#Not quite out of horror at the lack of tidiness but more out of being offended at the sight of Cody being so un-Cody

[ominouspuff]

what if

An au in which Cody and Rex still do questionable missions, caf is in criminally short supply (this time for hard-working rebels), and Cody grew his hair out for some reason

[satanourunholylord]

Love and Love Making Among the Vikings

Below is an infodump post which focuses on these topics:

Courtship: The Viking Way

Good Personal Hygiene

Sex Before Marriage

Homosexuality being Acceptable (with limits)

Some Viking Marriage Customs That Survive Today

Viking Sexual Euphemisms

Acceptance of Adultery in the Viking Age

Viking Women Divorcing Their Husbands

Vikings in popular culture are often viewed as the brutes of the Dark Ages, robbing, raping and pillaging people and goods. However, an analysis of their personal lives shows a much different side. Family life was important to Norse men, and every proper, upstanding Viking aimed to marry and have children. And although their parents arranged their marriages, Norsemen liked to court their ladies- and made a special effort to impress them with their appearance.

As for Norse women, although they had to put up with their husband’s affairs with live-in mistresses, slaves and even other men, they had the right to divorce their partners for violence, neglect, and various sexually related issues. In fact, Norse customs of love, marriage, and sex set a high standard in their time- and some even survive to this day.

Courtship: The Viking Way

Courtship wasn’t strictly necessary in Norse culture as marriage was more about alliances than love. The prospective bride and groom’s families would command the negotiations, to create a match that would bind the two clans as allies – and sometimes end feuds. Many brides were promised as "peace pledges" to smooth troubled waters between rival families. Although the couple in question could voice an opinion, it was fair to say they had little choice but to go ahead with the match.

That didn’t mean there was no romance -but Norse men had to handle it carefully. If a potential groom was too slow in making advances to his prospective bride, the lady’s relatives could take this as a slight and seek blood vengeance. Eighteen courtships in the sagas ended in this messy fashion. On the other hand, it also didn’t pay to move too fast or stretch out the courtship too long. If the couple liked each other too much to wait for the wedding night, matters could become complicated by an unwanted pregnancy.

So attempts to cultivate what the Norse called ˜inn matki munr’ (‘the mighty passion’) were intricate and involved specific rituals. Meeting and talking was one way to forge a relationship. But some odd practices were also employed. For instance, if a girl wanted to show her man she liked him, she made him a shirt. As for Viking men, they would go out and handpick their lady a bunch of purple flowers- and then slap her around the face with it!

Love poetry, although a favorite of the Norse gods, was viewed with suspicion. In fact, Icelandic law forbade skalds to compose Mannsong, (‘maiden songs’) for women who were not married to them under the threat of outlawry or death. This suspicion came about because the Norse believed that the poems could act as spells to seduce and bind women. Worse still, such praises could suggest that the skald or his patron knew the lady more intimately than he should.

Even if they were not in love before the wedding, the couple would try and cultivate it afterward. Husbands would seat their wives next to them if they wanted to show affection. Couples could also express their closeness by sharing the same drinking horn. If a husband were feeling very affectionate, he would ˜put her on his lap’ where he and his wife could indulge in “kyssir hana’ – a kiss and a cuddle. Or he would put his head on her lap, and she would stroke his hair.

Good personal hygiene was a must

Central to making a good impression on a potential or actual partner was good personal hygiene and pride in one’s appearance. This practice applied to both men and women. Norse graves are packed with grooming essentials for the afterlife- regardless of whether they belonged to a man or a woman. Combs, toothpicks, tweezers and ear spoons were all familiar, demonstrating the Norse liked to be neat and tidy-and clean. The Arab, Ibn Fadlan may have felt horror at the Viking practice of sharing a communal wash bowl, but at least his Norse acquaintances washed their face and combed their hair daily.

In fact, the Norse were probably the cleanest people in the Dark Ages. According to the Saxon cleric, John of Wallingford, they bathed weekly, on a Saturday. Wallingford complained that this, and their habit of changing their clothes regularly, was to “ undermine the virtue of married women and even seduce the daughters of nobles to be their mistresses.” However, the Norse were not content merely to be neat and tidy. Ibn Fadlan also noted the Rus- Viking traders who occupied what is now modern Russia-favored bleaching their beards to a saffron yellow, using a strong lye soap.

This method was probably also used on the hair of men and women. Norse women would have been particularly keen on achieving the long, fair, shiny hair that was the feminine ideal, although the white skin that men also coveted was probably only managed by the wealthy. Men also favored long hair, as only slaves wore their hair close cropped. However, this did not mean they were unkept. Figurines show Viking men wearing their hair trimmed and their beards well groomed- either styled to a point or shaped as a goatee.

Finally, there was the question of clothing. When it came to making an impact, the Norse liked to dress to impress. As well as being clean, garments were brightly colored and adorned with the most costly array of jewelry you could afford. Cloak pins and arm rings all showed off status, impressing the object of your desire not only with your appearance but your wealth and prospects in life.

Sex before marriage was acceptable

It wasn’t always possible to marry the one you loved - or lusted after. The sagas make constant reference to “the illicit love visit.” In such cases, a young couple, forbidden from marrying would meet in secret. The sagas never mention sex occurring. However, it is highly unlikely the young man would risk a secret tryst simply to ˜talk’ to the object of his affections. The lovers, however, were said to ˜enjoy’ each other. A document detailing a wife’s dissatisfaction with her impotent husband because she couldn’t ˜enjoy‘ him suggests this is a term linked to sexual fulfilment.

Indeed, although female virginity was the ideal, it was just about acceptable for a woman to have had sexual relationships before her marriage-with certain provisos. First, she needed to have been discrete and not too prolific in her pre martial encounters. However, most importantly, she should not have had any children out of wedlock. This restriction was not for moral reasons. Illegitimate sons could become their father’s heirs- if he recognized them. Rather, society censured Illegitimacy because of the burden it placed on the maternal family, not because it was deemed wrong or shameful.

Illegitimate children were the responsibility of the mother’s family- and so a burden to it. It was they who ultimately supported the child. Even if the father acknowledged his child, he and his family were only obliged to provide two-thirds of its support. Worse yet, the mother probably lost all hope of marriage, as few men would want to take on the responsibility and expense of another man’s child. Thus her family would lose out further as she would gain no bride price and no family alliance. Thus chastity was often the safest bet.

For men, sex outside marriage posed no such strictures. They were free to indulge themselves however they pleased-as long as they submitted to marriage in the end. For to remain unmarried in Norse society was unacceptable. A man accused of shunning wedlock was said to be ˜fleeing from the vagina.’ Women who did the same were “fleeing from the penis.’ Such people risked becoming social outcasts because they were not fulfilling their ultimate role: the procreation of children for the survival of their families and society.

Homosexuality was acceptable- with limits

Pre Christian Norse views on homosexuality weren’t simple. On the face of it, Norse society accepted sexual relationships between men. However, there were restrictions. Firstly, such relationships could not interfere with any future or current marriage. So the man still had to marry- whatever his views on the opposite sex- and his wife and her family had to be prepared to ignore her husband’s male lover or lovers. It was most important that the man did not neglect his conjugal duties. He still needed to have sex with his wife.

More important was that no free Norse man was the passive partner in a homosexual relationship. Vikings would rape males and females when on raiding trips to shame, degrade and weaken them. To be penetrated was to be submissive. It was acceptable to gain pleasure from penetrating someone- but not from being penetrated yourself. One of the worst insults an enemy could hurl at a Norse man was “sordinn” (penetrated). Any man branded as such would fight to the death defend his honor. These conflicts led to Scandinavian law codes making such types of insult illegal because of the bloodshed, with the slanderer often outlawed- if the injured party didn’t kill him first!

However, if such abuse was believed or proven, it had grave consequences for the man in question. Although Norse myths tell of gods such as Loki and even Odin taking on a submissive role in sex, Norse mortal society did not tolerate passivity in men. The man in question would become a social outcast, branded "ergi” (unmanly). Such men were believed to lack the ability to be vital and virile members of society. They were deemed liable to be ineffectual as fathers and fighters- and as such of no use. Dominant homosexuals were quite another matter.

There is no mention of lesbianism in the tales. Nor are there any references in other Old Norse texts to female homosexual relationships, so we cannot gauge pre-Christian attitudes to female homosexuality. However, Icelandic Christian law suggests lesbianism did occur in Norse society. In the 12th century, Bishop Porlakr Porhallson decreed “if women satisfy each other they shall be ordered the same penance as men who perform the most hideous adultery between them or with a quadruped.”

The Eddas and some of the sagas also specifically mention Freja having sex with other women. In fact at a banquet Loki accused her of having slept all the other Aesir at one time or another, a claim which Freja never denied.

Some Viking Marriage customs survive today

The Norse held their weddings on a Friday, the day of Frigg, the goddess of marriage and fertility. The time of the year was also crucial. Late summer or autumn were the preferred times. This period of the year was harvest time, a time of abundance and plenty. A good supply of meat, fruit, and grain was essential to ensure an amply provisioned wedding feast.

One beverage was of particular importance. The ˜bridal ale’ was first consumed in a loving cup by the bride and groom at the marriage feast. The couple would use the mead-like brew to seal their union with a toast to Odin and Freya. The bridal ale was brewed with a good deal of honey, to ensure the fertility of the newlyweds. Their families gifted the couple with enough of this sweet beer to last them a month- a custom that gives us the modern term ˜honeymoon.’

Before the wedding, both bride and groom took a ritual steam bath. Although they did not wear special clothes for the wedding, both wore specific tokens on their special day. For the bride, this was a floral wreath upon her head. For the groom, it was a sword, purposely robbed from one of his family’s burial mounds (or an old family sword buried in a fake mound that he ritually disinterred.) This sword was presented to the bride at the exchange of vows, as a way of making her a custodian of his family line.

As is common today, the bride and groom exchanged rings- both finger rings and arm rings as they spoke their vows. Once the ceremony was complete, the “brud hlaup” occurred. This was a race run by both wedding parties to the feasting hall. Whoever arrived last served the ale. But before the bride could enter, she had to be escorted over the threshold by the groom. The Norse, like many pagan peoples, believed thresholds were dangerous places for in transition to a new stage in their life.

The groom would then thrust a new sword, a gift from his bride, into the central pillar of the house. The depth of the resulting cut was used to determine the success of their union. Then, after the feast, eight witnesses lighted the bridal couple to bed. The groom then removed the bridal wreath from the bride- a ritual deflowering before the real event.

Viking Sexual Euphemisms

The Vikings could be quite ˜direct’ about certain matters. However, they could also be rather coy about sex – or at least, so their stories suggest. The sagas had various ways to refer to sex that describe it in a rather round about way. A man about to have sex with a woman was said to ˜turn towards’ her, “laying his hand/arm/thigh ” on her. The rest was up to the audience’s imagination. However, what was clear was the man was in charge. He took the lead. His partner followed.

Once the action warmed up, the sagas implied the increased activity in similarly guarded terms. A couple in the throes of passion would ˜crowd together in bed” (hviluthrong) and ‘enjoy each other. ‘ If things were particularly raunchy, the tales would describe the man as enjoying a good old brolta a maga or ˜romp on her belly’ or describe the couple as ˜travelling together.” Once they had exhausted themselves, the couple spent the aftermath at ˜hvila meth henna ” (rest with her), or he would ˜amuse one’s self.’ This activity referred to him enjoying a quiet conversation or game of cards with his partner.

However, the everyday terms used by the Vikings were probably not quite so reserved, judging by sexual words they have bequeathed to modern times. The Old Norse ˜thviet’ for a cut or slit began life as a sexual euphemism for a particular part of the female anatomy. Gradually it evolved into the old English ˜thwat’ and later into the more familiar twat which is used today as a term of abuse. The same occurred with another Old Norse word for the female genitals “Kunta’.

However, not all euphemisms were this crude. In contrast to these rather basic sexual terms, the Old Norse for sexual desire was “munuth.” This word derives from the root word for love “mun‘ and that of thought or memory ˜hugr,’ making the sexual impulse a ˜love thought.’ So perhaps the Vikings could be romantic souls after all.

Adultery was acceptable for Viking men, but not their wives

Many Norse men adored their wives, judging by the last words of one man just before he was hung:

” Happy am I to have won the joy of such a consort; ” said the condemned man of his wife. “I shall not go down basely in loneliness to the gods of Tartarus. So let the encircling bonds grip my throat in the midst; the final anguish shall bring with it pleasure only, since the certain hope remains of renewed love, and death shall prove to have its own delights. Each world holds joy, and in the twin regions shall the repose of our united souls win fame, our equal faithfulness in love “(Saxo Grammaticus)

Sadly, however, not everyone practiced “faithfulness in love” The basic requirement of a Norse man was to produce children with his wife. He was not, however, obliged to be faithful. Norse men could keep concubines known as frilles – lower status women who they did not marry and who lived with the man and his wife. According to Adam of Breman, a man could keep as many frilles as he could afford. Society regarded any children from these liaisons as legitimate.

Norse men also kept bed slaves. These unfortunate women had little choice in whether or not they lay with their master. Nor was it a great advantage to be the master’s favorite. Ibn Fadlan described witnessing a Viking funeral where the favoured bed slave of the deceased man was killed to accompany him to the afterlife. However, the one taboo liaison for a Norseman was to lie with another man’s wife. For this, he could be fined or killed.

Wives, however, were expected to remain faithful, probably because of the possibility of falling pregnant with a child that was not her husband’s. It’s unlikely that every wife did remain constant. However, if anyone caught a woman being unfaithful, the penalties varied. At best, her hair would be cut off. At worst, she could be divorced or fined- or killed. Adam of Breman even states that she could be enslaved.

Viking women could divorce their husbands

Viking women may have had to put up with their spouse’s affairs. However, they didn’t have to put up with their husbands ‘until death‘. Although a Norse wife could not divorce her husband for being unfaithful, there were other circumstances where it was perfectly acceptable. If her husband hit her, a woman could fine him. If he abused her in front of witnesses, not only did the fine apply, but his wife could divorce him after the third blow.

There were also various sexual reasons why a wife could divorce a husband. Men who dressed in feminine clothing such as low cut shirts, for instance, could be cast off, as could those who were homosexual- even if they were the dominant partner. A wife could object to the lack of discretion in homosexual liaisons – or the attention they distracted from her relationship with her spouse. In each case, the now ex-wife could claim back her original dowry and any inheritances she received during the marriage.

Another, perhaps surprising reason for divorce was if a man did not satisfy his wife sexually. A man who had refused to have sex with his wife for three years could be set aside. Likewise, if he could not perform or was leaving his wife sexually unfulfilled, he was at risk of being divorced. For if a couple wasn’t having sex, they weren’t producing children. Also, an unhappy marriage bred bitterness and resentment that could boil over into violence and family feuds. So it was better for a sexually unsatisfied woman to look elsewhere for a partner.

Judging by the sagas, it was the women who generally instigated divorce. All that was required was for them to assemble witnesses, cite their reasons and declare themselves divorced. This had to occur three times: in their bedroom, in front of the house and before a public assembly. It was Norse women’s one significant freedom. For if they were to remain tied to one man, run his home and land and put up with his lovers, the least they could expect was satisfying sex life.

[burgerpocalypse]

I've been trying to run through some free games I got from the Epic game store, specifically Grand Theft Auto V, Creature in the Well, and most recently Night in the Woods. I quit GTAV about 60% of the way because it sucked, and I can't beat the last area of Creature, so that leaves me to talk a little about NitW and the emotional turmoil it gave me.

Upfront, I'm not interested in games with heavy emphasis on story, least of all visual novels or whatever you want to call this game. However, I've heard mostly positive things about Night in the Woods here and there for the better part of the previous decade. That and the fact I got it for $0 convinced me to finally try it out.

Night in the Woods is an adventure focused on exploration and character drama. Mae Borowski, the protagonist, is a college dropout that just moved back to her Rust Belt hometown for mysterious reasons, and becomes entangled in suspicious happenings. The player will traverse the aged suburban sprawl and rural outskirts of Possum Springs, conversing with family, friends, strangers, and everyone else, uncovering secrets and opening wounds along the way.

Seeing as how Night in the Woods is primarily a story, I'll mostly be discussing that, so look out for spoilers, yo.

After spending two years away, Mae attempts to reconnect with her previously closest friends Bea (an idealist goth whomst had considerable familial and financial responsibility thrust upon her at a young age), Gregg (an anarchist punk with bipolar tendencies), and Angus (an incredibly nice man). Mae pushes the story forward by hanging out with Bea and Gregg, and sometimes Angus. This will often involve going to social outings, running errands, committing crimes, and so on.

