#I thought that ‘don’t mock terrible people for their appearance because so many decent people get caught in the crossfire’

[reversetimelord]

The takeaway should absolutely be “this guy fucking sucks and shows that trans men can also perpetuate misogyny, transmisogyny and transphobia in general (he also displayed bigotry against transmascs whilst trying to present himself as One Of The Good Guys™️); it’s deeply important to fucking check yourself and not fall into bigotry against your own community as well as others”, not “transmen™️ are all like this, they don’t really experience oppression and transfemmes should stay away from them” as some people seem to be taking it (not OP, her advice is solid)

to the trans girls saying "this would work on me" about that trans guy's guide to fumbling a tgirl, please develop some more self respect, don't let yourself get used by guys like that

[mrsbrookegillespie]

+Perfect Harmony+ (Part One) Luke x Reader

Description: For Y/N Molina, it never came easy for her. The hardest part not being able to do the one thing she loved, creating music. With her cousin Julie joining a ghost band that she’s been secretly admiring for years, her all time crush not returning the same feelings, and having many untold secrets, something is bound to go wrong.

Warnings: ANGST, swearing, mention of suicidal thoughts, Ray not being that nice (I’m sorry Ray, we love you), mention of slight sexual harassment, mentions of death (duh), terrible writing, typos, and probably more that my brain can’t think of at the moment. 

After Writing All Of That I’m Questioning This Story, But I Do Love It So... Many Songs Will Be Featured, Feel Free To Listen To Them When They Come Up.

+Perfect Harmony+

For Y/N Molina life wasn’t easy. Her parents, one being the sister of Ray Molina, dropped her off in front of the Molina household at the age of fourteen before going off to explore the world. At the time she was upset about the situation, but it wasn’t surprising. Her parents never wanted a kid, she practically raised herself while they were in Greece eating seafood, and sipping at the finest wine, no doubt. “How are you doing?” Rose, her cousin Julie’s mom, asks. 

Y/N shrugs. “They’re never coming back, so I guess I’m going to be stuck on this couch for a while.” She actually grew quite fond of the sofa that pulled out into a bed.

“We’ll make you a room up in the loft,” Rose assures.

“So, we agree, my parents are…” Her voice fades off, inhaling through her nose.

“You know, this used to be the studio of a band.” Y/N tilts her head, looking at the older woman. “A rock band, I met them when they were going to play at The Orpheum--”

“The Orpheum?!” Y/N exclaims. “That’s amazing!” 

“They were, but they died that night.” Rose stands up, walking to a box. “This is some of their stuff.” She picks it up. “I’ve heard the music you listen to, and I think you would like them.” Setting down the box in front of Y/N, she wastes no time searching through it.

“Sunset Curve?” she questions, staring down at the logo printed on the shirt. “Cool name,” she compliments with a wide smile, setting the article of clothing in her lap. She picks up a picture showing four boys. “Were these them?” 

“Yes, that one was Bobby, he’s a flirt, Reggie, sweetie, Alex, very sassy--” Y/N giggles, “And Luke, he was the lead singer.” 

“He’s… Quite decent looking,” Y/N observes sheepishly.

“I knew you’d think so.” Rose ruffles her hair. “Listen to the CD, you never know…” 

“I will.” Y/N clutches the photo to her chest as Rose leaves. Hastily she picks up the CD that had the band's logo plastered on the plastic case. She gently places it in the player, waiting for the music to come through the speakers. And then, there it was. “They’re amazing.” She grabs the box again, pulling out an orange beanie, placing it on her head. 

By the end of the night she had searched the entire studio for more stuff, gathering it, trying things on, she stayed up ‘til sunrise listening, and trying to learn each and every one of their songs, painting each of the members on canvases, writing songs about the guitarist that even though died years ago, she couldn’t help but feel connected to. A crush on a dead guy, what’s better than that?

“Boo!” Luke poofs in next to Y/N who’s currently getting her textbooks out of her locker.

“God!” she shrieks. “You need to stop doing that to me, gonna give me a heart attack,” she mutters as her fellow classmates, and random people she had never met give her weird glances. “Make people think I’m crazy.” Luke opens his mouth to reply, but Y/N beats him to it. “Yes, Luke, I know ‘we’re all a little crazy’.”

He pouts. “Someone’s grumpy today.” He crosses his arms, leaning against the locker next to hers. “But, anyways! Do you know where Julie is?” 

And there Y/N’s heart was punched. “I mean, she has to be around here somewhere,” she answers, slamming the locker door. “Now, if you’d excuse me, I have to go to class.” She takes her time to turn around on her heels.

“You’re gonna be at band rehearsal before our performance, right?” he asks, making her stop.

Turning only the upper half of her body to look at him. “I think you forget I live in the studio.”

He lets out an airy chuckle. “Right.” He playfully rolls his eyes.

Unlike Julie she didn’t care if people thought she was crazy, for the number one reason being that people already thought that. Wacky, coocoo, freak, those were just some of the words people called her before her favorite band suddenly popped out of nowhere because Julie played their CD.

That always confused Y/N, why is that when she played the CD all that time ago they didn’t show up, but when Julie did, they did? She never mentioned her already known infatuation with the band, even though it most likely answers the question of why Julie and her can see the ghosts. “But, I’m grounded so…” She carelessly shrugs. “I’m stuck on party duty for the time being, so probably won’t be there for that, but I’ll be there for the actual performance.” Even though she would’ve done it anyway, Ray wanted Y/N to be more ‘supportive’.

“Oh.” His smile falters a little. “Cool, I’ll catch you later then.”

An awkward tension fills the air. “Yep.” She salutes towards him, walking off. 

Grounded. No phone, only can drive her car to school, and home. Y/N wasn’t even allowed to listen to her records which she’s collected over the course of three years. And it was for the reason that she's failing multiple classes, but Ray didn’t understand the struggle she’s going through.

Let’s rewind… When Rose died it left the whole Molina family broken. But, it also left another part of Y/N broken when music became Julie’s thing at that moment, Ray not allowing Y/N to even have a guitar in her room. She loved music, all she wanted to do was sing, play every instrument, write every song with any word that popped into her mind. Julie couldn’t even touch a piano until recently, and yet, it had to only be Julie’s thing. So, now Y/N has to just secretly write songs in her red notebook knowing they’ll never be used, and secretly play in the school’s band room before any student takes a foot into the building, while she watches her cousin and the guys become ‘Julie and the Phantoms’.

What does hurt her everyday, is not being able to do something she loves because they’re afraid of how it might affect someone else. But, if Julie really cared for her family member then she’d be happy for her, right? Not to mention the way Luke looks at Julie hurts a little too, the chemistry. No one can deny it. It’s not like she’s had a crush on him before they even met him as a ghost. No, the biggest crush that she’s ever had is totally not a dead guy, and no, she’s never in the past thought about killing herself in hope to meet him if there were an afterlife, which she guesses there is now. She’s sure he loves Julie not being an absolute mess for him, and he probably knows that Y/N’s in love with him and is trying to show her he doesn’t like her in the worst way possible. “Y/N!” she internally screams, hearing the familiar voice.

“Josh…” she drags out his name. Maybe she should just give him a chance? He gives her plenty of attention. She giggles to herself when the thought crosses her mind. That wasn’t funny. An inner voice replies. 

“Hey, I just… Wanted to see how you were doing, you know--just friend to friend.” 

“I actually have to go to class, so we’ll talk later, ‘kay?” She tries to turn around to leave, but Josh grabs her arm to pull her back.

“Class doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes,” he counters.

“Y/N!” Luke exclaims, poofing right next to Josh. “I still haven’t found Julie, are you sure you don’t know where she is?” He almost didn’t even notice the other boy that had also been fighting for Y/N’s attention.

“I like to get to class early,” Y/N replies to Josh. “And you haven’t seen Julie around here, have you?”

“I think I saw her in the dance room.” She gives Luke a pointed look. “You know, practicing for that dance thing.”

“Yeah!” Y/N responds, not even an ounce interested in this conversation. Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, she noticed Luke not leaving.

“Who’s this?” he asks.

“So, Josh, I really have to go,” she claims. “I’ll see ya around!” 

“Wait,” he starts. “Is this about when I tried to kiss you the other day?” Y/N tenses up, 

Luke’s jaw dropping slightly.

Followed by a wide smile. “Does Y/N have a boyfriend?!” he mocks. 

“No, well, yes, it is. We aren’t dating, Josh, it’s uncomfortable.” Josh huffs out. “That’s not a weird reason for why.” Y/N’s blood starts to boil.

“You should feel honored that someone would even want to kiss you, I mean your reputation here isn’t all too great, Y/N,” he states. 

“Goodbye, Josh.” She turns on her heels. 

Luke watches as she angrily walks away, glaring at Josh who obviously couldn’t see him. He turns slightly, glancing over his shoulder to see Julie by her locker. Giving Y/N one more glimpse he goes to do what he came here to do. 

Y/N sits at her desk, rereading over the words that she colorfully wrote in her journal. “You pretty thing, with pretty things inside,” she sings quietly. She slams the book closed when she finds herself getting annoyed by just how untalented she was. 

“I think that Nick guy has a crush on Julie,” Luke reports, once again magically appearing in front of her. He was taken aback when she didn’t react.

[havenoffandoms]

and “So why do I have to punch that guy?” if u wanna write abt it pls geralt x fem!reader

This one is longer, but it’s also angsty. I hope you enjoy it, nonnie. 

Warnings: angst, canon-typical violence (someone gets punched), swearing, degrading insults (start under the cut), toxic masculine behaviour (not from Geralt), but fear not, there is a happy ending.

Prompt: 36. “So why do I have to punch that guy?”

Tumblr Request Masterlist

You have always been a little… well, you don’t like to use the term “odd”, because that implies that you’re in some way abnormal to everyone else. The entire village may think that you’re a bit strange, but that really shouldn’t colour your own perception of yourself. You’re unique, you’re one of a kind, and you’re different from all the other narrow-minded people in your village. So what? A little diversity never hurt anyone. 

It turns out that your neighbours don’t like diversity. You found a way to deal with their judgement and their disapproving looks. It certainly didn’t stop you from attending the farmer’s market or visiting the local inn and at least trying to mingle. You can deal with the hushed whispers that follow you everywhere, you don’t mind the way people suddenly stop talking when you appear, and you certainly don’t pay any attention to the glares the elderly village women shot your way. 

You aren’t looking for their approval, but the fact that you started, ahem, being involved with a certain witcher didn’t make things easier for you. When you first met Geralt, he was just passing through the village hoping to find a blacksmith to repair his sword. It turns out that the alderman had been looking for a witcher to get rid of the many wolf packs prowling the nearby forest, and attacking the farmers’ livestock. The entire village had been asked to pitch in to pay for the witcher’s services. You weren’t aware of the presence of a witcher that day, since you somehow managed to get lost in the woods yourself.

Geralt saved you from a very horrid death that day. You can’t imagine being mauled by a pack of wolves being all that terribly pleasant.

One thing led to another. Geralt saved you, so you welcomed him into your home, offered him a warm meal and refreshing ale, let him sleep in your guest room on a decently comfortable straw mattress. You didn’t have much to offer, but to a witcher, it was the very definition of luxury to not sleep under the stars for one night. So, you decided that Geralt could stay for as long as he needed… or wanted. 

He stayed for a whole week before you two parted, and since then, he makes sure to stop by your village every year at least once. 

This year, Geralt surprised you by dropping by for the second time in the span of two months. You’re happy to have him back, to the point where you simply don’t want him to leave anymore. But you know that the call of the Path will eventually take your witcher away from you. Until then, you’ll make sure to spoil him as much as you can, with good food, strong drinks, and a warm bed which you two now have taken to sharing. 

Your trip to the farmer’s market is about as uneventful as it gets. You left Geralt to sleep in while you go fetch some food for breakfast. You know just how much he loves scrambled eggs in the morning, but his visit took you by surprise, and you had just freshly run out of eggs that you could use. While you’re out, you decide to buy some meat as well (the butcher’s son likes you, though, and he’s one of the rare ones not to sneer at you when you interact with him). You make sure to purchase locally grown fruit and vegetables too. It’s all shaping to be a very uneventful morning. 

Until you make your way home again, and get stopped on the way by a group of men who have been following you since you left the market. You try to walk past them, but they crowd you and stare at you with lecherous sneers plastered on their faces. 

“Well, well, lads,” a young man you recognise as the innkeeper’s son speaks first, “what do we have here? The witcher’s whore, completely unguarded. You know, I heard a rumour that the mutant was seen around your house late at night last night…”

“It’s none of your business just who is seen around my house, Thomas!” 

You turn around, intent on getting away from these men as fast as you can, but Thomas is quicker and snatches your arm, whirling you around until you’re staring into his cruel eyes. His breath stinks of alcohol. 

“Now, now. You really ought to be nicer to us, whore!”

“Let me go,” you hiss, making sure to maintain eye contact and not let Thomas see just how scared you are, “let me go, or I’ll cry for help, and I guarantee you don’t want the witcher having to come to my rescue and beat the living hell out of you!”

“Awfully bad mouth you got on ya,” Thomas’ mocking tone sends chills coursing through your body, “but that’s to be expected from a whore.”

“So why do I have to punch that guy?” a rough baritone voice suddenly echoes behind you. Relief washes over you when you recognise Geralt’s voice. Thomas’ hold on your arm tightens, and when he turns to face Geralt, he twists your arm in the process, pulling a pained yelp from you and causing you to drop your basket. 

“He called me a witcher’s whore!” you cry out, your voice trembling as you fight back the tears that threaten to well up in your eyes and run down your cheeks. You see Geralt appraise the three men before him, but to your relief, he isn’t carrying his swords. You’d much rather avoid a bloodshed, not because you care about what happens to Thomas, but because you don’t want Geralt to be stoned out of the village (and out of your life). 

“That’s certainly more than a good enough reason to punch him, then.” 

Before Thomas’ brain can catch onto what’s happening, Geralt’s fist collides with his jaw, and a resounding crack follows where the witcher probably broke a bone. In his pain, Thomas let’s go of your hand long enough for you to run to Geralt’s side and hide behind his larger frame, a place from which you can watch as Thomas spits blood and howls in pain. Geralt is staring at the other two men, who look torn between helping their friend or running from the witcher. 

“Anything else you’d like to add to that statement?” Geralt asks Thomas, taking several threatening steps forward as he does so. A pleased smirk graces your lips as you watch Thomas scramble to his feet and run, quickly followed by his friends. “No, I didn’t think so.”

“Thank you for saving me,” you throw yourself at Geralt, and in your relief, you finally let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. “Your hand! How’s your ha-”

“Don’t you worry about that, dove,” Geralt tells you, his voice now much softer as he cradles your cheek in both his strong hands, forcing you to look into his kind eyes. “Are you hurt?”

“He twisted my arm, but nothing major. Shaken, that’s about it.” You look forlornly at your now spoilt purchases. The eggs broke when you dropped your basket, and the meat is scattered all over the sandy path. “And there goes your breakfast and our dinner.”

“I’ll hunt us something for dinner, dove, don’t worry. In the meantime, let’s skip breakfast and get packing.”

“Packing?” you parrot back incredulously, “where are we going?”

Geralt rests his forehead against yours and huffs impatiently. 

“I don’t want you to stay here a minute longer, and soon the villagers will demand that I leave anyway for hurting that boy. I’m taking you to Kaer Morhen with me.”

Kaer Morhen, the famed witcher’s keep, Geralt’s home. You’d heard stories of the place, but you never thought you’d ever get an invitation, and you certainly didn’t want to impose your presence either. But Geralt sounds so genuine, and the pleading gaze he shoots you tells you just how much he wants you to agree to this plan. 

It’s not like there’s anything holding you back in this village, anyway. “We should get packing then before there’s a mob at my door.” 

The next couple of months were probably the happiest of your life as you travelled the Path with Geralt, met his family and spent all winter cosied up to him in the witcher’s castle. For the first time in years, you finally feel like you belong.

[bestintheparsec]

One-Time Deal (The Mandalorian)

Din Djarin x Reader

Summary: part of my tropes oneshots -- “fake dating-to-lovers” was the #1 most requested, so here it is! I kind of combined it with some other trope requests, too -- cue mutual pining, huddling for warmth, etc

A/N: Whew! Writing this was hard -- this trope, in the context of The Mandalorian, was a challenge, lemme tell you. I don't think I've ever taken this long to write a fic😂 It’s a very loose rendition of the trope because it’s a oneshot and I kept it pretty light & fluffy, but I hope you like it! As always, I appreciate any/all feedback!❤️

Words: 3.2k

Warnings: none except some harassment; angst, fluff

~

This wasn’t how the mission was supposed to go. Really, you weren’t even supposed to be on the mission in the first place. But here you were, back in this crowded cantina, surrounded by a bunch of hunters you weren’t quite comfortable around. 

You weren’t a bounty hunter. You never went along on his jobs, not in the many months since you’d become a crew member -- your job was to guard the ship and the kid. But he needed backup on this mission, and that was how you ended up here. You’d left the child with Cara after retrieving the bounty puck from Greef on Nevarro. You weren’t here to do any hunting, per se, but between the two of you, you were able to help ease the tension in a room better than the Mandalorian could. This hunt also required working with a group, so he’d asked you to come along in case you were able to catch anything that seemed off before he could. 

That was all something you'd agreed to with some hesitation. But you hadn't expected it to go quite like this, and not so early on.

You carefully put your arm around his waist, looking up at him to get him to do the same. Din stiffened just the slightest bit at your touch, not enough for anyone but you to notice.

“Just relax,” you whispered to him.

After a moment's delay, he reached down and wrapped his arm around you. You tucked yourself in under his shoulder, and Din swore you could hear his muffled exhale. But you said nothing, and the two of you walked over to a booth to sit down, just like any other normal couple would.

-----------------

Earlier...

The idiot put his hand on your arm, and you immediately pulled away with fire in your eyes. “I’m going to ask you to stop that, before you regret it,” you spit out at him. Where was Din? You thought to yourself, annoyed at his temporary team mates. These were the people he used to work with? 

“What, you don’t want any of this?” he said, grinning at you as he gestured at himself dramatically. He started to reach for your arm again.

“No, and Mando’s going to --” you stepped back.

“I see. You’re with Mando, are you?” he said, mocking you with obvious disbelief.

“I -- Yes,” you said resolutely before realizing what you were saying. Before you could process this, Din appeared behind you, not hearing what you said but coming over after he saw your discomfort from across the room. He grabbed the guy by the shoulders, slamming him into the wall. 

“Didn’t take you for the type to have a girlfriend, Mando,” he teased, although you could tell he was backing down. “I always thought you liked working alone.”

“What --” Din started, before you interrupted, taking him by the arm.

“Yes. So just leave us alone,” you repeated to the guy, noting Din’s very slight head tilt towards you. He was confused, but released his hold and followed your cue as you pulled him with you towards the door.

“What are you doing?” he huffed as soon as you were outside.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that -- I didn’t mean to,” you mumbled, embarrassed at your reaction. “But... it’s going to be difficult for me to stay around without there being a good reason for me to be.”

“I don’t care what they --”

“I’m not a bounty hunter. They know that. I…. can’t go back and tell them I was kidding,” you said, looking up at him apologetically.

Din only looked at you quietly, not sure of how to respond. For a split second, the expression in your eyes made him soften. For what reason, he didn’t know. But it was a fleeting feeling, and he was confused once again.

“Maybe -- maybe it’ll be easier if we pretend. That way they’ll leave us alone for the rest of the job,” you suggested. It was a stupid idea, and you knew it. But you didn’t want to deal with anymore trouble than you had to. "I need to keep my eyes on them," you said. "I can do a better job at that if their eyes aren't on me."

----------------

Din had reluctantly agreed to the idea after a bit of your insistence, solely so that you wouldn’t have to go back on your lie. It really was a terrible idea, he thought. But you were here to help him, and he’d do the same for you -- like he always did, and always would.

The hunters from earlier joined you, along with some others, at the round booth. Plans were discussed, and as much as you despised most of them, you didn’t sense any hidden motives underneath their ignorant personalities.

You looked up at Din next to you and nodded reassuringly. A few seconds passed and he was still looking down at you, head still slightly tilted, as if he were thinking about something else. 

“Hey, you two,” one of them sneered, making you both break your gaze. “Do you need to get a room, or can we get moving?” Everyone at the table snickered, making you blush -- though you knew this wasn’t real, so you didn’t have any reason to feel this way.

You said nothing as you stood up along with everyone else, walking towards the exit behind Din. Out of nowhere, the jerk from earlier came up beside you and jokingly put his arm around your waist.

“Did you want to walk with me for a while?” he said, mockingly and laughing with the others.

You wanted to snarl at him. Din was a step ahead of you, taking your hand as you pushed the guy’s arm off you.

“Keep your hands off her,” Din said in a quiet tone that would’ve frightened you, if you didn’t know him -- How soft he actually was underneath all of the Beskar.

The two of you kept walking at a hurried pace until you were outside, back towards the ship. You noticed, not for the first time, that your hand was still in his. In all the time that you knew him, you obviously rarely touched each other, so you were surprised at how gentle his grip was.

Din let go as soon as you reached the Crest. He knew you were both just playing along, but it was strange for him nonetheless. He wasn’t used to any kind of physical contact, not in a long time. But some small part of his mind thought, just for a moment, of how soft your hand must have felt on the other side of his glove.

You gave him a small smile before boarding the ship, and he found himself silently asking what exactly he’d gotten himself into.

-----------------

You always wondered why every bounty hunt led you to the most extreme climates. This time, it seemed they needed to hide out on a planet that was currently being pounded by an ice storm. Otherwise, this city itself seemed to be harmless enough, given that someone had connections and was able to get the whole group a decent place to stay for the night before tracking down the culprit tomorrow. There were a few private sheds setup, each with one small bed and a few simple furnishings inside.

