#I naively thought it would take me two days max it took almost five but I'm happy with it

[megamog]

Final Fantasy XII Week Anniversary Edition - Day 5: (Sky) Pirates

[tanyawritesstories]

She Bites | Max Phillips x Siren!Reader

I came up with the strange idea of: what if Max was bitten by another creature? And siren was the natural answer for the reader's creature. I imagined their water form as basically the mermaids (sirens) from Pirates of the Caribbean. Enjoy my weirdness!

Word count: 3.5k

Warnings: vampirism (duh), plenty of sexual innuendos, flirting, Max is a bit of a douche, insinuations of murder, blood, biting, fluff, Max and reader are unaware of each other's supernatural identities

•••

Your day at the office started slow but now it was picking up. You had just locked in your fourth sale, and began printing the finalization papers. You signed off on them and stood to walk them to your boss's office. On your way, you passed Andrew, looking the part of a hungover, underpaid college student, like he always did.

"Hey Y/N, you sure you don't want to come out tonight with us?" He asked.

"Um, no thank you, Andrew. I have something planned already," you responded politely.

"Aw, c'mon," he looked you up and down sleazily, "I can make it worth your while."

"Andrew, can't you tell the lady has important plans," the spritely voice from behind you made you tense and turn around. Your boss was standing there with a smug look on his handsome face. "She's been telling me how much she is looking forward to her date tonight."

You looked at the floor sheepishly and you could see Andrew shift awkwardly in place. "You're doing great on that presentation, buddy," Max assured the other man, "Now run along."

Andrew scurried back to his desk and Max leaned against the wall beside you, his arms crossed over his chest. "Are we still on for seven tonight?" He asked with a smirk.

You looked up at him and smiled, nodding. "Absolutely. You're picking me up at my place right?"

He nodded back. "Of course, sweet cheeks. Especially if there's a chance I can come inside after dinner."

You smirked back at him, your tone as flirty as his. "Play your cards right and maybe I'll let you."

He chuckled darkly. "Oh trust me, baby. I've never lost a game."

You took a step closer to him, booping his nose gently with your finger. "Then you should have nothing to worry about." At that, you tucked the papers for him into his crossed arms and walked back to your desk.

Of course you knew what kind of reputation Max Phillips carried. Who didn't. He was the type of person your sisters would call a man-slut. Arrogant, attractive, and brainless. Also the type you thought would make easy food.

Your clan had moved to the city only a few months ago, having come to the conclusion that there wasn't enough food in the ocean. You and several of your mer-sisters had taken to the land, tasked with feeding your family. It was getting increasingly more difficult for sirens to survive, especially out at sea. People didn't travel out on the ocean as much as they did a hundred years ago. Plus, now their boats were made of metal and a lot bigger. Even with super strength and the combined forces of the clan, they were hard to take down. Attacks usually ended with more than a few injuries and only a small reward.

Blending in with the humans was easy. Your tail turned to legs when on land and your slit eyes, fangs, and claws only came out when you attacked.

You had figured out a plan to be able to support the clan for hopefully a long time. If you were able to take control of this company, you could employ the rest of your clan to run the business and any new hires would be dinner. It was easy. Or so you thought. You hadn't exactly anticipated the charming and quick-witted sales manager standing in your way.

You had taken out a few minor employees already, none of them were missed and nothing was suspected. You had used your siren charm to hypnotize them into submitting resignation forms the day before you took them.

You were confused when Mike went missing before you could get him. You thought maybe one of your sisters had gotten to him first, but perhaps he just quit. It was frustrating to think you missed such a good potential meal, but alas you had work to do.

You knew you had to ultimately take down Ted, but Ted was wound around Max's finger. So your current target was Max. You played along with his douchey behavior, falling into the role of the shy, naive new girl that was easy to woo. It had worked thus far, getting you a date with your target victim. You planned on insinuating that you would sleep with him, get him back to your place, and then kill him. It would be easy.

You had managed to conjure up a final sale before you left for the day. You gave Max a wave and flirty wink as you walked by his office. You mouthed the words 'don't be late' before the elevator doors closed.

~~~~

Back at your apartment you had completed putting the finishing touches on your makeup. Minimal, since beauty came naturally to sirens. No matter how they looked, they were always beautiful and always praised for it.

You slipped on the sleek black dress. It was satin with thin straps and a slight V plunge in the middle, exposing a teasing amount of cleavage. You looked good enough to eat. You knew Max would think the same. You grabbed a light jacket and donned it to cover your top half. You heard the doorbell ring and looked at the clock on the wall. Five minutes early, typical punctuality. You grabbed a pair of black heels, quickly throwing them on and grabbing your purse.

You found Max with a surprisingly sincere smile on his face when you opened the door.

"Good evening, doll," he greeted, "Ready for our date?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," you replied cheerfully.

He was wearing a nice suit as usual, but he had foregone the tie and waistcoat. Instead having the first few buttons of his shirt undone. It was a very relaxed look for him, and, shockingly, you didn’t dislike it.

You walked to his car, once again surprised when he opened the door for you. You slid in and thanked him. The drive to the restaurant didn't take as long as you thought it would.

Max offered you his arm as you walked in together. You had made the reservation, not trusting him to do it. You let him pull out your chair for you as you removed your jacket. Max only noticed once he was sitting in his own chair across from you. You snatched the wine list and glanced over it. From the corner of your eye you could see him staring unashamedly at your chest where the dip exposed the tops of your breasts.

“Do you have a preference?” You asked. “Anything red is fine with me,” Max answered, his eyes didn’t leave your body even when he knew you were watching him. You scanned back over the list, picking out something simple. “You look stunning tonight.”

You looked up to find Max with a smirk on his face. Willing a blush to come to your cheeks, you looked down at your plate. “That’s kind of you, Max. But I’m afraid you’re a bit of a liar.” He pouted adorably, leaning his elbows on the table. “Nonsense. You’re the most beautiful woman in the office,” he complimented. He reached over and took your hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the back of your hand.

You knew that was rubbish. Everyone had a crush on either Amanda or Zabeth. If someone had a crush on you it was because of your siren charm, otherwise they hated you because you did your job and got praised for it.

You ordered your food and found it easy to make conversation with Max. He kept up the perfect attitude with snarky and flirty thrown in. You weren’t learning much about him but you were learning his traits. You didn’t expect him to be such a good listener. He hung onto every word you said and asked questions here and there. You almost felt bad for spinning him the entire fake backstory you had made up for yourself. You tried asking him questions but he only answered a few before turning the conversation back to you.

By the time dessert came you had almost run out of fake information and stories to tell him. This was getting tiring, you hadn’t expected him to act like this. Most men couldn’t shut up about themselves, but you hadn’t gotten hardly anything out of him. It was strange, for sure. Max offered to pay and you let him think he was doing you a favor. He stood first and grabbed your coat, helping slide it over your arms and back. His hands stayed on your shoulders and he whispered into your ear.

“So did I play well?” You smirked turning to face him, putting your hands on his chest. “You’ll see, later.”

He placed his hand on the small of your back and led you back out to his car. He drove with one hand, the other was draped over the center console. You figured it was time to answer his question now. You took his hand and rested it on your knee, keeping your eyes out the window. You could hear him turn his head briefly to look at you. You waited until his eyes were back on the road before sliding his hand up your leg a little bit, you let go and allowed him to decide what he wanted to do next.

He took the hint and slid his hand further up your leg, pushing your dress up in the process. He stopped on your inner thigh, slowly rubbing your warm skin. You knew what he was doing, he was teasing you, trying to make you beg. This time you weren’t going to pretend, he would wait until you got home and was inside your room. If you let him live that long.

You made it back home and invited Max in. “Make yourself comfortable, you want anything more to drink?”

You strolled to your drink cabinet, kicking your heels off on the way there, and pulled out scotch for yourself. “I’ll have what you’re having, sweet cheeks,” he said sitting down on your sofa.

You turned, grabbing two glasses from the cabinet. You jumped when you felt his chest press into your back, his nose nuzzling into your neck. How did he get behind you so fast? You probably just didn’t hear him. It was unlikely with your acute senses but who knows.

“Can we skip the drinks?” He whispered huskily into your ear. You reached back and ran your fingers into his hair. “You’re eager, aren’t you?” You replied making sure your tone was as smooth as his.

"I'm hungry," he said, "and I wanna know what you taste like." He ended his sentence with a squeeze to your ass that actually made you gasp. He was good at dirty talk, you were almost starting to feel bad about having to kill such a fine specimen.

You turned around in his grasp and wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling his lips to yours in a passionate kiss. You expected him to try and heat it up right away, yet he surprised you once again. He took the kiss as slow and deep as you, keeping one hand on your ass, massaging it to his liking.

You broke away from his lips after a while of having them locked together, instead trailing kisses over his jaw. He took the break to place kisses and licks up and down your neck. You nuzzled your nose into the flesh of his neck, seeing the perfect moment open up.

You didn't hesitate.

Your pupils became slits, with your fingernails extending into sharp points and anchoring themselves into his suit coat. Your fangs descended into their proper places, now poised for harvesting. You barely registered the feeling of his teeth scraping along your skin before you bit down.

Your fangs pierced his skin with more resistance than you were expecting. However, that wasn’t the strangest thing to occur at that moment. You felt a sharp burning pain in your own neck, right where Max had been licking. Did he...he had just bitten you!

You retracted your fangs and shoved Max away, his teeth having unlodged from your skin. You glanced at your neck where two puncture holes were now steadily exuding blood.

"You fucking bit me!" You shouted.

Max recovered from your shove, his eyes tinged yellow, a smear of blood on his upper lip…and his own fangs.

"Why the hell do you taste like fish!" He yelled back.

You were beyond confused. "What? Doesn't matter, who the hell are you!" You grabbed a towel and quickly placed it over your bite wound.

"Me? Who are you!" He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, "Ugh, and why in fucks name does your blood taste salty."

"Usually when I bite people, they die, not complain about how my blood tastes," you grimaced.

"That's what happens when you bite a vampire, sugar tits," he deadpanned.

Your mouth dropped open. Well that explains a lot, but in addition, it made you angry. How were you supposed to take over the company now?

"I didn't know I had a fellow vamp working in my building," he smiled, "Though, that doesn't explain the fishy taste."

You rolled your eyes, heading towards your bedroom to find a bandage. "I'm not a vampire, I'm a siren. Did you honestly think vampires were the only supernatural beings walking this planet?"

Max followed not far behind you, intrigued by your revelation. "A siren, like a mermaid? Where's your tail?"

"I don't have a tail while I'm on land, and no, sirens are much deadlier than mermaids," you informed gruffly. Max appeared to be thinking over your words while he watched you tend to the two holes in your neck. He was unaffected by your bite, his skin having already healed itself.

"Why were you trying to kill me?" He suddenly inquired. You looked over to see him lying back on your bed. He had removed his suit coat and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, comfortable as could be.

"Because my sister's and I need to eat and I don't like killing just anyone on the street," you answered.

"Are the rest of your sisters as hot as you?" He sat up as you crossed the room, watching your every move. You sneered at him, "I figured killing you was an easy way to take over the company, therefore providing my family with a steady food source, and ridding the world of one less asshole."

Max nodded along to your words. "Great idea, sugar plum, but half the office has already been turned. Tough luck," he mocked.

You swore under your breath, "Then there's no point in working for the company anymore. You can leave now."

No wonder it had been so easy to lure him in, he was playing you too. You both fell right into each other's traps.

Max rose from your bed. He walked to you and gave you a teasing smile, pinching your cheek like an affectionate grandparent. "Don't worry, fish lips. Maybe we can work something out," he winked at you.

You pulled away from him and glared as he swung his jacket over his shoulder. "See you at the office tomorrow!"

~~~~

Max hadn't noticed you came into his office as you entered the same time as Evan was leaving. The loud thud of papers landing harshly on his desk made him look up.

"My resignation form," you said, "since my purpose has been...worn out."

Max looked taken aback despite the fact that you told him you would be quitting last night. "Why is that a reason to leave?" He asked, leaning back in his chair.

"I literally just told you, and you know about me when my existence is supposed to be a secret so…" you trailed off.

Max looked to be thinking again, never a good sign. He took your papers off his desk and promptly threw them in the trash bin. "No."

You raised your eyebrows, "No?" He nodded, "No. You happen to be doing the best work here so I can't let you go."

You put your hands on your hips. The audacity of this man! "Huh, right ok. Then I'll just walk out and never come back and there's nothing you can do to stop me," you said firmly. You turned heading towards the door.

"I could tell."

You looked back at Max, who was now standing, hands in his pockets. "Excuse me?"

"I could tell. I could walk out and announce to everyone that you're part fish and all I'd have to do to prove it, is throw some salt water on you," he threatened. You realized as he talked that he was dead serious, and it scared you. "Yeah, I did my research on sirens, believe it or not. I know how you operate," his smile evil and teasing at the same time as he moved to the front of the desk and sat on the edge. "If you stay, your secret is safe with me."

"That's blackmail," you stated obviously.

"Pfft," Max rolled his eyes, "And? Does it look like I'm giving you much choice here, sweet cheeks? You stay with the company and I'll help you, it's a lot easier for me to obtain blood, and I can do it without killing them. I can help you."

You sighed in frustration. What choice did you have? You hated him for not giving you an alternative, but the company wasn't all bad and pay was decent.

