#also while the rabbit hole animation is kind of... something- the song is really good and kinda catchy! DECO*27 did great there!! 👍👍 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

erodasfishtacos · 4 years ago

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could u please do like a harry x youtuber/influencer!reader and like lots of fluff🥺

Hi bubbie! Here you go :)))

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: Language

Harry was panicking. His mum and sister were going to be here in less than two hours and he’s burnt the eggplant parmigiana he had worked tediously on.

He grabbed what he had left in his fridge - ground beef, shredded cheddar cheese, and a little bit of bacon.

It was the type of foods he usually strayed away from so sometimes when his shopper would bring this stuff home - he’d avoid it and admittedly sometimes it would go bad sitting in the fridge.

The singer pulls up YouTube onto his phone - hoping something would come up when he typed in the ingredients on the search bar.

He clicks on the first video by cookingwithnofucks. A chuckle at the name as an advertisement plays.

A cute, bubbly girl appears on screen in a beautiful modern kitchen. She has a shirt on that says ‘fuck the patriarchy and eat pizza’. A high ponytail and minimal makeup.

“Okay - today we’re making a cheeseburger casserole,” the girl chirps, “It’s a heart attack in a dish but it’s so fucking good.”

Harry finds himself smiling as he crinkles his nose - it sounds absolutely disgusting but he’s intrigued more by the girl on the screen.

“Shit, I forgot to introduce myself. Hiii, if you’re new - I’m Y/N and I do cooking shit. Subscribe to my channel and all that jazz,” she titters while cutting open her beef package.

Harry follows along step-by-step, shaking his head as she doesn’t describe the instructions nearly well enough and is generally all over the place.

It’s a fucking cooking channel and at one point the meat starts burning. She just laughs and says, “s’just a little crispy!”

The casserole turns out looking even better than Y/N’s to be honest. It’s done in just the right amount of time for him to shower before his family arrives.

He makes sure to subscribe to her channel - eyebrows raising when he sees that she has 16 million subscribers.

Harry wanted to spend longer, looking at her social media but there was a fixed time so he locked his phone and went to get ready.

Anne - always the sweetheart just tells Harry that the casserole is delicious even as a bit of grease runs down her fork from the fatty meats.

Gemma wasn’t as kind, grimacing at the casserole and remarking, “You truly are turning into an American, huh?”

Laying in bed that night, Harry swipes back onto YouTube. Going back to the page he just subscribed to - under a pseudonym. He clicks on another video.

“Uh, okay. So I’m cooking...fuck, it’s called unicorn bark. It looks like a magical animal puke but it looks delicious so we’re going to try it.”

Harry realizes he’s been watching this girl cook for nearly an hour. Different videos from desserts to dinners.

She curses like a sailor, fucks up almost every recipe, and makes a mess everywhere. But she’s smiling and talkative which makes him quite memorized by her.

“I hate editing,” Y/N groans, letting her head fall dramatically against the desktop. Her best friend and dog looked at her oddly.

“I keep saying you need to hire someone, you stubborn bitch,” Laney retorts, clicking through her Instagram feed.

“Fuck off,” she tells her friend with no real heat. The video was almost fully edited - how to make spicy as fuck jalapeño poppers.

There is a calm silence for a while until Laney gasps, “Holy shit.”

“What is it?” Y/N asks, not really caring as she clicks her mouse to trim a segment.

“Harry fucking Styles just followed you on Instagram and Twitter!” Laney shouts, her dog - Rufus popping his head up in confusion.

Y/N looks at her friend to see if she’s really serious and sees no signs of deception. “Oh my god,” Y/N replies. She loved Harry Styles in One Direction and as a solo artist - a fangirl if you will.

Y/N was a well-known influencer and has run in the circles of many celebrities. She’s even met Liam Payne but she’s never been able to bump into Harry.

Her alerts tell her it to be true, she swallows as she looks back up at Laney, “He dm’ed me.”

“Open it! What did he say?” She squeals, squeezing herself on the chair next to her, peering over her shoulder at the phone.

Y/N is a bit nervous, trying not to have a mini aneurysm as she opens the message thread.

HarryStyles: Hello. Just wanted to let you know that your cheeseburger casserole recipe saved my ass last night. Cheers x

“He’s totally coming onto you,” Her friend states instantly, bouncing excitedly - she also had a bit of a crush on the singer.

It takes the two of them a minute to cool their shit before Y/N manages a reply.

Y/N/LN: Well I guess it’s only fair. Your songs have made a few of my nights much better. I’m a bit of a slut for Fine Line.

Harry laughs behind his screen at the cheeky reply he gets back. He’s usually never this forward - especially on social media where he likes to fly under the radar.

HarryStyles: Well if you fancy my music that much, I totally love for you to come to a show. I’m performing in New York City in two weeks.

“This has to be a joke, right?” Y/N sputters to her friend, eyes wide at the invite to a concert she already had tickets to.

Y/N/LN: I’m not going to lie, I already have tickets to the show. However, I don’t have any backstage passes to meet the man of the hour. Do you know someone who can hook me up?

It does wonders for Harry’s narcissism to know that she already had tickets for his concert. Was he really going to do this? He hasn’t met up with some like this since his One Direction days.

He had to remind himself - she may just be friendly and take this as a totally casual interaction. Which would be normal, Harry really shouldn’t be so infatuated with someone he’s watched cook on social media.

HarryStyles: I think I can arrange that. Shoot me your number? I’ll have them sent digitally to you with instructions on how to get backstage.

Y/N is a bit dumbfounded at how fast they agreed to meet up. A harmless backstage tour - he could just be a fan of hers and totally not interested, right?

Over the next few weeks, they never really stop texting. Harry sends her pictures of the recipes he copies off her channel - that usually always look better than the original. He sends her clips of him goofing around during tour rehearsal. FaceTimes her when he’s finally home for the night.

She sends him videos of her watching Harry Styles Best Moment Part Five. A few photos she snaps throughout the city of him on billboards and buildings, in Times Square. YN facetimes him when she’s frustrated with filming or watched a sad movie.

It didn’t make sense to either of them how seamlessly they’d clicked - especially without meeting. They were a perfect balance for each other. Harry - laidback, organized, level-headed. Y/N - eccentric, all over the place, adventurous.

Jeff had told him that he’s been gaining media attention from his social media interactions with Y/N. They like each other’s photos, begin following each other’s friends, and comment goofy things on their posts.

“Listen, I have a great idea,” Y/N begins - which Harry learned is never good. “You should film a video with me sometime.”

Y/N knew she was going out on a limb and instantly regretted the questions she’d been building the courage to ask for days when it’s quiet on his end. There’s static for a moment and Y/N needs to fill the silence.

“It was - I was just, uh, I know you’re probably too busy. I was -“ She stutters, embarrassment flooding her.

Harry cuts her off, “I’d love to.”

“Yo-you would?” She asks timidly. Was she really going to have Harry Styles in her apartment? If so, should she take down her poster?

He laughs sweetly, “Why do you sound so surprised? I can’t wait to come to New York, love.”

Y/N giggles, “Not the fact that you’re performing in front of a sold out crowd at MSG? I don’t think seeing me will top that.”

“I’ve been looking forward to meetin’ you in person since I came across your channel. You so lovely,” Harry replies, his voice a little softer but more serious.

“I’m nervous,” Y/N admits, picking at a thread in her jeans.

“Me too,” Harry murmurs, despite not wanting to admit it - he wanted her to know this was new territory for both of them. He didn’t want her to think that this was something that he did often. But a little too prideful to admit it’s the first time he’s ever done something quite like this.

“What if you don’t like me?” Y/N whispers, she...well she didn’t compare to the models he’s been seen with before. She’s regretfully fell into the rabbit hole of looking up his past flings and relationships.

Harry barks out a disbelieving laugh, “You can’t be serious, darling. I’ve been gone for you since I saw you burn that ground beef.”

Harry was having a bad day - scratch that. An awful one. He tried to go get coffee at eight in the morning and got bombarded by fans, he left the shop without even ordering. They followed him back to his car and it took him fifteen minutes to pull out.

His favorite Mickey Mouse Gucci suitcase he was bringing along on tour had busted. The zipper unraveling and the trim falling off as a result. It was a one-of-a-kind.

Then he’d been stuck on a Skype meeting about tour merchandise with a group of business partners for the last three hours - all he wanted was a fucking nap.

When Y/N’s contact vibrated across his screen, he’s itching to answer but declines as he needs to give these people his attention.

When she calls again, Harry feels a prickle of annoyance. It’s not even at her - to be quite honest. It’s just the shitty day and everything’s piling up.

He always got like this before he kicked off a tour - stress level maxed out and his ability to handle minor incidents nearly shot.

I’m busy

Okay! Sorry, just have a super exciting surprise for you, bub!

I really do not feeling like talking. I’d rather be left alone.

Oh, alright. Hope everything’s okay! Do you still want to facetime later?

Harry leaves her on read because he doesn’t want to slip up and take out his frustration on her. He’d been known to do that and he didn’t want her to think he was anything but besotted with her.

Y/N feels a little hesitant as she begins the uploading process to her channel. The red loading bar told her it’d be twenty-minutes before it’s going to be posted to her 16 million subscribers - one of them being Harry himself.

Twenty-minutes for her to back out and cancel the upload. She starts having doubts about it when Harry never replies to her text which is unlike him.

She takes Rufus out to avoid staring at the loading screen with unnecessary anxiety and uneasiness.

Harry is just getting home from a business dinner with the touring company’s management team. The tension and anxiety from today piling up on his shoulders and he just wants to call Y/N and crash in bed.

He tosses his keys in the little bowl in the entry and kicks off his dingy white vans to the side. His phone dings with an alert from Gemma.

You two are the literal cutest ever. It’s quite gross.

Harry slides onto a stool in his kitchen, confused by the text message before she’s sending the link to him.

Fine Line Inspired Cupcakes!

Harry isn’t quite sure why his heart starts pounding furiously in his chest. A sinking feeling in his stomach when he realizes that this was probably the surprise she was excited about.

He clicks on the thumbnail.

“Hiiii, it’s Y/N. Okay, well today we are going to bake some Fine Line inspired cupcakes. And if you haven’t listened to the album - get your ass out from rock you’re living under and stream it on Spotify!”

She has her hair down in long, waves and a loose cropped shirt that says TPWK in rainbow embroidery.

Harrys mouth is dry and he can’t take his fucking eyes away from the screen.

“Soo, I was thinking the first batch would be cherry flavored? ‘Cause he has a song titled ‘Cherry’. Let’s start there. First - I need to find my measuring cups.”

In true Y/N fashion, she scours her kitchen - cussing and yanking stuff out of her neatly organized cabinets before huffing and storming off to the side.

She comes back into view, a little frazzled but smiling when she holds up the ring of plastic measuring spoons, visible bite marks notched into the material.

“My asshole of a dog had a little snack,” Y/N shows the camera before shrugging, “Let’s get this shit started. Okay, you’re going to need one cup of sugar - no wait, two? I can’t read my fucking handwriting.”

Harry’s absolutely enamored by this scatter-brained, giggly girl who manages to produce cute blue and pink cupcakes that very vaguely resembled his album cover. His heart felt a million times too big for his chest.

He was enraptured for the entirety of the thirty minute video without taking his eyes away once.

To be honest, he hadn’t felt this way since his last relationship which was over a year ago at this point.

It’s not even a thought as he’s requesting a FaceTime with Y/N.

She answers after a few rings. She has a green face mask painted on her nose, chin, and forehead with gold eye masks under each eye. She is so fucking ridiculous it’s not even funny.

What is even more ridiculous is how gone Harry is realizing he is for her. She was quirky, unfiltered, carefree. If he was honest - he hadn’t met a girl like that in a very long time - especially a well-known influencer.

“Hi! How was your day, grumpy?” Y/N asks brightly, making a goofy face as the mask begins to tighten and crack on her skin. Not holding the earlier conversation against him and deciding to just move forward. She understood how stressful it can be.

“M’sorry. I was a bit grumpy,” He admits, “I loved your new video, darling. Did you make those just f’me?”

He can tell she’d be blushing if her face wasn’t covered, a bit bashful as she mutters, “You already know I did it for you.”

“You’re too sweet to me, only six days until we meet,” Harry replies, voice taking on a slow, lazy drawl.

“Six days,” Y/N repeats, eyes crinkling as she smiles with excitement.

“Is this outfit too much?” Y/N panics. Even though there’s literally nothing she can do about it - they’re already walking towards the backstage entrance of the massive arena. It’s still about two hours until the show starts but Harry requested her to come earlier.

Laney sighs, “For the millionth time, you look fucking sexy and Harry’s going to want to rail you right when he sees you.”

Y/N shoves her lightly with a faux annoyance as they meet up with a burly man who’s blocking the entrance to the backstage hallway and rooms.

She gives him their names and pulls up the passes on her phone before he’s nodding with any expression and letting them pass.

They’re not quite sure where to go from here so they begin to wander down the long hallway toward what looks to be the main area that people are milling about.

Y/N is nearly on the ground when someone rounds the corner without looking and walks right into her. Both of them let out huffs of air as they collide and attempt to stabilize themselves.

But there are large hands grasping her arms and holding her steady. In typical Y/N fashion she’s already cursing, “fuckin like a brick wall, look out next time.”

Then she’s looking up to Harry staring back down at her with an amused expression. He doesn’t let go of her and instead tugs her against his bare chest. He’s warm and a bit sweaty - like he’d just worked out. He was only in a pair of thin, running shorts, nike tennis shoes, and a little clip holding his hair off of his face.

Y/N can’t help but wrap her arms around his waist, returning the embrace and amazed by how right it feels to be in his arms. Her face tucks right against his collarbone and it’s like they’d known each other for years.

Pictures and videos don’t do this man justice. He’s gorgeous - sharp edges and dark inked skin. Tall and muscular but dimples that are carved in his cheeks.

“Nice to meet you, m’Harry,” Harry rumbles, removing one hand from Y/N’s shoulder to reach out his hand to her friend.

Laney shakes his hand before asking, “Laney. I’ll leave you two lovebirds be. Where’s the food?”

Harry chuckles against Y/N’s wavy hair, “Down the hall to the left.”

Laney’s trailing off without another glance, she was very food motivated despite her skinny frame. Also not wanting to intrude of the very personal first moments of their meeting.

The popstar pulls back to look down at the girl he’s fallen for in mere weeks. She’s as beautiful as he thought she'd be - if not more. He can’t help himself, “Would it be too forward to kiss you?”

Y/N smiles widely, running a hand along his jawline, “I’ve wanted you to kiss me since you stayed up on FaceTime with me until two in the morning as I cried after watching The Notebook - despite me seeing it a million times.”

Harry ducks forward to press his lips softly to her, large hands come to cup the side of her face as they connect. He’s so gentle as he moves his mouth against hers. In true Y/N fashion, she’s bold and has no hesitation slipping her tongue into his mouth.

He’s so fucking in love with her. It doesn’t make much sense - it’s definitely not logical but he’s realizing that’s okay.

“Oii, get a room!” Someone shouts from down the hallway teasingly.

Harry flips them the middle finger and pulls back, pink lips swollen and puffy, dimples on full display, “Let me take you out to dinner after the show, darling.”

“You going to wine and dine me, Styles?” Y/N giggles, unable to contain the pleasant warmness he’s spreading through her body.

“Mmm, have t’make sure you’ll want to keep me,” Harry murmurs happily against her lips once again, pressing kiss after kiss to her to make sure she’s real, “Definitely want to keep you.”

Y/N bites teasingly at his bottom lip, hand planted on the soft but firm skin of his stomach, “You’re never getting rid of me, hope you know that.”

“Was hoping you’d say that, now let me introduce you to my band.”

-- ---- ---- -- 1 year later - -- --- --- --

“Hi bitches! Today is a super special day. We have the one, the only Harry Styles filming with us. I know that’s not really that special since he’s on here all the time with me. But we’re celebrating our one year anniversary!” Y/N smiles, bumping hips with Harry who stands dutifully next to her.

Anyone viewing can see the absolute heart-eyes and adoration he has for the girl standing next to him. He’s still as lovestruck and gone for her as he was the first time they met. Harry’s fans were thrilled - for the first time in years, he’d opened up again.

They weren’t very public on social media beside’s tagging each other in memes and posting the occasional picture. Y/N was constantly uploading cooking videos from wherever in the world she was with Harry on his tour, she’d also begin making vlogs about different foods she’s been experiencing.

---

“Okay, so here in Peru - they’re known to have this really fucking spicy beef with noddles. So obviously, I’m going to make Harry try it first,” Y/N laughs as she props the camera up on the side of the table on a napkin holder.

Harry - who has a concert in a few hours - frowns at the steaming dish in front of him, “Darling, I don’t want to try it first. It’s going to burn my mouth. Not gonna be able to sing.”

“You’re sucha baby sometimes,” Y/N rolls her eyes, slurping up the noodles with her fork while making a silly face at her boyfriend. She pulls back, straight-faced, “It’s not hot at all. Tastes amazing, though.”

Harry takes that as an initiative to shovel a spoonful into his mouth. It only takes half a moment until his taste buds erupt in fiery flames from the spices, “You bloody little brat, y’tricked me! It’s so fuckin’ hot!”

Y/N smiles widely, laughing much too loudly in the restaurant when Harry chugs the glass of water next to the plate while glaring at his love. “I’m sorry, s’just to easy with you, lovie,” She replies, leaning over the table to press a kiss to his lips.

He’s a sucker for her and kisses her right back despite his mouth being an inferno. His heart was on fire for her and that burned much more intensely.

---

“No, love. The instructions say baking soda, not baking powder. They’re not the same thing,” Harry sighs, attempting to read her scribbled, sloppy handwriting. She’d already spilled milk on half of the paper.

“S’interchangeable, right?” Y/N hums, cracking an egg into the bowl and Harry automatically knows to look to fish out the eggshells that’d she’d let slip in because she sucks at cracking eggs but always wants to do it.

Harry reaches over her, grabbing the vanilla extract and a teaspoon, “It’s not, baby. Lemme do this real quick.”

“Will you make me a grilled cheese after this?” She asks, nuzzling into his side and wrapping her arms around his waist as he finishes adding the wet ingredients to their bowl. Harry stopped questioning her thought process a long time ago.

Harry swipes his finger into the mixture of icing off to the side and rubs it right onto her nose, cackling at her pout and squeaking when she pinches at the fleshy skin of his hips. She in turn dips her finger into the sugary cream and pops it right into her mouth.

Harry eyes darken, watching her lips purse as she sucks off the icing. It was a dirty move on Y/N’s part and she knows it. It has her boyfriend dragging an icing-covered thumb along her collarbone before leaning down to slowly lick up the sugary trail with his tongue.

When Y/N slides her fingers into his hair and lets out a pretty moan, Harry’s standing back up, trailing over to the tripod and saying into the camera, “We’ll be back after a little commercial break,” and is then turning off the record button.

It takes little to no time for Harry to have Y/N’s bum on the countertop, mouth on her neck, and hand in-between her thighs.

And when they finally posted a very edited final cut of the video - well there may be a couple of fans who notice the how flushed Y/N is halfway through and a lovely purple mark on Harry’s neck that wasn’t there in the beginning of the video.

#harry styles #harry styles writing #harry styles fanfic #harry styles writing request #harry styles fluff #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fic rec #harry styles prompt #harry styles x influencer y/n #harry styles smut #harry styles drabble

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otvlanga · 4 years ago

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Cicero oh so humbly asks the listener to make some headcanons about him~

Of course! Crackhead Crusty the clown, love the bastard. This is gonna be long.

- Cicero is a very good whistler. On days where his voice grew hoarse and faint from speaking to the Night Mother for hours on end, he’d opt to whistle a sweet tune for her instead. It’s one of the few things he can do in the sanctuary that won’t get on everyone else’s nerves. Though, at times it can be a bit creepy. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night in a dark, underground cave, and the only thing you can hear is an eerie, solemn whistle from a direction you can’t even discern. The fact that he’s an actual assassin and a jester makes it worse. He definitely does it to toy with his victims and freak them out when he’s traveling with the Listener.