"You can have the bed. I'll take the floor," Din said, dropping his things off to the side after you went into your assigned shed. Naturally, the Mandalorian’s partner will have to stay with him, the group had prodded earlier.

"Don't be ridiculous, Din. There's...plenty of room." 

He was silent as he stared at you.

"No, really," you said, although you heard the quivering in your voice. 

"It's fine, we don't have to," he said softly, already laying out a mat on the ground beside you in the small space.

You hopped onto the bed, glad to rest your legs. He switched the lamp off and you both laid down in the darkness. 

You closed your eyes as soon as your head hit the pillow and the last thing you heard was the loud banter of the others around you outside.

----------------------

"You're moving around a lot," Din observed quietly, his voice coming from the ground. Your eyelids fluttered open reluctantly, though you weren’t sleeping anyways.

At some point in the night you had woken up, wishing you had a blanket. Your lids felt heavy but it was hard to sleep when you could practically feel the air getting colder every minute with the faint sound of snow hitting the roof. The darkness that surrounded you seemed to add to the chill in the air.

"Because it's kriffing cold in here," you whispered loudly. "Aren't you freezing?"

Despite himself, Din caught himself smiling at your mild and uncharacteristic aggression. "No," he said simply. 

The snowfall continued to howl with the wind outside. After a while of stirring around some more, trying to find a warmer position, you let out a sigh. 

“Can you...come up here? With me?” you finally said, your voice barely louder than a murmur.

“I told you, I’m fine --” he replied, though he knew that wasn’t what you meant.

“For me, then. I’m...not fine,” you said, realizing your cheeks were probably turning red from the sudden heat. Somehow your voice was even quieter. You and Din had grown closer during the time you’d worked together. You knew each other’s habits and tendencies, thought processes and all. Surely it wouldn’t be too strange for him to sleep next to you. It was just for the warmth, you told yourself.

A long beat passed before you heard him sit up -- You might’ve heard a sigh, as well. You moved over to make space beside you. A few sounds of shuffling filled the darkness, and then you felt the bed dip down as Din awkwardly laid down next to you. The warmth of his body next to yours instantly relieved the tension in your muscles. You silently took a deep breath before moving closer to him, hoping this was okay. In that moment, you felt something click within yourself. No, you thought to yourself. You wouldn’t let this -- whatever this was -- get out of hand. 

Still, you relaxed when you felt the warm, rough fabric of his shirt against your very cold skin. He had long removed the armor, except for the helmet.

Din seemed to relax with you, too, letting go of the tension he didn't know he was holding onto. You weren't kidding about being cold -- he could feel your frozen hands even through his thick shirt. 

He was lying a little higher on the pillow so that his helmet wouldn't clash with your head. Without thinking, you nuzzled into his chest, tucked in under his chin. He didn't seem to know how to react or position himself properly, and eventually settled on resting his ungloved hand lightly on your waist. 

"Is this...alright?" You asked, hating how you could hear the slight tremor in your voice.

"...Yes," he answered in an equally soft but modulated voice.

Both of you were still, and you could hear the low sounds of Din’s breathing. You were grateful to be against his warmth, already feeling much more comfortable now. You closed your eyes, feeling the rises and falls of his chest. It was quiet for a while, only the sounds of snowfall filling the silence.

"Thank you," you whispered. "...We're keeping up appearances really well. I bet no one suspects anything at all," you added, a slight smile on your lips.

It could’ve been all in your head, but you thought you felt Din put a little more pressure on your waist after you said that, pulling you closer by just an inch. You fell back into a much needed slumber before you could think anything more of it.

-------------------

It wasn’t quite morning yet when you opened your eyes, but it would be soon. You were woken by the sudden silence of the snow ceasing to fall outside. You remained still, barely aware of your surroundings. Your cheek was on something rough. Din’s shirt and his chest, you realized. He was still fast asleep, much to your surprise. You also realized that you were completely warm, for the first time since you got here. You were still tucked into him, but now his entire arm was draped over you, relaxed but holding you snug. The weight of him on you was unexpectedly soothing.

At that, you felt a constriction in your chest and a slight flutter. Oh, no, you thought. This was not part of the plan.

Still, there was nowhere to go and no one else would be awake for a while, so you decided to let it be. Just this one time, and then you would go back to the plan. You closed your eyes, not going back to sleep but savoring the comfort you hadn’t felt in a long time.

You were still silently lying in his arms a while later when you felt him stir as he woke up. Like you, Din was slightly disoriented. He tensed up a bit, probably becoming aware of his sleeping position just like you had earlier. You didn’t move, not wanting to make things more awkward. 

Din lifted his arm off you slightly with a bit of hesitation. He’d wanted to get out of bed before you woke up. But you were so still and peaceful, he regretted having to move away. But it might have been more than that -- more than physically having to remove himself from you. 

Last night, you had fallen asleep before he had, just like you always did with the child on the Crest. But he’d never been this close to you before, when you were both physically vulnerable. Sleep never came easily to him, so he’d found himself lying quietly, lost in his thoughts while you were huddled into his chest. He didn’t know what to make of any of this. You were his partner, and you worked well together. But you were here, in his arms, and he felt his chest soften at the thought of this ever being a possibility. Somehow you felt like home, if he’d ever had one.

Still, it wasn’t something he could allow himself to deal with right now. He lowered his arm around you again, gently pulling you close for a brief moment before letting go and sitting up to put on his armor. You couldn’t know, he thought as he looked at you in the dark.

You opened your eyes after you heard him shuffle out the door. Your brows wrinkled in...uncertainty? If you'd been asleep you would've missed it, but you weren't. You'd felt him squeeze you in the smallest, shortest embrace before he removed himself from you. And as soon as he did, you missed it, that feeling. You realized that you wouldn’t have minded any of this last night, even if you hadn’t been chilled to the bone.

--------------------

It was another hour before everyone else had woken up and gathered around outside to go over the plans.

“You two were surprisingly quiet last night,” someone teased you, the others chuckling beside him. You felt your face heat up, and Din seemed to stiffen a bit next to you.

You met his eyes, keeping your composure. You didn’t want to have any confrontations today. You started to walk away, taking Din’s hand in yours as you moved around them.

There was a playful malice in his eyes as the guy reached out for you once more, but Din firmly grabbed his wrist, blocking the move before you even had time to turn and see what happened.

Din planned on letting go of him and following you out, but the guy decided to whip out his blade and held it up, causing Din to instinctively pull out his blaster. A couple of them looked like they were about to take a swing and Din was about to retaliate, when you stepped in.

“Hey!” you quipped, putting your arm up against Din’s chest. “Everybody needs to calm down,” you said, a bit angrily.

A few of the quieter team members stepped in with you, trying to get everyone to settle down. But the two of them continued to stare each other down, Din seeming a bit more on edge than usual. You grabbed his arm, pulling it more firmly than he’d expected.

“Let’s go,” you said with some force.

You walked back into your temporary lodging and towards the middle of the small dark space, letting the door shut before turning to face Din.

“Remember how you brought me on this job so that I could help you read the room?” you said, slightly raising your voice. “That was conflict back there, which is what we’re trying to avoid if we want to get this job done.”

Din knew you were right. He was used to there being issues with the people he worked with, but that didn’t mean he ever stopped trying to avoid it. Hell, he usually let them ridicule him freely, rarely responding to their aggression. He didn’t know why he felt more hostility towards them during this job.

But he did know, Din realized. This time, you were here. As often as others tended to mock him, it had brought out a different sense of anger in him when they tried to do the same to you. You were the only teammate that mattered to him, and he refused to let them belittle you in any way.

“This isn’t supposed to be real,” you said to him, though it sounded as if you were talking more to yourself. Why were you suddenly getting so riled up over this? You questioned yourself. Just last night you were happy to let yourself be in this act with him. You glanced at the ground for a second before looking back up at him, feeling mildly guilty at the tone you were using.

“We can’t...this isn’t part of the plan,” you said, whispering barely loud enough for him to hear you. 

Din let out a quiet breath when he saw the tension leave your eyes, your expression softening and almost pleading. The air was still and silent as he turned to meet your gaze, the realization coming over him as well. Between the sleepless nights you often shared aboard the Crest, the occasional glances he would give you when he knew you weren’t looking, and the tingle of electricity that went through him last night with you in his arms...maybe something was different. Or maybe it had always been there, hidden under the guise of a lone man needing a crew member.

He swore could hear his own pulse racing as you stood there facing him. You held his gaze, neither of you daring to speak your thoughts out loud. 

~

Tags (separate from Healer): @immundusspiritu​ @aeryntheofficial​ @i-like-those-odds​ @heyy-honeyy​ @hiscyarika​ @taman-a​ @electricprincess888​ @jensfolly​ @spacegayofficial​ @myrin1234​ @aloneontheoutside​ @pascalisthepunkest​

[halothenthehorns]

All in the Family

Chapter 124: Career Advice

Remus knocked a tin of biscuits to the ground, which opened with a clatter and sent gingersnaps in all directions. The Gryffindor banner behind the straight back chair that Regulus accidentally tore down during his fall, the Quidditch Cup sitting proudly in a nook to the left of her desk that fell on Frank's head, and the transfiguration essays that went scattering around into everyone's faces at their arrival left no one in doubt for this to be McGonagall's office, though the four Marauders had memorized this place before the first semester was up, and even Lily had been in here a handful of times to know as much.

The book sat propped up in the windowsill, looking out at the Quidditch pitch beyond, but nobody made a move towards it, as everyone was still eyeing Lily warily like they thought she was going to try exploding the castle next. She did get to her feet, but much more calmly again, going for the door and trying it. Sadly, it did not open, and she closed her eyes instead, willing herself to have enough patience to get through the rest of this.

"Lily, hun," Alice began cautiously, while Frank belatedly wondered if he should bother using the Episkey charm before trying the same again. "Are you-"

"I don't care," she enunciated clearly, also not caring that everyone in the room was now eyeing her, she'd say this in front of Snape herself if she had to. "I'm done, I quit, I'm never speaking to him again!" She was shouting by the end again, and seemed to realize it. Taking a long, deep breath she went on in a deadly calm voice that was somehow even scarier. "This doesn't happen to me in, in six years when Pettigrew gets us killed," she'd feel bad later for him flinching and Potter giving her the filthiest look for insulting him again. "This is in days! I'm glad it's his worst memory, if that part even is! He should feel bad for doing it! But he did, he's just like those other Death Eaters, and I am done."

Alice and Frank exchanged a heartbroken look as her voice cracked again, but they certainly weren't going to try and help mend this one if she really didn't want to.

"I think you should still see if he'll say it again," Regulus Black of all people said. His eyes were flickering from Peter, to his brother, and back to her critically. "If you maybe stop it from happening exactly that way-"

"No," she said flatly, there was no room for argument in her voice even as she whirled to glare him down, her skirt flaring dramatically an unintended side effect. "I'll always know he said it, I'll remember it every bloody time he tries to talk to me, why put myself through that again?"

Regulus didn't back down though, he was starting to look a little angry himself. "He could change, if he regrets it enough."

"I've been waiting for a year now for him to change!" Lily sneered, "years, even, I'm sick of waiting around!" She felt like a fool, them all standing around watching her, when there had been so many signs in her past this was coming.

It had started with him skipping out on some of their study sessions because some of the cool Slytherins noted how good he was at potions and asking for his help right after their first class, and he began trying to equally split his time while keeping both sides separate, because Snape knew both sides. He knew those cool, all pure-blood Slytherins would mock him for having a Muggleborn best friend, but he'd never wanted her to feel either obligated to go hang out with him to change their mind or feel left out, so he kept the two groups as separate as he could for as long as he could. It had almost worked, until last year, where finally the prejudices began getting so much worse as the whispers of You-Know-Who grew and sides were being picked even before the students realized that's what they were doing when they looked a moment too long at a known Muggleborn, wondering if they weren't coming back from holiday like the last one.

Finally, he'd begun having to pick, he couldn't just go see her or his Slytherin friends and pretend the other side didn't notice, so he tried sneaking around doing it instead as if she wouldn't notice, but that didn't work any better, and they'd both begun demanding he pick a side. He'd tried to convince Lily it was her, even while he stuck with them, because she was safe from the nastier spells they liked to practice on other Muggleborns and he could deter them with his point of view knowing and slowly change them, he kept promising, but she didn't think that was a good enough excuse because she could take care of herself and it certainly didn't seem to be working thus far. Still, so long as he kept being her friend, so long as it was just the two of them, she let it go for just a bit longer, until finally he heard a nasty Muggleborn joke a row over in the library last month, and laughed under his breath. He apologized at once, promising it's just what he had to do around the others and he didn't mean it, but from then on she could never shake the feeling of who he was being real around anymore. Now she knew.

Lily's balled up fists were still shaking as she kept eyeing Regulus though, already a little niggle in her brain as she wondered if maybe she should still give him one last chance, a test. It's not like it would take any effort to get Potter involved in this scenario again, and Regulus was right about one thing, people could change, he was... but should she really put herself through all this again on a chance? She'd still always wonder if he was really just thinking it in the back of his mind, if instead he'd be the reason to get her killed in the future instead of Pettigrew next time around.

The thought stopped her heart in her chest, surely even if he did hate her now, he'd never do that?

"Would you get on with it, I want out of this cycle already so I can get on with my life!" She shot at Lupin, who was closest to the book.

Remus was too afraid for his life to argue the point, but at least James and Sirius were looking at Regulus in admiration for that, and Peter smiling and still leaning beside him felt like a great omen to them at least.

She forced herself to just breathe for several moments as Lupin stuttered out the chapter title, Career Advice. She didn't want anyone else's advice though, this was her decision!

Harry though, did capture her attention, and she was admittedly distracted from her own woes to recall the fleeting shock she'd felt before landing again had temporarily distracted her. Now she almost had to bite down on her lip to stop herself from laughing. Her worry seemed to be the opposite, Harry found his father just as much an arse as she did. Potter's involvement in that had been the most typical of the whole event. It was the first time she'd really felt close to her son as he saw what she did.

James definitely didn't find it as funny.

He was still half worried she would turn around and start trying to kill him, like she'd blame him for Severus lashing out at the wrong person, but as she kept her lips pressed tight together and just ignored him as much as ever, at least that didn't seem to be coming. He'd wanted to hold her as Longbottom had and promise she wasn't really alone, but he knew better. He'd never really been alone, he couldn't even imagine the pain she was in. Sirius would never call him something like that, and what was more, he'd never had to question such a thing; but then, there wasn't even a derogatory word for purebloods.

Instead he listened in shocked horror as Harry analyzed the events, and found Snape the victim, like he'd once been to Dudley.

Remus kept trying to shrink away from the book even as he forced himself to read out Harry's side, his hands twitching in disgust like he wanted to throw the book out the window. Sirius kept looking from it to Prongs like he was waiting for a translator to all this. Peter just hung his head and wouldn't look at anyone.

James stamped his foot in frustration and began circling McGonagall's desk, but there was nobody to shout at, nothing to vent towards as Harry's whole idea of him crumbled to nothing apparently because of one instance, and he hadn't even been at fault! Snape had insulted Lily in the worst way possible, all he'd done was try to make him apologize, something he'd do to anyone for the rest of his life, how was that such a bad thing!

Yeah, Sirius had started it that time, but was Harry just forgetting Snape had been showing his true colors the past five years of his school life, belittling and insulting every kid that entered his class? He'd done that in his school years too, nobody had been safe from those terrible pre-Death Eaters and they'd often come out far worse than just being hung upside down in front of a crowd for a few moments! Snape had been a part of those instances, even if nobody had been able to prove it, James knew. Snape had been the one to use a dark curse, no normal spell just made a cut appear on him like that!

He stopped cold at Harry's next implicating thought, that he'd forced Lily Evans into marrying him somehow. It was the most insulting thing he'd ever heard from his life, all directed by his kid. He looked around as if concrete were slowly filling him, but at least everywhere he looked nobody in here seemed to believe that particular aspersion. Even Evans met his eyes, something his heart still thrilled at even as his mind circled desperately to understand.

"That's not Harry's fault," she actually, was, comforting, him? "It's Vol- V-" she had to stop and clear her throat, but finally spat, "Voldemort's," shivering herself for her nerve before flipping her hair over her shoulder and finishing with pure ferocity, "that he doesn't know us, whatever this future is. Whatever the hell happened Potter, I know you're not that kind of awful."

"Thanks," he told her sincerely as Harry turned his perspective to his own mother, calling her the decent one. Well he wasn't going to deny that one, ever since the very first time all she'd ever done was told them to stop, she stepped in whenever things escalated and pulled Snape away to try defusing the situation, which was more than he'd ever done, he'd admit to that. The one time she hadn't, and well, maybe things had gone too far...

It was a challenge, it was fun to push those Death Eaters as far as he could, getting whatever detentions he had to for it to show nobody was just going to bend over and let them do whatever they want. Snape was his personal favorite to target, he'd never appreciated the company Evans gave him! Harry didn't have the whole story, he consoled himself, and as Ginny arrived and Harry came to the brilliant conclusion to talk to Sirius about this, he would. He'd understand, right?

The actual point of the chapter cut into his miserable thoughts as Harry was distracted by all the Career Advice, the pamphlets over all the jobs, and then the actual meeting with McGonagall began, again with that toad in the back. He grimaced in disgust, wondering what Harry would have thought of hearing his. McGonagall had listened patiently as he talked of possibly being a professional Quidditch player, and he'd brought one of his drawings to show her which she'd said was very good, but as he'd departed she'd made the comment maybe a little law enforcement would do him more good. Overall his grades had been decent enough and he still had time and options, he didn't have to pin anything down, would Harry still think he was a lay about with nothing to do for his life but follow Snape around pantsing him all day if he heard that?

Lily watched at how absolutely miserable this was making Potter, he didn't even make one snide comment about Umbridge as she kept interrupting McGonagall, and thought this was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to him. To all of them. It wasn't pleasant, by any stretch, to have to be force-fed their life from somebody else's perspective, but she really acknowledged the good this was doing as he just slumped to the floor by Lupin's feet, head tipped towards the book not to miss a word.

Her berating had never penetrated his thick skull, his friends had only ever been an encouragement, even now Lupin and Black still looked more confused than hurt as he did, but Pettigrew and Regulus had their heads together once more and were whispering excitedly about their future goals, and Alice and Frank now had foreknowledge of this travesty of Neville not getting any kind of advice from his parents. She now had a truth forced upon her she'd needed for a long time but never would have accepted until the proof was laid bare.

Despite all that he'd been through, Harry was a good person, and Lily found herself smiling in encouragement, wishing Harry had a memory of her doing this rather than the one he did, he'd make a fantastic Auror, the best there was, all because he'd do the right thing no matter the cost.

She found herself suppressing laughter of all things as Harry went sneaking into a teacher's office once more, planning to use Umbridge's own fireplace to talk to Sirius Black. The amount of times Sev had offered to sneak into Slughorn's office and steal ingredients for their potions rather than Lily just ordering new ones suddenly wasn't so funny anymore, and she felt like she'd been kicked in the heart as she tried to think of anything else.

"Hey, Prongs, relax," Sirius finally sighed as he slumped to the ground beside him, still leaning against Remus's legs but watching him still fidget heavily as even old Professor Lupin happened to be there when Harry popped in. Did he really think the two of them were going to tell Harry to start hating him? "We'll set Harry right, nobody who really knows you can hate you, and Harry won't either when we're done with him."

"Yeah?" James tried to say like he agreed, but it still came out more as a pathetic question. He still didn't feel like he had a good answer for why Peter had done what he did, what had James done to make him fear Voldemort more than stick with them? Sirius and Remus still didn't seem as close as they should be in this future, something had changed between them as well, the lie that had started it all still cascading around. He wasn't sure he really wanted to hear Sirius and Remus try to reminisce about their glory days in school to Harry, had they possibly started hating him in this future too?

The answer very obviously seemed otherwise as his dread watching Moony slowly morphed to a soft smile as he eyed the pair, clearly calming Harry at least somewhat, but couldn't help but scoff at the phrase 'deflated his head.'

"I don't know why I put up with either of you," he laughed.

"We're the only people that bother trying to put up with you," Sirius shrugged without remorse.

His heart felt like singing right out of his chest at the next lovely bit of info, though Evans still rolled her eyes and didn't acknowledge the apparent news they'd started dating in seventh year! His mind spun wildly in every direction, he immediately vowed to look into whatever that head-deflating nonsense was.

Peter found himself wishing he could hide under the desk, even if nobody was really acknowledging him right now, even Regulus was attentive to the book as Harry's conversation was cut short and Filch entered Umbridge's office. He hadn't been mentioned at all of course, and who could blame his friends after what he'd done to them. The more he thought about it though, the more he realized he wasn't exactly relevant to their life at all.

He'd only been used as a ploy, an extra dupe in the future plans to keep James safe, and had done the worst thing imaginable to return that. It had been James's idea to become Animagi, and Padfoot was the best at that by far, keeping up with Moony as a companion, whereas the best he did was a distraction, and not even a very good one at that. Had he ever contributed anything to their life of value? He certainly couldn't come up with anything, and never would think up something so spectacular as the twins flooding a whole corridor with a swamp.

Everybody laughed uproariously at that, and were still chatting freely about it as if they wished they'd been plopped into that mess as Remus finished with the twins leaving the castle with one last hurrah against Umbridge. Would they even notice if he got left behind?

[lailannajacobs]

A Polished Party and a Jagged Attendee (Handmade Thieves pt. IV)

Pairing: Loki x Fem!Reader

Summary: Reader unwittingly finds her way onto Asgard and has to deal with all the attention that follows being a mortal in the extravagant realm. To his surprise, Loki finds himself having just as much trouble if not more than reader in dealing with it. 

