour shift ended, which, I didn’t even know they did those, we started biking to his place, and he–he fell. And I got nervous, and I grabbed his arm to help him up once I was sure he was okay, and when I made contact, the–

Well, Teresa talked about this last time, but the sky went that gross purple color. And I assumed tehat–I assumed that the glow was because of us touching, so I let go, and then–I couldn’t.

And then the breeze that’s always there happened again. And we were back on the road, on our bikes, and we were pedalling. Like nothing happened.

And he said, like, uh, “Nice grip,” or something, and I nodded, because my grip’s pretty nice, and we were just, in, like, a really weirdass situation, so.

Anywho. So we went back to my place and my sister was all like, oh, wow, who’s this, your–censored rude term that disrespects AJ, who is, like, maybe my only friend–and so I yelled at her?

I mean. He’s not my only friend. I–he is.

Why can’t I say that I have other friends? Like–I’m trying to lie, right now.

Um. Okay. Cool. So.

We’ll get to that later.

But, anyway, I did scream at her, yes. Cuz she was an ass. As per ush.

So. Anyway. AJ and I went up to my room and started watching a bootleg of—y’know? If this, like, truth serum thing going on’s a thing, I’m not gonna try to name the show. Cuz it’s embarrassing. I wanted to—no. Okay.

Can’t lie! That’s—

Ugh! That’s so stupid!

Um. What else? I think I saw a ghost during photography today, but that’s just how the woods are sometimes. AJ and I broke into some asshole’s beach house back there for this week’s project, because last year the guy who owns it was a creep to me. But I think that maybe his house is haunted? Cuz there was this, like, weird mist in the living room right by the TV.

But again, that’s just how the woods are. I think. That’s not really my zone. But, of all places in this town to already be haunted? That’s, like, top thirteen spots, natch.

Also: Gregory And Janet Wilson Who Live In The Beach House Development In The Woods From May To September Every Year But Who Live In Virginia Otherwise left three spare keys under the lion statuette in their uglyass overgrown garden. So, there. Make of that what you will.

But. It’s a supernatural occurrence, or whatever you wanna call it, so I should put it on here. The ghost sighting. Not his key location. That’s–that’s just a thing that I know. Obvi.

The mist was, like–it was kind of all-consuming? Like, in that way that people are always all-consumed by beauty, but not really, because I was also having heart palpitations. Or something. Not really sure what heart palpitations are, but, uh. I was overwhelmed by the beauty but also? Very, very afraid of it. I felt like I was frozen in place, like I was being swallowed by it–

And then AJ said, “Are you okay?” and I snapped out of it. I asked him if he saw it, and he nodded, was like, “uh yeah, but, like, we could agree before entering that the woods are super haunted,” and I agreed, but, like, he didn’t seem to get the vibes that I did. Swear to god, I heard horror movie music behind me.

Uh. The Corielli board is meeting tonight, and I’m supposed to talk about the theater program, just–I don’t like talking in front of the PTA, because I don’t know any of their kids, like, logically, I should know their kids. There are maybe 200 people in the high school, and I know most of them. I know all of their faces.

But the Corielli board’s faces don’t look like anybody. Like, literally. I’ve talked at Corielli board meetings, like, seven times, and I cannot tell you what a single parent looks like.

Which might be supernatural happenings also? Nice.

[faux-excited]

Mystery! Intrigue! Cool!

[a pause, a sigh]

At least this truth-curse-or-whatever-the-hell-it-is has room for jokes. That’s, like, legitimately cool.

Um. So, I have to talk to the board tonight, and I think that’ll be—that—shit. Shit, it’s in ten minutes.

I’ll record more later.

[static, and a click. CHARLOTTE is out of breath.]

Okay, I’m back. I’m—holy shit.

So, I think the truth curse is off, but—like, obvi, I’m not gonna—I can promise that I’m not exaggerating.

So, the board. The board.

So, I think I said that they might be paranormal activity? They super are. I’m usually late, when I go to meetings? But I was on-time, and, uh, I was supposed to stay in the auditorium, but I went backstage to check on the set, but. Whatever. I was backstage. And so were they.

The board, I mean.

And they were—they were silent, in a circle, staring at each other. All of them. No one said anything, for a minute—like, I started timing a few seconds in, and it was at least seventy-seven seconds.

And one of them looked up, and just—feedback and sirens came pouring out of his mouth, like during an emergency when you’re watching TV or—

And he looked at me, blinked, and said, “Miss Cranor-Liu, you made it!” and he pushed through the circle, and nobody moved, just—and he grabbed my shoulders, and I wanted to—I wanted to hit him, to—

He just said, “The meeting’s cancelled, dear, didn’t you hear?”

I tried to take in his face, just cuz, and—nothing stood out to me.

And I tried to pull away, to hit him, to—to, like, kick him in his balls, or whatever, and my body just—it froze. And then there was that stupid purple again, and—

And I was outside. And I checked my email, and I didn’t get a cancellation notice, so—uh.

Something’s happening at Corielli. And, uh, I think—four or five of us went to Corielli, like, Teresa and Elaine def didn’t, and Benji, like—I’ve seen him on campus before, like, when I was in middle school, but also, I’m pretty sure he’s omnipresent, so. Who knows, with him. But the majority of us involved went to Corielli, so—like. That’s relevant, I think? Put it on your conspiracy board, next to the seven photos of Avril Lavigne and her dopplegangers. Use green yarn, for, like—for my sake. S’a good color for conspiracy theory boards that you never see anywhere.