"Fine." Was all you said before walking out and resuming your work.

~~~~

Max had stayed true to his word, you had been listening, and he hadn't even hinted that you might be a dangerous supernatural creature to anyone. Maybe he was due more credit than you gave him

You were currently sitting on your sofa, wearing comfortable leggings and a t-shirt, drinking a beer while watching a movie. You were interrupted by a knock on your door. When you answered it you didn't expect to see Max standing on the other side with a cooler in one hand. He was wearing a button up with a black leather jacket and jeans, it was the most casual you'd ever seen him and he still looked so good.

"I brought dinner," he said simply. He unzipped the cooler bag and showed you its contents; four large plastic bags filled halfway up with blood.

"Max!" You whisper yelled. You ignored his smile and pulled him inside by his arm, quickly closing the door. "You can't just show me that, wait till you're inside," you sighed, "Now what do you want?"

"These are for you," he said, "and your family of fishes." He set the cooler down on the counter and proceeded to take the bags of blood and arrange them nicely in your fridge.

"You got that for me?" You asked, skeptical of his sudden kindness. "Yes, I said I would help you, so I am." He grabbed a beer out of the fridge while he was in there and took your place on the sofa.

This man was making a habit out of shocking you. He noticed as you stood shell-shocked in the middle of the room. "Did you really think I wouldn't keep my word?"

You wanted to be mad at him, you desperately wanted to be mad.

"No, I didn't think you would. I thought you were joking," you admitted. You took a seat next to him and took another sip of your beer.

"You wound me, fish lips," he sassed. You sighed, trying to maintain your current mindset of not being mad at him. “Only one thing,” you looked at him, “Can I see your tail?”

Your eyes practically rolled on their own. “Aw, c’mon,” he pouted, “I brought dinner for your whole family and saved your job, it’s the least you could do.”

“You do know that when I’m in the water the tail is the only thing I’m wearing,” you said. You watched as Max’s lips slowly turned upwards into a smug smirk. “You dickhead, that’s exactly what you want!” You took a pillow from the sofa and chucked it at his head, heading towards your room to shut yourself in.

He burst into laughter and got up to follow you. You attempted to close the door in his face but he caught it. Even with all your strength thrown against it he was able to hold it open like it was nothing.

“No, I’m genuinely curious, sweetheart,” he said once he was able to stop laughing. You stopped fighting him once you heard him. He’d never called you sweetheart before, it was normally irritating nicknames.

“I’ll think about it,” you relented. He smiled. “I did bring some of that blood just for us. You want to have dinner with me again?”

For once you found yourself smiling along with Max Philips.

[anotherhargrovebitch]

forget about mine : b.h

  based on the song small hands by keaton henson. it’s fairly angsty, and was requested by @herbouquetreign​ - thank you love for the idea! 

s t r a n g e r  t h i n g s  w r i t i n g 

In the dead of night, Billy hopes you don’t remember every detail to the degree he does. He wishes you aren’t fixating on the glint in his eyes when he laughs or the nervous smile that crossed his lips before he lit a cigarette for you to share. He prays you aren’t still crying over what happened three months ago, that you have moved on with your life. That above all else is what Billy wants the most.

It shouldn’t have happened in the first place, the two of you. What began as a mistake evolved into more than anyone could’ve anticipated. He woke up with you beside him, your chin perched on his shoulder as he looked down realising he stayed the night. The infamous Hargrove slept through the entire party with a girl rather than crawling out of her window. 

At that moment, as your head perched on his shoulder with your eyes still closed, breathing gently Billy realised he couldn’t leave. He took the time to admire your beauty, details about your face he could recite or draw if asked to now. It was only when you woke up slightly startled that he was still there that the relationship between you really started. And that is something Billy will never forget. 

*

“You’re still here, in my bed?” You move around your room, quickly changing into your clothes as you cover your body whilst Billy remains in your bed. 

Pushing himself to sit upright, the duvet drops further down his body exposing more than you remember from last nights drunken mistake. A mistake - that’s what you’re determined last night was, something to never be repeated. 

“Why wouldn’t I have stuck around, Princess?” He was quick lipped, still trying to figure out the answer to your question. 

You glance over your shoulder, pulling your shirt down with a heavy sigh. “Because, you’re you.” You motion to him, and Billy merely chuckles in response. “Oh come on,” You move closer, perching on the edge of your bed as Billy keeps his eyes on you, noticing how you furrow your brows when you get confused and bite your lower lip. 

“What?” He raises an eyebrow, something he often does to provoke others as he licks his lips. “What’re you trying to imply, Y/n?” He quips as he leans forward, his lips hovering over yours as he kisses you softly, your witty responses melting away. 

*

What Billy will never get to witness is you healing, he wants to know that you’re moving on and not focusing on all the small details. Sometimes he asks Max if you’re ever around and if she sees you in Hawkins. He’s desperate to hear that you’re doing alright, even if it breaks him inside to know that you are truly moving on. 

It’s a conflicted mindset, and Billy acknowledged it but that doesn’t change a single thing about it. 

He wakes up every day with a little bit more confidence returning, but he’ll never forget the painful words you exchanged. They weren’t intentional, they were said in anger, slicing through the last strings that held his heart together as you threw the vase of flowers he gifted you to the ground. 

Billy winced as you stepped across the broken shards of glass, watching as you claimed to feel numb before you left. 

Walking to work, Billy listens to his music in the small headphones he could just about afford. Hawkins wasn’t so bad these days, but he still longed to leave and move back to his real home. He always thought you would leave together, hand in hand and never turn back. How naive he had been to think it wouldn’t fall apart like everything else in his life. 

Billy will do anything to drown out the scenes he passes by that remind him of you. His eyes always hover over the small children’s park covered in spray paint that you helped decorate as you shared a joint with him. He loved how it affected you, just how carefree you seemed even for a few hours. 

His eyes still struggle to leave the pavement as he turns the corner to the garage, knowing the pond is up ahead where he told you he loved you for the first time. He’ll never forget the light in your eyes as they teared up, and how you held him when you said it back.

“Alright, Hargrove. There’s a missus for you in the office.” One of his colleagues informs him as he wipes the sweat and oil from his brow, oblivious to Billy tensing at the idea of a woman wanting to see him. 

“Thanks, boss.” Billy calls back weakly in response as he walks into the office. 

The lady in question sits with her back turned, but he knows instantly it isn’t you. 

He converses with the woman in question, taking her details about her car. 

“Say, what’s a good looking guy like you doing in here?” She flirts too hard, almost throwing herself at him as she tugs on her blouse, revealing more than she should. 

Billy focuses on the paperwork as he scrawls her information down. “Workin’” He bluntly responds, hearing her sigh to herself. 

“I bet you get all hot and sweaty in here. I know I feel hot and it’s been five minutes.” She laughs to herself, focusing on Billy hoping to see a hint of a smile. Yet, to her dismay, he keeps a straight face. 

“It’s manageable.” He responds, shrugging his shoulder. “Is there anything else you need to tell me about your car, Ma’am.” He lifts his eyes up for the first time since she began flirting, and he notices how she’s leaning forward, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“You got a girlfriend, boy?” She questions and Billy opens his mouth, but no words follow. “I take that as a no, huh.” 

“I did.” Billy mutters under his breath as he rises to his feet. “But that doesn’t matter.” He opens the door for her and she stands up, brushing his arm as she walks out. 

All of the guys turn their heads as she leaves, some whistle whilst others make provocative comments. 

Billy rolls his eyes as he carries on with work, not falling for the same mistake twice. 

*

“How could you?” Your eyes fill with tears, but you were adamant to yourself to not let them fall. Showing them made him win, it made him aware you cared more than you liked to let on. 

Billy steps forward, holding his hands out but you bat them away. “I, I it was a mistake!” He claims loudly, wanting you to know the truth. “She was trying it on me, I didn’t ask for her to.” 

You scoff in response. “But you still did it, Billy. It doesn’t matter if she came onto you because you still slept with her!” You’re now yelling, unable to hide your anger as he stands before you, eyes lowered. “You’re not even going to fight for this, are you?” You whimper as it all sinks in. 

“Y/n, please.” Billy pleads, but you shake your head. The broken glass separates the pair of you, but you don’t care about bleeding or the petals that have fallen apart. “Baby,” He tries to step closer as you walk past him, wiping your eyes. 

“We’re done, Billy.” You coldly tell him as you look him in the eyes one last time, knowing you’ll never see them again. 

*

As his day draws to a close, Billy takes the long route home knowing he needs it. The fresh air in Hawkins isn’t as polluted as California, but at least it isn’t heavy and musty. 

He listens to his music as he hums along the back alleys, minding his own business before reaching his small apartment. It wasn’t much, but it meant he wouldn’t be beaten black and blue every minute of the day. 

Billy discards his headphones and walkman, replacing them with a piece of paper and a pencil. He sat in silence on the floor, writing down his thoughts. It was one thing he remembered vividly from you, you taught him to write down his feelings rather than inflict them on others. 

Tears fill his eyes as he finishes the piece of paper, back to back. It’s filled with apologies, with sorrows of what he lost if he wasn’t so stupid, so naive to slip into old habits. He was weak, he folded into the customer's charms forgetting you for mere minutes, but those minutes were enough to lose you for good.

Rising from his feet, Billy walks into the living room where a small cabinet remains coated in dust. He kneels down to open the cupboard where the box remains out of sight. 

As he opens the lid his eyes are greeted with all the feelings, the thoughts he wanted to share. The box is close to overflowing with apologies that remain unspoken to you, as you stopped listening a long time ago. 

Placing the piece of paper into the box, Billy closes the cabinet doors once more. It was out of sight and mind, just like he was to you. 

[miss-choco-chips]

Teaching you, teaching me

Four times mother and son learned from and about each other, and one time Tim used his knowledge for evil good.

(Warning: Tim is older in some and younger in others, without order)

(For my babes @the-quiet-carrotcake and @animemangasoul who cheered me up when I was feeling bad, hope this makes you happy as well! 

Also, hon tagged me on a ‘five word prompt generator’ thing and I lost the post, so this is my contribution, five words that inspired each part)

Animal

When Jack died, it was sad but they were prepared. He’d been in a coma for two months by then, and Janet had practically been readying both herself and her son for the outcome. Tim had been sad, but it was more because of a possible future lost (he’d never given up the hope of his father changing one day, of Jack wanting to stay and being more present in his life), than genuine sorrow. Or so had the therapist told her.

Janet hadn’t felt bad, not really. Her relationship with her late husband had been cold long before his death, ruined by years of neglecting their son and being absent of their lives, but she suffered for her son, with his too big heart, who didn’t hesitate on wasting his tears on a father that never deserved them, the second she told him the news. 

Still, she held his hand through the entire funeral, surprised by the way he held his head on high. When he threw an arm over her shoulders to guide her away, after the service was over, she realized he was trying to be strong for her. The thirteen year old, heart breaking inside his small chest, was puffing it out to make himself seem bigger, more reliable, to comfort a mother that didn’t really need it.

Her beautiful, kind son.

Max’s death, a short two months after, was nothing like that.

The dog had been part of their household for nine, almost ten years now. Bought shortly after the circus tragedy, in a desperate attempt at soothing her son’s nightmares with the company of something fluffy and loveable, Max had grown up next to Tim, been there for any sad or happy moment, comforting him or sharing his joy by turns. The golden retriever had seem made specifically of love, giving all of it to the kid he’d been gifted to, and for that alone Janet had gone all out on his medical treatments, desperate to make him live as long as possible for a dog. 

Still, he was gone too soon, taking with him Tim’s smile and leaving ample space for tears. Tim had stayed by his side from the moment the veterinarian informed them of his chronic condition, to the tragic end of it, petting him softly and speaking in low, comforting tones.

Max’s last act before dying had been to lick Tim’s hand, the only thing he could reach from where he was lying on the dog bed, and wag his tail once. Even at death’s door, he’d showed Tim more love than his father ever had. Just for that, Janet would Max more than she did Jack.

It also baffled her, when Tim rejected her offer to bring home another dog a week after the small funeral they held in the backyard, softly closing the book on his lap to give her his full attention.

-You love getting new pets -she felt compelled to point out, because it felt like the obvious course of action.

-I do, but I also know why you are suggesting it now, and it won’t work. You can’t make me forget my sadness over losing Max by getting me a puppy, mom. 

-It’ll fill the void -she insists. Almost desperately. 

(She can’t stand to hear her child cry by himself at night, his despair breaking her heart worse than anything else ever could)

-It won’t -he says, shifting in the window seat he always choose when deep in thought or in a contemplative mood-. I loved Max, not because he was a dog, but because he was Max. Even if you buy me a hundred puppies, I’ll love them because they’d be them. It won’t make me forget my pain over Max’s death. 

She wanted to fight him on it, offer more, whatever it took to wipe the dim and far away look from his eyes, but he glanced up at her, so softly and fond, and she felt her tongue glueing itself to the top of her mouth. 

She thought, weirdly enough, of Wayne. Of how, when his first son went away, how he took another boy in. Despite loving Jason, he never stopped missing Dick. She thinks she understands, a little, where Tim was coming from.

(Tim would throw his book at her, if he knew she was comparing the Waynes to dogs, but, if the shoe fits…)

Demonstration

They say watching was the best form of learning, and Tim took it to heart. He analyzed people, going to work, hanging out with friends, buying groceries, fighting, laughing, crying… he saw, and he learned.

The one he watched the most was his mother, though.

How she smiled oh-so-politely at parties, how she ruthlessly destroyed the person speaking to her with short, well informed facts and dirty laundry. How she did both at the same time.

He went with her to DI, and took notice of the way her hips swayed with each step whenever she needed the room’s attention on her, or made her heels click extra hard against the porcelain floor when she wanted averted eyes.

She waved sweetly to her secretary, and frostily glared at the board member sitting three seats away from her.

She clenched her teeth during a phone call with someone she hated, but kept her voice perfectly smooth, warm even, as if speaking to an old friend.

He knew he would inherit the company one day. And, small as DI had been in the past, it had flourished under Janet Drake’s tender and constant care, blooming into the powerhouse it was today, on par with Wayne Enterprises. It was intimidating, to imagine all that power, all that responsibility, on his shoulders. 

Mother, Aunt Nicole, Uncle Lex, Uncle Bruce, Dick, Jay… they all said it, that Tim was too kind, too soft. He would give his hand to someone down without a thought, rather than see if they had a weapon first. Sweet, they called him, and made him blush, because he liked it. Liked that, to all that ruthless, sharp, for moments cruel people, he was a warm presence. A safe, comfortable place to lay worries to rest and smile. He liked being their sweet Timmy.

But he also despised it, because he was a gothamite, and this city ate sweet people whole for dessert, just after finishing with the foolish and naive ones that made for it’s lunch. There was no place for tender people, because that was the best kind to sink teeth into, and Gotham feeds on them. And he can’t die, because who is going to make sure mom and Nicole don’t go off the deep end? Who’s going to help Lex understand and bond with his son, with Conner? Who’s going to make sure the Waynes are getting along, when Alfred himself decides to leave them to their terrible life choices?

So he watches his mom, because she’s a prime example of someone not to be fucked with. Someone who is going to survive this wreck of a city until her drawn out, bitter end, and when that comes, she’ll go kicking and screaming and suing people to the ends of the earth. She doesn’t fear Gotham, and while sure as fuck Gotham doesn’t fear her either, it at least respects her. 

So he watches, and memorizes, and adapts behaviours and gestures into his own, tries to mimic the look in her eyes that send people flinching back and laughing nervously.

And, since he’s watching, he notices that she knows. How she’d look over her shoulder, straight into his eyes, as if saying ‘pay attention, I’m only showing you this once’ before she does something particularly tricky. Demonstrates her way of surviving, and lets him learn from it to make his own.

Tim, eleven years old, so tender and soft he’s like a warm, eatable bunny in everyone’s opinion, closes his eyes and breathes in, deeply. When he opens them, the icy blue of his gaze is enough to send the closest board member stumbling back and mumbling an apology (for what, who knows) before scurrying out of the room. 

Mom looks back to the rest of the board, but Tim knows (because he watches her all the time, he’s learned her to the smallest detail) that she’s smiling. 

She’s proud.

Galaxy

It’s late, and she feels sick and wants nothing more than to go to sleep. She’d basically lived at the office this last week, because of some stupid mistake Jack had made with the one piece of paperwork she needed him to sign (how he manages to screw up from all the way across the world, she can’t quite understand; it surely requires talent), and feels about ready to collapse on her bed.

But, because it’s been a while since she saw him, something in her gut tells her to go look for her son. Tim’s probably asleep right now, it’s almost four a.m, but if she’s silent enough, she could sneak a quick peek through the door, make sure he’s fine, and then go to bed completely unburdened.

Except, when she gets there, she’s treated to the sight of her son, her eight year old son, getting back into his room from God knows where by climbing through his window. Which, by the way, was located on the third floor.

Janet pressed a hand to her chest, as if to make sure her heart was still beating. It was, but the speed couldn't be normal.

Was this a heart attack? 

Hidden by the shadows on the hallway, she noticed how he removed his tiny sneakers, that she had completely forgot he even owned, and thrusted them under the bed. They were worn out, full of grim, obviously used often for activities like sneaking out at night and climbing the house. 

Yes, she was having a heart attack. And an aneurysm. Simultaneously.

The camera around his neck, she did remember. The one gift he had asked for his last birthday, the only thing he ever begged her for. She hadn’t understand his passion for owning one, but since he never had looked so earnest (and wanting to make up for Jack missing the day) she conceded.

Was it a mistake? Watching the little boy making himself comfortable in his bed, going through the photos in the camera with the most delighted expression ever, she felt like ‘fuck yes’ wasn’t a strong enough answer.

Her first impulse, to jump inside the room and demand answers, was squashed down almost as soon as it hitted her. If she did, Tim would clam up and deny everything. Instead, she breathed in deeply and tapped her knuckles against the doorframe.

Tim almost jumped straight out of his skin, looking at her like a thief caught red handed. It’d be almost funny, if her heartbeat wasn’t still off the charts.

-Timothy, it’s quite late. Why are you awake at this hour? And with your camera? -she made a show of scanning his clothing, as if she wasn’t aware of the jeans and hoodie- Why aren’t you on your pajamas?

She could almost hear him thinking, brilliant mind kicking into overdrive as her prodigious son searched for an answer that would satisfy his mother and keep him out of trouble. Shame no such answer existed.

-I… was outside, mama -he mumbled; calling her like that, amping up the cuteness, was almost overdoing it, but she supposed the situation called for big guns- Taking pictures of the sky. I-I know it’s dark, and polluted, but I heard today was going to be extra-starry, and I thought maybe I could photograph the stars for you?

He was good, she ought to give him that. But years too young to even try to lie to her.

-I see -she answers, calmly walking closer to him. Her face betrayed nothing, and she could see how that was getting into him by the way he was fondling with the camera, almost carelessly compared to his earlier reverent touch.

He flinched when she sat by his side.

-M-mom?

-Well? -an arched eyebrow- Aren’t you going to show me? You did something incredibly dangerous, climbing down your window- no, don’t even try to lie, I saw you climbing back in. Don’t think we won’t be talking about that in the morning. But you did something truly reckless, for those pictures for me. The least I can do is see them.

Quick, trembling hands fumbled a bit with the buttons. Janet was honestly surprised when he turned the camera around, showing actual sky pictures to her. She believed it a bluff. Maybe preventive measures, in case he got caught? She was sure he was lying, because even if they were sky pictures, it wasn’t a particularly nice view, all foggy and polluted Gotham landscape.

She also noticed (though pretended not to) how those angles weren't ones he could achieve from their backyard, which upped her panic levels a few notches. Her baby had been alone, at night, away from home, in this shithole of a city.

-What a pity -she says, instead, giving back the camera, despite her burning desire to search for older pictures to get an idea of her son’s true activities-, those look like the usual sky. I would have loved to see the stars. Well, not your fault, this place is just ugly. Maybe we should move to Metropolis, I’m sure there are stars there.

-Mom…!

-Hush, now, go to sleep. We are talking about sneaking out and bedtimes tomorrow, I’m too tired right now.

She could see his anxiety (at moving away? Why did he love this place so much?), but he must have realized he’d push his luck too far if he insisted, so he kissed her cheek and let her tuck him in. 

Despite her bone-deep tiredness, Janet couldn't get a single second of shut eye at all. By six a.m and truly out of ideas, she picked up the phone. Too respectful of Nicole’s boundaries to bother her at that hour (or at least, not desperate enough; had the situation been a little more urgent, she wouldn’t have hesitated to drag her to the manor kicking and screaming), she called Lex.

At the fifth ring, her old friend's voice answered- I have a conference with the president in a few hours and need rest, this better be important.

-Please, your sleep schedule is even worse than mine. I need an opinion.

-And is Al Ghul unavailable? Why are you bothering me, when you two usually ignore my advice and go to each other?

-Don’t be jealous, green isn’t your color. Lavender isn’t either, but well, I guess you can’t win all your battles…

-Bold words for someone asking for help.

-Who said anything about help? I just need a new perspective. And I’m already regretting going to you for it.

-Well, I’m awake now, so might as well. Mercy -Luthor’s voice sounded a little muffled, probably covering the receiver while he addressed his bodyguard slash buttler- I’ll be in the study, bring me coffee.

She gave him a few minutes, twirling one of her dark locks in her pointer finger. Laying in bed, unmade by all the tossing and turning she did for the last hours, she looked the picture of unrest. Luthor would laugh himself sick if he saw her now.

-Alright, I have coffee now. What happened?

-I caught Tim coming back home  after sneaking out last night. It looked like he did it before, multiple times; he had specific shoes for it that he hid, and even got some backup-plan photographs to make it look like he was just in the backyard photograpying the sky.

She heard the squeaking sound his chair made as he sat straighter, floored by her confession. 

-You should oil that chair. Is unbecoming for your image if it makes that kind of sounds everytime you move on it.

-Sorry, I can’t answer properly to the last part because I’m still reeling for the opening bit.

-Weak.

He ignored her (rude), muttering under his breath- Tim what? No, he wouldn’t… well, he does have Janet’s genes, so maybe…

-So -she cut him off, because if he kept that line of thinking, she would hang up and he still hadn’t given her any advice-, your thoughts?

-Get a bodyguard on him 24-7 who’ll keep him from going out at night -he answered quick as a wip, not even needing to think it through. She huffed.

-If it were that easy, I wouldn't need your opinion, you fool. This is my son we are talking about. Guilt and duty might keep him from going out, if I appeal to those, but brute force and shackles? He’s smart, smarter than you, maybe even than me. If he really wants to go, and finds no moral obstacles, he’ll find a way. 

-So, do what you said, attack his conscience. 

-I want to keep him safe, not emotionally destroy him.

-Forbid him from going? Like you said, he’s a dutiful son, and very well behaved.

-Which means he’ll make sure I think he’s obeying, but no guarantees he’ll actually do it. Think harder.

A few minutes went by, before the man sighed.

-You said it yourself, if he really wants to go, there’s little you can do, short of locking him up like a prince in a tower. Maybe speak to him, tell him your reasons to worry… and get him some martial arts teacher, to give him a fighting chance if he ends up disobeying anyway.

----.----

After speaking to Luthor and a quick call to Nicole for a favor (namely, get Lady Shiva to accept a work as a sensei for Tim), Janet slept for a solid nine hours. Eating, overseeing some papers and phoning her secretary to clean her schedule for the rest of the week, and she was ready to face her son after having dinner together. 

They sat on Tim’s bed, and she held his hand as she spoke to him. About how cold it was, how easy it was, before he was born. How life was do this, think about that, conquer here, throw something away there. Act, consequence, simple as that. Clinical as that.

It was different, she said, when he came to her life, to her arms. Because it was warm, and difficult, and so, so scary. She’d never been so afraid of the butterfly effect before. Now, consequences of a misstep could come to bite her in twenty years, a simple act  now could make Tim despise her in the future.

“I’ve never been so afraid in my life”, she told him, baring her soul for the first time in her life. “But I’ve also never been happier, and it’s all because of you.”

“I love you”, she told him, giving her heart away for the first time in her life. “And I can’t lose you.”

Those words were the hardest for her to say. She did it, anyway. Because he needed to hear them, and because they might be enough to keep him from pulling last night’s stunt again.

By the time she was done, Tim’s face was a mess of tears and snot. He hadn’t uttered a single word, holding onto her hand like a lifeline, but his smile was the brightest, prettiest thing she’s ever seen.

-I’ll be careful, Mom -he promised, between wrecked sobs. It had truly affected him, to hear her heart thoughts so bluntly. She ought to do this more often, if he treasured it so much- I.. I won’t go out at night alone, not until I’m someone not even the Rogues can mess with. I promise -he looks at his bedside table, where the camera sits, and looks regretful but determined at the same time. She knows he means it. Whatever feeling he got from sneaking out to take pictures, it evidently wasn’t as strong as what he felt now, holding his mom’s hand and shaking from such strong emotions.

-Thank you -she breathed in deeply, relaxing for the first time since the night before, letting go of his hand to hug his shoulders, pressing him into her side.

After a few seconds of silence, he weaseled out of her hold, raising a hand to halt her when she tried to follow his example and get up- Stay there a minute, Mom, I have something to show you.

With that, he sprinted to the light switch, and turned them off. But a slight, greenish glow remained in the room, and then she noticed the glow in the dark stars sticking to the ceiling.

There were… a lot of them.

Tim came back and sat once again next to her, hand quickly snatching hers.

-You said… you said you wanted to see the stars, so I made you a little galaxy. Whenever you want to see them, you can come here… You’ll also know, that way, that I’m here and not sneaking out.

Thanking people wasn’t something Janet did often. But she had said ‘I love you’ today, and that one was a first, so this wasn’t too far fetched for her.

-Thank you, Tim.

Feedback

A week after showing his mother his multiple closets full of disguises and aliases’ clothing, he was called into her office. 

He had expected some questions, maybe even feedback or advice in how to perfect his portrayal of other people.

He hadn’t expected this.

-..and I know I’m not as… adapted to the ever changing times as younger people like you. Me, Lex, sometimes Nicole, we are too set on our ways, but. 

She cleared her throat. Tim still wasn’t sure he wasn’t having some kind of fever dream.

-But. It’s important for you to know that I… I won’t ever judge you for something you are. I might judge your actions, like when you accept Todd’s offers for a ride downtown, or Grayson’s requests for a dance, or when you are too dumb/ kind, too kind, towards other people… But I’ll never judge you for something you didn’t choose. Like this.

In the midst of this confusing speech, Tim still couldn't quiet comprehend why mom was gesturing towards the shoes on the desk. They were simple, red heels, not even that high, belongings of Caroline Hill, one of his more successful aliases. It was a wonder how people on the Alley’s clinic hadn’t catched on that their favorite voluntary nurse slash doctor in training was a fifteen year old kid instead of the nineteen year old shy girl they thought, but it was an ego boost when they called him Miss Hill, and a boost to his medical skills when they taught him something new.

-I understand this is an… -a quick glance to the papers in her desk. Had mom… wrote this down beforehand? What…?- age of changes, yes, an age of changes for you. And you are… discovering- no, learning yourself. And I’m honored that you trusted me enough to show me that, and came to me in this… confusing times.