Other than her friends, Mae will also have opportunities to interact with her parents, various citizens, and vagrants. whom provide flavor and history to the world while also bringing some of Mae's muddled past to light. The player will traverse environments through walking and jumping around, with the occasional platforming feat required to progress or access certain areas. Occasionally, you'll be presented with small minigames, like a Guitar Hero-clone or red light/green light shoplifting, and a game-within-a-game dungeon crawler that pissed me off to no end. While most activities in the town are benign, certain important events will move the day along and lock you out of further exploration.

Early on, Mae's group stumbles upon a discarded arm and some cryptic dialogue from a few characters. After each day, Mae experiences strange dream sequences that involve platforming segments and surreal representations of her friends and the town. Several hours of gameplay later, Mae witnesses a kidnapping on Halloween by what appears to be a ghost.

In the midst of all this, Mae hangs out with her friends and discovers what they've been up to in her absence. Bea runs the family business for her father, who broke down after her mom died, putting them in dire financial straits and preventing Bea from leaving Possum Springs; she bears resentment towards Mae, since she dropped out of college and came home for no apparent reason while also not maturing at all. Gregg is aimless, sporadic, and uninhibited, while his boyfriend Angus is neat, tidy, and overly helpful. Their relationship appears strong, and they are planning to move to a new city together, though Bea is convinced it won't last.

Mae does her best to strengthen bonds while suffering from a variety of stressors, like her family's money troubles, her self-destructive tendencies and dissociative episodes, and ominous celestial beings invading her mind. This sometimes leads to inadvertent and painful social situations, especially with Bea.

Mae attempts to investigate the supposedly supernatural happenings with the help of Bea, Gregg, and Angus, while her mental health steadily declines. Eventually, the group travels deep into the woods (at night) and stumble into a cult, after which Mae suffers a great fall and enters a coma. After waking up, Mae then attempts to confront the cult head-on, though her friends arrive to help. They enter a cave, find the cult again, discover the eldritch horror they serve and explore her personal connection to it, accidentally cause a cave-in and trap the cultists, escape the cave, and try to make sense of what happened after the fact.

Now, don't get me wrong. I rather enjoyed Night in the Wood's story. I really liked all the characters. I loved the dialogue. Even the platforming and various minigames were fine, if simplistic and occasionally annoying. The structure of this paragraph seems as though it's leading towards a big 'but'. I just wanted to say that I really liked the game, even though I don't generally enjoy video game stories, and especially not video games primarily about a story. Though I'm not from a run-down midwestern town, and obviously don't have the same sort of personal relationships she does, Mae's emotional strife and insecurities really resonated with me. Her personal thoughts and reactions often made me just stop and think about the many mistakes I've made with the people I care about and all the relationships I've ruined.

However, if the plot wanted to spend so much time on Mae and her friends, it should have been about Mae and her friends. Conversely, if it wanted to be about a spooky cult in a small town, it should have spent much more time on a spooky cult in a small town. The plot is torn between two diametrically opposed focuses, those being Mae's struggles to maintain relationships and her dealing with suspicious supernatural occurrences in Possum Springs. So much time passes before anything really happens with the cult and cosmic horror that I feel some people might even forget there is a cult and cosmic horror, and Mae isn't just experiencing a psychotic break for no reason.

In the end, the cult goes unresolved, and it's unclear what the relationship is with the residents of Possum Springs, or what its powers even are. I don't need the game to explain every aspect in detail, but no one appears to be affected by the existence of the cult and its god other than Mae. My brain was going into overdrive looking for clues, making patterns, identifying red herrings, anything that might help me understand the mystery, when in reality there was no mystery to understand.

There is also a severe lack of actual choice or decision making in terms of dialogue, and a distinct absence of any real challenge in gameplay. I definitely felt that this story could have been more efficiently told if it were in a book, usually after spending a few minutes walking around trying to find something important and

It doesn't help that I sometimes accidentally skipped certain segments, since it's not always explicitly clear if an action will push the day forward and lock me in. I even completely missed a third of the investigations since I chose to check out the historical society building with Gregg second when the game expected me to do it last. This sort of problem led to me giving up completely on other story-focus games like Kentucky Route Zero since I constantly skipped and missed chunks of stuff or did things out of the intended order and ruined the flow of events.

Now this has obviously gotten a little too long, so I'll just wrap it up by saying that Night in the Woods is great and I recommend it. It made me feel feelings, deep feelings, like I was moments away from crying on more than one occasion.

Thanks for reading. I have a lot on my mind because of this game, so I hope it was worth your time.

[ye-local-simp]

Hi !! I came across your blog a while ago and since there’s a match up event may I request a TWST match-up 💕

I’m an Aries and an INFP. A cis female, I’m really short about Ortho height, black short cuts above my shoulders. I usually wear whatever makes me comfortable, my hair is always messy I never bother to tidy myself up lmao. I do have a high sense of fashion I just don’t use it very often.

I’m super quiet and awkward when surrounded by strangers, I find it hard to make friends or to actually express my emotions resting bitch face <3. I’ll only talk when people come to me first. I don’t open up easily but when I do I tend to get more chaotic and playful. I'm really open-minded open to everyone's opinion and take criticism very well. When I hate someone I won’t try to hide it and just straight it show to their face. A compassionate person, that once I choose to care for someone, that care will never go away, no matter how much they hurt me. It’s actually hard to get me to hate or hold grudges against anyone since I’m kinda forgiving and laid back. I feel super uncomfortable when people confront me or even try to befriend me too fast it makes my trust issue goes off the roof. I try to see the best in others and put myself in other people's perspectives before judging. I tend to live in my own head and daydream all the time instead of focusing on the real world. I may act tough and strong but I’m also quite sensitive, I can handle physical pain but not emotional. I take every decision with care and will never be caught acting recklessly. I'm actually a really hard-working person, I believe without working and trying your best then you won't be able to achieve your goal, and yes I also dislike the idea of wishing for something to present itself. I admire honesty, people with confidence in themselves and who know their place. I despise those who lack self-awareness and do not make an effort to change for the better. I love to encourage my people on being themselves and I find it cute seeing people doing what they love and the smile on people's faces. The worst insult ever to me is that people tell me that I'm selfish because I care a lot about others even if I don't want to. My love language is act of service and quality time. I fall in love rather quickly and hard to fall out of it.

My interest is Art, that is literally what I do every day and what I want to pursue for the rest of my life. I really like to eat, anything really but I mostly prefer sweets and spicy stuff. I like plushies and anything cute. I don't get scared easily and indifferent to most things, my favorite movie genres are horror, comedy, and action. I'm not into sport mainly because I'm quite short on stamina but I am fairly strong for my size. I don't know what to add anymore but I kin Ei, Shenhe, and Sucrose 🎨. Apologize if this is long ( ･ᴗ･̥̥̥ ) and I hope you are having a wonderful day ! ( sorry I suck at social interaction )



I am going to match you up with...

Deuce!!

-A very straightforward and honest person so you would definitely have no issue of him hiding things from you. He is one of the few who knows how sensitive you really are so he acts as your bodyguard and makes you feel independent at the same time. Meaning that he doesn't really tower over you all the time. He would definitely be the one to get you out of uncomfortable conditions too.

-In terms of your interests, he is not really an artistic person but would definitely be supportive of your art.Anyone who even thinks about dissing it is dead even before the bad critisms reach you(if there even is any). You might have to explain that some critisms may help you improve though.

-Since he is a lot more on the masculine side, he would definitely gift you feminine things or things that he heard that a lot of women would like like arcade plushies,fluffy notebooks and flowers so his gifts are usually great if you love those kinds of things.He would definitely ask his mum for advice on how to woo you too.

-The only issue would be that he may not understand your advances or how you are actually feeling since this guy is very dense when it comes to feelings

[jaskiersvalley]

AAA I loved that Jaskier attacking Stregobor -fic. I have re-read your fics multiple times and the centaur ones are my favorite (jaskier is my fav..) . I'm going on a 4 hour train trip the day after tomorrow (I'm terrified of trains and travel), so I'm probably going to use reading your blog as a distraction from anxiety heh. Thanks for doing what you do!

Wishing you safe travels on the train, Nonnie! For what it’s worth, I’m super proud of you for doing it despite being terrified of trains and travel. Will definitely be keeping you in my thoughts today as you make your journey (hopefully you’re off to do something nice !). To keep you well supplied with distractions, have a whole new AU just for you!

Witchers were an abomination but they were a necessary creation. Wingless and half wild with blood lust, society feared them, shied away from their unnatural looks even if they were created and not born like that. The trials and mutations stripped them of their wings, left them grounded and unreadable. Society was too used to reading social cues from wings, someone without them was a blank, emotionless figure.

However, they were an unwanted necessity. Airborne monsters were easy enough to deal with, there were teams and departments celebrated for their heroics in dealing with harpies and griffins. But things like arachasae, nekkers and drowners needed to be controlled and taken down. However, wings were too vulnerable and delicate to be subjected to being dunked in filthy water or crawling into dark, damp caves with. It was how witchers came into existence. They were given strength, stamina and healing power in exchange for their wings and their worth in the eyes of society. Needed but universally loathed, if a witcher was in town, people held their wings tight to their bodies for fear of a witcher getting jealous and tearing it off, fashioning fake wings for themselves out of them.

Jaskier’s wings were large, brown with white tips. He was especially proud of how the whites sparkled in the sunshine. It led to him preening, rubbing oils into the feathers to keep them perfect. He also spoke a lot with his wings, lifting them, flaring for dramatics, fluttering when excited and puffing up to flirt with anyone who gave him the time of day. Spotting a witcher in the corner of a tavern, his wings flared out, showing off and flirting out of habit. He wasn’t deterred by the lack of a wing twitch of dismissal or an answering fluffing of acceptance. Instead, Jaskier sat down at the table with a wide smile.

As far as first meetings went, it wasn’t Jaskier’s finest but Geralt didn’t verbally (or physically) eviscerate him for approaching which was as good as accepting the propositions as far as Jaskier was concerned. He was working with limited information so he had to do his best and hope.

The more he trailed after Geralt, the more he learned to read the smaller nuances of his body. When his shoulders tightened, Jaskier knew Geralt was worried. But a small raise of the corner of his lips meant mirth or fondness. Not to mention the tick of a jaw muscle which only ever came about when Geralt was engaging some horrible creature. As much as he denied it, Jaskier knew it meant worry, maybe even fear. No matter what anybody said, Jaskier knew that witchers felt emotions as deeply as anyone else, they just didn’t have the means to express them in the same way.

Life on the road was not an easy one. Jaskier soon became glad his wings were mostly brown, the whites were dust stained and less than glamorous. Oils and cleaning products had to be used sparingly because they ran out sooner than they got to a town that stocked Jaskier’s preferred brands. It was a worthwhile trade off, oils in exchange of inspiration and a muse for his art.

They were sat in another clearing, perched on logs and Jaskier was trying to reach the base of his wing where a few feathers were tangled and in desperate need of a tidy. One of them was probably loose but there was no way for Jaskier to see what he was doing. From the side, Geralt was pretending not to watch him struggle.

“You could help rather than gawk,” Jaskier huffed, annoyed that his arm wouldn’t bend exactly as he needed it. What use were good, strong bones when they stopped him from reaching the base of his wing?

Silently, Geralt stared at him before grunting. “You don’t want me help.”

“I think you’ll find I blood well do. Come and make yourself useful.”

Jaskier thrust the oil towards Geralt and huffed to hurry him along. He watched as Geralt’s eyes widened and he stood up, the most hesitant Jaskier had ever seen him. Steady hands took the proffered oil and Geralt settled on his knees behind Jaskier.

“See the feathers at the base? They’re giving me such trouble and itch like crazy.”

Careful hands reached to untangle them and Jaskier heard Geralt gasp.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt murmured. Without seeing him, Jaskier could read him so much easier. “I didn’t mean to.”

Not quite sure what had happened, Jaskier hummed and twisted to look back at Geralt who had a brown feather between his fingers and was staring down at it in horror.

“I’m too brutish for something as delicate as your wings.” Geralt made to stand up but Jaskier flared his wing, trapping him.

“It was loose. You need to pull a lot harder than that.” A suspicion was swirling in the darkness of Jaskier’s mind. “Have you ever touched wings before.”

Never before had Geralt looked so timid. Eyes wide, he looked up at Jaskier before his gaze skittered away. A small shake of his head told Jaskier everything.

“Well then,” he said and stretched his wings out wide in invitation, “have your fill.”

At first, nothing happened and Jaskier almost started worrying that he’d gone too far. Usually only mates and family groomed each other. Though he doubted Geralt knew that, having spent so long without wings. So he tried to tamp down on the emotions bubbling away in his chest. They were all driven from his mind with the first, hesitant touch that skimmed across the ridge of a wing.

Each touch was light, barely there and Jaskier could hear how gently Geralt was breathing, barely making any noise.

“You can touch all you want,” he reassured. Gradually, the touches got braver, after a few more loose feathers dropped thanks to Geralt, he settled into the moment.

Fingers buried themselves into each wing and Jaskier gasped at the touch. Geralt growled a little. “You’re so soft.”

As Geralt’s hands dug into the feathers, a thumb brushed against an oil gland at the base of a wing and Jaskier stifled a groan. It had been a long time since anyone had touched him there. Though he was free with his body and affections, there were some taboos even he didn’t break with a stranger. But Geralt was no stranger. They had been travelling together for so long now.

“Am I hurting you?” Geralt asked, frozen.

“Quite the opposite.” The admission didn’t fluster Jaskier as much as he had expected. “Your touch is very intimate.” The hand moved though Jaskier could feel the reluctance in it. “It’s a welcome touch, if you’re interested.”

A soft, quiet “yes” was barely audible but the touch returned and Jaskier bit his lip when Geralt mirrored his touch on the other wing too.

He didn’t last too long without begging. “I want to touch you too.”

Hesitant, Geralt moved from behind Jaskier. It was all too easy to tug him down to straddle Jaskier’s lap and his arms wound under Jaskier’s, returning to playing with the bast of his wings.

Instinctively, Jaskier’s hands wrapped around Geralt, hands splayed flat on his back. For all the scars he had, there wasn’t even that much to remind them of the fact he had been human once. Exploring the expanse of a smooth back, Jaskier shuddered. He was a little disappointed Geralt’ back wasn’t as sensitive as his but all it meant was that he got to explore and try new things.

Jaskier was delighted to find that nipping along Geralt’s jaw and kissing down his neck were met with favourable reactions. It emboldened him until their lips were pressed together, tongues licking against each other playfully.

It was a first that was definitely worth remembering. Geralt was so careful until Jaskier all but growled at him to grip his wings better. While lovers had done that before, none compared to Geralt and his raw power. There was no doubt in Jaskier that if he wanted to, Geralt could rip his wings off without even exerting himself. Instead, he was so careful and gentle with them, cherishing each touch, nuzzling under Jaskier’s chin and mouthing at the skin there as they fucked. While Geralt didn’t have wings that flew out to full span to shake and quiver with pleasure, there was no missing his enjoyment. Soft words, half lost murmurs dipping into growls and whines. Never before had Jaskier felt so worshipped and pampered.

They didn’t really mention it the next morning. Jaskier would have almost worried but, a few days later, he was unpacking bags from Roach for the night. At the bottom of the satchel for the bedrolls, he saw a handful of carefully stored feathers he recognised. They were the ones Geralt had loosened and pulled. Jaskier hadn’t realised they had been gathered up, cleaned of any dust and stashed away. There was nothing for it, Jaskier was going to have to keep adding to the collection. Maybe Geralt would appreciate a couple of white ones added to them when the time came.

However, the first white feather Jaskier shed didn’t end up in the bag. Instead, Jaskier brushed Geralt’s hair out of his face and pushed the quill through the bun he’d managed to put it up into. The fact they were in the middle of a tavern and Jaskier was declaring in a very public setting his claim on Geralt was only a secondary motive. As much as Jaskier wanted Geralt to be his, he also wanted to be Geralt’s. What he didn’t expect was for Geralt to smile, touch the feather now in his hair and then hold a hand up.

From a bag, he pulled a dagger, ornate with flowers and a wolf on the handle. Understanding the gesture, Jaskier accepted the offered dagger and tucked it into his waistband. With a stroke over Geralt’s cheek, he got up, slinging his lute across his chest, staring up the strumming for the first song of his set. If there was a slight swagger to his steps, a proud smile, nobody would have picked up on it because all eyes were on his puffed up wings as he showed off for Geralt and nobody else.

[boop-le-snoot]

PARTY FAVOURS I CHAPTER 6

Rating: Explicit.

‼️TW: Reader is EIGHTEEN! Recreational drug use, smoking and alcohol consumption, deeply internalised self-loathing, very questionable moral standards. Daddy kink taken half-seriously. BDSM themes in later chapters - explicit content will come with it's own TWs. FIRST PERSON POV. There's non-explicit smut in this part!