- When he was much younger and much less insane, he was a bit of a ladies man back in The Imperial city, where he grew up. He’s always had a knack for sugaring up his words, especially so by song and prose, even before taking up the jester persona. He was definitely very good at using it to his advantage in his youth. He could charm near any woman willing to make eye contact, whether by reciting a memorized poem, or singing a sweet song. His silver tongue got him out of sticky situations where he almost got caught on his jobs as well.

- Get’s very antsy after a while without being told what to do or given a task. He’s dedicated his entire life to serving the Night Mother and the Listener, and being without an objective for too long really bugs him out. He literally doesn’t know how to function properly without having someone order him around and have him do things for them, it’s kind of sad.

- He has very vivid nightmares from time to time, where he’s back on his last contract when The Jester was killed. Only this time, he’s the Jester, and he’s under the raised knife of shadowy figure he can’t quite see. His chest aches from the action of manic laughter, but nothing escapes his open mouth. He’s wrapped in deafening, creeping silence as the shadowy assailant plunges their knife into his chest, again and again. He sees the night mother standing near him, peering silently, scrutinizing him with a disappointed and angry look. He knows she’s angry that he won’t laugh for her; instead, he’s dying in pathetic silence. No manner of grisly death or torture frightens this man, except the disappointment of his unholy matron. He’s almost shook back into sanity when he awakes, and many of the other members revel in the fact that Cicero is silent for once, unaware of the unfortunate reason why.

- His excessive attachment to the Night Mother stems from the unfortunate loss of his own mother when he was at a young age. On one summer night in the Imperial City, when the air was sticky and warm and the sun was melting out of the evening sky, his mother did not return from work. She was a strong-headed woman, hardened by a life of poverty and the struggle of surviving while raising a child alone. He scarcely remembers her now in his adulthood, but as a young boy he would trail her all around their small shed of a home, clinging to the ends of her tattered dress. She worked for meager pay as a seamstress, stationed daily in the back rooms of a clothing shop patching holes, sewing buttons onto robes, and trimming fabric. She never came come after the sun set, adamant on not leaving her son in the care of her elderly neighbors after dark. When the moon peaked through the dusk clouds, he was sent to bed by the elderly couple who watched him on his mother’s work days. When he awoke in the morning, and his mother still had not returned, his insisted on helping search for her. He was met with a firm “no, you should wait here while we go find your mommy” but he was not having it. He screamed and cries until they gave in and let him tag along. They had turned down an alley nearby at the sight of torn clothes discarded on the ground, and the old couple pushed him backwards and covered his eyes a moment too late, for he’d already caught a glimpse of his mother’s bloodied, lifeless body. He has no conscious memory of those moments, he has no memory of ever having a mother to begin with, and he has no memory of the folded paper left next to her body, with an inky black handprint smudged into the middle of it.

- He spent a good portion of his childhood after that at a rundown orphanage. He was a loner among the other children and scarcely spoke a word. He spent his waking hours playing by himself in the corner, picking apart dead bugs and skeevers with pins and shards of glass he found strewn about. He’d giggle and chortle as the blood smeared onto his hands, painting on scraps of old parchment with it. Any couple looking to adopt would immediately turn their gaze away from him, and onto one of his peers. He went many years without being brought to a new home until one day, close to his eleventh birthday, a pair of men dressed in darkened robes with red embellishments made their way inside the orphanage. Much to his surprise, they approached him. He was sat on the floor, carving away at his wooden bedpost with a dagger he most certainly was not permitted to have. For a moment he feared they would tell on him and get him in trouble, but they did nothing of the sort. Instead they asked his name, and when he murmured out a very shy “Cicero”, they took him by the hand and led him outside and to his new home. He was educated from that day on about the ways of the Night Mother, and the importance of the Five Tenets. He was glad to see there were a few handful of other children near his age at the new home that the two men called “The Sanctuary.” As a young child, with repressed trauma from his mother’s murder, he ate that cult shit up and immediately swore unwavering fidelity to the Night Mother and Dread Father, and not for a moment in his life did it ever diminish. Not in the silence of his matron, and not in the presence of the false leader.

- He really likes carrots because he finds it cool that they match his hair. Literally, that’s the only reason why. Ironically he also loves rabbits, despite hating most other animals. Probably smuggled a few pet rabbits into the sanctuary over the years growing up. Definitely pesters and prods the Listener/dragonborn to let him have one as well, now that they’re the leader and can demand the other members put up with it. Eventually he gets one and names it something stupid like Cornelius.

#cicero #cicero skyrim #dark brotherhood #listener #ldb #dragonborn #nazir #veezara #babette #festus krex #astrid #i forget the other girls name sry #skyrim #headcanons #tes #elder scrolls #lucien lachance

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forgiveness-in-the-misery · 4 years ago

Text

Toki’s Psychological State Through the Seasons

Toki is by far for me personally the most interesting member of Dethklok; I know to some degree he’s deemed as a potentially over hyped character by fans and even the show itself, but there’s countless reasons why people cling onto that character, and they’re good reasons. Even if said reasons just come down to “I think he’s neat.” that’s valid.

For me I am so fascinated with his character development, personality, and the varied chunks of background information we get about him throughout the series. A big part of this character is that when you look at him in season one compared to season four he is very different or at least he appears to be much different. Season one does establish that Toki does have a childish personality, his bedroom looks more like a room for a kid than one for a guy in his 20s. Season one establishes those basic facts about him that do heavily carry out through the show, but also increase as the show goes on.

Toki goes from immature but not overly immature to....a complete fucking wreck by the finale of season four (before Doomstar) and the reason for it is simple; it’s trauma.

Toki starts to act differently in season one after the Dethfamily episode; he spends practically that entire episode in a catatonic state, his parents always looming nearby like figures of danger and doom. After this we do get to him being bitter about being seen as immature and seen as the kid of the band (despite the fact he was barely 16 when he joined Dethklok) and when a charity informs him that a dying girl wants to meet him he turns into a complete prick. He finally comes out of that when he sees a video the kid made of herself singing a song about death and hatred, with that scene we see a small flashback of Toki’s childhood; him about the little girl’s age standing out in the snow staring up at his parents looking confused and a moment later he’s being smacked across the face.

We could already gather beforehand when we found out he came from a very devout religious sect outside of Lillehammer that his childhood was sketchy, plus how he locked up when around his parents, but seeing the flashback of him being hit as a little boy.....Answers the obvious question of “did they beat him?”

Season one is the least eventful of the seasons. Season two is when shit begins changing drastically.

Season two Toki receives a call to inform him that his father has cancer and is on his death bed, the family and the church wants him to return to Norway to see his father. He acts completely fine about this initially, the phone conversation and the way he announces his father’s terminal illness to the band is as if somebody just asked to borrow his car. When it gets close to time to actually go and when they are in Norway it’s different though; he becomes anxious and clearly uncomfortable, in Norway he stays in town mostly, stalling around places he went to as a kid and a teenager before he ran off to America.

He does handle his father’s dying well once he finally convinces himself to go inside his house and see him then follow through with his father’s dying request to carry him up to his old childhood home (which goes wrong because his friend’s are dicks.)

I am not going to go into personal detail at all and my situation was nothing like Toki’s (it’s incredibly rare to hear situations like that anymore), but Toki handling his father’s passing freakishly well kind of was a red flag for me, because I know from my own experiences that when you find out something complicated like a terminal illness or the death of your abusive parent theres’ a chance you may respond way too calmly to it, and then later down the line days or months or years later something will trigger a big reaction to it. Which is what happens.

After handling his dad’s death well we get the most iconic scene involving Toki at that point and honestly still the most iconic; he beats a man to death with his bare hands. The thing that triggers this is a hallucinated image of a rabbit, an animal he associates both with his father and his childhood, the image of it triggers him to fly into an insanely feral blind rage taking it out on a guy who had been annoying him all night. Toki has always throughout the entire series shown signs of being a tad violent, but never THAT bad. Sure he shot down a plane and had accidentally caused a death or twenty (the whole band is, it’s part of the sacrifices to the Gods deal) but we had never seen him before or after that moment beat somebody to death. That is new and it came from a place of pent up....shit. Shit he never worked through and even after that continued to not work through.

Because after this we lead into him worsening further; he begins drinking. A lot. The band consist of dudes with addiction issues, mainly alcohol, but Toki never seemed to drink quite as much as them until after he went feral on that straight edge guy.

Toki deals with his childhood trauma in several ways:

He drinks. A lot.

He focuses on fantasy and daydreams to keep himself from focusing on his past.

He spends a lot of time with Dr. Rockso who takes advantage of his kindness often, he also spends gross amounts of money bailing his clown buddy out of jail. Constantly.

He occasionally gets violent, but never to the point of manslaughter.

Seasons three and four are when we get fully introduced to Toki acting like a kid more than a guy in his 20s and it makes sense. Toki didn’t have a childhood; we learn that his parents essentially made him into a slave at a young age having him do pointless “chores” like sweeping snow during a storm, carrying stacks of wood much too heavy for a small child, etc. and when he failed to work quickly enough or failed a task they punished him. They punished him by locking him in a shed, they punished him by chaining him up like an animal, they punished him by smacking him, by beating him with a bull whip, and worst of all (who knew it could get worse) they would force him to stay for long periods of times in a deep hole dug into the ground. A hole where he hid a clown doll made of twigs and straw, the only friend he had as a little kid.

From all that we can gather through the show he didn’t exactly have a social life of any kind until his teens, the older he became the braver I think he became, and that was responded to with worse violence from his parents. I think the statement in season one about a vision of father killing son wasn’t totally off, I think if Toki had never run away from Norway that his father would have murdered him. I think his parents knew somehow that he isn’t entirely human, they knew he was something else, and I do think his parents had plans to kill him before he could become “too powerful”.

That aside though.....Once we the audience as well as his friends find out far more details about his horrifying childhood Toki changes. A lot. He’d already been immature and a tad bit off but he regresses further after that, more prone to depression and outbursts, clinginess, and a need to feel like he’s loved by pretty much anybody.

This is a dude who is about my age that came to the horrid realization that any person or animal he loves will die because that’s his “gift”, the gift of death. He works his ass off to repress and rationalize a brutally nightmarish childhood, and the guys he’s in a band with who he loves and sees as his family....are dicks. We know that when he joined Dethklok before they got famous that they were all close, but when they began becoming popular and became immensely wealthy the others became more focused on self indulgence and power, less focused on this still a child who desperately just wanted a family.

I think a key factor with Toki being the way he is comes down to the band’s “no caring” rule. A rule that only existed because of Magnus. Toki is the baby in a group of people who have known each other for a good while, people who came to an agreement to not give a shit about each other for a reason they never explained to him because it’s too painful for them to think about. I think he always tried to live by that rule of not caring, he tried to bury all the shit wrong with himself the best that he could but he was never good at it. It’s also clear they all care about each other and they definitely care about Toki; Nathan and Skwisgaar often being the most protective of him.

In season four aka the season where the show becomes less of a comedy and more of a drama with stunning animation. Toki is immensely more immature and awkward, he’s clingy with the band especially where Skwisgaar is regarded. Near the end of season four he’s completely fucked up; he splits his time between Rockso (his comfort object) and Magnus (a father figure to replace Nathan) in the dinner episode which has so much going on in it. So much. Toki is at his lowest point in the series; he shows up late, drunk as fucking hell, shirtless, and covered in bruises and cuts. Rockso is with him and when Charles tries to tell him Rockso shouldn’t be there Toki goes into a full fucking anxiety attack until Charles tells him it’s fine to have the clown there. Toki’s heavily dependent on Rockso by that point; his found family is quickly falling to shit. God knows what kind of shit Magnus might have been feeding him about the band at that point.

Toki’s entire thing from day one/the pilot of the series is that he just wants a family. When he feels like he doesn’t belong in the one that he found and was taken in by he searches for family in other places, when he can’t handle the memories of his childhood he spirals hard. I understand that the guys didn’t really know how to handle it after they heard about Toki’s childhood so I can’t fault them completely for just.....shoving him off onto Rockso after that, but I still think they should have tried to be there for him more so, more directly. I think an outlet that isn’t a drug addled clown might have helped him in some way, I think if when he’d been a teenager if one of them had found out about his upbringing and just pointed out “that isn’t okay, at all.” then things might have panned out differently.

Mental regression isn’t uncommon when it comes down to victims of trauma caused by extreme abuse. Especially considering his trauma all occurred basically from the get go; he was a child slave, the closest I would guess he ever got to having a childhood when he was a kid was seeing other kids childhoods. Going into town and seeing kids playing, sneaking into birthday parties just to be around other kids his age, etc. and he definitely was childish as a teenager, but I think he tried to bury that side of himself when his bandmates started teasing him or pointing out how unmetal it all is.....But then a douche bag journalist brought his parents to America, a little girl died, his abusive father died horribly (as he should) in front of him, he beat a man to death (allegedly), etc.

He spent a lot of years away from all the trauma and the death and the bull shit then suddenly it started piling on top of him again and his escapism was fantasy, clinging onto a junkie clown, partaking in childish hobbies.....because why not?

Each member of the band suffered some messed up shit when they were kids and it shows in different ways, this is Toki’s way of dealing with it....or not. I’m not entirely sure what his psychological state would be post Doomstar; the way he bounces back from immense trauma makes me think that he would be okay given some time and that’s a safe assumption to make, especially now that his bandmates/family will be there for him the way he needs them to be.

I want to tag @theidiotwiththepaintedface who hopefully will enjoy this painfully long deep dive into a character’s psychology lol.

#metalocalypse #dethklok #toki wartooth #character analysis #tw: child abuse

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demansiabites · 2 years ago

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10, 13, 22, 23, 27 pls

10. The first op I E2′d was Ash. It was a nightmare. I was pretty damn early into the game, and E2ing a 6 star was bad enough, let alone a limited op that required so much high tier elite material. I still remember that I needed D32 Steel and Polymerized Gel for her, just not the quantities of each.

13. I’m not good enough at the game for “troll tactics” but while screensharing with friends I started saying “hold on I’m boutta baba booey this guy” before activating Texas’s S2 on a Sarkaz Lancer right before he hits her at full speed. I had like a 90% success rate with baba booeying the lancers until one of them hit her going full speed and I had to sit there like I just witnessed a car accident. The game is to let them get as close as physically possible before stunning them, and make sure you time it properly because Texas’s S2 won’t stun until the sword actually falls and hits the enemy.

22. Favorite event was Dossoles Holiday by far. Loved the music, the atmosphere, loved Candela, loved the main plot essentially being “triathlon plus terrorism”, really loved that I got Ch’en the Holungday on like my second ten pull that was pretty cool thanks for that Hypergryph. The stickers were also a lot of fun to use, and I think should definitely be brought back at some point.

23. It’d be easy to say Liduke seeing as I’m a huge W simp, and also I love Eunectes and Schwarz, plus Blitz essentially is the reason I even got into the game because I saw him and then went down a rabbit hole that led me into being an Arknights fan. But truth be told, I’m also a big fan of Ryuuzaki Ichi (竜崎いち). Not only do I always think of the Nearls as being incredibly well designed characters, but also they did so many of my favorite outfits. Modeling Night, Serenity, Lone Climber and Seventh Night’s Awakened just to name a few. Still love Liduke’s work as well though.

27. Okay so when they say “soundtrack” I’m not sure if they want like, full ass events, but I’m going to instead share some of my favorite individual tracks from Arknights just because I love them a lot. The answer to favorite event music though is Dossoles Holiday, that’s the easiest answer I could give. Some of my favorite individual tracks, however, include, in order of most to least obvious (except the last one that was a separate addition):

-Ain’t Seen Nothing Like This | Straight up had this in my playlist for a long time after it came out. Only reason it’s not in there anymore is because I don’t use playlists anymore, but I fucking adore the song, and the animation just is fucking amazing.

-Emperor’s Blade Theme | The epitome of “why do I hear boss music”. I don’t play Arknights with audio most of the time since I play it on my actual phone 90% of the time, so when I went out of my way to listen to some themes this one fucking blew me away. It reminds me a lot of something I’d hear in Super Mario Galaxy, which is one of the highest compliments I can give a track. Listening to it makes me remember the fear I felt back when I still wasn’t good at the game, and Walk in the Dust came out. I was barely scraping by using Kyostin’s guides to beat levels, and Emperor’s Blade fucking kicked my teeth in. I didn’t end up beating the level until months later on my own without a guide. My autodeploy still isn’t safe on WD-8.

-Golden Age Will Return Again | Kind of unfair because it’s not out in EN yet and I’m solely an EN player, but this song genuinely went so hard in the 3rd Anniversary Stream that I went out of my to listen to it on my own and I fucking adore it. Sea shanties are top tier, and this one is an orchestral dream composed specifically to make me feel as much shrimp emotion as I possibly can. I cannot wait for Stultifera Navis.

-Lungmen Battle Theme | My favorite of the generic battle themes as far as I’m aware, it reminds me a lot of Mega Man X for some reason. I’m not sure if that’s grounded in reality, I haven’t played Mega Man X in years, I’m pretty sure it’s not, but the actual track is fucking amazing and every time I listen to it I remember that it is in fact as good as I remember. Of all the tracks I’d recommend listening to it’s this one, because it’s easy to miss it if you don’t play with volume like I do.

-Dossoles Lobby BGM | If I could have like, background music for my life I’d want it to be this. As I formerly mentioned, I didn’t play this game with audio, but whenever I was playing during this event I’d turn my audio on because I wanted to listen to this track. I never turn my phone’s volume up. This is responsible for 25% of my love of the Dossoles Holiday event, and that’s a shit ton considering it’s my favorite event.

#arknights #ask game #anon you have added years to my life for sending in an ask

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hypnoticwinter · 4 years ago

Text

Down the Rabbit Hole part 1

It's five in the afternoon just outside of Corpus Christi and I and my poor old Elantra with the broken AC are stuck in a traffic jam because some dickhead decided he wanted to cut across five lanes of traffic and got mangled by a semi truck. And then the jam’s compounded by all of the damn lookie-looes slowing down to a crawl as they squirm through the two lanes still open, the metaphorical arteries of the gigantic beast that is the United States highway system, trying to get a good look at something gory on the way home.

I'm slowly melting into my seat, barely able to keep my eyes open. I keep glancing over at the water bottle I'd set snugly into the passenger seat, my cupholders being full with spare change and old receipts and little mini bottles of hand sanitizer, but just the way the sun's reflecting off of it makes me sick thinking about how warm the water would be by now.

I'm a few cars back from the wreck now. A police officer, looking sweaty and tired, steps out into the road, stopping traffic to let a couple of paramedics cross. A loud radio ad is playing in the car next to me and I look over. The guy in it looks about as done with this as I feel. I smile to myself, go back to watching the wreck.

The paramedics have stopped now and are talking to the policeman in the middle of the road. He looks annoyed, gestures at the cars ahead of him. One of the paramedics shakes his head and points back towards one of the cars.

The radio ad ends and the throbbing beat of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" comes on and I find myself singing along under my breath without even thinking about it.

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray

South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio...

Another paramedic joins the group in the middle of the highway and then they hustle over to the wreck. The police officer gestures and we move fractionally forwards, then stop again. The asshole in the giant pickup truck ahead of me has decided to stop and watch them peel the door off the crushed sedan like the scab off a fresh cut. I can see something pink and fleshy and hurt-looking inside, where the driver's seat ought to have been, and I look away quickly.

We didn't start the fire

It was always burning since the world's been turning...

I end up meeting the eyes of the guy in the car next to me. He's bobbing his head along to Billy Joel and gives me a somewhat sheepish, embarrassed look. He's balding, looks about forty. A tired, haggard, sweaty face. I roll my eyes and smile at him and he smiles back. Someone behind me honks and I twist backwards and give him the finger, really slam it at him against the dirty rear window. We're rolling forwards so slowly that it's absurd to even honk, just people blowing off steam. I suppose on some level it's equally absurd to give him the finger for it, but whatever.

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball

ARPANET, Free Tibet, what's in Mystery Flesh Pit?

Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, space monkey, Mafia

Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go...

Wait. What?

Now that we're past the wreck the highway widens out. More lanes open and the guy next to me merges over to the left. Billy Joel's voice disappears into engine noises and honks and the sound of the wind whipping past my open windows, but I still keep thinking about the lyrics I had just mouthed along to.