Tim opened his mouth to speak. Mom seemed to panic, as much as mom ever did anyways, quickly sorting through her sheets of… Information? Pointers?

-Not that I think you are confused! I trust that you know yourself the best, and I trust whatever you say to me are your honest feelings on the matter. 

-I… I am confused -he managed to blurt out. 

Mom winced, and searched among her papers some more. When she seemed to find whatever it was, she pulled it above the others, gave them a quick glance, and kept going- It’s okay if you don’t know it yet, too. There’s more than just… male or female. According to my research, there’s a ‘neither’, ‘both’ and ‘sometimes one, sometimes the other’ option.

Janet seemed lost at her own words. Tim could relate. He wasn’t even sure they were talking about his aliases anymore.

-What I mean to say is -she breathed in deeply, letting the papers fall to the desk and meeting his eyes head on-, I love you. You are my son, daughter, neither, both, whatever you feel, but still mine. My child, and nothing you do about your… identity or sexuality can change that. I’ll always accept you, as you are. And if anyone ever gives you trouble about it, you can always come to me and I’ll set their minds straight, or remove them from the picture.

Tim felt fondness surging in his chest, even as his mind came to an abrupt halt when he finally understood what this was all about.

-You might have to be patient with me, or explain some concepts, as I learn about this, because its all new information to me. But I promise you I’ll always love you no matter what, and I’m willing and ready to do my best to/

-Mom -he finally choked up, torn between embarrassment and profound love- I’m not… I’m a boy. I really, really appreciate all this, but you don’t need to… I mean, the shoes and clothes? It’s because I’m making aliases, so I can learn different things and meet people without it being traced back to me. Like, tools. Caroline Hill, the shoes owner, for example, is a tool to learn about medicine, and practice the way of women in case I ever need to disguise myself as one. Not… not actual representations of Tim Drake.

There was a minute of silence.

-Well, this is… unexpected.

-But -he continued, cheeks warm but hurting from smiling so hard- you are the best mom ever, and this learning you are doing? It’s great, even if not applicable to me, because it… it’s good, for people to understand and accept other people like that. It makes you a better person, and I’m really proud of you.

He got up from his seat and walked around the desk, sitting in the floor by his mom’s chair like he did when he was a toddler, and rested his head in her lap, hugging her legs, eyes going to hers with wonder and happiness. She seemed utterly relieved, both at not having fucked up their chat, and at him not being mad at the misunderstanding.

-Aliases, huh. I can help with that. We can talk about it over dinner, and I’ll give you some suggestions.

-Thanks, mom. And, hum, since you brought up the whole gender and sexuality stuff… this might be a good moment to let you know I’m bi.

Long, sharp nails scratched his scalp softly, his eyes closing almost on instinct. Her laugh ringed in his ears.

-It doesn’t matter to me, Timothy. Boy, girl… whoever you bring home, I’ll…

He smiled, expectant.

-... never accept them. No one, no matter their genders, is good enough for my son.

Ah, there she was, the mother he knew and loved.

Movie

Tim, sitting in his study, didn’t even raise his eyes from the paperwork mom had assigned him (to help make him accustomed to dealing with it for when he’ll have a more central role in DI)  when the door opened and closed with a bang. He continued signing contracts with one hand, while the other patted his desk for his phone, shooting a quick text to the butler without looking.

-Can you believe it? -his intruder clamored, walking back and forth in front of Tim’s desk, hands messing through long locks of black hair.

-No -he replied, eyes still not leaving his work- It's amazing, how the stock market dropped on Wayne Enterprises. What is Bruce thinking, with the neon knights? He can’t do that and then go gallivanting around the world alone again, the stockholders won’t stand for such a big inversion without the logical follow up. I need to phone Damian about this, maybe he can ask his brothers to pose as Bruce and/

-I’m not talking about your precious Waynes!

-I know -he replied, hand finishing the last stroke of his signature, raising his eyes to his godmother just as the door opened and the butler brought a tea (and coffee) set, placing it by the little table in the corner of the study-, but I needed a few minutes to finish this before paying attention to you, Aunt. Now, a cup of tea? I’ll be having coffee, but it might not be the best for your frayed nerves.

-My nerves aren’t frayed, you little brat. Show some respect. Where is my cute little angel of a godson? -she complained, sitting as elegantly as ever in the plus couch by the little table. Tim sat opposite her.

-He hasn't slept in three days -and is being asked to meddle into adult’s problems, but he didn’t voice that part, merely mixing ingredients in the steaming cup-, It’s natural to be bitter. Now, tea?

She didn’t answer, but accepted the offered drink, already prepared to her tastes perfectly. Despite her anger, she smiled. Two sugars, no milk, a little lemon, the smallest hint of vodka. Her godson knew her so well.

A few seconds went by as Tim readied his own coffee and downed half. The butler topped the cup for him, and then left just as quietly as he had came.

-Now, want to tell me what has you so mad?

He already knew, but playing innocent was one of his strengths. Bruce still blamed Dick for the incident on the music room of the manor, despite the fact that Tim had been there at the moment and his eldest far away on a secret mission civilian Tim wasn't supposed to know about. That was the true power of a goodie two shoes.

-Your mother, she… You know we were planning on going to the movies today, and she…!

-Ah -he nodded, as if only catching up then- She went with Dana, right?

Nicole gritted her teeth, downing her cup in one long glup to calm herself. Tim merely took the teapot and filled it again.

-Janet doesn’t even like the movies! She hates being around other people. The only reason she goes is to humor me, and now… That woman…

-Dana is a good person -he intervened, because he genuinely liked her. Dana Winters had been in charge of taking care of his comatose dad until his death, and they had spent some time together during his visits to Jack. A lot of his alias Caroline Hill had been based on her. And right now, she...

-Too good -Nicole muttered, which Tim suspects, was the root of the problem.

-Shouldn't you be glad? -he asked, head tilted in his best show of naivety- That mom is trying to get someone kind to be by her side? Dad wasn’t… dad wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t as nice to mom as he could have been. I, for one, want her to be happy.

-Janet doesn’t do nice.

It took everything in him to not answer ‘well, she might tonight’, because that would ruin his innocent image, and he was afraid Nicole might actually stab Dana. Really, refraining himself like that was almost painful. Mom better appreciate his sacrifice.

-The nicest thing she could ever stand was you -she continued, ignorant to her godson’s internal struggle-, and you are her baby.

-I’m fifteen -he felt compelled to inform her, but was promptly shushed.

-To us, you never grew past your chubby stage.

-I didn’t have a chubby stage, and you can’t prove otherwise -he’d know. He was the one who got rid of the evidence.

-Back to the point… Dana is no good fit for your mom. She’d end up tearing off her own hair in frustration in less than a month after countless discussions of morality and ‘doing the right thing’. She can barely resist when it’s you doing the nagging and, again, you are the exception to all of Janet’s rules.

Tim hummed, thinking distractedly how someone as smart as Nicole couldn’t see that Dana’s good heart wasn’t the problem here. Oh well, he needed to be a little more direct.

-And who do you think would be a good match for mom? Someone distant, like dad? Or easily manipulated?

A growling almost came out of Nicole’s mouth. Tim refilled his coffee cup again.

-Neither… those make for good tools, but not partners. Janet needs someone who understands her, who couldn’t judge, who likes her as rotten and twisted as she is.

Should he protest? This was his mother they were talking about. Not that she was wrong, but… still.

Deciding against it, because he needed to get back to work and this conversation was already exhausting, he nodded- Mm, but plenty of people in high society adore her... 

-Those fools either don’t know of her true nature, or are too scared of it. None would make for a good life companion.

-So, someone who isn’t scared of her, knows her inside out, isn’t morally upright…

-They should also have similar objectives in life -Nicole interjected, empty cup clattering against the plater when she placed it there-, otherwise Janet might feel the need to remove them to keep them off her way.

-Objectives, like…?

-Staying on top of the food chain of the corporate world, for example. And keeping loved ones safe. Like you, for her.

“And Damian, for you”, he didn’t say. Finally, they seemed to be reaching the end of the discussion. Just a few more lines...

-And they should be strong -she kept on, digging her own grave for Tim’s convenience-, because Janet is, too, which means her enemies are as well, and she needs someone to have her back if she ever needs it.

-I don’t think -he wondered, finger tapping his chin in childlike confusion- that such a person exists. Someone as morally compromised as mom, strong enough to help her achieve her objectives, who knows her and loves her. I never met someone like that… I mean, besides you.

Time seemed to stop for Nicole, who dropped the scon she had halfway through her mouth. Tim knew what having a romantic realization felt like, so he let her deal with it while he finished his coffee. After a few minutes letting her stew, he force a look of curiosity and concern on his face- Aunt Nicole? Are you alright? You went really quiet…

Nicole wasn’t sitting in front of him any longer. Okay, he’ll forgive the rudeness, in the spirit of love and all that. Picking up his phone, he sent Dana a quick text, warning her to make herself scarce.

“Everything going according to plan on my end”

“Ah, okay. I’ll thank Janet for accompanying me, and ask her to just be friends. Then I’ll catch a taxi :) “

“Yeah, let me know once you are back on your house, it’s getting pretty late”

“Aw, you’re such a gentleman. Me and your mom spent all afternoon talking about you, you know. And Nicole”

“You buttered her up to the idea?”

“She seemed to be considering ending this ‘date’ early as well to go looking for her, so I’m guessing I did ;) “

“Thank you again, Dana “

“Make sure they invite me to the wedding, and we’re even!”

“If they don’t elope, that’s it”

“They won’t. That would mean missing the chance to make Uncle Lex miserable by asking him to plan the whole ceremony”

Smiling despite himself, he put his coffee cup down and went back to his desk. Better to get work out of the way before Mom and Nicole came back and informed him of the good news. 

Shocked face number three might do.

[pappydaddy]

Wedding Crasher (s.h)

a/n: i am loving looking through all my first fics! i remember posting them all (since it’s only been like a year). i still cannot believe how this blog grew, it amazes me. anywho, i will be revamping this by rewriting it eventually, but for now, i am just making it look like my newer fics! i will also be using this for my speak now collection when taylor releases her version of the album and when i finish the folklore/evermore and fearless collections!

pairing: steve harrington x fem!reader

tv show/movie: stranger things

not requested

tv show/movie: stranger things

warnings: angst with a happy ending (for steve and the reader at least)

masterlist | taglist | wips | navigation

- not my gif -   

Y/n sat in front of her vanity, finally alone with her thoughts. Her bridal party were rushing around checking on every single little detail. Her mother was most likely off yelling that she wanted pink roses, not white lining the aisle. It seemed that everyone was fretting over trivial things when it was obvious that the Bride was having a crisis. Her Fiancé was determined that they needed to be married in her hometown, deciding that was what Y/n wanted. 

  Being in Hawkins once again brought back a lot of memories. Memories she wanted to bury deep into her mind and forget. Death, heartbreak, horror, fear. Those were paired with horrible flashbacks. The one that hit her hardest was the memory of the man she still loves with all her heart. The man who broke her heart into a million pieces when he told her he couldn’t do it anymore. The man who every inch of this damn town pushed him to the front of her mind again - no matter how hard she tries to push it back. When they were together, they were positive that they were going to be together forever. Until they weren’t. 

  Blinking the tears blurring her vision away, a single one rolled down her cheek. Wiping it away harshly, she stared at her reflection. Her eyes were dull, her face void of any emotion. Her movements were lethargic and slow as she stroked the makeup brush over her cheeks, dusting them with blush. She looked magnificent with her hair all done, her face almost completely finished. She looked so much more mature than she did last time she was in town. Her face had thinned out more, her posture improving as she molded herself into a professional woman. She wasn’t the same wide-eyed, naive little girl who left this town with a broken heart and all her possessions. 

  She didn’t want to marry Jessie, her Fiancé. Sure, he was a wonderful man. He was sweet, caring, professional and had a good future, but she didn’t love him like he loved her. No matter how far they got in their relationship, she couldn’t get over the love of her life - Steve. Everything Jessie did, she found herself comparing him to Steve. From the way he walked to the way he made her feel when they made love. Nobody was able to make her the way Steve made her feel. Her heart was heavy, a pain spreading through her chest. Steve didn’t want anything to do with her. He made that clear the day he ripped her heart out and left it broken and bleeding in her hands. 

  Taking a deep breath, she shifted in her seat, blinking before rolling the mascara wand over her eyelashes. Her eye shadow covered eyelids sparkling faintly in the bright lights bordering the mirror. She needed to forget Steve, to ignore the slideshow of memories playing like a reel in her mind. Setting the tube of mascara down, she smeared the red lipstick on her lips carefully. It was only a matter of time before her Bridesmaids burst back into the room, rushing to get her into her wedding dress. 

  Rising from her seat, pulling the sliver satin dressing robe closer before tightening the belt holding it closed. Her bare feet padded across the bridal suite towards the wardrobe that her perfectly white gown was hanging in. Pulling the beautifully crafted wooden doors open, she was greeted by the ball gown. Her dainty hand reached out, her fingers brushing against the lace details. The train was perfectly folded at the bottom of the wardrobe to avoid getting wrinkles in the fabric. It was a beautiful dress, but she didn’t want it either. She didn’t want a large, puffy dress with capped sleeves or sleeves at all. Her mother insisted on this one and since she was settling for her husband, what would it matter if she settled for her dress too. 

  The door opened, but Y/n didn’t pull her eyes from her dress as guilt and sadness settled in her stomach. “I was wondering what was taking you guys so long. I need to get into my dress.” She said as the door softly closed behind whoever just walking in. She had assumed it was her bridesmaids, freaking out that the Bride still wasn’t dressed. 

  “You’ll look beautiful in it,” The voice that spoke was masculine, soft and certainly didn’t belong to one of her bridesmaids. She stilled, her hand pausing as it trailed over her dress. The voice, though she hadn’t heard it in so many years, she instantly knew. Her heart jumped happily, but it broke once again all at the same time. “Just like I always dreamed of.” It spoke again at her silence. 

  Clearing her throat, she turned around, her hand dropping from her dress as she collected herself. “What are you doing here, Steve?” She asked, finally looking at him. Her breath hitched at the sight of him, but she tried to disguise it, not wanting him to know that he still effected her - to know that she still loved him. He had also matured, but somehow, he still looked exactly the same. The same bushy, floppy hair that Y/n had loved to run her fingers through. His big brown eyes that held the mysteries of the world in them. 

  “I heard you were in town and I had to come see you.” He told her, his eyes trailing over her. The way her curled hair cascaded over her shoulders made her look like an angel to him, the sunlight shining through the windows forming a halo in her hair. 

  “Why? Last time I checked, you were the one who left me,” She reminded him, her hands fidgeting with the dangling part of her robe belt. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t look away from him. She couldn’t help but notice of his eyes missed the goofy gleam that were normally held in them. “Usually after someone says they don’t want to be with you, they don’t show up at your wedding.” 

  “I know, I spent two days arguing with myself and the kids about if I should do this or not,” He sent a tentative smile towards her at the mention of the kids what weren’t really kids anymore. Y/n couldn’t help the corner of her mouth twitching into a tiny little smile when he brought the kids up. They were all invited to the wedding. She wanted Max and El to be part of her bridal party, but her mother refused, saying that having children as bridesmaids wouldn’t make Jessie’s snobbish family happy. Jessie also backed her mother up and wouldn’t let them be seated close to the alter either. “I just need to know if you love him. If you love this guy.” Steve’s voice broke slightly, tears blurring his vision. 

  “Of course I love him!” She said too quickly and too defensively. She knew her mistake the second she said it. With anyone else, it would have been able to slip by, but Steve knew her inside out. Her hands dropped the belt, her eyes wide. Steve took a step towards her, his sneaker squeaking against the fancy hardwood floor. Jessie’s family paid for everything while her mother planned everything. Neither of the family’s spared a single expense, pulling out all the stops. Money was no issue for Jessie’s family. 

  “No you don’t,” He muttered, taking another step towards her, slowly closing the vast difference between the as she stood still. Part of her wanted him to reach her, to grab her and kiss her like he did when they were younger. “I can tell by your voice and by how you don’t have the glow you get when your happy.” He stopped, the space between them only a foot smaller, someone could still parallel park a car between then and have room to spare. 

  “Jessie is my Fiancé, I love him, Steve.” She tried to deny, but she knew there was no use. He could read her like a book. He was always able to. 

  “Do you love him or does your mother love him?” He posed the question, taking another small step towards the girl he was trying to win back. After all those years, he yearned for her to come back to town, if only to pass through, but alas, she never did. Until now. Her wedding day. Her mother didn’t waste a second to leave town behind her daughter, leaving Steve with no way to find her. The kids were too mad at him for breaking Y/n’s heart to give her information to him. If it weren’t for Steve finding Dustin’s invitation, he wouldn’t even know she was going to be in town, let alone getting married. 

  Y/n tightened her jaw, not wanting to answer his question. Her silence was enough of an answer for Steve. “I made a mistake five years ago. I was scared and young, I was overwhelmed by my feelings for you and my parents were telling me that I was only a kid and I didn’t know what love was,” Steve gushed, his eyes pleading with her. “They told me that we weren’t going to last and I believed them. I believed them so much that I let them convince me to break up with you, but you have to know that I regret that day and I will regret forever because I love you and I’m never going to stop.” He ranted, taking a bigger step towards her. 

  Her eyes were glued to his. She believed every word leaving his mouth with all her heart, but she couldn’t do anything about it. This was her wedding day. In a few hours, she was going to be walking down the aisle towards her Fiancé. “I don’t love him,” She answered his earlier question verbally. Gulping, she took a deep breath, closing her eyes. Her shoulders dropped as she exhaled, her eyes opening once again to see Steve still staring at her, his watery eyes flicking over every feature of her face. “I love you. I never stopped loving you despite you breaking my heart. I only dated Jessie to try and get over you and I ended up too deep into the relationship before I realized that I was never going to get over you.” Tears rolled down her face, her lip quivering uncontrollably. She was finally letting everything she felt out. Steve was always her confidant, her safety blanket. The person she felt the most comfortable around, the person she told everything to, the person who knew everything about her. 

  “Then come with me right now. Leave Jessie, don’t even walk down the aisle, don’t put that dress on. Run away with me, because you can bet your ass that I will get in there and ruin that wedding,” Steve spoke with such passion. His voice went soft, his eyes softening. “Because I am not going to lose you again.” 

  “I-” She started to say, but she stopped, her mouth open as she thought it over. 

  “Please, Y/n, I love you, you love me. We’ll run away and I’ll move out to the city with you, I’ll go anywhere as long as I’m with you. Just please don’t walk down that aisle.” He spilled his heart out, his throat dry. His heart thumped on his rib-cage painfully. He honestly didn’t expect for her to tell him she still loved him. He just couldn’t let her get married without knowing how he felt and he couldn’t live with himself if he let her marry someone she didn’t love. 

  “I want to, I want to so badly.” Her shoulders shook as she started to break down. She had a way to live the life she wanted with the man she loved, but she knew that so much time and money went into this wedding. So many people were making sure everything is perfect, what would they think if she just ran away? 

  “Then do it, baby,” Steve’s voice broke. “Just come with me and we can live the life we talked about when we were younger. Your mother will get over it and if she doesn’t, we can ignore her like my parents. I can’t let you get married when I know you’d rather be with me. I’m not going to give up like I did five years ago, and I’m going to be the one you’re walking down the aisle to, not him.” 

  “Our relationship never was a traditional one, I guess this is fitting to us,” She let out a wet chuckle as she wiped at her cheeks, trying to keep her makeup intact. She was certainly glad that she used waterproof eye makeup. Sniffling, she blinked away her tears, smiling at Steve who was silent as he watched her with hopeful eyes. “Let’s do it, Harrington, let’s run away together.” He smiled wide at her words, walking briskly towards her, closing the distance rapidly. His arms wound around her waist, pulling her flush against him. His lips crashed against hers, her hands instantly flying to cup his face. It was almost like no time had gone by as their lips moved against each other, molding together perfectly. A perfect fit. Y/n felt just like a teenager again, the feelings she had five years ago rushing back. 

  Her back curved as she danced on her tip toes while Steve curved his back to match her, keeping them pressed up against each other. Y/n giggled into the kiss, smiling as they pulled away, still in each other’s arms. “Let’s get out of here,” Steve smiled, unwrapping himself from her. “Do you have any clothes?” He looked around the bridal suite for something for her to change into. 

  “Just the wedding dress.” She jabbed her thumb in the direction of the hanging dress. The doorknob rattled, making the pair snap their eyes towards it. The knob rattled more before the person on the other side started to slap the door with their palms. 

  “Y/n, why is this door locked? We need to get your dress on!” She heard the voice of her Maid of Honor on the other side, her palm hitting the door harder. Biting her red painted lip, she thought of the fly. Steve gave her a panicked look, waiting for her to do something. 

  “I’m busy trying to settle some nerves! Did you by any chance make sure the carpet doesn’t have any winkles in it that I can trip on?” She yelled through the door, needing her to leave. The banging stopped, but Y/n was positive she was still there. Sitting on the couch, she slipped her heels on, needing something to wear on her feet. 

  “I have no idea! I will check on that, Y/n.” She called through the door, the sound of her heels clicking wildly as she walked away, a mission set in her mind. Y/n stood up, her heels on her feet and a smile on her face. Steve stood there, looking at her with his hand stretched out for her to grab. 

  “Come on, L/n, we don’t have much time to make our escape,” He told her. She grabbed his hand, prompting him to lead her to the door. Their hearts were soaring, adrenaline pumping through their veins at the thought of being caught. Unlocking the door, his hand grasped the door handle, pausing before he twisted it. He looked back at her, the goofy gleam in his eyes once again. Her eyes sparkled at the sight of it and neither of them could wipe the wide smiles off their faces. “I love you so damn much.” Steve muttered softly. 

  “I love you too.” Her tone matched him. Turning back to face the door, Steve twisted the handle, opening the door and poking his head out. He scanned the hall carefully, before leading Y/n out, the pair of them rushing down the hall towards the stairwell, knowing everyone was taking the elevators. Their heart hammered against their chests and they kept throwing nervous looks over their shoulders. Their fast footsteps were loud in the echoing, bleak stairwell as they rushed down two flights of stairs, bursting out of the staff entrance. The nice summer air hitting Y/n’s bare legs that weren’t covered by her dressing robe. 

  Steve pulled her towards his car that was most likely illegally parked, but he didn’t care. “You still have the BMW?” She asked, perking her eyebrow at him as he yanked her door open, looking around nervously to check for anyone who would try and stop them. Steve ignored her, helping her slide into the car while keeping her robe tight to her. Steve rushed around to his side, sliding in and slamming the door. 

  “I can’t believe you agreed to come with me, I honestly thought you were going to marry that guy no matter what,” Steve told her, tearing out of the parking lot, speeding down the road. “I’m glad I crashed your wedding and got you back.” He admitted, his hand coming off the steering wheel to rest on her thigh, just like he did when they were younger. She looked down at his hand, smiling lightly before looking back at Steve who kept his eyes on the road. 

  “I’m glad you still loved me, I thought I was going to be stuck in that dreadful life forever.” She sighed, settling back into the seat. Steve scoffed, glancing at her quickly. 

  “Like I would let that happen,” He remarked, looking back at the road. “We’re Steve and Y/n, we’re meant to be together! Everyone knows that!” He exclaimed. Y/n laughed, nodding. 

  “We’re Steve and Y/n alright,” She agreed, smiling widely. “Wedding Crasher and Runaway Bride, together forever.”                    

[bisexualalexclaremontdiaz]

The Magpie And Her Bandit: Chapter 3

Wow this took forever didn’t it? I started it a while back but then completely forgot about it! So sorry! This one is in Maggie’s POV and is SUPER short. Like, 900 words. Sorry, again, I know, I suck! Other Chapters

Maggie leaped over the fence, landing on the ground as gracefully as any gymnast. She ran from the park, purposely keeping her pace slightly slow so that Max, who she knew was running after her, could follow. She wondered why Mrs. Mallard was at Cosmopolis Park when it seemed so irregular for her to do so. Did she know that Maggie took her necklace? How could she have seen? Maggie was always careful and made it away uncaught almost every time. Besides, if she had seen Maggie take it, why didn’t she go to the police? Why did the old lady come after her herself? These questions swirled around in her mind and she hadn’t noticed she had stopped running until Max came up behind her.

“We aren’t done talking about this?” he said, slightly out of breath.

Maggie raised a brow, “The only thing we need to talk about is your lack of stamina.”

“This isn’t a joke, Mags,” he said concernedly, “You said that you would stop stealing.”

“I said I’d try to stop stealing,” she said, as the two of them walked back towards Max’s house, “And I did. For about two months”

He gave her a disappointed look that broke her heart. She sighed.

“I really did try,” She muttered, crossing her arms defensively.

His eyes softened. “Yeah, I know.”

“It’s just,” she starts, “I always needed to steal to survive. My parents were killed and my sister abandoned me. I didn’t have anyone to look after me and the foster houses I was put in weren’t exactly five-star hotels. The parents often neglected and abused us.”

Tears started to well in her eyes, “I remember when one of the kids came out, our foster parents wouldn’t give him food for days at a time. I would have to steal food or valuables to sell off just so that he could survive. I was lucky. I ran away when I was only 8 and the Renegades saved me. I didn’t have to endure the terrible torture others had to. But even those few years were enough to teach me what I needed to do to survive.”

She felt the tears drip down her face and she felt ashamed. Ashamed of letting her emotions show. Ashamed of being naive enough to think that this wasn’t what life was. Ashamed that, even after all these years, she was still the scared little girl who didn’t have anyone to look after her.

“Oh, Maggie,” Max whispered, “I knew the foster homes were bad, but I never imagined…” He trailed off.

“I’m sorry that you had to go through that.” he said sympathetically, “And I’m sorry you felt as though you had to hide it.”

“I wasn’t hiding it,” she said truthfully, “I just don’t like reliving those moments.”

Abruptly, she wiped her tears and laughed. “What a drama fest, huh?” she tried to school her face into indifference, “Sorry to dump tha-”

Before she could finish her sentence, Max enveloped her into a hug. 

“Don’t ever think that you are burdening me with your problems.”

She smiled and hugged him back. “You’re the best friend a girl could ask for, Maxie.”

He suddenly broke away from her, his face slightly red. 

“Yeah,” he said, looking a bit disappointed, “Your best friend.”

Maggie was confused. Weren’t they just being so open with each other? Now he was back to his strange behaviour? I was hoping things were finally going back to normal, Maggie thought sadly. 

“Hey, Max,” she started, “Can we talk about your weir-”

Suddenly, she saw something that made her heart started to beat fast. “Max, we have to go now.” She grabbed his hand and started to walk quickly in the opposite direction of his house. Her instincts told her to run, but she didn’t want to seem too conspicuous.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing.” she said, not wanting to panic him, “Just that car seems a bit familiar.”

“What car?” He began to turn his head but Maggie pulled him back.

“Don’t be so obvious!” She said under her breath, as though someone may be listening, “I just saw it about two blocks back. I think it may be following us.”

“What?!” He exclaimed.

“Not so loud!” She began to walk faster. “We just have to be a bit careful about our next move.”

Max bit his lip. “I think we should head to the police.”

“No.” She said firmly. Maggie didn’t like the police all that much. The few times she was caught stealing brought her straight to the police station, so it was certain that there was no love lost between them. “If they see us heading towards the police they’ll bail and head straight to your house. Who knows what they’d do to your dads?”