Warnings: None! 

Word Count: 3.3k

A/N: Hey guys! Had a little less time this weeks so it’s a slightly shorter chapter, but I think pretty decent anyways! Love to hear what you think, always makes my day when you do! <3 

You turned your head to look at the Prince, your faces now mere inches apart, the scent of lemon and pine impossible not to notice. Looking into his eyes, you tried to focus on the cunning amusement you found in them rather than the discomfort of every pair of eyes boring into you. “Are you sure it’s not your terrifying mug that stunned them all into silence?”

His jaw twitched in what might have been an attempt to hide a smile. “It’s never had that effect before.”

You shrugged, “How can you be so sure?”

He shook his head slightly, the ghost of a smirk on his lips, “It seems you’ll do just fine here Midgardian.”

He broke eye contact and turned to the crowd. His words did nothing to reassure you as you stared down the small group of about about fifty, all mingling with flutes of what appeared to be champagne in their hands. It looked like the two of you had crashed a party and neither you or the guests seemed too pleased about it. As irritating as the prince was, arguing with him was hands down more preferable than whatever you were about to go through.

“My dear people,” he announced with a dramatic sweep of his hands, “I don’t know what rumours you may have heard, but this Midgardian is not dangerous in any way. She is our ambassador and is here to answer any question you may have about Midgard or its beings.”

The crowd began to whisper and strange looks were thrown in your direction as they took you in. Glazing over the faces as to not get intimidated by any, you pulled at your jacket, realizing why the Prince had been hoping you would have been wearing the Asgardian clothes. Without them, you felt more like a pariah than a spectacle - not that either were great options. The monstrous dresses they had given you didn’t seem like such a bad option any more.

“And more importantly,” he continued, a harder edge to his voice, despite the false aristocracy, “She is under Odin’s protection.”

The crowd immediately quieted, ogling you with renewed interest and something like a mix of fear and awe. You kept your face impassive, not wanting to spoil the bald faced lies coming out of the prince’s mouth. It didn’t matter that it made sense for an ambassador to be protected by the king; you knew you wouldn’t have had to sneak around for the past couple weeks if you had truly been under Odin’s protection. But then again, announcing your presence in such a public manner had to mean that the king was aware you were no longer in the dungeon and that he wasn’t about to kill you for it. Right? You told yourself that your little deal with the god of Mischief had made sure that you wouldn’t be in the crosshairs of such obvious danger.

You fiddled with the hem of your sweatshirt, unsure what to believe. Trying to unravel the sly god’s plans only served to make your head hurt. You could try and figure them out when it didn’t feel like you were staring down the barrels of about fifty guns. The only thing you knew for sure was that you were a prisoner all the same, regardless of whether it was publicly in a dungeon or privately in the eyes of the king and his son.

“Midgaridan? I was correct in thinking you could hear, no?”

Your attention snapped to the mocking voice and you shot the prince a confused look. Snickers filled the air. You glared at him. This party obviously wasn’t going to be easy. The least he could do was not make it any harder. But you took in a deep breath, not wanting to show these people, or the prince, any sign of emotion.

“I asked if you wanted to say a few words to this lovely crowd.” He repeated, daring you to prove to him and the crowd that you were more than the meek, pathetic being you were rumoured to be.

Still, you hesitated anyways. Sure if you didn’t say anything you would prove them right but what did you have to say? It wasn’t like you could tell them that you were being held prisoner here and that you’d stab any one of them if it meant getting out alive. And if you based your lying abilities on how often the prince believed you, the odds weren’t in your favour for pretending you actually wanted to be here.

The weight of everyone’s eyes on you made you aware that you had to say something, even if it was just to say that you wouldn’t say anything at all. Something had to come out of your mouth before these people could add stupid to the list of attributes they believed you possessed.

“It is an honour to be a Midgardian ambassador for this beautiful realm.” You cleared your throat, trying to stop the shake in your voice. “It has been too long since our two worlds have been connected. I look forward to meeting you all.”

“Thank you Midgardian. Enjoy the party everyone.” The Prince’s voice dripped honey but the dismissal was clear. The show was over. At least for now.

“You know, if you hadn’t been scowling, maybe someone would have believed you.” He whispered, all too amused for your liking. “Now go mingle. It’s a large part of your duties here.”

Even though he now had his back to you, you knew there would be a smug smirk on his face - the kind you only wanted to wipe off with your fist. If there hadn’t been so many people around, you might have done it, and something told you he knew that.

You sighed.

Mingle.

Small talk with strangers. Great.

You took a tentative step forward into the fray, trying to figure out why the prince had brought you here. Because there was no way he had only brought you here to mingle. You understood that technically he was right and that it was probably a part of your official job but still, you didn’t trust him enough to believe he had no other motive. Maybe it was punishment for having tried to escape, but you didn’t think so. The way he had sent you off just now made it seem like this was practice for other, bigger events.

It was harder than you thought it would be to even find someone to stop and talk to. It seemed impossible with everyone sneaking glances at you like you were a car wreck - a disaster they knew they shouldn’t stare at for too long. A woman in a cornflower blue dress with long blond hair walked by with an equally stunning man beside her, dressed in an expensive looking navy cloak. You recognized them as the couple you had run into earlier and they seemed no more charming than they did then.

You had just turned to, if you were being honest, run in the opposite direction when she spoke, “I can’t imagine why Odin wanted it around. I mean they’re so fragile, I’m surprised it hasn’t died yet.”

“I know.” The man said with a devastated sigh, “Prince Loki said they spend most of their time asleep. It’s a wonder it’s still standing.”

It was a wonder stupidity hadn’t killed either of them yet, you thought, taking a deep breath to try and calm yourself down. The rational side of your brain knew you should walk away but you couldn’t. You had had it with being called an it. And again you were stuck in a miserable situation because of a certain prince. And if you couldn’t lash out at him, you would find the next best thing. After all, wasn’t it your job to talk to these people?

Turning, you bared your teeth in a false, sharp smile. “Hi. I couldn’t help but let you know that I was actually wondering the same thing about the two of you. I mean, not the whole fragile, sleeping body thing but wondering how you’re not dead yet.” They furrowed their brows, unsure as to where you were going with your statement. “Honestly, how have you not annoyed anyone to the point of murder yet. I’m genuinely curious. I have to know your secret.”

Her eyes narrowed and she took a step forward as if to strike you, but the man sighed with a hand on her shoulder. He seemed so genuinely bored you couldn’t help but think he could have faked the welcome speech much better than you ever could have.

“Interesting, aren’t they.”

“Actually, I find these creatures to be rather predictable.” She pursed her lips as if having bit into a lemon. “Must be the results of being so…uncivilized.”

You ground your teeth, ready to turn this into a real brawl when a deep voice interrupted, “She’s only calling you a creature because she’s never seen anyone so lovely in her life.”

You whirled around, fully prepared to tell this new person to shove off but lost your words at the sight of the kindest eyes you had ever seen. The man they belonged to had dark skin and brown eyes so dark they were almost black, with hair cropped close to his head. Even amidst the rest of the the gorgeous crowd, the man before you radiated beauty.

Knowing it wouldn’t be smart to alienate everyone on this planet, you unclenched your fists and forced a smile. If you were truly going to be stuck here for a year, you were going to need an ally - one that wasn’t known for chaos and vanity.

He extended a hand, “I’m Asger.”

You paused, shocked by his civility and overall lack of gawking.

“Is a handshake not a Midgardian greeting custom?” His brows furrowed as he looked at his hand like a traitor.

“Yes. Yes it is.” You took his hand before he could retract it. “I’m (y/n).”

“It’s nice to meet you (y/n).” A broad smile lit his face and for the first time since you had crash landed, you felt yourself loosen up, if only a little.

Maybe this party wouldn’t be so horrifyingly terrible. So far, he appeared to be kind and straight forward. You hated that your first instinct was thinking you could proabably use someone like him to escape, but you knew, deep down, getting out wasn’t going to be easy or pleasant.

“It’s nice to meet you too.” You turned your back on the two twits you always seemed to run into, and gave him your full attention. “It’s refreshing to find someone who isn’t completely oblivious about the ways of earth.”

As soon as the words left your mouth, you realized they were most definitely not the words of a proper ambassador, but if he noticed, he didn’t let on.

Instead, he let out a warm laugh, “I’m pleased to know all those hours spent in the library were not for nothing.”

You placed a hand on his muscular forearm, and shot him a smile of your own. “Well, I’d have to say I’m impressed Asger.”

“Then that makes it all worth it, lady.”

“And how is our dear ambassador doing?” The prince appeared seemingly out of nowhere, looming over your shoulder. “I’m sure you’re getting acquainted just fine?”

“What does it matter to you?” You snarled in a low whisper.

The prince didn’t answer, remaining still yet ever so bored. Asger looked between the two of you with a strange look on his face, his eyes lingering on the prince before he nodded and turned away, no longer meeting your eyes. You wanted to tell him to stay, that the cunning man behind you was leaving instead, but he was gone to quickly.

“As the one who brought you to this party, it wouldn’t reflect kindly on me if you were to me if you were to do anything,” He paused, still staring after Asger, “Unseemly.”

You glared at him with clenched fists, frustrated that he had scared off the only person here that didn’t seem to want anything from you. “You don’t have to worry about your precious reputation wolf. I’ve been fine.”

“Is that why you asked Alva why she wasn’t dead yet?” A laugh resonated through his chest as he took in your surprised expression. “I was informed.”

You crossed your arms, in no way willing to apologize. “Seems like I have a knack for making enemies. Maybe I’m not cut out to be an ambassador and should just go home to Earth.”

“Seems like you also have one for making friends.” His voice trailed off, all humour gone, eyes tracing Asger through the crowd.

“That shouldn’t surprise you.” You jutted up your chin. “I can be quite nice to those who don’t call me an it.”

“It doesn’t surprise me.” His unnerving gaze found yours again, staring at you as if you were the only person in the room. “It’s only natural.”

You couldn’t find it in you to look away. “And why would you say that?”

“Because it seems that no one here can take their eyes off of you.” He looked past you so quickly you almost missed it but the dangerous glint in his eyes was enough to remind you who you were talking to. “Maybe not all for the same reasons, but nonetheless, none of them can.”

“I think that might be because most of these people are so oblivious about Earth they can’t tell a rabbit from a racoon.”

That arrogant smirk slid into place, masking any real emotion you might have glimpsed. “You can’t blame them for their stupidity.”

You grabbed a flute off of a tray from a passing waiter. “Somehow I doubt that’s something a man who wishes to be king should say.”

He cocked his head, seeming surprised but not offended as he took the drink from your hand. “Who says I wish to be king?”

“It isn’t hard to guess.” You shrugged, trying to hide the fact that you were fishing for information. “Especially that you’re known for your cunning reputation.”

You weren’t sure what kind of information  you were looking for, but anything you could use against him might be useful later on. Getting to your ship meant getting as much help as you could blackmail into getting.

“Mischievous.” He corrected with a wolfish grin. “There’s no ill intent behind any of my tricks.”

You leaned back on your heels, turning your nose up at him. “Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night wolf.”

His smile curled into a sneer, his eyes slightly narrowed as if it was too much work to maintain the mask he wore in public. You had to wonder if your words had hit a nerve and you stored his little reaction away.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t find it all that difficult to fall asleep. And you must not any more either.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because I know from experience that the bed you have now is much more comfortable than the one in your cell. Just remember what that’s like before you decide to stop playing nice.” His lips spread into a wide, wolfish grin.

You clenched your teeth, unsure how to respond. It seemed no matter how often he might appear to be on your side, he always managed to remind you that he only played to benefit himself - and you knew what benefit the prince wasn’t guaranteed to benefit you. However, his vicious reaction only solidified your suspicions that you had hit a nerve and you wondered if maybe, deep down somewhere, the prince was at war with the decisions he made. If maybe, deep down somewhere, there was a heart in that lean chest.

His threat reminded you that being out of the dungeon meant you were constantly at his mercy, so however much you wanted to show him what you were really like when you stopped playing nice, he was right about the bed in your room being more comfortable. Although, you did have to wonder if he was speaking generally about the beds outside of the dungeon or if he really had tested both. You sighed. You had enough with this party and everyone in it. It was time you got the hell out.

“Have I mingled enough yet, your highness?” Your voice was clipped and professional - playing nice as he called it.

His jaw twitched, “When you spit the words out, the formalities don’t mean much.”

“I’ll save you the trouble by telling you this now wolf.” You placed your hands on your hip, unable to help yourself. “The formalities never mean much when they come from my mouth.”

“I figured as much Midgardian.” With a finger under your chin, he tilted your head up, his touch feather light. “Maybe someone will have to teach you some manners.”

Those green eyes were dark, taunting and beautiful - a dangerous mix you had never seen on a human. Yet he wasn’t the only dangerous one playing these games. You were too. And despite his threat only seconds ago, you weren’t about to let him think he was about to win every round so easily.

“Oh prince,” you let out a lover’s sigh that had him tilting his head in curiosity, “Touch me again and you’ll lose your hand.”

He let out a breath that may have been a chuckle. “So feisty.”

You raised a brow, waiting for him to remove the calloused finger that, even in its limited contact, seemed to burn at the touch.

“I hope that’s a promise you’ll keep with all the other men and women who touch you.” He dropped his finger but held you there with that intense gaze. “Have a wonderful evening ambassador. On behalf of the king, we’re pleased you have granted us with a moment of your time. We expect to see you at the next gathering.”

You stopped yourself from calling him out on his lies and forced a tightlipped smile and a nod. As much as you hated to admit it, he could change his mind if you gave him a reason to. He had taken his finger off and you had to consider that a win. You weren’t about to push it and stay here any longer than you had to.

With a wink, he turned and left, dismissing you with the motion. You thought about heading back down to the market now that you could say you were on official ambassador business but you suddenly felt exhausted. And if Asgard was anything like Earth, the shops would all be closed at this hour.

What you really needed was sleep and a lot of it. It was clear that no one here trusted you, and tired, there was no way you could escape with their eyes constantly on you. You knew even getting Asger to help you would take time. You would have to play the good little soldier before you could make your escape because there were no shortcuts here; you learned that today with how quickly the prince had found you.

Even if patience was not one of your virtues, you would make it one. Being too hasty would probably result in your death. On the plus side, if you were really smart about it, you could probably steal something valuable on your way out. It only seemed fair that they gave you a hefty payment for all the trouble they caused.

At the door, your turned back and glanced around the room, locking eyes with Asger long enough for him to shoot you another kind smile. When you spotted the prince who, despite the smile he shot in another lord’s direction, looked miserable, you smiled.

You pushed open the door and looked around, unsure which way to go. You had a lot of planning to do if you wanted to escape, but that was okay because they had sentenced you with enough time to use it to your advantage.

[hiddendreamer67]

The Sanders Games- Part 4 (Enemies are Made)

(Find a link to previous parts in my reblog, and updates are on Fridays.)

Summary:  In the 75th Hunger Games, only one male* tribute is chosen from each of the twelve districts. As the tributes begin their training, alliances are formed and enemies are made, including what may be a change in the all-so-important annual career alliance.

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The third day of training was more focused. Thomas could feel it in the air, a sense of finality to it. With every hour the games were drawing closer, and many tributes scrambled to find the one skill that would allow them to survive.

Of course, looking around the room, Thomas couldn’t help but think about how only one of these children would be alive in, what, two weeks? It was a smaller group, so maybe even sooner.

He wondered how Patrick had viewed his fellow tributes, or how they would compare to Thomas’ own enemies. Of course, it was hard to think of the twelve-year-old with purple hair as his ‘enemy’, or the two farming kids who kept laughing while painting camouflage on each other.

Thomas sighed, shaking his head. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to witness their deaths first hand.

“No, you’re doing it wrong!”

Thomas glanced up, noticing the careers were fighting again. They seemed to have welcomed the boy from three into their ranks. Thomas had no idea why, considering all he and the boy from 1 did was fight constantly.

“You are not an instructor.” Logan ignored Roman, following his sparring partner’s technique at the sword station. “Spar yourself if you think you’re so clever.”

Roman smacked Logan’s blade out of his hand with his own, and immediately a swarm of Peacekeepers were breaking the two apart.

Thomas shook his head, taking stock of his other opponents. The other two careers were just as dangerous, one all muscle and one with a snake-like gaze. This one hissed at him as he walked by, and Thomas was quick to pick up his pace. There was another muscled dude, Peter from 7. Right by his side was Magenta, the bright-haired purple short stack that seemed glued to Peter nowadays. Then Remy, a boy who was getting worryingly good at tying knots. Virgil, the recluse from 12, Ethan, the cute one from 6…okay, make that the really cute one from 6…Good Lord, Thomas was so gay.

Thomas took a second look, watching the agricultural pair transfer from camouflage to the knife throwing station. It reminded Thomas that despite their carefree, friendly attitudes, the pair would likely not hesitate to kill someone outside their alliance. Districts 10 and 11 were resilient and not to be disregarded.

Patton and Emile. His brain supplied, finding it difficult to refer to tributes simply by district as time went on. The friendliest faces here. If the situation was different, Thomas would have loved to get close to them too. But with a glance towards Ethan, Thomas remembered how dangerous it was to get attached.

Thomas wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that he was learning all his victim’s names. It reminded him that these tributes weren’t just targets; they were people, stripped of their potential to all live a fulfilling life of happiness and contentment. It felt far too personal, and when it came down to it Thomas wasn’t sure if he could go through with this.

Thomas shook his head. No, he couldn’t think like that. He had to survive, his family needed him. He thought of his brothers, Shea and Christian, waiting back home with his loving parents. He thought of Patrick, and how Thomas had to make his brother proud by succeeding where Patrick had inevitably failed. Thomas owed it to them and himself to live on. Whatever happened, Thomas knew that family came first.

But…didn’t these kids have families, too?

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Logan sat alone, just as he had every other lunch session. Despite being a part of the careers now, he found their company tedious. Instead Logan was content to get to lunch early, eating in solitude and then training with his new allies.

Of course, the boy from 11 had other plans, slamming a muffin down in front of Logan. He looked up at the intruder over the edge of his glasses. For once, the peaceful boy looked almost furious. “Can I help you?”

“Why are you teaming up with the careers?” The boy asked, sitting across from him.

“That’s none of your business.” Logan replied, getting ready to move tables.

“It is too my business!” The boy’s tone turned almost to pleading. “You’re trying to slaughter the rest of us!”

“...Yes?” Logan confirmed, watching his opponent deflate. “It seems you are unfamiliar with the rules of this particular event. This is not a social event and frankly the way you’ve been treating this like one is demeaning to everyone involved, including those who will perish. Take this seriously.”

The boy- Patton, was it? - seemed to stare into his eyes for an uncomfortably long time. “I am taking this seriously.”  Patton said finally. “But I don’t believe innocent children should be killed. If we all banded together, maybe we’d stand a chance. Or at the very least, I think I owe it to everyone here to help make their last moments as pleasant as possible in this horrible place. I am taking it seriously, in my own way, because I’m a good person.” Patton stood up, pushing the muffin towards Logan with a sad sort of finality. “And I was starting to think you were one, too.”

Logan looked down at the muffin, unsure what to make of Patton’s little speech.

“Oi, Dawdle Dork.” Roman gave whistled at him, arms crossed as he leaned against the doorway. The other careers were with him, looking annoyed. “Let’s go, we don’t like to be kept waiting.”

Logan sighed, gathering his trash and throwing it out as he followed Roman out towards the training area. “Name calling, really?” Logan muttered under his breath. “It would be more beneficial if we appeared to be a cohesive group to intimidate the competition.”

“Aww, is the techie feeling embarrassed?” Nate teased, harshly ruffling Logan’s hair. Though disguised as a jest, Logan knew it was just another excuse for the career to try and intimidate him. It seemed common among the careers for them to try and ‘flex’ on each other, and subsequently now that included himself.

Logan found the whole ritual tedious. It was just an animalistic instinct to try and establish a pecking order within the pack. Still, disregarding this pomp and happenstance, Logan knew he was fortunate to gain stronger allies than himself. He didn’t feel particularly safe in this group, but Logan had the comfort of knowing he wasn’t an immediate target. He would do his part, assist the careers until it was no longer in his best interest, and then as the game progressed Logan knew there would be a tipping point where he too became prey and would need to hightail it away from these predators. No matter, such was the way of the games.

“Logan’s right.” Deceit spoke up suddenly, surprising Logan. “We need to keep up appearances.”

“We’re not in the arena yet.” Nate reminded him.

“No, but practice makes perfect.” Deceit glared at him, and Logan wondered if Nate’s comment qualified as insubordination.

“If we show up in the Arena acting like this, no one will take us seriously.” Deceit continued. “But by all means, if you’d like to make a fool of yourself, keep it up. I’m certain your parents will be proud when your coffin arrives on their doorstep.”

“Ouch.” Roman hissed. “Jeez dark and brooding, lighten up.” Nate went unusually quiet, not bantering back as he usually would.

 Though Deceit was less vocal about his superiority than the other two, Logan knew not to underestimate him. There was something fishy about Deceit that went beyond his nautical roots. Often it appeared that Deceit was weaker than the others, yet he held the uncanny ability to keep them in line as an undeclared Alpha. It gave Logan pause, wondering what the snake-like figure was hiding.

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Roman bounced his leg up and down, anxiously watching the screen. He could care less about all of the Capital tabloids scrolling across. All he was waiting for was the scores- earlier in the day, each tribute had a private session with the game makers where skills were showcased so you could be judged on how worthy an opponent you were. Of course, none of it really mattered, the only true title of any worth would be the victor title given to the winner of the games, but nonetheless Roman hoped to outrank every peon he was matched with.