What the hell is a Mystery Flesh Pit?

I glance over at the phone sitting in its holster on the dash but something about the way the car I’d just past had crunched in on itself like a discarded candy wrapper makes me think better of it. I shift a lane or two to the right, get in line for my exit, and then I'm off the freeway. I make every light on the way to my apartment, all four of them, and it's just enough time that I forget about the line in the song. I jump into the shower and let the cold water run over me for fifteen minutes, which turns into thirty, which turns into forty-five, which turns into an hour.

When I get out I'm shivering but the warm Texas air blowing through my open window wraps me up like a warm hug, and I shrug into a flannel shirt, leave it unbuttoned. I put my cigarette out, leave it crumpled in the ashtray, stifle my coughs. I’m still not used to smoking this much. I eye the half-empty pack laying on the table but I let it alone.

The letter I received yesterday is on the kitchen table where I'd dropped it. The envelope is still on the floor somewhere. I think about going back and reading it again, or going and finding the envelope and throwing it away, but I don't want to. There wouldn’t be a point.

My phone buzzes; I see the name of the contact and let it ring. I don’t want to talk to him.

Outside, down in the courtyard, an old man is taking his dog for a walk. There is a vast darkened array of clouds closing in from the east and it already smells like rain, the wind is carrying it. I might take a walk too, later tonight.

I go back to the dresser and take my shirt off, slip a bra on, and then put the shirt back on. I almost light another cigarette, then I stop myself.

What the hell is Mystery Flesh Pit?

I had almost forgotten. Almost, but not quite. Billy Joel got stuck in my head and while I'd been puttering I'd hummed along until I got to that verse.

I shake my head and go get my laptop, type it into google half-expecting to find a porn site. A few travelogue type posts, a Wikipedia page...I click on that one and get hit with a redirect. Permian Basin Superorganism Containment Area? ("Mystery Flesh Pit" redirects here. For the defunct U.S. National Park, see...)

I read the page, and then I stop. The growing sense of unease I felt while I devoured the Wikipedia article is now almost too much for me to handle.

This can't possibly be real. This has to be a prank or something, some kind of internet joke gone out of control. I click on the link to the National Park and see pictures, too many and too high quality to be faked. It's like something out of a Michael Crichton novel but it's real. It has to be.

The Permian Basin Superorganism (Immanis Collosseus), I read, is a subterranean organism unique to modern biology, being the sole occupant of the Phylum Immanemqa. The organism was discovered by a pilot well drilling crew in 1973; later efforts were made to expose more of the organism through drilling and surface mining explosives. The Permian Basin Superorganism is notable for its immense size, being the largest living animal on the planet, its equally immense age, and for the degree and sophistication of human exploitation concerning the animal, culminating in the opening of a National Park largely within the creature’s body, allowing visitors to descend within the Permian Basin Superorganism and…

I read about gullets and bones and digestion, about an ancient animal of some kind living baked into the stone and earth outside of Gumption, Texas. I read about the sheer enormity of it, I read about how a mining company turned it into a tourist attraction, splitting its throat wide open with metal retaining walls and letting people ride an elevator a thousand feet down into its insides. I read about ballast, some kind of secretion exuded by the creature that acts as a kind of panacea, healing afflictions untouchable by conventional medicine. They made great baths out of the glands that produced it, let people bathe in its diluted aphrodisiac waters. I read, finally, about the 2007 disaster that closed the park, when a pump failed to activate and drowned the thing, making it wake up – god, wake up? – and swallow almost seven hundred people, making it spew caustic vomit so high into the air that there are still pockets of it being found here and there nearly a hundred miles away, burning into the ground and poisoning water tables. And the way they managed to get it to go back to sleep is classified by the US Government. Did they nuke it? Christ, Gumption is only...okay, well, it's about five hundred miles away, so I guess I'm a little less concerned, but, god, this happened in the same state as me and this is only the first time I'm hearing about it. July Fourth, 2007...

I realize after a moment, with a strange little knot in my stomach, that actually, I did hear about it. I wasn't in the state in 2007. It was four years ago, I'd just gotten out of school and I was still in Oklahoma, but I remember my parents telling me about an earthquake at midnight that they'd felt, that woke them up, knocked a couple of things over. I had never known...

I feel a little like I've just woken up and gone to the bathroom and looked outside and all of a sudden the sky is a bright green, and everybody I ask about it just looks at me really strangely and says that it's always been green.

I google my way all over the internet, looking at photos people have taken decades ago on their family trips, hosted on filesharing sites or on ancient GeoCities-era pages. I see smiling families, people in hiking gear, people swimming inside biological hot springs, people digging pitons into great sheer walls of flesh, not minding the blood that gushes out. I see a shaky video someone's taken of their television, of CNN back on the Fourth of July, 2007, I see a vast bloody pit, carved into the great flat nothing of central Texas.

I feel like my head is spinning. I get up, get away from the computer, grab another cigarette and smoke it slowly, standing on the balcony, looking out over the sprawling cityscape in the general direction of Gumption, Texas, or at least where I think it should be. If north is that way, then…

Alright. It's real. There's enough evidence, photographs, videos, spread across so many different web sites that it would be impossible to fake. I look up an old rating list of National Parks, making sure that it's from around 2004 or so, and find Mystery Flesh Pit near the bottom. The tiny two-sentence blurb describes it as "strange," "horrifying," and "easily skippable," so I guess that could also explain why I had never heard of it.

And, of course, the ballast. Some kind of miracle liquid. I read on Wikipedia that they’d tried to synthesize it after July 4th, after the supplies had been cut off, but no matter how molecularly perfect they could make the compound it was so much drossy bathwater, without the power to cure even a hangnail. It has to come straight from the source for it to be any good - who knows why.

There is a slow, anxious curl unwinding in my stomach, and for a moment, I fear the results it may lead me to.

I look at the map I'd opened in another tab again; Gumption, Texas; a tiny little county named after a tiny little town, or so I've heard. Now that I’m thinking about it, I vaguely remember passing through Gumption once, very briefly, during a family road trip back when I was six, but I don't remember much more than that. The only reason I even recognize the name of the town is because at the time I thought it was a funny name and I kept saying it to myself after I'd asked my mom what the word on the sign meant when we drove into town. Welcome to Gumption. Did it have more, perhaps? “Home of the Mystery Flesh Pit?” I don't remember visiting the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, that's for sure. I think that would have stuck with little six-year-old me.

I eye the scale on the map, use my fingers to estimate the distance from Corpus Christi to Gumption.

It'd be a solid day of driving, seven or eight hours on the road, not counting breaks for food, sleep, restroom. I grimace at the computer screen, then zoom the map out. Lubbock, though...I could take a plane to Lubbock. That'd be, what, like two hours? Maybe? And then rent a car, drive down to Gumption...

I swallow, then laugh at myself. Why bother? I think. Why bother driving down to look at some fences and security guards? It's closed off, the Wikipedia page said, nobody in or out, just some scientists and a sedative plant. The fun stopped when it woke up, back in ‘07.

Flights are cheap. Ninety-nine dollars, ninety-five dollars. I start to type in the address to check my bank balance, then stop, fold the computer closed. I want a cigarette.

On my way out to the window my foot brushes against the envelope I'd left discarded on the floor and again I think of picking it up and putting it away, and again I leave it there. It doesn't really matter.

It'd be a horrible waste of money, probably. And I doubt I'd find anything really meaningful. Even if, you know, I use the excuse of going and looking around so I could write a story on it or something, I don't know if Jim, my editor, would really care that much. From what it seems, Mystery Flesh Pit is ancient history.

I take another look at the sheet of paper sitting on the table, curled over on itself like a dead spider. Fuck it, I think, then repeat myself out loud. I stub out the cigarette and go retrieve my cell phone, look up the phone number for American Airlines out of Corpus Christi airport. Fifteen minutes on hold later I am the proud owner of one business class ticket to Lubbock, Texas, leaving in four hours out of gate nine. I hang up the call and say "fuck it" aloud again because it makes me feel a little better, and then I go pack.

The plane ride is okay. Security was a bear and a half but it always is. I realized from the pleasant-unnerving swooping sensation in my stomach when we took off that it had been long enough since the last time I'd been on a plane that I had forgotten what it feels like. I was lucky to grab a window seat next to a little kid and his father; they didn't bother me as much as I'd expected. Once he turned to me to show me something on the handheld video game he was playing but his father quickly intercepted him and apologized to me; I was a little put out, honestly, I would have wanted to look at it. I'd forgotten to stick a book in my carry-on so I had been stuck staring out the window, and about a half hour in the plane had angled in such a way that the setting sun was glaring me right in the face and daring me to enjoy the scenery, so I did the most sensible thing I could and closed the shutter and tried to fall asleep. I think I managed to do so about fifteen minutes before we landed, which lead to me letting out a rather embarrassing yelp when the landing jolted me awake. The kid and his dad looked at me and I blushed, mentally kicking myself for blushing, but I smiled at them and shrugged and said that I'd fallen asleep and we had a laugh about it.

Lubbock is alright, I guess, if you don’t look at it too closely or stay too long. I rent a car at the airport and drive into town, and consider driving to Gumption that night, but I decide after some deliberation that it'll be better to do a little reconnaissance here first, if I really am going to make a story out of this. Am I? I've been treating that as my excuse so far and yeah, I brought my voice recorder and my camcorder and my DSLR and plenty of memory cards and extra batteries...but I guess I hadn't really taken it seriously.

The city's very alive at night, more so, it seems to me, than Corpus Christi, but I also don't get out very much back home, so maybe my perception is skewed. Everywhere I look there are clubs and shows and bars and things, and then, as I pass into the seedier areas, huddled groups of people spotted here and there. I imagine they’re eying me as I drive past and I tamp down the little curl of fear rising in my stomach.

I find a Motel 6 and then I try to find a Waffle House, but seemingly there aren’t any in Lubbock. I settle for someplace called The Pancake House, and then in a couple of hours I feel better, and then a couple of hours after that I finally manage to fall asleep.

I wake up having slept like the dead. I think about going someplace for breakfast but think better of it after I sit up too quickly and my stomach gives an uneasy lurch in protest. I get dressed leisurely – it is my weekend, after all. For a moment I even manage to fantasize that I'll be able to catch a flight home in time to make it to work on Monday but then I laugh at myself, which I seem to be doing quite a lot of lately.

Barely a hundred miles away, Mystery Flesh Pit is waiting for me. I don't know what I'll find there – personally, I feel rather certain it'll be a hell of a let-down – but it feels nice to have a purpose for once, to feel as though my life is being put to some kind of use other than to see how many cigarettes I can smoke in a single day and still retain some dignity.

It's nice to not have to think.

I take a breath and throw some clothes on and get started on the hard part.

* * *

The guy mopping the floor at the bus stop:

"Excuse me, sir? Do you know anything about the Mystery Flesh Pit Disaster of 2007?"

"The what?"

Businessman on the street, approached while tying his shoes:

"Excuse me, sir? I'm doing some research on the Mystery Flesh Pit disast –"

"I'm sorry, lady, I don't have any money."

Lady at the counter of the pharmacy:

"Excuse me, ma'am? I'm trying to find out some information on the Mystery Flesh Pit, do you have a moment to talk about it?"

"Sure, honey, but I'm afraid I don't know that much about it. That was back in, what, 2003? 2004?"

"2007, actually. Did you ever happen to visit while the park was still operating?"

"It was a park? I just remember something about some sort of tunnel collapse."

"Right. Thanks for your time."

Guy at the 7-11, asked while filling up the tank on my car next to him:

"Hey, dude, you know anything about the Mystery Flesh Pit?"

"Went there once when I was a kid. Pretty cool. Why?"

"I'm a reporter, doing a story on it. You remember the disaster that closed it down?"

"It's closed now? That's lame. What happened?"

"Thing woke up and ate everybody."

"For real?"

"Yeah. I've been asking around, like nobody's heard about it. Kind of surprising."

He taps his finger to his chin. "You know," he says thoughtfully, "it has been like five years since then."

"Four years."

"Even so. People don't have any kind of attention span any more."

His pump clicks off and so does our conversation.

Yeah, alright, maybe it isn't a very representative group, but it seems like nobody cares. Is that reasonable? Well...seven hundred plus people died, most in pretty gruesome ways, according to Wikipedia. Then there were the, god, the thousand or ten-thousand-plus people affected by the vomit and ejecta scattered hundreds of miles away. I’m not sure. You'd expect that apathy from the rest of the nation, maybe, I don't know why somebody in Arkansas or Kentucky or Illinois or wherever would give a fuck if they didn't personally know somebody who was affected, but here? Just a hundred miles from the place or so?

Maybe they did a really good job of cleaning up the cities, maybe it's only the little towns and places where the legacy of it has really clung on. I know there has to be a story, somebody who was there, somebody who saw it. That jerky camcorder video of CNN is a start, but something real, something visceral, in the words of a survivor...

That was the one thing I didn’t find much of. No memoirs, no autobiographies, just a few mentions here and there but nothing like a back-to-front story of what that night was like. That is what I’m really after.

I put my cigarette out in one of those trashcan-cum-ashtrays that dot the corners of every city I've ever been to, Lubbock no exception. I get in the rental car and again forget that it has crank windows instead of buttons. "To the library, and step on it," I giggle to myself as I pull out into traffic. I feel a little lightheaded and I remember that I never bothered to eat anything.

Perusal of the newspaper archives at the Mahon Public Library downtown confirmed what I'd already assumed – that there was no big government coverup, there was no conspiracy of that sort. The disaster at the Mystery Flesh Pit was capital-letter Very Big News for about a month, back in 2007, at least in the area. The stories towards the end of the month cast a little light on why it didn't last, though – it wasn't ongoing, it was just sort of a one-and-done thing. Yeah, finding the caustic vomit everywhere kicked up another stink a week or so later but the Powers That Be seemed to get that under control fairly quickly, at least in more populated areas. After that there were grumblings about disclosure and fault and blame and all that, and quite a few articles about Anodyne Mining or whoever going bankrupt but by the end of the month, aside from a few overly sentimental memorial pieces dedicated to delicately sidestepping the exact causes of death of the people they were memorializing, the news had moved on.

A librarian pokes around the corner with a cart and smiles at me; I smile back at her. She's young, pretty, long skirt, dark eyes. I scoot forward so she can pass behind me. I read on for a while, the faint swish of her skirt and the slim sliding sound of books going back into shelves registering dimly and pleasantly in the back of my mind. I put the paper down and stretch a little, and then I notice she's glancing over at me. I smile at her again.

"Doing some research?" she asks, and I nod.

"Yes," I say. "I'm a reporter for a paper in Corpus Christi and I'm doing a story on the Mystery Flesh Pit. Have you heard of it?"

As soon as the words pass my lips there's something dark and guarded lurking in her eyes that makes me perk my ears up. She waits a couple of seconds before she answers, clearly thinking of what to say, of how much to tell me. I mention, after a moment, that I'm surprised that so few people here in Lubbock seem to really remember it or care about it, and she nods, leans up against her cart.

"It was a big deal for a while," she says, gesturing to the stack of papers next to me, "but after that I guess it just wasn't exciting any more. The only people who really remember it are out in all the small towns where it really affected them. Here, in Lubbock, they just had vans working overtime to clean everything up and then it was easy to forget about. Every now and then I hear about them finding another pile of that vomit somewhere just...festering away out there in the desert."

"Were you there?"

"No," she says, "but my brother was."

"I'm sorry," I tell her. I want to reach out and touch her or something but I don't know if she'd appreciate it, so instead I keep my sympathy subdued. "Is he - ?"

"No, no," she says quickly, "he's alright. He was a park ranger there, he just…happened to be working that night. He, ah...it really fucked him up for a while," she says finally, giving me a grimace. "We haven't talked in a long time."

"I'm sorry," I say again. "That must have been hard, for both of you."

"Yeah," she says, cutting her glance downwards. "He always said some strange things about the disaster, real Alex Jones type stuff. But he just couldn't, you know, move on at all. We got in a big fight about it and, well, that was that."

I wonder what to say for a moment before I cross my legs, set the newspapers aside. "You must have gone there, then, while it was still operating."

"Yes, plenty of times."

"What was it like?"

She laughs softly. "God, that's such a...like, where do I even begin, you know? Have you been to many other National Parks?"

"A few," I tell her. "Not as many as I'd have liked. Crater Lake, Devil's Tower, Badlands, Petrified Forest..."

She laughs. "Real Midwest girl, aren't you?"

"Hey, Crater Lake is in Oregon, that's not the Midwest."

"I wasn't knocking it. Um. Well, it wasn't like any other park you've ever been to, I can guarantee that. It was like, you drive up to it and you park and you walk up these stairs to get to the main observatory building, and you get in there and you look down and there's just...skin. In a hole in the ground. It was extremely disconcerting. From that distance it didn't look real, it looked like it was plasticine or something, like it was a model. And there was something...I don't know, kind of lewd about it?"

"Lewd?"

"Yeah. The way they were spreading it open with these giant metal, like, flanges or whatever, and how it was all raw and pink around the opening...Freud would have had a field day with it. Made you feel like you were watching a gynecological exam."

"I still kind of can't believe they found this thing and thought opening a theme park was the best thing to do with it."

"It was the 70s, I guess." she shrugs. "Place is old, you know. Anyway, once you actually got down into it, it was...it was an experience. You rode this giant elevator down and they had a massive visitor center something like 1200 feet down inside the thing's throat, and you could look out the windows and see all this flesh outside. It was honestly like something out of a movie, it was so surreal. I went there a bunch of times with my brother cause he got an employee discount and I could get in for five dollars and I saw at least ten people have panic attacks and hyperventilate."

I think about my next question for a moment. "Would you say overall that it was, you know, a negative thing? Like, the park on the whole."

"No, absolutely not."

"Why's that?"

She licks her lips. "I think that it's really easy to forget how small we are. We've done all these great things, we've built civilizations, we've put people on the moon, we're exploring the bottom of the ocean, I think humanity in general likes to think that we have everything figured out." She shrugs. "The Mystery Flesh Pit is a really good reminder that we know basically nothing. I mean, they were studying it but they knew practically nothing about it, not how big it was, not whether there were more creatures like it elsewhere in the world, not where it came from, not even if it was awake or if it could move or what the thing looked like as a whole. I think what they ended up doing with it was stupid as hell, but as far as the experience of actually going down inside of it and walking around on a trail and, I don't know, watching macrobacteria roll past outside the fence or seeing something really weird moving around down there and seeing the park ranger guiding you not know what it is either, that's an experience I genuinely wish everybody got to have. It'll change your life."

"How did it change yours?"

She laughs. "Besides, you know, everything with the disaster and my brother and all that shit? Just going down there really made me realize who I was."

"How, exactly?"

She shakes her head. "Like I said, I figured out just how small I was and how – I don't know, how insignificant we really are. These days whenever I get worried or bothered or I stress out over something I think about standing there in the elevator looking up through the glass ceiling and watching the light get smaller and dimmer, like I was falling into a bottomless pit, and I find peace."

"Seems like an odd way to find peace."

"Different strokes, right? Anyway. I really ought to put these books away. Was there anything else you wanted to know?"

I think about it for a moment, then shrug. "I'm planning on heading down to Gumption tomorrow, aside from the pit itself is there anything else I ought to check out?"

She lets out a low whistle. "I think you're going to be very disappointed. They don't let anybody go to the Pit any more, it's all sealed off, has been for years. And Gumption, well...that town has seen better days. I'll give you a tip, though, even though maybe I shouldn't. Look for my brother there, I know he still lives in town. I can't give you his number or his address, unfortunately, because I don't have them any more, but I know for a fact that he works at the only gas station in town, a 7/11, so ask around there and you'll be able to find him. His name's Peter; I'd tell you to tell him I sent you but I kind of get the feeling that might not get you very far."

I thank her for the tip and set the newspapers aside. If I head out tonight I might be able to get some good shots of the fence around Mystery Flesh Pit. I think of it, of the sunset, then discard the thought. Forget it. I'll need a whole day to really dig into it, I think. And more's the better. I have plenty of batteries, I have plenty of storage. Easy girl, there's no rush. Assuming they let me just walk up and start filming, but if I really hype myself up I can half-believe I could talk my way into at least getting some shots of the fence, at the very least.