Summary: You're Peter's classmate, a child of rich and famous but uncaring parents. Getting paired up for a lengthy project with the boy was an interesting turn of events and you don't know whether to feel blessed or cursed when you develop, seemingly, a perfectly normal, harmless crush on Tony Stark. Fueled by feelings of inadequacy and boredom, your life spirals out of control - and you're lucky your newfound friends are there to pick up the pieces even if you cannot find it in yourself to believe these amazing human (and not so human) beings voluntarily give you more than a fleeting glance and an offhanded thought. And they brought cake!

A/N: Remember that questionable morals remark? Yea, this chapter is the reason. Y/N, girl, you gotta stop... But at least it's kinda funny. Okay, it's pretty damn hilarious.

Beta read by the lovely and patient @miscmarvelwritings ! She is amazing. I larb her. 💙

"And then I was like 'No Way!' and he was like 'Totally' and that's how I met Tony Stark," I finished excitedly, opposite a laughing Mr. Davies. The story of how I met Iron Man was a total hit with the teacher and my vigorous mimicking of the facial expressions that described my feelings during the time had my teacher busting a gut something loud. 

"I honestly have some trouble believing that but - hey, what the hell, he's a billionaire superhero, it's basically expected for him to be a little strange," When his laughing fit was over, Mr. Davies reminded me he was, in fact, a psychology doctor. There was serious brain power under that easygoing attitude.

I expected detention to be bearable in his company but Mr. Davies rose above expectations, welcoming me with another cup of tea and some colouring pages. Admittedly, I contemplated stealing some - those mandalas were really captivating.

"Oh, he's strange alright, but nothing I can't handle," I twirled a pencil between my fingers. 

Mr. Davies grinned knowingly, too knowingly for my comfort, and I had no choice but to make a stone face before looking him in the eye. 

He smirked. "So, anything else interesting for you going on?" 

"Nah, not much. Really looking forward to being done with high school and going out into the bigger world, y'know."

"You turned 18 already, right?" I nodded in confirmation. "Maybe get a job, something part-time? OsCorp always hands these leaflets out, they're looking for lab assistants."

I wrinkled my nose. "I don't need a job. Plus, I'm sure Bruce-err, Doctor Banner would smash me if I went to work at OsCorp," I glossed over my slip-up, hoping Mr. Davies would do the same. But no such luck happened.

"Right. Me and Bruce, we actually go way back," He smiled, stirring his tea. I perked up in interest. "We studied psychology together, sat next to each other in half of our classes. It's a shame what happened to him but I hope he's happy now," Mr. Davies was smiling earnestly, looking out of the window where rain had started flowing down on the glass.

"Really? That's cool," I said, lacking anything else to add to his statement.

"He used to skip classes and always lost his glasses even though they'd be on top of his head," My teacher continued. "Banner was actually quite a rowdy student," He added with a smirk.

"Hah, he still routinely loses his glasses, although he wears them on a string around his neck now," I chuckled fondly. Bruce was such a dork.

I chatted with Mr. Davies some more, just casual conversation about everything and nothing in between. His parents were hippies, he had two moms and one dad and according to him, Thor was very overrated. I didn't even notice we were up in each other's space until our knees brushed when Mr. Davies - "Call me Will" - was showing me the pictures of his cats, dog and lizard. I figured that as the hippy child, personal space was kind of a foreign concept to him - and that rang true, I've seen Will give out more shoulder grabs and high fives than anyone else sans the gym teacher.

The clock's ding announced 6 PM and I quickly gathered my things, hastily saying goodbye. I was stopped though.

"If you don't mind a quick stop at my house, I can drop you off. It's pouring buckets outside and I would hate you to get sick," Will spoke casually. 

Technically, I knew he was bending some rules of conduct. But it was also 55° outside and the water coming from the sky was unlikely to be warm. So I caved without any guilty conscience, obediently following Mr. Davies -Will- to the parking lot where a new-ish Jeep Cherokee proudly stood amongst several older, less gently used cars. With New York city traffic being the way it is, I didn't text Bruce yet, fully expecting for the trip to take a whole hour if not more. 

Thankfully the parking gods were merciful and Will managed to find a spot right across his two-story townhouse. "You're welcome to come in if you feel comfortable, I just need to fetch some documents," He said.

And that's where I fucked up. I nodded affirmatively, I followed him through the door and made myself as comfortable as I could on his living room couch. It was a cozy home, his iguana chilled opposite me in it's terrarium and the little mutt that was his dog really reminded me of the atrocity that my parents used to own before they had me. It yipped and yapped, wagging it's bushy tail at me and demanding pets.

The steaming tea mug was dutifully placed in my hand by Will who hopped upstairs immediately after that, skipping steps. I watched the man with a benign stare: he'd removed his sweater and I could see the defined muscles of his back and the admirable backside that he possessed. There was no harm in looking respectfully, right?

I was halfway through my mug when Will came back down, brandishing a truly impressive stack of manila folders, setting it on a nearby table before sitting down on the other end of the couch, maintaining a respectful distance between us. We chatted some more and the more he spoke about his current research, the more passionate he became; by the end of his truly epic description of the effects that anti-depressants have on the learning process of depressed adolescents, I was mesmerized by the way his pink lips formed words.

Sitting with my calves tucked under my butt, leaning against the armrest , I was a goner. He caught my eye, diverting his own stare from my exposed legs to the side, blinking furiously. It calmed my spirits somewhat, knowing that I wasn't the only one affected by the sudden change of atmosphere in the room. My mug landed on the low table with a loud clang as I leaned forward, the sleeves of my sweater accidentally brushing against his leg.

Will cleared his throat and I startled, tilting my head up towards him in confusion. He was staring at me with a mix of fear and delight in his eyes, like a boy preparing for his first kiss. I would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation if the darkness in his stormy grey eyes didn't make my own breath do somersaults somewhere between my lungs and my esophagus.

Fifteen minutes later, both my sweater and my panties were thrown somewhere in the furthest end of the room and those thin lips were making me see stars. For some reason he was convinced I'd had only typical teenage disappointing sex up to this point and was really eager to show me what a grown man can do. I mean, I wasn't complaining, he was really, really good with his mouth - but I didn't have all night, so I flipped the tables and showed off my own oral skills until he had to bodily remove me from his dick and lift me onto it. Every movement felt surreal, like I was living in a dream. Despite my common sense yelling expletives at me, I kissed Will back with twice the heat and none of the finesse, each of us reaching the peak nearly in sync.

"Can I get that ride to the tower now?"

Will let out a decidedly unmanly squeak when he realised where exactly he'd be taking me after we did what we'd done. I smiled at him in hopes of calming down the man but it seemed it came out more predatory. He shivered, his dick twitching within me.

I texted Bruce the same time I was getting into Will's car. My brain was still somewhat in a state of shock and I used the brief moment to tidy up my hair and makeup, taking note of my sex-flushed face. I only hoped I didn't stink like man-sweat and Will's cologne. 

Another realization was startled out of me: that was my first time having had sex without a condom. I was on birth control since I was fourteen so pregnancy wasn't a scare; currently, I was more worried about the mildly uncomfortable, wet feeling in my panties where my teacher's cum had pooled out.

Yikes. That moment Will took a careful monitoring of my facial expression and it took me a lot to keep it somewhere between neutral and happy. Internally, I was freaking the fuck out, torn between horror and incredible arousal.

It morphed into full fledged mortification when I saw Bruce's lab coat from afar, the man standing next to the entrance door. Having had a dumb moment, I texted Banner that a former schoolmate of his was the one giving me a ride and it really shouldn't have been a surprise that Bruce would go downstairs to greet Will.

'Fuck you, you dumbass,' was my approximate train of thought, directed at myself, when all three of us gathered, hiding from the cold rain and the autumn wind under the safety of the roof. Both men shared a brief, warm embrace before Bruce's arm snaked around my waist.

"You go upstairs, okay? I don't want you to get sick," Banner said, eyeing the disastrous weather.

I looked at Will, finding his eyebrow cocked at Bruce's frivolous gesture and a faint flush blossoming on his face. The man shuffled awkwardly, giving me a small wave and a tight-lipped smile before turning his attention back to Bruce. I wished him good night, hastily retreating into the safety of the elevator.

"What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fu-u-uck..." I chanted under my breath, acutely aware of the blossoming bruises on my hips where my teacher held me, the dampness of my underwear. 

The elevator doors opened, revealing the common room couch being occupied by Wanda. Peter, Wanda's brother and the two resident super soldiers setting the table for dinner. Tony was off bickering with Loki and Strange by the coffee maker and Thor was standing outside on the patio, doing something very strange with his hands and his hammer. Was he summoning the shitty weather?! The audacity!

"Hey," Wanda greeted me quietly. Her eyebrows raised upon seeing my face full of perplexed confusion. "You okay?.. Wait, what? Tell me you did not!" As my internal crisis reached its peak, I remembered that a) Wanda is a telepath and b) There were other people in the room.

One ungraceful landing next to her later, I turned my bleary stare onto her. "Oops?" I offered in the way of explanation. What was I supposed to say if I didn't know for myself what the devil possessed me to fuck my social studies teacher after school? He was fucking hot, okay.

The witch smirked, obviously following my defensive internal monologue. "Oops?" Her tone was laced with gleeful sarcasm.

"I'm a human disaster," I groaned, finally caving in and palming my face. Wanda began snickering. "I have zero impulse control," I continued wallowing in self-pity. The redhead just cackled harder.

"I feel so attacked right now," Tony's voice loudly announced the man's presence. I was thankful for the distraction, happy that today, out of all the days, he decided to make the situation about himself. "I am the resident hot mess and nothing you do will change that. Or get out of my tower," He made a dramatic gesture, waving along everybody to the table.

At the dinner table, with Peter on one side of me and Bruce on the other, Wanda's speech was clear. "I think you two are about on the same level, Tony," Her tone was dry. The looks she cast me were cheeky at best and downright gleeful at worst. Not only was she the resident telepath but also, apparently, a huge drama fan.

I, on the other hand, felt like a fish thrown out of water. My mind was still jumping between astounded and horrified like a rabid rabbit and Bruce's excited remark about seeing a former schoolmate only worsened the anxiety. My brain was telling me EVERYBODY knew EVERYTHING whereas in reality, it was only Wanda and it didn't seem like she was upset enough to give up my dirty little secret. If anything, the witch seemed almost impressed. And that dry, mildly interested facial expression only solidified when she put two and two together: my teacher, whom I fucked, also known as Bruce's former study buddy.

"I have some spare sweatpants that might fit you," Wanda directly addressed me as we were finishing up the wonderful chicken roast courtesy of Clint and Bucky. Nobody batted an eye at the sudden exclamation, evidently used to being around someone who could hear their thoughts. 

I nodded, mentally waving a big, red thank you note. With sparkles. And hearts. Wanda chuckled.

"Hey, did you change your perfume?" Peter's innocent remark made me nearly freeze in my spot. 

Kill Bill sirens started playing in my head on repeat as I heard Wanda choke on her asparagus, inadvertently drawing attention to the three of us. Peter looked at us in confusion: Wanda kept on gasping, but it seemed like the dam had finally burst and she was laughing in earnest, snorting, loudly, as I engaged my willpower to stop myself from doing the same. Needless to say, it was a spectacular failure and now both of us were bent over our dinner plates, absolutely losing it - much to the concern of the adults present at the table. The rest of the team was growing concerned.

"Oh my god, your FACE!" Wanda's incoherent mumbling and the accusing finger pointed in my direction did it.

"A lady doesn't... kiss... and tell...." I fervently gulped the oxygen as I tried to articulate my thoughts into something comprehendible. The hysterical laughter won by a wide margin.

"Who's the lucky guy?" Natasha seemed to get the gist, relaxing immediately and picking up her fork to continue her meal. 

I shook my head, unable to form a coherent thought, much less a sentence. Bruce chuckled from somewhere beside me and just like that, the tension broke. The adults in the room traded knowing looks, chuckling and snorting amongst themselves. 

The moments I needed to calm down went to waste really quick: my first laughing fit over, I took one look at Wanda and yet again, both of us were puffing out our cheeks to try and prevent another hysterical fit. 

"Whew," I exaggerated, eyes wide and looking ANYWHERE but at Wanda.

"What a wild ride," She snorted and I put a palm over my face, shaking my head in... 

Disappointment at myself? I wasn't disappointed. Now that I got over the WTF factor, I found the situation to be pretty damn hot. Will was hot. Eh, whatever. 

My casual mood of zero-fucks-given began returning. After few of the last bites of potatoes, I was prepared to face  Natasha. I looked the Black Widow dead in the eye as I firmly stated: "And for the record? We are NOT having this conversation."

She elegantly arched her eyebrow whilst everybody else held their breath. "That bad, huh?" The retort was immediate.

I allowed myself to radiate a bit of that newly acquired smugness I had begun to feel: "You have no idea," I hoped my smirk was as devious as I wished it to be.

"Alright, heartbreaker, colour me impressed," Natasha nodded in affirmation. We shared another meaningful look and reverted back to our plates with the menfolk observing us akin animals at a zoo. 

Somewhat amazed, slightly afraid. Bruce's stare was somewhat concerned, too: he contemplatively eyed me from the corner of his eye, the same way I eyed him, checking out the fact that he appeared somewhat annoyed. Like a proper father would, I suppose. 

Luckily for me, I finished off the remaining food and drink quickly, with Wanda being my saviour once again as she all but bodily dragged me into the elevator, promising to return me to the science den in no more than an hour. Tony went to complain but was promptly stopped by Natasha inconspicuously reaching for the butter knife: the engineer knew how to pick his battles. I didn't doubt that Romanoff was going to hear "all about it" second-hand from Wanda and I was fully prepared to face the redhead spy's judgement. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, escaped that clever woman.

A quick shower and a change of clothes later, I sat on Wanda's couch, nervously fiddling with the two sizes too big sweatpants, occasionally stopping to straighten the plain white tank top that just barely fit me. I washed my hair but didn't  dry it before Wanda was impatiently telling me to hurry up: the mess sat atop my head held up by a single scrunchie.

"Okay... Where do I start?" She asked me, looking like the cat that ate the canary. 

"Don't start," I stopped her with a raised palm. "It was a casual, one-time thing and I've no interest in pursuing that shit on the reg," I answered honestly. The fact that he was my teacher simultaneously worsened the situation and made me elated. But ultimately, I didn't want to risk the trouble that would come along with this mess. Besides, I had no feelings for the guy whatsoever. As I've said previously, it was just bad impulse control on some teenage hormone steroids.

"You're a strange one," Wanda's penetrating gaze made me shiver. "You live without a care in the world but at the same time, your mind is always all over the place. It is interesting."

"Uh, thanks? I guess?"

"I think we should try being friends," The witch remarked after a brief moment of awkward silence. I stared at her, dumbfounded. "Because of my powers, I can literally see through people and predict what they will do before they even think about doing it. With you, it's not like that," She explained, her Slavic accent making a full guest appearance.

"So...you want to be friends because I'm a fucking mess?" I couldn't help but feel a little offended. The occasional shitty decision aside, I didn't think of myself as that bad.

"I want to be friends because I like you," Wanda fondly rolled her eyes, standing up from the couch and motioning for me to follow. "Now let's get you to Tony or he'll blow a gasket. He's already insufferable as he is."

@another-stark-sub @mostly-marvel-musings  @vozit @littlegasps @pilloclock @shereadsinquiet @downeyreads @hermione-grangers-wife @individualistfem

[cerastes]

Imagine how Doctor felt when they finally got to Rhodes Island after Evil Time, and Amiya and Kal’tsit immediately warn them about the ‘special’ cases.

Don’t overestimulate Ifrit this, watch out for suddenly bursting on flames around Skyfire that, Skadi can accidentally turn you into a bloodstain on the carpet with a flick of her finger so keep your distance this, Lappland will possibly eat your carotid artery like she eats Kit Kats wrong if you delve too deep into her world that, yeah, yeah, a lot of stuff that is either obvious or makes sense after spending an aggregate seven seconds in the same room with the person in question, nothing terribly hard to understand or believe.

And then, you have Specter.

“We have to keep her in the medical ward in a reinforced room whenever she’s not in an operation,” explains Kal’tsit. “She is highly unstable and dangerous if left unsupervised. Only make contact with her if it is completely necessary.”

So you have all of these dangerous people running amok freely in the base, but this one, this one Specter person in particular needs to be locked behind reinforced walls? Sounds dangerous.

Doctor then takes one look at this supposed rabid animal and sees this:

Bam, Doctor is immediately emotionally supported. Doctor cannot comprehend how this pleasant, sweet, soft-spoken lady could possibly be as dangerously violent as advertised. Ifrit has a mean streak, Skadi IS legitimately that strong and lacks any sort of social skills so she always ends up resorting on it, Lappland has all the makings of a sociopath, and Skyfire is unfortunately Skyfire, so Doc can understand these perfectly, but Specter? This somewhat short nun that, to be fair, occasionally blurts out how some people were always meant to be pieces, but otherwise just hangs out at the dorm and breaks out a cute little prayer for others now and then? How could she possibly need nigh permanent containment?