“But, they wouldn’t know where I lived right?”

“To be honest, they could.” Maggie said apologetically, “You’re Max Everhart, you’re not exactly low-key.” After the supernova, Max became a bit of a hero. He didn’t love the spotlight, but he got his fair share of it anyways. Interviews, photographs, fan clubs, all things that came with his fame. Thankfully, the commotion died down after a while as people started to settle in this new era.

“Ugh, I told Hugh that magazines were a bad idea!” He said, “So why do you think they’re following us?”

Maggie turned onto an emptier street. 

“We’re about to find out.”

[protagonistheavy]

I’m just gonna randomly shoot out some things about WW84 that sucked or were weird. It might be random but it’ll be just as coherent as the movie.

I immediately sensed this movie would suck when it begins with a voice-over by Diana explaining what the first ten minutes of the movie was going to be about, and then I knew FOR SURE it was going to suck when those ten minutes go and explain the moral of the next two hours of the film. This childhood flashback has no bearing on anything happening in the present, other than to setup the message that cheating and taking shortcuts is wrong.

Which, by the way, that message is so stupid and this flashback VALIDATES how bad it is. Diana is about to win this sports thing as a kid but gets disqualified at the last moment because when she got knocked off her horse, she took a shortcut to get back into the race. You’d think craftiness like that would be REWARDED somehow, but she’s punished for it, and it sets up this frustration that lasts for the entire movie. Not a good frustration, just something that annoys you.

I hate the presentation of this obstacle course by the way. It seemed really cool for like five minutes but the race got so tedious. You think she’s going to win when she jumps for the hoop -- no, she’s diving into the water, the race is still going. She gets to land! ... No, now it’s a horse riding segment. She shoots an arrow through a hoop, and at the stadium, they release a flag with her color! ... But that’s just hoop one of several that she needs to shoot. It’s so tedious and pointless, you never get the right sense of suspense.

Okay now for the bulk of the film.

Barbara’s weird focus on heels gets so grating, I could not believe how many times they emphasized her shoes. I get that they represent something larger but they don’t do anything with it, they just keep having people comment on her fucking shoes! and then after awhile, no mention of heels, it’s just dropped, it’s so uncanny how important fucking HEELS were for like 30 minutes of a film.

Barbara feeds a homeless guy on her way home, explained that she visits this guy almost everyday. We NEVER see this guy again, except for when Barbara is first turning “evil” (GOD I gotta explain that one) where he just... RANDOMLY APPEARS! He appears just to make Barbara look more evil, and then he’s just gone. SO ANNOYING!

And they do this AGAIN with another minor character. This guy named Carl???? Okay can ANYONE explain this guy to me? For NO REASON we see that Diana has like, this assistant named Carl that she just sort of shrugs off. And then he’s never mentioned again, never seen again, until like a whole hour later -- where Diana is apparently friends enough with this guy that he takes her on a tour through some federal building? And it’s HERE that they try to give CARL a fucking character quirk, even though he’s NEVER SEEN AFTER THIS? They like try to make him seem like a buddy of Diana’s or something like we should think this scene is kinda funny or fuck at least show that Diana has relationships with people. Nope.

And I’d say that’s a big problem for me with the film, Diana has NO connections with ANYONE in this film... EXCEPT HER DEAD PARTNER THAT COMES BACK TO LIFE IN SOME RANDOM GUY’S BODY, OH MY GOD. I just have to scream about that, what the FUCK was this plot??? They couldn’t just have Steve be wished back into existence somehow, no, the plot instead makes it so a RANDOM NEARBY GUY just gets POSSESSED by Steve, and then the movie has the nerve to just REPLACE THE GUY WITH STEVE’S ACTOR! Because apparently “that’s all Diana can see.” WHAT THE FUCK!!!! She had sex with this other person’s body several times, dude!! It’s so weird, they could have done ANYTHING but they chose this WEIRD plot!

And Steve NEVER HAD TO COME BACK! Why was Steve so fucking important?! Especially when they KNEW that they’d have to kill him off again anyway! They just thrust him back into the plot because they couldn’t think of ANYTHING else that would drive Wonder Woman into a conflict other than THE MAN IN HER LIFE. Holy shit, dude. It’s literally her WHOLE motive in this dumb film, grappling with how she’s just obsessed over this dead dude for DECADES, it’s such a pathetic state for WONDER WOMAN to be in.

Okay remember when I said Barbara turned evil and the homeless guy-- yeah yeah so her “turning evil” scene? Revolves around her fighting back against a street harasser. Yeah so earlier we see her get catcalled and pushed around by this random drunk guy, you know, the classic random drunk guys we know are on the streets. And Diana saves her. Later she’s in a TOTALLY different spot and the SAME DRUNK GUY harasses her AGAIN, literally the same drunk guy in the same clothes, doing the same shit as last time, even though it got him thrown into a trash can before. Yeah they use THIS GUY to demonstrate Barbara “turning evil” because now she has super strength and throws the guy down and kicks him across the street. WE’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL BAD FOR THIS DRUNK GUY. WE’RE SUPPOSED TO THINK “BARBARA, NO, YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” What the FUUUUCK? Why not have her do something evil that effects the homeless guy -- THAT would be a moment in which the audience says, “NO BARBARA, NO!” Instead it just seems like she’s, like, TOTALLY IN THE RIGHT! Like yeah maybe she’s going overboard but this guy TWICE has physically assaulted her and ALL she’s doing is kicking him, BECAUSE SHE’S DEFENDING HERSELF and MAKING A POINT to this fucking guy! Hoooly shit it’s just, so wrong to use THIS dynamic as the “turning point” for an evil character.

Yeah and also, Barbara’s whole plot? It’s just shy of a fetish story. The whole thing. One day this meek nerdy woman wakes up and her body is fuller and sexier, she’s more confident, getting stronger and taller -- I’ve genuinely read fetish stories less blatant than this. It’s so fucking weird to see happen, it gives me bad vibes.

Barbara’s character is just dropped so hard. It doesn’t explore her or her position well at all despite how hard it tries to make SOMETHING out of nothing. She has no motive other than being jealous of other people and wanting power, it’s actually really dumb how this normal and sweet woman gets turned into a literal monster just for having been EVIL enough to make a fucking wish on a dumb stone, and she gets NO redemption, no explanation for where she goes afterwards when the film ends. No one even seems to care that Barbara is just gone, but I guess that’s fair because by the end of the movie, fucking, a LOT happened in the world.

Yeah the climax is that the villain can grant wishes and so everyone in the world starts making wishes, and it shows how these wishes get immediately corrupted or cause widespread chaos. But humor me this: is there not a SINGLE person that would have used their wish for, like, “world peace?” Wouldn’t that ONE wish stop like half of all other wishes? And you might think “Adam that’s dumb, a wish can’t just grant world peace” FUCK YOU! THE LOGIC OF THESE WISHES IS THAT IT CAN LET THE DEAD POSSESS HUMAN BODIES, IT CAN INSTANTLY CREATE AND ALSO DISMANTLE NUCLEAR WARHEADS, IT CAN CREATE GIANT WALLS OF STONE AROUND A COUNTRY. How the FUCK was there not a SINGLE child -- JUST A NAIVE CHILD -- that was watching this broadcast and wished for world peace? It’s just, this WHOLE PLOT IS SO DUMB!

The villain has the power to grant wishes, but only if they VERY SPECIFICALLY say “I WISH.” So he has to CONSTANTLY word-trick people into wishing for exactly what he wants them to wish for, while ALSO touching them. This gets repeated MULTIPLE times. But what pisses me off the most is that it doesn’t explain well what he GETS from people making a wish. Because the first time we see him use this power, he does it to one of his investors, and gets the investor to wish for his financial success. IMMEDIATELY after the investor makes the wish, the villain steps away and just says “Okay but in return you have to give me all your money and stocks.” And then he just walks out of the building, while the investor yells at him to come back. ??? No written agreement, no contract or anything. The villain just gets this guy to say “I wish” and then decides what he himself gets out of it.

We don’t get explained until LATER that whenever someone makes a wish, “the wish” gets to take something precious from the wisher. So what the villain basically just gets to do is grant a wish and then just DECIDE what the person gives them. He gets an oil tycoon to make a wish, and then he just takes his security team and his oil, and the security team just goes along with it, they just plain out lose their free will whenever they’re part of a wish. What the fuck man. It’s so stupid! And like not stupid-stupid, this COULD have been a cool idea for a villain, but it’s played so comically DUMB that it can’t be taken seriously at all, it never gets explored in interesting ways. It’s just him running around, tricking people into saying “yeah I wish for that thing you said.”

And the villain is like... IN MY PERSPECTIVE, the villain FEELS like he was inspired by Donald Trump. He’s a conman, he does this “thing” with his hands when he talks, he lies to people constantly, he acts rich but he doesn’t actually have any money, he just puts on a front of being rich. And like the whole film I thought that he was white, like, a white American with just a weird accent -- no, he’s like, just... NOT white apparently! We see a flashback to him as a kid (his dramatic story is that he pissed the bed as a child and his dad hit him -- I’m not kidding) and he’s WAY DARKER SKINNED as a child. He’s just a totally different person. In fact when I first saw this scene, I thought that was HIS child! We see his kid several times and he’s darker skinned, but I just assumed, “oh okay, like, this is a white guy and his partner he had a kid with or whatever, wasn’t. Or he adopted or something.” No, apparently Max Lord the villain is not white... I don’t even know what to MAKE of that, it just seems like a clear error on the writer’s part that they didn’t realize MAYBE that’d have some importance to what the grander message in the story is.

The props suck. It all looked super fake. At one point a stone pillar gets knocked over and broken, it’s the fakest looking thing, hitting the ground like it’s made of styrofoam. So much of this movie seemed like it was produced from whatever was lying around the storage room. I seriously only think the 80s aesthetic was chosen because they had lots of 80s themed props and clothes they could use on the cheap, because the movie does NOTHING else with the time period -- NOTHING ELSE. It’s just an excuse to show off 80s fashion and trends, and how Diana never had 80s hair, SUCH A MISSED OPPORTUNITY BUT WHATEVER.

Even the acting just feels so cold. The major actors all put in a contractual amount of effort and nothing more, and all the side characters just couldn’t give a shit. Why would they? The plot is fucking bonkers and their characters are worthless. The only good acting I saw was from Barbara, and that only lasts for the first hour of the film when Barbara actually has a personality. After that she’s just delegated to being a villain that wears more and more villainous clothing, until she’s just a fucking cat beast out of no where.

Yeah we get no reason for why Barbara turns into a cat woman, other than when she was making a wish, she said she’d like to be an “apex predator.” So the wish turned her into a cat woman. The only cat-like thigns we even see ASSOCIATED with Barbara until this point, is that she’s fascinated by Diana’s leopard print heels (THE HEELS! THE HEELS!) and in her office is a model of a tiger. Im probably getting these animals mixed up but whatever. It’s so fucking dumb, she’s a GEOLOGIST! And yeah she’s also generically a few other types of doctors, but she’s in this film primarily as a GEOLOGIST -- WHY DID SHE GET CAT POWERS?

Diana hypes up this fucking armor out of NO WHERE, Steve just randomly comes across it in Diana’s room, it’s just covered up in cloth and propped against a wall. Why? Why is it like this? Diana has had that armor for awhile by this point, it’s a fucking RELIC of her culture, and everything else in her fancy home is also neatly organized and displayed. This important fucking armor though, never put away. Anyway it gets hyped up as being like indestructible, but literally in the backstory for it we’re told that it failed to keep the amazon warrior wearing it safe, it eventually failed her... and then sure enough, when Diana is wearing it for a fight against Barbara, it just doesn’t do anything! It just gets ripped apart! What the fuck was the point of making Diana wear something so TACKY when she never needed it?!? You’d THINK she would use the wings to fly... but by that point, DIANA JUST HAS FLIGHT POWERS! The suit offers NOTHING OF VALUE to hear except to get ripped up!

Diana just REMEMBERS, only ONCE, that she has fucking INVISIBILITY POWERS. Yeah they get into a jet and need to fly out undetected. So Diana just pulls out some Dragonball Z power out of no where and MAKES THE WHOLE JET INVISIBLE, including them inside of it. Even though this was NEVER mentioned EVER before that she could do this... Even though she specifically says “I’ve only tried this once on a coffee mug”... SHE GETS IT RIGHT, THE WHOLE JET TURNS INVISIBLE. Okay, now get this: HOW DOES AN INVISIBLE JET HELP HER? SHE LITERALLY JUST STATED THAT THEY HAVE RADARS, THEY CAN STILL DETECT THEM, SO WHAT DOES BECOMING INVISIBLE DO? THE RADAR WOULD STILL PICK THEM UP, WOULDN’T IT? Oh my god man. Oh my god. AND IT NEVER COMES BACK UP! THEY NEVER HAVE TO USE THE INVISIBLE JET OR THE INVISIBLE POWERS EVER AGAIN! WHAT A SHITTY, SHITTY WAY TO SHOEHORN IN A FUCKING PROP, HOLY FUCK!

Okay and okay okay okay WHY WAS DIANA JUST ALLOWED TO TAKE A JET? Did I miss something? She just walks through this security clearance area with Steve... she flashes a badge, she’s let into a hangar. She walks past a plane, then tells Steve to pick one out to fly. They get into the plane, they start to take off, and BEE-WOO-BEE-WOO everyone is suddenly like “STOP THAT PLANE, WHAT’S THAT PLANE DOING?” WHAT??? Uhhhh YOU LET HER IN? She had CLEARANCE? D-Did Diana seriously just not think this far? She has clearance to go there but she didn’t ask first “hey we’re gonna use one of these jets?” WHOSE JET IS SHE EVEN TAKING? WHERE ARE THEY? This scene made NO FUCKING SENSE! I seriously MUST have missed some explanation but like, why was she ALLOWED TO ENTER the hangar but NOT ALLOWED TO FLY? And why wouldn’t she just-- HUBROUOUFBOSF

And the pacing of the film is just terrible, if you haven’t picked up on it. The first half of the film has like NO action, we almost never see Wonder Woman do anything. For an hour the cast is mostly just being introduced as well as the plot, that’s so fair, but then it ramps up to fucking eleven when suddenly these wishes just start changing the world fucking dramatically, in ways that just don’t make sense. The final third of the movie is a confusing mess of characters literally teleporting around the country, with virtually every bad thing happening at once because of fucking wishes. Nuclear missiles are about to be launched, people are wishing for each other to die, society is just crazily collapsing over the course of like three days. And then the ending is just, it just reverses everything... The ending is that everyone, EVERYONE in the WORLD renounces their wishes ... BY LITERALLY SAYING “I RENOUNCE MY WISH” OUT LOUD, IT’S SO FUCKING FUNNY ... and then things just snap back to normal. SERIOUSLY, we see shit LITERALLY REWIND at some points as all these wishes just fucking get reversed. BUT THE NUKES JUST GET DISMANTLED IN MID-AIR, THOSE DON’T GET REVERSED, THEY JUST FALL APART IN THE SKY, WHAT COULD GO WRONG.

The particle shit makes no sense... Villain has to touch people to make wishes, right? So his scheme becomes to use this broadcast that takes over EVERY broadcast in the world, which will TECHNICALLY count as “touching” people because the sattelite is spreading... his... particles? And apparently that counts, apparently just touching particles of this guy gives you a free wish. That just, doesn’t make sense at all, how the fuck are his particles getting sent around the world??? That’s now how cameras or broadcasts or sattelites work AT ALL.

At the end when the villain renounces his own wish and shit, he goes looking for his kid... He just runs out into no where and starts yelling his kid’s name. And then sure enough a minute later the kid appears, just running out of the woods apparently. It’s just so stupid. And this kid wears the same “generic kids shirt with stripes” through the entire movie, that’s funny to me for some reason.

The fight scene choreography was terrible. All of the fights were just grunts being flipped into the air or into walls. They had no idea how to make an interesting fight for Diana, it’s just always random humans with guns that she has to whip the weapons away from or deflect their bullets. It’s every fight, the same thing. At one point Steve uses a dinner tray to fucking block bullets, it’s so stupid, he runs ACROSS the hallway to GET the dinner tray, then RUNS BACK to use it to defend himself, it’s so fucking stupid, it’s like they said on set while recording “uh we need Steve to do SOMETHING here, just make him grab something.”

This movie wants to have a feminist message but just fucks it all up by not at all trying to make an actual feminist message that would resonate with women. WW84′s idea of sexism is so cartoonish, it’s all drunk men on streets that catcall women and sober men that constantly say hi to women as they walk by. There’s no mention of like, a glass ceiling, no. And there’s no critique against MEN here, no no no, MEN aren’t the problem, MEN aren’t being criticized... it’s just SOME of these men, these drunk ones on the street lol. Not a societal problem, just random guys who are jerks and should be thrown into trash cans............ BUT DON’T KICK THEM UNTIL THEY BLEED, NO, NO BARBARA, NO! Not the MAN!

There’s so much focus on Diana and Steve too that it just makes me wonder, did ANYONE realize how un-feminist this was??? Like they made a whole movie where Wonder Woman’s motive is JUST... man. Just man. Want man, get man. Keep man. That’s it. Don’t want man dead. That’s all she’s about. And, classic for Hollywood, they can’t even have her TALK to another woman about something OTHER THAN MEN... There’s SO MUCH GAY SUBTEXT, and it’s STILL drenched in a heteronormative plot.

YEAH THE GAY SUBTEXT, FUUUUCK! Fuuuck man! They GENUINELY setup this dynamic that MAYBE Diana and Barbara could fall in love. Diana sees so much in Barbara that she wants, and same for Barbara. Barbara basically takes her out on a date! It just gets dropped, Diana just acts like a pretty weak friend towards Barbara and never really explains to her the importance of what’s happening, it’s so sad to see what could have been a full romance get turned into some... ridiculously pointless rivalry I guess. It’s like you can genuinely feel the producers’ hands creeping into the movie, changing the direction of things so that it checks off as many boxes as possible rather than be something NEW and change how we see Diana.

Even the visual effects just suck.......! The invisible jet, yeah as it turns out, NOT VERY SPECTACULAR LOOKING... They try hard to make it a cool scene by at LEAST having it fly through fireworks, but that’s shit I can look up on youtube! They seriously just got a drone to fly through fireworks and then put an INVISIBLE JET flying through it. Other effects just suck to look at too, Wonder Woman’s lasso looks ridiculous at times, especially when she does this like “circle” thing where she spins it really fast, just looked terrible. So many shots of Diana flying around or sliding under stuff, and it just looks so fake with how she’s transplanted over a moving background.

There was one point where to save a bunch of kids, they launch a missile that Diana uses to whip and propel herself off of to go save the kids. But because this movie is edited SO BADLY it first justl ooks like Steve and Diana see some kids playing in the street so they decide to LAUNCH A ROCKET AT THEM. Up until you see Diana whip the missile to use it to fly forward, that’s ALL you can possible assume!!!!

Seriously, this whole movie sucks, this is maybe only HALF of my grievances. It’s so stupid, I do not recommend watching it, I can’t believe how this followed up the original Wonder Woman when that movie was so DECENT. It was GOOD even, and then WW84 just shits on everything it started, it’s a whole fucking movie that feels like kids playing with toys and making up a plot as they go. I can’t even IMAGINE watching the first film now! Like, what the fuck will I think?! These two movies are so staggeringly different and not in ANY good ways. It’s such a fuck up, I feel SO bad for the people who worked on this, such a waste of their time. This is a first draft script that I think no one fully read to completion or gave a solid shit about before filming, a bunch of stray ideas cobbled together incoherently.

[james-stark-the-writer-wips]

Of Witches And Demons - An Excerpt

Chapter 2: The Immortals. 

WC: 4000 words. Wanted to get this out asap tbh so it’s not the most polished thing but I hope you’ll forgive that and enjoy this!! If you wanna read a slightly more polished version, it’ll be up on wattpad soon so, 

LINK

(“Let’s go away a little. Different town, different people. Doesn’t matter where. Just know we’re not in Tenebris anymore although we will get back there soon. Does matter who. So pay attention.” Krilla said. Almadea nodded.)

“So,” Alice said, lighting the candle in her hand. “Who are we this time around?”

The forest was calm, quiet, isolated. They liked coming here a night. Listening to the crickets hiding in the grass, the hooting owls, seeing the moonlight giving everything a soft glow. It was magical. Even after so long, the magic hadn’t faded. The man beside Alice sighed as he looked away from the moon and towards her.

“Who do you want to be?” He took the candle from her. “Billionaires? Eccentrics? Business owners?”

“I can’t decide, Xan.” Alice said.

A soft breeze began to blow, carrying cool water along with it. The candle flame flickered as the wind blew past it. Xander put a hand around the flame to keep it from going out.

“So, you’re here. Took you long enough.” Xander said.

A branch crunched under the foot of the man walking towards Xander.

“I’m sorry I don’t finish as fast as you do, Xander.” The man said.

“You took an unusually long time.” Xander replied.

“I take a perfectly okay time, Xan. You’d think you’d know after two centuries together.” The man stopped in place. The wind began to die down.

“I should, I suppose.” Xan nodded. “Anyway, get over here, Cy.”

“So why the meeting outside?” Cyrus asked.

“I wanted to talk about our plans on Thursday.”

“Couldn’t we have had this conversation in the house?” He protested.

“I wanted the fresh air. Now get over here and stop whining.” Xander said. Cyrus let out a frustrated groan and walked over to the two of them.

“So, have you decided who we’re going to be?” Cyrus asked Alice.

“Well, I’m not sure yet. But definitely something new, someone we haven’t been yet.” She said.

“New, huh?” Cyrus chuckled softly.

“Let’s start at the basics. What have we been?” Xander said.

“Doctors, magicians, circus folk, philanthropists, bakers, politicians...” Cyrus began.

“So, what do you think, Alice?” Xander asked.

“How about ourselves?” Alice said.

“Don’t be naive, Alice. You know we can’t do that.” Cyrus said.

“I’m not saying tell everyone who we are.”

“Then what are you proposing, Alice? You know I hate vague people.” Cyrus leaned against a tree.

“Let’s be a family again instead of distant siblings. I’m tired of playing siblings.”

“Then, what? You wanna be my mother?” Cyrus scoffed.

“It’s not the 1800s, Cy.” Alice replied, picking up the candle and putting it to her nose. “You’d be my father. Besides, you are older than me.”

“You want me and Xander to be your fathers?” Cyrus said.

“Yes. And what’s the problem? You two used to date each other, right?” Alice vaguely pointed at both of them.

“There’s no problem, I’m just confirming.”

Xander interrupted before Cyrus could get another word in. “That’s fine and all, Alice, but what do we do? You know, for a living?”

“We’re rich, that’s for sure. I have had enough of being poor. We’re immortal, for fuck sake. There’s no fun being poor. Certainly not in this world.” She grumbled.

“Okay. Then you better come up with a good reason for us being rich.”

Alice pondered over it for a minute. What should they be? People would ask, that’s for sure. After so many years, Alice had learned that people couldn’t help but stick their noses in other people’s businesses. 

Alice snapped her fingers. “Ooh, how about you be oil princes?” She said. “We haven’t done that yet.”

“Both of us?” Cyrus asked.

“No. Don’t be silly. There’s no way anyone would believe that. It’d be more plausible if you started the business together after you met and fell in love or you started the business then fell in love but that feels old.”

“Then, what, pray tell, should we be? It’s your turn, Alice. Otherwise we skip your turn and we do my thing.” Xander said.

“No! We did your thing the last time we moved. I’ll think of something. Just give me a second.”

Cyrus sighed. “Okay, then. Take the night to sleep on it. We have a long trip ahead of us soon, anyway.”

“At least we’re sure of the location, yes?” Alice asked.

Xander nodded. “Yes. That hasn’t changed.”

“Where was it again?” Cyrus asked.

“You know where it is.” Xander said.

“I wasn’t listening when you said it.”

“You’ve got to start paying more attention, Cyrus. You’re wasting that photographic memory of yours.”

“Please, let’s not do this right now, Xan. Just tell me where we’re going. And let’s let Alice decide till tomorrow, yes?”

“Sure, whatever.” Xander let out a soft sigh. “We’re going to Tenebris.” He turned to Alice. Let’s go.” He put a hand on Alice’s back and turned to Cyrus. “You coming?”

“Go on ahead. I’ll catch up. I’m going to enjoy some of that fresh air you dragged me out here for.” Cyrus said. 

Xander handed him the candle and began to walk away. 

“Where the fuck is Tenebris?” Cyrus called out.

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Xander kept walking.

“Don’t be vague, Xan.” Cyrus shouted but Xander and Alice had already walked away. 

A slight smile crept onto Cyrus’s face without permission as looked up at the moon, its glimmering light illuminating the entire forest in a silver blanket. Anyone who says the night is evil has never looked at the moon. He thought.

He put his hands in his pockets. The air seemed to grow colder every passing second. He could smell the fresh, wet grass from last night’s shower. It clung to the air like glue, filling it with a soft hint of earthiness everywhere.

He began to walk back towards the mansion they currently resided in. They owned the forest (at least parts of it) and the mansion. They’d bought it to make sure the number of tresspassers and onlookers would go down and it had helped a lot, actually.

But people were getting suspicious. It was time to pack up and move, as they did every twenty or so years, whenever they thought someone was onto them. They’d lived in France, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, India, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and every big city and country in the world. Now they’d had enough of the city life — one of the primary reasons they’d moved to this town from NY, in fact —  and wanted to move somewhere more quiet and peaceful. 

While cites sure had their advantages —  a prominent one being everyone was too busy to give a shit about new people in town — it got lonely over time. And even in big cities, there was no escaping nosy neighbours.

Though it had been only nine years in this town, they’d decided to move somewhere they could live in peace. A place where they wouldn’t have to worry about getting shot or killed and being found out. This town had its charm but even it’s residents were wondering why the people in the mansion didn’t seem to age a day in the last few years. They’d started believing the ‘good genes, I guess’ excuse even less every time it was told to them.

Cyrus had personally seen what happened when humans found out about one of them being an Immortal.

When Cyrus had been granted the opportunity to be an Immortal, there were eight of them. Now, only Cyrus and Xander remained of the original eight. The others had either died, left to live in isolation or moved away to try their best to stay out of regular human business, trying to live normal lives unhindered.

Alice had only recently – 167 years ago, to be precise – joined them but she was a fine addition. She was the first woman to be turned in almost five centuries.

Cyrus took in a deep breath, letting all of nature’s beautiful smell consume his body as if tasting wine. He took his hands out of his pockets and blew on them to warm them up a bit. It was freezing out here.

Time to head back, he thought as he turned around and began to walk uphill back to the mansion.

With over twenty rooms in the mansion, the place was fit for kings (and had actually once belonged to a prince, of sorts). Everything about this place screamed ‘We have too much money’. Which wasn’t a bad thing, really. They had actually helped build an orphanage in the city, which had finished construction three weeks ago.

The mansion sat alone on a cliff, with no houses for miles and no one to disturb them. From the balcony, you could see the entire town in all its glory.

In one corner, smoke arose from the town’s bakery as Keith, the owner of said bakery, baked the last bread of the day, shutting down for the night. 

In another corner, if you lived in a mile radius, you could her Mrs. Radley screaming at her husband for being home late again. As the clock struck ten, the town began to close up, with only the twenty four hour pharmacy and the famous Powers’ Coffee Shop staying on.

Even in this small town, you could see a few people sitting in the coffee shop, writing away on their laptops all night long. It was the students from the nearby college that came out to Powers’ for their famous coffee.

Justin Powers and a single employee kept the shop open all day with them looking after it during the day while Justin’s son Max looked after it at night. 

And their coffees were delicious. And, thankfully close by to Joanna’s Pie Shop, the best pies you’ll ever taste.

And in two days time, they would all be a faint memory, never to be seen again, if possible.

Cyrus made his way into the mansion. All the lights had been turned off, no surprise there, and Alice had gone to bed.

Xander, on the other hand, sat by the fireplace, a glass of expensive whiskey in hand and a novel in the other.

“I’m gonna go sleep, Xan. I’ll see you in the morning.” Cyrus said.

“Mmhmm.” Xander said, flipping a page in his book.

Cyrus walked up the stairs and found his way to his bedroom, the smallest of all the rooms in the mansion, and crawled into bed, pulling the covers onto him.

He reached under his bed and grabbed the long stick he kept there. He quickly extended it to the opposite wall and flicked off the light switch. He put the stick back in its place and opened the curtains behind his bed. As he closed his eyes, he found sleep quickly.

-

As the sun rose above the horizon, Alice woke up, yawning, gently outstretching her arms. She had given much thought to what they should be… and nothing seemed as exciting as good old star crossed lovers. Ala gay Romeo and Juliet. Except without the dying part.

She pushed the bed covers aside, heading straight for the bathroom. She couldn’t wait to tell Xan and Cy what she’d chosen. As she took a quick shower, she began to iron out the details of how it would work and what their story would be. Sure, star crossed lovers was old and cliche, but it was perfect. To be honest, she was always trash for Shakespeare and star crossed lovers. This was a perfect pit. Besides, they’d been siblings for far too long.