"Oh, and one last thing."

I blink, look back up at her. She has a faint smile on her face, probably from watching me zone out, that fades quickly. "Don't stay in Gumption too long."

* * *

The drive down to Gumption is dusty and hot and boring. I get about halfway before I realize I'm not driving my poor old Hyundai, I'm driving a rental car, and that it has a functional air conditioner, and then I feel very silly, for though the wind certainly felt nice on the whole I would have much rather just rolled the windows up and sat in the cool air. I see a grand total of four other cars, all coming from Gumption, on the two-hour drive. It's mostly a straight shot but my phone tells me to take a county road that turns into just a dirt track towards the end that, after a little meandering, plops me out onto a back street of Gumption, Texas.

The research I'd done suggests that at one point Gumption had been a bustling little town, fuelled by the Pit’s tourist draw, and initially its size would indicate that it still is. But as I drove slowly through the empty streets, the general air of disrepair and decay became more and more apparent. I see a couple abandoned houses, and not the foreclosed sort with realtor's signs out front, but straight-up shattered-glass, boarded-windows, holes-in-the-roofs abandoned. The ones that weren't just looked sad, like no one was taking care of them properly. The cars parked on the street are all at least five or six years old, as best as I can tell. I see only two people out and about while I'm driving around at 15 miles an hour, getting some video footage, cruising down the middle of the road, eyes flicking between the empty street ahead and the screen on my camera. One, a youngish-looking black guy, keeps his head down and doesn't look at me, and the other, an old man in a wifebeater mowing his lawn, stares at me all the way down the street, until I turn the corner and pull onto the main road.

There's the 7/11. I'm tempted to head to it right away but I refrain, look for a diner or something, but the ones around look about as welcoming as the rest of the place. There's a McDonald's but it's so small it doesn't even have a drive-through, which is something I'd never seen before. There's a drug store and a liquor store and one of those tiny little storefront churches, something something Starry Wisdom. I think about going to McDonald's but instead I pull a u-turn and head back to the gas station. The clerk, a haggard-looking woman, doesn't look up from her magazine when I walk in. I wander to the back and grab a Coke out of the fridge unit. The credit-card reader is broken so I have to dig around in my wallet and find some bills. The entire exchange continues without any speech at all until I work up my nerve and lick my lips and ask her if there's a hotel around here somewhere.

She looks at me for a few moments and then jerks her head towards the road. Her voice sounds like a frog croaking. "There's a motel down the road a ways. When you pull out take a left and turn at Third street."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

"By the way."

"Yeah?"

"Can you tell me when Peter works?"

I had to think for a moment to remember his name. I have it written down in a notebook but it's out in the car. Her eyes flash a little more lively. "Who's asking?"

I think of what to say for a moment before I shrug. "A friend."

For a moment I think she's going to tell me to fuck off, but something in my face must have convinced her. "He's off today. Come in tomorrow at eight or nine at night, he'll be here. He works graveyard most days."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

I walk out the door and the heat hits me like a thrown punch. I blow a breath out and lean up against the rough cinderblock edge of the gas station building and drink my Coke.

It's four in the afternoon and it'll take me maybe half an hour to drive down to the Mystery Flesh Pit. It'll be cooler, too, in the evening, and if this town is any indication I doubt there'll be much of a line. I wonder where the people who work there live; maybe they have a dormitory there or something. Clearly they don't live here. Maybe there's some little patch of suburbs somewhere, behind those hills over there, perhaps, where all the people are, but it's four in the afternoon and I've seen a grand total of three other cars driving around, so maybe not.

The guy at the motel gives me a nicer greeting than the lady at the 7-11 did, although not by much; at least I get a few dirty molars of a smile out of him as he hands me the key to my room. I had to wake him up from his nap at the front desk in order to get the room to begin with, and though I tried to do so as gently as I could he still started and almost fell out of his chair.

"Here for the Pit?" he asks as I'm about to leave, and I turn back, glance at him.

"Yeah," I say after a moment. "Just going to see what's there now."

"You're heading over now?"

"Yes."

"Huh," he grunts after a moment. "Most of you folks don't do that 'till dark."

I frown. "Us folks?"

"You know, you..." his eyes roam over my face and his mouth drops open very slightly. "Oh," he says heavily. "Never mind."

"What?"

"Nothing, ma'am. Now if you'll excuse me –"

"Wait, hang on –"

"You have a good day now, ma'am."

He disappears into the back room and I stand there, glaring at the door as it swings shut, key still looped around my finger. I have half a mind to vault the desk and head back there and demand to know what the hell he was talking about, but I take a deep breath and let it out. What could he have meant? Maybe he thinks I work over at the Flesh Pit or something, although that wouldn't explain why they only head over after dark...that doesn't make sense. Tourists, maybe? But that doesn't make sense either.

I chew on my lip for a little while and then shake my head, push the door open and let the heat swallow me up again. There's no sense brooding on it; the only thing to do is to move forward.

* * *

The drive down to Mystery Flesh Pit is, if it were possible, even hotter and more boring than the drive down to Gumption. The heat is pounding on the window and begging me to let it in so I turn up the AC, trying to drown it out, but it's no use. No matter where I put my arm the sun is pouring down on me, and if I leave it still for more than a moment I get that unpleasant prickling sensation that tells me I'm starting to burn already. I've already got a pretty terrible driver's tan from the ride down but this is just overkill.

No cars pass me on the long road that my phone assures me is the way to the Permian Basin Superorganism Containment Corporation. It's only wide enough for one so if someone did come by someone's going off the road. Hopefully not me, as this rental Toyota is not built for that sort of thing. It's already been complaining at me creakily and jostling me around. I'll have to get it a car wash or something when I get back to Lubbock, whenever that ends up being. I didn't read over the rental contract very closely but I'm pretty sure if I bring it back this dusty there's some kind of fee.

You can see the outline of the plant, growing larger up ahead. It looks unassuming, exactly like any other indecipherable cluster of industrial buildings you'd see along the side of the highway, all greyish-white, tubes and pipes and tanks and corrugation, warning signs and fences and barbed wire, power lines and scaffolding and light poles, all clustering out of the ground like mushrooms after a cold rain. The guard in the gatehouse is watching me as I pull up, but I turn off the road, turning the car around so I'll be ready to go whenever I need to, well away from the road so anyone trying to get in or out can get by without any trouble.

The sign on the fence broadly proclaims that this is the site of the Permian Basin Recovery and Superorganism Containment Corporation, and says that the administration building is to the right, along with the barracks, infirmary, commissary, and so on.

I get out, shut the car door, take my camcorder with me. I keep it on but held low, taking a shot of my feet. I wander up to the gatehouse and the guard steps out, hand on the butt of his pistol, resting loose but confident. He has an MP helmet on and I wonder whether the National Guard is in charge of security or something, and then I wonder if I'm about to get got for trespassing. Surely there'd be more of a commotion if I was, right?

The guard has a sharp face but disconcertingly watery eyes. "Hi," I tell him.

"This area's off-limits to civilians, ma'am," he tells me.

"I'm not trying to get in," I assure him. "I'm a journalist, I just want to take some photos. Is that okay?"

He relaxes a little, points up and down the fence. "Right now," he says, "you're on public land. You go over that fence, you're trespassing on Federal land. Understand?"

"Yessir," I grunt, reflexively. Some old habits never die.

"You can take photos of whatever you like except for people inside the fence, understand? Before you leave I will check your camera."

"Yessir."

"Any questions?"

"Can I take a photo of you?"

"Am I inside the fence?"

"No."

"Then yes, you can."

I bring my DSLR up, snap a picture of him. He gives me a cheesy grin. I look at the display and then back up at him. "You blinked."

"Better take another."

I do so. "You know," I say to him, "this is a much more civil interaction than I expected it to be."

He pauses, halfway back to the guardhouse, to shrug at me. "You're just lucky that the government doesn't also own the land around the park. On most military bases it's like that, you know, they own a hundred-foot radius out from the fence, but here it's different."

"Cause it used to be a National Park?"

"I believe so."

"Do I have to stay in your sight or anything?"

He shakes his head. "No, there are cameras. Just make sure you don't touch the fence, it's electric."

I look at the sign on the fence again; I'd sort of skimmed over it before but a few more things catch my eye this time, especially the bright red one proclaiming that it's charged to 10,000 volts. I whistle. "Y'all really don't want people getting in, huh?"

"It's dangerous."

"So I've heard. Want to do an interview?"

"Can't do that, ma'am. What paper are you with?"

"Corpus Christi Star-Tribune."

He raises his eyebrows. "You're a long way from home. What brings you down to Gumption County?"

I briefly explain what got me interested in the Mystery Flesh Pit and he nods. "Lot of people seem to have forgotten about this place. It's for the best, I'd say."

"Care to elaborate?"

"No, ma'am," he says, but not unkindly. "I can't talk to reporters."

"Come on," I wheedle. "Who'd know?"

"We're on camera," he repeats.

"Fair enough," I shrug.

He gets back in the guardhouse and I run a hand through my hair and turn my attention to the fence. I take a shot of the gates, of the fence, of the signs on the fence, of the great bulging buildings visible through the fence. I get a nice one of the fence extending along into the horizon, a great metal wall bisecting the flat, hot plain of West Texas earth, extending into infinity, it seems, a shimmer of heat distortion bubbling off of it down in the distance. I get another good one of the sun dipping downwards behind the plant, swallowed by it, casting shadows across my face, long spidery ones that scrape the ground. Then, once I'm at about fifty-percent capacity on my memory card, I put the camera away and sit there on the trunk of the car, kicking my heels idly against the gravelly ground, taking it all in. I read the sign again and I call out to the guard. After a moment he comes out of the gatehouse again.

"What is it?" he asks.

"What's that sign mean?" I ask him, pointing to it. He turns, looks at it.

"I don't think it's very ambiguous," he tells me, and I roll my eyes.

"No, I'm serious. What the hell does it mean? 'Over 500 people die each year attempting to commune with the Organism?' What does that - ?"

"Ma'am, I really can't talk about it."

I look at him carefully but he seems serious, and the sign, well...it's a sign on an electric fence on federal property, so surely it's serious as well. I turn my camera back on and snap a photo of it, then I realize that there's a bit of background noise, coming slowly closer. It's the rumbling of an engine.

There, down the road, is an unmarked white Econoline van. It flashes its brights at me and I step out of the road, let it pass by, while the guard at the gate straightens his uniform. It pulls up to the gate and the guard leans in. He and the driver have a brief conversation before the guard steps back and reaches into the booth to open the gate. The gate opens but the driver of the van sticks his head out, looks back at me. He has a jowly, bristly face, about two five-o'clock shadows away from a beard, and a large bald spot.

"And you, what are you doing here?" he calls, and I get up, a little surprised to be addressed so abruptly. The guard comes out in a hurry, shaking his head.

"Sir," he starts, but the guy in the van isn't having any of it.

"Shut up for a second," he says. "Lady, what're you doing out here?"

"I'm –"

"Sir, you really shouldn't –"

"Look, lady," he says, gesturing me closer. "Things don't have to go this way. There've been a lot of advances with medical technology that can really help you out with those urges. There's –"

"Urges?" I ask. I get a prickly feeling all up and down my spine, like I'm hearing something I ought not to.

"Sir," the guard says, urgently now, "she's a reporter."

The man's mouth snaps shut so quickly he might as well have been a cartoon character. He flushes an angry red and glares at the guard as though he wants to say something but he just ducks his head back through the window of the car and drives through the gate, which closes after him. I shake my head.

"I suppose," I say after a moment, "that you aren't going to tell me what he meant?"

"Not a chance."

"Well," I say, getting up and stretching, "it's been fun."

"You have a good night now."

"Am I going to get a visit from the Men in Black at my hotel room later?"

"I wouldn't worry about that."

"Riiiight." I waggle my eyebrows at him. "That's exactly what they'd want me to think."

He laughs. "Good luck," he tells me.

"I get the feeling I'll need it."

"You’ll be fine," he says after a moment, but I do not feel reassured.

* * *

I drive back to Gumption with the setting sun blazing in my rearview mirror. It slips out of view entirely and coats the sky in dusky purples that quickly fade to black, and then it's the figurative middle of the night. One-handed I manage to wriggle a cigarette out of the pack on the seat next to me and transfer it to my mouth and then feel around for my lighter, and then I groan and pull over. The guy at the rental desk at the airport had seen the pack of cigarettes in my hand while I was filling out the paperwork and told me very strictly that I had better not smoke in the car and I, of course, had managed to forget completely. It's a good thing I remembered before I lit up.

The night is cold but not unbearably so. I spend a long time there, leaning against the trunk of my car, cigarette in my hand but forgotten momentarily, staring up at the sky. There's so little light pollution out here that I can see what feels like all of the stars, practically, great scattered dustings of them sweeping across the whole of the night sky like someone had tossed them there. There's the Big Dipper, there's Orion, there's the Little Dipper... I think that bright one is Mars, maybe, it looks a little reddish. And that cluster there must be the Pleiades.

I take a breath and blow it out and realize exactly how tired I am. It's somewhere lurking in the back of my skull, right behind my eyes, coiled around my neck. If I closed my eyes I'd probably be able to fall asleep out here, right on the hood of the car.

I crack my neck and wince. The moon's bright and full tonight, at least, so I can still see the barren terrain all around me.

I consider the cigarette for a moment before I throw it to the ground and crush it out. I don't normally litter, really, I swear, but the exhaustion creeping over me is making me not care.

There's a long drainage ditch along the side of the road here, terminating in one of those white-concrete tunnels disappearing into the dirt, its mouth wide enough to swallow me whole if I felt like going down there. I stifle a yawn, kick a rock down into the ditch, and traipse around the side of the car, get in and start it up. From where I parked it, the headlights angle downward enough to reveal a sliced-pie cut of the inside of the tunnel and there, inside it, I see for only the briefest second a pale, wide-eyed face staring at me, along with a dark-jacketed body and a hand, curled there on the floor of the tunnel like a spider before, in a flash, the man retreats into the darkness deeper in the tunnel and is gone.

I can feel my heart beating out of my chest and I realize my mouth has dropped open. Real animal fear has seized me and my rational mind cannot jerk back the reins. I put the car into gear, fumbling first and sticking it in neutral, and then push the pedal all the way to the floor and roar off into the dark.

I was very lucky that there was no one trying to get to Mystery Flesh Pit that night, for I probably would have flipped the car trying to go around them. The closer I get to Gumption, the slower I drive, until finally I manage to get myself to stop the car just outside of town. I pull over again and get out, curling my lip at my shaking hands, and light up another cigarette.

It was just a homeless guy, hiding in a drainage ditch. I probably spooked the fuck out of him, pulling up right there on top of him and hanging out. He must be wondering what the fuck I was doing out there. Probably scared him more than he scared me.

Why did I wig out so bad anyway? I like to think I've got a pretty good nerve. Well, stress is a good excuse, I guess. Or perhaps it's because he was simply hiding down there, unknown, unnoticed, the whole time I was sitting there on the hood of the car, completely oblivious. He could have rushed out and attacked me, if he'd had the guts to, and I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.

I take another drag at the cigarette and glare up at the stars again. Ursa Major, Orion, Pleiades. Sometimes, when it's quiet like this, I allow myself to think about what the coming year, or possibly years, if I'm lucky, will be like.

Whatever.

I crush the cigarette out and drive back into town, head back to my motel room. I feel better once I've showered and put on some shorts. I get into bed and pull the covers up, and even though they're the scratchy, weird-feeling covers used in seemingly every cheap motel in America, regardless of location, I drift off to sleep easily enough.

Continue with Part 2

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#writing #mystery flesh pit #writeblr #Michael Crichton #thriller #novel #alt lit

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illneverrecover · 4 years ago

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Ult Group Game

I’m catching up on my tags from the weekend, and I was tagged by @ditzymax - thank you again!! Rules: Answer the following questions for your ult kpop group While I love many groups, my ult is still BTS!

1. Who was your first bias?

Taehyung 😻 💖 🌈👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨💚 💖 💞 💗 💞😍 💖💝💘😘 💖💘 😭🌈💓♥️ 💞 💞 💘💝 💖 💖

2. Who is your bias now?

Taehyung, the only man 😻 💖 🌈👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨💚 💖 💞 💗 💞😍 💖💝💘😘 💖💘 😭🌈💓♥️ 💞 💞 💘💝 💖 💖

3. What was the first mv you watched by them?

So my lovely friend @serensama who got me into BTS to begin with scheduled a plan of attack to get me to fall into the rabbit hole. The first MV she sent me was ‘Mic Drop’, followed by ‘Save Me’, ‘Blood Sweat and Tears’, and ‘Dope’. She also successfully guessed that I would be Tae biased and sealed the deal when she sent me Red Hair Tae. I was a goner.

4. What’s your favourite mv?

OOF this is hard, I love so many of their MVs for a multitude of reasons. But if I had to pick one, probably Fake Love / Singularity. Love Yourself: Tear was my first comeback and I will never forget the rush and excitement of staying up late and waiting for it to drop and then being in awe of it. 2018 was just a great year in general lol

5. If you could only listen to one of their songs for the rest of your life, which would it be?

Again, this is such a hard question because different songs fit different vibes and moods for me, but if I had to pick only one, it would be Sea.

6. Who would you want to see them collab with?

I’m not really sure, there’s no one I’m really dying to see them collab with at this point. I’d love to see more solo projects/mixtapes and subunit stuff, though!

7. What (mv) concept do you want to see them do?

I feel like they’ve done basically everything at this point honestly, but I’d love another sexy concept now that they’re older and more secure in who they are. Like them just being confident badass men, knowing that they look good and the power that holds? 😩😩👌🏼👌🏼 I also really love dark concepts in general, and while they’ve dipping their toes in on dark concepts, I’d like to see something with a bit more feral-ness to it, if that makes sense haha.

8. Have you ever had a dream with any of the members in it?

I’ve had a lot of dreams actually! Usually concert related, or meeting them backstage kind of thing. I have also had an ungodly amount of dreams regarding Taehyung, my subconscious is good to me like that. 😏

9. If you could spend the day with one member, who would it be and what would you do?

I’d love to spend a day with all of them actually. I’d really love to have like a chill dinner with booze and just drink and hang out and get to see them just relax and have fun. But if I had to pick a member, it would definitely be Tae. I’d love to just see things and experience them from his point of view.

10. Which member do you think you would get on with best?

Honestly, if I had to rank it, I would say 1-Taehyung, 2-Yoongi, 3-Jungkook. They say that your biases tend to be people that you see yourself in and relate to, and I would agree that overall I think we’re similar (though I got a lot of fire sign energy to take it to the next level, lol). Tae and I have a lot in common as far as our hobbies and attitudes go and I think we’d vibe well together because of it. Yoongi and I have similar personalities (anytime Yoongi is sarcastic, wine drunk, or begging to be a rock, I feel it so hard) so while I may not know much about his leisure activities he’s interested in, I think we’d understand each other well. Third would probably be Jungkook - as someone who also loves to play video games and watch anime, we could talk about our favorites and how crazy this season of Attack on Titan has been over some ramen.

11. Which member do you think you would argue with?

I had to really think about this one! Probably either Namjoon or Jin. Namjoon mostly because he’s a Virgo man and I tend to clash with them (ignore the fact I’m married to one, lmao). I also think he sees things very logically overall and I tend to follow my feelings/intuition a bit more, so I could see us getting into friendly debates. I enjoy being able to talk with someone like that though, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing! For Jin, I think it would just be friendly squabbling/picking on each other. Two Sagittarius's just ribbing each other over random shit trying to press the others’ buttons kind of thing.

12. If you had to let one member scroll through your tumblr, who would it be?

Oh god lmaooo I feel like Jimin would be L I V I N G to scroll through my blog and see all the thirsty shit I post, lmao. He’d definitely show it to the other members too, so I’m probably not safe either way.