Then Doctor sees her in action for the first time in an Operation and everything makes sense.

Just as a reminder:

Strength? Top class. Endurance? Top class. Tactical planning? None whatsoever. Combat skill despite no tactical planning abilities at all? Rated excellent. Specter dissociates harder than a child with ADHD taking three ritalins instead of the prescribed one and has a body ravaged by a lethal, incurable illness, and despite all of this, there she is, catching machetes, arrows and Arts blasts to the chin and shrugging them off while swinging a buzzsaw duct taped to the end of a pipe she found laying around on a Costco parking lot to immensely devastating effect. Nothing can take her down, no one can take her strong swings, all the while she’s completely out of her mind, relying entirely on muscle memory from back when she was actually sane, only muttering some nonsense to herself in a low voice now and then. Sometimes, one of her eyes just starts intensely glowing for some reason. Kal’tsit has no freaking clue how she does that. Hordes of Reunion nobodies wondering if they should even bother swinging at this blank-faced small nun because even if they get lucky and don’t lose an arm in the process, it’s not even going to hurt her. It’s quite literally and realistically meaningless to attack her. She’s a walking horror movie. 

And it’s not even due to powerful Arts or a powerful mutation given to her by Oripathy, no one knows how or why Specter can do any of this, less of all herself. It’s go time? She just says “ok, tell me how it went when I wake up, see you later, have a pleasant noon”, turns off her brain and activates her Ultra Deepsea Instinct to Gokupunch Elite Casters and Defense Crushers through buildings. 

It’d only take one particularly bad manic day to really ruin some lives at Rhodes Island if she ever lost control. They’d no doubt be able to contain her one way or another -- she’s not the only freak of nature in Rhodes Island, after all -- but it’d be a Herculean task to stop her nonetheless, and practically impossible to stop her with no loses. Specter is the unstoppable force and the immovable object simultaneously thanks to her deadly mix of physical strength and endurance. It makes all the sense in the world that Kal’tsit would prefer her in a nice, tidy, reinforced hospital room where all she’ll damage if she ever flies off the handle is some medical equipment instead of very realistically ripping someone in half with her bare hands or punting Skyfire out of the stratosphere or something. Sure, she’s a nice, soft-spoken lady, but you also never know when sudden (or even full) onset insanity will kick in, especially since Specter’s nervous system is already a wreck. As dangerous as Ifrit or Lappland can be, there’s a sort of ‘guarantee’ that they won’t harm others if they can help it; Ifrit is temperamental and rebellious, but not at all malicious, and Lappland is kind of a sociopath, but aside from making people uncomfortable, she doesn’t hurt others. Specter, on the other hand, can simply go fully insane one day and there’s no way to tell when it’ll happen, and given her clinical condition, it’s indeed less an “if” and more a “when”.

Specter having the dubious honor of being the only Operator we know of that has to be kept in a special room for the safety of others suddenly makes a lot of sense when you consider her medical condition and what she’s capable of.

[razzle-zazzle]

Whumptober Day 23: What’s a whumpee gotta do to get some sleep around here?

Exhaustion + Sleep Deprivation

761 words; I have been told by @ninja-go-to-therapy​ to call this thing “Birb Time”

@lovelystressedprincess

TW for creepy captors & dehumanization

Cole was exhausted.

He was also being held captive by a mage who seemed to think he was some kind of bird. Which wasn’t ideal. At all.

The birdcage he was kept in was too small for Cole to lay down fully. He could sit comfortably, but he couldn’t stand. Whenever he slept it wasn’t for very long and it wasn’t very well.

So Cole was understandably very exhausted.

His captor didn’t seem to care. Rather, the mage seemed almost pleased with the dark circles under Cole’s eyes. Said they made Cole “prettier”.

Cole disagreed.

His captor was currently cleaning up for the day, tidying up the room while Cole watched him like a hawk.

“Oh, what a pretty bird you are.” His captor cooed, reaching through the bars to run a hand through Cole’s hair. “Of course, you’re not really a bird, are you?” He chuckled. “Not that anyone but you and me can see that.”

Cole glared at his captor through tired eyes.

“There’s going to be some very special visitors tomorrow, gorgeous.” His captor continued, conjuring a cracker. “A very powerful group of elemental masters are coming to me for some magic advice.”

Cole froze. Were the others coming? Might he finally be saved?

“Can you imagine?” His captor pushed the cracker through the bars, “They’re coming to me for help finding someone. Me.” He practically preened, which was ironic given that Cole was the one in the birdcage.

Cole took the offered cracker, knowing it was better to accept every piece of nourishment he was offered. It wasn’t very bad, as crackers went, but Cole would much prefer not being treated like some pet.

His captor reached in again, giving Cole’s chin a scratch. “I’ll need you to be on your best behavior tomorrow, okay? Can’t have you making a fuss.”

Cole didn’t have the energy to respond.

+=+=+=+=+

The next day dawned as days usually did, with Cole aching all over, exhaustion heavy in his limbs.

“Good morning, gorgeous.” His captor crooned, breakfast in hand. “Who’s a pretty bird? Are you a pretty bird? Yes, you’re such a pretty bird.”

If looks could kill, Cole’s captor would be a smoldering patch of ash right now.

Or maybe he’d have some kind of magical resistance to that kind of thing. That sounded much more in line with Cole’s luck right about now.

His captor only smiled brighter, moving off to get things in order. “Our visitors should be here soon. I’ll want you on your best behavior, alright?”

Oh, Cole would be on his best behavior. The birdcage was in full view of the entrance. There was no way his friends would miss him.

And indeed, they arrived not much later. Well, Jay and Zane had arrived. The others were presumably off doing other things.

Hopefully at least one of them was looking for Cole.

But Jay and Zane were right there, there was no way they couldn’t see Cole, Jay was looking right at him—

And then Jay looked away nervously.

Zane was saying something, but Cole wasn’t listening. What? Why had Jay looked away? Why wasn’t he saying anything? Cole was right there—why wasn’t Jay making a fuss?

“Jay, what the fuck are you doing?” Cole asked. His voice trembled from lack of sleep.

Jay flinched at the sound. “That’s uh, that’s a large bird you’ve got there.” He said, eyeing Cole nervously.

“It is quite strange,” Zane agreed, “But it’s just a bird, Jay.”

His captor laughed. “Ah, but he’s a very pretty bird, wouldn’t you say?” He walked over to Cole’s cage, cooing softly while conjuring a piece of fruit. “An absolutely gorgeous bird, yes you are.”

Jay muttered something about ugly vultures, but otherwise left the subject alone.

This was some kind of prank. It had to be. There was no way—

“Okay, hilarious,” Cole said, his voice trembling from more than sleep deprivation. “Funny joke, absolutely hilarious. Please.”

His captor cooed again. “My my, what’s got you so worked up today? Making all those sounds—you must be stressed out quite a lot.” He turned to Jay and Zane. “Should we continue this in another room? I don’t think my pet is taking your presence very well.”

Jay nodded, seeming almost eager to get out of the room.

Cole watched the three leave in dawning horror. They didn’t… they looked right at him.

Did they not care?

Fuck, Cole was too tired to think. Too tired to try and escape.

Too tired to do anything other than curl into a ball and cry.

[mercyparkgirl]

the roommate

Pairing: Logan x MC (implied)

Warnings: angst, ptsd

Word Count: ~1835

Summary: Set after the events of Ride or Die, my MC (Ellie Wheeler) adjusts to her new life, from the perspective of herself and her roomate, Sophie.

Notes: So... this is the first fanfic I’ve ever written! Always been too nervous to post but with @rodappreciationweek I figured why not. Hope you enjoy!

_________________________

sophia.

My roommate’s name was Ellie, from Los Angeles. We only texted a little before move-in day at Langston, and I really hoped we would get along. My older brother had told me horror stories about his freshman roommate, some of which I believed, most which I guessed he made up to scare me. Still, those stories had taken root in my mind and I found myself with a little more than first-day anxiety as mom fussed over the fitted bed sheet and position of the throw pillows in my new room. 

“Hi” a soft voice spoke from the door and I turned around quickly to greet the girl in the doorway. Her hair was pulled back and I squealed as I noticed her Langston sweatshirt, gesturing at the identical one I was wearing. She laughed at that, and to her surprise I launched forward to give her a hug. She only tensed for a moment before hugging me back, and with the ice seemingly broken we settled comfortably into unpacking and setting up the room.

I felt definitively uncool as my mom chattered on and on, immediately conscious of the fact that Ellie apparently didn’t need her mom to make her bed for her. I caught her a couple of times smiling softly at my mom with a longing look in her eyes I couldn’t quite place and I wondered what she thought of me. 

Ellie certainly didn’t seem to have as much stuff as I did, and certainly not my plant habit that was rapidly turning into an addiction. The only thing she set on her desk was a framed photograph which she removed from a box full of tissue paper with great care, running a hand quickly over the glass before setting it down. I snuck a look at it as I pushed a succulent into her hands, insisting that she have something else to liven up her side of the room.

She and an unusually attractive boy, both dressed in formal attire, stared fiercely into the camera as if daring someone to oppose them, his arm wrapped protectively around her. His eyes were dark and powerful, while hers were full of a righteous fury and passion that seemed both completely out of place and extraordinarily natural on her features.

Ellie and I spent that night and the next few weeks getting to know each other. We bonded over both being from the West Coast, though Tacoma is very different from LA. She was smart, though she had the air of a student who wasn’t used to being surrounded by people at her level. We had no classes together but it was easy to fall into the rhythm of studying together in the library or student union building every night. I was so lucky to have her for the transition to college, and I hoped she felt the same.

She wanted stories about my siblings, my parents, the plays I’d been in during middle school, and I was more than happy to talk without realizing that I was learning very little about her in return. Still, I managed to pick up on some things. She spun her charm bracelet when she got excited about something, and fiddled with some strange object on a chain around her neck when she thought no one was looking, a far-away look on her face. 

For a girl who owned so many leather jackets and an apparently very impressive car (The only thing I care about less than cars are the Kardashians and essential oils) she was surprisingly sweet and funny, enough that I was shocked the first time I saw her in short sleeves.

“Is that a real tattoo?” I exclaimed, not giving her time to answer. “That is so cool. I really wanted one when I was 16 and my sister told me she’d poke me with a needle for free. What is it? A wolf? Badass. Do you have a whole pack of them?”

She laughed and pulled a jacket on. “It’s a lone wolf, I’m afraid. Ran away from its pack.”

I’m a light sleeper which I always considered a curse in a house full of noisy siblings, but I was glad of it the first time I woke up in the middle of the night to a scream, sleepily flicking on the light to see her writhing in her bed. I threw back the covers and sat down on her bed, gently shaking her shoulder until she woke up gasping, nails digging into my arm. For just a moment I swore I could see the ghosts of great flames in her eyes, fading back into embers as she realized where she was. 

I wrapped my arms around her and she sat still for a few long moments before squeezing my arm and standing up. 

“I think… I think I’m going to go for a drive. Thank you Soph.” I wanted to wait up for her but I fell asleep on top of my sheets. 

The nightmares happened again, and then again. Some nights she would just curl back into the blankets, or open the window before falling back to sleep. 

And some nights she would grab the keys from her nightstand and leave without a word. I’d be asleep before she came home, or maybe she never came back to bed those nights. Maybe she drove until the morning sun stretched her fingers above the horizon and began her slow crawl to the other side.

ellie.

When I left LA, it felt like the ending of a story. The closing of a book. But I’m starting to realize life doesn’t work like that. Nobody gets happy endings or tidy conclusions. Life just… keeps going. And it’s up to us whether we can stay afloat or get lost in the riptide, losing ourselves in the memories and regrets. 

Don’t get me wrong, nothing could take away the magic of stepping out of my car at the place I had dreamed about since I was old enough to dream, completely and terrifyingly on my own. No curfew, no explanations needed. I could reinvent myself. It would be a brand new start. But as I subconsciously ran a hand over the smooth hood of my Widow I remembered the first time I had seen her, sleek and dangerous and mine in Kaneko’s shop, how the leather of the seats smelled like home, and I knew forgetting wasn’t an option. And maybe I didn’t want it to be.

I had never shared a room with anyone, unless you count sleepovers with Riya or the week I spent in Logan’s loft above the shop. But Sophia made it feel like I’d been missing out. She was kind and open and welcoming from the moment I stepped in the room. She was brilliant, too, even for Langston standards which were far above what I was used to at Mar Vista Prep. I quickly realized that there would be little time to fully appreciate the lack of parental control given my heavy workload. 

I had a couple classes with Ingrid and was surprised by how happy I was to see her. I needed to get out of LA but it would always be the place I was from and she represented a piece of my past. A reminder of a time in my life that I might have convinced myself never really happened if not for her. We were friendly and the fun kind of competitive, but didn’t hang out much outside of class, though I felt that either one of us would be happy to if the other one asked. I made a lot of acquaintances very quickly, a few of which turned tentatively into friends, but I mostly hung out with Soph when I wasn’t in class.

My dad and I talked nearly every day for the first couple weeks, which gradually turned into every weekend. We never talked for long, classes were “going well”, work was “busy”. I loved him, of course, but I found it hard to shake the image of him pointing a gun at the man I loved, face tight with bitter fury. 

I knew Colt was still in LA, and I hesitantly tried to inquire about the specifics of my dad’s latest assignments. He must have figured what my real question was because he got quiet for a moment then said “I think it’s best if we don’t talk about that. Best to leave it in the past.”

I didn’t mention it again, or ask about Mona which had been my next idea. But it was hard to leave Logan in the past when I’d spent so much time seeing him as my future. I texted his number a couple times even though I knew he’d no longer have it, pitiful ‘I love you’s when I felt so lonely it was hard to breathe. 

At night my fingers would trace the places his had until the memories of his rough hands on my body were blurred with my own and I was no longer sure if he had ever touched me at all. If not for the spark plug I wore around my neck and the picture of us at prom I kept next to a succulent Soph had given me, I wouldn’t be sure he ever existed at all. 

I was ok most of the time and on occasion, I wasn’t. I cried sometimes and I didn’t even know why. I grew to fear lying in bed because the thoughts threatened to crush me, my brain forcing myself to relive every moment of that spring and asking me what I should have done differently. And when I finally, finally got to sleep I had nightmares. 

Jason looming over me, larger than life, hands reaching out as my feet stuck to the ground, my car nowhere to be seen. Or a blazing inferno on the bridge, Colt’s screams of pain and grief pounding in my ears, his face twisted in an agony I could have prevented. Kaneko’s voice a whisper in my skull “Once you’ve made your choice it is made. You hold true until the end.” 

The fire from the explosion spreads, higher and farther than I remember it, the flames taking Jason’s shape, and my father’s, consuming me completely until I wake up, sweating and throat hoarse with Sophia’s soft hands on my shoulder. 

Sometimes I can get back to sleep, but sometimes I know I won’t be able to. On those nights I grab my keys and run down to my Widow, no jacket so I can feel the wind on as much of my body as possible. At that hour the streets are sleepy and I can make it to the freeway in 10 minutes. And as the lights passing by turn into stars, spinning above my head, I drive. And in that moment I can hear their laughter, their whoops and cheers. In that moment, as I fly into the night... I’m not alone. 

[aghostfromtheages]

Damned Devotion

This is a little self indulgent project I was motivated to work on after my last play through of the Witcher (I needed some OlgierdxReader). It takes place over four chapters which are being posted on AO3. I will include the link in a comment on this post. (Edit: 2/4 chapters now up on AO3)

You meet the same man four different times.

Your grandmother's fairytales never went like this.

Chapter 1: Once

The water was cold.

Cold enough to make you falter as you stepped into the river. The current was more gentle here than upstream, nearer your new home, more languid. It tugged softly at you as it passed, washing the last remnants of sleep from your body. Your dream was not shrugged off so easily. Though you barely remembered it, the feeling it left you with haunted you still. Empty. Cold. Maybe all those stories about your grandmother having elf-blood weren’t so far fetched. You slipped under the surface briefly, wetting your hair. Telling portents, predicting the gender of a child; your grandmother had been known for her small magicks. More luck than anything, or so your mother insisted. 

You remembered little from your dream, or had it been a nightmare? Boars filled your cottage, spilling from the front door, trampling your garden. There was blood, a storm of snow, and a man with fiery red hair and eyes like flint. The rest was a half-forgotten muddle. You ran your hands over the flat river stones. If you had inherited any of your grandmother’s fortune-telling ability, you couldn’t imagine what your dream could signify.

Morning sun dappled the water and nearby bank, burning up the veil of mist that still hung about the river. Your body having finally adjusted to the cool water, you swam leisurely upstream. 