“Be patient, Roman.” His mentor advised, watching Roman twitch.

“Be patient, Roman.” Roman mocked. As if that advice would do him any good. His mentor had been feeding him terrible advice the entire journey, almost as though he wanted Roman to fail. No matter- Roman didn’t need him. Roman didn’t need anyone.

The district 1 tribute leaned forwards, watching the news channel change to the familiar score screen. Being from the best district- why else would it be number 1?- Roman would get his score first. He waited, folding and unfolding his hands and wishing the news anchor would just get on with it already.

Finally, the big number appeared on the screen, broadcasting to the whole world Roman’s score.

“...a ten?” Roman felt his face fell. Certainly not a terrible score, the highest being twelve, but Roman had truly thought he earned higher.

“It’s just as I told you.” The mentor looked almost bored, picking at his nails. “They don’t care about some fancy sword swinging.”

Roman huffed at him, watching the rest of the scores appear on screen. He tied with Nate, the big lug getting a decent score wasn’t surprising, but it did make Roman’s spirits sink. Still, tied for first was acceptable, and he still did better than the other allies. Deceit earned a nine and Logan scraped by with only a seven.

Honestly, that didn’t surprise Roman. Logan was clearly not made for hand-to-hand combat, so he had no idea why Deceit had brought him onto the team. Frankly, it was a bit embarrassing, especially considering some of the other lesser tributes beat Logan’s score. Particularly that Peter fellow, who pulled out with a solid eight. He could be a threat, but Roman was certain the group could easily overtake him.

The boy from district 9, Remy...his score was more surprising. How on earth had he managed to earn a nine? If Roman didn’t see his picture on screen, Roman wouldn’t have even recognized him. That could be a challenge. Roman must have missed something when he was sizing up his opponents.

No one else on the leaderboard came close to beating Roman’s score...until, district twelve, when all of Panem had nearly turned off their televisions of boredom and Roman himself was hardly paying attention. Roman’s eyes widened, not believing what was right in front of him.

“An ELEVEN?!” Roman screeched, standing up so fast his chair tipped over. “I- but- how- ? How could a nobody from a loser district like twelve beat me?”

“Well he wouldn’t have, if you actually took this seriously.” The mentor lectured, although he too seemed impressed by the score. “Guess you underestimated him.”

“I did not!” Roman insisted. “There must be some mistake.” Roman refused to believe this was anything more than a pathetic mishap. He deserved to hold the top rank. No matter; Roman would just need to prove it, out in the games where he would spill that little coal miner’s blood himself.

[artificialqueens]

It could be a beginning (Rajila) - vicisonhando

A/N: So I have finally evolved from lurking around and reading all the fantastic fics on this side to writing my own. I hope you like it, feedback is always welcome and if you cheer loud enough, there might be more to come in the future.

Also a big shout out to the amazingly talented @formercongressman, who was kind enough to beta for me. This would probably be kind of a hot mess without you.

Raja glared at the half empty glass of wine in front of her. Even though the Pinot Grigio was one of the best she had had in a while, it was still not enough to lift her spirits. Her phone rested next to the glass with its dark screen facing upwards. She was tempted to reach for it again, knowing full well, that it had only been minutes since she checked it last. When the waiter across the room caught her attention, she narrowed her eyes and stared him down. Apparently he got the message since he didn’t not approach her to ask once again, if she really wouldn’t like to order something while waiting. She was sitting tucked in a booth for two in a corner away from most prying eyes in what was supposedly Manila’s favorite Italian restaurant in all of New York City. The place was elegant yet cozy, with white linen tablecloths and black and white photos of old Italian opera singers on the walls. Eros Ramazzotti was softly playing from some well-hidden speakers and the waiting staff had been nothing but polite and attentive so far. All in all, the restaurant certainly seemed like the perfect place for a first date.

There was, however, one small problem. Manila, her date, was nowhere to be found.

Raja hadn’t thought much of it when she had arrived a couple of minutes before seven and was let to an empty table. When 7:15 rolled around and Manila still hadn’t shown up, she started to get worried. She had shot the other woman a quick text asking if she had been held up, but had not gotten a reply so far. By now it was a quarter to 8 and Raja’s brain was jumping back and forth between worrying that something terrible had happened to Manila and being pissed that she had apparently been stood up. Right now the latter was what she was focusing on and she was fuming. How was this bitch going to walk into work on Monday and look her in the eye? Or maybe it was all a joke to Manila. A prank with her group of faithful Heathers designed to set her up and have a nice laugh on the expense of the new girl… That was probably it, Raja convinced herself. She could see them sitting in some bar right now, laughing at how stupid she was for falling for their joke. How readily she had agreed to the date when Manila had asked her.

Her thoughts faltered for a moment as she remembered Manila timidly knocking on her open office door on Monday morning earlier this week, wringing her hands and biting her lower lip nervously. Raja had found the behavior rather endearing and was about to ask her what was going on, when Manila looked up from the floor and said in one rushed breath: “Willyoumaybegooutonadatewithme?“

“What?“

“I’m sorry!“ she back tracked immediately “That was totally inappropriate. We work together and you are probably not even into women. Forget I even asked. I’m really sorry. I’ll just go now, before I embarrass myself even more.“ Manila’s voice was still rushed as she kept on rambling, but she was at least a bit more understandable to Raja now.

“Wait!“ Raja interjected. “Don‘t go, please. I… I would actually love to go out on date with you.“

A small smile appeared on Manila’s face at the words. “Really? Because you don’t have to. I really didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just… I really liked working with you the past couple of weeks and would love to get to know you better. It doesn’t even have to mean anything. There is this really great Italian restaurant near my place. They have amazing pasta and their Pinot Grigio is to die for. I mean, you said you like white wine, didn’t you?”

“Girl,” Raja laughed. “Relax, I already said yes.”

Manila blushed and smiled, looking away from her, pushing an unruly lock of her black hair back behind her ear. On an impulse Raja got up from where she had been sat behind her desk and walked over to Manila. Thankfully she had closed the door behind her, so Raja didn’t have to worry about any of their coworkers seeing them, as she stepped into her personal space and gently placed a finger under Manila’s chin.

Carefully lifting her face, Raja waited until the smaller woman looked up into her eyes before she spoke. “I meant what I said. I would love to go out with you. And as for that Italian place, you had me at Pinot Grigio.”

Manila laughed, her usual confidence quickly returning. “So predictable.” she teased.

Raja gasped in mock offense. Before she had time to reconsider, she leaned down and brushed her lips against Manila’s cheek in a short and sweet kiss. Pulling back and straightening up, she smiled. “How about you text me the address and I’ll meet you there at 7 this Friday? Does that work for you?”

Manila nodded in a daze. “Uhm, Friday…. Yeah, Friday is great. I’ll make reservations and text you the details. I ehm, I gotta go now.”

Raja watched as her hand came up to her cheek, while she turned and left the office. She could still feel her own lips tingling from the brief contact and the smile wouldn’t leave her face for the rest of the day.

Looking back at the interaction now, Raja had a hard time believing that it had all been a set up. But here she was, sitting alone in one of New York’s fancier restaurants on a Friday night. She drained the rest of her wine in one go - it was the second glass already - and checked her phone again. Ten to eight and still not a message from Manila in sight. Putting her phone down she waved the closest waitresses over. She was done with the pitying stares of staff and patrons alike. Settling her check, she noticed that her earlier waiter had not dared to come back, sending in a colleague for back up. She could hardly blame him. The last time he had come by to ask if she wanted to order something, she had almost bitten his head off. She smiled at her new waitress apologetically and left a generous tip. It was hardly the staffs’ fault that she had gotten stood up.

Dejectedly she ordered an uber and made her way out of the restaurant. She had really been looking forward to this evening. From the first day working at Runway, Manila had caught Raja’s eye, even though they started out on slightly rocky ground. As the new Head of the Fashion Department Raja was introduced to the team during a morning meeting and desperately tried to remember as many of her new coworkers names as possible. But only the quirky Head of the Arts Department, with her white blonde streak in her otherwise jet black hair and her obvious penchant for bright yellow colored accessories, truly stood out to her. Once the introduction was over and Raja took her seat at the table, the woman next to Manila turned to her and faux whispered: “Good luck with that one. Seems like her last job didn’t even pay enough to afford a decent hairdresser.”

Manila chuckled under her breath and Raja was fuming. While she hadn’t exactly been thrilled when she started turning gray in her early thirties, she had come to love the silvery streaks peppered throughout her black hair and she prided herself on maintaining it in excellent condition. But it was her first day and everybody of importance was gathered in that meeting, so she bit her tongue to keep a sharp retort from slipping out.

Later on she learned that the woman’s name was Delta and that together with Manila and another woman from the Art Department called Carmen they were known in the office as the Heathers.  There wasn’t a piece of gossip going around that they weren’t aware of and they had a habit of joking at the expenses of the people around them, often toeing the line between casual meanness and downright cruelty.   

But even though Raja was apprehensive of the group, once she started working with Manila more closely, she learned that the other woman had not only a wicked sense of humor and an infectious laugh, but also a sweet and gentle side to her, that only the people she actually liked got to see. Something else Raja quickly came to admire was Manila’s dedication to her job. She was full of creative energy and didn’t mind putting in extra hours to finish a project. After walking in on Manila once, absorbed by a spree of photos in front of her and completely oblivious to her surroundings, Raja made it her mission to sneak up on her as often as she could. Manila had the habit of furrowing her brows and chewing on anything that was at hand when she was concentrating and it was one of the cutest things Raja had ever seen. Luckily Manila didn’t seem to mind being snuck up on. Instead her face lit up with a bright smile whenever she noticed Raja’s presence.

Just as Raja sat down in the uber her phone lit up. Disbelieving she stared at the photo of Manila smiling happily up at her from the lock screen. That woman had some nerve. By now it was past eight and she was tempted to simply ignore the call.

Maybe if Raja had pushed away her own insecurities and considered her past interactions with Manila rationally, she would have realized how unlikely it was, that the other woman would stand her up on any volition of her own. But instead she had let her own hurt fester and so, when she answered her phone, she all but growled: “This had better be good, bitch!“

The line was quiet for moment, then there was some rustling and a quiet “ouch… fuck“

“Manila?“ she questioned.

“Yeah, I’m here….“ the voice on the other end was quiet and slightly raspy, nothing like Manila’s usual cheerful tone and Raja went from pissed beyond belief to worried in an instant.

“Are you okay?“

“No, I mean yes, I mean not really…. I am in the ER right now. I got hit by a car on my…��

“Where exactly are you? I’m coming to see you right now.” Raja interrupted her.

“What? No, you really don’t have to do that. I already ruined your night by not showing up for dinner. I don’t want to make it even worse by dragging you to some stupid ER. I just, I mean, uhm, I’m sorry for not calling earlier. I didn’t get my purse back until now and I’m just lucky my phone still works.”

Raja listened to Manila talk, smiling despite herself. If the other woman could still talk a mile a minute, chances were she wasn’t too badly hurt. Still, she had no intention of going home without having seen that Manila was safe with her own eyes. So the next time she stopped to take a breath Raja quickly interjected: “Listen, girl, you better tell me where you are right now. Because I’m coming to see you, even if I have to check every fucking ER in the whole of New York City.”

“You would really do that?”

“Bitch, try me.”

Raja could almost see the smile in Manila’s voice when she answered: “I’m at the Metropolitan hospital.” There was some noise in the background and then she said, “I have to go now. The doctor is here to check on my leg.”

“Okay, hang in there. I’ll be with you in no time.”

Raja ended the call and sank back into her seat with a sigh, her body releasing the tension she hadn’t even noticed she was holding in. Manila had not stood her up. It had all just been in her head. Suddenly Raja realized that Manila hadn’t even told her what exactly had happened or how badly she was injured. Consciously drawing in a deep breath to stop her mind from coming up with all kind of horrible scenarios she decided to focus on the task at hand. Checking her location on her phone she saw that the Metropolitan Hospital was only a couple of blocks away. She quickly told her driver the new direction and settled into her seat, trying to keep thoughts of Manila with a maimed arm or without the use of her legs out of her mind.

By the time she arrived at the hospital Raja felt slightly nauseous with worry. She made her way inside and walked up to the front desk with determination. She mentally prepared herself to tear the woman in front of her a new one should she try to deny her access to Manila. But to her surprise the nurse gave up the information of her whereabouts without a fight.

When Raja finally opened the door to Manila’s room, her heart almost stopped. Manila looked more disheveled and vulnerable than Raja had ever seen her. The first thing she noticed was the bright yellow dress. It was partly covered by a hospital duvet, but Raja could still tell that it was the kind of garment only Manila could pull of. If the situation wasn’t so grim, she would have laughed. Instead she frowned at the tears and dirt stains she could make out in several places. Next her eyes drifted to the cast on her right leg which is propped up in sling. Finally she took in Manila’s wild hair and smudged make up. Her eyes were closed and as Raja drew closer, she was able to make out tear stains and several cuts on her cheeks. Careful, as to not disturb the sleeping woman, Raja pulled a chair up to the bed. But as she sat down Manila opened her eyes and blinked slowly.

“Hey” Raja’s voice was soft as she spoke.

“You… you actually came.” Manila stared at her in disbelief.

“Of course I did, bitch. I told you I would. How are you?”

“Just peachy. Apart from the broken leg and the sprained rip and my body aching all over that is.”

“Sorry, that was a stupid question. Is there anything I can do?”

Manila shook her head and immediately winced in pain. “Not really. The painkillers are supposed to kick in soon. I’m sure I’ll be better then.”

“Okay.” Raja still looked unconvinced. She hated seeing Manila like this. She looked so small in the hospital bed. The yellow of her dress, that would normally serve to accentuate her playful personality, paired with the harsh fluorescent lightning of the room made her skin look sickeningly pale. A paleness that only set off the angry bruises that had begun to form around her eye and on her chest near the right clavicle.

“Actually,” Manila interrupted her thoughts, “There is something you could do. Can you grab me another pillow to help prop me up a bit more and maybe get me some water?”

Raja almost jumped out of her chair, relieved to have something to do beside staring at Manila’s injuries. She quickly made her way to the thankfully empty second bed in the room and grabbed the pillow on it. But once she was back at Manila’s side she was lost. How was she supposed to get the pillow behind her without hurting her anymore?

Sensing Raja’s insecurity Manila spoke up: “I can’t really sit up by myself. I tried earlier and it hurt like bitch. But my arms are mostly okay. So maybe if you come a bit closer, I can put them around your neck and you can pull me up and put the pillow behind me…” she trailed of.

“I don’t know. Are you sure it is a good idea for you to sit up if it hurts so much?” Under normal circumstances Raja would have jumped at the chance of having Manila’s hands on her body, but right now she was more worried about aggravating her injuries.

“It’s fine,” the younger woman assured her. “The nurse said I could sit up if I felt like it. She told me to ask for help if I needed any. But I’d much rather have you help me…” she looked away shyly at her admission.

Raja knew she had lost that battle then and there. How was she supposed to say no to this? So she stepped right next to the bed, put the pillow in her left hand and leaned forward over Manila. “Well, let’s give it a try then.”

Manila beamed up at her and wrapped her hands behind Raja’s neck. Her hands were a bit cold and Raja shivered when they graced the hair on the back of her neck. For a moment she imagined this is another situation. Maybe the end of an actual date and Manila’s arms would wrap around her to draw her closer. She would lean in, their faces only inches apart… Suddenly Manila cleared her throat and Raja realized she had been starring. She was impossibly grateful for her dark complexion, which made it far less likely that Manila detected the blush she was able to feel rising to her cheeks or so she hoped. Manila had interlaced her fingers and her hands rested right at the connection between Raja’s neck and her shoulders. Raja sneaked her right hand underneath Manila’s arm onto her shoulder blade.

“Ready?” she asked. When Manila nodded she slowly started to straighten up, trying to give her as much support with her right hand as she could. She noticed Manila’s face straining in pain, but before she was able to stop, Manila motioned for her to keep going. So she lifted her up a bit more and then managed to weasel the pillow between Manila’s back and the bed. Carefully she lowered Manila back down until she was comfortably resting against the pillow. It was an obvious improvement to before, since now she was almost sitting upright.

But instead of letting go of Raja it felt like Manila was actually tightening her grip. She looked up into Raja’s eyes, a small smile playing around her lips. “I’m so glad you came.”

“Like I could leave you on your on in the hospital.” Raja frowned as she watched Manila’s facial expression change. Her eyes shifted towards Raja’s lips and she worried her lower lip slightly between her teeth. Suddenly her eyes shot back up to Raja’s. Her pupils were blown and there was a slight blush on her cheeks. Raja wasn’t sure if she imagined the slight tuck of Manila’s hands at the back of her neck or if it was really there, but she couldn’t help herself.

She leaned in, closing the distance between them and stopping a mere inch away from Manila’s face. She felt the other woman’s warm breath on her face. Suddenly afraid she had misread the whole situation, she was about to pull back, when Manila closed the remaining distance between them. The first brush of lips was soft, almost tentative. Manila’s lips were chapped on Raja’s and against her usual instincts she tried to keep the contact gentle, afraid to cause the other woman anymore hurt or even discomfort. But Manila was having none of it. She wrapped her arms closer around Raja, one of her hands finding its way into Rajas salt and pepper hair tugging and pulling and truly messing up the up-do Raja had spent ages on to make it look effortlessly messy in the first place. Feeling Manila’s lips insistently against her own, her tongue licking softly against her upper lip, Raja finally gave in and let her take the lead. She opened her mouth slightly and Manila welcomed the opportunity to explore. Raja sighed into the kiss, one hand coming up to cradle Manila’s face gently. She wanted to pull her close and push her back into the bed at the same time, wanted to kiss and touch her all over while never breaking the connection between their lips at the same time.

Knowing that she couldn’t give into her desperate need right now, she pulled back reluctantly. Manila let out a needy whimper and tried to chase Raja’s lips with her own. Her eyes opened and her pupils appeared almost black. It took all of Raja’s will power to keep from moving back in. Only the thought of hurting Manila in her already fragile state gave her the strength to fully disentangle herself from their embrace.

Instead she sat down on the edge of the bed. The room was quiet and Raja was acutely aware of her heart beating furiously in her chest, almost convinced Manila was able to hear it. Uncharacteristically unsure of what to do next she watched Manila, who met her gaze but didn’t speak.

The silence started to become unbearable and Raja decided to break it with a soft “So…”

“I–” Manila began at the same time. They stopped and grinned at each other. “You go first.”

“No, you go first.” Raja refused.

But Manila shook her head and repeated, “No, you go first.”

And just like that it turned in a game of “No, you,” both of them trying desperately to keep a straight face, until Raja couldn’t help herself anymore. She let out a deep belly laugh. Manila was quick to join her and she was glad that they are back to their usual relaxed if slightly silly dynamic. However the relief was short lived, because almost as soon as Manila started to laugh she stopped again, clutching her side and letting out a string of curse words that Raja had never heard her use before. Worriedly, she tried to figure out what she could do to help.

She wondered if she should call a nurse, when she noticed that Manila had stopped swearing and was  watching her instead. She lifted her hand from where she had been clutching her side and grabbed Raja’s, interlacing their fingers. “Hey, don’t look so terrified, Raj. I’m okay. Laughing just isn’t the best idea at the moment, I guess.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, the doctor said I was lucky. Apparently it could have been way worse. I mean my leg is obviously broken, and my ribs hurt like hell when I move the wrong way, or laugh apparently. But other than that, I’m mostly okay. They checked me for internal bleeding and while the doctor wants to keep me overnight to be on the safe side, she said it doesn’t look like I have a concussion.” While talking, Manila kept gently rubbing her thumb over the back of Raja’s hand.

Taking in the cuts and bruises on her face and chest, Raja wasn’t able to shake the feeling that she was downplaying her injuries to sooth her worries. And while it wasn’t quite working – Raja thought she probably wouldn’t stop worrying until Manila was up and about again – she decided to let her get away with it for now though and focused on something else. “So what exactly happened to you? You never said how you got here in the first place.”

“Well, after I got ready for tonight, I realized that for once in my life I was early, like really early. So I figured I could walk to the restaurant and maybe pick up some flowers on the way.” Manila blushed at that and it was Raja’s turn to run her thumb over Manila’s hand and smile reassuringly. “It’s really not that far from my place and I was certain I would get there with more than enough time to spare. So I was just crossing the street to get to the flower shop around the corner from my apartment and then everything is a blur. I mean, I think the traffic light was actually green when I crossed and I definitely looked left and right, but maybe I was wrong or maybe the driver didn’t see me. Well, obviously they didn’t see me. And then they must have hit me. I don’t really remember that part, or anything really up until waking up in the ambulance on my way here…”

Raja’s heart constricted in fear just thinking about how badly things could have turned out. Manila really had been lucky. Unsure of how to voice her thoughts, she decided to lighten the mood. “Good thing our work pays for decent health insurance, or this could have easily become the most expensive date of your life.”

But Manila didn’t laugh. She looked at Raja and her eyes were earnest. “I’m really, really sorry for standing you up. I tried to get the paramedics to give me my phone, but they wouldn’t listen. I felt so bad thinking that you were sitting at the restaurant waiting for me, wondering where I was.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Raja squeezed Manila’s hand softly and brought her free hand up to her face stroking her cheek, mindful of the cuts there. “Please, Nila, don’t beat yourself up about it. I’m just glad you are okay.” Then, after a moment she added: “But for our next date I’m definitely picking you up at home. Doesn’t matter how close you live to the restaurant.”

“There is going to be a next date?” Manila’s face broke into a hopeful smile.

“You really gotta ask?”

And before Manila could answer Raja leaned forward again and sealed their lips in another soft kiss.