Tagging (only if you’re interested, of course!): @quinnkoo @jimins-ass-eater @taetaesbaebaepsae @thiccasswonhoruinedmylife @ditttiii @taegularities @purpletigertaetae @kpop---scenarios @biaswreckme @serensama

#tag games #ult kpop group tag game #this one was fun #jackie.tagged

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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago

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Survey #357

“your magic white rabbit has left its writing on the wall / we follow like alice, and just keep diving down the hole”

Are you better at telling stories or writing them? Writing, by a long shot. What’s one song you hate, but know every word to? i'm a barbie girl in a fckn barbie woooooorld What’s your favorite magazine? I don’t read magazines. If you could be an animal for one day, which animal would you choose? Probably a house cat. Be indoors and safe, able to just nap... lol. But I'd want another cat as a friend, too! Do you prefer outdoor or indoor concerts/events? Indoors, by a mile. I get hot outside way too easily. Do you know if you were a planned child? I don't know. What’s your favorite gem? Dragon's breath opal. As an adult, do you want to live in an apartment or a house? I'd like to live in a house, especially with the pets I want. I doubt many apartment complexes would allow multiple reptiles and inverts. Do you like the stem or leafy part of the broccoli? It doesn't matter much to me, but I prefer the stem. The texture is more likeable to me. Do bats frighten you? No, I adore bats! Does Paris appeal to you? Yeah, it's a pretty place. Are you a KPOP fan? No, I've never really checked it out. How long was your longest relationship? Over three and a half years. First time you kissed the last person you kissed? We were outside roasting marshmallows one night. Do you have to really know someone to kiss them? Absolutely. I don't dish 'em out for nothing. Were you anyone’s first kiss? No. If you had to be named after one of the 50 states of America, what state would you WANT to be named after? I actually think "Nevada" would be kinda pretty as a name? Do you think morals are universal or relative to the beliefs, traditions, or practices of individuals or groups? I've wondered this for a long while, really. I lean towards it being a mix, maybe? But more towards universal, I think... with some exceptions. This answer is all over the place, I honestly don't know. Is torture ever a good option? If no, why not? If yes, when? No? I think the "why not" is obvious... You just don't. What do you think is one one of the most undervalued professions right now? Teachers, garbagemen, retail and food workers... There's a lot. Have you ever seen anyone have a heart attack? Thank Christ no. Have you personalized your answering machine/voicemail? No. Have you ever had Fiji brand water? I actually don't believe I have, though it's always looked appealing to me, haha. What’s your favorite horror movie? The Crazies and the first Silent Hill, as well as both Blair Witch Projects. What was the worst thing a friend has either done or said to you? I'd rather not even think about things the bitch said to me. Are you biracial? No. When was the last time you got mad and broke something? I've never broken something when mad. What color dress did you wear to prom? My first was maroon, second one was black. Who is the cutest baby you know? My friend has a daughter named Scarlett who is absolutely gorgeous. Have you ever thrown a rock at a window? No, because I respect people's fucking property. Has anyone ever thrown a rock at your window? No. Does your hair react well to dye, or does it damage it? It likes to not take dye at all. >.> I have only had one instance where a friend dyed it red and it stuck for months and months, but we kept it in for a couple hours, I think. My normal hairdresser says it's because my hair is really healthy and I guess rejects it. What kind of pet do you wish you had? I ramble plenty about how I want tarantulas and more reptiles, haha. I also DESPERATELY want to rescue or foster an opossum. When was the last time you were diagnosed with something? Are you concerned about anything regarding your physical or mental health at the moment? I haven't been diagnosed with anything in quite some time, I believe, but as I'm going through the process of being approved for TMS therapy for my depression, my bipolar diagnosis is being questioned, which is... strange to me. It's been acknowledged by many a doctor that I have bipolar 2, but if insurance recognizes my primary diagnosis as bipolar, they won't cover TMS because it can massively excite the mania portion of bipolarity, and therefore I can't do it because we can't manually afford it. I'm willing to take the risk by far, as I've never had issues with mania, but I can't without insurance. I'm just waiting to hear back from them... What is one blanket judgment you tend to make about people (like, you judge all people who live at home, all people who drink, etc)? Does this judgment come from a particular personal experience? I really don't know. How do you react to other people yelling or slamming doors? Is this something you ever do too? I get very scared if it's a man. I don't like anyone doing it, and my anxiety will spike regardless, I'm just terrified of angry men. Have you ever lost your cool at work or somewhere else important? What happened as a result? No. Who has the power to break you? Jason still might. I don't know. Is anyone in your family blind? My sister is legally blind in one eye. Do you believe in evolution? Yeah. I do find the concept odd, that ALL LIFE originated from one thing, but I sure ain't got a better explanation, so. What job do you think people should be paid the most for? Surgeons, maybe? I dunno, that's a big question. Were you ever held back a year in school? Did you ever skip a grade? No. Have you ever been given a hickey? Have you given one? Yeah to both. What is your least favourite thing about your full name? I have the most basic white bitch middle name in the world, lol. Do you like the age you are? Eh, I don't mind it much, but I think it'd be better to be in my early 20s versus mid 20s. I'm just always so tired now. I can't believe I used to refuse to go to sleep before 10:30. What’s your favourite kind of poptart? The chocolate sundae one. If you had to eat one type (Chinese, etc.) of food which would it be? American bc I'm not very adventurous with food at all. When did your family immigrate to wherever you live now? *shrug* Are your fingers long, or short? Long. Mom's always said I have "piano fingers." Do you play Pokemon Go? If so, what level are you and who’s your buddy? Yeah, I love it, but don't play it nearly as much as I want because I don't exactly go anywhere, lol. My bud's Charmeleon, and I'm probably like five EXP from level 28. Do you ever sit indoors and wear sunglasses or a hat? I don't own either, so. Do you know how to read animals’ behavior? I honestly think I'm very good at it. Do you like playing video games? If so, what do you usually play? Yes, but not as much as I used to. All I really play nowadays is World of Warcraft. The only working console I have is a PS2, and I haven't bought a new game in probably a couple years, but there are definitely ones I want to play, mainly on PS4. Just can't afford it right now. Have you ever viewed the moon through a telescope? No. Do you know how to properly eat food with chopsticks? No. There's no way I could, given my tremors. Do you prefer reading books, comic books, manga/graphic novels, magazines, or the newspaper? Books. When is the last time you ate donuts? It's been months, man. I've seriously been craving a glazed one, though. Krispy Kreme sounds amaaaaaziiiiiing. Has anyone ever called you sexy? Somehow. Do you like raisins? NO NO NO NO NO. Have you ever overheard a conversation you weren’t supposed to? More than once. Do you like ants? They're genuinely extremely fascinating animals, but they're seriously annoying nevertheless. Did you like the movie Antz? I loved it as a kid. What was your favorite ice cream flavor when you were little? Chocolate. Is it still your favorite? Eh, depends on the day. By the way, what is your name? Brittany. What time zone do you live in? EST. Do you like cats? I love cats. What’s the most creepy experience you’ve ever had? One night when my mom and sister were at the beach for a dance competition, I was having trouble sleeping, and it only got worse when my dog Teddy started freaking the fuck out, barking loudly and staring intently at the foot of the bed. I was so scared that I tried to force his head to lie down, but he fought against me. I was terrified, but got up out of the bed and went into the living room to call my mom at like 3 in the damn morning, and she had to have our neighbor come over to sleep in the house with me (I was in a different room that night). You can't convince me that there wasn't paranormal shit going on. I think the house was haunted honestly, for multiple reasons. What’s the most boring game to exist? Why do you dislike it so much? Hm, I dunno. What’s the coolest place that you've ever been to? What’d you do there? Disney World was very memorable as a kid. We just went around collecting signatures, going on rides, all that fun stuff. I'll never forget fireworks at the castle. If you’re interested in having a long-term relationship with someone, do you think that waiting a certain amount of time before you first have sex is a good idea? Or does it not matter? I think it's a good idea, personally, mostly for the sake of reducing the spread of STDs. Just because you think you'll be long-term, doesn't mean you will be. Besides that, isn't there a science that sex and feelings of love are connected? Like, sex is impossible without at least some underlying emotions? I might be entirely wrong, in which case forgive me for spreading misinformation, but if that's so and things don't go as planned, you've gotten emotionally invested in someone too early and wind up getting hurt. You do you, I just don't think it's smart. Have you ever discovered something big by looking through someone’s phone, Facebook, email, etc.? No. Have you kept anything from your past relationships? (Things they left at your house, gifts, notes, etc) Do you think that’s a big deal for future relationships or not? Yeah, like plushies and little stuff like that. When it's tiny things like I just mentioned, I really don't think it matters. I think some things might be questionable to keep, but at the same time, I don't think it's really wrong to keep memories of a happy time, if the thing still brings you joy and has been emotionally disconnected from the ex? Idk. Do you have any financial regrets? Either way, what’s an example of a GOOD financial decision you’ve made? Going to and dropping out of college three fucking times. I don't know about a good financial decision seeing as I'm not even in charge of my own finances, nor really have any to begin with. Are you a believer in “signs” from the Universe about things in your life? If you are, can you think of a particular example? No. Name some things that one or both of your parents are really good at or really interested in. Mom LOVES medical stuff, like watching surgeries and stuff like that. She is also absolutely incredible with children. Dad likes sports a lot, hockey and football especially. Think of a good friend of the opposite sex (currently or in the past). Have you ever had any sort of “more than a friend” or sexual thoughts about them? If not, can you explain why? Well, we dated briefly, so... It was awkward to, but I let myself imagine sexual situations a few times to help myself understand if I really did like-like him, or if he was truly just a brother to me. Turns out, he's a bro. If someone told you that you would never achieve something and you ended up doing it, would you have any interest in finding that person and showing them? I'ma be honest, yes. I wouldn't actively seek them out, but rather just hope they somehow find out or I run into them or something. What is the most jealousy-induced thing you’ve ever done? Apparently, be the girl Juan liked instead of this girl that literally threatened to deck me. Guess what? We're friends now lmaoooo.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''white rabbit'' by egypt central

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borisbubbles · 4 years ago

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17. CZECH REPUBLIC

Benny Christo - “Kemama”

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So first off, thank you for the nice commens. 😇The past few months haven’t been the happiest time for me, so thank you for your patience as I scraped my bearings together for another post! 😁

So I will now extend that same sympathy to Benny Christo, whom I think I damn fucking underrated. Let’s jump in~

ENTRY ANALYSIS

As one may expect i INSTANTLY liked “Kemama” because you know, it’s a fun, laid-back, tropical afro-breeze, completely different from anything else we would see in NFs and the year. EXACTLY the type of song I was hoping the Czech NF would deliver (and deliver they did, see NF Corner). This level of mild like swung into strong unironic like upon realizing that the title is a contraction of “Okay Mother” 😍 and the song deals with the subject of overcoming racially-tinged discrimination and rising above the hate. That just feels very poetic and apt? “Kemama” felt like the entry that had to overcome the highest odds in order to earn the respect it so fully deserves, and still hasn’t fully reached it.

.In our Western European bubble, comprised mostly of gays and left-liberal straights, we have a very grateful and universal acceptance of many different kinds of [lizard] people that make up Eurovision casts. Yet with “Kemama” we may have reached an unusually grimy undercurrent of coded racism.

Of course nothing I read was outrageously rancid, than Cod for that. The worst statement I read was a double-whammy of “EWW THIS ISN’T CARIBBEANVISION” and “WHY WOULD SOMEONE FROM *KENYA* WANT TO REP CZECHIA IN EUROVISION?”, and yes they first got the continent wrong and then *also* got the country wrong in the follow-up post and then they were torn limb from limb by a pack of aformentioned left-liberals. I’m sorry but i can’t not have any other response than laughter in the face of yet another fucking MORON faceplanting themselves with words like a... racist JK Rowling if you will?

Still, while I never read something outright vile about Benny doesn’t mean I found his deniers really annoying and they were! Think “Ew Solovey is ‘Too Aggressive’ it will NEVER DO WELL IN ESC”, a statement that isn’t coded nor racist (and yet extremely false and misguided), functioned as a similar idea by the same minds. A statement borne from the same breed of narrow-minded stubbornness which has caused elitist morons to be all “there is **SOMETHING** about “Kemama” i do *NOT* like and I cannot lay my finger on it... but I **DO NOT** like it at ALL. It won’t ever qualify because everyone will think the same way I do” -- Eurovision snobs, tiptoeing around racial coda in January 2020.

They would also insist that Benny was “arrogant” because he was seemingly impervious to their (de)constructive criticism. Like, if you were a biracial butterfly living in a slavic country who had to deal with statements such as the above on a regular basis, you WOULD block out the noise. And if you heard them often enough you will start to block them out pre-emptively. DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW COPING MECHANISMS WORK?? (oh wait you’re white-privileged. Nevermind 🙄)

So naturally, when Benny decided that he would revamp “Okay Mother” by adding in MORE African elements it only made me love him even more lol. 😍 Was it a bull-headed, contrarian and possibly really stupid decision? Yes, yes and absolutely yes. Was it worth it? Well he managed to incite even more meltdowns in a group of people I feel nothing but contempt for, so hell yeah? Eurovision was cancelled anyway so who cares how much ‘worse’ “Kemama” actually got.

Okay, so we’ve arrived at the revamp.

Granted, it wasn’t the best ‘vamp, I’d be a fool to deny it. The new elements threw a wrench in the melodic balance of the song. Out went tropical laid-back fun, IN went that fucking guitar oh my god this is some Hotel FM piano levels of overbearing I swear. (nb: this still didn’t stop me from ironically stanning Hotel FM’s lame asses anyway 😍). However, it made the personal backstory that I loved and savoured take a backseat to the now inferior composition. 😭

Regardless, New Kemama was fundamentally the same song, and I fundamentally liked Old Kemama, so whatevs, it made no different to me. In the eyes of many Eurovision diehards we were experiencing WORST PRESHOW SEASON EVER (after three songs... lol) and nothing clinches this brainworm more than a revamp announcement. “OH MY GOD HE WILL RUIN IT! I CAN GUARANTEE YOU I *WON’T* LIKE IT”. Self-fulfilling prophecies, ya know? It certainly didn’t help when the official channel accidentally uploaded a vid with broken soundmixing (‘OMG HORRIBLE LAST IN THE SEMI!!!!’ calm the ever-loving HELL down) and took another FULL WEEK to upload the correct vid. The damage had already been done. Typing "SEE I TOLD YOU THE REVAMP WOULD BE SHITE HA HA HA” in the Kemama comment box really just is the ESC equivalent of reponding with “Actually, *all* lives matter :smug:” to a BLM support pamphlet, isn’t it?

NF CORNER

While not my favourite NF of the bunch, I found the Czech NF to be lowkey epic. Not epic enough to remember its name but regardless Czechvision or whatever marked the end of an era because it was also the last selection spearheaded by Jan Bors :o

I think I’ve made it clear enough in the past that I’m somewhat mixed on Bors Era Czechia - Lake Malawi were a toetapping good, Ickolas was a pockmarked, skin-crawling evil and the other three inhibit a purgatory somewhere between “moderately nice” and “moderate timewaste.”

Still, I have great respect for the man who orchestrated Czech’s comeback after scoring NINE POINTS TOTAL across three years with the mindset of “So what? Why says we can’t win?” so ofc I was all into the idea of the “EIGHT INDIE ANGELS, HAND-PICKED BY BORS HIMSELF” NF that would serve as his swan song.

Naturally things went down the drain the second Bors left, with one of the eight peacing and his successor cancelling the live broadcast (does anyone remember what exactly happened? I vaguely recall one was the cause of the other but lol it’s July can’t be bothered to factscheck (Factsczeck?) anymore, bitches.

Anyway, ON TO THE GOOD STUFF, and yes, there was plenty.

We All Poop - “ All the Blood (Positive Song Actually)”

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Yes, as you can imagine I ofc IMMEDIATELY fell into like when I saw that chyron and invisioned the inevitability of the Czech Rep’s Rep immediately alienating every parent just based on their name alone <3 😍 w/e WAP quickly became that “Good but not great” song you find in every NF that everyone gushes over because it’s the whitest option available. Like, yes, “All the blood” is good, but musically it’s identical to Green Day and Twenty-One Pilots and god name ANY 90s-early00′s American Punk Rock band. For me the enjoyment came from the fact that WAP were openly crazy vegan fundamentalists and the VC clip actively condemns the use ANY animal protein by replacing the cattle and game with LITERAL HUMAN BEINGS. 😍 :fusedmarcintensifies: :kasiamosage:

Pam Rabbit - “Get up”

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Ohhhh YES a glorious experimental Synth-Trap song only I could love and ofc I did. God what is there even to say; the provocative darkness of the verses combined with the swirling amorphousness of the chorus gives me LIFE. LUFF THIS SHIT <3333 Ftr, this was also the fave of Slovene Juror duo / synth angels / Boris faves ZALAGASPER, further proving their pathetic naysayers that they own all things music and the haters can suck a series of-

Barbora Mochowa - “White and Black Holes“

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Lol, yes even with a “Get up” existing, there was a song I liked even more. Barbora proved a very competent Lana del Gay last year, but I was a YUGE fan of this year’s... Kate Bush-Björk blend of ethereal awesome. It is so soothingly beautiful and the rare example of a song that I find completely free of flaws. Were the competition not such a hard place, I’d be pissed she didnt win (at least she won the jury vote MASSIVE KUDOS to every alum on that) but w/e this selection had opions and I’m rather robbed of a “Kemama” than I am of a BRILLIANT IRREPLICABLE AETHERBALLAD. ~Danse balance sûr les white and black holes~

Elis Mraz & Cis T - “Wanna be like”

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I *VERY* strongly felt that if the Czech Republic wanted to win ESC, they should have picked Elis and even now I STILL believe she could have won. That isn’t to say I gushed over “Wanna be like” because I find it kind of annoying lol. Yes, I LOVE an annoying female voice (:Tones&Icackle:) but Elis’s reaches a Camilla Cabello sort of place for me (good lord get Senorita OFF the fucking radio) and the Scat + White Guy Rapping middle-eight. 😬. However, the second I opened up the video clip for this paragraph and was immediately BLASTED by Elis murdering a ukelele and wearing a “schoolgirl” outfit straight from a Japanese tentacle porn movie and OH MY GOD THE AGGRESSIVE TWERKING made me reconsider that hey, this min-sized Meghan Traynor actually kinda highkey owns, yo! Yet, I’m not at all bothered we lost her in the Czech NF because we got UNO DOS QUATRO CINCO SEIS :fatmansplit: fill up the megameme slot instead, so...

Eurovision 2020 vs Eurovision 2021

BENNY RUINED HIS SONG AND NEVER WOULD HAVE QUALIFIED. jk I’m not a moron. Sure, “Kemama” wasn’t an easy sell because you know AFROBEAT in a contest where half of the people watching are fash (ie: all of Eastern Europe, who watch out of ~Nationalistic Sentiment~ 😬), but there are Kemama live renditions out there and he owns them SO hard lol. A few soundmixing issues really would not have stopped Benny from qualifying in that RIDICULOUSLY WEAKSAUCE SEMIFINAL are you fucking kidding me. He probably would’ve bombed in the Grand Final, but I mean it’s Czech and it’s not Ickolas so ofc it would have.

And Czech renewed him for 2021 regardless of the sceptics, woohoo! I think part of it was due the Czech not wanting to re-organize an ENTIRE NF from scratch without Jan Bors, but probably also because Benny owns live when he isn’t engaged in psychological trench warfare with actual human detritus <3 and also because the Czech fucking CARE about their artists and don’t drop them like a sack of rotten potatoes wtfshitprus.

Can’t wait for the moment when he qualifies and Efendi does not, etc, etc.

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’d say that the core around which the Ben Drama spun was pretty standard fare: niche fave beats out the concensus fave, meltdowns ensue, people convince themselves it was the WRONG decision because it wasn the result they wanted, try to disown the song and make a fool of themselves because the song slaps, sorry. Even the revamp drama felt more of less generic for me, because yawn fantards melting down over a revamp of a song they don’t even like what else is new.