When you saw the man, your breath caught in your throat. He was different from your dream,  clutching his side and leading his horse. His eyes were shrewd and sharp, not quite the flinty coldness that pierced your dreams. You had never seen such eyes before. Dropping yourself into the water, you peered through the reeds as he attempted to forge the river, nervous horse in tow.

"Lost, are you?" Your curiosity overcame your hesitancy, and you called out, hiding your nakedness as best you could beneath the water. 

Your words stopped the man in his tracks, thigh-deep in the river, mere meters from you. He loosened his grip on his horse’s reins and drew a long curved blade from a sash belted about his waist. He swung it lazily, searching for the origin of your voice as he steadied himself. 

"Now now, if you are some vila or nixie trying to tempt me, you'd best search elsewhere." He swept the blade through the reeds mere feet from where you sat, continuing forward. "I won't be easy prey."

You wheeled back, splashing into the shallows of the river, narrowly escaping the arc of the blade, exclaiming in irritation. 

The man's horse, a disheveled looking bay,  jerked in surprise at your movement, pulling the reins from its master’s hand. Quickly, you plucked your clothing from the bank, wishing to protect any modesty you had left. You peered over your shoulder as the man struggled to calm his mount. "I am no water witch," you said indignantly, as you pulled on a tunic. "And I would not wait around to banter with local men if I was one."

The man shushed his horse, eyes slipping from your half-naked form to the other bank and back, finally running up your body and settling on your eyes. He set a hand tenderly on his bloodied side again.

“Of course,” his tone betrayed the sarcasm underlying the propriety of his speech. “Maids often spend their mornings bathing naked in forest streams.” He sucked in a strained breath, trying hard to look unaffected, though you could see fresh blood had seeped through the brocade of his coat.

"Do you know in which direction the closest township lays?"

"Brunwich is not half a day by foot. Much faster by horse, I'm sure." You paused and then added, "My lord." Surreptitiously, if only for your own safety, as he appeared dressed in the most expensive, but worn, finery. You'd not lived there long, so you had not had time to become familiar with the local manors and families. 

He looked in the direction you point and nodded in agreement, but did not contradict the title you’d given him nor allowed you his name. Instead, he added, rather diffidently, “And the nearest healer?”

You flicked the water from your trousers with a practiced snap. “Why... you almost beheaded her.”

The man lifted his chin. He had the good graces to look somewhat remorseful. “Apologies, for my… ah, impulsive reaction. Although...” he frowned, “it is unusual to find a woman so at ease this far from town…”

Having finally pulled on the rest of your clothing, you unsheathed a very large hunting knife from the belt at your waist. As if in answer, you brandished it with no small amount of deftness. “Now, we can stand here and exchange pleasantries all day, or I can try and keep you from attracting drowners with all that blood you’re feeding into the river.” Without waiting for a response, you bent to collect the riverside herbs you had previously harvested and motioned him forward. “You’re lucky I called out to you.”

  Back at the small cottage you called home, the bay horse wandered your garden, while crow calls echoed from freshly plowed fields nearby. Inside, you gingerly peeled away the man’s once white undershirt, revealing deep lacerations that spanned his chest and ribs. You placed your fingers lightly on the oozing wound, causing the man to flinch and groan. Despite the large quantity of blood, the wound appeared clean and fairly surface level, only having reached past the muscle to the rib bones in a couple of spots. For all the damage, it must have been a glancing blow. 

“I’ll need to clean the wound and then stitch some of the deeper lacerations closed. I have some fresh beggartick blossom for the pain-” The man grunted, interrupting you. 

“Tch, I appreciate your concern, but-” he flinched, knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the table, as you poured vodka over the wound, “-I would prefer to be fully lucid.” You raised your brow, but said nothing as you rinsed your hands and then cauterized the needle for suturing. Making quick work threading the needle, you gently placed a hand against the man’s chest and began your stitching. His body was etched in old scars. They seemed synonymous with battle wounds one would find on a soldier. You remember seeing similar scars on a cadaver in one of the medical classes at the Academy. Another hint to your patient’s background. You frowned.

“And what, pray tell, caused such a wound? The townspeople should know if there are horrors haunting their forest.” 

“A big fucking bear.” Before you could stop him, he took a swig from the distilled vodka. “My band and I came upon it in the middle of a hunt. I was trying to find my way to Brunwich after getting separated from them when I found you.” 

“It would seem we have very differing opinions on who found who.” You snipped the trailing ends off of the silk suture before stepping back to regard your work. 

The man gave a low whistle, "My, my, you are a damn skilled woman." The stitches were not too tight, not too loose, some of your best work. He ran a thumb lightly over the thread.

Smiling, you gently swatted his hand away while you worked to apply a salve of yarrow and calendula to the area, before bandaging. "Well, I didn't spend all that time at the Academy without learning a few things." 

"Is that so? I have naught to pay you with now…"

You looked the man over as you tidied your supplies. "I figured not. I am new to this part of the province, so the least you could tell me is your name."

The man slowed in his dressing, as if surprised at the question. "Of course… I'm Olgierd von Everec." He hesitated, and then continued past your lack of reaction. "My family owned a manor house not far from here… Or rather, used to."

So, a disgraced lord then. That explained a few things.

You watched him finish dressing out of the corner of your eye. He held himself with the easy confidence of someone born into nobility, yet he moved with the measure of someone with martial experience. You followed him out the door, to where his horse grazed in a patch of clover.

"I will repay you." He promised, holding your gaze as he did at the river. You nodded to placate him, patting the nose of his horse as he pulled himself into the saddle. He wouldn’t be the first customer to stiff you on payment.

Standing in your garden you watched as Olgierd von Everec spurred his horse into a gallop, jumped the fence at the edge of the road and finally disappeared past the turn at the crossroads.

The summer wore on. You settled into your life as a herbalist and healer, receiving visitors that came as far as Oxenfurt. Your dreams no longer bothered you, and you started to forget about your encounter with the remarkable man at the river.

Weeks later you found a basket at your door. Inside was a small pouch, containing seven crowns and a fresh bottle of vodka. Underneath it, folded in half, laid a bear pelt.

[radiantroope]

The Chill Along Your Spine

Chapter Three: The Woods

co-written with @sortagaysortahigh and @letsgofullkook!! please follow them too!

warnings: horror au, horror movie concepts, mentions of blood and gore, mentions of murder, mentions of violence, cussing, possible spelling and grammar errors

series masterlist

Sarah Cameron

Sarah was questioning if coming on the trip was a good idea at the events that had taken place in a spanse of less than twenty-four hours. She just wanted a relaxing get away with her friends to forget about the stress of college and growing up. She thought it would do them all some good. Sure, there was a divide still, but she hoped this trip could bring them all closer and they could consider calling each other friends.

The middle Cameron child had followed her father’s wishes in attending Chapel Hill. It may not have been exactly what she wanted, but she didn’t want to let him down. Her and John B. had broken up before they went off to their separate schools. They didn’t want to hold each other back from truly living and experiencing college life. Yet somehow, when they both visited home, they ended up in the sheets together. Maybe because it was familiar or a sense of intimacy that a lot of college boys couldn’t give her. It wasn’t a healthy habit but the blonde girl still went with it.

Being so close yet so far away from home was good for Sarah. She was able to live her own life, yet could still visit whenever she wanted. Which she did quite often, mostly for Wheezie, but also for JJ. She wanted to make sure he knew he didn’t get left behind and his friends still cared about him. They’d go to weekend Boneyard parties together and a time or two, snuck off together, but that was something they’d take to the grave. Sarah enjoyed the nostalgia she felt as she watched teenagers run around the bonfire, or a fight would break out and she’d have a memory of a John B. and Topper from all those years ago.

A lot of kids who attended Chapel Hill and came from Kildare got caught up in the crazy parties and drugs — not to say Sarah didn’t dapple in it a bit as well. The freedom they had in the OBX couldn’t compare to what they had on the mainland. No more suspecting parents and having to look over your shoulder constantly to avoid being caught. She’d heard many kids let their grades slip and were on the verge of flunking out. Visiting home almost every weekend helped keep the blonde girl’s head on straight.

Truth be told, she had absolutely no idea what she wanted to do with her life. She knew she wanted to be successful and build a life for herself. Ward pushed her to go for business, follow in his and Rafe’s footsteps, but she was conflicted. Most of the time she just wanted to drop out and join volunteer groups to help rescued sea animals and clean up the beaches. Ward would surely cut her off if she did that, despite being the favorite in everyone’s eyes. That’s why she valued trips like this with her friends. She didn’t have to worry about those things and was able to just live in the moment.

After a day out fishing on the lake, the group retreated back to the cabin. Sarah walked arm in arm with Kiara, giggling as the alcohol they’d consumed pumped through their bloodstreams. Kelce has offered to grill up some steaks for dinner and the blonde had remembered there were some expensive bottles of wine stashed somewhere within the house.

The former Kook princess slipped away from her friends and started searching for the wine she knew she’d seen. Though, the cabin was so big she wasn’t positive where exactly it had been. Was it John B’s room? She thought to herself as she ascended the stairs and made her way to said boy’s room. She came up empty in there and moved onto Rafe and Kelce’s room. God, did someone fucking move it? She scoffed to herself as she inspected the surprisingly tidy room.

Sarah paused as she heard a creak above her head. She looked up at the ceiling and drowned out the other voices downstairs, listening for another sound. She let out a soft breath and summed it up to the house settling. It was old so in her mind it was a perfectly acceptable answer.

Bingo. She smiled as she walked beside Pope’s bed to the winerack in the corner. It was a bit odd that there was wine kept in a random bedroom but they also didn’t know who else had been staying at that cabin before them.

Sarah went to make her way back downstairs but halted as the wooden ceiling above her head creaked once again. She’d just crossed the threshold into the hallway, eyes following the sound of the creaking as it moved towards the back of the house. Her eyes fell on a door at the end of the hall, gut twisting at the mere sight of it. She stepped towards it, wondering if anyone had inspected the suspicious door with a deadbolt lock.

As she inched closer, she tried to ignore the chill that ran along her spine. One hand gripped tight on the neck of the wine bottle as the other reached for the shiny knob. Her amber eyes slipped closed as she braced herself to find if the door was unlocked.

“Sarah!” Kiara’s loud voice made the girl jump, nearly dropping the glass bottle as her other hand caught it. “Did you find it?”

“Yeah! Coming!” Sarah called back, backing away from the door slowly. She retreated back down the hall, stealing one last glance behind her at the erie door as the creaking above her head subsided.

-

The next morning Sarah Cameron woke up with a brain splitting headache. She didn’t know if it was from going overboard on the wine the prior night, or the lack of sleep she’d gotten. Her subconscious mind was restless thinking about the door and the footstep like noises in the attic. She was ignoring that thought, choosing to believe it was because of Kelce’s prank and JJ’s irrational fear of someone on a nonexistent boat.

The blonde girl forced herself out of bed and changed into a pair of leggings and a tank top. A hike would do her some good. She could clear her head and get a better look at the woods surrounding them in broad daylight. She made her way downstairs into the kitchen where everyone had already gathered, munching on their own breakfasts. She grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and popped two Ibuprofen from the cabinet beside it.

“Rough night?” Rafe snickered, eyeing his sister from the stove as he prepared eggs.

Sarah responded with her middle finger and a roll of her eyes. She grabbed a banana and sat down at the kitchen table across from John B., choosing to get something in her belly before her journey.

“I’m gonna go on a hike, anyone wanna come with?” she asked the group.

Kiara’s response was inaudible around her mouthful of food but with the way she darted for the stairs — Kelce hot on her heels — Sarah assumed it was a yes. She chuckled as the two disappeared up the stairs, shoving each other along the way. Her eyes met John B.’s hazel ones that were swimming with concern. Oh, here we go.

“Are you sure a hike is a good idea?” the brunette asked, fidgeting in his seat as his mind went over the events that had taken place.

“It’s broad daylight out and I’m not going alone. Yes, I’m sure a hike is fine,” Sarah retorted, holding back the bite to her tone. Even broken up, the boy still tended to be up in her business. She was starting to regret revisiting the past with him the day they all arrived.

The Cameron girl stood from the table and disposed of her banana peel in the trash as Kiara and Kelce came back down. She smiled at the two and made her way to the door, hearing a chair scrape the floor as someone hastily stood up. She didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

“I’m coming with you,” John B. said as he stared at Sarah from the table. The group looked between the two and at each other, an uncomfortable tension filling the room.

Sarah sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, the headache that had started to dissipate returning. “I can take care of myself, John. I don’t need a babysitter,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I know you don’t but I-”

“Then stop acting like we’re sixteen again!” Sarah snapped, her hard gaze meeting his again. He looked hurt and she knew she was being harsh, but he needed to hear it. “We aren’t together anymore. I’m a grown woman and I can make my own decisions.”

She didn’t wait for him to respond before she ripped open the front door and walked out. She heard the door shut from behind her and the hasty steps of her friends moving to catch up with her. Neither of them addressed what just happened, which she was thankful for.

The three of them fell into step, walking their own path through the trees. Kelce and Kiara talked about school and what they were going to do with their futures. Sarah chimed in every now and again but her thoughts were elsewhere. Her mind was going back to all of the weird things they’d encountered. A face in the window, a person on a boat that disappeared, footsteps in the attic and deadbolt locked door. She couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy as her eyes gazed over the wilderness around them.

Sarah’s breath caught in her throat, feet becoming glued to the Earth beneath her. Ghostface was a few yards ahead of her, disappearing behind a tree when she stopped. She watched the trees around where he’d been, waiting to see if he popped back up.

“Sarah?” Kiara turned to look at her friend.

The blonde shook her head slightly and started walking again, trailing behind the other two. That’s when she saw him again, this time on her right and closer. She saw the sun reflect off a metal object as he waved it at her and disappeared behind a tree again.

Get a grip Sarah. Your mind is playing tricks on you. You’re paranoid.

Sarah’s brain was spinning as she saw him out of the corner of her eye on the left. Approximately five seconds later again on the right. Her hands started shaking, breathing picking up. Kelce noticed and turned around to face her, hands coming up to hold her shoulders.

“Sarah? Sarah, what’s wrong?” Kiara’s concerned voice reached the blonde’s ears.

Though, the Cameron girl wasn’t looking at them. She was looking behind them, directly into the black eyes of ghostface who was only about three feet away. The masked person tilted their head slowly, raising their hand and waving tauntingly.

“Guys,” Sarah’s shaky voice managed to get out, she raised her hand and pointed, unable to tear her gaze away. She didn’t want him to disappear and the other two to think she was crazy. Kiara and Kelce turned, faces paling as they too saw him.

“Run!” Kelce yelled, turned Sarah roughly and pushing her ahead of him.

The three of them moved as fast as their feet could carry them, weaving through the trees. They couldn’t look behind them to see if they were being chased or they’d run smack into one. Kelce was screaming for the others as they neared the cabin. Kiara was on the verge of tears. Sarah’s lungs burned, eyes watering as she broke the tree line and saw her friends. JJ grabbed her, eyes wracking her body to see if she was hurt after he heard the commotion. Everyone joined him outside quickly.

“It was ghostface! We fucking saw him!” Kelce yelled, hunching over with his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath.

“What?” JJ asked, pushing Sarah behind him and Rafe.

“He was following us. He was fucking with me the whole time,” Sarah told them, hands folded over her chest as she grabbed her shoulders.

Pope grabbed Kiara, wrapping his arms around her to relax her shaking frame. He glanced around to the rest of them as he rubbed the girls back. Everyone wore similar faces of shock and fear.

“What do we do?” Topper asked, glancing around.

“Fuck, dude. Fuck!” Rafe yelled, kicking the old wooden boards of the porch steps.

John B. had his hands on top of his head as he started pacing, scolding Rafe for what he’d just done. Then they all started yelling, fighting over what to do next. But they didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t some silly prank one of them was playing. This was real. Someone was watching them — taunting them. They were living a nightmare.

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if you want to be added to the tag list for this series let me, @sortagaysortahigh or @letsgofullkook know!

[swearingintengwar]

Alright, taking a dive into this whole Space Australia business...

(warning: this gets kinda dark! Specific content warnings in the tags)

Humans are tough.

They’re persistence predators, walking for days on end to tire out their prey. When their society developed to the point where hunting was less common, their impressive stamina turned to more frivolous ends. Capsaicin - yes, the neurotoxin - is a basic cooking spice for them. They’ll willingly endure extreme temperatures with only rudimentary protective gear, just because they like to play in snow. And that’s without even getting into skydiving and roller coasters and horror movies.

Their reputation as damn near unkillable was pretty much inevitable.

Then, stories started to go around.

Humans, now common on starship crews, secluding themselves. Emitting cries of pain despite being completely unharmed. Seeking companionship from inanimate objects and dangerous beasts.

Sometimes they are mysteriously wounded, and refuse to explain why.