[retiredhq]

Hello everyone! Yesterday I asked if any of you were interested in seeing a sample application to give you an idea of what I am looking for in the responses to the sections of the app and many of you said yes. So I have placed under the cut a mock application for the character I will be playing: Monarch. If you have any further questions don’t hesitate to ask! I hope this is helpful! 

STATS

Chosen skeleton: Monarch

Full Name: Elizabeth Mitchell

Age: 41

Gender: Cis female

Pronouns: she/her

Faceclaim: Carla Gugino, Keri Russel 

HEADCANONS

Beth was raised by her mother. They lived in a small trailer in Ankeytown, Ohio. For as long as Beth can remember it was just her, her mother, and a series of bums. Beth never knew what it was like to have a father or a stable relationship with a parent. A few of the men her mom dated tried to play as a father figure, but Beth’s mother thought that was a step too far and would often call off relationships once the men got too familiar. It was the ones that were rude and treated Beth more like a dog that were the ones who tended to stick around. Beth doesn’t know if her mother liked them more or if it was just harder to get rid of them. 

Beth’s mom imposed a lot of her dreams onto Beth. Beth was a pretty and vibrant young lady, but very shy and self-conscious. Beth mom forced her into uncomfortable social situations and showed her off like a prized poodle. Her mother made her sign up for the cheerleading team and vie for the role of head cheerleader. Beth had no interest in the sport but knew better than to argue or resist her mother’s wishes. So Beth worked tirelessly to maintain decent grades while training to be a flier for the cheer team. It was never enough to satisfy her mother, who constantly picked apart Beth’s performance, appearance, and presentation. Phrases like ‘if only you cared enough to brush your hair the boys might ask you out’ were common for Beth to hear. 

During high school, Beth fell in love with the works of Shakespeare and has a teacher which encouraged her passion. He invited her to be a part of the school production of Midsummer’s Night Dream but it conflicted with her cheer practice so she declined. But the thought of acting captivated her. Beth always wanted to be anyone but herself. So when she graduated college she left her small town and her toxic mother behind and moved to Los Angeles for what she thought would be a time of sunshine and self-fulfillment. 

For two years Elizabeth lived in L.A. working as a waitress and going to auditions. She used all of her tip money to pay for an acting coach and never got a callback. But in 1982 she heard of an audition for a non-traditional acting role for the U.S. government. As a last-ditch effort, she auditioned for a role called ‘Babydoll’. She didn’t get the part but she got the callback. Her sweet face and overexaggerated expressions were just what they were looking for. She was given the role of Monarch and trained for a year to fight and operate the mechanical wings. 

In 1986 while on a mission, Beth nearly died. She was using the wingsuit as they fought the Bugmen from Mars and one of them attacked her midair and pulled out some of the wires of her wings before she was able to knock them off. She didn’t realize that they’d done damage to her equipment so she carried on. While about four hundred feet up in the air, surveying the scene, her wings glitched and folded in, causing her to plummet. She fell, screaming and helpless for over three hundred feet. Fortunately, Starscreech was able to catch her before she hit the ground but that moment has made her anxious to fly too high or too far from Starscreech since. 

When Exemplar disbanded Beth was told by the bureau to avoid a career that would put her in the public eye. Because she’d signed a nondisclosure agreement that kept her silent on all things Exemplar, she knew it would be best to try and lead a life where she pretended she wasn’t Monarch instead of trying to tiptoe around questions. She got a job working for Mary Kay as a door to door saleswoman. She would still get prying questions from housewives or be asked to pose for photos. But it was clear most people pitied her and her downfall more than they were genuinely excited to see her. But her boss was very excited to have a former celebrity as the unofficial face of the company. 

After the team disbanded Beth made a valiant effort to keep up with the others. She was restricted from seeing Gecko, Price, or The Creature but she was able to track down some of the other members. Those who chose to live on the east coast were easiest for her to visit. She would stop by about once a year and bring over a casserole (she’s not a very good cook so these were often secretly trashed by all except Tallahassee). She didn’t want anyone to feel too lonely or get lost in disbelief. Some of them were having trouble with denial after the team ended because of how dramatic the life change was. Beth just wanted to make sure everyone was okay. 

Most nights after missions Beth would offer to cook dinner for the team. But the team learned quickly that Beth is a terrible cook and when she made food. Somehow it tasted burnt while being undercooked. So after she offered the team would exchange nervous glances. To protect her feelings one of them would say ‘We already worked tonight you shouldn’t have to work more! Let’s get pizza!’  and they’d order pizza. They ate enough pizza that they all ended up sick of it by the time the team disbanded but it was better than eating her cooking or telling her the truth. 

(Not related to Beth but I think that the pizza guys who brought food to the Exemplar HQ had a running competition to see who could stay at HG the longest before a.) Being scared off by The Creature b.) Being escorted out by security or c.) Being mildly physically assaulted by Tallahassee). 

PLOTS

Most importantly I’d like her relationship with Babydoll to heal. It’s really Beth’s fault that there has been so much bad blood. Beth was projecting her insecurities that she learned from her mother. I want Beth to apologize to Babydoll and maybe even have Babydoll refuse to accept the apology because it’s twenty years too late. But it would be wonderful for there to be a moment when Beth saves Babydoll’s life and asks for forgiveness again and Babydoll starts to come around. Beth needs to be supportive and really prove that she has learned and changed. I want to see them turn into a healthy and loving friendship where they build each other up and kick ass together. 

I also want there to be a scene where Beth takes charge. She has never really aspired to leadership because she never believed she was worth listening to. But she’s smart and considerate and she knows her team very well. So if there’s a part where Captain Kick and Price are unavailable I think it would be great to see Beth step up to the plate. Even if it’s just working to build a plan with one other person I want Beth to be sure of her idea. 

I want Beth to get mortally injured at some point. As the healer of the team and the one who usually transports them to safety I would love to have her be incapacitated and in need of someone to rescue her. I want to see that role reversal and how the team deals with having their healer be on the brink of death. 

The general arc for her I see is one where she learns to love herself and accept that there is no such thing as second best. She must learn to strive to be the best version of herself. 

THEME SONG

Kate Bush’s - Running up that Hill 

I’m going to ignore the original intention of the lyrics and rework them to suit my purposes. To me, the song Running up that Hill embodies Beth’s relationship with the team, especially Babydoll. In many ways, Beth wishes she was anyone but herself. She wishes she was as pretty, charming, and captivating as Babydoll and would give anything to take over that role. But Beth is also very self-sacrificing and when she sees her team in danger she flies directly into the line of fire. She would risk her own life to protect them and sometimes that means diving in front of an attack and taking the blow. I especially think the line “Is there so much hate for the ones we love?” resonates with her character because she loves the team like family but sometimes she hates them and how they make her feel (inferior, frustrated, scared, etc). Additionally, the general sound and vibe of the song match the sort of dark, melancholic and thoughtful, yet groovy vibe that I get from Elizabeth. 

PARA SAMPLE

A shaking breath drawn in. She rubbed the plastic handle of her Mary Kay case, half-surprised it wasn’t worn down by now. The ritual of quelling her anxious by running her thumb over the ridge on top of the handle was one she performed at every house she stopped at. This one, painted pastel blue with a well-groomed front lawn was the perfect target. There were two types of houses she found success at: those with perfect lawns and those with nothing but a patch of dirt. Women who had spare money to spend and women who liked to look like they did. Anyone with practical landscaping wouldn’t have time for her or her long-winded, fake smile filled speech. 

Then the exhale. Moving fast enough that her anxiety could not catch up to stop her, she extended her well-manicured forefinger and pressed the doorbell. She could hear the chime echo throughout the house as the buzzing in her chest seeped upwards until her jaw clenched. She heard the definitive click-clack of heels on a tile floor and then the door swung open. Raising her head up quickly and donning a bright smile, she put on the mask over ever-cheerful feminine dignity and in a sing-song voice spoke, “Hi, I’m Lizzie Mitchell and I’m here on behalf of Mary Kay!” 

ANYTHING ELSE

Here’s an edit I made for her!

[closetofanxiety]

Nitromare: Underneath the Barrel

Another week, another episode of Nitro from the Vince Russo era. This Monday is November 1, 1999, and we’re live from the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I went out to Minneapolis to see a wrestling show last year, and had a fine time. I don’t know if I’ll have as much fun watching this Nitro.

We open up with Bret Hart upbraiding Hall and Nash for interfering in his match last week. They don’t know why he’s upset, since they interfered on his behalf. “Screw you, Scott!” Bret yells. 

Bret walks out to the crowd, on crutches, and tells people he thinks Bill Goldberg is the rightful U.S. champion. Sid Vicious, hair product spilling down the back of his leather vest in thick rivulets, comes out and beats on Hart. Hall and Nash come out to mock the injured Canadian hero. 

We’re still in the midst of this nonsensical tournament to crown a new WCW world heavyweight champion. The brackets make me realize I’ve been misspelling Lash LeRoux’s name wrong for two straight installments of Nitromare. It’s in the spirit of Crash TV, bro!

One thing I appreciate is that the WWE Network has left in the commercials that are wrestling-themed, so there are some Randy Savage Slim Jims ads, and a lot of ads for WCW toys. It’s amazing how little ads for wrestling toys have changed since then. The medium is ripe for reinvention.

Some recap, some backstage nonsense, and we’re onto our first match: Vampiro vs. Berlyn, in a battle to see who is the top mall goth in all of WCW. It’s a pretty decent match, and then ... Oh God, it’s the Michael Graves-era Misfits running out of the back for some reason. “Vampiro is a musician as well,” Tony notes. I’ll say this: the Michael Graves albums aren’t as bad as people claim. Some decent songs on those, but people were just going to shit on anything that wasn’t Danzig, casually overlooking that “Earth A.D.” was terrible.

Ah, let’s see: ref bump, the Misfits take out Berlyn’s bodyguard, The Wall, with a chair shot, and then help Vampiro get the cheating win over Berlyn. The Wall has miraculously recovered from being knocked unconscious 15 seconds ago, and gives the microphone to Berlyn. “From now on, screw USA!” he says. 

Backstage, Hall is reading a newspaper. Ah, the 1990s! He and Nash mumble semi-audibly to each other. In another part of backstage, the Revolution have locked a leather-clad Torrie Wilson in a cage. “She’s the property now of the Revolution,” Brain informs us. 

The Revolution come out to the ring. Perry Saturn is wearing an outfit entirely composed of denim except for his leather Kangol. “You say you want a revolution?” Shane Douglas asks. No one said that, Shane. They let Perry talk for a while, which is a bold choice. Perry demands a key on top of a pole match, the key being the one to let Torrie Wilson out of her cage. Is this the first item on a pole match of the Russo era? I believe it is. 

Dean Malenko takes the mic to call out Chris Benoit. “You’ve been nothing but a puss, old buddy,” he says. DANGEROUSLY EDGY.

Benoit comes out. All these guys are in street clothes, which hilariously means polo shirts tucked into jeans. They look like a bunch of office guys getting ready to cut loose with a game of touch football at the company picnic. Chris Benoit announces he will wrestle Dean Malenko in a cage, which for some reason causes Malenko to have some kind of psychotic break. 

Backstage, the Filthy Animals are coming into the building, and a security stops them, demanding to see backstage passes. This makes a huge amount of sense. The Filthy Animals beat the security guy up, because they can’t be contained by your rules. Meanwhile, Mike Tenay is interviewing Kimberly Page, who is flanked by all the Nitro Girls. How many Nitro Girls can you name without looking it up? Was one of them named Sapphire? That’s about as much as I can muster. Kim tells the Nitro Girls she’s leaving the group. I never really thought of her as a Nitro Girl tbh. 

Ernest “The Cat” Miller comes to the ring, and the fake music the WWE Network inserts over his entrance song is unbelievably bad. Seriously, go and watch this. It’s incredible. It sounds like a Casio keyboard has been sunk in a vat of pickle brine before being struck by hammer-wielding orangutans. 

He’s wrestling Lash LeRoux. “Big future ahead for this guy,” Brain says. “I can see it. He’s going to explode.” He’s now a Christian cartoonist and illustrator, so maybe? This match lasts maybe two minutes. The Cat’s knee gives out and LeRoux picks up the win.

Backstage, Hart is raging about Nash and Hall. “These guys aren’t the bottom of the barrel, they’re underneath the barrel!” he fumes. Meanwhile, dissension in the Nitro Girls as they try to decide who will be the new leader. Elsewhere, the Filthy Animals are secretly videotaping Lex Luger and Miss Elizabeth. Eddie Guerrero is wearing a fetching Cosby sweater. The camera keeps rolling after they stop acting and then they show an actual behind-the-scenes TNT director. Everyone is cracking up. LIVE TV, BRO! Maybe that was deliberate? Maybe Vince Russo was out to destroy the fourth wall once and for all?

Now we cut to a remote segment with a shockingly subdued, normal Scott Steiner talking about a back injury to Larry Zbyszko. This is a totally different Steiner. No shouting, no babbling, just a guy talking like a football player about the specifics of an injury and surgery. Larry is wearing a colored denim shirt with the Nitro logo on the breast pocket. At last, a garment fine enough for me to be wed in. Was this an attempt to do a “shoot interview”? Russo pulling back the curtain - this ain’t Scott Steiner the character, this is Scott Steiner THE HUMAN BEING! 

Now we’re back in the ring, and the Nitro Girls are dancing. I would like to read an oral history of this dance troupe. Get on that, Bixenspan. The dancing ends with some pushing and shoving, but before that can go anywhere, we’re backstage again, with Tenay interviewing Buff Bagwell. The Buff Daddy complains about “the writers” holding him back. 

A series of vignettes show us Kevin Nash doing a Vince McMahon impression. What am I doing with my life?

Back to the Nitro Girls. More pushing and shoving backstage. Trying to turn them into workers was such a characteristically Russovian decision. And, like most of his ideas, it was terrible and obviously doomed to fail.

A crowd sign: “BUFF IS THE REAL PEOPLE [sic] CHAMPION”

Stevie Ray comes out and announces that “the powers that be” have determined there will be a strap match. “Who said that? The two writers in the back?” Buff yells. Yes, Buff. So now we have a strap match. It’s not a good strap match, and the two suited goons who work for THE DAMN WRITERS IN THE BACK run out because Buff starts to win. Why do Russo and Ferrara hate Buff so much? 

We switch from the ring as the ring announcer is talking to Tenay interviewing Jeff Jarrett. “Don’t get slappy with me, Tenay!” he says. He drops some more insider terminology, because Vince Russo thought that was what normal people wanted. 

Kevin Nash comes out, a vision of horror in putty makeup, as Vince McMahon. “The fans out here, they don’t even know who he is,” Tony says. Which explains why they’re silently watching this terrible skit. Less than three years after this, Nash would be working for Vince McMahon once again, and losing to Chris Jericho in a hair vs. hair match. Life comes at you fast, Kevin.

“I put anyone out of business until I was the only show in town,” Nash as Vince says, eerily predicting what will happen in less than 18 months. The crowd is restless and bored. He uses some insider lingo, as was the style at the time. Nash-Vince introduces Scott Hall as “the Trouser Snake.” 

“He’s clean and sober!” Nash-Vince proclaims. This is grim. Fifteen years before this, a young “Magnum” Scott Hall was starting off in this very city, in the dying days of the once-great American Wrestling Association. How far we had all come. 

Hall launches some more insider lingo and does a crotch chop aimed at “the boys in New York.” Seconds and minutes of my life, rushing by, never to be held again. 

Backstage shit. Lex, Liz, Meng, Perfect. Ah, Perfect. The last great star of the Minneapolis-based AWA, a native of nearby Robbinsdale. What did Verne make of all this? I mean, Verne probably would have tried to put a 59-year-old Baron Von Raschke over Bret Hart, but I digress.

Hennig gets a good pop when he comes out. Brain points out Hennig’s father, the great AWA star Larry Hennig, at ringside. The ghosts of the 1970s are all around us. This is a match against Disco Inferno. This will not be up to the standard of one of Hennig’s matches in the previous decade with Nick Bockwinkel. 

The crowd absolutely fucking loses it for Larry Hennig, chanting “LARE-EE! LARE-EE!” as he punches Disco Inferno. Ah, that does my heart good.

Of course, this has to be interrupted by the random appearance of some goober walking down the ramp from backstage. Disco Inferno runs out to talk to him, and they walk down the ramp to the back. The bell rings, and Hennig wins by contour. Larry claps at ringside while looking like he’s seen someone shoot a family pet. 

Some backstage garbage. We come back to the ring for a “hardcore three-way dance.” The Barbarian w/Jimmy Hart, Meng, and ... Norman Smiley dressed as a baseball catcher. Two of the all-time legit tough guys and a star from the old British wrestling, in this goofy-ass plunder battle. This should have been a stiff, nasty classic. Instead it’s a slow, sloppy farce. 

Crowd sign, evidently made by a lunatic: “PUSH DAVID FLAIR.” 

In the ring, Meng and the Barbarian are chopping the shit out of Norman Smiley. THIS IS MORE LIKE IT. Smiley’s shoulder is sliced open, probably on one of those fake trash cans. He’s stretchered away from the ring for some reason. He jumps off the stretcher when he sees that Meng and the Barbarian have knocked each other out, and covers the Barbarian for the win.

Backstage, Jim Duggan is begging an unseen Vince Russo for his job. “I’ve been wrestling for 20 years, and I think I have more fan support than some of these guys out here doing the dropkicks.” Fancy, fancy dropkicks! 

Russo, off-camera, sneers, “It’s all about ratings. Next!” He managed to keep his voice off TV for two whole weeks. As we know, the amount of Vince Russo time would only grow. 

Jarrett comes out and demands to see Luger. Jarrett is mad that Luger accused him of beating up Miss Elizabeth two weeks ago. “This is not the WWF. We don’t abuse women here!” Luger comes out and apologizes for accusing Jeff Jarrett of hitting Miss Elizabeth with a guitar. This is exactly like “War and Peace.” But it’s all a ruse! Luger goads Jarrett into insulting Meng, who runs out. Jarrett flees, wisely. 

Miss Elizabeth and Luger join Meng. Elizabeth thanks Meng, and then ... maces him. Luger pulls out a crowbar and beats on Meng. None of this makes sense. None of it has to. We are deep within the heart of the Nitromare. 

Backstage nonsense. The Filthy Animals, who Mark accurately describes as “The Go-Bots version of DX,” come out for a good ol’ fashioned object on a pole match. The object here is a key that will free Torrie Wilson from a cage. If Eddie Guerrero wins, he will reunite Torrie with her crew. Perry Saturn implies that if he wins, he will have sex with Torrie, presumably against her will. Whenever someone talks about how great wrestling was in the late 1990s, I will remember this.

Perry Saturn is driving a forklift with the Torrie cage on it. I’m not sure he’s a licensed forklift operator. Also, I’m pretty sure the Target Center is a union shop. Could be a strike in the works here. 

Tony: “It’s been a wild night.” Brain: “It’s getting better every Monday!” Only Tony is truthful. 

Eddie vs. Saturn should be a good match, but of course it’s not. After about two minutes, there’s interference from Shane Douglas, and most of the action in the match revolves around attempts to get the key off the pole. This is the problem with object on a pole matches. 

Sign in the crowd: “CONAN [sic] IS THE TACO BELL DOG.” This is a racist reference that may be lost on younger people reading this today.

Eddie gets the key while Torrie chokes Saturn. The Filthy Animals were, theoretically, a pretty good faction. It’s kind of a fun mixture of personalities, and their all-for-one mentality really helped them stand out. They were let down by the fact that Vince Russo was in charge. 

More backstage shit, and then we’re back in the ring for a Filthy Animals match. I mean, we just had all the Filthy Animals out for the previous match, but here they are again. No way the crowd could possibly become bored by 25 minutes of the same people, right? 

Kidman and Konnan, the tag team champs, are going to be wrestling Sting and Luger. We’ve also seen a lot of Luger tonight. This is WCW, but they’re running the show like one of those super local indies where everyone has to wrestle twice on the same show. 

Some people in the crowd have Juggalo face paint, the second week in a row I’ve noticed this. Did the Misfits ever wrestle the Insane Clown Posse on a WCW show? If not, why not?

This match sucks, but Sting is still insanely popular. The crowd goes berserk at every Stinger splash. The match ends after three or four minutes via DQ, when Rey and Eddie jump Sting. The Filthy Animals were the babyfaces in the previous match, and they’re the heels here. Welcome to Vince Russo’s World of Moral Ambiguity and Veiled Rape References.

Sting is mad because Lex didn’t help against the Filthy Animals. Sting and Luger have quite the rocky friendship. Backstage, Sting knocks over an (empty) barrel of Surge, the none-more-Nineties soft drink. 

We come to the ring, where Booker T is walking out. He’s jumped on the ramp by Jeff Jarrett. This is a fun, Southern-style match, or more like a hyper fast, caffeinated version of a Southern match. Naturally, it gets interrupted by the two besuited goons working on behalf of Russo and Ferrara, and Jarrett wins. Has there been a clean pin once tonight?

A remote piece from the set of “Slam,” which would later be renamed “Ready to Rumble,” the godawful David Arquette wrestling movie. Tenay interviews Goldberg. Goldberg sure doesn’t like the Outsiders and Sid! 

A bunch of backstage garbage. Madusa, another AWA favorite, gets a nice reception from the crowd. She’s going to wrestle Evan Karagias. This is pretty much what people who don’t like intergender wrestling are thinking of when they talk about intergender wrestling. Madusa keeps trying to seduce Karagias rather than wrestle him. Madusa pins him and then makes out with him. Everything is awful.

Benoit and Malenko are wrestling in a cage. This should be a brutal classic by two of the best technical wrestlers of all time. “I can’t wait ‘til this match is over,” Brain says. I feel the same way about this episode, and this entire insane project. 