However, what I do take away that the revamp was ENTIRELY Benny’s idea which he told no one about (cue to JAN BORS having a social media meltdown like he’s Caesar at the Ides of March 💔) added MORE afrobeat just to troll his haters even more <3 God, I’d say it was bad from a musical perspective but this level of in-your-face defiance is fucking iconic and hilarious, sorry. This entire this year is so batshit bonkers that the concept of a someone potentially shooting themselves in the foot and “torpedo’ing” their qualification chances (not rly, he would’ve Q’d anyway lol) JUST to take the moral high ground in a racially coded argument only HE took seriously may not even be the craziest concept in the year! (lol it definitely isn’t. Look at the pics I haven’t greyed out yet)

This and more yield Benny some well-earned Senheads! Yay!!

Score: 3 Senhits out of 5.

#Eurovision #Eurovision 2020 #Eurovision Song Contest #Czech Republic #Czechia #Bohemia #Ben Christovão #Benny Christo

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ryqoshay · 4 years ago

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Tri-Arame: Happy Nyan Day

Primary Pairing Trio: YuuAyuSetsu Secondary Groupings: AiRina, ShizuKasu, EmmaKariKana Words: ~2.6k Rating: G Time Frame: Sometime during the 2nd trimester of their 2nd year? Later? Story Arc: Stand Alone

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Author’s Note: I couldn’t help myself. The song is too cute. And I may have hit triple digits at some point for plays...

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“Alright, next order of business,” Setsuna said from her position by the whiteboard “Yuu-san has written several songs for our new subgroups, so we need to decide who gets each one.” She seemed to be barely able to contain her excitement, but must have been tapping deep into Nana to keep up a professional appearance as she and Kasumi lead the meeting.

Subgroups… Ayumu couldn’t quite get used to the term. The Nijigasaki School Idol Club was a group of solo idols; rivals but friends, as they had come to call themselves. Only since their joint performance at the School Idol Festival had they started doing more things as a group. Then Setsuna and Kasumi insisted that they form subgroups, as it was apparently a popular thing with idol groups. But they still were not technically a group…

Then again, she seemed to be the only one who had an issue with the concept. Everyone else had been excited so Ayumu had decided not to voice her dissent.

After much discussion, as well as calling in votes from their fellow students, the subgroups were assigned and Ayumu ended up in one with Setsuna and Shizuku. And for some reason, they had been assigned a couple of peppy, almost embarrassingly happy songs to start, ones that didn’t really match any of their styles as individual idols.

Of course, Setsuna had been thrilled to use it all as an excuse to explore a facet of school idols not normally in her repertoire. Shizuku had decided it would be a way to expand her acting skills. And Ayumu found herself just going along with them. However, she couldn’t deny that she was having fun. A lot of fun, actually.

Ayumu was distracted from her thoughts as a stack of music sheets was passed to her from Shizuku sitting beside her. She flipped through the pages and started skimming to get an idea of what Yuu had written for them.

“Ne, Karin-chan.” Emma said from across the table as she pointed to something on one of the sheets in her hand.

Next to her, Karin leaned over a little to get a better view before nodding approval. She then held up a page and motioned to Ai who was in her usual spot on the couch next to Rina. Ai found the indicated sheet in her own stack and also nodded. Seemed like DiverDiva may have figured out which song they wanted to claim.

“Yuu-san.” Setsuna suddenly uttered.

“Mm?” The twin-tailed girl next to Ayumu responded.

“Is this one based on that anime we started watching?”

Yuu chuckled. “I figured you’d be the one to notice that first.”

Oh, Ayumu knew that expression. Mt. Yuki was about to erupt in explosive excitement.

“That’s amazing!” Setsuna exclaimed. “It works so well! It could be the opening sequence for the second season, easily!”

“A song based on an anime?” Kasumi questioned. “What’s it about?”

“Ohmygoditssogood!” Setsuna gushed as she grabbed the younger girl’s hands before launching into a rapid fire, overly detailed description.

Ayumu empathized a little with the expression Kasumi displayed. She looked like she just had a chalkboard eraser dropped on her head, despite by all rights knowing of the trap’s existence based on prior experience. However, over the last few months, Ayumu had come to find Setsuna’s passion for anime, even her soft spot for certain cliches, to be rather endearing. As such, she just smiled as she watched her fellow second-year geek out.

“Andtheyallcompeteforthemastersaffectionandthereisanadventurousbutclumsyoneandatsundereoneandaseriousoneandatimidoneshesthecutestbyfarshessopureandsheliterallyisascaredycat” Setsuna’s verbal torrent continued “Honestlytheyreallcutecatgirlsingeneralaresocute!”

Wait. Catgirls? That’s the series that had inspired Yuu to write a song? The one where the protagonist rescues a bunch of cats that end up magically transforming into girls? That horribly written harem, chock full of overused tropes, fanservice and plot holes? What the heck was Yuu thinking?

Sure, the protagonist was pretty cute with her twin tailed hairstyle, and she was a heck of a saint for putting up with the antics of all the catgirls living with her. But that wasn’t enough to make up for all of the other shortcomings of the series as far as Ayumu was concerned. So why that one? Why was that the series that inspired a song?

“Hmm…” Kanata hummed from the other side of the table. “Seems like A・ZU・NA has their song decided.”

Oh gods, no…

“I have no objections.” Shizuku spoke up. “The song does seem to fit well with the others we’ve already performed. However, given the primary subject, are we to then act as cats?”

Shizuku-chan, not you as well…

“Or course!” Setsuna proclaimed, releasing Kasumi as her attention shifted.

How embarrassing…

“Hrm…” Shizuku pondered. “I may have to practice that.”

“Well to help with that,” Setsuna began speed walking toward the club’s storage lockers “we should get some cat ears!”

“We have cat ears?” Ayumu asked aloud before realizing she had done so.

“Of course!” Kasumi was the one to chime in this time. “Every school idol should wear cat ears at some point. Setsuna-senpai is right that catgirls are cute. The fans love that kind of thing and they make someone like me even cuter!”

“Rinari and Ai-san have already dressed as cats for that one animal themed photoshoot we had.” Ai reminded.

Oh, that’s right. Ayumu had ended up being a rabbit and had to endure Yuu’s teasing the entire time.

“We still have the ears you two wore.” Setsuna’s voice came from within the open locker. “And here are the rest.” She stepped back, revealing a box filled with various costume accessories.

“Setsuna-chan’s already getting into it.” Yuu chuckled.

Sure enough, the raven-haired girl was already wearing a grey set of cat ears with darker grey stripes and red inner lining. With an ear-to-ear smile, she practically skipped back to the table to set down the box.

Shizuku leaned in to inspect the selection. “How about this one?” She retrieved a set with a calico pattern.

“Those suit you well, Shizuku-san.” Setsuna approved. “Now for you, Ayumu-san.”

“Eh, me too?” Ayumu startled.

“Yes.” Setsuna nodded before turning her attention to the box. “Let’s see…”

“How about this one?” Yuu reached out and grabbed a pair of pink cat ears.

“Yuu-chan, wai…” Before Ayumu could finish, Yuu had already slipped the headband on her.

“Perfect.” Yuu declared. “And they’re at least as cute as the bunny ears, though I may still like Ayu-pyon a bit more than Ayumyan.”

Ayumyan…? Heat gathered in Ayumu’s cheeks.

“So, now that we’re all wearing cat ears, what else should we do?” Shizuku inquired.

“We act like cats.” Setsuna stated decisively.

“Yes, but how?”

“We act like they do in the anime. Hrm… Perhaps like this!” She dropped to her knees next to Yuu. “Goshujinsamya!” She cried, curling her fingers and hands to mimic paws and placing them on Yuu’s legs. She looked up excitedly as though she was about to jump into the other girl’s lap.

“Wha? You’re making me the master, Setsunyan?” Yuu laughed.

“Well you do look a little like the protagonist.”

“I do? Hrm… maybe.” Yuu shrugged before reaching down to pat Setsuna’s head.

Ayumu felt a sharp pang of the all too familiar jealousy she had been working hard to get past. But seriously, she knew Setsuna was capable of being embarrassed. How was she able to just shut off her shame like that and behave in just the right way to make Ayumu feel like this?

Movement by the whiteboard caught Ayumu’s eye. Oh no, Kasumi was walking toward them. Ayumu followed the first-year’s gaze down to Yuu’s free hand. Ayumu was significantly closer, but if she didn’t make her move now, Kasumi would beat her to it.

But everyone else was here. Watching.

Setsuna let out a sound that could pass as a cat’s mewl, closed her eyes and pushed up into Yuu’s hand.

Geez…

“G… Go… Goshujinsamya…” She squeaked out, sliding off her seat to mirror Setsuna.

“Dwaaa…” Yuu cooed. “Don’t worry Ayumyan, I won’t forget about you.” She patted Ayumu’s head as well.

Ayumu had to suppress making a sound like Setsuna had a moment ago, though she now understood the cause.

“Sen~pai~” Kasumi wailed, predictably. “Don’t forget about Kasumin… I mean Kasumyan!”

“Sorry, Kasumyan, but my hands are full.” Yuu apologized. “Maybe a raincheck? And while I’m at it, to complete the subgroup, I suppose I could get Shizunyan in as well.”

Really? Were they all going to get their names nyanified now?

“Thank you for the offer, Yuu-senpai,” Shizuku said “but I shall pass.”

“Ah ha!” Ai laughed. “So that was Yuyu’s plan all along! Surround herself with catgirls.”

Yuu shrugged. “It’s a school idol club and we already had the props. It was bound to happen eventually anyway.”

Yuu surrounded by catgirls? Ayumu didn’t particularly like that idea. However… she glanced over at the girl opposite her. Perhaps… if it was just them… maybe it would be alright? Maybe. Just maybe.

“Kyaa!” Kasumi shrieked. “Sh-Sh-Shizuko, when did you get…?!”

Ayumu looked up to see that the theater student had made her way behind the boastful idol and placed a pair of cream-colored ears on her.

“There, there.” Shizuku said gently, patting her fellow first-year’s head. “That’s a good girl, Kasumyan.”

“I… I’d still prefer Senpai to give me head pats…” Kasumi grumbled.

Shizuku’s shoulders slumped, she dropped her hand and donned a hurt expression. “So, I’m not good enough to substitute?”

Kasumi turned, made eye contact with Shizuku and winced. “That’s not what I meant! I’m sorry Shizuko! You’re head pats are great! Please, uhm… please continue.”

Immediately, Shizuku brightened. “Shizunyan.” She corrected cheerfully and resumed patting the other girl’s head.

“Wait, were you just acting?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Ayumu detected a small change in Shizuku’s smile. “You’ll have to figure that out on your own.” Had she actually been acting?

“Hmmm… nya~n…” Kanata drawled sleepily.

Emma giggled in response which pulled Ayumu’s attention to that side of the table. The redheaded third-year had found a light brown set of cat ears with cute purple lining, placed them on Katana and started petting her like Yuu was doing to her and Setsua and Shizuku was to Kasumi. She had also found a red pair with green lining for herself.

“Here, Karinyan.” Emma smiled and held out a blue set.

“No thanks, Emma,” Karin started to refuse “I’m goo… eh?” Pink started to dust her cheeks as the accessory was moved closer. “Fine…” She sighed and relented.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Karin reached up and placed a hand on top of Emma’s head. The redhead responded with a content hum and pushed up a little into the affectionate gesture.

“Ainyan’s not going to be left out of this!” Ai proclaimed, practically jogging to the table. “Ne, Rinya, don’t these look a little like Hanpen’s?” She held up a set.

“Mm.” Rina confirmed. “They are very cute. I like them.”

“Perfect.” Ai grabbed what looked like a yellow set for herself and made her way back to the couch.

So, did that mean everyone in the club was now wearing cat ears? Ayumu wondered. No, everyone except… She looked up.

“What’s up, Ayumyan?” Yuu asked with a gentle smile as their eyes met and she paused her pats.

Geez, there was no way Ayumu was going to get used to that nickname. With heat gathering in her cheeks, she averted her gaze. Yuu seemed to be all too willing to dismiss the disruption as she hummed happily and resumed her affections.

As a peaceful quite settled in the clubroom, Ayumu turned her attention once again to Setsuna. So often she had thought of the excitable girl as likened to a puppy. However, as she was now, Setsuna looked very much like a cat about to curl up in Yuu’s lap, start purring and fall asleep.

Adorable.

What might it be like to be the one petting her? Ayumu considered. What if Yuu-chan and I swapped places? Would they both look up at me like that? Would they call me… Goshu… Geez, she couldn’t even complete the thought. Still, as embarrassing as it might be, it was more than a little appealing. Perhaps next…

Wait, didn’t they still have practice?

----------

Setsuna felt heat rise in her cheeks as memories from earlier in the day suddenly sprung forth in her mind. She shook her head, though was unable to avoid the oncoming thoughts. With a sigh, she sat back in her chair for a couple minutes of break from her studies.

Geez, she had really let herself get carried away. Sure, new songs from Yuu were always worth excitement and one based on a beloved anime series worth that much more, but…

Had she really needed to do that with Yuu? Setsuna mentally checked through other possible candidates. The first-years were out as calling someone younger master seemed strange. She didn’t feel quite as close to the third-years, though any of them probably would have been fine with it.

That just left her fellow second-years. Ai would have probably teased her about such a display, which would have been a bit embarrassing but otherwise alright. However, how would Rina have reacted? Of course, by that logic, targeting Yuu had resulted in upsetting Kasumi. So that only left Ayumu.

Ayumu-san…

While Yuu’s affection had been great, really great, wonderful in fact, Setsuna couldn’t help wondering how it might have felt if Ayumu had taken Yuu’s place. She then immediately realized she already had a fairly close approximation by way of how often Ayumu styled her hair.

And on that topic, was it Setsuna’s imagination or had Ayumu been the only one to work with her hair as of late? Though many of the prepping duties before their Lives were divided among anyone able to assist, ever since Ayumu had taught her how to make her adorable signature braided buns, it seemed she had been the one to style Setsuna’s hair.

Setsuna racked her memory. Had Yuu really never helped with that? Ai? Emma? Anyone else? She couldn’t recall. Strange. But, was it intentional? Surely Ayumu wasn’t the type to quietly manipulate a situation to ensure a desired outcome, right? No, it had to be a coincidence. In either case, Setsuna was unable to come up with a reason to object to the situation.

Setsuna blinked. That had been an odd tangent.

A different thought occurred to her. Had she overstepped her bounds earlier? Had she put herself in a position that could be interpreted as trying to come between Ayumu and Yuu?

Setsuna ran a replay of their walk from school to the station after practice. Neither seemed to behave differently toward her or attempt to exclude her from conversation or anything like that. It had all seemed quite normal, as far as she could tell.

The three had talked about plans for choreography and costuming for the new song. Of course, Yuu had used several opportunities to tease Ayumu who responded with her predictable flustered adorableness while Setsuna enjoyed the show. Just another enjoyable walk with them, same as yesterday and hopefully tomorrow, and as many other days as possible until the end of their school year. And maybe next year as well.

So no, it would seem Setsuna had not overstepped her bounds and was still on good terms with her two closest friends. That was a relief. If anything, perhaps she had actually strengthened her bonds with them? That would be nice. Really nice.

Setsuna smiled to herself as she suddenly had the urge to rewatch the catgirl anime. She glanced at the clock and determined she had spent enough time studying and it was late enough that her parents were unlikely to walk in on her. She slid her laptop in front of herself, navigated to the streaming site and started watching. Tomorrow, she would have to be sure to talk with Yuu and Ayumu about it again.

----------

Author’s Notes Continued in Followup Post

#YuuAyuSetsu #Takasaki Yuu #Yuki Setsuna #Uehara Ayumu #Tri-Arame #Love Live Nijigasaki #fanfic

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atendersun-archived · 3 years ago

Note

“You’re really cute…when you let yourself talk about things you love.” Absent-mindedly Sullivan complimented him, leaning on his hand. Happily he has been listening to a passionate rant of information. Every little rabbit hole Muus brain brought to him, all the fun stories. It was really nice. To get to hear the real him. “I hope we can talk about things you like again. So I can see you that happy more often.”

Besides him rested numerous plastic containers with barriers that many used to store fishing lures in. His on he other hand were labeled with different initials and numbers that marked his uniquely thought out storing system. Inside many of them were a variety of miniature items made from materials such as polymer clay, felt, shrinkable plastic, and wood. Resting on his lap as he spoke freely on his most recent passion was a notebook that he had been doodling out ideas for additional items to be made later on.

Words also appeared to be etched in between sketches with great significance yet he managed to multitask in conversation so swiftly that none of them parted through his lips as he went on with his attempt at describing to the other what it was that he aimed to do with all of us uniquely made miniatures. Amongst the growing list of adjectives was the term 'passionate', which he would later find a tad bit of humor in due to the fact that he would then begin to speak openly about what he aimed to do with an idea that had only just recently popped into his head earlier in the week.

"Sully", he began, "Do you know what a diorama is? That is kind of like what I am making, but they are going to be more like how I think the inside of a Poké Ball, or a Polly Pocket shell would be."

How exactly he wanted to approach that idea was still being determined in his drawings. He hadn't yet decided if he wanted to store his ideas inside something as simply as a tiny house, or to up the difficulty by trying put his hand at making something akin to the inside of the brain instead. If he was willing to really do his research, and figure out how to even begin adding it in, he'd have pushed it even further by including in some sort of musical trait into it as if they were very unusual music boxes.

"I've been feeling very out of touch with myself. That's why.. I am making these little houses, I guess, for the parts of me that stand out the most. That way they have places to be that are not only of their own, but also that are safe to be in as well. That way I can kind only just focus on the parts of me that are here right now instead of feeling all of the feelings of all of me's at the same time."

Showing seemed easier than risking confusion with his long string of words, so he ceased moving the pen across paper long enough for him to switch out the pad entirely for the most filled of all of the bins with the marking of the number sixteen across the top. That had been the first one he wanted to work on out of reluctancy to really even begin thinking about what he would've used to describe himself during other core moments in his life, but also because he had been really weighed down the most by pings of jealousy and resentment that he knew were stirring from the loneliness and guilt that blossomed into fruition as a teenager.

"These one's are all the things that I see when I think of me at sixteen. This one is an itty bitty version of Aime Jr. Aime was my best friend that moved away to France, but b- before that, he gived me a hedgehog that I named after him. Once I even had a real hedgehog that I named Baby Aime, but I'll probably save him for later 'cause I got him when I was older. I still have him, by the way. The stuffed animal that is. He's very beat up looking from having gone to lots of things with me before I kind of out grew bringing him along, but.. I do still like to think back on when I still had Aime around all those many years ago."

From there, he very excitedly hopped from one item to another; explaining each one's individual meaning before immediately following it up with another. In his chatter, he went on to describe making miniature versions of the favorite books he used to beg his older brother to read to him since they always seemed to be easier to understand when he heard them in a voice other than his own. Or how he simply just did so to not so secretly trick his sibling into sharing the bed with him long enough for him to drift off to sleep with him at his side instead of alone.

Also happily presented were tiny versions of some standard looking Valentine's Day cards and some even tinier stickers he designed and cut out using an x-acto blade. Both were heavily enjoyed by him during that time in his life since he held such largely positive feelings towards things that were either cute, or were associated with love in any way. His dream back then had always been to experience a fairytale love like he watched in movies, or heard about in songs by Taylor Swift songs, as he knew that his chances of that were not necessarily as high as they may have been if not for his perceived sensitivity and slowness.

And while he was still somewhat still shifting through the hurt of his plan to make that kind of dream come true didn't work out as intended, that was not the only reason he purposely chose to keep his focus on making items he associated with himself instead of himself in association with the person he was dating at the time in his life. His decision to do so had not been made out of a lack of love for that individual, but rather because he wanted to keep the home he was making for the boy he once was be one crafted from as much self love as he possibly could have.

"There's still lots of other things I could maybe make to go into the home for the Muu that was the littlest, I guess. Like if I made things relevant to dating for the first time, since th- that was a very core thing for me when I was only sixteen. I don't.. really want to though, because I feel.. like that is where a lot of the guilt of being me comes from to begin with, an- and I don't want to stick him into the house for him right back into those feelings all over again. Of not.. loving in the right way, or of making things harder than they needed to be even if maybe I didn't mean for it to be that way. I'm.. making these little houses, or whatever they're gonna be, so these littler versions of me get to be tucked away into spots of healing. That's why I- I am maybe making all of these things, but not even use all of 'em, because I want to make sure the space is happy for them. I don't.. want them to cry because something doesn't feel safe."