I watch a lot of conspiracy theory videos, just to—to laugh at that. Also, they’re so consistent to me? So they’re very relaxing. Good to fall asleep to. Like, some folks need white noise or ASMR or whatever, but a good ol’ Andy Kaufman death hoax ten hour loop, y’know? Or, like, a Sondheim is multiple people one. It exists. You have to look hard for it, but, like, it almost convinced me that there are eighteen of him, so it’s worth it. I watched a seven-part documentary on the moon-landing thing when I was a kid, and that thing just, like—it got me so interested. I’m not crazy or anything. But this is ringing major documentary alarm bells. Maybe I can hit up some clickbait site and they can send folks over here to wrap a nice bow on this whole weird situation.

[beat]

Nobody’s gonna listen to this, like—and AJ’s the only person who’ll care, so, like, might as well talk on here.

Mae Babson the new transfer student is hot as hell. Like—I try not to have crushes, because they’re dumb, and they keep my eyes off the prize, which is to say, y’know. College. My art.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that feelings are pointless and that we’d be way better off without them, y’know? Especially when those feelings are for really dreamy girls who manage to look, like, at least 70 percent like she’s into girls, even though this is Corielli, so, like, she could be the straightest girl on earth, and also she’s weirdly nice, like—nicer than most people. And it’s kind of annoying how nice she is, like, she—she’s nice to everybody. Even to people who don’t deserve it.

But. Anyways. She’s super hot and I’m kinda sorta in love with her. Whatever. Rant over. I’ll edit that out.

So. Ghosts and mystery and intrigue. Woo.

Y’know, maybe Mae’s caught up in this mystery, actually, cuz—well, she only showed up after all that happened. Maybe she’s, like—maybe she’s a ghost. That’s the nightmare, honestly, being in love with a ghost. Like, second only to her being straight? Worst case scenario.

I could write a solid one act about being in love with a ghost and, like, protag comes to accept that she’s dead and is willing to make this work, but ghost girl’s like, “Oh, too bad, don’t like girls. Sorry, honey!” And that’s the plot twist. Sad ending. A tragicomedy for everyone.

But. Incorporeal Girlfriend and playwriting dreams aside, it is weird that she showed up, cuz—we never get new juniors, especially not midyear? So. It’s not entirely out there that she’s involved. Put her pic up next to the X-Files poster, connect ‘em with red yarn. For love symbolism.

Also, she’s like, otherworldly-ly attractive, so. That contributes to Benji’s alien theory. Also, Benji? I don’t care about your alien theory. Or that you wrote your thesis on aliens. Or that you—

Ugh. Just. The email thread is very long and you aren’t Agent David Duchovny On The X-Files I Don’t Know The Character Name But Oh Boy Do I Know Who David Duchovny Is. Also, use the goddamn group chat? Some of us don’t ever check our emails. And I know you’re gonna call me blasphemous or something for not knowing the X-Files guy’s name, which, yeah, I did that on purpose.

So, um, I was helping out the lighting designer—Ollie, the other day, because if the show looks like shit it’s my fault somehow, and they kept asking me about purple lights. I forgot about this, like—

Wait.

God, I can’t stop thinking about the board, actually. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything. I’m—I’m pretty self-aware, I would have said something. I’m me, for God’s sake, I would’ve said something half-charming and half-assholey, and then I would’ve been kicked out, and I would’ve, uh, maybe tried to pick a physical fight, and then—yeah. You know the deal. I told the Starbucks story earlier. I think—I think they somehow stopped me from saying anything, like—just like that force wouldn’t let me lie or let go of AJ’s hand or fight back—there’s always an inability to do something.

I swear, if this interferes with the show, I’ll fight God. Or whatever force is out there, like—I will press legal charges against fate or destiny or the passage of time or aliens or whatever the fuck. And also punch it.

The lighting designer stuff—that’s just me being paranoid, but the—the board, that’s real, and I’m scared as hell. I’m gonna—I’m gonna maybe do some recon, re: that, get those costume slash makeup design elective credits I’ve been trying for. I haven’t taken the class, because it’s seniors only and also because Ms. Dunkers hates me because her nephew accused me of selling him fake Rent tickets, which, I didn’t know they were fake, so, he can’t blame me, so she won’t let me in her classes anymore. She has explicitly told admin that “Miss Cranor-Liu is not to enroll in any of my electives no matter how much she complains to you.” So I asked admin, like, can I just do a bunch of independent studies, and I think they’re afraid of me? So they said yes.

Anyway.

I’m gonna sneak in on next week’s board meeting as an interested potential transfer student. Need an alias, and you know that it will be Faith Deathstrike. Which is an unfortunate last name, but a badass codename.

So. Uh. I’m signing off. Come to the show, week of February twentieth at the Corelli auditorium, and watch me get possessed by an actual ghost during my solo, or whatever. And if I get ritually sacrificed at the board meeting, now you know what led up to my disappearance! This is basically Serial, now, but in real time, right?

Anyway. Cool. Thanks. Bye.