The rest of the Kith, as the collective sapients of the galaxy have begun to call themselves, are baffled. What could be overwhelming humans, who rise like phoenixes from any hardship? They notice that many afflicted humans are shy about what’s troubling them, though, and conclude it would be rude to ask human advice on the subject.

It’s not until a ketian finds their human captain dead in her cabin, a note on her bedside table and a laser burn clean through her brow, that the Kith realize how badly they were wrong.

The note on Captain Alexis’s table speaks of how unhappy she was on the ship, of her stress and loneliness. She’s to be given a hero’s funeral, written down in history as a martyr whose sacrifice taught the Kith their mistakes, until her sister hears of the arrangements. “No,” she says. “There’s nothing heroic about this. My sister was a victim, not a martyr. Give her back to her family, let us say our goodbyes. Remember her with honor, but remember her as she was.” And she begins the strange keening pain-cry of humans, her eyes sparkling with tears in that way the Kith find strange and oddly beautiful - few other species shed tears - but know better than to comment on. “My sister wouldn’t have wanted a place in history, especially not one earned by your callousness.” She makes the strange gesture of aggression that humans sometimes make, a bit like their gesture of indication but with a different finger extended. The crew have seen it used in all manner of situations, from playful banter to outright rage.

This is outright rage.

As Alexis’s sister collects her body, the crew gathers to talk. The events of the death are incomprehensible to them. Al’ara, the ketian pilot who’d found the body, carefully examines the cabin. No signs anyone else was there. No signs of struggle.

Shyly, for fear of being rude, the crew decides to ask a human about the mysterious night, and it’s then that they realize just how deeply their mistakes ran.

Humans’ bodies are tough, sure, but their minds are fragile as frost.

At first, the crew is baffled. What species could possibly have the capacity for self-annihilation? Why had it not evolved out millenia ago?

The human keens. Their eyes sparkle. Senseless as it may seem, this is all too real.

Suddenly, her strange actions make so much more sense. The times she’d refused to work despite being in perfect health. Her exhaustion and listlessness that didn’t have any physical cause. The times the crew had heard keening from her cabin. Even the strangely tidy blade scars that sometimes peeked out from her sleeves.

Fragile as frost, indeed.

The crew are at a loss. They caused this, they had been too worried about offending their captain to take basic care of her. Al’ara plucks feathers from their wings, the ones Alexis had often compared to the blue jays from her homeworld, and spends hours in meditation, sitting with their guilt and grief, learning to exist again. The quiet chanskir medic whose name no one could quite pronounce paints his scales silver-blue in mourning, singing low warbling dirges. Natreyen, with all the concern for his honor characteristic of mikali raised in traditional societies, turns himself in as a murderer.

It’s Alexis’s sister, of all people, who intervenes. “No,” she says, “you aren’t a murderer. You didn’t know any better. You did the best you could.”

“Lydia?” he asks. “You were so angry before. Why are you defending me now?”

“Because there is a difference between acknowledging your mistakes and turning them into deliberate crime. And because I was blinded with my pain that day. My heart hurt from losing my sister.”

“Then if I can’t give myself up to the law, how am I to make up for the stain on my honor? Deliberately or not, I caused a life to be wasted.”

Lydia kneels to match his height. One of her hands cups his ridged cheek, a gesture he recognizes as one of affection. “Learn, Natreyen,” she says. “Learn how to do better next time.”

Natreyen is so stunned he can only bow deeply. Lydia has spared his life, given him the second chance so few mikali would ever consider. 

Luckily, she knows how to make this official, make his people recognize his redemption instead of calling him a fugitive. She raises her hands above his head. “Natreyen, you have wasted a life, and debt must be paid,” she intones, in fluent Mikai, then places her hands on his back, lacing her fingers into the gaps in his carapace and scratching his soft skin. Gently, just enough to cause a slight prickle of pain. A token vengeance. “As the wronged, I declare before the Justicars of Honor that I am satisfied by this avenging. Go forth and improve yourself.”

Her hands unlace from his carapace, and the rite is complete. In the eyes of his kin, Natreyen’s soul is no longer burdened by killing.

He resolves to go forth and learn, as Lydia instructed him.

He begins by investigating what Lydia had meant by her heart hurting, by being blinded by pain. They’re uniquely human concepts; no other Kith species has phrases that quite match those. And so, dread settling in the pit of his abdomen, he decides to ask Lydia.

His fears are quickly relieved when she isn’t offended by the questions, and the answers turn out to be a bit more literal than he was expecting. Uniquely among the known Kith, humans can feel emotional responses as physical sensations, rather than having separate nerve reactions for mental and physical stimuli. When Alexis died, Lydia experienced her grief as physical pain, and that led her to lash out in anger instead of calming herself. This part, Natreyen understands. It’s difficult to think when you’re in pain.

The crew’s first attempts at making their ship human-friendly go poorly. Making sure humans couldn’t be around weapons unsupervised gets dismissed by Lydia as treating the symptoms instead of the problem. Painkillers, to keep humans levelheaded when distressed, would only cause more problems in the long run. 

Finally, Natreyen realizes what he’s been doing wrong. The task isn’t to human-proof what’s already there, but to add things that were lacking. Human crew members would need shorter work hours and more mental stimulation. More variety in food would also help. Companionship would be a must, and Lydia recommends a few types of animal that many humans are good at caring for. Communication with social groupmates would be invaluable. A specialist in human psychology wouldn’t go amiss, either.

Sure, running a human-friendly ship would be more work, but most humans were happier in groups. A larger crew would be just another way of making the ship more hospitable to these strangely tough yet fragile Kith.

Several flights, five humans, two cats, and more shenanigans than Natreyen cared to remember later, everything seems to be going well.

Then he feels a sharp pain in his fetlock.

He looks down and sees that someone has attached a knife to one of the cleaning robots. Without a second thought, he removes the knife and pages the rest of the crew to ask how it had ended up there.

The humans are devastated to hear of the knife’s removal, claiming that Natreyen had “killed Stabby”. Apparently the idea of taping a knife to a cleaning robot had been a running joke on their planet since before they’d ever met the rest of the Kith, and in Stabby’s half hour of existence the humans had grown attached to him.

Natreyen remembers Lydia’s voice in the Chamber of Justice. I am satisfied by this avenging. Her nails on his back, pricks of pain without any true harm.

He gets an idea.

“Al’ara,” he asks, “would you fetch a butter knife from the mess hall?”

She flies off to get one, and he taps on a remote to recall the robot that had been turned into Stabby. It trundles up to his feet, waiting.

Al’ara returns with the knife, and Natreyen tapes it to the robot, exactly where its old knife had been. “Will this do?” he asks the humans.

Their cheers are enough of an answer. He taps the remote again, commanding the newly resurrected Stabby to return to cleaning. Everyone is satisfied, and he dismisses the meeting.

Little does he know, Stabby will one day be the general of the entire Kith fleet, at least as far as humans are concerned. Something about it gaining the rank of anyone it hit...

[0poole]

Humor in Writing

    Most of the time I feel like dismissing what might seem like “faults” in writing because I haven’t actually made anything myself, and especially haven’t gotten any attention to what I make, but every once in a while something really ticks me off. Of course, I still try to take it with a grain of salt because of my lack of true experience in writing, but considering I’m hoping to actually become some degree of a writer I feel like it’s worth actually trying to explain what I think is a fault with things and why. 

    There always seems to be one specific thing that bothers me a lot when reading/watching stuff, and it’s the hard switching of tone from comedy to sincerity, or something similar to that, or vice versa.

    Honestly, even though it sounds like the motive of a cartoon villain, I kinda think there’s too much humor in the world. It’s probably just entirely driven by opinion and preferences, but I feel like so many people are striving and looking for comedy that it hinders so many other things. I feel like, both in real life and in writing, having so much humor everywhere creates a pretty big gap between that tone and sincerity, which is pretty much always needed at some point. The big line between comedy and sincerity makes it so much harder, emotionally speaking, to feel good about the switch. I’ll try to explain…

    First of all, this whole line of thought, even though I’ve been thinking it forever, was spawned by me watching Epithet Erased. Took me long enough, because I’ve seen some of the characters around and really loved their designs, but I finally watched it all, and I gotta say… It was interesting. Also, this is probably just going to be very ranty and opinionated but I will (hopefully) have something more valuable to say after. But, anyways, for one, it felt just barely too close to some of the premises for the stories I’ve thought of in various ways, but I guess that’s just bad luck on my part. Second, I feel like its humor really brought it down for me. Some episodes felt so long winded (although not necessarily “boring” I guess) because I felt like I got the joke they were trying to tell relatively quickly after they started it, but carried it so far. It didn’t help that, at least for a few of them, some of the characters felt like archetypes that I’ve seen a lot around the internet, or at least were simple enough that I understood what they were instantly, and when they are carried out through long character-focused moments it felt like nothing was happening. I feel like some of the characters are fine enough, even if I may not like them, but Giovanni and Indus were the two big ones that I thought had a little too much time given to them…

    But more relevant to what I’m trying to say, sometimes the writing jumps way too far from the very comedic tone it’s trying to put out and into it trying to be sincere. The worst case of this was when Sylvie met Mera in the museum storage, and Sylvester tried to out Mera’s nightmares, only to see that her nightmare was the reality she was already in. With the scene change, and Indus becoming more serious with Molly, it felt like a good enough departure from the usual comedic tone to warrant the deeper motive of the character. But, then, of course, they had to trash the whole tone by adding the line about her also being afraid of ducks. There was absolutely no good reason to warrant that line and I will die on that hill. Not only was it just humor, but it was spontaneous “random” humor, and so on… I honestly hope people could just understand where I’m coming from there by how out of place it seems. I feel like the only defense they could use, apart from “just liking it,” would be that it’s comedic relief, but I genuinely feel like since practically the whole thing up until this point was comedy there was absolutely no need for comedic relief. The scene itself is like the opposite of comedic relief, like “Sit down and pay attention” or “Turn your brain back on” or whatever. The climactic point of the scenes before it were reached, meaning the sincere conflict there should be focused on, and apart from that one tiny little line it worked well enough. The fact that it was so tiny and insignificant is basically why I hated it so much. They literally could’ve just scratched it off of the script and only good things would have happened. 

    Something a bit similar happened before when Molly revealed her backstory to Giovanni. It wasn’t quite as bad, but when a scene goes from comedy to “my mom’s dead and my life sucks” you do feel the shift a little too quickly. I feel like it’s not as bad because it could just be Molly’s character, seeing the tragedy of her life as just sort of normal and not really that remarkable, meaning she’s more likely to just randomly bring it up. 

    But I definitely wouldn’t be going off this much about it if there wasn’t at least a little bit more. Zora was literally the reason I wanted to watch the show, because I saw a drawing of her a while back and thought she was just some random OC, but when I heard she was from this show I instantly wanted to watch it a lot more. I think the same thing happened with Molly, but I think I knew she was from the show to begin with. Anyway, Zora was the main character who I loved from the get-go and loved even more the more I learned about her. She’s such a perfect amount of diversion from being a generic cowboy in the little design details, while still being 100% cowboy material. Then, when I saw that her power was “Sundial,” or more generally just time powers, I loved it. The big thing that seems little conceptually is making her key term “sundial” instead of just “time” or whatever, because of how much it relates to her cowboy-ness, with it being associated with the “sun” people often associate with Death Valley and the Wild West and whatnot. Not to mention, it’s just a cool power.

    But that’s kinda the thing, though. She’s so insanely strong. She could literally kill anyone on a whim. I don’t see how anyone could be cracking jokes in her presence. It’s kinda more general of a gripe, but when she aged up Howie it was borderline terrifying, and yet… right after, they’re cracking jokes again. It’s just so jarring. She could have literally reduced him to dust, and they’re so casual about it. I know Percy is supposed to be kinda blind to some obvious things, but I feel like even she could see the horror. That said, though, Percy is also one of my favorites. Her powers feel so natural yet interesting for what she is for some reason. 

Frankly, the visual character designs alone for this show are all really good. Whether or not I’m into the writing, I can’t deny that the show kept me coming back just because it feels so good to just look at it, you know? The minimal animation, vocalized stage directions, and top-down scene view was really interesting to watch, since I’ve never seen it before, and seems like a perfect way to produce more content with less budget. It made everything feel super crisp and tidy, despite being animated so simply. Not to mention that the general lack of animation meant the few scenes where there was traditional-level animation felt really good. The voice acting was also amazing, (again not directly tied to the writing) especially when the voice actors carried their character and emotion from the scene into the stage directions, instead of just reading them out plainly. And, at the very least, the premise of the show is also really interesting (at least to me, mainly because I created 2 stories with a similar idea without even knowing anything about it. Simplified, specific superpowers are just perfect for character designing, you know?) 

But I am kinda acting like the writing was bad, but it really wasn’t all things considered… I’m just not really into comedy, and when the comedy I don’t like is paired with writing and practically everything else I do like it doesn’t sit right with me. Considering this idea and some of the story beats were adopted from a DnD(-esque?) campaign, I feel like it’s much more fine. Frankly, I’m surprised I didn’t realize it sooner. Once I read about that, everything just fell into place. I’m not really into DnD either, though…

So, I feel like there are things to gain from thinking about this. While Epithet Erased is still on the mind, I feel like I’ve realized something about the juxtaposition of comedy and sincerity, that being that comedic characters can exist in sincere surroundings, and vice versa. Zora specifically could be one of these characters, because she’s so powerful that she probably sees everything around her as trivial, while the other characters have more sincere reactions to her obscene power. She could easily crack a sick joke that no one laughs at because she’s the only one who can find humor in whatever’s going on. By contrast, the thing about Mera’s fear of ducks was a product of the scene and not of the character, so it just ruined things. Nothing about it was made to be funny to the characters, it was made to be funny to the audience, even though the audience should be in sincere mode then. 

Another character that I think works like this is Charlie from Hazbin Hotel, who is the sincere personality in a world of complete and total insincerity. She’s basically a more unique kind of straight man (despite being neither straight nor a man), who are always the grounding in comedic casts, like Squidward in Spongebob. I guess in sincere stories there are comedic relief characters, and in comedies there are straight men. You know, these are probably all things other people have figured out already… at least I can feel good knowing I sort of reached them on my own…

    I think a good solution for stuff that’s primarily meant to be a comedy is to make it almost entirely comedic, at least with the inclusion of a straight man if needed. The big name that comes to mind is good ol Monty Python, the backbone of 14 year old boys’ humor style. At some point I realized why I like the humor of The Holy Grail, at least above other comedic movies, is that they don’t hold back at all. At no point whatsoever do they pull back the veil and put in a sincere moment. And, of course, since I can basically recite the entire movie from memory I think it did wonders. I think when it comes to comedies like this, trying to be too sincere at certain points makes it feel even less sincere than if it didn’t have the sincere moment at all. This might be a product of the 00s American family-rated live action comedies who all feel like they fall into that same boat, where the entire movie is hijinks, but then at the very end they pull that all back and have something really impactful happen, with the idea being having some shoehorned message about “family” or whatever. I can group so many movies into that category that it feels almost corporate how many there are like that, and because it’s both overdone and geared towards too generalized of an audience, trying to capture the comedy-lovers and sincere-lovers, it really just fails in both ways. Or, maybe people love them because they’re just barely bad enough to enjoy it in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way. I dunno. If I wasn’t a little nostalgic for the time those types of movies might be my all-time least favorite.

    But I’m a stick in the mud who hates comedy so I’m not really equipped to tell anyone how to do it right. Instead, I feel like there’s some seriously untapped potential in other forms of “feel-good” tones, like casual lightheartedness and just plain fun. I feel like those two things really work towards creating sincere stories that are still enjoyable, and not just one shot of sadness after another, while still having a dash of impactful emotion in them.

    I feel like this is where Pixar really shines. People say “It’s not a true Pixar movie if you don’t cry at the end” because I think Pixar movies are great at making the audience lower their guard, and when the moment is right, hitting you right in your heart to make you feel the right emotions. For example, what I’d call my favorite movie of all time (for intents and purposes, if not for real), Inside Out, is all about emotional sincerity, where it’s trying to get across how it’s okay to feel sad, even though the world around you tends to say happiness is always what you want. For most of the movie, it’s a pretty casual romp around the inner workings of Riley’s mind, with some jokes thrown in (because it doesn’t have to be completely without jokes). I’m not really sure how to explain it, but the various jokes in Inside out feel like they’re sort of blended with the interesting workings of this fantasy mind-world, like the fact that earworms are just the little blobby workers in our minds sending the memory of the song back up to the control panel for the hell of it, or that our dreams are a product of a Hollywood-like place in our minds. These things definitely are there for humor, but something about them feels much more fun than just any kind of generic comedy. 