About twenty minutes later, the clock rang nine and Alice stepped out of the shower, quickly drying herself off and slipping on a nice pair of jeans and a plain red t-shirt.

She rushed down the stairs, jumping two steps at a time, making her way to the dining table where a sleepy Cyrus sat, slowly sipping on his coffee. Besides him sat Xander eating his regular bowl of cornflakes.

“Guys!” Alice said, rushing to take a seat besides Cyrus.

“Please, just…softer.” Cyrus said, halfway through a sip.

“Just listen. I’ve decided.”

“About?” Xan asked

“Our cover.”

“Alice. Softer.” Cy scolded.

“Shut up, dick.” Alice snarked. She turned her attention to Xan. “So, our cover. I know what we wanna be.”

“Alice, you know what we say about cussing at the table.”

“You’re not my dad!” Alice said.

Xander had a rule about being civilized at the table. It was a surprise he’d managed to uphold it all these years, especially with Alice and Cyrus in the house — half their vocabulary was curse words.

“Well I’m gonna be soon, apparently so you better start listening, right?” Xander retorted.

“Ugh, I hate you.” Alice groaned.

“Perfect. Means I’m being a good parent.”

“So much wrong with that statement but we don’t have the time to explain all that. Anyway can you just listen to me?”

“Alright alright. Go on, I’m listening.” He shoved a spoonful of cornflakes into his mouth.

“Right. Our story. You two are, drum roll please,” She paused until Xan put down his spoon and reluctantly did a little series of taps on the table, “star crossed lovers.”

“Good god.” Cyrus sighed. “Why did we let her choose again?”

“I can hear you, you know.” Alice said.

“Her birthday comes up soon. It’s her gift.” Xan reminded, not noticing it was a rhetorical question.

“So,” Alice continued, unfazed. “I’ve been thinking all night and Xan was the rich guy…”

“Obviously.” Xan said, taking a bite of his food. Alice rolled her eyes.

“Would you just let me tell it?”

“Okay!” Xan backed off. “Sorry.”

“Right, so, Xan was the rich guy. You met at a mutual friend’s party, had drinks together and hooked up. Cyrus was still in the closet at the time and his dad was super homophobic. But, you kept seeing Xan because you felt a connection. When you meet him the second time, three days have passed. Xan sees you and says, “I’ve been waiting for you.” And you ask, “For three days?” and he nods and you kiss him in public for the first time. You stay over for the night but the next day your dad finds out. He’s threatened to cut you off if he sees you with Xan again.” She paused for a breath.

“But, you like him so much, you risked being broke. Your family isn’t super rich, but you do pretty well. You went off to live with Xan and your dad said he cut you off. But, your dad suddenly falls ill only you don’t learn that until a week later when your mom calls you to his funeral. He couldn’t bear to see you go and he died of a heart attack. When his will is read after the funeral, you realize he never took you out of it. In fact, he left you most of his possessions. You give a lot of it to your mom and you and Xan continue living together. After two years, you have an amazing fall wedding. Then the year after that, you adopted me from an orphanage at age six or something. At this point, Xan is 28 and Cy, you’re 26. And since then, it’s been like eight or nine years and now I’m starting high school.”

Xan almost spit out his milk. “Wait, hold up. You’re going to high school?”

“Yeah, I mean, I didn’t really get to go back when I turned and I haven’t really been to one since. It’ll be a good learning experience. Plus what am I gonna be? Homeschooled? I need to start hanging out with people my own age!”

“Good luck finding a hundred and seventy year old people. Do you need me to buy you a graveyard, hon?” Cyrus teased. Alice ignored him.

“It’s going to be awful. You haven’t been to school for what, a hundred and sixty eight years at this point?” Xander said.

“Sixty seven.” Alice corrected. “Sixty eight next month.”

“Yeah, a lot has changed since then.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll pick things up quick.” Alice reassured him. “Plus there will be cute boys and girls there.” She added softly.

“You can’t be serious.” Cyrus put his cup down, fully awake now, and turned to Xander for an answer.

“Oh, come on, Xan.” Alice begged.

“Eh, let her do it. She’ll be fine. You know how she can be if she doesn’t get what she wants.” Xan resigned, after some thought. He continued eating.

“Yay!” Alice squealed, jumping out of her seat. “You lose, I win!” She stuck her tongue out, making a face at Cy. He ignored her.

Alice blew a raspberry. She turned to Xan. “So, when do we leave?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, earlier if we can manage it.” He chewed on his food before continuing. “Start packing, say your goodbyes.”

“Great. I’m gonna go do that then.” Cy stood up and left the room.

“I’m gonna go to Joanna’s then. Grab some breakfast and say goodbye.”

“Bring something back for me and Cy, yeah?” Xan said.

“Sure.” Alice grabbed her coat, her purse, the car keys and rushed out the door.

-

Joanna’s Pie Shop was a quaint little shop, tucked between a McDonald’s and a Starbucks. But it got by surprisingly well, all because of how goddamn delicious Joanna’s pies were.

Alice had eaten a lot of things in her relatively small existence but having had a taste of Joanna’s pies was her most proud moment. 

“Joanna!” She called out as she pushed open the door and walked in.

“Coming, darling!” Joanna’s voice came from inside the kitchen. “Just getting some pies ready. Be out in a minute. Take a seat.”

Alice took a seat on the black bar stools by the counter and sat patiently as she waited for Joanna to come out.

Joanna arrived from the kitchen with thick gloves and trays with steaming hot pies, her apron covered in flour.

“Hot from the oven!” She announced, placing the tray on the counter and slipping off the thick gloves. “Want a slice?”

“Yeah.” Alice said. “A full Chocolate Coconut Creme for me, two slice of green apple for Cy and a slice of Pumpkin pie for Xander.”

“Coming right up.” Joana said. “Feel free to help yourself to some coffee if you want.” She grabbed a mug from behind her and handed it to Alice.

“Thanks, Jo. You’re the best.”

Joana smiled before disappearing back into the kitchen.

As Alice sipped on her coffee, Joana walked out of the kitchen with the pies. “Here ya go, hon.” She quickly stuffed them into a large box and handed it to Alice.

“Thanks. How much is it?” Alice asked.

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s on the house. I’m in a good mood today. Plus you’ve already done so much for us.”

“Oh, come on, Jo. This’ll be the last time you get to charge me.”

Joana gave her a puzzled look, “What do you mean, hon?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about…” Alice said. 

“You’re not dying or nothing, right, hon?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” Alice reassured her.

Joana let out a deep sigh of relief “Well, good. Then what is it?”

“We’re moving. Me, Xan and Cy.”

“Moving?” Joana gasped. “Where?” 

“It’s far. That’s all I can tell you about it. It’s family business.”

“But you’ll come back eventually, right?” Joana asked.

“No, I’m afraid not. We’ll be staying there permanently.” Alice said softly.

“Permanently?” Joana couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

Alice nodded. “So, this is… technically, goodbye.”

Joana choked up. “When uh— When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow. Afternoon. Maybe earlier.”

“Oh. Alright then.” Joana cleaned her hand on her apron and wiped off a tear.

“I’m sorry, it’s just the decision was so sudden. We made plans last night.”

“No, it’s fine. Just, before you leave, promise me you’ll stop by one last time? For old times sake?”

“I’ll try, Jo.”

“No, promise me, Alice. Just stop by before you leave. It shouldn’t take very long.”

“I’m sorry, it’s out of my hands. But I’ll try my best.”

“Very well then. I hope you come.” Joana started to go back in the kitchen.

Alice held up the box. “Joana? How much?”

“Like I said, Alice. They’re on the house. Enjoy them. I’m not gonna charge you and that’s final.”

Alice smiled. “I’m gonna miss you, Jo.”

“I’m gonna miss you too, hon.” Joana disappeared back into the kitchen.

Alice sighed and walked out of the shop.

-

The next day came quickly and everyone rushed frantically to stuff their things into a million bags. It’s insane how much junk you collect over the years. A lot of it would go into the storage facility they’d kept over the years but beyond that, everything else they were attached to came with them.

This time, the furniture, most of the paintings, the utensils, some small things and other stuff they didn’t want all stayed. They’d decided to donate the mansion to the city and open it to the public for free use by anyone. Xander had even talked to some of the townspeople to turn it into a lodging for the homeless free of cost of something similar. But now they had to leave so who knew what would happen to the house?

The truck came, the important stuff was loaded in and Cyrus and Alice sat in the car, waiting for Xander to lock everything up and bring out his bags. Finally, he did come out and got in the car.

“Ready?” He asked, putting on his seatbelt.

“Yeah.” Cyrus said. 

“Hey, Xan, you mind if we stop by Joana’s? She asked me to stop by if we could.”

“What’s the time right now?”

“It’s uh, 1:36 pm.” Cyrus said.

“Sure. We’ve got some time to kill. I guess that’d be alright. Plus I have to go give the house keys away too.”

“Great. Just drop me off at hers then and come pick me up after you’re done.”

“Alright, give me a second to go tell the driver the plans have changed.” Xander said, getting out of the car. He returned quickly.

“He’s gonna go ahead and he’ll be waiting on the outskirts of town for us to lead the way.”

“Cool.” Cyrus said. “Turn the AC on and let’s go already.” He put in headphones and lied down on the backseat, using his forearm as a pillow. “And wake me up when we get there.”

Xander sighed. “Fine.”

The car whirred to life.

-

Joana stood idly in the shop, expectantly staring at the door, waiting for Alice and the other two to arrive.

As she saw their car turning the bend, she rushed out from behind the counter and ran outside.

“You came!” She said as Alice opened the car door.

“Yeah.” Alice said.

“No, no don’t get out.” Joana said. “Or I’m going to start crying and I don’t want to ruin my makeup. “Just wait here, I’ll be back in a second.”

“O-okay.” Alice said.

“What’s wrong?” Xander asked.

“She told me to wait here.”

“Fine.” Xander said.

Joana reemerged from the shop carrying a large box of pies. She quickly handed it to Alice.

“What’s this?” Alice asked, opening the box. 

“It’s my coveted smores pie. With extra marshmallows. Made them specially for you this morning.”

“Thank you, Joana.”

“I’m gonna miss you, hun.” 

“I’m gonna miss you too.” Alice said.

“Now go, before the waterworks start.” Joana said.

Alice nodded, closing the car door. As the car drove away, Joana waved a last goodbye.

-

Almost thirty six straight hours of driving later, Xander called out for Cyrus who had woken up and gone to sleep multiple times at this point.

“Cy, we’re almost there.” Xander said.

“We’re here?” Cyrus sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“Just about. We’ll be there in five.”

“Great.” Cyrus said.

The car slowly cruised along the road, the truck following behind as they passed into Tenebris’s borders. 

“Welcome to Tenebris, babe.” Xander said to Cyrus. 

“I am not calling you babe.” Cyrus said.

“You better start.” Xander said. “Our daughter wants us to, don’t you, hun?”

“Mmhmm.” Alice said.

“Fuck you both.” Cyrus said.

“Yeah, love you too, babe.”

Cyrus let out a frustrated groan. God, he wished this wouldn’t last long. It already felt weird. But, here they were: in Tenebris, a town smackdab in the middle of fucking nowhere. And for a while, this would be their home.

*

[maxhoemo]

1923 - The next day

“Max, won’t you think this through?” 

“I have thought it through,” Max told his father. Packing away what little he owned into a burlap potato sack.

“I don’t think it’s safe to get involved with those men.”

“You’re involved with them,” he reminded him. “Anyways, all I’m doing is keeping house for him.” Max’s father already thought his second job was cleaning houses and apartments.  

“Why can’t you stay here with us? Where it’s safe?”

“I’ll be safe. I’m 20 years old. I need to go out and live my life.”

“But Max... You know what rats like that do with naive boys like you. I can’t stand to think about my little boy windin’ up in prison. Or dead.”

“Oh, dad...” Max turned to him, wrapping his arms around his father and pulling him into a hug. His father really did care about him. It almost made him want to stay. “Ian promised he would take me home if I changed my mind. Look. I’ll telephone the bar every night. I promise. And I’m not as naive as you think. I won’t do nothin’ illegal.”

“I know you won’t, Max. I’m not worried about you. It’s them I don’t trust.”

“I know... But... I mean, this is a once in a lifetime chance for me to make something of myself. I need to experience the world.”

“If you ever feel scared and that scum won’t take you home, you make sure you call and your brothers will be down in a snap.”

“Thanks, dad.” Max smiled at him. Obviously there was no way their family could take on a bunch of mafia goons but Max knew his dad just had to say something to put his mind at ease. Max understood why he was scared. Max was scared too. But he didn’t want it to get in his way of what could be. He couldn’t live in this dilapidated old house eating broth every night and selling his body for quarters. He would rather have an uncertain future than to predict all of that with 100% accuracy each day. Max’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a car horn. It was time.

----

Max’s breath was caught in his throat as they arrived at Ian’s place. It was so much bigger than he could have imagined. But it wasn’t just the size. It was everything. It was surrounded by a huge metal gate. The yard was filled with statues and even a fountain. Max could hardly stay focused on one thing at a time as they walked through. His neck craning all around to try and see everything. The main entrance was bigger than Max’s house. There was an enormous staircase with fancy red carpeting, but Ian didn’t lead Max up the stairs. Instead they took an elevator. 

Max was dumbfounded. He had an elevator in his house! Max hadn’t said anything yet. He was just drinking in everything he saw. Hardly believing it was real. As the elevator door opened, Ian put an arm around Max and lead him down the hall. “This is my bedroom,” Ian said as he opened the door. “You’ll be staying in here, naturally.” 

Max stepped inside, his bag dropping from his hands with a loud thud. His mouth hanging open. Ian’s bedroom was bigger than his family’s bar. 

“Do you like it?”

“...It’s...Beautiful...” Max admitted. He took a few more steps inside, running his hand along a velvet chair up against one of the walls. “Everything’s brand new...” he whispered to himself. He kept walking along, towards the centre of the room. Stopping only when he noticed he nearly fell into some kind of hole. He looked down curiously. It was pink, Max guessed porcelain. Shaped like a big sea shell. Some kind of odd decoration? “What is this...?”

“Bathtub,” Ian answered simply.

Max tilted his head, walking around the circumference looking down at it, he saw the taps and spout.  “Right here? In your bedroom?”

“I find it relaxing. One day I just thought to myself, I’d like a bathtub in my room. And when I want something, I get it,” he stated very matter of factly. Though, there was a cockiness to his tone that Max picked up on. “Like you, fer’ example.”

Max turned on his heel to face him. “What do you mean by that?”

“The other night. I saw you. I wanted you. Now here you are.”

He raised a brow and placed his hand on his hip. “Oh, I see. That it then? I’m another decoration for your room? Like your tub and your furniture...”

Ian didn’t answer. He just smiled, moving closer to Max. Max felt a sudden nervous twist of his stomach. His instincts telling him to run, but he stayed still. The thought crossed his mind that Ian had lied about everything just to get him here. He had some other intentions. He wanted to hurt him... But Ian didn’t do anything. He just said. “You’re different. None of this shit makes me any less lonely.”

“Lonely? But there are so many people here...” They had driven over with two of Ian’s goons and Max had seen other men in the house. Along with a maid and some other people who looked like staff. 

“Those people aren’t my friends.”

‘Well, neither am I...’ Max thought. But he didn’t say it. He had no reason to be rude to Ian. If Ian’s idea of making friends was scooping them up from their families and bribing them with promises of anything they could ever want, maybe he truly was lonely. Max continued with his tour around the room. He wasn’t even close to finished yet. There was a large bay-window covered in a sheer white curtain. Max pulled the curtain back and gasped at the sight. A smile crossing his face.

“What is it?” Ian asked.

“I just... I’ve never seen a view like this before. It’s...” They were so much higher up than Max had realized. It looked like they could see the entire city from where they were. There were cars and people. And lights! Flashing and Neon... It was spectacular.

“I’m glad you like it,” Ian smiled, joining him at the window. 

“Oh, look!” Max pointed at the glittering CINEMA sign off in the distance. “I went there once. I saved up and took my little brother to see a movie.” It was one of Max’s favourite memories. And indeed one of the only happy ones he could seem to conjure up at the moment. But things were different now. He’d have everything he needed... And he didn’t even have to work. He turned to Ian. “Were you really serious? About wantin’ me as a friend.”

“I just want you to stay with me. Keep me company. Be an ear.”

Max nodded. 

“I’ve got a meeting starting in about 20. I gotta skiddadle...” he said, stepping away and grabbing a briefcase off the desk. “You stay in here. Got it?”

“Got it... Ian...” he turned his head to look at him. The sheer curtain grasped in his fist, covering his face. The light of the setting sun glowing behind him. He looked so beautiful, it made Ian’s breath hitch. “I was serious,” he went on.

“About what?” Ian asked.

“You can’t touch me... Got it?”

“Got it...” Ian nodded. “Cross my heart.”

----

“When Ian had left the room, he continued to look around at everything. When he was done with that, he grabbed his bag and unpacked what little he had. He didn’t even have a change of clothes. Just some pyjamas that hardly fit right anymore. He looked at himself in Ian’s mirror. He looked completely out of place in this room. He frowned. His clothes were stained. His shoes were all worn. His glasses were broken so they didn’t quite sit on his face straight. It was irritating at first but he’d gotten used to it. His skin was very pale, making the grime stand out even further. He could only wonder why Ian had seen him and wanted to take him home. He remembered the tub. 

It was so tempting. He was sure Ian wouldn’t mind. It was his room now too... Max had never had a bath in running water before. With five brothers and sisters, his family couldn’t afford the water bill. Ma had a metal basin she filled from the sink and they’d all have to take turns in the same water.

There was an oak cabinet beside the tub, which Max found some soaps and towels in. Turning on the water, his face lit up at the steam that came off of it. It was exciting! He could only imagine how a warm bath felt. He smiled to himself. If he wasn’t as brave, he might have gone his whole life never knowing. He unbuttoned his work shirt and slid it off. He folded it up neatly, but placing it on any surface of the room didn’t seem right. The room was so perfect, and Max was so filthy... He decided to put it on the floor. He soon slipped off his shoes, and did the same with his pants and underwear as the shirt.

He was hesitant to step inside once it was full. He bit his lip and dipped in just a toe before committing entirely. He let out a deep sigh as he settled in. The hot water warming his blood and relaxing his muscles. It was pure bliss. He closed his eyes. He could feel the veins of stress in his head soften. It had been so long of that passive headache he never even noticed he had it. “Oh my god!” he laughed to himself. “This is what it’s like to be rich, huh? I really could get used to this... So long as Ian behaves himself.”

He couldn’t help but think about Ian. What was the deal with him? A rich lonely guy... He supposed it seemed plausible. He just wanted a friend. But why Max? Max was so...Ugly... He thought to himself. He was poor. He was a degenerate.  Not to mention dirty... As he cleaned himself with the soap, he was shocked at how much dirt and grime there really was. He looked down at his hands as he scrubbed. His skin was dry and cracking. His nails were all broken and jagged. Not to mention black with dirt. He was bruised and calloused. His dad always said he should be proud. He had the hands of a working man. But Max didn’t feel proud. He felt shame. Everywhere he went, he wore a badge. A sign to let the world know; “My name is Max and I’m poor.” Not that it was the only sign. His ribs and collarbone stuck out very noticeably. Something his John’s loved to point out. Especially the ones with cars. Max would never forget the laugh of that one fat son of a bitch! 

“You're a twig. You must be hungry, boy.”

“I am, sir...”

“Make sure to swallow then,” he laughed.

Max’s vision became blurry. He frowned and knit his eyebrows together at the memory. The past few years had provided so many bad memories. He wished he could just wash them away like the dirt on his skin. All the men and women who had known him. Who had hit him. Beaten him. Tied him up. The woman’s husband who had pointed a gun at him. The man with the knife that had come out when Max asked for his pay. He can still feel the blade on his skin. The humiliation. 

He remembered being completely naked in the back of a bar. On his knees. Surrounded by four well dressed men. They had kept him an extra three hours. What could Max do? There was only one of him...

But how could Max forget his most famous, and evil, client? The pain in his hips, being fucked up against the Mayor’s desk. Then he woke up, face down on the pavement on a street he didn’t recognize. The other hookers told him later he’d been drugged for sure. The mayor didn’t want Max to remember anything. But Max did remember. And he only wished he could forget. Not just him. Everyone. Their words echoed through his head.

Max wiped the tears from his eyes. He couldn’t let Ian see him like this. He would know how weak he was. Nobody could know how weak he really was.

“Max.”

Max jumped at the sudden voice. Interrupting his own thoughts. He wiped water on his face in an attempt to hide the obvious fact that he’d been crying. 

“Couldn’t wait to try it out, huh?” Ian laughed. He seemed amused. Max was almost insulted. Like it was ‘cute’ that Max had never taken a real bath before. Not that Ian could really know that. “How is it?”

“It’s very nice,” Max said honestly. As Ian walked further into the room, Max covered his crotch under the water. He didn’t want Ian to see him naked. 

Ian began to undress. Max couldn’t believe how many layers of clothes he wore. Suit jacket, vest, shirt, undershirt, pants, long johns, socks...Max only had his bare skin under his clothes. Unless he was lucky enough to have a coat. 

“Umm...” Max started. “Could you... Turn around...?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m getting out and I don’t want you looking at me! That’s why!” Max snapped. Autonomy over his body was something he had come to value when he could have it. And he had to make certain that here, he could have it. Ian complied with his request, and Max felt a weight lifted from his chest. He stepped out and wrapped a towel around his waist. “Alright.” Ian turned around and kept on with what he had been doing. As Max stepped onto the other towel he had laid out before, he suddenly thought of something. “Ian...”

“What is it?”

“How does... I mean... How do you get the water out...?” At home, they just poured it out in the backyard. But you couldn’t lift this tub.

Ian didn’t laugh this time. Instead, he gave Max a warm smile and took him by the hand. Leading him over to the faucet. “I’ll show you, You just lift this part here, and...” Max heard a sound as the water started to lower. Max nodded. It wasn’t really a bath tub. It was just a giant sink. At least, that’s how he understood it. 

“Where am I to sleep?” he asked.

“My bed, ‘course.”

Max frowned.

“What’s the matter, little bird?” Ian’s tone was of honest sympathy.

“I don’t wanna sleep with you...” Max said quietly.

“I won’t touch ya’.” Ian assured.

“I just...” As Ian looked into Max’s eyes as he spoke, he saw unmitigated fear. Ian could tell Max was scared of something. Something more than having a hand on his chest in the night. 

“You sleep there. I’ll sleep on the sofa, alright?”

Max looked behind him. Ian’s furniture was all so ritzy, but it didn’t look all that comfortable. “Are you sure...? For real..?”

Ian nodded. “It aint no problem for me.”

“You’re being straight right now?”

“‘Course. Really. You take the bed.”

“Thank you Ian...” 

----

 The next morning, Max was awakened by a powerful smell. His stomach rumbled as his eyes slowly opened.

“Morning. Sleep well?”

“Yes...” Max nodded. “I’ve never slept in a bed so soft before.” He smiled sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I’m hungry...” It came out as a whine.

“Well, come eat.”

He looked over at Ian. There was that smell. Sausages and toast. Butter, milk, juice... All spread out on the table in fancy blue china. Max couldn’t believe it. He took a seat next to Ian, wolfing down as much as he could.

“Slow down. It’s not going anywhere, you know.”

“I’m sorry...” Max said through a mouthful of toast. “I just never... My family don’t do breakfast.” Especially not like this. “Thank you.”

“Don’t. I like givin’ things to you.”

“And why is that?”

“Not really sure. Guess it just makes me happy to see ya’ gettin’ nice stuff you couldn’t have before.”

Max continued eating as Ian got ready for the day. He felt a little bad when he realized he hadn’t been listening as Ian explained what he was off to do. “If you get hungry again, just ask the gal in the kitchen. She’ll make ya’ anything you want.”

Max blinked. Anything? Any time he wanted? Max wiped his mouth with his hand when he finally decided he was full enough. Though when he got up he soon realized his clothes weren’t where he left them. “Hey... Where’s my shirt and pants?”

“Laundry. The maid’ll bring em’ back in a couple hours. Those are your only clothes, aren’t they?”

“Yeah...” Max admitted.

“Here. Come ‘ere...” Ian called him over. He reached into his inner pocket and handed Max a stack of bills. Max’s eyes went wide as he took them. It was more money then he’d ever seen. “Take the streetcar downtown and buy yourself some clothes and whatever else ya’ like.”

“What? Really?”

“I told you I wanted ya’ to have anything ya’ wanted.”

“Oh my God... Thank you, Ian!”

“Please. Stop thanking me. It’s nothing.”

“No. No, it really isn’t nothing...” Max couldn’t even remember the last time he had new clothes. But this was so much money. If he went shopping, he could quite literally have anything he wanted. And it was all just beginning. 

[fairymascot]

the unfathomable rachel amber

how is it possible for a teenage girl to be loved and adored by absolutely everybody?

for fans exploring rachel's character in light of season 1, and quite possibly for deck9 as well, this seemed to be one of the most pressing questions. what about rachel amber was so powerful, so magnetic, so irresistible to everyone around her? what kind of person does it take to leave the same impact on her surroundings that she did?

i've seen a lot of possible answers-- depictions of her as a time traveler herself; depictions of her as ethereal, some sort of goddess, like she was never quite human to begin with. depictions of her as a girl who poured all of herself into meeting other people's expectations, switching from one mask to another so rapidly she almost forgets her true self, and ultimately, deck9's depiction -- as the daughter of the district attorney, who's spent so much of her life acting on and off stage that it's become second nature.

all those takes are creative and engaging, and serve as foundation for compelling characters. but there's one line of thought that i haven't seen expressed before, and that's:

who says it has to be that complicated?

(cut for length.)

many interpretations, including the one that ended up being canon, depicted rachel as an onion. a matryoshka doll. like so much of her is carefully constructed and coordinated, and you have to peel away through layers of pretense and manipulation to get to the real person underneath. but i can't help but think that for someone like rachel, being as well-liked as she is would not have been particularly hard.

rachel was beautiful. max calls her photos 'mesmerizing'. and rachel knew it; she capitalized on that, focused all her efforts on paving a path to becoming a model. regardless of her personality, people would be naturally drawn to her, because the fact of the matter is that beautiful people draw attention and adoration.

her second strongest point is that she didn't care for cliques. within the blackwell bubble, neatly divided between the vortex club elite and the losers not cool enough to get in, that essentially made her a goddess. being of high social standing while refusing to restrict yourself to it is, in that highschool age where one’s image is everything, a near-unthinkable assertion of confidence.

outside of blackwell? that mattered little. when you ask the truckers in the two whales about her, they say things like 'oh, just another teen girl with a pipe dream', 'oh, i remember her-- asked me if i could give her a ride up to cali, once'. outside of blackwell, she was nobody. just another pretty face with aspirations far too big to ever fulfil. but because you play as max, a teenager herself, who is completely immersed in the blackwell bubble, rachel's influence surrounds you almost everywhere you go. it's easy to forget what that girl would've really looked like to any outsiders looking in.

on top of that: the two characters who knew rachel most intimately, who tell you about her in most detail, are chloe and frank. chloe's perception heavily colors max's (and the player's) own, because she is the single most significant character in the story, and the one who means the most to max. so if chloe's dedicated her life to finding rachel, whom she describes with nothing short of reverence, then of course you feel some sense of immense awe towards rachel as well.

then there's frank, who's remarkable in that he's the only one outside the blackwell bubble -- and a grown adult, at that -- who speaks of rachel in such depth. and he shows that exact same reverence towards her as chloe. frank's relative detachment from the rest of the cast is what lends all the more power to this view, and combining his and chloe's descriptions of her, it starts to feel like objective reality. rachel was an angel, a lioness, the most important girl in the whole world.

but let's think about this for a second. chloe and frank's relationships to rachel come from a very similar place. when she enters their lives, they're both lone wolves, jaded, isolated, miserable. and rachel swoops in with her endless beauty, providing them with warmth and kindness when nobody else would... of course she'd become the single shining beacon in their lives. of course they'd idealize her to hell and back. who else in their closed-off little world could even compare?

when you look at her relationship with frank, it's plain to see it wasn't some magical fairytale romance: the letters we find teach us they fought, seemingly often, going as far as to lash out against each other violently. Both Chloe and Nathan insist Rachel was only in it for his stash to begin with -- and though both clearly aren't free from bias, it's easy to imagine that as the common impression onlookers would get from their relationship. and maybe it was the truth; we never got the chance to ask rachel, after all. but in the end, it didn't matter, because she was willing to show frank affection when nobody but his dog would, and that was all it took to make her his savior.