Even in the seriousness of his words, he never strayed away from wanting to ramble on more regarding the thoughtfulness behind his intentions. What he was working on was obviously of great importance to him. Even more than that, he seemed to have been so caught up in his own motivation that he'd failed to even really notice how expressive his body language and facial features became when he shared on about even just the smallest of things that brought life into him at such a young, impressionable age.

Or at least he hadn't until receiving the compliment offered by the other male. Out of what seemed to be embarrassment, the blond instinctively pulled a hand away from sorting through his miscellaneous items to pull the fabric of his shirt up to protectively cover the lower half of his face. In reality, however, he was more so hiding away the surprisingly boyish grin that silenced his moving lips. As well as the growing shade of pink that existed around the nose that sat above them. He was still very much getting used to being spoken to as if his company was desired rather than being hypervigilant of the backhandedness that came from people spending time with him out of obligation or manipulation rather than genuine companionship. Unlike in the many months prior, though, he at least found himself really enjoying the affirming words of endearment offered by the raven.

"Oh, thank you.. I'm not very good at talking about myself a lot of the time. Or of even just.. knowing myself, but you.. you know, th- that is something we can at least, kind of.. learn together maybe?"

#sully i am sorry but you broke the man #also rip the dash for this #tw long post #tximidity

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nodesiretogrowup · 5 years ago

Text

alrighty, let’s recap this bitch!

LAUNCHPAD! I’VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH! PLEASE COME BACK!

I looked up when National S’mores Day is (because I’m a nerd) and it is August 10. So either the photo later was mislabeled or, more likely, Launchpad got the wrong info

Huey with the little baby scouts is TOO CUTE!!

I wonder if Violet’s there. Probably not because she would have been hanging out with Huey if she was. Or this episode was meant to come before Challenge

It’s a baby beagle boy! I wonder if he’s there of his own will or if it is part of some plan

He scared away most of the kids! Now they won’t get to enjoy s’more-y goodness

His s’more sounds DOPE AF, though it probably would give you INSTANT DIABETES

“Aw, not even a modern robot.” MY SWEET SON!

I know it was the bully saying it, but Huey should chill a bit when it comes to doing things EXACTLY and PERFECTLY. It’s just gonna cause stress

BOYD IS BABY AND I LOVE HIM

“Would you like to be friends?” “Sure. Wow, that was easy.” If only it was always that easy

I don’t know if Huey has the JWG as memorized as he thinks, going by Challenge and Quack Pack

“We’re just kids.” “Definitely!” *uses laser eyes to light fire*

This episode does a good job showing what a trigger word/phrase is like, though I’m not sure if that was the intention

I like that a squirrel with a burnt tail scurries out of one of the trees. It’s the attention to detail that helps elevate this show

Instead of jumping out of the way or hiding Huey jumps straight onto Boyd to try and help him. Huey already sees Boyd as someone worth protecting

The kid that just runs across the screen while his hat is on fire is great

Not sure why they took the time to change before going to Gyro but whatever

BOYD IS ADORABLE AND I LOVE HIM

“I’m more than an intern, I’m a scientist.” I feel like this might be hinting at Fenton’s arc for the season, possibly wanting to be seen more as a scientist than a superhero

I’m gonna pretend that using sunglasses on someone who is shooting lasers out of their eyes is a Cyclops reference. And they look pretty dope too

At least Fenton knows when he is in over his head...this time

Gyro trying to climb up on the table to avoid Boyd was kind of funny. And then him protecting himself with Lil Bulb

“Which one?” Manny is DONE with this shit

“Boyd? What idiot called it that?” Even when he’s not there, Gyro can still burn Mark lol

I figured 2-BO was a reference to something but wasn’t sure what. Apparently it’s a bit of a play on the name of Astro Boy’s in-universe creator’s son. Neat

Huey stays in between Gyro and Boyd to protect Boyd

Fenton’s face cracks me up. There are NO THOUGHTS in this man’s head lol

“You were an intern like me?” “Nothing like you.” Damn Gyro, why so salty?

I don’t know why Fenton is so surprised that Gyro was an intern. I feel like that’s a pretty standard thing

LOVE IS STORED IN THE BOYD

It make me sad when Gyro mentions how many times Boyd’s core programing was altered. Poor baby doesn’t really get a say in what happens to him

“ROAD TRIP!” Huey, you do these kinds of things ALL THE TIME. I feel like he should be used to this by now

“YOU’RE not going. GIZMODUCK is.” Does Gyro see Fenton and Gizmoduck as separate entities or is this just a no, but yes type of joke?

Huey standing up for Boyd is so sweet. They barely know each other but Huey trusts him

When the episode doesn’t have the theme song you KNOW shit’s ‘bout to go down

I wonder who’s flying the plane. My guess is Launchpad because Della would have been cooing over Huey making a new friend and go into embarrassing mom mode. He probably went of on his own adventure or did tourist things like buying collectables. Or maybe Gyro flew them there. Who knows

As many people have said, the art direction and animation for this episode are BEAUTIFUL. I love the pink tint the lighting has in most of the episode

SAILOR MOON CONFIRMED CANON

I bet Mark Beaks is a Sailor Moon fan

I like that the in-universe Sailor Moon is a bunny because Usagi is Japanese for rabbit

I love that going incognito nowadays means you wear a hat, a hoodie, and sunglasses. Boyd looks good in red (though red is my favorite color so I might be biased)

Gyro-takes one step and the fuzz shows up. NOICE

I like detective lady. She has a cool design

Huey and Fenton are awful at acting casual

“Crimes?” Oh my sweet Hubert. I’m pretty sure most if not all of Scrooge’s employees have had run ins w/ The Law

Gyro is like, move I’m gay

“I’m here on a very important...field trip.” ALL THE KIDS NEED A GYRO FIELD TRIP LIKE HOW THE GAANG GOT ZUKO FIELD TRIPS

Lil Bulb said FUCK THE POLICE

I wonder what it actually says

Fenton just watches as the inspector chases Lil Bulb

Seriously though, Fenton does a bunch of silly stuff in the background and this episode warrants a rewatch SOLELY for him

How did Lil Bulb know where to find them? And how did he shake off the inspector? I want to see his little adventure

FOR SCIENCE!

“Blah!” *arm armor attaches* I want this joke to come back

Fenton and Huey INSTANTLY nerd out. I love them

Fenton being a Gyro fanboy is ADORABLE

“AH, DUST IN MY EYE! The dust of GENIUS!” What a dweeb lol

I like that Fenton keeps the arm on for the whole scene

Poor Boyd, he looks so scared

Huey going into protective big brother mode

Doofus continues to be equal parts hilarious and disturbing

Where are their parents? Like, someone should be looking after these kids! ESPECIALLY DOOFUS!

“Do you need a hug?” I SURE FUCKING DO

Mark is such a prick lol

“NO WAY, A ROBOT BOY! DREAMS DO COME TRUE!” YOU DON’T DESERVE THAT DREAM YOU COCKWAFFLE

SOMEONE HUG THIS CHILD! BECAUSE I CANNOT!

“Seems like the little guy’s had it tough.” MY POOR BABY

Lil Bulb gets SO PISSED he blew a fuse

You really shouldn’t have left them alone, Gyro

Why does Fenton automatically jump to superhero for Boyd? I mean the theme of the episode is letting Boyd choose who he wants to be so of course Fenton would have his own idea of what Boyd should be, but why go straight to superhero? Do you want superbros, Fenton?

Huey already realises this might be a bad idea, because he’s more concerned about Boyd as a person rather than Boyd as a machine

“IN RETROSPECT WE PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE USED THE FIRST HOLE” Fenton, you dumbass genius

Dr. Akita’s setup made me laugh. I DIED when he “enhanced” the image

I recognized the character on the chips though I don’t know their name. I’m more of a western animation fan, so many of the references probably flew pass me

BOOP

I also have a key on my laptop that flies off (it’s the u key)

I LOVE BABY GYRO! It’s so cool they went with his og look (minus the red hair) to show him younger

I LOVE THE OUTLAW COUPLE! SO COOL! SO HOT!

Huey is so DONE with Fenton

I love the stupid G pose he does. PLEASE HAVE HIM DO IT AGAIN. PREFERABLY WHEN DW IS NEARBY

Such a polite boy

“My bones are metal!” This line and Boyd’s catchphrase of “Hi, I’m Boyd/2-BO, a definitely real boy!” reminded me of Olaf. The end of the episode gives Boyd even MORE Olaf parallels

Gizmoduck sliding by those boxes was cool

How did Gizmoduck get himself unstuck from that alley?

I loved the double take the female outlaw does

Huey is TRAUMATIZED

I legit thought Boyd was gonna light the oil on fire the first time I watched and I was like that won’t help

“So, what do we do now?” “I...don’t know.” This is why you don’t leave babies alone to fight criminals

Boyd reminded me of Calculester from Monster Prom when he asked the lady to return the money

STOP LEAVING THE CHILDREN ALONE! THEY ARE BABIES! THEY AREN’T EVEN TEENS!

“Why do we always fight when we’re on vacation?” Because this is Ducktales and there is no such thing as a normal vacation

Lil Bulb just kicking his lil feet

The “lab” safety poster made me chuckle. Then I remembered Akita is also a dog and I laughed more

LITTLE BABY GYRO GRADUATING! My guess is his professor/dean/principal influenced him on a personal level and is partially the reason Boyd is a parrot

Lil Helper blueprints. Nice reference to the og series

Has anyone talked about the poster with the cogs and the dogman in old-timey clothes that says GIZMOS on it? I think it’s a Dr. Who reference

IDEALISTIC GYRO AND BOYD IS TOO CUTE!

How did he NOT notice the second hole in the wall?

That is a surplus of handcuffs. Do you think she uses them for...fun times?

“I’m just a guy! With very bruisable skin!”

Poor misunderstood Gyro inventions

Boyd just politely waves at everyone

Huey is WAY calmer than I would be if I got lost in an unfamiliar city

Boyd says FUCK WORK

I love Huey stimming. Really hope Disney will let them confirm in words that Huey is autistic

Is it more common for two kids to wonder around by themselves in Tokyo? Because as an American I find it super stressful and would want to find their parents so they could be safer

THE BUNNY! AND THEN THE KITTIES!

Do cats just take buses on their own in Tokyo?

CHERRY BLOSSOM TIME BITCHES

“And I know what you’re thinking, what about ninjas?” I am ALWAYS wondering about ninjas

I like that Huey finally has a friend who shares the same interests and doesn’t mind info dumps

“Boyd, I don’t think you’re a killer robot. You’re just a kid.” “Aw, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.” T_T

I CAN SHOW YOU THE WORLD

I like Boyd’s motief

Akita is us after the quarantine

When he complained about being stiff I was like mood

I like his Green Goblin disc thingy

The other people don’t give a shit about Boyd just FLYING DOWN WITH HIS ROCKET FEET!

Gyro shows up *dramatic wind*

His tablet has a duckie on it. I wounder if they have a Mac/PC thing going on with Waddle and what brand the duckie represents

When the adults argue and Boyd gets all sad and scared I FELT THAT

Huey doing his best to keep Boyd calm and defend him SO PURE

OH GOD HELP THIS POOR CHILD!

HUEY IS A GOOD BOY AND A GOOD FRIEND

“Because of you I’ve become an outcast.” I feel like you did that to yourself

ANIME HAIR POOF

ngl, that shit was TERRIFYING

“You don’t have to do what Akita tells you. Do what I tell you.” So close

“INTERN! FIGHT BETTER!”

Huey must weigh NOTHING if Gyro can pick him up

Akita’s tail looks like a cinnamon roll

Huey always finding that hidden info

The gibberish Gyro says is great

BOYD SAYS IT BECAUSE GYRO TOLD HIM THAT!

THAT HUG!!!

HOW DARE AKITA HURT BABY GYRO AND SWEET BABY BOYD?!

PROTECTIVE PAPA GYRO

NEEEEERRRRRRRD FIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT

“You’ll never invent anything worthwhile.” LIL BULB HAS ENTERED THE FIGHT

Are doggos recyclable?

HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGS

Blue eyes=good robot

ANOTHER HUG

Be Only Yourself, Dude

I like that basically Gyro admitted that he was like Fenton if Fenton hadn’t had support

“That’s not technically how doctorites work, BUT I DON’T CARE!” Do you think Gyro doesn’t have his doctorate or do you think he assumed Fenton already had one?

“The hugging is a ‘just for today’ thing.” YOU CANNOT STOP THE HUG TRAIN!

“Leave. Now.”

Are they gonna go to the plane?

This season has been consistently knocking it out of the park! I’m a SLUT for backstory episodes, so I enjoyed this one a lot. I loved seeing Gyro when he had hope and faith in the world. It SUCKS that Akita took that away from him. Hopefully Gyro will see things slightly less cynical now. Fenton was a dweeb the whole episode and I love him for it. Boyd is SO SWEET AND PRECIOUS and in NO WAY deserved the treatment he got. I have a feeling there is more to Boyd’s creation/Dr.Akita that we’ll get later on. Huey was ADORABLE this episode. It’s really sweet to see him hangout with someone who gets him. Everyone deserves to have at least one friend like that. The fight scene was GORGEOUS! SO FLUID! I really loved this one and I hope we get more Team Science episodes because these characters play really well off each other.

#ducktales #dt spoilers #a bit later than normal but oh well

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spartanguard · 5 years ago

Text

you ain't gonna be lonesome anymore

Summary: Emma discovers that there's more to the guy who lives alone in the woods than the town would lead her to believe—and may have just found a kindred spirit. (Modern AU inspired by "Joshua" by Dolly Parton)

A/N: In the spirit of Dolly Parton's Heartstrings, this piece was inspired by her song "Joshua", which I heard and immediately knew needed to be an AU. I had intended to wait until closer to the release of the series but...I couldn’t. Hope you like it!

rated G | 5.6k | AO3

On her way into town, through the narrow forest road that just barely held two lanes of traffic, Emma Swan saw it—a tiny little cabin hiding among the trees. It probably wouldn’t have caught her attention were it not for the light coming through the windows, practically a beacon in the dimming dusk, and the bit of smoke coming from the chimney.

And she probably wouldn’t have given it another thought were it not for the people of Storybrooke being the way they were. She just assumed it was normal for hermits to live in cabins in the Maine woods, but once she realized this town was full of busybodys who knew everyone and made everyone’s business their own, she saw the oddity of it.

Not like she was much of anything normal herself; this was just another stop on the road to wherever. Neal may have left her with a broken heart and jail time on her record, but she also couldn’t forget his words: “Home is the place, when you leave...you just miss it.” So far, she hadn’t missed anywhere; not Arizona, not Tallahassee, not Minnesota, New York, Boston—anywhere.

And she was pretty sure she’d be able to add Storybrooke to that list. It was almost too quaint to be true, and the people, while hospitable, were one step away from cloying. But winter was approaching, and this seemed as good a place to hibernate as any other before moving onto the next.

So she got a job at the diner and began putting names to faces of just about everyone in town. The grumpy miner, Leroy, liked his bacon; the cute sheriff, Graham, stereotypically enjoyed doughnuts. And so on. She got the gossip about the romance between the teacher and the recently divorced manager of the animal shelter, and the equally scandalous teenage pregnancy that prompted the young lovebirds to elope.

It was on a quick trip out of town—because Storybrooke had a terrible liquor selection and she’d be damned if she spent her birthday drinking the swill at the Rabbit Hole—that she saw the cabin again, looking just as cozy yet standoffish as it had a month ago, and it got her wondering. Now that she knew everyone, just who lived there?

“Hey Granny,” she asked a couple days later (once she was over her hangover). “You know that cottage in the woods, out by the highway?”

“What about it?” the diner’s owner barked impatiently, even though they were in the middle of the afternoon lull.

“Who lives there?” She could see Graham tucking away out there, or maybe it was Belle, the sweet but reserved librarian.

“No one worth knowing,” Granny grumbled. “And you won’t see ‘em around here, anyways. Good riddance.”

Emma frowned; that was antithesis to just about everything she’d learned about this town. Everyone was so keen to make sure she knew everyone else—so what was going on there?

“You talking about the Jones place, out on the ridge?” Leroy asked, the only other person in the diner.

“I guess so.”

“Yeah, don’t bother. He’s a dick.”

“What did he do?” she asked, making a move to refill Leroy’s coffee mug.

“He just...is. Anytime anyone has gotten close to his property, they’ve been run off. The one time I saw him, he was glaring at anyone who dared to get too close. There's all sorts of weird sounds and smells coming from his property. He’s just a nasty piece of work. Don’t you worry about him, sister—just keep your distance and you’ll be fine.”

Well, Emma had a terrible problem with doing what people told her. Now she was curious.

She tested the waters. She started to ask people when it was slow if they knew anything about the cabin in the woods, and got all kinds of responses.

“Stay away from him, dear; his heart’s as black as his hair.”

“My cousin got lost hiking and ended up near the property; guns started ringing out and he ran the other way as fast as he could.”

“I ran into him down at the docks one night. No clue what he was doing there but it didn’t look like anything good.”

“I heard he’s a werewolf, and that's why he lives all alone!” (That one was from one of the kids in town.)

“No, silly; he’s a pirate, with a hook for a hand! He’s got his treasure out there so that’s why he protects it!” (And that was said kid’s friend.)

“He’s evil, plain and simple,” she was assured by the pawnbroker—but given that man’s smarm and apparent Napoleon complex, she didn’t take his word as gold.

Emma had seen a lot more of the world than the residents of Storybrooke, and a lot more people; while she hadn’t had the best interactions with all of them, she knew that no one was as terrible as they all made this Jones guy out to be.

She also knew a thing or two about keeping your distance from people and the reasons one might have to do that—especially the people here; there were some days she figured he had the right idea, particularly after she’d heard some nasty things about the teacher said by the prudish old ladies. God forbid they ever learn Emma’s romantic history; it might kill them in their vinyl-covered seats.

And Emma had always been a bit of a rebel; that streak had gotten her kicked out of more than a few homes growing up and into several scrapes, but even at 28, she had no desire to tamp it down.

So on one of the last crisp days of fall, early in November, she decided she’d see what the fuss was about.

She packed up a few pastries purchased with her employee “discount” (otherwise known as “take them out of my paycheck, Granny”), a thermos of hot cocoa, wrapped herself up in her leather jacket and a scarf, and then headed off on what she told people was a “fall colors hike”. Which wasn’t entirely a lie, even if more leaves were on the ground than the trees at this point.

“Don’t go poking around that Jones place, you hear?” Granny called as she was leaving. “I’m not gonna drag your carcass home.”

Emma just rolled her eyes. She’d be fine.

Wouldn’t she?

She couldn’t lie—some of the stories started sending shivers down her spine the closer she got to the property. She’d never really been an outdoors-y girl, at least not by choice; there may have been a few nights spent on park benches, but only in the summer. And she generally preferred to stick to marked trails, but this forest didn’t have any—at least, not that went where she was headed. So it took all her concentration to make sure she didn’t slip on a slick patch or some protruding tree root.

Or maybe it was the trees themselves; they were tall and a tiny bit foreboding, as if they were telling her she wasn’t supposed to be there. (Maybe she wasn’t quite as rebellious as she thought.) Somewhere, in the recesses of her mind, the voice of Legolas was telling her how old the forest was. But then she laughed aloud when she remembered a meme that changed it to “old as balls”.

Her laughter was quickly cut off by a growl, though. Up ahead was a large, shaggy black dog—and he was standing his ground. Emma saw the clearing—and the cabin—beyond, and realized she’d arrived. Crap, had that kid been right about the werewolf thing? This dog was huge.

She remembered something about not looking a crazy dog in the eyes and was trying to avoid contact, but then a voice called out that drew both of their attentions.

“Who are you?”