The match is not a brutal classic. It’s over in 4:29. A few decent spots, but more like a highlight reel than anything. Perry Saturn runs out to try and help Malenko. It doesn’t work. Benoit wins with a diving headbutt off the top of the cage, which is insane. The Revolution gets into the cage and they beat up Benoit. The Filthy Animals have turned into babyfaces again, and they run into the cage to help Benoit. The crowd doesn’t know what to do, so they do nothing. David Flair, the least electrifying man in sports entertainment, shows up with a crowbar to attack the Filthy Animals. Now Sting comes out to attack the Filthy Animals. With any luck, we’ll get Meng out here to attack the Filthy Animals. 

Instead, we cut to the parking garage. David Flair is trying to sneak away, but gets run down by someone driving a car. It’s Kim Page. This show is terrible. 

Backstage: someone has beaten up Nash-Vince. Good. 

Now the main event: Sid vs. Scott Hall. Why am I doing this to myself? How much longer am I going to be able to do this?

The match is bad. It lasts 4:53. For a second I have the horrifying fear that this is the match where Sid broke his leg, but then I look it up and see that it happened during the Sin PPV in January 2001. 

There’s a ref bump. Second of the night. A referee was also attacked by Shane Douglas after the key on a pole match. Bret Hart comes out on his crutches. Hits Sid. Swings and misses with Hall. Hall gets the pin on Sid. Who cares about any of this? What is even happening in this show?

[1800areyouslapping]

I decided to muse about this instead because I had far too much to say for HC format. Just consider it one long, long HC.

Wow, poor Sister :( I mean, poor everybody but, wow. The main reason, (and obvious one, really) I could see all three of them separating, is due to Hanzo trying to kill Genji. So at that point, she would have lost her dad. Believes one brother is dead, murdered by Hanzo; a brother she’s admired and looked up to her whole life. And then that same brother would leave her behind. I really don’t see Hanzo taking her with him, not with his headspace at the time. 

So she gets abandoned by the last family she had left? Yeah, I’d say they last saw eachother on a bad note.

Sister!Reader even tried so hard to change Hanzo’s mind, but he was so beyond any reason. She tried to get to Genji to warn him but she failed. There was nothing she else could do. When Hanzo left he told himself that his sister would be better off left behind, maybe he really thought so. Unfortunately, Sister wasn’t better off; not at all. The clan leaders would quickly turn on her. So she had to run.

By the time Hanzo comes to his senses somewhat, Sister is more off the grid than he is. He can’t find her. Every year he honors Genji and every year he tries to find his little Sister, but to no avail. When a decade starts to roll around, just a year shy of it; Hanzo starts to think that perhaps he should be honoring his Sister’s memory as well. Until one day Hanzo is holed up in the corner of a bar one day trying to figure out his next move, that is. 

The bar owner has this terribly loud, live concert on the screens, 

“A special, one-time, live airing!!! So staayyyy tuned!” It’s obnoxious. The melodies and instrumentals are not something he enjoys. But then the singer talks, after so much singing, and a red alert sounds off in Hanzo’s mind. It’s been nearly ten years but he still knows that voice. Or maybe he’s being too hopeful. Maybe he’s losing his mind, but the singer... sounds like you. 

He watches the concert for long enough to actually learn the singer's stage name and the next tour date. The gut feeling Hanzo has is so strong and persistent, that he’ll be there at the next date to listen to the singer live and in person. Listening to her second-hand isn't good enough. He has many doubts as he’s traveling to where the singer is. She certainly doesn’t look anything like you. With the big overdone wigs, and the bright... are those purple eyes? Half of her face covered by some mock, costume ninja mask. 

The next time the singer performs he sneaks in. Holes himself up in the rafters. Just waiting for her to say something. Biting back a headache from all of the noise, and the thousands upon thousands of screaming fans. Then something even more grounding than just talking happens. A fan in the audience is holding something that is hilarious to the singer. It makes her laugh.... you laugh. Then there is no denying that it is you. You’re the singer commanding and entertaining a stadium full of twenty thousand people. 

Hanzo didn’t know what the hell to do. Eventually, he’d want to try and reunite with you; at least that’s what he thinks at first. In the meantime, he’ll do some research. Looks you up and finds that you’ve been hiding in plain sight this whole time. You walked into an audition for a girl band, “famously unprepared for it”, but nailed the audition anyway. You’ve refused to do interviews for the entirety of your career. Have never appeared without the costume ninja mask, it’s your stick. Never, not wearing an obnoxious wig, and obnoxious contacts. Your stage name and your “real name” are both ridiculous. 

You separated from the girl band five years after you joined, and started your own solo career. Now have a very loyal following, every concert always sells out. There are several infamous pictures of you traveling with a gaggle of serious, intimidating bodyguards. Security at your concerts is extremely tight. Hanzo scoffs because he snuck in just fine. 

Hanzo would end up making the decision not to insert himself back into her life. At least not until Genji comes back into his own. She’s made a name for herself. She’s relatively safe. Most importantly she’s alive, and he can easily keep an eye on her whereabouts. She probably hates him anyway, and honestly, he’s right. Sister never got the help and guidance that Genji received. 

She’s been dealing with the fact that Hanzo killed her brother and left her behind for the wolfs to pick her off, for almost ten years on her own? Yeah, Sister’s got a major chip on her shoulder, and rightfully so.

Genji’s known about Sister!Reader’s career for years. Has been following her career nearly from the very beginning. Was a big part in pushing through the papers that gave her a new identity (so she could travel, and lie effectively). The request came though Blackwatch carrying a hefty price tag. The commanders nearly denied helping Sister’s agency, but changed their mind when Genji agreed to help take down the empire. 

Genji had also known about Hanzo’s yearly habit of visiting the Castle to honor his memory for a long time. He just wanted to make sure that he ready to take charge of pulling his family back together before going and confronting either sibling. Wanted to make sure he had the confidence and the mental clarity before diving into something that would end up being so emotionally and mentally taxing. So the dragon’s short happens, we all know how that went. Genji will give Hanzo some time, and decide to try again after the recall takes place. 

Genji decides that maybe the second time around he shouldn't be such a drama queen about it lmao. And by the time the second try rolls around Hanzo has had some time to process and think about it. Therefore being in a better, calmer mental space. Not necessarily all the open, but it��s a start. The second time around they would meet eachother in a much less stressful situation and actually manage to have a decent conversation. A little curt, still very rough. Hanzo still isn’t convinced about the recall, Genji, or going with him to meet their Sister. 

If Hanzo will agree to keep having small meetings with him, Genji promises to work on bringing little Sister around (He was gonna do it anyway but psh, he’s gotta have some leverage). Genji has already been to plenty of Sister’s concerts. Is a genuine fan of her music. It was a major source of comfort for him while he was recovering, physically and mentally. 

Genji decides to buy a meet and greet ticket and just wing it. He doesn’t want to show up in your bedroom, crawling through your hotel window. You have a gaggle of bodyguards for a reason, you’re paranoid about the clan figuring you out. Just showing up would only scare you. It’d just be another dragon’s short.

So if he meets you in your own element, surrounded by your guards maybe it’ll go over better? And Genji showing up looking the way he does wouldn't faze a soul at her concert. Fans would just think its a costume, people dress up like that at her concerts all the time. It’s not big deal. 

Sister knows how to make her fans feel special. She only allows five meet and greets per show. And that’s because she wants to ensure every fan gets personal time and attention from her. So when it’s Genji’s turn, (he was last in line and for good reason) he walks into the room and she’s there, ready to greet her fan with a hug, before they sit down and she offers him the floor. She’s used to fans having a lot to say to her. So she finds it important to let them they say what they have to say. 

“Would you mind, if I took this off?” Genji asks while pointing to his helm. 

“Of course not, whatever you’re comfortable with.” 

Genji swears he’s starting to shake. Sitting this close to you he can see all the subtle familiar bone structure of your face hidden away under the mask and makeup. He never had serious doubts over the years, but sometimes a creeping suspicion that maybe the famous singer isn’t you would keep in. But being here he can see it’s definitely you. There is absolutely no doubting it. 

So he very carefully takes off his helm. The visor and the part covering his hair. Watching your every move, waiting to see any apprehension. When the helm hits the table, tears are rolling down your face. You demand that the guards leave. They protest of course, as they should. But you snap at them anyway. “I said leave!”  

You tear the mask and the wig off, without being in the safety of a dark secluded room for the first time in almost ten years. “Genji?!” 

Reuniting with you wasn’t exactly smooth from there, but it was still not dragon’s short level of freak out. It’s a lot of tears, a lot of doubt. A lot of reassurance from Genji. And a whole hell of a lot of anger when he finally finds a moment to bring Hanzo up to you. You don’t understand how he can be so fucking calm and resolute about it. He assures you it took him years and a whole lot of help to get to where he is. So it’s completely understandable that you’re angry. 

Genji, in conclusion, is the real MVP here. He’ll get Sister and Hanzo to come around to healing. Hanzo would eventually join Overwatch (but only temporarily IMO), Sis would remain in her stellar pop career. They’d have Zen around to mediate and work on getting the siblings back to a good place with eachother. It would be a fuck ton of work. And probably a few close calls for Hanzo. But they’ll get there.  

[retphienix]

Usually I spend this final post talking at length about every part of the game, and sure this will be a lengthy post but honestly? This game gave me something to talk about at every turn. I've already said it all, and don't really see a reason in repeating myself here beyond summing things up.

The final boss was... fine.

Honestly that's about how I'd rank her. She was fine. Multiple forms, some deadly attacks. If this was any other RPG I'd say she was "fine", but it's worth mentioning that "fine" in FF8 is nearly god-tier because every encounter is usually utter garbage.

She even managed to kill me once because I got a bad trio and remained cocky, resulting in two dying and Squall (my third) sitting at 1000 HP using his Limit Break instead of healing.

I lost because of my ego on that one, but she gets the credit I suppose.

The story throughout was usually passable. I feel it was stronger at the start, was performed better towards the middle (with things like the garden battle and space scene which still ranks as my favorite moment in the game), and obviously dumb at the end because the weak plot points from the middle become the main emphasis.

It feels like some of the plot was left at first drafts or written by different people without consulting each other, and it's annoying to follow.

Like the GF memory issue brought up in the orphanage scene was, in my opinion, totally fine! It would have been MORE fine if it CONTINUED to be important to the story.

If GFs ended up being the reason Edea turned evil through brain rot, and the final boss ended up being the GF inside of her, I'd be saying the story was pretty decent to good!

Instead they latched onto possession which was unbelievably stupid and only made worse by saying it's not just possession, it's FUTURE possession.

At that it was still "passable, but disappointing" to me, because I much prefer expanding on the GF idea. But it just got worse!

All of a sudden the reason Ultimecia is doing this is revealed and it's just dumb.

Time Compression means nothing! It's a plot device with no form! It has no reasoning, it has no real world equivalent, it MEANS nothing and we're never given the slightest hint as to WHY she wants this or even WHAT this is.

If you would have said she was evil because evil is cool I'd be more forgiving, but this plot point and LITERAL GOAL of the antagonist means NOTHING.

The characters started out as cardboard and slowly became actual characters (with some exceptions who merely became decorated cardboard).

I started this game utterly amazed that such an unlikable character was made the main protagonist, but as it's wrapping up I must admit I like Squall and friends.

Squall explained why he was a little craphead and has begun (and in some cases succeeded in) growing out of it and becoming a better person who's willing to trust.

Rinoa becomes much more serious compared to her reveal in the plot and towards the end she's a key part in major plans necessary to defeat Ultimecia instead of just dipping her toe into making a change.

Irvine mostly just goes from acting like a playboy to fawning over Selphie. There's a little more to it, but not as much as I wanted from him.

Zell mostly just becomes a more emphasized version of himself, and that's fine too, but he's in the same boat as Irvine.

Selphie remains pretty much unchanged, but at least she gets a little backstory with Trabia in which I became curious if she's always been a beacon of optimism or if Trabia made her into one. Saaaame boat.

Quistis only gets any characterization at the very beginning with her getting fired from her position, and a small bit when her infatuation with Squall is explained to be a misinterpretation of forgotten emotions. She's "interesting", but she got the least out of everyone here. She's not only in the same boat as the majority of the main cast, she's captain of the sucker.

The characters are arguably the weakest part if you ignore the god-awful gameplay, but I ended up liking them more than this writeup implies.

I LIKE Squall and Rinoa and hope they enjoy each other's company.

I LIKE Irvine and Selphie for being who they are and wish the same.

I LIKE Zell as a character, and I WANT to know more about Quistis.

That's a pretty big difference from Disc 1 where I generally didn't like anything that was going on.

The gameplay is TRASH~~~~

I've said so many things on it, so I'll leave it at just this.

They innovated in a lot of ways. They added a lot of things. They tried to emphasize a feature that was extremely well received in 7 (summon animations) but they just messed everything up.

Features either ruin balance or ruin another feature. Half the features work against each other. Most of the features appear to have been developed in bubbles without knowing or testing with other features.

Some features exist for very specific reasons like enhancing world exploration, but they just don't work. (That being enemies leveling with you, as it unbalances literally every boss and it makes leveling in itself counter productive to getting stronger.) While others are solutions to non-problems, like replacing loot with draw spots (lowering the excitement value).

It's bad. Like really bad.

And if the best thing I can say about the gameplay is either "On paper it's interesting" or "You can skip most of it by using this broken feature to negate all the rest" or "Just throw Encounter-None on and never fight again", then I don't think I need to explain how bad it is.

As for the ending itself, my interpretation is pretty definite and good enough for me.

Squall gets lost in the compression and, as Ultimecia hinted towards, it begins to delete him from existence.

Earlier in the game they say the safest way to make it through the compression is to believe in each other and keep their bonds and relationships in mind at all times because they don't belong in that time so time will try to erase them if nothing IN that time is bound to them (so stand together or vanish apart).

Since Squall is bad at that kind of thing, he gets lost. When he gets lost he begins to doubt because he has a history of losing everyone around him, and when he doubts he begins to be deleted by time itself.

The memory loops and distortions are that process happening in his brain as it not only began because he failed to hold onto his friends, it makes it harder to rebound because it deletes all those memories in the first place.

Once it finally deletes his memories we get that meme'd up void face and he falls back and sheds a tear, a husk of a man. This is cemented by the feather he caught falling easily to the ground as if it had fallen straight through him.

Squall is gone.

Follow that by Rinoa refusing to give up and proving this is a two way street, just because Squall failed to believe in everyone strongly enough doesn't mean she can't do it for the both of them. She believes so hard he comes back, the end.

I gave it a less than serious tone towards the end there, but in all truth I'm serious in my interpretation.

Continuing beyond just Squall's freakout, I liked the ending. It suited the goals we all had and it showed some MUCH. NEEDED. CHARACTERIZATION- that would have been fantastic to experience in the core game! *cough*

They got to choose when they went back to, so Laguna chose to go back to marry Raine and lived up to this current time again?! THAT'S GOOD STUFF.

Irvine being Irvine in ways I WISH were in the main game because LOOK AT HIM. HE'S BEING A TOTAL DORK AND I LOVE HIM FOR IT.

Zell choking like the dork he is and then immediately starting a fight, just FANTASTIC stuff there that I wish there was more of.

Selphie and Quistis showing that they care about their friends through the traditional "Save you from choking and mock you for it" way.

Selphie even stole Irvine's hat. It wasn't much, but if she did more "silly" things like that we might have had an excuse to understand her more and get more character out of her. The most I recall is singing on trains and hijacking the Ragnarok, that’s not enough.

There are so many little good things in this game overshadowed by miles of poorly thought out mechanics and glossing over details in the story that shouldn't be, or deciding to follow through with unbelievably bad plot points.

I WANT this to be better because some of it IS good.

But I would be lying through my teeth if I said that all made up for the gameplay. The only reason I’m remotely singing these praises is because (ironically) it’s so broken you can ignore 90% of the gameplay and just play through the ridiculous story to find the good bits.

In the end though. I'm happy.

If you would have told me beating FF8 would make me happy as a kid, I'd have believed you because I liked it then.

If you would have told me this when I was wrapping up disc 1 I'd have called you a liar.

But here I am.

I'm happy with the end result, despite the poor turns the story took, despite the lack of sufficient characterization for the main cast, despite the TERRIBLE TERRIBLE gameplay, I'm content and happy with this.

And now I know so much about the inner workings of this piece of garbage that I could probably beat it in no time flat with almost no fighting outside of boss fights. lol.

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 53

I had been looking forward to the new Willy Wonka all summer long. I knew Johnny Depp was going to be in it, and I loved him, and I also loved the old movie with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Sarah and I bought ourselves tickets after school one day to discover that it was quite disappointing.. It wasn't really Johnny Depp's fault entirely, though many people didn't like his performance as Willy Wonka and I didn't much care for it either – truth be told. I honestly didn't like the way it was filmed or the campy cutesy way they portrayed the children and their parents, and this has a lot to do with the fact that Tim Burton seems to have more or less lost his touch (at least in my opinion). The score was terrible and continuous. Most movie music, particularly the kind used in family films is actually kind of terrible and will kill a movie for me in the end. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the original one, and the book itself were actually quite dark in a way that the new remake failed to be. The first movie seemed symbolic of society to me, whereas the second was trying to be quirky. It wasn't that they altered the story. I understand that a new direction is creatively interesting and inevitable to any remake, but the movie itself seemed very empty. You didn't get the bleak metaphors in the second remake. You didn't get anything that compared to the colored lights playing on Gene Wilder's face as they went through the chocolate tunnel and he sang his little song.

I was also disappointed that Marilyn Manson didn't get the role of Willy Wonka. He had wanted it, but ultimately, the movie makers were too worried about making it too frightening for most viewers. Marilyn Manson would have been perfect I think. It was a movie I think that he had personally loved too much himself to mess up. And I always had loved the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child as well, which might have been why I cared so much and was so disappointed by the end product. Whenever I find myself sad or disappointed or lonely in life, I sometimes laugh at myself and and sing Cheer Up Charlie in my head in order to mock myself.

Dare I say, I was obsessed with Marilyn Manson. I think I have mentioned this before, however he was definitely my new number one by the time I was sixteen years old. At the time, I guess I found myself drawn to him, less for his appearance, but by how misunderstood he was and how he seemed to have mastered his message and the collected and methodically he spoke and presented his ideas to people who hated him and all the hype that came with that. I read his biography – which was really more of an autobiography – only he had mostly narrated his life I think through tape recorded conversation and had someone else write it – so technically it was a biography and that inspired me a lot. It probably influenced the language, subject matter, and the way I try to tell stories to a certain extent. While it is true, there are some times in that book more towards the end where he really went too far for me, I rather appreciated the dark honesty and combination of dark comedy and intimacy about the book altogether. He spoke honestly, and that makes most people uncomfortable. I really like uncomfortable subject matter.

There were opinions that he held about creating a world of chaos and drug abuse as some kind of lash back to the postmodern world that has made many people – such as myself if I am to be honest, that I no longer agree with at all (Honestly, he probably doesn't either – the book came out in 1998). The story was very focused on him, and his own selfishness. It wasn't a cruel form of selfishness, but a very self aware one. This is something that people don't like to see in themselves, but Marilyn Manson was all about that. He was very into being driven and moving forward – which I also admired. Some of the selfish stuff he wanted to do led him to pushing himself into some creepy situations – and those are places I honestly would never go, probably because drugs were involved. The notion that you can fix society by breaking down all rules and social structure was lame – and I even thought so in my teenage wannabe-just-like-my-idols larva stage. Also, when the singer for Jack off Jill said that his guitarist Twiggy raped her, I do believe it. Marilyn Manson didn't have anything to do with that, but when you read that book, there was a very strong sense of them breaking down social rules. And there was very little place for women – because of course there generally isn't in the music business. And now, I can honestly say, I don't like Marilyn Manson's music very much. It's okay – but not great like I once thought. I still feel like he had tapped into something very real. And the book was ultimately hilarious – with his choice of phrases and words. I think it really influenced me and it might be a small part of why I am writing my own life story as I am today. And he really showed the strange looking, average people lost in a world of consumerism and shallow beauty standard, how you could transcend that. You don't have to fit a mold. You can create their own form of beauty and become a work of art, rather than accept mediocrity. This idea really revolutionized the way I looked in the mirror everyday.

Most of the time, on the drive to and fro from Kendrick to Moscow and back again in the evening, we would listen to Mudhoney a lot. The reason we liked Mudhoney so much was because we were poor. Sarah and I never had money for decent albums, and when we bought an album, we would listen to it to death. For whatever reason, Hastings had plentiful stacks of Mudhoney cds, often for only three or four dollars a piece. Had we had more money, we would have experimented, but that wasn't there for us. Buying an album was taking a chance. Neither one of us had a job, and we were at the mercy of rare handouts from our parents. So if we spent fifteen dollars on an album that sucked, it was very disappointing. But there was a certain kind of delight in listening to Mudhoney out in the farm roads of the Pallouse Hills. The members of Mudhoney themselves were very apart of the rural north west themselves. They're music seemed relevant and very close to home.

Aside from the general music we had been listening to, the mixes that I made from Danny's computer on the weekends, Marilyn Manson and Mudhoney, I discovered Bob Dylan. Sarah's mother owned the album of Blood on the Tracks. I think lyrically, it was the best thing I had ever heard. It kind of surprised me, since it was a lot more mature than what I generally wanted to listen to. Bob Dylan's unique narration of thoughts and ideas brought my own thinking to a much higher state. Over the course of that year, even though I was fond of a lot of music, Bob Dylan rose and rose in my mind. It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) to me was like a tearing apart of everything in society and expressing it for what it was, and even though I felt this dread about my life and my own future, the growing awareness of death that waits for us behind everything we see, think, do and say, about human beings as the collective and what we have been building since we came into existence, there was this serene sense of everything would be okay. That song really built a foundation for me. There were many dark nights driving home that late fall and throughout the winters, where both Sarah and I would listen to that song in the dark winding roads in rural farm fields well off the highway. Something about the way we would listen to that, and the fact that even though we were a ways out from Moscow, you could still see the light's of the city miles away playing on the dark clouds that loomed above us. Bob Dylan introduced me to the abyss.