when you break it down like this, there's no real reason to think rachel amber had some sort of jedi mind powers, or a master's degree in human psychology. she needed exactly three things to rise to where she did: beauty, confidence, and kindness.

and in the end, those were the things she suffered for the most.

though deck9 didn't take that route, i think that from looking at rachel's characterization in season 1 alone, it's easy to read her as someone with a compulsive need to be liked. she would literally go around handing out photos of herself to anyone who'd take them -- which you can say is ambitious, a way of getting herself out there, but isn't there also a sense of desperation to it? why would she give her photo to samuel, the school janitor? surely she didn't expect him to be able to kickstart her modeling career?

then there's the unused lines in max's nightmare in episode five, meant to be spoken by rachel. one of them is: 'now i'll never be a star, never be famous. no one will ever see my face again'. rachel hinged SO heavily on her appearance. her plan of getting ahead in life had nothing to do with her perfect 4.0 gpa; it had nothing to do with acting, which deck9 supposedly imposed on her as a means of giving her more depth, because who'd care about some vapid girl who wants to be a model? but that's the duality of rachel amber in season one, the thing that makes her so intriguing: she's a goddess, a force of nature, and yet in so many ways she's just another vain teen girl.

it doesn't take a lot of effort to read the effects of female socialization into rachel's character. girls are taught, from a young age, that their worth is rooted in two main things: their appearance, and their emotional endurance. girls are taught to be kind, to be understanding, to extend endless compassion and forgiveness towards everyone, but most specifically men. it starts as early as kindergarten, where girls bullied by boys are told not to mind it, because 'it just means that he likes you'. and those two traits are absolutely predominant in rachel amber's characterization-- her appearance is, in her eyes, her key to her future. she dreams of having fans. she needs to be admired; she needs to be liked.

and so, she feels compelled to extend sympathy and friendliness to everyone she meets because she needs everyone to like her. in most of her relationships, outside of frank and his drugs, there really doesn’t seem to be any higher motive than that. but because she's hardwired that way, she also instinctively reads too deeply into people, and is far too willing to give them the benefit of a doubt. in her journey to earn sympathy from others, she's been saddled with an overly-empathetic nature.

what her relationships with nathan, frank and jefferson all have in common is that she made the choice to see beyond their dark exterior and look for some hidden depth beneath it; convincing herself nathan was a troubled youth in need of a friend, and that frank was a decent guy whose rocky life led him down an unfortunate path. that jefferson was a tortured soul, some mystery in need of unravelling, who just needs someone to reach into his very core and open him up.

by blindly and indistinctly overextending her sympathy to everyone around her, rachel amber got tangled up with all the wrong people, and got pulled down a horrible, horrible path that she never deserved. the rachel depicted in before the storm-- some kind of all-knowing mind-reader, simply cannot be that same girl. there's nothing about the rachel amber in life is strange to indicate that kind of bottomless profoundness. she was, in many ways, naive. she was shallow, vain, fickle and quick-tempered. she was warm, loving, and kind to a fault.

at the end of the day, when you step back from that little bubble in a dead-end town's highschool she had made her domain, she was a nobody. no powers, no meticulous acting, no boundless wisdom beyond her years.

she really was just another girl.

[artificialqueens]

now there's green light in my eyes ch. 1

author ladyalix

cw / alcohol

ship: trixya

1920s/Great Gatsby AU for Trixya! Trixie is a Milwaukee girl visiting her cousin Pearl in New York, Katya is a Russian refugee in the bootlegging business, murder and lovers and speakeasies and general 1920s New York fun ensue! Trixie, Katya, Kennedy, and Pearl are cis girls, Max is a cis man, and Violet is a gay/genderfluid Italian gangster who does drag!

more on ao3 @ladyalix

I know what the gangsters think of me. I can converse with them as easily in their native Italian as in English, I smoke and drink like one of them. My clothing is cut low to lead them into business deals, coerce them into thinking I actually give a damn about them personally. They like to believe it, and so they do.

But these men, I do not find them attractive. No, the one who makes my heart race is someone entirely different.

___

Trixie Mattel’s summer in New York was hard to run by her mother. It was safer in Wisconsin, Mamma had argued. The city wasn’t proper for a nice girl like Trixie, only nineteen, chaste and well-mannered - she belonged in a small town, helping Mamma run her dress shop, biding the days until she married whatever good-natured man came along first. Ever since Papa had died when she was eleven, Trixie had spent her summers working. It wasn’t easy without a man in the house, but they made do with what they had. Trixie had stopped asking for new clothing long ago, learned to pretend not to be hungry on the days when there wasn’t money for food. When Mamma took in sewing and laundry and cleaned rich ladies’ houses Trixie came along and helped; the most important thing, though, Mamma always said, was that she did not lose her dignity and class. Mamma grew up in New York; her sister’s daughter Pearl, who was five years older than Trixie, lived there now. Mamma had left it all behind to marry Trixie’s father, a love story she told with wistful eyes and sighs whenever Trixie could coax it out of her.

“They didn’t want me marrying him,” she said. “He was an Indian from Wisconsin and I was a socialite from New York. It was quite the scandal back in the day - in all the papers, you know. It was unthinkable. But when you love someone, sometimes boundaries that stark cease to exist. When you love someone everything falls into place.”

And so Trixie and her mother, cut off from any inheritance, still acted like socialites even when there was nothing to eat, when there was no coal in the fireplace, when Trixie had to drop out of school for a year and take in mending. She held onto that secret knowledge, that she came from New York and had the manners and poise and dignity to show for it, like it was a treasure. A pearl, like her cousin’s name. She’d never met Pearl, but the two had corresponded for many years of Trixie’s childhood. Trixie could tell she was a pretty girl even in black and white -  lithe and elfin with big eyes. Pearl often wrote of lavish parties and beach holidays and trips abroad; she married an Englishman named Max Malanaphy last year. Trixie idolized her. And this year, the summer she would be turning nineteen, Pearl had finally sent her the letter Trixie had been waiting for as long as she could remember.

My Dear Trixie,

I hope Wisconsin is doing you well! You must be DREADFULLY bored! Would you like to spend your summer staying with us in New York? I’ll pay for train fare.  I’m sure you are old enough now that Aunt Eleanor won’t mind. Do write back!  

Love, your Pearl. xxxx

Trixie’s mother had been reluctant - Trixie was too naive, too trusting, too young, she had fretted.

“But Mamma,” Trixie had argued, “It’s Pearl . You know her. She’s a very responsible girl. I won’t get into trouble with her and Max - Mr. Malanaphy - looking after me. And she said she’ll pay for train fare!”

Her mother had sighed.

“Tell Pearl we shall pay her back,” she finally said. “But… perhaps. You have been very helpful lately, very mature. It might do you good to get out of Wisconsin for a summer.”

So here she was, in New York City. Max and Pearl had a flat overlooking Central Park which was one of the nicest places Trixie had ever seen, more beautifully decorated even than the mayor’s house back home where she used to clean the floors.

“Please, make yourself at home,” Max said warmly, his accent betraying his British roots and making him seem very sophisticated. Though he wasn’t too much older than Pearl, his hair was already a steely grey. He was handsome, Trixie guessed, tall and lanky with a long straight nose and fair skin. He’d been an officer in the war, with medals to prove it, but now worked somehow in trade. Trixie was rather confused about the exact nature of his job, but he did do well for himself, it seemed. Pearl was just as pretty as Trixie had pictured her, even more so maybe. Her hair was pale blonde, her eyes blue and shaded by long dark lashes. She dressed well, too; pale, floaty dresses that showed off her slim, attractive figure in a way Trixie’s mother would have considered vulgar. Trixie considered it wonderful.

“Tonight we’re going to see the most wonderful jazz singer,” Pearl gushed as she bustled about the flat, tidying up what was to be Trixie’s new roo,. “Kennedy Davenport herself. They say she’s the Josephine Baker of New York.”

Trixie had no idea who Josephine Baker was, but she nodded.

“Am I coming with you?”

“Of course,” said Pearl. “If you want to. And you must promise not to write home about where it is.”

“What do you mean?”

Pearl smirked. “I guess you know drinking alcohol is illegal now,” she said. Trixie nodded again, suspicious.

“Well, Max and I just happen to know a little place that gets around that pesky Eighteenth,” she grinned. “It also happens to be an absolute hotspot of talent in every colour, shape, and size. None of which you’d find on the outside, either. But it’s all very hush-hush. Can you keep it a secret?”

Trixie frowned, considering. She couldn’t help thinking of her mother’s warnings, her promises to stay out of trouble, but eventually she squared her shoulders. “Yes. I can.”

“Oh, isn’t that the bee’s knees !” chirped Pearl, clasping her hands together in excitement. “I hope you have something nice to wear!”

Max beckoned for Trixie to follow him and Pearl down a flight of steps to the basement of an old unassuming brownstone - something so well hidden, so inconspicuous, that by day it would have had no hint of its true nature.

“This definitely doesn’t seem legal,” muttered Trixie. Max nodded understandingly, his grey hair illuminated by the gas lamps, his pale face almost haunting in the dim shadow.

“I was worried too, my first time. But don’t worry. The cops tend to overlook this place. Mostly because of Madame Zamolodchikova’s bribery.”

“And her sex appeal,” snorted Pearl. “You know she’d be in prison for alcohol possession right now if she didn’t look like she did.”

Trixie gulped.

“Madame what ?”

Pearl laughed.

“Katya Zamolodchikova. Max, we know her well enough, you can stop putting on airs.” Max huffed.

“First-name bases are overrated, darling.”

The speakeasy was dark, clouded with smoke and pervasive with the scent of alcohol. A black girl with large light eyes and an elaborate feathered costume sang jazz on a small raised stage.

“Kennedy Davenport,” whispered Max, “an absolute genius. I can’t believe she’s performing at Madame Zamo’s. She’s been signed with all the big labels uptown already.”

The band picked up and began to play a peppier jazz tune.

“Oh, let’s dance,” exclaimed Pearl, grasping onto her lover’s wrist. She looked vibrant and lovely even in the dim light, her pale blonde hair coiffed into finger-waves and her thin, flat-chested body draped in a short pale pink dress.

Trixie hung back, feeling inadequate and dumpy in the pale blue gingham she’d brought from home. It was too modest and too hokey and too Wisconsin for a place like this.

“Don’t you want to dance?” called Pearl, expertly twisting her body into the Charleston with Max.

“Um…” Trixie froze. “I think I’ll watch. For now.” She sat on a plush red couch, folding her legs the way her mother had always taught her. This - the dress that looked nunlike next to Pearl’s - was still the shortest dress she’d ever worn. As she sat, it hiked above her knees and made her feel very daring and very, very bad.

“It’s quite all right, darling,” came a gravelly, foreign voice from startlingly close behind her. Trixie turned around to face an elegant blonde woman, all red lips and picture star hair and sharp cheekbones and bony limbs, dressed in furs and diamonds and reeking of smoke. “Not everyone is a dancer. Some of us prefer to sit back and watch, yes?”

“Leave her alone, Katya,” said Pearl, rolling her eyes as she walked towards Trixie and the mysterious woman. “Trixie’s terrified, the poor dear.”

Katya , thought Trixie as the realization dawned in her brain, this is the owner of the speakeasy, the bootlegger,  herself.

“Terrified? Trixie, dear, you have no reason to be terrified,” cooed the blonde woman, the “r”s in her speech trilled and drawn out. “You are not hiding in ditch from Red Army.”

Trixie blinked.

“ What ?”

“I am only teasing,” affirmed this Katya. “Can I get you something to drink? What do you like?”

“I’ve, um, actually never drank alcohol before,” confessed Trixie.

“Have you not?” Katya’s eyes, which were a startling blue, filled with mischief. “Well, today we have a little bit of everything. Scotch from Scotland, gin from England, vodka from Russia, champagne from France, rum from the West Indies.”

Trixie had no idea what any of those things tasted like, but she knew what champagne was; she decided on ordering that.

“A good choice, Trixie,” commented Katya as she bustled about, pouring a glass.

“How is business on the North Shore, Miss Zamolodchikova?” murmured Max, pronouncing the foreign surname perfectly. He’d obviously practiced.

“Oh, excellent, excellent. You have spoken with Dardo about the latest shipment?”

“Of course.” Pearl glanced nervously at Trixie, who had been pretending not to pay attention.

“This doesn’t concern you, Trixie,” she whispered, giving her hand a squeeze - amiable, yet firm in its message to make herself scarce.

“Oh. All right. Sorry.”

Trixie left the couch, casting glances the others’ way and kicking herself inwardly for not realizing that Pearl herself - and Max, too, then, were bootleggers, gangsters. It certainly explained Max’s wealth and his frequent trips to London.

As the night dragged on, Trixie tried hard not to trail after Pearl, but it proved difficult. Katya seemed to take Trixie under her wing, providing her with drinks and making small talk. Trixie learnt the older woman was originally from Russia, and had spent time living with artists and ingenues in Paris before settling comfortably in Long Island, nestled on the funds from her speakeasy.

“It is, of course, ridiculous what you must do to have a little fun in this country,” she explained, taking a drag on a cigarette. Trixie always thought of cigarettes as being in the realm of men, but Katya managed to make it feminine and even sensual. It was no wonder, she thought, that all the gangster men went after her.

“Why don’t you go back to your country, then?” asked Trixie. She realized how rude she must have sounded only when the Russian woman’s blue eyes misted with tears.

“Oh, my dear, I have no country to go back to. Ever since damn Communists killed the tsar. I came to Paris as refugee when I was not much older than you, you see. All alone - my parents were killed in the fighting.” Katya swallowed hard. “Everything you see, I make myself. My entire life here in America, I make myself.”

“‘Golly,” whispered Trixie.  Her childhood had been far from ideal; she knew what it was to be hungry, to wear clothes that never fit right. But poor as she had been, Katya’s story made her background seem near idyllic.

“It is all right. We all have our crosses to bear,” said Katya quietly. “I do not dwell too much in the past. And besides, in Russia I could not do this ,” she said, grasping Trixie’s bare thigh with her pale hand. Trixie tensed.

“What is wrong with you?” she exclaimed. The Russian’s hand felt good, exciting even, but it was all wrong. Men weren’t supposed to do this to ladies, let alone other ladies. Trixie’s mother would probably have a heart attack if she could see her daughter right now.

Katya retracted her hand, a look of shame spreading across her face.

“I am sorry, Trixie, I thought you knew. Here in my bar, we are very open about our… sexual differences, you see. In Paris it was all the rage. Every woman I knew was intimate with other women. But New York, even, is not Paris. This I know now.” Trixie’s anger faded as she saw Katya’s face etched with worry. Katya was no predator - she was just a woman, a woman like Trixie, who fell in love with other women. Maybe, just maybe, Trixie even felt the same way. The Russian woman was so unlike anyone back home, she couldn’t be sure; the way she smoked like a man, the way her accent made Trixie’s name a rolling wave, the way she showed so much kindness and openness and understanding. The way this place seemed to be safe for people like Kennedy to sing and Katya to love, it couldn’t be a bad thing. When you love someone everything falls into place…

“I hope we can still be friends, Trixie,” Katya was saying now. “Nothing really happened.”

“Yeah. Nothing happened,” confirmed Trixie. “But if something were to happen, I don’t think I would mind.”

[d0ntw0rrybehappy]

10/7/2019

brandon and i went down to the train tracks by the la river. parked the car in the arts district. down past the “soho warehouse” the social club up on the rooftop and the barely reformed warehouses bombed-out looking.

we’d walked around the industrial quarter of downtown at night earlier in the week. putrid smell of clothes and trash on the ground. i don’t know how clothes and stuff gathers like that for the homeless. there are smells downtown that make me worried i’m going to get a disease. a lot of things originate here. roaches and rats and old-school plagues. the tents here in los angeles are really really intense. some are big. they mark off sections of the sidewalk and you don’t see what’s going on inside (Behind cloth walls). people stick together and make tent cities. a lot of the houseless people look like just average citizens. just normal people who haven’t been tattooed by homelessness yet. we walked past people staggering under the floodlights trying to erase the darkness of the alleys. weeds 6 foot high these new weeds that i dont remember from before that now remind me of places like this. they grow tall and ugly and hairy almost, they grow straight up. brandon and i walked looking for a burger shop. i was more scared than he was. past a van blasting mexican music, the kind with trumpets and sort of a ballad. at first i was comforted by the sound but by brandon’s hesitation i noticed it was weird to play such a thing to an alleyway, at 2:00 in the morning.

getting home to a warm bed was a relief. somewhere warm and safe where you don’t have to look behind you or be afraid. we saw a guy walking who kept looking behind him. we saw black and white helicopters flying overhead, LAPD, so many. we saw industrial workers at these giant wholesale warehouses getting things ready for the morning. pulling things out of trucks and putting them in. it felt safe there too. it felt like the kind of situation where you could die but probably wouldn’t. there were hibiscus flowers.

the thumping gunshots of the hardcore rave we’d gone to when getting here felt so wrong. $20 each for security guards, warehouse space and paying the artists well. young friendly healthy-looking people with a table of dj equipment. meanwhile we’re in the middle of one of la’s many hoods and a uniquely terrible one. the angry aggressive electronic music carries for blocks of this derelict place and the uncomfortable looking tenant building next to us. i wonder what homeless people say about the warehouse parties that go on in skid row and the fashion district. it’s a tale as old as time for the artists to go where it’s cheap and grimey but the discrepancy felt too great and it felt wrong to stand on the rooftop where cool kids were hanging out and smoking cigarettes and looking out from the tower onto the rough and deeply dangerous and deeply unwell street. as we left a man staggered in our direction from the mouth of the alleyway and we went in the other direction.

at another warehouse party i attended in skid row the streets were alive with homeless people, there was no sidewalk because the tents took up the sidewalk and so the people that lived there and hung around there took to the street. the streets were filled with people like a slow-motion bedlam. a woman sitting on a broken stool saw us first, getting out of the lyft, looking lost. she told us to come and told us exactly where the rave was. we said thank you and were grateful for her kindness because we were afraid. she offered us weed or meth and said had we got anything and we said no, she asked if we had money and my friend max who is wonderful this way gave her twenty dollars. we should have left then but had stayed too long and four or five others came over and they asked for money too. we didn’t know what to do because we all wanted to be kind to homeless people in that naive way and we just stood there and began to catch the attention of others who began coming over from the farther reaches. the first woman asked us all how old we were and at this point i hostilely lied. max told her the truth. then a tired-looking black man with glasses came down from somewhere and told the original woman that it was time for us to go and to leave us alone. he said it like he knew her, like they were family and they listened and they all went back.

we went into the rave guarded by a big strong man and the walls were 10 feet high and made of cement with barbed wire on top. inside was plasticky neon basic EDM music and lots of people. and it was so loud no one could have slept next the building. it made me think about rising waters and tension and the possibility of riots. us safe in our cement barbed wire and the oceans of suffering outside. i think of someone saying “just let me look at you” and spreading them apart with a magnifying glass, a rape of the city. brandon and i are obsessed or at least very interested in these insanely tough neighborhoods and i can’t think of why it’s not poverty tourism. i think it’s okay but you have to talk to people and not treat them like animals and you have to understand that this isn’t an aesthetic. it’s hard because i aestheticize everything especially the dark parts of life but increasingly when i come home after experiences like this i feel stressed. it makes me feel precarious. i feel like i’m doing some kind of duty if i do it right but i’m also afraid i might die. LA isn’t providence. if i was ever scared or worried in providence, LA is the big dogs it’s the major leagues it’s where all this shit gets ever more concentrated and ever more stark. i get scared when we get home at night. i don’t know how many people, poor people have to tell me that this life fucking sucks and i should never wish it on anyone so why would i even go here. it’s so not normal and it’s twisted. but i can’t stop because i feel like there’s something i have to do, maybe, and i just have to be careful that i don’t become another arm of the culture-raping gentrifying cycle but for this to actually be it.

anyway when i start talking about my privilege i just end up in this endless cycle thought machine so i’ll tell you what we did and what else happened.

after that night we went to the la river and i parked the car in the arts district and we started looking for a weak spot into the river. i thought it’d be a kind of safe tunnel through the city because there’s a bike path i’d biked along at some point as a kid. but there was no sidewalk next to the river here and it was all fenced off to get there in the parking lots of factories and warehouses and restaurants, well fenced or gated, and there were people around. so we walked and walked and found a place at maybe baby 667 took a right. brandon kept saying maybe baby maybe baby and we walked into the back of a wholesale truck place where the cargo crate attaches to the wall of the building like the tunnel between an airport and airplane. nothing there, no way in. we went the other direction towards a construction site and there was a way in there, it was a sunday so construction was halted. there was a fence we could easily have crawled under into what looked like a tunnel down into the river next to a metro building, but we weren’t sure if a ticket person was sitting in the booth in the parking lot and we walked nother 40 feet past a man in an orange and yellow reflective vest who looked at us a little funny.

for the life of us we couldn’t find an opening, it must have been an hour. i was surprised. into the arts district through hennesy and ingalls it felt like we were being directed. or protected. it got super rich and gentrified, turns out after verve coffee roasters skid row was .2 miles to the left, but we were being directed along this long shaped metal outside-tunnel wall thing through the safe parts and we started getting frustrated thinking we were losing the river because there’d never be a weak spot here.

we reached a bridge that would bring us across the river to the other side and thus into east la. i knew we had to ascend the stairs, i just knew for some reason. next to another or the same metro building with crabgrass we took one last look at a possibility -- a weakly fenced crack between two buildings. in front of the fence was a stinky pile of waste and i lifted my pants and hopped across it afraid to touch it even with my feet as brandon held back behind. it was truly a crevasse, about four feet across and it looked like there were people in or recently had been. brandon sort of wanted to go but i said it looked strange, something wrong, claustrophobic. when we ascended the stairs of the bridge and looked down the crack ended in a dead end. somebody had lived there like a snake in the rock. trapped themselves but banking on the idea that no one else would want to take the risk and enter either. jon said it was like literally being backed into a corner, no other place to go. he said it was sad.

we crossed the bridge and saw a man that startled brandon but more on that later. we took a left to keep going north up along the river but almost immediately i took a breath. there was writing on the wall that looked strange. it looked like it had been written by a white crusty. it had this bloody dripping quality, scrawled and was almost a paragraph, some sentence i dont remember about the water rising perhaps. and when it distracted me or sort of spoke to me i suddenly realized that that was it: the opening.

we went through the space between the bridge and the building and suddenly we were there. a big gravel parking lot with rusted traincars parked and empty. to our left under the bridge a homeless encampment. a latina woman walked in the opposite direction of us between tent and sink or something like someone just going about their fucking day in the glare of sunlight and public and the hunched stress of poverty, but also just a young woman living. i didn’t feel unsafe much at all near them. people form tent cities often to feel more safe. community and protection behind cloth walls and the neverending threat of having to move and leave a lot of what you’ve got behind and stake out another place in unknown territory on the street.

the parking lot had a surprising amount of cars in it. i actually dont know how cars drove in there. a lot of the cars were kind of nice and some were driving kind of weirdly, backing up and making U turns or just circling a little bit. not like they were waiting to make a drug deal though. just this weird collision of privacy out in the public. a man and wife and two little kids got out of the car and started taking pictures with their iphones. of the la river and the train tracks. there were a number of people like that. brandon and i were both in ponytails and loose and dark clothes, tucked so nothing was sticking out, comfortable clothes you could move in, dark in the heat. we walked right past the family who looked at us almost like we could be the dangerous ones. we walked past them along the tracks, under the bridge and into a new sort of zone. not directly into the la river because it is remarkably visible and vulnerable, wash of sunbaked gray cement through the whole city -- could see us from a mile. we walked along it though we did see a tunnel going from the riverside into the underground of the city.

a sign said no trespassing no dumping though we saw many putrid piles of homelessness that brandon said were very much like the ones he saw at the border. people have to leave their stuff behind and he called them artifacts, photos of family and religious items, which was beautiful to me because many of these items were so disposable and transient. and the stink of displacement, the stink of stress on people’s backs. we saw many of them and heard voices in the shadows the way you heard animals and i had to remind myself that this was not the apocalypse, every man for himself, these were people living behind cloth walls in the back alley we traversed in the heat. we tried to walk quietly on the tracks themselves. a tent under the bridge solemn and silent like a shrine.

we walked quietly on the tracks themselves so our feet wouldnt rattle the gravel of slag and asphalt. actually i told brandon to do that. i think he’s street smart but sometimes he surprises me -- he doesnt slip or sneak. i sneak like a cat when im in places like this. i dont know if he’s right to be unafraid to me he’s being a dope. brandon had brought the weed without me realizing and it was time to smoke. we sat to the side of the train tracks back out from under the bridge in the yellow heat of sun and dried out los angeles plant weeds waiting to be revived by rain which grew thick here unlike other places where they just die. he lit the joint and the trouble started.

we heard a train whistle in the distance and we were both like shit active train tracks. railside traffic lights had turned green and we thought the train was coming just as the no trespassing sign became obvious in front of us. usually trespassing isn’t a big deal but sometimes it is. once in a park a sheriff found us with his flashlight off way in the hedges and wrote us all up.

plus we were high. so we ran to the opposite end of the track where we could crouch behind a low wall and kept sipping on the joint which almost caught fire to my hair and the weeds lol. then brandon looked at his watch and it was time to go so he could make it to work on time. so we went up the hill behind the wall because we heard traffic and thought it might be just a street. plus we found a modest footpath made by a person. industrial relics, old rusted things with many pieces lodged in the side of the hill we passed. brandon said this was the same at the border too, these little paths. he followed me because i’m good at scrambling. and we slowly poked our heads up and it was...

a construction site. another empty one. the traffic right beyond. i felt vulnerable out in the open like that -- we were even visible to some of the road, and it looked like someone could come out from one of the bulldozers or cranes at any minute. we edged along the shadow in the perimeter and i feigned confidence that i could get us out but my legs felt shakey and brandon was quickly losing confidence in me. i wished i could have been a better leader. there were many places we could just scale and jump out to the sidewalk but i didn’t know what we were jumping into. the way there was crawling with cop cars, and, i dont know. the spaces between chainlink fences were too small and we watched a guy about our age bike by without noticing us. that’s a funny feeling that’s happened a few times in places like this. everyday life just beyond the fence.

it’s a nightmarish feeling, to be trapped at a dead end. the flow of your movement cut off. i don’t know how to explain it. it’s not the fear that some big scary person is going to come after you right then. it’s the fear of being trapped. i’ve, yeah, had dreams about it and it’s happened to me a couple times. you have to go back the way you came. eventually brandon made the call to just walk the way back. we walked back and being high we managed to really freak each other out.