    Then, I feel like the most important thing about fun and lightheartedness is that they feel like they blend so much better with the sincere moments. Obviously if it’s too quick it’ll still be bad, but I think it’ll be much less bad than with comedy. Maybe you could think of it like a spectrum with pure comedy at one end and pure tragedy at the other, with fun and lightheartedness just barely crossing the midpoint towards the comedy side. Since there’s less of a gap between it and tragedy compared to pure comedy, it feels less jarring. Plus, it just feels more reasonable logically speaking, since comedy sort of puts up this insincere barrier to sort of suspend the disbelief that the events in question are supposed to be taken seriously, which makes breaking that barrier harder once it’s established. With fun and lightheartedness, there may be an expectation of it sort of maintaining itself but there isn’t as much to say there isn’t something hiding in the background. In Inside Out at least, throughout Joy and Sadness’ journey they are pretty determined to get back to the control panel to save Riley, but they’re for the most part confident they can do it (or, you know, just Joy’s confident), so they sort of interpret the world around them in a more casual light, but with that lower-level need still there. But when Joy falls into the abyss of forgotten memories and the hopelessness sets in, you feel it much more, because it was sort of already there to begin with, and it was just made perfectly clear at that moment. I think Bing Bong’s emotions during the scene also make it pretty emotional, since he’s being casual about his death while also being sincere about his sacrifice for Riley’s sake. Not to mention his inner sadness was outed while talking with Sadness.

    I feel like if I were trying to write an actual essay I could probably phrase all this a lot better. I just think there’s a ton of value to lightheartedness in stories, as opposed to comedy, for the sake of “feeling good.” Pretty much all of my favorite things have that tone to them to some degree, like Wander Over Yonder, my for sure favorite TV show. It definitely feels fun in a way that can elicit laughs, but it’s not a lot like “This is a joke and you should laugh” most of the time (Disregarding the Evil Sandwich, my least favorite character in the show). I also think Steven Universe succeeds very well with that tone, creating an extremely comfy atmosphere when it comes to the less climactic episodes. 

    I also vastly prefer the lighthearted resolutions to the conflicts in lighthearted stories. Frankly, I am infinitely more likely to cry to a comfy and happy resolution than I am to the actual sad parts. I’m not really sure what it is about them, but I guess the characters finally being happy again after emotional turmoil warrants a happy-cry. I swear, if I think too hard about the scene where Riley finally admits her sadness to her parents and just sits in their warm embrace, I tear up. It feels so much better than hijinks-danger-hijink resolution. 

    But yeah, the stories I want to write the most will all inevitably have that sort of lighthearted flair to them, unless of course I choose to go more inherently serious with a story. There’s nothing wrong with that either. 

    With regard to the really big claim I made before about there being too much humor in the world, the themes of Inside Out, and what I said about comedy’s insincere barrier, I really think the world as a whole would benefit from valuing humor a little less. It feels like there are so many situations where people sort of want to maintain their good feelings with humor instead of more directly dealing with issues in a sincere mindset. For example, if people say something disagreeable (but not insane), It feels like too many people resort to making jokes at that person’s expense and not dealing with the issues directly. Obviously if someones saying some insane bullshit it’s fine, but when the more reasonable takes that are just barely put under the same umbrella as the insane shit are made fun of, it really deepens the trench between the people of different opinions. Of course, humor isn’t the only thing deepening that trench, but it really feels like one of them a lot of the time.

    Apart from that, I feel like using humor as a way to distract from general negativity and negative emotions like what Inside Out sort of warns against can be pretty detrimental too. Obviously happiness can still be around, but putting up that kind of barrier between you and the necessary sincerity for emotion with comedy just makes the unpleasantness of the unpleasant stuff that much more unpleasant. I’m saying this one at least out of personal experience, since I have sort of developed to be too subconsciously against super sad and sincere real world scenarios. I haven’t personally felt too many of them myself, but I definitely feel myself blocking off some of my own emotional vulnerability, especially around other people. I can consciously talk against it, like I’m doing now, but I feel like it’s going to take a long time for that barrier to really break. Is humor to blame for that sort of thing? Maybe, with a dash of toxic masculinity and other buzzwords people often avoid for reasons I mentioned in the last paragraph. 

    Even though this one is much more unreasonably generalizable than the last two things, I feel like the popularity of self-deprecating humor across the internet also (probably?) takes a toll on some people. Obviously some people might just use it to their genuine benefit, but since it seems so common surely some people are putting on a self-deprecating face to get along, and eventually maybe even believing what they used to joke about themselves. Either way, it might be a product of an extreme departure from any kind of narcissism, making being self-confident and self-loving just that little bit harder for people.

    But, while I’m not the most equipped to judge writing, I’m even less equipped to actually debate for the existence of all those things, so just know I’m kinda speaking with my heart and not my brain here. People obviously want and need different things, and I’m probably just projecting. Hell, maybe that’s me self-deprecating to not make me seem weird to everyone else. I dunno.

        No matter what, all this reliance on humor really just shows who is and isn’t funny. Sometimes, people really need to get a grip. Frankly, I don’t think I’m that funny either, which is why I’ve kind of had the humor beaten out of me by one too many awkward silences after a weird joke in my elementary/middle school days. I guess that’s my cartoon villain origin story. 

[quicklyseverebird]

Why I became politically activated (agitated), or why I became a Trump supporter.

All the cards on the table, I doubt anyone will read this, especially anyone to whom it might make a difference or change a mind.  This is a textual equivalent to shouting into the wind, and at the moment of writing these words, I don’t even know if I will post them anywhere.  Yet I find clarity in writing things out, and in light of the state of our country, I want to organize my stream of consciousness to see why and how I got here, to where I stand now, at this point of time.

I used to pride myself on my lack of political involvement.  I used to all but sneer when people got all worked up about political issues.  Such things were distant and had no seeming impact on my life, though I did my civic duty and voted whenever possible, because that’s what you do in a republic, and you have no right to complain about the results if you did nothing to affect them.

So, when Trump first mentioned that he was running for president, I just rolled my eyes and chuckled like anyone else.  He was vain, self-promoting and way too quick on the Twitter finger.  He’s no one I would want to have over for dinner, but now I’m glad he won and I hope he wins again.  I don’t think anyone else’s ego would have been able to weather the storm we’ve gone through over the past 4 years.  Especially not a politician, who survives mainly by going wherever the wind of public opinion blows.

But I’m not a Republican, so I can’t vote in their primaries, so when he rose to the top, I was as surprised as anyone else.  So, who was my other option?

Hillary Clinton, the poster child of political corruption and cronyism, whose scandals and crimes make a bigger volume than all the books she’s written explaining(complaining) about her loss.

2016 is when I had my political awakening and started to really look around at what was happening in the culture around me.  Perhaps it was because I was a parent to a child on the cusp of adolescence who would soon start to be immersed in it.  What I saw terrified me.

America had a rising group of Nazis infiltrating our culture.  And I don’t mean the stereotypical skin heads we all revile and view with disgust.  And I don’t mean the paltry 10-11k white supremacists in our country of 365 million (per Anti-defamation League data).  No one took them all that seriously, because their bigotry was all too obvious, easily exposed, and they were, quite frankly, too few to matter.

No, I mean a real group of extremists who were Nazi’s in all but name.  Who actually made a point of labeling anyone who disagreed with them a Nazi, in fact.  Who with seeming ignorance of the historical irony of their actions, re-enacted every deed performed by the black and brown shirts of pre-WWII fascist Europe.  They worked to shut down free speech (of anyone whose position differed from their own), attacked and intimidated anyone who challenged them with threats physical, verbal, professional and political, advocating literal book burning, public destruction of property, and most sneaky of all, enacting a new form of acceptable racism into a form that some have compared to a state-sponsored cult or religion.  I saw the blossom in 2016, and now I am seeing the fruit.

A couple weeks ago, I watched, in horror, live on television as the Krystal Naught was reenacted in my own city and cities across the country.  Since then I’ve seen these groups claim territory, terrorize and destroy businesses and residents’ homes.  Most often—again in seeming unconscious irony—those belonging to the very people they claimed to be fighting in support of.  The term terrorist is apt, as well as zealot.  They subvert groups of well-meaning people to their own political ends and rain down terror on anyone who disagrees with them, up to and including actual physical harm, and provoking situations that wind up in death.

They are left wing, just as the Nazi’s were, born from a communist/Marxist foundation with an emphasis on race, instead of class, as their dividing point.  It’s not the proletariat and bourgeoisie anymore, it’s <insert minority group> vs white.  The irony that most of these individuals are themselves, white, seems—of course—to be lost on them.  Fascism is socialism with a nationalistic and racial focus.  It was invented by a student of Marx as a way of making socialism feasible.  Apart from the nationalistic bent, this group follows the same formula.  Anyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi or some kind of “-ist” or “-phobic.”  It’s a marvelous rhetorical device.  Say you’re not racist, well that that’s proof that you are!  Try and bring up a factual point that disagrees with them, and they slap you with a label and claim through intersectionality politics that they don’t have to listen to you or any facts you might have to offer because you are from the “wrong group.”  They only have to listen to details or views on an issue from a group appointed and designated by their ideology.  No one else could ever offer a differing position.  And those from the group in question who DO disagree with them?  Well obviously, they are “race traitors” and their views don’t matter either.  After all, a person is only a part of the “right group” if they agree with these people.  If this took place in Nazi Germany, they would have been called “Jew-lovers.”  I’ve literally watched people of color assaulted, abused, called racial slurs, by white people.  (yes, there’s that irony again.)  I’ve watched POC being told by these individuals, unaware of their actual skin color, to check their white privilege because obviously they have to be white if they disagree with their position.  I see this inherent and rampant racism every time I post my own views and watch as people assume I’m a white man because…I hold the “wrong view.”  Why would race even matter to whether or not what is being said is true or accurate, unless you're a racist?  They have all their groups in neat and tidy boxes, with their assigned positions and “proper,” “permitted” viewpoints and anyone straying from the herd must be culled.  I’ve watched them tear down statues of the men who gave them their rights, and statues of the men who freed slaves or died to free them, even black heroes!  They’ve torn down statues built to commemorate abolitionists in the name of…racism…  They paint a street, claiming that it is free speech, but when someone else paints on the same street, it’s a hate crime.

They are, in fact, the most racist people in our country, and they revel in it because they feel it’s justified.  Place any of these people in Nazi Germany and they would be chomping at the bit alongside the Fuhrer at the "outrages" the Jewish race had inflicted on their country and the "privileges" they possessed.  Their racism is “justified!”  It is “right!”  I have no doubt that, if our skin color didn’t already distinguish us from one another, the mobs roaming our cities now would be demanding something akin to pink triangles or stars of David be worn by the designated parties.  We can see their racism clearly wherever they find a position of power and are allowed to organize themselves.  We watched an utterly self-unaware Chaz/Chop re-institute Jim Crow laws and create race-designated locations, parks, gardens, etc.  Whenever they find themselves in power, they organize themselves along racial lines.  Given enough time, they would probably have created separate bathrooms and drinking fountains.

Like the Nazi’s of Germany, they thrive on division and fear.  It gave the Germans a sense of purpose and pride coming out of the Great Depression following WWI.  In today’s world, they never would have risen so far or so fast if not for the economic devastation following Covid-19 and the many frustrated, unemployed, frightened people it left in its wake.

And they do it all in the name of “racial” or “social” justice, and justify their rampant racism that way. They excuse their racism in the name of…racism.  It leaves one wondering if these are either the most historically ignorant and self-unaware people in human history, or if they are literally evil.  And I don’t use the term evil hyperbolically.  I don’t mean mustache-twirling villains in black.  No one really evil believes they are evil.  The Devil himself thought his actions justified.  Evil always justifies itself, masks itself as good, and this allows them to do even greater harm, for no one does more damage than an intellectual fool who believes they are doing the right thing.  The only thing greater than mankind’s tendency towards evil is our ability to convince ourselves that it is good.  And oh, they lie, and they lie, and they lie.  They lie about events where they were the aggressors.  They lie and even post videos of the event proving they are lying, boasting about their lies, because they know that they won't be held accountable, and their lie is being spread faster than the truth, and the people in authority will allow this.  Far from being counter-cultural, they are now a state-sponsored, state-supported non-theistic religion.  The similarities with a cult are creepy.

The truth is, they aren't interested in eliminating racism. In fact, as we can see from these protests, they make racism worse!  And they do so deliberately.  Why?  Because they aren't interested in lives, no matter the color.  They aren't interested in actual justice.  More black lives alone have been killed by these protests, by actual BLM and Antifa people, than unarmed black men were killed by cops across the country in all of 2019.  Perhaps we should defund/disband them.  They are militarizing racism the same way the Nazi's did, to gain power.  It's not about lives, it's not about actual violence or inequality, it's about the Movement. It's about gaining power and influence in society.  And it is working the same way it did back in Germany.  When you have literally white, leftist people attacking and calling black people racial slurs because they don't agree with their positions, and then claiming they are against racism....

So, let’s see here.  We have an international organization born from the German Communist Party, with localized cells but a unified ideology, cooperative networks, shared finances, a common uniform, trademarked logos and merchandise, who ferment racial tensions to gain political power, create divisions between communities, seek to destroy anyone who would stand in their way through threat of violence and intimidation, destroy history, hide in screens of “useful idiots” seeking to be a part of a cause that they stir into “protests” so they can create further unrest and violence, all so they can gain power for their ideology.  And all the while, claiming to be the victims of the people they attack so they can claim the moral high ground.  Self-defense in the face of the mob is “racist.”  Protecting your property is a sign of “privilege” that must be purged, even as they loot, burn, destroy homes and businesses of the people whose lives they claim to want to protect.  

Explain to me how, exactly, they aren’t exactly like the Nazi’s before the rise of Hitler?  They are a socialist organization, with a racial element that use intimidation, threats of violence, doxing, actual violence and harm to anyone who disagrees with them or stands in their way to gain political and social power.  A literally evil ideology that has caused more death and suffering to mankind than any other in history, that has failed everywhere it was implemented.

And all the while the media propaganda praises them, just as they did Hitler (who himself won Time’s Man of the Year award, recall).

If you want to know if you are one of the good guys, then ask, which side supports freedom of speech?  Which supports liberty?  Which side doesn't advocate for violence as a means to their ends?  Which side are literally attacking their opponents?  Are people better off when you are in control, or not?  I think we can look at the smoldering ruins of our cities to decide where these extremists stand.

So, why did I become politically activated/agitated?  It wasn’t some YouTube channel “radicalizing” me.  I am not a MAGA fanatic or Trump fan.  What motivated me was seeing the rise of a new, evil authoritarian power in America.  They wear a different mask, but their actions speak for themselves.  They are the REAL neo-Nazis.  It doesn’t matter what they call themselves now.  You can change your name, but your deeds remain.  Your title doesn’t define you; your actions do.  If it quacks like a duck….  The Right didn’t pull me to their side, you on the left drove me here in fear for my life and the future of this country.  The fear is only growing now as I see official after official bow (sometimes literally) to these groups.  If they gain any more political power, I shudder to think of the world my daughter will inherit.  Will she be the new Anne Frank?  The Right isn’t the one making threats or calling me names if I disagree with them.  You are.  They don’t threaten my life or my family’s future.  You do.  They aren’t the people approaching with devastation in their wake.  You are.  You activated me.  I can only hope enough other people will see you for what you are and be activated as well.  God help us all if you ever gain power.  Some of them are literally already calling for anyone who disagrees with them to be imprisoned in "re-education" camps.  No lie.  This cannot happen.  Never again.

[pidgetyy]

My application for The Underpass, a roleplay hosted by @fireflythenightlight (and which I found through my dear friend @validwofjobs). Legacy is a mostly-human, slightly-pheonix girl who loves planning ahead, making new friends, and her two identical pet giant geckos, Lychee the pet leachie and Guinep the familiar leachie-salamander. The rest about her can be found in these incoming walls of text under the cut!

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Backstory- 

Legacy grew up with an older and younger sister, the treasured “only son” of her parents, especially her father. Her name, before she realized she wasn’t a boy and chose a new name for herself, was Terrence. Her family lived in an apartment above a pet reptile store, run by her father. She got her familiar, Guinep, as well as her beloved pet, Lychee, when she was 8. She bonded with Guinep especially as her familiar, but the identical Lychee received plenty of love too, and in the first few years she had trouble telling apart the identical and closely bonded New Caledonian Giant Geckos by anything other than their temperament- Guinep was very calm, but Lychee tended to be a lot more snappish. Lychee followed Guinep’s lead in warming up to Legacy quickly, but remains a little aggressive towards strangers. 