Standing in the entryway of the cabin was who she assumed was the owner and—damn. She was not expecting a guy who looked like that to be living out here. The old lady in the diner had been right about black hair, but where she’d been expecting long and messy, it was short and slightly tousled. He had a bit of scruff and even from far away, she could see the way his piercing blue eyes and furrowed brows were studying her. And a strong nose, sharp jaw, and high cheekbones left him with a face much prettier than anything she expected.

He was dressed for rugged living, in a dark plaid button up and worn jeans, but the way they hugged his biceps and legs couldn’t possibly be practical. She wasn’t complaining, though—whatever he was doing out here was clearly good for him. He was probably the most attractive person she’d ever seen in person.

“Lass?” he called out again, and took a step out from the house. He had an accent that definitely wasn’t from Maine—probably from the other side of the Atlantic—and his voice was more than on edge. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t sound mean, though—just wary. She couldn’t blame him; she probably would be, too, if some strange person was standing in her front yard and staring.

Oh, right—she was the strange person.

“Hi! Sorry, I, uh, I’m Emma. Emma Swan.”

The dog was still growling; she hadn’t noticed in her ogling. “Easy, Smee,” he said, and the pup finally relaxed, then trotted back to the man. He gave the good boy a scratch behind the ears before ushering the mutt inside and turning his attention back to Emma. “Can I help you with something?”

She could think of a few lusty somethings but it was then she realized that she had no real plan for actually finding anyone out here, despite the fact that she knew the place was occupied. “Oh, no, not really; I, uh, just—”

“Just thought you’d come out and see if the one-handed old coot was real?”

Busted. Her eyes darted away, focusing on an old barrel standing in the yard—though not missing the prosthetic hook at the end of his left arm—and she was pretty sure she was blushing in shame. God, why did she think this was a good idea? He probably had enough gawkers and clearly didn’t like people and—and he was laughing. What?

She looked back up and he was chuckling at her, giving her a bit of a wry grin.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, starting to get worried that he really was crazy.

“You’re the first person who’s had the guts to do that in broad daylight,” he replied, still amused. “Do you want to come in?”

She could feel her eyebrows disappear into her beanie—that was not what she expected at all. There was still part of her waiting for him to produce a shotgun and run her off the property, or wondering if she was about to be chained to a radiator Black Snake Moan-style.

That said, this was also the most entertaining thing that had happened since she arrived here, and she’d certainly made it through shadier situations. That and there were zero creeper vibes from this guy—something she was all too good at noticing. “Sure,” she answered casually.

He smiled—a brilliant thing, really, brighter than the autumn sun shining through the mostly bare branches—and beckoned her to follow him into the house. Leaves and twigs crunched under her boots as she followed.

He paused at the door, though, and turned back to her. “Oh, you can call me Killian, by the way. Killian Jones.”

“Nice to meet you, Killian Jones.”

“The pleasure’s all mine, Emma Swan.”

He led the way in and she was right behind him, stopping only to swipe her shoes on the doormat; she may be awkward, but she didn’t want to be rude and track mud in—especially once she got a look around.

It wasn’t a large cabin, she knew that, but it was surprisingly spacious inside and clean—much cleaner than the rural setting would suggest. The wood floors were immaculately waxed and there wasn’t even the haze of dust motes swirling in the light from the windows; she couldn’t say half as much about her cramped apartment.

There was a tidy living space with a couch, a recliner, and an inviting fireplace with a large TV mounted above it; a small kitchen area to one side; and a couple doors on the other that she assumed headed to bedrooms. Smee was draped over one end of the sofa, his furry head resting on the arm as he watched her—still judging, but not aggressive, at least. Then the sound of wood scraping against wood drew her eyes back to the kitchen, where Killian was sliding another chair up to the small table. “Take a seat,” he said with a nod.

“Thanks,” she answered, and complied; the furniture was well-loved but also in good shape.

“Rum?” he asked, but he was already pulling glasses from a cupboard.

“Only if it’s good.” If anything, she’d be glad to leave Storybrooke for somewhere with better booze.

“Trust me, it’s the best.” He set the glasses on the table and then went back to grab an old-looking bottle off the counter; vintage was putting it lightly: it was scuffed and scratched and had no label, only a cork in the top to protect the amber liquid.

She had to bite her tongue when he deftly pulled out the cork with his teeth, because the extra attention on his mouth just highlighted how supple—and likely kissable—his lips were. He poured a generous amount for both of them before setting the bottle down and taking the seat next to her.

He lifted his glass, but then paused. “I feel like I should toast to something, but I’ve no clue what.”

It did feel odd to be making a toast with an almost-total stranger, but Emma agreed; that and it felt rude to not make one, and she’d already been that enough today. “To good rum?” she offered.

“Works for me. Cheers.”

“Cheers.” She took a sip and— “Damn,” she sighed as it slid down her throat. “You weren’t lying.” It was the perfect blend of sweet and spicy, with a light amount of burn that warmed up the bit of her that had been starting to numb in the chill autumn air.

“I make a habit not to.”

“Good to know.”

They took a few more sips in companionable silence, until he set his glass down and stared into it. “So, um,” he started, then scratched nervously behind his ear. “What, uh, what are they saying about me in town?”

“Nothing true.”

He arched an eyebrow at her in disbelief. “You hardly know me, lass.”

“No, but I can tell that your heart isn’t as black as your hair.”

“Someone said that?”

“Yup.”

“Well, it’s poetic; I’ll give it that,” he chuckled. “Anything else?”

“Mostly that you’re rude and combative, although the kids tell some tall tales.”

“Such as?”

“Werewolf, vampire, pirate—take your pick.”

He laughed again (a sound she was finding she enjoyed quite a bit). “I suppose pirate is the most apt of that list.”

“You do have good taste in rum.” Damn good; this reminded her of the stuff she bought on her birthday. “But I thought pirates lived on the high seas?”

“I do have a ship.”

“Okay then.” That explained why people saw him at the docks. “But then why would you live up here?”

He shrugged. “I imagine you’ve seen what that town is like.” She nodded; that she had. “I wasn’t in much mood for company when I arrived here, so they took that as a slight on their perceived hospitality. They wrote me off from there, and if that was how they were going to treat a newcomer, then I wanted no part of it.” He took another long drag of his rum. “And given that I wasn’t much in the mood for company, this place seemed perfect. So I bought the property, fixed it up, and...here I am. Well, me and Smee.”

She understood that; it was easier to keep people at arms’ length than to let them in and risk them hurting you. Casual, passing relationships were fine; intimacy was off the table, even platonic.

The thing she couldn’t figure out, though, was what was happening in the present.

“And what about now?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you in the mood for company...now?”

He was still studying his drink, but glanced up at her through his long lashes, and the corner of his mouth ticked up. “I suppose I am.” He paused a bit, then added, “Are you?”

“Not usually,” she answered quickly. “But it doesn’t seem so bad at the moment.”

The fine lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he gave her a sideways smile that, to her astonishment, made her heart skip a beat; she couldn’t remember the last time that happened. And—was it just her, or the rum, or were his cheeks pink? Was he blushing?

How did she stumble upon what might be one of the most adorable people on the face of the earth in the middle of the woods?

“So,” he continued casually, as if he hadn’t just possibly taken up residence in a part of Emma’s heart that she wasn’t sure worked anymore, “just how did you end up in Storybrooke?”

“I drove here,” she said nonchalantly.

“Ha. But really.”

She initially blamed it on the rum when she poured out her whole sob story to him, but in hindsight, the reality was that he was the first person she didn’t think would judge her too hard on it—which was confirmed when he relayed his own, which wasn’t terribly different: unstable homes, absent family members, and then broken hearts. When he found out about her nomadic lifestyle, he asked about the places she’d been; she followed suit when he told her he’d been in the Navy, which was where he lost his hand.

“Okay, but really,” she demanded, voice a bit louder than normal thanks to the influence of the rum. “Even if you’re not in the Navy anymore, you could go anywhere; why the hell are you here?”

He shrugged and licked his (delectable) lips. “Everyone has to make port somewhere at some point.”

She gave him a disbelieving look. “Yeah, but...Storybrooke? What even is there to do here? Why not go to a place like New York or Boston?”

Staring into his now-empty glass, he chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, then cast her a sideways glance. “Let’s just say...some ventures in life demand a fair bit of privacy, which is also something I quite value.” He was silent for another moment, but then continued, “If I show you something, do you think you can keep it secret?”

She held up her right hand in a Vulcan salute. “Scout’s honor.”

Killian’s jaw hung open at whatever the hell she was doing (frankly, she didn’t know herself, either), before chuckling, shaking his head, and coming to his feet. “Follow me.”

They headed back outside, Smee trotting behind them, over to the far edge of the property, opposite the way Emma had come from. Hidden between some trees was a small shack that was just as clean and pristine on the outside as the cottage was on the inside. As they got closer, she picked up on a smell that wasn’t the forest, but did seem familiar—and, she hated to say it, Leroy was right: there was a weird noise coming from it.

“What is this?” she had to ask.

“You’ll see,” he answered casually, pulling a key from his shirt pocket to unlock the door.

Inside wasn’t very big, and it was crowded with equipment on one end and bottle-covered tables on the other. The spicy scent overpowered her and almost stung a bit; it reminded her of her brief career as a bartender in a strip club and the smell of stale alcohol that wasn’t properly mopped after a spill. Wait—was this? “Rum?” she said, almost in disbelief, turning to look back at him.

“Aye.”

She assessed the operation once more; it looked more like the inside of the chemistry lab she was supposed to go to in high school than a moonshine operation. It was impressive, honestly. “So I guess you really are a pirate, huh?” she teased.

He gave a mock bow. “Captain Hook, at your service.”

She giggled, but then it was like a lightning bolt or whatever went off in her head. “Wait—Hook’s Rum?”

“Ah, so you’ve heard of it.”

She snorted. “I got drunk on it on my birthday. Best rum I’ve ever had.”

“It’s always nice to make an impression,” he said with a smirk. God, he was a dork.

“How many times have people tried to break in?” she wondered as he slipped past her inside and grabbed an empty bottle.

“Are you trying to rob me?” he countered as he fiddled with something on the still, flipping a lever with his hook and letting amber liquid pour into the bottle.

“Nope.”

“Then none.”

She leaned against the doorframe as she watched him work. “So, using your legend of infamy to keep your illicit business practices under wraps. I like it.”

“I have a license,” he tossed back as he shut off the flow once the bottle was full, then turned to another surface where an odd machine laid. “How else would you have bought it in the store?”

“Fair.” He twisted the handle on the contraption, which turned the bottle. “But is that how you’ve managed to keep this secret out here?”

“Indeed.” Carefully, he wiped the bottle down, then turned and handed it to her; now it bore the semi-familiar label that had caught her eye in the liquor store on it. “I can autograph that, if you want.”

“But then I can’t drink it.”

“Guess I better give you two, then.”

He did—somehow raising his dorkdom to adorable (adorkable?) levels—and directed them back to the house. The sun was definitely lower than it had been when she left and her stomach was starting to grumble; hopefully, those pastries weren’t crushed. But hunger wasn’t the first thing on her mind, oddly enough. “So,” she started, “if you keep that hidden, why did you trust me with it?”

He didn’t answer until they were back in the house. “You’ve been honest,” he answered simply. “And you have that look about you.”

“What look?”

“The look you get when you’ve been left alone.”

“Pretty sure we established that.”

“Yeah. But it means...I knew you’d understand.”

She swallowed and suddenly felt like his intense blue gaze on her saw every thought she’d ever had. “Yeah, I do,” she said softly.

And then her stomach rudely growled, interrupting what had been a soft but heavy moment.

Killian’s low chuckle eased her mortification, but only slightly. “I was about to make some grilled cheese, if you’d like; unless you need to get back to town.”

That look he’d just been talking about creeped into his eyes, and she saw it for the out it was. But what kind of monster turns that down? “Grilled cheese is my favorite.”

“Excellent. Pick out a movie and I’ll get that going.”

His collection was extensive, but she found herself more drawn to his book selection. Most people were surprised to know she was an avid reader, given her life, but she’d learned long ago that libraries were an excellent place to get out of inclement weather, and when you were strapped for cash, it was cheap entertainment.

Something he must have figured out, too, given the stack with Storybrooke Public Library stamped on the edges. “Really? You go to the library?”

“Is that really so surprising?” he called back from the kitchen, where she could hear the familiar sizzle of buttered bread on a griddle.

“Seems odd that the town hermit would go to the second-most welcoming place in the city center.”

“Only second-most?”

“After Granny’s.”

“Ahh,” was all he said, but then she heard the sound of dishes.

A minute later, he was back in the living room with a delicious, gooey sandwich on a plate just for her. “Well, there’s little that can keep me away from a good book, and Belle is the only other person in town that I like.”

“Other than…?”

“You, obviously.”

“I moved up your list that fast?”

“You’re second of three; let’s not get too cocky, love.”

“Yeah? Who’s third?”

“Belle. Smee is first.”

“Oh, I see,” she threw back, amused. It was kind of insane how easily they fell into banter after only...wow, had it really been 4 hours since she showed up here?

He invited her to take a seat on the end of the couch opposite Smee while he settled into the recliner and they started to talk about books. Then movies, then TV a bit, but it moved onto their respective educations (Emma: GED; Killian: the equivalent of a master’s or something crazy that he got from the naval academy and was decidedly not using).

He got another bottle of rum out once they finished eating and continued to drink and talk through the night, about...oh, everything. Emma knew she had been talking a long time because she was trying to use the rum to rehydrate (which probably wasn’t working all that well) but it was hard to remember what all they had discussed when it was literally everything. And when she was honestly enjoying herself more than any time in recent memory. Even Smee had finally warmed up to her, resting his head in her lap as she scratched behind his floppy ears.

Had she ever fallen into conversation this easily? Probably not. But then again, no one else was like Killian.

She’d been vaguely aware of the changing color of the sky outside his windows as the night wore on—orange to blue to black—but when lavender crept in, she finally took a glance at her phone and was shocked to see the time.

“Oh shit—I have to get to work,” she cursed.

“At this hour?”

“Breakfast rush,” she explained, showing the clock on her phone.

Killian’s eyes grew wide. “I didn’t realize...I’m so sorry to have kept you, Swan.”

“Quit being such a gentleman; I didn’t notice, either. The only thing is…” At this, she giggled for some reason. “I haven’t slept a wink and I’m slightly tipsy. This will be real interesting.”

He made a beeline for the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on while she gathered her things and shoved one of the day-old pastries in her mouth; she had enough time to walk back into town but she’d have to head straight to the diner. Assuming she didn’t stumble and hit a tree on the way. No—she was NOT giving Granny the satisfaction of knowing her warning had come true and actually forcing the old lady to drag her body from the woods. (She’d rather Killian do that, anyways.) (Or, you know, do her, but she got the impression he wasn’t the one-night kind of guy—or maybe she just didn’t want him to be that with her.)

She’d just zipped her coat when a thermos was being shoved in her hands; by smell alone, she could tell this was better than the cheap stuff Granny served. “Hope that helps,” he said softly.

“It already is,” she answered, then took a sip, not caring if she burnt her tongue. “Damn—is everything you brew amazing?”

“I try,” he shrugged arrogantly, but then the cocky facade washed away in an instant, replaced with something bordering on sheepish. “You know, if you wanted to come back later, or any other time, my schedule’s pretty clear.”

“Well, hopefully you’re going to get some sleep.”

“Well, yes, that. But, um,” he stammered, nervously scratching a spot behind his ear. “Don’t be a stranger, is what I’m trying to say. I’m...you’ll always be welcome here, if you want.” He was definitely blushing, the color visible even in the faint pre-dawn light.

“I might take you up on that,” she answered, trying to be casual but ending up much closer to sincere—because she had a feeling she would. She was already kind of dreading leaving, even if it was just because she didn’t like the idea of working on no sleep and with a questionable BAC.

“I hope you do.” The weight of the sincerity of that statement settled over both of them for an intense moment that in itself was enough to bring her back to sobriety, if the coffee wasn’t doing it, too. But then he was overtaken by a jaw-cracking yawn that effectively killed it.

“Go to bed,” she commanded, with a light shove on his shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, I will. Be safe.”

“I’ll do my best. See you later,” she farewelled, hoping he could tell she meant it.

“Until then, Swan.”

She let herself out the door and headed back the way she came, at first afraid to cast a glance behind her because she thought if she did, she might not want to leave ever. But she finally did when she was back on the edge of the clearing, and saw him watching her through the window on the door. She smiled and waved, which he returned, but she didn’t miss the bit of loneliness in his gaze as he watched her walk away.

It took considerable effort, but she managed to put one foot in front of the other and continue on her way. The sun wasn’t visible yet, so she still had time, but she needed to hustle if she’d make her shift.

Between the coffee and the gorgeous sunrise, it was definitely a pleasant hike, and was definitely helping her in the staying-awake department. Still though, there was a feeling she couldn’t shake—something completely foreign, yet vaguely familiar, and she couldn’t lie—it kind of stung. What the heck was that?

She took another sip of the coffee as she tried to figure it out, letting it warm her as it slid down her throat. She’d almost forgotten what good coffee tasted like, let alone when it had been made fresh and just for her. It was going to suck going back to Granny’s mass-produced bean water; she’d miss this stuff.

Wait—miss it?

Was that what she was feeling?

Not just for the coffee, obviously (though that was certainly part of it). Did she already miss Killian?

“Home is the place, when you leave...you just miss it.”

No. That was insane. She’d only been there for, like, 12 hours. You can’t find home that fast, can you? (Not like she’d really know.)

But she couldn’t deny that it felt like part of her had stayed behind in that cottage. Or that she was already counting down the hours until her work shift ended and she could come back. Or that the ache got just a little bit worse with each step that took her away.

Damn. That had to be it.

Who knew she’d finally find what she’d been looking for in the middle of nowhere?

The sun finally broke the horizon as she reached Granny’s front steps and downed the last drop of coffee. She still had a couple minutes, so she quickly stashed the thermos in her backpack and used the selfie camera on her phone to make sure she didn’t look too haggard, lest Granny get some uncouth ideas.

(Actually, Granny was probably dirtier than Emma was, in that regard; and she had the oddest sense that the old lady might be able to smell the forest on her, or at least the rum.)

With one last deep breath, if only to make sure she didn’t reek too bad, Emma smoothed her hair and headed inside, for what was sure to be an arduous shift.

But, unlike most days, she actually had something to look forward to at the end of it.

Hours later, she pulled her little old Bug up the semi-hidden driveway on the other side of Killian’s property, bearing sandwiches and onion rings. Killian came out to greet her, but she didn’t let him get a word in before she’d pressed up on her toes and stole his smile with a kiss. (That he quickly reciprocated. Until Smee interrupted with a friendly bark, looking for his own hello.)

A few weeks later, her belongings, stuffed into a few age-worn duffel bags, accompanied her on her now-daily trip to the cabin in the woods; she was spending all her time there anyways, as Killian had pointed out—may as well just make the move permanent.

It took a bit longer for either of them to admit it out loud, but they both blurted it one night while cuddled close, watching The Princess Bride with Smee at their feet: she loved him, and he loved her. There was no denying it. And then they couldn’t stop saying it.

Eventually, they grew tired of Storybrooke and its whispers. Eventually, Killian’s not-so-discreet rum business got more notice. So they went onto the next place without much fuss.

She felt a bit sad when they first left the cabin, mainly because it was where they fell in love. But her home wasn’t those four walls. No, it was with Killian—and Smee, and whatever other animals or tiny humans eventually joined them—wherever that might be.

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

thanks for reading! tagging some friends: @kat2609 @thesschesthair @optomisticgirl @xpumpkindumplingx @shipsxahoy @amortentia-on-the-rocks @mryddinwilt @cocohook38 @annytecture @wingedlioness @word-bug @distant-rose @wellhellotragic @welllpthisishappening @let-it-raines @pirateherokillian @bleebug @its-imperator-furiosa @fergus80 @killianmesmalls @sherlockianwhovian @effulgentcolors @laschatzi @ive-always-been-a-pirate @nfbagelperson @stubble-sandwich @lenfaz @phiralovesloki @athenascarlet @kmomof4 @ilovemesomekillianjones @whimsicallyenchantedrose @snowbellewells @idristardis

#cs ff #cs modern au #dolly parton au #my ff

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