first there was a sound behind us. looked up. police helicopter. they regularly patrol los angeles particularly downtown. or maybe it was on a mission who knows. they patrol the border too, and fly low to terrify people. this one flew right above our heads. why here, at the riverside? i imagined organized executions, shootings going on here in this overgrown alleyway walled off from the street. visible only from that other dimension. being high we both flipped that the helicopter was going to say something to us. i just stood up straight, moved to the shadows and kept walking like business as usual. police bluff. we didn’t turn around.

then we heard the craziest fucking thing. it was like a bird, loud and low by our ears. a big bird, a bird with big windpipes. and i swear to you there was something deliberate in its call. though the notes were many the way it was played had none of the wild animalness of a bird, none of the changes in dynamic, none of the rhythms beyond humans. it sounded like it was being played...on some kind of flute or whistle. it was going on behind us mixing with the helicopter blades. it, too, felt like it was about us. i think it was some kind of signal but brandon insists it was just a bird. but he didn’t say that then. i fucking swear it wasn’t a bird. i don’t know what it was. the signal idea’s beautiful but the melody was rather complex (and did not repeat). to know what that meant would really be a whole language. maybe it was just someone trying to attract a bird. whatever it was it played at our backs as we beat it.

that’s all i want to say for today peace out

[lawyerfail]

Our story: How my mum’s former employer tried to bill grieving widow £5500 for 105 mins work.

I want to share an experience and lesson, so that others can learn, not to go thru the same and maybe save thousands of pounds too.

Our Story

My Dad passed away in Jan 2017.

What you won’t know is that since then, we have been in arguing against the legal system and my mum’s former employer, a solicitor in Scotland who tried to bill a grieving family £5500 for 105 minutes work.

For many people my age, sadly, the number of weddings you attend goes down and is replaced by attending funerals.

I share our experience, in the hope that it you can be informed and save thousands of pounds, from going to lawyers and others who prey on the vulnerable, use and write the law to be on their side, have some frankly disgusting behaviours and unethical practices when people are at their most vulnerable.  

My Dad had a simple estate, three bank accounts, a credit card, a pension and some shares. We knew the balances and looked for legal advice to close it down. In a time of despair, where would you go? As there is only a handful of solicitors in Irvine, and the fact that my mum used to work there it was a simple decision to go there.

Not that we were functioning much logically at the time, but we presented the death certificate and asked to transfer everything to my mum, nothing more needed. No feuding, no ex-wives, no brother, sisters, sons, daughters, cousins staking any claim, no complicated affairs, nothing. As simple as it gets. When my mum worked there, there were an extremely frugal company to say the least. I remember going into the office after school. Very much the typical dinosaur type lawyers, technology wise and frugal beyond belief that resisted change and spending on anything at all.

So, without applying my normal diligent thought process, we signed the terms and conditions to close the estate. People have been dying forever and the legal system has been dealing with it for centuries. Expecting solicitors to charge 2-3 times what you would expect, I naively thought we might get a bill for £500-£1000. So, five months later we did get a bill.

Not for £500 but for £5500.

Let that sink in a little. One, maybe two or max three hours work I estimated, so even for the craziest charge by the 12-minute slot of laziest lawyers. Not £1500, Five thousand five hundred. £5500.

As you can imagine, that came as quite a shock. A big shock.

So naturally, like someone querying a large phone bill, I asked for an itemised break-down.

This was a challenge. A much great challenge than you would think because solicitors don’t want you looking deeply into what they have been doing and spending time on. Despite four months and four requests, I did receive a list of sorts which was not itemised, no running totals and not one that made a lot of sense.

I have a first-class university degree and over twenty years’ experience in business & finance industry. I am a computer & maths geek with accountancy experience and I still couldn’t understand it. It took me 3 weeks to attempt to decipher the charges, match them to who did what when, at what charge and what items related to the costs levied. Even then I could not completely decipher it. Best summation I could do, was that the solicitors had done 105 minutes work and sent 57 pages of letters, for a total of £5500. Various bills and sums to companies I had never heard of, nor details what the amounts were for or why.

Law firms are in a position of trust. A law firm with an audit file and a legal mandate to charge whatever they please because you have signed terms and conditions whilst in bereavement. Law firms operate this way whilst your guard is down, when you are extremely vulnerable and whilst my perception was that my mother’s former employer would may be even do us a favour and look after her after her husband of 50 years has just passed, follow the regulations and acting as per law society regulations. In short, act in your best interest and be someone you can trust.

I know from having some other friends going through similar process of losing parents and that no-one was paying attention to their solicitor, everyone accepting what their lawyer said and months later subsequently charged, this greatly disturbed me. So, when you are at your lowest eb, having lost a parent, not thinking straight, any solicitor can act in your “best interest” and charge you whatever they please. Who else have they taken advantage of in this way?

I followed the Scottish Legal Complaints Commissions guidelines and complained to the firm’s client relations partner. This got us nowhere. The offered to take £1000 of the bill initially, then £1500 but were not interested in sending a fully itemised bill, nor willing to discuss all the points I had raised about overcharging.

For months we had a lot of pressure via phone calls and solicitor letters demanding payment in full but we resisted them anything until the matter was resolved.

We had a lot of family discussions about giving in & just settling it. Who can argue with a law firm? Who has the energy for that? They are geared up and rightly so, to be above reproach and in a position of trust. My Dad has instilled in me a tremendous sense of stubbornness and resilience, my Dad was never one to back down when he believed in something, especially injustice from big companies and authorities. So, I was determined not to back down.

Next step after getting nowhere with the client relations partner, I decided to take this to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission. This was frustrating and more difficult than you can imagine. It took me two months of phone calls and letters and proving my case for Scottish Legal Complaints commission to accept my case as valid. First time I tried they said it wasn’t a valid complaint. One of those scenarios where you no one was about to accept responsibility, it was no-one’s fault and the whole thing was about to fall apart. To the SLCC it was the Law Society’s fault, then the Law Society saying they didn’t deal with complaints so it almost fell into a black hole.

Eventually, I did manage to get SLCC to accept 9 complaints out of my original list of 11 complaints accepted for further investigation against the firm. Part of this process, to resolve it quickly that is in less than a further fifteen months, you can have a mediation session to resolve the issues before a formal complaint it registered. I accepted this. I met with two lawyers from the firm and one trained mediator.

What was said in mediation is confidential and I cannot repeat exactly what was said, but I can share and want to share publicly the facts of our experience.

 How Solicitors will con money unethically

Communication & Trust

According to many solicitor’s terms and conditions, they publish and share hourly rates of solicitors, para-legals, secretarial / admin rates. They are obliged to publish rates in terms of business. They are obliged to act in best interests of the client. What ours did, is use £195ph solicitor for everything. Solicitors, also do not charge for anything less than 12 minutes. Like it or not, which I do not, but all solicitors charge a unit of work for the most trivial matter. That I cannot change. What I dispute strongly is that if you are handing in a bank statement or a trivial administration matter, that anyone could validate if documents acceptable and you should be charged at minimum admin fees, not £195ph fully trained solicitor.

There were many examples where solicitors have been operating the same way for years, without questioning the purpose or common sense of doing it that way. Three examples we were grossly overcharged for : share price validation, audit fees and letters.

Valuations

My Dad worked for BP fr over 25 years and had shares. We knew the amount of shares held, and in less than a minute on Google anyone can work out the value. Despite that, under the pretence of acting under a clients best interest, ours wrote a letter (1 unit of work & a letter £39+£40.25=£79.25) to Smith & Williamson to request a valuation. Smith & Williamson charged a valuation fee of £60 and then our solicitor, added also 1 unit of £195 ph again read the reply to that letter. £180 to tell you what you already knew. Not something I asked them to do beforehand either but comes under the arguement of they’ve always done it this way and it’s in the loosely described, wide ranging terms and conditions.

Auditor fees

Typical business practice is for another company to audit your work. So, for us, that 105 minutes of work for £5500 also included £400 of auditor fees. For an external law firm, validated that everything in the file represented good value for money, was all in the client interest and an accurate bill. This stinks to me. I would prefer to see a customer panel or external to the legal system truly assess solicitors fees charged. Or every firm to be more transparent itemised billing, in simple English not the obsfucated, obscure and confusing shambles it is now. The auditing firm knew next to nothing about the case. Despite it having more holes than the Titanic.

Letters & Lack of common sense

One of the credit cards my Dad owned was an M&S credit card, which had the princely sum of £66 balance outstanding. Our solicitor spent 1 unit crafting a letter to request the balance, 1 letter sent initially, 1 follow up letter as the first one was not answered in 5 days, then another unit reading the reply and another letter to us to tell us they had received the balance amount from M&S. Again, the absence of logic, common sense and acting in the best interest of the client sorely lacking but our solicitor did expect to charge over £200 for this admin sorry “legal service”.

RBS 4 letters and 1 unit just to confirm we have an account with them, which we knew already and could prove for free. Again, low amount balances and charges that are completely unnecessary and can be done yourself, done for a fraction of the cost. There is never a warning in advance, do you want us to process this, do you want us to write letters and charge you £195ph for something you can do yourself in 2 minutes? No warning to say that you can do things yourself upfront, without incurring completely unnecessary costs, that require zero legal skill and are purely administration or secretarial tasks at best. This theme is repeated for our entire case, there was nothing complex about closing an estate, nothing complex that required top legal advice for more than an hour at best, then for a secretary to carry out the instructions from the solicitor.

Cost Estimates & Explanations before work is done

We were never given any ball park costs, no estimate, no range of expected costs in advance. Solicitors are reluctant to estimating costs upfront. Solicitors hate this, and want to use the terms and conditions, hourly rate maximum billing with no-one watching how long, or how much anything costs. As I have experienced, challenging this is very difficult and even when taken to Legal Complaints Commission, to get a full investigation, solicitors do not like this at all. In every other walk of life, being transparent, held to account is standard practice. When dealing with someone’s estate, trust is paramount in solicitor, it is everything and it should be unquestionable trust.

If you have to have your solicitor do something for you, give them enough work to do in bulk. If you give them five * one-minute tasks spread over five days that will cost 5 units. If you give them all 5 at once and stipulate you expect this will be one unit of work, this will make it easier when reconciling both statements on effort, cost and billable units.

0.5-1% of estate value goes to Solicitor for doing nothing

Valuation of the estate was another bizarre exercise. After being charged over £200 for share valuation which went to a professional firm, the valuation of my parents house was done by me. I have zero residential property skills, zero interest or knowledge in property valuation other than googling house prices in Irvine. I gave an estimated value and this was accepted without question. So the most valuable part of the estate is valued by me? The total value of the estate is essential part of closing down an estate. One of the most unscrupulous pieces of business is that solicitors will also claim 0.5%-1% of the estate for themselves. This is for the sole purpose of them providing escrow, security and trust to distribute the estate. Watch out for this. In estates that are passionately disputed by warring family members I can see why it is needed, for a flat fee, not for a percentage of the estate. This is a disgusting and underhand tactic, which can be thousands of pounds for doing next to nothing.

Now I do not doubt that complex estates that have families in dispute do require legal professsionals, all the same having worked in consulting, having this experience and several other painful experiences with the legal profession, there is a huge amount of money to be made prolonging the problem. Consultants and lawyers take great delight in charging by the unit, making the complex more complex and time consuming.

What’s wrong with the billable hour

You would expect that law firms believe in putting the client first, doing things the right way and having a deeply rooted ethical values which drives all behaviour. The billable unit and billable hour is at great odds with this.

The main problem with the billable hour performance metric is that it specifically rewards and underpins behaviours that can be both to the detriment of the firm and, more importantly, its clients.

Customers do not like the billable hour. It is far to open to abuse. There is little correlation between quality of service and cost as the client still gets charged the same amount whether the solicitor wins or loses. There is more money to be made doing a poor job than a great one.

Rather than engendering a positive relationship with clients, billable hours create an huge debate between parties with both sides analysing, evaluating and auditing the fees. When solicitors only present the audit file after the invoice and have a lack of transparency and hidden charging mechanisms around pricing means that clients never really know how much and for what they will be charged at the end of a project.

Clients know that billable hours are inflationary because they will be charged for a block of unit time whether or not they use the whole block. This inevitably leads to a negative perception.

What’s more, the fear of being charged a significant amount for simply contacting your lawyer means there is little incentive for regular communication. The clients can be reluctant to call the lawyer and equally they can become cynical or suspicious every time the lawyer contacts them.

Within the firm, billable hours drive inefficiency. To generate more revenue for the firm, somewhat counter-intuitively, individuals seem to be rewarded for prolonging litigation, ‘churning the bill’ and creating unnecessary work.

  Law Society Admits it needs reform and is out of touch

BBC News on Law Society

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-42860598

The professional body for Scotland's solicitors has called for wide-ranging reforms to the way legal services are regulated.

The Law Society of Scotland claims the current regulatory framework is "in drastic need of modernisation" and is "no longer fit for purpose".

It has put forward 11 recommendations for change to an independent review of legal services regulation.

They include overhauling the legal complaints system.

The organisation argues the current system is "complex and confusing”

  Scottish Legal Complaints Commission

I wholeheartedly agree it is complex and confusing. We settled our complaint early. From my Dad’s passing it took fifteen months to get to SLCC, thru mediation and our complaints accepted.

It would have taken another eight to fourteen more months for the complaints to be investigated.

We accepted a settlement at 50% of original cost, still was almost £3000 to be paid more for the fact to get rid of the energy taken up arguing against the legal system. I vehemently agree we would have won our case against the firm and maybe even entitled to compensation. But we didn’t have the energy for that.

They admitted every complaint, they admitted they could do better and it was eye opening experience for them. They are dinosaurs and not operating in the real world, they are not alone but operating in a bygone era of charging whatever they like, regulated by legal firms doing the exact same billable hour practice which maximises their revenue at the disgust of the customer.  

My mum wanted an end to the fighting. 

This was my email to SLCC explaining our decision

Following a lot of family discussion after the mediation session, we have decided to end the complaint process at this stage. This decision has not been taken lightly, but mainly due to my mother's health, the emotional strain, stress has gone on long enough and the thought of another 8-14 months of time to conclude the complaint, is far too much to bear.

 Make no mistake, or be under no illusion, this absolves the firm of nothing. They accepted and admitted being culpable for 9 complaints registered, and I have no doubt whatsoever if it were not for such a protracted process to resolve things, they would be found guilty of all matters raised against them.

 Having witnessed face to face how out of touch law firms are with reality, how damaging bereavement is, having to deal with solicitors’ incompetence, how open to abuse solicitors have in billing to people that are grieving, then also go thru another 15 months of intimidation from this process, completely disgusts me. People are completely broken during this process, have no energy to face life, never mind be proving that a law firm and its processes are completely wrong and out of touch, is something that needs to change. As a professional I charge for my expertise, so will not be telling the firm how to improve their business practices but I will be informing the public how they can avoid untrustworthy, out of touch companies who try to extort and pressure widowers and families out of large sums of money, hiding behind a process which even the law society says is broken.

  Time for Change

It is time to change this behaviour, process and practice. 

Solicitors overcharging and exploiting bereaved clients, still grieving and without the energy to fight the legal system absolutely disgusts me.

I want my experience to be shared, as I know several other people and friends of friends recently going thru the same experience, with no idea how much their bill will be and what they are being charged for.

If I can help anyone, let me know. I hope this will be of use to people and save you thousands of pounds.

I hope the SLCC change the process for legal complaints.

Please share this blog with friends that are going thru a terrible time in the hope you can save thousands of pounds going into the wrong hands.

[anneedmonsonus]

Le Fanu, Perth’s Most Expensive Renovation, is Now For Sale

Le Fanu, Perth’s most expensive home renovation, is up for sale. If you could do with a luxury beach home and have a spare $17 million, this heritage-listed house could be yours!

Some of you guys may remember the story I wrote a few years ago on this house. Right by the beach in Cottesloe with spectacular views, the 1893-built house later fell into ruin, catching the eye and imagination of many who passed. Eventually Le Fanu was put on the market in 2008 for $6.5 million. Because of the 1492sqm block and the home’s extensive 36m ocean frontage, the land was estimated to be worth a whopping $15 million. But because the heritage restrictions were so strict, any future owner wasn’t allowed to bulldoze but had to restore – and the sheer scope of the work was certainly a deterrent. The house later sold for a greatly reduced $4.5 million and its extensive renovations cost almost $11 million. Whether its style is to your personal taste or not, there is no doubt that it is an absolutely incredible job. If you’re interested in the listing, Le Fanu is on the market with Pamela Wilkinson of The Agency.

If you’d like to read the original comments, you can check out my original blog post here. Otherwise, take a little tour below!

SAVED FROM RUIN: THE STORY OF LE FANU

There has always been something so compelling to me about a beautiful old house that has fallen into ruin. Are you the same? I think a ruined old house has something romantic about it; it sparks the imagination as you envision what it could look like with some love and what secrets might lay beyond its walls.

Way back in November 2008, when I was just a wee house nerd with black flared pants from Roads and eyebrows that didn’t match, one of my newspaper editors sent me an email asking if I could write some stories on Le Fanu. I knew instantly what house she was talking about and just about kissed my computer in excitement at the thought of finally getting to stickybeak inside.

Photo from Archie’s Archive.

The ballroom was one of the rooms in the worst condition. The leadlight door you can see was able to be saved.

Photos: D-Max Photography.

I had driven past this house for years and if you live in Perth, you probably have too. On a valuable seaside block on the corner of Marine Parade and Salvado Street in ritzy Cottesloe, Le Fanu has become a Perth icon since it was built in 1893; with its conical tower, gables, ornate chimneys and tall windows pulling admiring glances. One of the first houses in Cottesloe (along with nearby Tukurua and my personal favourite, Belvedere), Le Fanu was originally built as a grand beachside home for the wealthy general manager of The Bank of Western Australia, Henry Diggins Holmes, his wife Marion and their three children.

Later in its life, Le Fanu fell into ruin – and became even more famous. Its listing on the market in 2008 was a controversial one.

This was because with the block’s large size of 1492sqm and extensive 36m ocean frontage, the value of the land was estimated to be worth at least $15 million – possibly the most expensive piece of residential real estate in Cottesloe.

Yet because the crumbling old abandoned house, which came with an asbestos roof, crumbling bricks, rotten roof timbers, collapsing limestone walls, an assortment of creature tenants and the highest possible grading of heritage listing, no-one was allowed to knock it down and redevelop – leaving the only choice for a potential owner to renovate. As the cost of the extensive restoration work would cost millions, the selling price of the property was set in accordance for a greatly reduced price of $6.5 million.

It later sold for around $4.25 million – yet still cost almost $11 million to do up, making it Perth’s most expensive home renovation (and many would say one of (if not the) most difficult! It’s not difficult to see why…

BEFORE: The old ballroom.

Photos: D-Max Photography.

With Le Fanu now saved from spilling back into the sand dunes, I thought I’d celebrate by taking a look back at the history of this very special home – why it fell into ruin and how it was rescued by a team that included dedicated owners, Zorzi Builders and Hocking Heritage Studio – and show you the house’s amazing before and afters. Enjoy the tour. Maya x

A TIMELINE OF LE FANU

1893

Originally called Banksia and later named Le Fanu in honour of a former Anglican archbishop, the house was built in a Federation Queen Anne style and demonstrated the affluence that accompanied the gold boom of the 1890s. At the time it was built, Cottesloe was just being established as a popular summer playground for wealthy Perth residents in the 1880s, and there were only six houses in the suburb.

Nestled into the sand dunes with uninterrupted sea views, Le Fanu was built at 2 Salvado Street, Cottesloe for the Holmes family – the wealthy general manager of The Bank of Western Australia, Henry Diggins Holmes, his wife Marion and their three children, two daughters, Marion Phoebe, Albina Emma and Henry William. The Holmes had a massive effect upon the cultural life of Western Australia through banking and charitable activities, with Mr and Holmes and his wife Marion founders of the Ministering Children’s League Convalescent Home in Cottesloe. The Holmes family were prominent in business and charity, and incredibly generous with their time and money. Throughout their lives the family undertook many kinds of charity work, fundraising and philanthropic activities for the elderly, disabled, mentally handicapped and the poor.

1897 In May 1897 it appeared that the Holmes family had moved permanently to Banksia.

1898 – 1900

The house was soon extended with substantial additions and alterations undertaken in 1898 and 1900 designed by architect Percy William Harrison. The extension programs culminated in the western and northern rank of rooms in 1900.

Originally a five room house, the house grows to encompass 17 rooms that include five bedrooms, a light-filled ballroom, also allegedly used as a chapel, a drawing room, a formal dining or reception room, a formal lounge, a second lounge room, a sitting room, a family room, kitchen with walk-in pantry, an enclosed veranda and a study, its walls once covered with wood panelling with a concealed safe in the wall. There are also designated maids quarters.

There is a cellar by the kitchen, with hooks to the ceilings where meat was once hung, and an entrance to another cellar from a building in the garden. The Queen Anne style featured coursed rubble limestone walls and the southern façade had a particularly beautiful feature in the form of a candle-snuffer roof, a roof in the shape of an inverted cone, usually atop a tower.

BEFORE AND AFTER: The home’s distinctive candle-snuffer roof. Photos: D-Max Photography.

1945

Following the deaths of Henry and Marion Holmes the house was transferred in 1945 from the Holmes family to the Church of England’s Perth Diocese, as the Church was closely associated with the MCL. Just after the end of WWII, le Fanu was bought by the Anglican Church. The Anglican Church continued the charity work of the Holmes and the house was used as a meeting place for religious organisations and groups. It was in 1945 that it was renamed ‘Le Fanu’ after Henry Frewen Le Fanu, the Bishop of Perth between 1929 and 1946. (I had always thought naively that it was named Le Fanu after 19th century Irish ghost story/Gothic horror writer Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, which when the house looked quite spooky seemed quite fitting). The house’s ballroom was allegedly used as a chapel.

1973

Le Fanu was sold as a residence to a woman called Francis Fenwick, later Mrs Drake-Brockman, who took it on with the aim of renovating and restoring it to be her beachside home for her retirement. However it was a colossal job and as she was also coping with a farm at Esperance, the house slowly slipped into disrepair. Its position on an unprotected, blustery seaside block didn’t help with the salty sea air adding to its gradual degradation.

1975

The National Trust of Western Australia classified Le Fanu in 1975.

2008

The ruined abode was put on the market. An offer was made, but the sale fell through and the house went back on the market.

Le Fanu’s sale was a controversial one. With the block’s large size of 1492sqm and its extensive 36m ocean frontage, the land was estimated to be worth a whopping $15 million. Yet because the ruined house had the highest possible grading of heritage listing, the only choice for a potential owner was to renovate – an expensive task not for the faint-hearted. So the selling price of the property was set in accordance for a greatly reduced price of $6.5 million.

I was thrilled when in 2008 I got the chance to have a stickybeak through the house for my newspaper stories. I was one of those many people who drove past the house and stared at in a creepy fashion.

Chris Shellabear was the agent then. Chris is a nice, kindly man who seemed bemused at the fact that I wanted to go see Le Fanu. Really, the story was not a home review – it was a news piece about the famous house going on the market and struggling to be sold – and it didn’t actually require a personal walkthrough, but Chris didn’t need to know that, I figured. “Yes I NEED to see it,” I declared to him, ignoring the fact that Chris is a very busy man. “When are you free?” I was keen to get through it ASAP before I lost my chance and teed it up for that afternoon.

The house was a delightful mess. It was far worse inside than I had thought it would be. I have written about a few ruins over the years but I had never before visited any house in such a decrepit state. The ceilings were caving in, the floors were caving in, there was damage from rats and termites and the salty sea air to the limestone walls. It was dark and quite creepy, and an overcast day, with the wind rattling through the holes in the walls and ceilings.

The ballroom was one of the rooms in the worst condition. The leadlight door you can see was able to be saved.

The ballroom, at the end of the grand hallway, was considered dangerous so we could not enter it properly, and there was tape sectioning off areas that were too hazardous. I didn’t blog back then – I don’t even think I had a camera phone – and the sellers didn’t want any photos taken of the “interiors”, but I still regret not snapping photos. It was shocking inside. I remember the cellar, still with an old meat hook hanging from the ceiling, and a chute from the outside.

Chris told me at the time he believed the house would be bought by people wanting to turn the residence back into the grand family house it had once been. “Ninety percent of the interest has come from people wanting to make it a family home,” he said.

The chute down to the old cellar.

The cellar saved.

BEFORE AND AFTER: Incredibly, Zorzi Builders managed to save and restore many of the original features, including the magnificent leadlight front door and the original tesselated Federation tiling. Photo: Heather Robbins.

2009

It was still a while before Le Fanu, then home to rats, snakes and birds, found a buyer in 2009 (who desired that their involvement in the house remain out of the public eye) – but it sold in April, for the reduced price of around $4.25 million. (Hey, that’s a bargain, right – more than $2 million under the asking price!)

The new owners (bravely taking on one of the biggest and most complicated restorations in Perth as their first renovation project!) approached Perth’s premier building company Zorzi Builders, who having seen the outcomes of the restoration and adaptation of the incredible heritage house Colwyn at 50 Victoria Avenue Claremont, decided Hocking Planning & Architecture were the appropriate heritage architects for the challenging job.

“Zorzi Builders are proud to have been entrusted with the restoration of this important home, which couldn’t have happened without the courage of our clients, who wanted to get it right,” Zorzi Builders marketing manager David Reynolds said. “It was gutsy of them to put that kind of money on the table and is perhaps a sign that as a society we’re valuing heritage more.”