Legacy was almost 15 when she finally admitted to herself that she didn’t think she was really a boy, after two years of suppressing and refusing to believe her own feelings. She began to grow her hair out, and stared longingly at the girl’s section of stores, but didn’t dare to expose her identity to her parents, whose reactions she couldn’t predict in the slightest. After about a year and a half of planning and psyching herself up, she finally had the guts to come out to her parents. The fallout didn’t come to the extremes she’d read many a horror story of online, of physical abuse or conversion therapy, but her parents still refused to acknowledge her preferred pronouns or name, and began to threaten homeschooling her, to keep “their only son” away from “the influence of those queer friends of yours.” She refused to be homeschooled, and her parents responded that, if she insisted on this, then they wouldn’t be paying college tuition for a daughter they didn’t have. Upset to say the least, she haphazardly packed the belongings she thought of first and could fit in her backpack, and left. It was the largest decision she had made in her life, and it was completely unplanned.

Her grandma on her mother’s side lived in a small house halfway across the city, and Legacy hoped her parents hadn’t shared the news with her about her identity, because she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. It came as a surprise not that her grandmother knew, but she actually accepted Legacy, scoffing and asking her to “give me your real name, girl” when she introduced herself grudgingly as Terrence. For the next few months, she lived there happily, upset about some of the belongings she had forgotten to bring but definitely not willing to go back to her parents, who didn’t bother to come find her (after her grandmother had sternly told them over the phone not to come unless they were going to treat their daughter right). Her grandmother bought her real girl’s clothes, and even helped her dye her hair a bright shade of bubblegum pink she’d had her eyes on for months. She finished highschool a semester early, something she had already been planning to do since before coming out. Her grandmother, unfortunately, was starting to decline in her old age. She was in stage 4 of Alzheimer’s disease, beginning to get to stage 5, when she was finally deemed no longer able to care for herself and was placed in an elderly person’s home to be cared for. By that summer, Legacy was back on the streets, preferring them against going back to her parents.

She took a job as the sole member of the “Maintenance Crew” of a cafe/coffee shop in a slightly busier part of the city in order to pay for her own living necessities and her leachie’s. From age 17 to the start of rp, Legacy worked there, cleaning up spills, keeping tabs of what sanitary supplies needed restocking, and keeping the rest of the shop sanitary. She made use of the keys she had to the shop, coming in before dawn, and definitely before opening hours, to clean the shop and then to clean herself, and fix her hair to look presentable. On particularly cold nights, she would spend the night there, more to keep her beloved pets warm than for any other reason. Though her high body temperature was usually enough to keep herself and the leachies warm, she didn’t want to risk any of them getting sick on especially stormy or windy winter nights. Most nights, she would instead find a friend happy to lend a couch for the night, or a fellow homeless person she trusted enough to watch her back while she slept next to, for safety reasons.

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Personality-

Legacy is a generally cautious and consistent person. She sticks to her daily routine and her plans rather than acting spontaneously without thought. Unexpected changes and surprises are strongly disliked, because she hates being unprepared for something and sometimes has trouble dealing with surprise changes to her own plans because of that. Besides not being a big fan of practical jokes, she tries not to act outwardly uptight or prissy in social situations, even if her careful organization, tidiness and plans may make her seem like it. Most people wouldn’t pinpoint her as a homeless kid if they saw her, because she dedicates a considerable amount of time and money to making herself look very clean and neat. Half of the backpack she wears is filled with two other outfits, which she mixes-and-matches often. When she feels like a fashion change is in order, she’ll donate some clothes and buy new replacements for them at a local clothing exchange store. 

Her careful and well-put-together nature stems from a deep fear of making mistakes. Legacy hates the thought that she might make some mistake, do something wrong that could ruin her life as it is now, or change it beyond recognition (even if the change was for the better). So instead, she chooses inactivity. Though she could probably find a permanent place to live if she got a second job and saved carefully, she doesn’t, and instead spends most of her paycheck on unnecessary things like new clothes when she no longer needs it to buy food and water for her and her pets. She waited and planned for over a year to come out to her parents, and it still didn’t end well, so now she just tries to avoid taking any risks like that again (besides hiding her gender- she’s definitely done doing that. She presents as female and uses her real, chosen name. Most people don’t even realize she wasn’t born a girl). Legacy prefers to be a follower in social situations, rather than a leader. That way, she’s less likely to take the brunt of the consequences if a wrong decision is made. Safer. She prefers being safe, and right now her routine and life is safe and predictable, so she doesn’t see a need to change it or plan to end up anywhere else in her life.

Her caution about life decisions and other areas doesn’t quite extend to the social side of her life, however. Legacy’s a people person and a definite extrovert. She likes to surround herself with new friends at any chance she gets, and has a great memory for faces and personal details. Since middle school, she hasn’t forgotten a friend’s birthday or favorite color. Stranger’s opinions generally don’t have the power to change your whole life around, so with that low-risk assessment of friendship Legacy goes at making friends with a sort of wild abandon. Her charisma isn’t exactly impressive, but that doesn’t matter when she can just walk away and try again with someone else if the first person doesn’t seem to like her all that much. Even though she could listen to details about a person she barely knows for hours, and loves to learn new details about anyone, she’s dismissive of people’s opinions, especially if they’re about her. Few people have ever managed to become such an ingrained part of Legacy’s life as to earn the title of “Friend I actually care about and will make an effort not to lose.” Legacy shows up at many a party, flitting between groups for a while usually before finding someone she likes enough to hang out with for the rest of the night or couch-crash with, but refuses to get any farther than slightly tipsy even if the drinks are free. Being drunk is far too risky a thing for her to ever have attempted, even as tempting as it sometimes was. Party-going and friend-making are a few items on the short list of things she rarely, if ever, plans for.

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Extra Facts™-

-She is, by a small percentage, a Phoenix hybrid (1/8th, or 12.5 percent to be precise) by her great-grandmother on her mother’s mother’s side. She doesn’t have the identifying wings because of her lack of more phoenix-hybrid ancestors, but does have the noticeably higher body temperature and small flame-producing ability. She doesn’t have a ton of control over the flames, and they’re likely to appear, purposefully or not, when she’s feeling strong emotions.

-her favorite color is, by far, pink. Second is light green.

-Partially because of favorite-color influence, partially because of its sweet flavor, her favorite food is watermelon.

-She isn’t a vegetarian, but she generally doesn’t like meat very much. 

-She wishes she had the spare money to afford an instrument. Legacy used to play the flute in her middle school band, and loved it, but she left it behind in her parent’s house.

-Lawful neutral

-She’s a Libra (her birthday is September 28th)

[birdlord]

Every Book I Read in 2019

This was a heavier reading year for me (heavier culture-consumption year in general) partly because my partner started logging his books read, and then, of course, it’s a competition.

01 Morvern Callar; Alan Warner - One of the starkest books I’ve ever read. What is it about Scotland that breeds writers with such brutal, distant perspectives on life? Must be all the rocks. 

02 21 Things You Might Not Know About the Indian Act; Bob Joseph - I haven’t had much education in Canada’s relationship to the Indigenous nations that came before it, so this opened things up for me quite a bit. The first and most fundamental awakening is to the fact that this is not a story of progress from worse to better (which is what a simplistic, grade school understanding of smallpox blankets>residential schools>reserves would tell you), in fact, the nation to nation relationship of early contact was often superior to what we have today. I wish there was more of a call to action, but apparently a sequel is on its way. 

03 The Plot Against America; Philip Roth - An alternative history that in some ways mirrors our present. I did feel like I was always waiting for something to happen, but I suppose the point is that, even at the end of the world, disasters proceed incrementally. 

04 Sabrina; Nick Drnaso - The blank art style and lack of contrast in the colouring of each page really reinforces the feeling of impersonal vacancy between most of the characters. I wonder how this will read in the future, as it’s very much based in today’s relationship to friends and technology. 

05 Perfumes: The Guide; Luca Turn & Tania Sanchez - One of the things I like to do when I need to turn my brain off online is reading perfume reviews. That’s where I found out about this book, which runs through different scent families and reviews specific well-known perfumes. Every topic has its boffins, and these two are particularly witty and readable. 

06 Adventures in the Screen Trade; William Goldman - Reading this made me realize how little of the cinema of the 1970s I’ve actually seen, beyond the usual heavy hitters. Ultimately I found this pretty thin, a few peices of advice stitched together with anecdotes about a Hollywood that is barely recognizable today. 

07 The Age of Innocence; Edith Wharton - A love triangle in which the fulcrum is a terribly irritating person, someone who thinks himself far more outré than he is. Nonetheless, I was taken in by this story of “rebellion”, such as it was, to be compelling.

08 Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis; Sam Anderson - Like a novel that follows various separate characters, this book switches between tales of the founding of Oklahoma City with basketball facts and encounters with various oddball city residents. It’s certainly a fun ride, but you may find, as I did, that some parts of the narrative interest you more than others. Longest subtitle ever?

09 World of Yesterday; Stefan Zweig - A memoir of pre-war Austria and its artistic communities, told by one of its best-known exports. Particularly wrenching with regards to the buildup to WWII, from the perspective of those who had been through this experience before, so recently. 

10 Teach us to Sit Still: A Sceptic’s Search for Health and Healing; Tim Parks - A writer finds himself plagued by pain that conventional doctors aren’t able to cure, so he heads further afield to see if he can use stillness-of-mind to ease the pain, all the while complaining as you would expect a sceptic to do. His digressions into literature were a bit hard to take (I’m sure you’re not Coleridge, my man).

11 The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences have Extraordinary Impact; Chip & Dan Heath - I read this for work-related reasons, with the intention of improving my ability to make exhibitions and interpretation. It has a certain sort of self-helpish structure, with anecdotes starting each chapter and a simple lesson drawn from each one. Not a bad read if you work in a public-facing capacity. 

12 Against Everything: Essays; Mark Greif - The founder of N+1 collects a disparate selection of essays, written over a period of several years. You won’t love them all, but hey, you can always skip those ones!

13 See What I Have Done; Sarah Schmidt - A retelling of the Lizzie Borden story, which I’d seen a lot of good reviews for. Sadly this didn’t measure up, for me. There’s a lot of stage setting (rotting food plays an important part) but there’s not a lot of substance there. 

14 Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy; Angela Garber - This is another one that came to me very highly recommended. Garber seems to think these topics are not as well-covered as they are, but she does a good job researching and retelling tales of pregnancy, birth, postpartum difficulties and breastfeeding. 

15 Rebecca; Daphne du Maurier - This was my favourite book club book of the year. I’d always had an impression of...trashiness I guess? around du Maurier, but this is a classic thriller. Maybe the first time I’ve ever read, rather than watched, a thriller! That’s on me. 

16 O’Keefe: The Life of an American Legend; Jeffrey Hogrefe - I went to New Mexico for the first time this spring, and a colleague lent me this Georgia O’Keefe biography after I returned. I hadn’t known much about her personal life before this, aside from what I learned at her museum in Santa Fe. The author has made the decision that much of O’Keefe’s life was determined by childhood incest, but doesn’t have what you might call….evidence?

17 A Lost Lady; Willa Cather - A turn-of-the-20th century story about an upper-class woman and her young admirer Neil. I’ve never read any other Cather, but this felt very similar to the Wharton I also read this year, which I gather isn’t typical of her. 

18 The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months of Unearthing the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country; Helen Russell - A British journalist moves to small-town Denmark with her husband, and although the distances are not long, there’s a considerable culture shock. Made me want to eat pastries in a BIG WAY. 

19 How Not to be a Boy; Robert Webb - The title gives a clue to the framing device of this book, which is fundamentally a celebrity memoir, albeit one that largely ignores the celebrity part of his life in favour of an examination of the effects of patriarchy on boys’ development as human beings. 

20 The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (And Your Children Will be Glad that You Did); Philippa Perry; A psychotherapist’s take on how parents’ own upbringing affects the way they interact with their own kids. 

21 The Library Book; Susan Orlean - This book has stuck with me more than I imagined that it would. It covers both the history of libraries in the USA, and the story of the arson of the LA Public Library’s central branch in 1986. 

22 We Are Never Meeting in Real Life; Samantha Irby - I’ve been reading Irby’s blog for years, and follow her on social media. So I knew the level of raunch and near body-horror to expect in this essay collection. This did fill in a lot of gaps in terms of her life, which added a lot more blackness (hey) to the humour. 

23 State of Wonder; Ann Patchett - A semi-riff on Heart of Darkness involving an OB/GYN who now works for a pharmaceutical company, heading to the jungle to retrieve another researcher who has gone all Colonel Kurtz on them. I found it a bit unsatisfying, but the descriptions were, admittedly, great. 

24 Disappearing Earth; Julia Phillips - A story of an abduction of two girls in very remote Russia, each chapter told by another townsperson. The connections between the narrators of each chapter are sometimes obvious, but not always. Ending a little tidy, but plays against expectations for a book like this. 

25 Ethan Frome; Edith Wharton - I gather this is a typical high school read, but I’d never got to it. In case you’re in the same boat as me, it’s a short, mildly melodramatic romantic tragedy set in the new england winter. It lacks the focus on class that other Whartons have, but certainly keeps the same strong sense that once you’ve made a choice, you’re stuck with it. FOREVER. 

26 Educated; Tara Westover - This memoir of a Mormon fundamentalist-turned-Academic-superstar was huge on everyone’s reading lists a couple of years back, and I finally got to it. It felt similar to me in some ways to the Glass Castle, in terms of the nearly-unbelievable amounts of hell she and her family go through at the hands of her father and his Big Ideas. I found that it lacked real contemplation of the culture shock of moving from the rural mountain west to, say, Cambridge. 

27 Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of Lusitania; Erik Larson - I’m a sucker for a story of a passenger liner, any non-Titanic passenger liner, really. Plus Lusitania’s story has interesting resonances for the US entry into WWI, and we see the perspective of the U-boat captain as well as people on land, and Lusitania’s own passengers and crew. 

28 The Birds and Other Stories; Daphne du Maurier - The title story is the one that stuck in my head most strongly, which isn’t any surprise. I found it much more harrowing than the film, it had a really effective sense of gradually increasing dread and inevitability. 

29 Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Faded Glory; Raphael Bob-Waksberg - Hit or miss in the usual way of short story collections, this book has a real debt to George Saunders. 

30 Sex & Rage; Eve Babitz - a sort of pseudo-autobiography of an indolent life in the LA scene of the 1970s. It was sometimes very difficult to see how the protagonist actually felt about anything, which is a frequent, acute symptom of youth. 

31 Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party; Graham Greene - Gotta love a book with an alternate title built in. This is a broad (the characters? are, without exception, insane?!) satire about a world I know little about. I don’t have a lot of patience or interest in Greene’s religious allegories, but it’s a fine enough story. 

32 Lathe of Heaven; Ursula K LeGuin - Near-future sci-fi that is incredibly prescient about the effects of climate change for a book written over forty years ago. The book has amazing world-building, and the first half has the whirlwind feel of Homer going back in time, killing butterflies and returning to the present to see what changes he has wrought. 

33 The Grammarians; Cathleen Schine - Rarely have I read a book whose jacket description of the plot seems so very distant from what actually happens therein. 

34 The Boy Kings: A Journey Into the Heart of the Social Network; Katharine Losse - Losse was one of Facebook’s very earliest employees, and she charts her experience with the company in this memoir from 2012. Do you even recall what Facebook was like in 2012? They hadn’t even altered the results of elections yet! Zuck was a mere MULTI-MILLIONAIRE, probably. Were we ever so young?

35 Invisible Women; Caroline Ciado Perez - If you want to read a book that will make you angry, so angry that you repeatedly assail whoever is around with facts taken from it, then this, my friend, is the book for you. 

36 The Hidden World of the Fox; Adele Brand - A really charming look at the fox from an ecologist who has studied them around the world. Much of it takes place in the UK, where urban foxes take on a similar ecological niche that raccoons famously do where I live, in Toronto. 

37 S; Doug Dorst & JJ Abrams - This is a real mindfuck of a book, consisting of a faux-old novel, with marginalia added by two students which follows its own narrative. A difficult read not because of the density of prose, but the sheer logistics involved: read the page, then the marginalia? Read the marginalia interspersed with the novel text? Go back chapter by chapter? I’m not sure that either story was worth the trouble, in the end. 

38 American War; Omar El Akkad - This is not exclusively, but partially a climate-based speculative novel, or, grossly, cli-fi for short. Ugh, what a term! But this book is a really tight, and realistic look at the results of a fossil-fuels-based second US Civil War. 

39 Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation; Andrew Marantz - This is the guy you’ll hear on every NPR story talking about his semi-embedding within the Extremely Online alt-right. Most of the figures he profiles come off basically how you’d expect, I found his conclusions about the ways these groups have chosen to use online media tools to achieve their ends the most illuminating part. 

40 Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm; Isabella Tree - This is the story of a long process of transitioning a rural acreage (more of an estate than a farm, this is aristocratic shit) from intensive agriculture to something closer to wild land. There are long passages where Tree (ahem) simply lists species which have come back, which I’m sure is fascinating if you are from the area, but I tended to glaze over a bit. Experts from around the UK and other European nations weigh in on how best to rewild the space, which places the project in a wider context. 

FICTON: 17     NONFICTION: 23