Sarah was still very much apart of the CKY internet forum, but she seemed to have left the business of commenting on the forum and arguing with the pointless trolls on there, since it was mostly composed of obnoxious abusive assholes who just hated women, and she had singled out a few friends over the internet that she liked to correspond with online. One of these friends was a fellow who lived over in Georgia. His name was Alex, he was two years older than Sarah and I, and he seemed rather intelligent. He played in a hardcore punk band. Even though he knew a lot of people who considered him a friend, he didn't consider many other people his friend. Sarah was maybe the first real friend he seemed to have. Tough he played in this punk band, he preferring more melodic and organized sounding classic rock/pop music like The Beatles or Paul Simon, and mostly just played in the band he was in for the experience and because his friends were into it. There were parts of the concerts where Alex would rap. He enjoyed writing, and he was far far better at expressing himself that either Sarah or I were. He had skills as an orator.

He also had a substance abuse problem with cough syrup. He took other drugs, and I think over the course of that year he ended up getting into some legal trouble. He was given a counselor, and the counselor betrayed his trust and told his parents what he had done. So there was a lot of that. And then at some point that year, even though he had straight A's and could graduate, he ended up punching one of his friends while they were doing some school project and he got kicked off and went for a GED instead. I never spoke to him. But Sarah talked to him all the time, and she would tell me these things – so by extension, I felt we were friends in an odd way.

It was Alex who got Sarah into Queens of the Stone Age and into Mark Lanegan. Half the time, I was wanting to listen to Hole, Marilyn Manson, mixed cds, and Bob Dylan, Sarah wanted to listen to Queens of the Stone Age and Mark Lanegan. Mark Lanegan, though not a household name, is a well respected singer and songwriter. He initially was in a band called Screaming Trees in the early nineties, had been a friend to Kurt Cobain, and eventually went solo, got clean off of heroin, and his music drastically became far more folk inspired. His voice is distinctly low and raspy. He's compared to Tom Waits a little bit – though they are still quite different. He is a very tall, very serious looking. I mention these details about Mark Lanegan because when Sarah found Mark Lanegan, she became crazy obsessed with him.

Queens of the Stone Age gave our trips to school and particularly back from school, this very particular sound. The album Songs For the Deaf made me feel like we were hundreds of miles away from humanity. Outside the small 1979 Honda Civic, the world was a dark place and we might have been the only two people who existed, Sarah and I – since it was usually night time by the time we got out of school later on as the fall played into the winter. Sarah would also listen to Mark Lanegan's new album at the time, Bubblegum and it's EP cousin Here Comes That Weird Chill. It's a really great record, the both of them, very blues inspired but also very indirectly – dark, bassy and minimalist and lyrically strong. Sarah was madly in love with Mark Lanegan. And we used to laugh about this -as Mark Lanegan was in his forties, and Sarah a sixteen year old girl. He became such an ingrained part of her identity that it's still very much a part of who she is.

Aside from these nights driving home, and the time we put in at school, or the time at home where we would sometimes still have fights that ended in us both crying and falling asleep, we would once a month afford to eat lunch at the China Buffet in the mall. We had so little money, and our parents didn't have much to give for us to eat out. Sarah often was the one who bought us lunch. I don't know if my father or mother can truly appreciate just how often Sarah had to use her chore money to feed the both of us. Today, I kind of look suspiciously at the China Buffet's food – excluding the added fact that I don't consume animal products anymore. It's far far far too cheap and that makes me suspicious since I know they are still churning a profit most of the time. Most of it isn't truly or strictly Chinese – more loosely Americanized Chinese inspired foods and if you want better quality Chinese/Thai/Korean/Japanese food it's better to just look up the reviews online and go to a real restaurant. In any case, it was six dollars a piece for us to eat there, and neither one of us ever even had that much to pay for food – which is kind of hard for me to believe now. Six dollars to me then is like sixty to me now.

I remember there was a weekend when Samantha, who I had not seen much since leaving Kendrick, who was still dating Adam, invited Sarah and I to do to the movies with her, a silly romantic comedy called Failure to Launch with Matthew Mcconaughey. For some reason, I didn't think I needed to pay my own way. Samantha was annoyed with me, and angrily paid for my ticket. I felt badly, in predictable fashion. In the end, I more or less remember Samantha most as someone who was always annoyed with me for my personal failings at being adultlike. After the movie was over, we were driving home, and Samantha and Adam were just ridiculous. They were fighting about nothing essentially. It's something couples do often, and I've never fully understood it. Samantha was being kind of quiet, and Adam was going 'what's wrong Sam??', and Samantha would huff and say 'Nothing....'. He would implore that something must be wrong, because she's 'being all weird'. I didn't see the weirdness personally, but whatever. She seemed to be playing like she was upset, but was hiding something from him, and he was vying to find out what that something was, trying to drive and get some strong eye contact in there. Meanwhile, Sarah and I are sheepishly in the back seat watching all this go down as the dark silhouettes of Samantha and Adam continued on and on this way.

It was like they were fake fighting. Samantha was talking in a high pitched voice. Nobody was saying anything. And then at some point one of them would accuse the other one of not loving them anymore, but of course it was said not like it was a real problem, but like a way to manipulate the other. Then they would sort of weepily banter back and forth. In the end, Adam would put on Styx's Lady in the car stereo, and they would begin making out like it had never happened. I came to the conclusion that neither one of them knew the other at all. For them, like many many people, being in a relationship and being in love is more pushing one another's buttons looking for reactions. There is a lot of power stuff going back and forth. I can't say I am one of those people or not. I never feel like I am looking to press buttons, but I probably am – I may be the worst.

On the weekends, we were at Danny's very small one bedroom house. It was very small – I cannot express that enough. My mom and Danny slept in the bedroom. David was set up in this small hallway TV room to play Danny's bad video games – like American Choppers and other biker related games that nobody really liked but Danny. Allison slept on the floor or a very small loveseat. And I slept in a recliner in the living room, but I would generally be on the computer until three or four in the morning trying to find decent songs to burn. The house was small, and it was also very muggy. Most of the time, my mother and Danny were gone. Nobody was in a good mood, but none of us fought either. I remember awkwardly asking Danny if he wanted to use his computer when he would get off after work, and he would say no, but would sort of mean yes.

What confused me, was that it was clear that we were taking up his space. We took up the televisions, we took up the computer. We probably took up the bathroom and the refrigerator. He wasn't really rude to us about it, but he didn't seem to enjoy it either. And yet, when my mother had found her own place, and was making good money as a bartender, he had demanded that she move in with him and quit her job. He didn't want her working at the bar anymore, because he didn't want her being ogled at by drunk men. So she took a job at a boy's home. It was this place that they sent mentally ill boys between the ages of fourteen and twenty two. You had to have done something criminal to be in there. It wasn't quite an insane asylum, nor was it quite juvy. It was a little bit of both. A few times while my mother was working there, she got knocked down by the boy's who were stronger than her, and beaten up a bit. It was a very rough job and the pay wasn't good, though she did seem to like it a lot.

But, as I mentioned earlier. Almost all my time was devoted to school work. By November, I was just beginning to get the hang of this school thing. I was finally becoming somewhat receptive to Mike teaching me, and I felt rather special. Most people would have thought that an alternative school education would be deluded and easier than the main public schools. Actually, the alternative school was much more challenging, and even more rewarding. Mike didn't like testing at all. He never used it except in the rare occasion where the state demanded it. Personally, he didn't like grades, though he understood that they gave an indication of how you were doing. All he really wanted you to do is learn how to think critically about ideas. And I was starting to trust Mike and Jenni a lot. I trusted them more than I had ever trusted most adults. Mike and Jenni at home had a son and a daughter. I remember their daughter's name was Sunshine. Both of them had bright smiling faces, their parents actually seemed to want a little more than to keep them fed and clothed. In fact, they didn't exist solely for their parent's benefits at all. The point of their existences was for them to become capable strong adults. They actually cared how their kids were getting on in life and how they coped with things. Mike and Jenni would pool up the money they made every school year, and they would take that money, get visas for the whole family and visit places in Europe and South America every summer. They seemed incredibly happy – living somehow in a world that I could never truly belong in. And yet, Mike obviously at the same time was able to take on a lot of philosophical issues and to face very harsh realities of humankind, and we were always there to remind him of that.

I could not help but feel a little bit jealous of their family. Not that I was crazy envious about it, but I really was beginning to care a lot about Mike and Jenni and what they thought of my own future. Dare I say it, the little rebellious satanist that I was secretly wanted their approval quite a bit. I wanted them to see great potential in me and to care about me like I was one of their own smiling happy kids. But I obviously wasn't. No matter how many books I read or how much I wrote, I was still very much a member of my own clan. Internally, I felt like a sick little creature that lingered on the outskirts of their happy home. Metaphorically, I, as the sickly thing, on a cold winter night would stare into the the household of their happy family and long to be one of them as they ate dinner or sat around a Christmas Tree (the image that comes to mind). But of course, that could never be.

Understandably of course, Mike had this wall towards his students becoming too close. And it seemed painfully unfair to me, even though it was the only way that this school could function. He broke layers and walls up in his students, but they could never really get to know him. He didn't lie to anyone exactly, just pushed students away subtly at any hint that they were getting to be that way. It was a mindfuck and it could hurt your feelings if you were vulnerable. He knew that he had a very strong affect on his students and he was afraid he would meet an especially vulnerable student one day who would either kill themselves, and break his heart a bit, or get confused about the nature of their teacher-student relationship. He also wanted us to be self sufficient. It was contradictory, but in order to try to help us to helping ourselves, he had to get inside of our minds. He knew what he was doing. Jenni and him had met in high school. They went to college together and eventually got married. They were incredibly close, and I venture to guess that while Jenni was taking psychology courses, Mike learned second hand from her and was using it on his students to retrain us. He was obsessively curious about that kind of stuff.

What I did always find strange, and what I eventually found out was that Mike and Jenni were extremely religious. Mike was very decent about not mixing his Christianity with his teaching. He taught about human truths that went to the core of the human spirit so to speak, but he did so in a way that an atheist could understand as easily as a religious person could. I respected Mike enough not to challenge him on religious grounds, but it bothered me. Mike was very much dedicated to real true debate and expressing your ideas. He wanted his students to know how to debate like pros. So I found it strange that he had decided to believe in the bible so heavily. He questioned none of it. Or at least, I really imagined that he didn't. I found out offhandedly from Jenni that both of them believed the first testament when it said that there was a time when men grew to be a thousand years old, and the world was only about six thousand years old at that. It was preposterous. Mike even played guitar in the church band.

I am quite certain that Mike converted to Christianity because of Jenni. I am not saying he didn't believe it. I think he did. But it was much more of a struggle for him than it was for her – not for reasons of wanting to sin or anything like that, but because he had to at some point shut his mind off and have faith in something without question. I knew that, because Mike tended to challenge concepts a lot. And as I was still in my first year atheist stage, I really wanted to question him. But I promised myself I wouldn't.

All the same, I learned a lot about Christianity indirectly in a way that created greater complexity for me and my schemas about what it meant to be Christian. For one thing, we often think about fundamentalist Christians as being the Pro-Trump types. They tend to vote right wing, have a mistrust for education, they tend to be either stingy and rich, or hopelessly poor. We see them in the political arena often, holding their signs against abortion, gay marriage. Mike – though I think it was a contradiction, was not against gay people. Jenni might have been, but Mike was not. If he had a problem with it, it didn't seem to create any sort of riff in his mind. I never asked him in specific detail about what he thought, but it was clear that this was a nonissue for him. He was much more privately adamant about evolution not being how we came to be what we are than he was about God hating gay people.

I once asked him about abortion. I didn't ask him because I wanted to fight, and at first I had to assure him this was not the case. What I really wanted was to ask someone who would be obviously caught in the middle – having strong ties to the liberal education system and the church. His answer was that he personally only in his own conception of the world could not imagine not wanting to have the baby. He just saw life as a blessing and human beings as being primarily good – so only good could come from a new baby in the world. But he let me know that this was just him. He was not about to say that he was the ultimate authority of what should and should not happen in the world. He felt it was a woman's place to make the decision and it was between them and their own truths. He could not possibly comprehend what everyone's situation or reality is like. And I really respected that answer. Obviously, the benefits to being in his shoes probably would have made having children not such a bad thing and he was fully willing to admit that he had a personal bias for himself that he and Jenni both agreed with. But he wasn't getting in anyone else's business.

Another interesting thing I learned from him came from the time I asked him about what he felt about the division of church and state. I knew vaguely that there were a lot of politicians who wanted to combine Christianity with government policies, and most hardcore Christians were all for it. When I asked him about it, he explained something to me that I hadn't really thought of before. Mike really didn't want religion and government to combine at all. He didn't feel like any of it had to do with being close to god or being enlightened by Jesus. And aside from opposing it on the grounds of religion having a way of corrupting our civil liberties, he actually felt that government made religion worse too. It was intrusive to his spiritual life. He didn't want government in his religion. He respected those boundaries because he felt the idea of government being mixed with his personal faith actually tampered with his relationship with god and brought it down to earthly places.  I keep these conversations in mind, because even though I am not a Christian at all, I felt that his answers were well thought out and what I wish more Christians were like.

Mike also taught us about Islam and Judaism in an incredibly fair way. We spent two weeks studying Islam, reading texts – in a secular way. We watched several documentaries on the history of Islam. Mike had no problem with Muslims, and in fact had many Muslim friends who he respected. This isn't to say that Mike gave us the whole truth about Islam, but he basically gave us a much clearer view of the religion as a whole. All in all, it's equally as violent as the bible is. To a degree however, when I compared the two religions, I actually found myself gravitating towards Islam the most. I wasn't by any means dropping my atheistic views. But I could see certain elements of Islam that resonated more deeply with me. Their idea of God felt more in depth than the Christian god. I admired how they represented their idea of God through architecture. Not that I don't love a good rosary or catholic cathedral – I do. But when you are trying to conceive of something as profound as the creator of all beings alive or dead, some all knowing consciousness that lays beyond time and space itself, than the design and math that is used in Islamic architecture fits better with my idea of how one should go about thinking of it. With Christian architecture, it often feels like you are looking less to the heavens than you are to yourself.

Anyway, I am very happy that I was introduced to religion in this way. It didn't so much change my views about God, but gave me a greater appreciation for the fables and stories that resonate with people. I felt for the first time in my life, connected to people who lived thousands of years before me, and I think it grounded me in the history of my own existence, what it really means to be alive, to pursue truth for truth's sake, to actually want to make the world a better place for more than just myself, and to harness beauty. It put in motion a need to find meaning behind everything.

After the first quarter there was supposed to be a parent-teacher conference. Even though it had only been a few months, and even though I still occasionally saw my father for a rare three or four hours a week – I wanted him to come to this conference. I wanted him to see how much better I was doing in school. Given what a academic failure I had grown into being over the previous seven years, I wanted him to sort of acknowledge that I was flipping things around. He promised he would show up. But of course, he forgot. My father was desperately trying to find a way to hide the pain of Patty's death. He was online dating again, more as a distraction I suppose than a genuine need to be close to anyone. After Patty, there was a string of forty or so women he would talk to for a time. Most of these relationships never went past the telephone, and I cannot even remember them all. You could pick up a phone book and just start naming off women, and many of those names would come to mind as the name of someone my father online dated for a time.

And when he wasn't doing that, he was buying speakers and musical equipment on the internet. Rooms of our house were beginning to fill up with speakers. He became so emphatic about certain products that he would spend hours on the phone, till he eventually was talking to CEO's of these companies. And even stranger still, my bald conservative father who had accused me of being high for a few years at this point, who loved listening to conservative talk radio for five hours straight most days, decided that it was fine for he himself to hang out with the druggy crowd of teenage boys in town. It was a strange sight for me, and I didn't know what to think about it. I was mostly too busy learning in school, but I observed it from a distance and had to scratch my head.

Sarah's mother did showed up to the school for the conference that day, so I got a ride home with her and Sarah – thankfully. Carol and Sarah might have felt a little bad for me. There is something incredibly disappointing about being forgotten or stood up. I remember we went out to a Mexican restaurant afterwards that made very tasty salsa and homemade chips, and I cheered up somewhat after that.

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[lunakinesis]

Accusations

Trigger Warnings For: Sexual assault, mentions of rape and sexual harassment.

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Small towns are terrible places. Gossip spreads like there's no tomorrow and it's impossible to stem the tide before everyone knows whatever was being whispered about; getting the facts out there can be even harder with everyone insisting what they knew absolutely had to be true. Small towns are also quiet, dull places with little to do, with communities reluctant to try or welcome anything new, forever set in their ways.

I'd always seen myself getting out of here the second I graduated high school. I'd go off to college and never look back. That was the plan anyway, but life tends to not go the way we envisioned it would. Sometimes that's a good thing but most of the time it's nothing but a road to disappointment.

For me – despite my general shockingly awful luck – it was a good thing. I didn't leave because in my senior year I met the love of my life. I'd never been big on such nonsense, the notion of childhood sweethearts had been something laughable to me up to that point and I'd always mentally told myself 'give them a month after school is done' to all the couples in my year who insisted they'd be together forever.

That all changed when I met Tim.

Tim was a quiet kind of guy who transferred into my school when senior year began. A pretty awful time to have to shift schools in anyone's opinion: too late to even bother making friends when you'd be graduating and going of into the world at the school year's end. Yet for all he was quiet, Tim was a likeable guy. When he talked he was polite and friendly with a good sense of humour that could make anyone laugh. He wasn't an athletic sort of guy, in fact he was quite your typical nerd in terms of interests but he had just the right kind of exterior attitude for it to be ignored rather than to become a target for meat-heads who still hadn't matured.

I suppose I was 'average' in terms of popularity, I'd never been one of those people that everyone liked and had to be around, but I'd never been either invisible or so low in the food chain that I was a target for endless torment. I had a decent number of close friends and was on amiable terms with most other students.

Maybe it was our amiability with all our classmates that eventually led to us being thrust together, I don't know. Some people might like to call it fate. I just call it living in a place with a tiny population. There's only so long you can go without interacting with someone unless you're actively trying not to speak with them.

We bonded over books, cheesy musicals and a shared love of pizza. That eventually spawned further bonding over our desire to help animals – domestic or otherwise – and desperation to leave our painfully boring hometown behind and explore the world.

I'll spare you all the rest of the details or we'd be here forever going over the ups and downs of high school and college romance. From what I've told you, you probably know the outcome: We fell in love and stayed that way. We didn't end up escaping our small town, sadly. Instead we ended up going to a nearby college that we could travel to and from each day. The reason? It was just him and his mom and she ended up in a bad car accident shortly before winter break of our senior year. He understandably didn't want to leave her alone to go to the other side of the country, and I knew he'd need the mental and emotional support to get through balancing a degree and caring for his mom, so I stayed.

We got married after our third and final year of college. We still planned on getting away from town but with a bundle of debt over our heads, we knew we'd have to wait a little.

A little turned into a long time. There was no one specific reason... Just life. Life getting in the way in every way it could: gaining and losing jobs, getting promotions, bills to pay and appliances needing to be repaired and so on. All of it adding up to money and more importantly, time. Our mid-twenties came and went and soon we found ourselves approaching the near-end of that decade with the big 'three-zero' staring us down not too far away.

By this time we were settled into our jobs. I had my own catering business which Tim assisted with alongside working as a manager in a local sports bar. It was less about getting a greater income and more about making sure we had space from one another so we didn't end up suffocating.

Tim had a good relationship with all the customers and his colleagues... Except one. Amanda. To most people she wouldn't have seemed annoying or unpleasant and it wasn't as if she had some sort of personal vendetta against my husband.

Quite the opposite in fact, she was after him.

I was never worried about Tim straying with anyone – man or woman – as he just wasn't the sort, so I had no concerns of him running off with the barmaid. No, my problem was with how uncomfortable she made Tim.

She was pushy and touchy, constantly flirting with him, constantly smacking his ass and trying to rub his shoulders. It didn't matter how many times he told her to knock it off, she'd come back harder. He knew better than to complain to his boss, he'd just get laughed off because he was a man and she was a woman.

We women may face more problems and struggles in the grand scheme of things, but men suffer too in regards to domestic abuse and sexual harassment/assault. They're laughed at, mocked and taunted and not believed.

But I believe my Tim. The stress he was carrying was enough to convince me, but seeing her brazen behaviour with my own eyes sealed the deal. She didn't even stop when I'd pop in to have lunch with him. She'd bother us his entire break, rest a hand on his shoulder and squeeze it and make comments on his appearance; How 'lucky' I was to have 'a man like Timothy'.

He hated that most. Timothy. Not even his mother called him that, only I did when we were alone, now she'd tarnished that. He'd insisted he be called Tim but of course she didn't bother listening. I'd asked him multiple times if he wanted me to have a word with her. But my sweet, quiet Tim didn't want to cause any trouble.

So he endured. For a while. I would not be telling anyone this if that had been the end of it. No, things turned bad for Tim one night when they were the only two in the bar after closing, having the duty of locking up. Amanda practically threw herself on Tim that night, groping him and attempting to take off his shirt, all the while removing hers and exposing her breasts.

Tim pushed her away, he admitted he had maybe used a bit more force than necessary, shoving her back into one of the booth tables. I've never blamed him for that, I know I would use whatever force I had if a man were doing the same to me. He told her he'd had enough, that if she pulled anything like that again he would be making a formal complaint, no matter how much he was laughed at.