ABOVE PHOTOS: A long, grand hallway leads to the ballroom, now a billiards room. D-Max Photography.

Photo: Red Images Fine Photography.

Photo: Red Images Fine Photography.

2011

With plans for Le Fanu’s restoration now underway; in 2011 I interviewed the late great architect Ian Hocking of Hocking Planning and Architecture, who sadly passed away on November 16, 2014. Le Fanu was his last project.

Ian, a renowned heritage architect, was excited about being a key player in Le Fanu’s restoration and told me about what work was planned for Le Fanu. He said the approved design was guided by a conservation plan to satisfy the stringent heritage and planning requirements of the Heritage Council of WA and the Town of Cottesloe. “Le Fanu is in a very fragile state and would disappear in a handful of years if not conserved now,” he said. “The conservation of the external cap limestone walls and brick quoining and the reconstruction of the external facades to c1900 configuration and appearance will be major challenges. No residential project in WA has involved this level of conservation works nor this level of urgency.” Mr Hocking said the Marine Parade and Salvado Street facades needed to be retained, as did all the major internal rooms, gallery and passage, basement undercroft and cellar.

Ian said the approved design had been guided by a conservation plan to satisfy the stringent heritage and planning requirements of the Heritage Council of WA and the Town of Cottesloe. “The development approval took six months of detailed submissions, consultations and negotiations to satisfy the many detailed requirements,” he said.

Even the furniture to be placed in the house when complete, years in the future, required council pre-approval!

Ian said discussions with the Heritage Council of WA and Town of Cottesloe confirmed the need to retain the Marine Parade and Salvado Street facades including roof lines, reconstruct the verandas to their original configuration, retain the setbacks which give the place prominence and retain all major internal rooms, gallery and passage, basement undercroft and cellar. “These constraints occupied three quarters of the site, leaving only the cramped north-eastern corner for new development, which extends the facilities of the existing house,” he said. “The existing house does not have any bathrooms or toilets and the kitchen has to be taken down, and reconstructed, to accommodate the driveway in its prescribed location, into the basement level car park, from Salvado Road.”

An artist impression of what Le Fanu will look like after the proposed work.

2012

Work continues on the home – carefully. With the danger of walls and ceilings collapsing, tradespeople were instructed to wear hard hats. There are countless tradespeople and artisans called to work on the house, many who were so happy to be a part of its history they even worked weekends on it. Many original features were almost ruined but were able to be rescued by being carefully taken apart, painstakingly restored, then put back together. The salt-soaked limestone walls were deconstructed and the stones bagged and numbered to be restored to rebuild the new walls. The Federation tessellated floor tiles, archway plaster angels, leadlight glass doors and fireplaces were also restored. The existing jarrah floors, too rotten to rescue, were replaced with locally sourced jarrah.

David says Le Fanu’s importance as an iconic heritage home thrills many of the Zorzi artisans, giving them an opportunity to use traditional craftsmanship methods in a historic setting. “It was a real 18-month labour of love for them – it took them back to their roots,” he says.

A NEW LEASE OF LIFE: The beautiful original Federation tiling to the entry foyer was saved, each piece restored and painstakingly relaid by Zorzi craftsmen. Photo: Red Images Fine Photography.

This fireplace in the formal dining room was also saved – including its tiling. Photo: Red Images Fine Photography.

Adjoining the ballroom, now a billiards room, is now a beautiful bar with black honed marble benchtops. Photos: D-Max Photography.

The open-plan kitchen, living and dining – the timber ‘centrepiece’ is a bar. Photos: D-Max Photography.

The house is slowly extended and becomes a capacious three storey mansion – with features including a cavernous ten car undercroft garage (with marble floors. Of course), a restored cellar for wine, a ballroom/billiards room and a luxe main suite on the top floor.

Tradies report unusual noises and like to joke that the resident ghost is former owner Mrs Drake Brockman. “The supervisor said when he was alone at the house late at night he thought he could hear people in the building,” said David Reynolds.

There is also the mystery of the wall in one of the ground floor. Despite a plethora of experts being called in to figure it out, no-one can explain why the wall is continually cold and damp. Every time the wall is scraped back and the paint fixed, it is shortly damp and cold again with damage to the paint, as if water is seeping from within the limestone wall – which should be impossible. The team eventually puts it down to some kind of quirky supernatural activity!

Every bathroom is lavishly appointed. Photos: D-Max Photography.

On the upper floor is the new main suite, which seems to be bigger than my entire house. Photo D-Max Photography.

2015

After checking out the house again during its renovation, I am lucky enough to visit Le Fanu for the third time, with David Reynolds and other West journalist Sally-Ann Jones. It is fully furnished, but whisper-quiet and empty; with the current owners using it only as a holiday house. Sally has just asked if the house boasts any hauntings, and David tells us of the supervisors and tradies who have heard strange noises. Two minutes later, all three of us hear a distinct thump from downstairs – even near-deaf old me. “There’s the ghost,” laughs David.

Zorzi Builders work on the home takes out the 2015 Masters Builders-Bankwest Housing Excellence Awards title of the Best Alteration and Addition in WA. David Reynolds says the intricate interior was designed with MMA Interiors to symbolise the period the house was built and its history as an abode for a wealthy family; features include chandelier-adorned ceilings, original ceilings roses, marble floors and bathrooms, locally sourced jarrah and custom cabinetry throughout. Original limestone walls restored and extended with locally sourced material surround the home along with water features and salt-tolerant architectural landscaping. This grand old lady is ready for a new lease of life.

The classically designed gardens accentuate the timeless beauty of the house – and don’t restrict the stunning ocean views. Photos: D-Max Photography.

What do you think of Le Fanu’s renovation? Like many people, I loved the romance of the ruin, and while I feel the house still has something very romantic about it, it is a different kind of magic now; walking through gives a feeling of awe more than mystery. With the house still a seaside holiday home; it has not yet re-acquired the patina and character of frequent use. And while it is exquisitely beautiful, the finished house is too elegant for my personal taste – you know I prefer my homes a little worn in; I would never belong in a house with elegant marble floors! (unless perhaps I was sliding across them in my socks).

However I do know that Cottesloe Council – and the Heritage Council – have very stringent laws. The work that was done to Le Fanu – every material, feature and fixture would have had to have met very particular guidelines. I think the work and craftsmanship that has been done has to be commended – even if it’s not to your personal taste you cannot deny the house is incredible. It is amazing it is still standing and all the people who saved it deserve the biggest congratulations. It was not a job for the faint-hearted and they’ve turned it into the kind of home befitting of its spectacular oceanfront locale and one that reflects the huge investment of money, time, energy and faith that went into it.

When I visited the finished house it was empty – a holiday house again, which seemed a bit of a pity, to have a house like that only be used infrequently! I’d love to see it as a wonderful family home again. And who knows – with a long life now ahead of it again, hopefully that will happen once more. Maya x

Like this story? You can see other inspiring home renovations by following House Nerd on Facebook, Instagram @housenerd, Pinterest, Twitter @HouseNerd_ or Bloglovin.

The post Le Fanu, Perth’s Most Expensive Renovation, is Now For Sale appeared first on House Nerd.

from Home Improvement https://house-nerd.com/2019/03/14/le-fanu-for-sale/

[fashiontrendin-blog]

The Cult of Supreme: Everything I Learned From the Kids in Line

https://fashion-trendin.com/the-cult-of-supreme-everything-i-learned-from-the-kids-in-line/

The Cult of Supreme: Everything I Learned From the Kids in Line

W

hy do people love Supreme so much? I’m not asking because I’m against the hype — I’m generally pro-hype when it comes to streetwear — I’m more so asking in amazement. Even if you’re not a fan of the brand, its success is arguably impossible to miss. Take its recent New York Post cover takeover as evidence; newsstands sold out of copies within hours, defying the notion that print is dead.

In my eyes, defiance, or perhaps rebellion, is so much of what Supreme is about. According to its website, the brand opened its doors in 1994 as a hub for skaters, but eventually grew to cater to other counterculture movements, like “punks,” “hip-hop heads,” and downtown kids.

Supreme’s business strategy reflects its unorthodox roots. The brand’s decision to release product in highly controlled limited releases (a.k.a. “drops”) strays far from the traditional retail approach. And while most brands seek to maximize their target audiences to in turn maximize profit, Supreme doesn’t seem too worried about losing customers along the way. In fact, I’ll take this moment to share that I am currently blocked by Supreme on Instagram. Sadly there’s no juicy explanation; I can’t for the life of me recall what provoked this. Nevertheless, since I’m not an internet troll or a spewer of hate speech, this act proves my point: Supreme doesn’t give a fuck about rules or the status quo. And to be honest, it’s working: The only two Supreme pieces I own were purchased after I was blocked.

“At the core of Supreme’s power to drive demand for its products is its ability to cultivate a community,” Business of Fashion wrote of the Supreme phenomenon. “It’s the critical ingredient that turns drops into rituals, and T-shirts into trophies.”

I’m increasingly intrigued by Supreme, and have no doubt I share this sentiment with the customers who line up down the block every week in the hope of buying something from one of its highly anticipated drops, in which certain pieces sell out in minutes. Through denying people access and defying traditional rules of retail, Supreme has created a loyal customer base that is hooked on the chase.

To gain a better understanding of how Supreme has established such unfailing prominence, I decided to speak to its biggest fans right at their mecca: the Supreme Soho store, minutes before the next drop. Continue below for the five most striking things I learned from those keeping the hype alive.

1. Supreme Isn’t Shy About Playing Hard to Get

“Supreme has always been a thing that you have to know. They don’t spend any money on advertising, they don’t do photoshoots and exposés — maybe every once in a while in a skate magazine or something raunchy like that — but they don’t really publicize the brand at all. You kinda have to know the brand to know what’s going on. The fact that it isn’t so publicized is what [brings] a lot of people here. Even though you have to wait in these stupid long lines, it was almost like a privilege to do so because you know people didn’t know about it and people aren’t able to do it. Even though more and more people know about Supreme, that ‘people aren’t able to do it’ aspect is very heavy. There’s still such a demand because it’s still such a privilege to go in there and shop. They’ve turned it into a real thing; it’s an honor to get that spot, it’s coveted just to be able to go in there and buy the items.” – Andre, @solestreetsneakerco, 35

“Shopping wise it’s okay, but sometimes the workers inside assume you’re a reseller and sometimes don’t give customers stuff.” – Tony, 26

2. Further, Customer Service Seems Not to Be of Much Concern

“You gotta figure 80% of the line is tourists and this a thing. People come on vacation and one of the things on their checklist is ‘visit the Supreme store.’ The coveted item of Supreme is a box logo tee. A plain T-shirt with the logo on it; it’s the simplest thing and nobody understands why it goes for so much money. [Ed note: Supreme box logo T-shirts are not sold on the Supreme site; if you want to purchase from a reseller it will put you back anywhere between $650 and $2000.] It’s just because it’s that core item. These tourists don’t know much, so 800 people walk through that door on a regular day and 450 of them ask for a box logo T-shirt, which is never there. So I know [the employees] get frustrated working there and having to deal with it all the time, so they’re a little brash. That is what Supreme is. I wouldn’t want to walk in there and have employees that are like ‘Hey, welcome to Supreme! How may I help you?’ That’s not what this place is, that’s not what this place has ever been. The employees sorta act the way they act.” – Andre, @solestreetsneakerco, 35

“I don’t really like going into the store, they’re kind of rude to you. When I was younger, I was very naive and scared, but you get used to it. They’re not nice to most customers that go there, but they recognize that almost every single person goes there multiple times a week and [the employees] realize they’re just buying the same thing to sell. So, it’s understandable.” – Edison, 19

“They’re not nice, but they’re really cool. I admire them. They have personality. No other store can have an employee like this; if employee had this attitude at other stores they’d get fired. They’re dope, they’re special.” – Lox, @iamyourshoes, 21

3. Some Customers Have Turned Shopping at Supreme Into a Business

“It’s a business. I mean, I am a fan as well, that’s what started the whole thing, but it’s primarily a business at this point for me. I was always interested in sneakers, one of my first jobs was at FootAction. I wanted to be a manager, I caught the bug, it stuck. The first time I discovered Supreme was when they released a [Nike] Dunk Low, I think it was 2010-ish, maybe 2009. It was only available at Supreme and I wanted it of course because I was interested in the sneaker aspect of it. So that was my first time coming down here and finding out where the place was. Once I discovered the sneaker and I went in the store and saw everything, I started doing more research. At the same time, my son is kind of into skateboarding and knew about the brand and he thought it was cool that I had something Supreme. I started coming down here a bit more often and following more of the stuff they were releasing. At first it was just for me, but then it started growing. I was always able to sell sneakers casually; buy two pairs or three pairs to help pay for my pair of it. That started growing coinciding with me finding out about Supreme.

Then Complex did a documentary that I was involved with a couple years ago and that blew me up… When it aired, [Supreme was] banning me [from] buying [anything but] size XLs. There were times when I’d go in there and be like ‘Can I get that black t-shirt?’ they’d be like ‘Nah it’s sold out,’ then three guys behind me got the black T-shirt in their hand. I had to eat shit for a while to get back in good graces. But that [documentary] took me from 5,000 followers to 50,000 followers. It legitimized me in the eyes of a lot of buyers, it did more good than bad in the long run. – Andre @solestreetsneakerco, 35

“Nothing, I just like the money.” [Ed note: In response to “why do you like Supreme?”] – Jalen, 18

“I would honestly say [I own] upwards of 400 pieces. It’s like moving inventory. For a while in high school I was working for Grailed (I was a moderator), that was my thing, collecting old Supreme, early 2000s/90s Supreme. But that’s a big part of it, keeping some stuff, selling some stuff — I have some stuff in my house that hopefully in a couple of years will be worth something.” – Edison, 19

“When I was in high school, I used to wear skate shoes like Nike SBs, and I wanted to wear Supreme and the SBs together because that was the trend, so that’s how I got started. What I don’t like, I’ll sell; if I like stuff, I’ll keep it myself. Like, see this bag? [Points at camo Supreme duffle bag.] It’s 2005, no one has it. This is a very rare bag, but if I wanna resell it’ll probably go for $500. But I like keeping stuff for myself. “ – Tony, 26

“We usually resell so that we can get more stuff. I like to buy the bags, the tees, the sweatpants, and the decks also.” – Ericson, 16

4. …While Others Truly Cherish the Sentimentality

“There’s kids like [Jalen] now who come and buy everything, so I gotta go and figure out how to get it. I go in and just buy stuff for myself. The brand has always been cool, even in 2006, this shit was always known as the dope brand.” – Jimmy, 28

“I like the culture around it… that you have to wake up early to try to get everything, how many people you can meet on the line — it’s really cool. It’s in New York and most times in New York you don’t get a collection of people standing around waiting for one thing because everybody’s so busy.” – Gregory, 17

5. Regardless, Many Customers Aren’t Ashamed to Admit That They’re In It for the Hype

“I thought it was a cool brand — I thought cool people had the brand. I was pretty into Odd Future at the time too; Tyler, the Creator is very cool and he wears Supreme. Then a lot of kids at my middle school and high school wore it too, so it kinda pushed me further into wearing it.” – Edison, 19

“I started shopping at Supreme three and a half years ago. I got into it from my boy. He told me ‘Yo, just stop by, come with us to Supreme.’ We used to camp out from like Monday to Thursday.” – Zane, 25

“Just the limited quantity and how you have to line up and everything.” [In response to “Why do you like Supreme?”] – Max, 14

“Through the vibe.” [In response to “How did you discover Supreme?”]  – Miguel, 13

“This is the second time I went, the first time was two days ago — but I obviously know what it is. Everyone is hyping it up.” – Alexis, 15

“I just find it super trendy and I love the idea of items you can purchase online that are hella limited and once they’re gone they’re gone. It’s really an indescribable feeling, like you’re one of the few that were able to get this.” – Zach, 17

Photos by Louisiana Mei Gelpi.

[twistedtinseltown]

Episode 1: Welcome to Hollywood (U)

STORY SUMMARY: They say it takes a village to raise a child, and Hollywood University just obtained Atlas Seville – an incredibly bright but naive boy with a good future ahead of him if he can just survive the next four years of college. But knowing this town, that's obviously easier said than done.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Atlas meets his roommate, who quickly gets them both in hot water; normalcy for a college professor makes things awkward... as usual.

WORD COUNT: 2,346  TOTAL # OF WORDS: 2,346

DISCLAIMER: The only character that I personally own is Atlas Seville. Everyone else is owned by either Pixelberry Studios or Bagdasarian Productions.

Enjoy!

It had been a very long week.

Eighteen-year-old Atlas Seville had just moved out to California so he could attend Hollywood University, one of the most prestigious performing arts schools in the country. This was the first time that the boy was living somewhere without his family, much like most other incoming freshmen to the school. Understandably, he was excited to be here but very nervous to be out on his own.

Atlas worked very hard to get to step foot on the campus at all. Born with developmental disorders, he struggled to learn subjects in school for a few years. Despite his memory being almost photographic, it was his communication skills that were somewhat lacking. He wasn't officially diagnosed, however, until the fifth grade – with the diagnosis of a stutter, acute social phobia, and Asperger's syndrome. There were other developmental hurdles for Atlas, but he managed to get by.

Since then, Atlas and his father Dave began to work with a therapist and he's made leaps and bounds to improve on his grades with great payoff.

Reaching the front gates of Hollywood U's campus in a taxi cab, Atlas quickly paid the driver with some of the money he had on his person. He quietly got out of the cab, bags in tow and head held high.

Standing at about five-foot-four, Atlas was small in both size and stature. His windswept brown hair and bright blue eyes complimented his rounder face and pale complexion, and he always seemed to have a childlike wonder and energy to tie it all together.

Entering the campus, Atlas started to look around in awe at all of the buildings around him. Most of them stood taller than the ones in his hometown, except for maybe the city hall there. He was so focused on marveling the brilliant architecture that he didn't see directly ahead of him, walking directly into someone.

“Whoa!” A toned blond, who appeared to be a few years older than Atlas, looked down at the brunet as he picked up his luggage that he dropped. “You okay there, little guy?”

Atlas heard the rough voice and quickly looked up at the other boy after frantically getting a grasp on his bags. “Oh! Y-Yeah, I’m okay, thank you.”

“You need some help? Four bags seems like a lot.”

Sheepishly, Atlas nodded. “Some help w-would be nice, actually…” He blushed. “Y-You can carry a suitcase and my backpack.”

The blond smiled and bent down to grab the suitcase for him. “You got it.” He stood upright again. “My name’s Max, by the way.”

Atlas blinked in slight surprise. “M-Max Warren?”

Max grinned. “Yeah! Why do you ask?”

“I think y-you’re my roommate!”

“Your last name Seville?”

“Mhm!”

“Then yeah, you are!”

Atlas squeaked in excitement, putting down his bags to hug Max tightly.

Max chuckled and hugged the smaller boy back. “You seem younger than eighteen, ya know.”

“I-I get that a lot.” Atlas smiled brightly up at Max and stayed in their tight hug. “B-But I’m not worried.”

“Adds to your innocent charm.”

To the blond’s surprise, Atlas let out what seemed to be a childlike giggle. “E-Exactly!”

Max laughed. “Well, I’m gonna protect you with my Goddamn life, okay?”

“Y-You promise?”

“I promise.”

Atlas smiled brightly and latched onto his arm. “Thank you for helping me, b-by the way.”

Max flashed a movie star smile. “Of course. What are roommates for?”

Thomas Hunt loathed having office hours.

Such hours are required for every professor – whether they were adjunct or not – and most faculty members at Hollywood University. Hours for dozens of students to line the hallway just to see him. As much as it might seem that Thomas's Hollywood ego (or, maybe, lack thereof depending on personal perspective) would love being showered in the attention, the students themselves irked Thomas to no end. Each had with them their own... quirks, to put it nicely, but they tended to fall into one of three categories.

First, there were the students that consistently came to his office and asked a million questions about assignments. They would typically be so far behind with the assignment that he almost knew they were going to fail it, either because they cheated or they were just lazy. He wasn't so surprised with the students that did this, but they were generally quite bothersome anyway. A few extensions of the category included, but weren't limited to, students asking for his opinions on other professors' assignments just because they wanted to impress him.

Ha. Impress Thomas Hunt? Already an improbable task.

Next came the students who would come into his office for one sole purpose: to flirt with him. These types of students angered Thomas even more than the students in the last category did. Did they not realize that his standards were higher than the Empire State Building compared to most of the students with infatuations for a man that was almost twice their age?

Of course... the almost criminal age gap hadn't stopped him before at one point.

But that's a story for another time, I'm afraid.

Lastly, there were what Thomas liked to call his "platinum status" students – the students who managed to gain a massive amount of his respect with their work ethic and composure, and whose projects continued to blow him away with their intuitive creativity and the sheer effort put into them. These were the students he believed could do some good in Hollywood and in the world, and he talked to these students at least once every other week.

Unfortunately, the professor hadn't gotten the chance to meet any of these students before their summer break, which was now very close to finishing up.

Thomas was snapped out of focus as he finished typing up his syllabus when he heard a knock on his office door. He saved the document and closed his laptop for the moment, looking toward the door. "Come in!"

Once the door was pulled open, in stepped fellow professor Priya Singh, a stack of manila folders under her arm. "Ah, you're here early for a change."

"Figured it was time I prepared here for my next semester of personal hell," Thomas quipped back at her with a sarcastic smile.

"You don't have to be so bitter about it," was Priya's deadpan response.

Thomas sighed. "Sorry. I thought I would catch you in a good mood for a change for our first day back together, but apparently, that's not the case."

"No harm done, I promise." Priya set down the folders that were under her arm. "Your new student files for the roster for your Hollywood 101 class. Straight from the undergraduate department."

Eyes widening, Thomas looked to the pile of folders, then back to her stunned. "There's got to be at least two hundred files in this batch..."

"Which is why that class is now in the auditorium."

Thomas grabbed the top folder of the bunch, sighing in dread. "Good God... and I have to put all of these in the system by…?"

Priya shook her head. "By tomorrow."

"Christ..." Thomas looked down at his tapping finger in defeat before moving some of the folders closer to his laptop. "Guess I should get to work on this then. And I was hoping to leave on time tonight."

"I know it's a lot, but I'm sure you'll live. I have to get my things in order. I'll see you later today, alright?"

Thomas nodded in reply before he watched Priya stride out of the room and shut the door with a click behind her. He let out a sigh, shaking his head as he started to comb through the files of students in his classes.

With the way things were going right now, this was going to be a long semester…

About two hours and lots of work later, Atlas and Max had finished pulling their dorm room together and were now walking into the coffee shop that was on campus called On the Grind. The two ordered coffee and sat in a booth next to the windows. Sunlight illuminated the seats and the table as they talked.

Max took a small sip of his drink. “So the name Atlas, huh? “How’d your parents give you that name?”

Blushing, Atlas grabbed his arm awkwardly. “M-My dad named me after the Greek titan that carried the world on his shoulders in mythology.”

“Holy shit, that’s cool! What’s your full name?”

“A-Atlas Dorian Seville. My d-dad gave me the middle name from The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

Max raised an eyebrow at the younger boy. “Who’s that and where’s his picture?”

To that, Atlas burst out laughing, making his freckles practically glow in the sunlight now. “It’s a b-book!”

“Oh…” It was Max’s turn to blush now.

Atlas giggled. “I-It’s okay, Max!”

“Well, well, what do we have here…?” a shrill, unrecognizable voice interrupted from next to them.

The source turned out to be coming from a shorter girl that had abruptly showed up at the end of the table. Max immediately thought she had the appearance of a Jersey Shore reject, while Atlas… wasn’t sure what to think at all. An entourage of four stood behind her – three other girls and a boy.

“I believe this is our table,” the queen bee continued.

Max furrowed his brows at her. “I’m sorry?”

She crossed her arms. “Every time we’re in here, we sit here at this table – mine and Lance’s names are engraved under it!”

“God, Bianca…” one of the other girls muttered as she rolled her eyes.

Atlas looked under the table curiously – and sure enough, by the pole on his side of the table, there were two sets of initials carved into the wood: B.S. + L.S.

Max sneered. “Your names may be on it, but it’s not your property.”

Bianca leaned in toward Max, and if looks could kill, he would have likely imploded. “Do you even know who I am? My name should be on anything I want.”

“I-It’s just a table…” Atlas spoke up quietly as to not cause a scene.

Turning her attention away from Max, Bianca slowly stood upright again and glided her French-tipped fingernails across the table. She went to one of her friends, grabbing the drink out of their hand and letting it loose on Atlas in the blink of an eye. Her cold villainess sneer locked onto his fragile frame. “You can’t tell me what I can and can’t have, retard.”

Atlas’s eyes went wide and watery as he heard the gasps throughout the coffee shop and the sound of someone typing on their phone.

Max stood up from the booth and got in Bianca’s face. “You want your table? You can fucking have it, princess. But if you ever hurt my roommate again, you’re going to have hell to pay.”

Bianca gave him a wicked smirk. “Oh?” She noticed Atlas standing up to join Max. “You mean like this?” Her hands pushed abruptly against the smaller boy’s chest, slamming him into the table and causing Atlas to cry out in pain.

The older boy growled and stood protectively in front of Atlas, his icy eyes on the mean girl. “Don’t call him a retard. And don’t you ever touch him again! If you’re still looking to try, you gotta try to go through me, bitch.”

And that’s exactly what Bianca did.

She threw the first slap before going in for punches, and to keep on the defensive, Max fought back.

Lance and two of the other girls tried to pull Bianca off of Max, while one of the baristas ran over to the scene with a security guard.

“Alright, alright, break it up!” the security guard shouted, prying Max away from Bianca.

The barista, on the other hand, went over to Atlas immediately and covering him protectively so he wouldn’t be swung at. “Are you okay?”

Biting his lip, Atlas shook his head as tears fell from his eyes. “N-No… I-I’m overwhelmed and scared. Is M-Max gonna be okay?”

“He might be in some trouble for this, but I think he’ll make it out okay.” The man smiled. “I’m Zig.”

Atlas sniffled, wiping his eyes. “I-I’m Atlas…”

“I dig that name.”

“Thank you!”

Zig leaned up when he heard the scene quiet down and sighed in relief when he saw that everyone in the fight was gone.

Shaking his head, the security guard sat down across the table from Atlas and Zig. “Hi there, buddy. I’m Diego. Listen…” He gently grabbed Atlas’s hands. “I have to warn you: your friend might get in trouble for this since you guys were on school property when it happened. You’ll be okay, but you’ll have to tell people what happened in a hearing, okay? I don’t know when that will be, but I know a guy you should meet in case something happens like this again.”

Taking in all of the information, Atlas nodded slowly, his eyes filled with worry.

Zig rubbed his back comfortingly. “You’ll be okay. You aren’t in trouble.”

Atlas nodded again. “O-Okay…”

Diego took a deep breath as he pulled out a small notebook, quickly writing down his cell phone number. “Here, buddy. You can call me anytime if you’re in trouble.”

“I’ll add my number too,” Zig added on, taking out a pen and jotting it down before sliding the paper over to Atlas. “Here you go.” He turned to look outside. “Your friend is waiting for you to go outside. You’re going to be okay.”

Atlas took a deep breath and nodded a third time as he stood up. “O-Okay. Thank you.”

Diego smiled warmly. “Of course. You go on ahead and get back to your dorm room so you can go and change out of those clothes.”

“R-Right…” Atlas frowned. “T-Talk to both of you later…” He made his way out of the café, praying to God that his whole semester wouldn’t be riddled with incidents like this.

His first week was not going well, and classes hadn’t even started yet!