Amanda didn't like that. I don't know what went on in that woman's head but the next morning police were at our door.

Amanda had accused Tim of harassing and assaulting her when she said no to his advances. She'd laid it on thick, breaking down in the police station and showing them her bruises from when he'd tried to 'pin' her to the table.

It was in vain, but Tim tried to deny it and tried to explain the truth. Maybe if he'd just lied about the whole ordeal he would've been believed given how often it happens that male rapists walk away and their victim's lives are ruined. I know the majority of rape cases are not false, that many will naturally deny a crime that is difficult to prove... but now we were on the back end of an absolute lie and Tim trying to explain the truth made it worse.

Who would you believe? It's awful to say that if I didn't know my husband and the situation, I would've believed Amanda too. The police certainly didn't believe a grown man could've been the one harassed and assaulted when he explained the whole mess during his questioning. There wasn't even any CCTV footage of the event, they were down for maintenance. Just our luck.

Tim was released on bail and lost his job, his boss believed Amanda as did most of his colleagues and the regulars at the bar. Only the weekend doorman believed my husband, and he resigned in protest. Not that it did us much good but Tim and I were grateful someone could see through the bitch's lies. My words counted for nothing since I was his wife, people expected me to side with my partner. One friend did nothing against the tide either, Amanda had them all hooked on her despicable act. I caught her driving by the house one day, a smirk on her face as she watched me clear up the broken glass bottles people had thrown at our property in their 'disgust' for my husband. This was her own way of playing the 'If I can't have him, no one can' card.

If my husband had been found guilty of a crime he didn't commit, this story would end. But that didn't happen. Tim never made it to court. Amanda was popular with the regulars just as Tim had been. She had an angelic persona around them, and no doubt they felt some strong urge to protect the barmaid. An urge that spilled into some twisted sense of justice.

Tim was assaulted the night before he was due in court. He'd just gone out for a walk in the park to clear his head. He died from a combination of blunt-force trauma and internal bleeding on the way to the hospital. He hadn't even put up a fight, even into adulthood he wasn't an athletic man and certainly no brawler. I suppose he thought fighting back would've made his situation worse. I wish he had. I would rather have had him alive and in prison for multiple charges as opposed to a cold corpse.

I don't know what Amanda had expected to happen, but clearly it wasn't my husband's death. She didn't seem smug anymore when I saw her. I guess she imagined I would leave him whilst he was in prison, and she could swoop in and 'forgive' him for what he'd done to her and take him in. Who else but her would have him after all that had happened? If that was her plan, it failed.

I was filled with contempt in the following weeks. Oh, I was grieving. But I couldn't believe how quick everyone was to turn on my husband. I heard them muttering when I was out and about, thinking I couldn't hear them. Amongst themselves they said it was 'Justice' that 'He had deserved it' and that 'it wasn't a slow enough death.' Amongst other disgusting things. His work friends were the worst. They came to me, offering false condolences that melted away into 'Tim was always such a quiet guy. But it's always the quiet ones, isn't it?'. I turned each and every one away after that.

Small towns are awful places, as I said before. Gossip and lies spread like wildfire, and Tim was the juiciest thing to pass through here in a long time. I started to hate leaving the house as the filth said about him grew worse and worse.

"I hear he had to transfer way back in high school because he was caught trying to grope one of the cheerleaders."

"I heard he tried to get one of his college professors to boost his grades by offering to go down on her and threatened her when she refused."

"I bet he's been doing it to Christina all this time and she was just too scared to come forward. It's awful that young girls and women feel like that, like no one will believe them."

I wanted to scoff at the irony of that one. For once the girl was the liar, not the accused man.

My contempt grew as people tried to pull me back into the community, get me to 'open up' about our marriage as if I had some skeleton waiting to be freed from the closet.

I eventually took them up on the offer to stop by the community blood drive. No one expected me to give blood, just be there to reintegrate myself. In a town as small as ours, practically everyone would be there.

I offered to bake some cakes for the event, something greatly appreciated given my expertise. I was happy to be included, to have a chance to share with my neighbours again. To set the record straight.

That's why I'm here now, sitting in the bleachers of my old high school gym, humming away to myself as I look across them all. The regulars who'd been acquitted of murdering my husband, the bar staff who had turned their backs on him, the busy-bodies who had spread disgusting lies about him and dear, sweet Amanda who accused my husband of her own crime.

They're looking back at me, I can feel all their eyes boring into me.

Judging me.

Pleading with me.

Too little too late.

Most of them have succumbed, their eyes lifeless. Their bodies motionless. The rest will soon follow. As will I.

Content that I had brought my own justice as they had, I took a bite from my slice of cake and waited to join my husband.

[secretlyafrogman]

In-Laws

Word Count: 1,521

Pairing: None

Characters: Crowley, Female Reader

Warnings: Cursing, mentions of mental illness, mentions of religion

Summary: You hated your in-laws. More so than you could even put into words. So what happens when your roommate decides to intervene? Well, when your roommate is the King of Hell, anything is possible.

A/N: Okay, so I wrote this a few nights ago after my actual in-laws called my parents to try and call off our wedding hen it’s happening in two weeks. I wish I was joking. 

Please note that there are mentions of mental illness being downgraded like it’s nothing and Godly people bringing people down. I for one do not agree with this on any means, but once again, both things I’ve had to deal with in the two years that I’ve known my fiance. 

Anyway, this is a very personal fic for me and I was considering not posting it, but two of my friends that I read it to really enjoyed it and said I should. So here we go. It was written as an outlet to my emotions at the time.

By the way, I’m terrible with titles. Can’t you tell?

Hope you enjoy!

Living with Crowley wasn’t exactly your ideal living situation. Sure, he stayed away most of the time bothering the Winchesters and their angel friend or sealing deals here and there or at meetings with other demons doing “boring work” as he called it. And sure, the decor was nice and sophisticated if not a bit dreary and depressing at times. But living with a demon did have it’s downfalls: such as the smell of sulfur and ash filling the place or the screams from down in the basement that made it hard to sleep at night or the constant bitching and moaning about work or so many other countless things you couldn’t even begin to list off. And yet here you were all because you had promised the Winchesters that you would look after him and make sure that he wasn’t causing trouble... Like you could look after the King of Hell. Yeah... that was a realistic job choice right there. 

Truth be told, it kind of was. Because maybe you and Crowley were a bit closer than what the Winchesters initially thought. That’s not to say you wanted to be in any sort of relationship with him, oh no! But he was decent company at times and being tainted by human blood seemed to have made him sentimental. He needed a friend even if he said he didn’t want one, and for some reason he had seemed to lean on you, and while you weren’t close it was still a friendship nonetheless. Maybe it’s because out of the little band of boy wonders that the Winchesters were, you had always treated him with some sort of dignity and respect. And if he saw you and him as being friends, that was fine by you. 

But then something changed one night that made you two almost inseparable. 

It had all started when you had went out on what was supposed to be a nice family outing with your fiance and his family. They took you two to dinner, bought you two a glass of wine, made pleasant conversations that unbeknownst to you turned out to be nothing but a trap. Because just as soon as you had gotten comfortable with the evening, his father brought up the wedding. Oh, here we go again. This had been a constant issue with his parents from the very beginning because “They didn’t approve of your job,” or “Why are you working with so many other men?” or “Why are you living with an older gentleman? Is he your sugar daddy?” or “Why do you have anxiety? There is no such thing as mental illness.” 

Once again, issues that they have had since the beginning of your relationship were being brought up again and you were being attacked viciously. Your fiance had your back, trying to call them off but you couldn’t take anymore. Standing up, you threw the glass of wine in their faces and stormed out to the distressed calls of the one that you loved. You found your car, jumped in and ignored all of them as you drove off as fast as your car could take you just to get out of your situation. 

As soon as you arrived home, you stepped into the house and let out a scream of frustration. You didn’t think anyone would be home at the time, so why the hell not let off some steam? Walking into the living room and picking up an empty wine glass that was on the table from the previous night, you chunked it at the wall waiting to hear a shatter. But it never came. Instead you saw the irritated face of Crowley as he appeared and grabbed the glass mid air. 

“That’s a thousand dollar glass, love. Clear crystal. Let’s not just break it without good cause.”

You growled as you watched him put it back down on the table. 

“I’ll make a deal with you. You tell Uncle Crowley what’s got your panties bunched up and if I think it’s a valid reason, I’ll let you break that glass. But if I don’t, you have to do dishes for a week. And I know how much you hate doing those.”

Grumbling, you slouched down on the couch with a huff. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That much is obvious.” Crowley replied as he walked over to you and sat down beside you, two glasses of scotch appearing in his hand as he handed you one. “Trouble in paradise?”

“That’s an understatement.” You scoffed as you took a drink of the scotch. 

“It’s not your in-laws again, is it?”

“It might be.”

“What on earth did they do this time, Y/N?”

“What haven’t they done?” You raised you free hand, rolling your eyes as you placed the scotch on the coffee table as to not spill it. “It’s always something because they’re people of God and see me as not being good enough for their son. I bet they would shit a brick if they knew I was roommates and friends with the bloody King of Hell.”

Crowley chuckled. “I can make that happen.”

“Don’t tempt me.” You shook you head and took another sip of the scotch before putting it back down. “But seriously, if it’s not one thing to them it’s a thousand other things. Whether it be my job or my living arrangement or my fucking anxiety and depression that they don’t seem to understand. But let me tell you something. I would really like to see them go through the shit I’ve seen... that I KNOW to be out there in the real world without needing something to help calm their nerves. I mean... look at you.”

He shrugged. “Point valid and taken.” 

Reaching a hand up, you rubbed your temples in frustration. “They call themselves people of God, but they are far from it being the judgmental assholes that they are. I think they need to know where they’re going to go if they don’t stop.”

That must have given Crowley an idea. Because before you could say another world, he had downed his scotch and stood from the couch. “Do you really want all your problems to go away? I can make that happen for you.”

“At the expense of my soul...”

“No, darling. Not this time. We’re friends, after all. Just give me twenty four hours and I promise you your in-laws will no longer be a problem.”

“Crowls, please don’t murder them.”

“Not on the agenda at all. See you soon.”

And with that he was gone. Rolling your eyes, you downed the rest of your scotch and went upstairs to get some rest. What the hell was he thinking...?

---------------

The ringing of your cell phone is what woke you up the next morning. Groaning, you grabbed your phone and looked at it, seeing the number of your in-laws flash on the screen. Great. What did they want?

“Hello?”

“Y/N!” Your father in-law’s voice was shaking as if he had seen a ghost and his words felt forced. “We just want you to know how sorry we are for last night and that we see nothing wrong with you marrying our son. In fact, we would like to make it up to you by offering to pay for the entire wedding and you can do whatever you would like!”

You blinked, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. “Seriously?”

“Of course. You are going to be our daughter, after all. Now run along and get started with your day. We know that you must be very busy and have to meet with the boys you work with soon. We love you.”

“Yeah... love you too.”

You hung up the phone in confusion as Crowley appeared in front of your bed, a smirk on his lips. 

“Well? Didn’t I tell you that everything would be alright?”

“What did you do, Crowley?”

You watched as he reached up and patted the space next to him. “Thought it might be nice if the in-laws met Juliet. I also might have told them that if they didn’t start treating you like a daughter that Juliet did quite enjoy using humans as squeaky toys and that I would have her on them faster than they could run.”

You rolled your eyes as Juliet jumped in bed with you and gave you a lick on the cheek. You reached up where you thought the hellhound’s ears were and gave her a scratch. “You really are unbelievable at times.”

“Is that any way to say thank you to your best friend?”

“You know we’re not besties, Crowley.”

You chuckled as he made a mock-hurt expression. “Did I not just help you out of your bad situation?”

“Yes, you did.”

“And did I even ask for your soul?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“And you’re telling me we’re not besties yet!?”

You laughed and shrugged your shoulders, giving Juliet a pet as you heard her sigh in content. “I guess I can reconsider.”

“You better.”

You rolled your eyes a second time. “Shut up!”

“I love you too.”

[loveaningenue]

Hiddleswift Timeline 2016

The biggest fauxmance of 2016? As bad as Tayvin was, this was worse in terms of fakeness (IMO, but both were really fake). It’s fun to see how people actually believed in their relationship, but here we are, on Tumblr, where people believed not too long ago that they were still together. Enjoy this short timeline (and analysis)! 

(More pictures are visible on the links that are on the dates. + I’ll add extra pictures later).

May 3, 2016: Taylor and Tom dance together at the 2016 Met Gala. 

May 16, 2016: Tom answers question about her in an MTV interview. (”How was dancing with Tay Swift? I sat next time to her at dinner that night, and she was very charming. I mean, I've seen a couple of her videos, and I think, I remember 'Shake It Off' was released around the time we made I Saw the Light. She's very cool, yeah.” “Would you be up for a duet? I don't know that I could stand up to her vocal talents, to be honest. That's what she does. She's a professional musician and I'm an actor. We'll see. You never know. But I'm pretty sure we won't do it.")

(June 1, 2016: Taylor and Calvin Harris break up)

June 15, 2016: Taylor and Tom are photographed together in Rhode Island which is quite funny because there aren’t paparazzi’s in RI, except if you call them...

June 16, 2016: Taylor and Tom are seen boarding her private jet in RI. Might I remind you of the airport they were seen in was the Groton airport in Connecticut. 

June 21, 2016: Taylor brings Tom with her at Selena’s concert in Nashville. Tom is mocked for dancing like a dad by the media. There aren’t any paps in Nashville usually, so seeing these made a lot of people raise their eyesbrows again. 

June 23, 2016: Taylor and Tom go on a date in Nashville with Holly Williams and her husband. 

June 25, 2016: Taylor visits Tom’s family in Suffolk, England. The paps suddenly appear in an English county that is quite unknown to the general public.

June 26, 2016: Taylor continues her visit in England. She meets Tom’s mom just 10 days after their relationship began.

June 27, 2016: Taylor and Tom visit Rome, Italy. It was a super low-key trip because they went to the Colosseum, a very unpopular touristic place in Italy. 

June 28, 2016: Taylor and Tom have breakfast together at a cafe in Rome. Tom was acting really well here.

June 29, 2016: Taylor and Tom visit yet another unknown place in Rome, this time, they go to the Vatican. They also eat at Piazza Navona and go on a helicopter ride. 

July 3-4, 2016: Taylor has her annual Fourth of July party and Tom gets the honour to wear an I ♥ TS shirt, later to be ridiculed by it. 

July 7, 2016: Taylor and Tom fly to Australia where Thor: Ragnarok is being filmed. 

July 10, 2016: Tom refuses to answer question about Taylor in Autralia (How is Taylor enjoying the beautiful Gold Coast? I'm not going to answer that, if it's all right.).

July 11, 2016: Taylor, Tom and eight bodyguards dine at Gemelli's Italian in Queensland, Australia. 

July 14, 2016: Taylor, Tom, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and others watch Ghostbusters at the movie theater. 

An interview with Tom by Hollywood Reporter is later released (You're in the middle of a cultural frenzy right now because you're dating Taylor Swift. How would you respond to people who claim that you're involved in some sort of publicity stunt? (Laughs.) Well, um. How best to put this? That notion is — look, the truth is that Taylor Swift and I are together, and we're very happy. Thanks for asking. That's the truth. It's not a publicity stunt. ) He mentions Taylor as Taylor Swift, as her boyfriend of one month, you expect them to say Taylor, but Tom just couldn’t say it. The fact that he had to state that it wasn’t a publicity stunt is 👌.

July 22, 2016: Taylor and Tom are papped in LA. 

July 25, 2016: Tom gets questioned about Taylor at Comic Con and answers.

July 27, 2016: Taylor and Tom eat at Hillstone restaurant in Santa Monica. 

August 12, 2016: Tom follows Taylor on Instagram and an interview by the Hollywood Reporter and answers a question about Taylor.

August 13, 2016: He’s later papped boarding Taylor’s private jet in Burbank airport (where the paps were called to take pictures of him at a very secured airport). 

September 6, 2016: Taylor and Tom break up. 

After the Break-Up

February 8, 2016: Tom talks about Taylor in his GQ interview. 

[...] “Taylor is an amazing woman,” reads the prepared statement Tom Hiddleston has memorized and is now giving me at The Bull & Last, where his voice has gone low. “She’s generous and kind and lovely, and we had the best time.” But I didn’t ask that, I say. I asked something else. So I wait, and he says, “Of course it was real.”

I ask if he wants to say anything about Australia, about the Fourth of July party at which he donned that fateful tank top, about the rumors that she thought he was too eager. Does he want to say anything about any of it? And here he puts down his fork, a bite of my steak still on it. He looks off into the middle distance, and here is what he says:

“The truth is, it was the Fourth of July and a public holiday and we were playing a game and I slipped and hurt my back. And I wanted to protect the graze from the sun and said, ’Does anyone have a T-shirt?’ And one of her friends said, ’I’ve got this.’ The friend pulled out the “I ��� T.S.” tank top that Taylor’s friends are contractually obligated to own. “And we all laughed about it. It was a joke.”

So that’s his statement on the entire relationship: an explanation of the tank top. “It was a joke,” he repeats. “Among friends.”

I can vouch for this depiction of Tom Hiddleston. He is definitely, without a doubt, someone who would put on an “I ♥ T.S.” tank top, both to protect a scratch from sun damage and to make his new friends laugh while th—wait, sorry, he’s still talking:

“I have to be so psychologically strong about not letting other people’s interpretations about my life affect my life. A relationship exists between two people. We will always know what it was. The narratives that are out there altogether have been extrapolated from pictures that were taken without consent or permission, with no context. Nobody had the context for that story. And I’m still trying to work out a way of having a personal life and protecting it, but also without hiding. So the hardest thing is that that was a joke among friends on the Fourth of July.”

He still isn’t looking at me. The last piece of my steak is now poised on his fork in mid-air. He is so sad, and I can’t take it anymore, so I put my hand on his and I say, “Tom, Tom, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk about the tank top anymore. I got it. I understand. I’ll tell the world.” But he can’t stop talking about it. He literally cannot stop talking about it.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just, I was surprised. I was just surprised that it got so much attention. The tank top became an emblem of this thing.” It’s hard to tell me this, he says. He wants to trust me. He wants to trust that the world won’t use this to embarrass him again, but he doesn’t know. He just knows it will follow him until he talks about it. [...]

General Conclusion A failed PR stunt that only Taylor benefited little from. At least, compared to Calvin, Tom was nice and a decent human being. Probably sounded great at first, as if nothing could go wrong (Taylor Swift dating and British actor), but the acting was over the top and too many paps were called. The media didn’t believe much in it, having various articles about it being PR, but they were still a lot of positive stories about them. The general public could easily tell it was PR, so only the Swifties really believed in it.

Swiftie Side Tom was the nice Englishman that danced with Taylor at the Met Gala in May 2016. Right after her terrible breakup with Calvin Harris, she was spotted kissing Tom in RI and the rest of the summer was a wonderful world tour, from Nashville to England to Italy and to Australia. Taylor, not ready for another serious relationship, decided to break things off with him just a month after their trip to Australia. 

Another theory about them was that they either never broke up and were dating secretly (or that they did break up, but got back together quickly after). Some fans believed it when Tom was working in LA while Taylor was there as well. Though it was said by Tom that he was single and the theories were proved to be wrong. 

PR Side Taylor had no new music to promote, but she had Kimye to deal with. The perfect way to hide the bad press was by stunting with Tom. Tom wasn’t known in North America and a relationship with Taylor surely upped his profile. 

N.B. Taylor was still allegedly with Karlie at this point, so it was PR and bearding.  Tom is rumoured to be gay, but since I don’t follow Tom, I can’t confirm this. 

How It Went Down (Overview of the Timeline) Taylor and Calvin broke up June 1, 2016. 

June 15, Taylor and Tom were spotted in RI together and the media was all over it, overlooking Kim’s negative comments on Taylor. 

Taylor brought Tom to Nashville where they went to Selena’s concert and danced together. Tom was completely ridiculed for his dancing and looking like he could be Taylor’s father.

They continued their romance to Suffolk where Taylor met Tom’s family. Talk about moving too fast.

Then they went on what the media called a private vacation in Rome, Italy. Spotted kissing, taking pictures, and eating together, everything felt forced.

Tom even brought Taylor to Australia, where he was filming the new Thor movie, but not too long after, Kim released a series of snapchats of Taylor and Kanye’s phone conversation about Famous, Kanye’s controversial song. 

Nothing going well for Taylor, her and Tom were reducing their pap pictures and ceased them in August, though Tom was seen boarding one of her private jets. In early September, it was publicly announced in the media that they broke up.

My Thoughts Hiddleswift is what I like to call a failed fauxmance and possibly one of Taylor’s worse one. In my first post, I said that it was the first time I looked at the pictures could say it was fake. 

I barely knew Tom before and I feel bad for the embarrassment he got from the stunt. For now, he’ll be known as Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriend. I hope he can get out of that title. This is a situation in which saying “was it worth it?” just fits perfectly (“if the high was worth the pain”??) (for Tom: “Grab your passport and my hand”). At least he got what he wanted, exposure in the US. 

I could only hope that this is the last PR stunt that Taylor does, but I highly doubt it will (a girl can dream). 

The Aftermath (will be updated) Tom tried to find an excuse for his I ❤️ TS shirt which caused him a lot of humiliation on the Internet, but it failed because no one cared. He said many positive things about her in his GQ interview (see quotes👆) but now refuses to answer questions about her. 

Pretty sure there are other timelines about them, but I think this is the most completed one (Larrienation stopped when they arrived in Australia, but she has a pretty good post about them that is linked in my 2016: The Bearding Timeline).