#also youre DAMN quick no one has contacted or even tried to get darce to see your nonsense

[adelacreations]

*peeks in and sees the discourse*

Man can yall antis SHUT UP about Billy? And honestly Steve too, I'm taking him away and putting him on the high shelf.

"People are excusing his behaviour" MAN if you had an OUNCE of energy like this towards actual issues like idk the fucking Supreme Court, (the ukulele lady, yes I watched the video and yes I wanted to claw my eyes out) or actually supporting BIPOC in Fandom.

Shut up, yall are embarrassing. Why is it always the people in Fandom that don't create having the shittiest takes. Is that all you're good for? Nastiness? Pathetic.

[cromulentbookreview]

Spurlos Verschwunden

You know how you read an article online about scientists trying to find a ways to open portals to other worlds/parallel universes/the Upside Down/etc. and you immediately think: haven’t these scientists ever seen any movie or TV show ever made? They know that’s going to end badly, right? Right??

And by that, I mean: Before I Disappear by Danielle Stinson!

Seventeen-year-old Rose Montgomery, her mom Helen and her little brother Charlie have been living on the run for a long time. Rose and Charlie’s father disappeared when Charlie was still a baby and after that, things fell apart. Helen became depressed, and entered into a relationship with an abusive piece of shit referred to only as the Monster. Rose, Helen and Charlie fled the Monster, but he kept pursuing them farther and farther West. At the beginning of the novel, the Montgomerys are lying low in Nevada when Charlie, who has always been a bit strange, insists that the family move West to Fort Glory, Oregon for reasons Rose doesn’t quite understand. When she sees that the charity Hands for Hearths (a definite Habitat for Humanity expy) has an affiliate office in Fort Glory, she decides to go for it. All Rose wants for her family is a permanent home - someplace better than the ramshackle trailer in which they crossed the country. Hands for Hearths is her best hope.

Fort Glory isn’t just your average town on the Oregon Coast - it’s the site of DARC, the Deep Atomic Research Collider, Oregon’s answer to the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The facility had been shut down, until three weeks ago when it was brought back online...at practically the same moment Charlie started telling Rose that they needed to move to Fort Glory. Spoooooky....

While the Montgomerys adjust to life in Fort Glory, including the influx of tourists, journalists and conspiracy theorists drawn in by DARC, weird things start happening in the town. Crime rises. People randomly go crazy. Rumors are that the DARC is messing with things it shouldn’t be messing with, like poking holes into other dimensions. Because it worked so well on Stranger Things.

Rose just shrugs all this weirdness off - she has bigger problems, like earning a paycheck, helping her family get a house, keeping their ancient truck running and making sure there’s enough food to eat. Charlie, who is clearly some sort of Kid Hero capable of seeing things most other people can’t, tries repeatedly to warn Rose that something bad is about to happen, but, again, she just brushes it off. Rose drives to the nearby town of Maple to the Hands for Hearths office when the whole world goes crazy. The sky turns green, people start attacking each other, even Labrador retrievers turn against their humans! (You know things are truly bad when a Labrador retriever turns against you).

So Rose heads back to Fort Glory as she can as fast  only to find that the road literally stops just outside of town. There’s nothing beyond it except old growth forest.

The whole town is gone, along with everyone in it.

Rose, desperate to find her mom and Charlie, runs into the woods. After some shenanigans, she feels this weird tugging...suddenly she’s yanked sideways into a place known as the Fold. The Fold looks like the woods around Fort Glory, but something is wrong. Really, really wrong. Rose quickly teams up with four other teens who have found themselves stuck in the Fold - including the hunky ex-con Ian, whose dark past has made him an outcast in Fort Glory, but as Rose gets to know him, he really doesn’t seem so bad...plus it’s nice to not be alone in the Fold, where the laws of physics don’t apply and your inner demons can physically hurt you. But wormholes and darkness monsters be damned, Rose is going to find Charlie, damn it!

Oh, and her mom. Her, too. It’s not like she forgot her mom was missing, too...

Before I Disappear is a quick, exciting read - it’s also a standalone, which, having read nothing but the first of serieses for a long while, is very refreshing. I love the setting - as a native Oregonian, I am a sucker for stories set in my beloved, bizarre home state. The fictional town of Fort Glory, Oregon seems to be a mix of Fort Clatsop, Fort Stevens and, possibly, Fort Vancouver - you know, all those weird forts they had on the Pacific coast (except Fort Vancouver, which is way down on the Columbia, but the Columbia is how you get down to the coast in a boat so...). All wee little Oregonian children - or, at least, those of us who live west of the Cascades - are forced at some point to go to Fort Clatsop, as it was where Lewis and Clark hung out once they reached the Pacific. I distinctly remember being made to visit Fort Vancouver, too, even though it’s in *shudder* Washington. Fort Glory could also be any of those teeny little coastal towns they have up and down the coast, like Cannon Beach or Seaside or Tillamook or Garibaldi or Nehalem or Manzanita or Netarts or Yachats or Depoe Bay or Newport...ok I should stop because now I’m just naming towns I’ve been to (they’re all very nice. Well, except Newport.The aquarium is cool, but the rest of the town can get sucked into a wormhole for all I care). 

Needless to say, I am familiar with the Oregon Coast, it’s where Oregonians go when the sun comes out. (Well, when the sun comes out in the rest of the state. On the coast, the sun only comes out three days a year and it’s always on the days when you aren’t there). So I can speak with some authority when I say the Oregon Coast would be a terrible place to build a fancy underground atomic energy research facility-type thing. I mean, there’s the risk of tsunamis, earthquakes, lingering radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi Power plant Disaster of 2011...

See, this is why we shouldn’t have research facilities dedicated to punching holes into other dimensions situated on the Oregon Coast. Especially not right on top of a town. Put that shit out in the desert where if you poke a hole and let in a Demogorgon or a Darkness Monster, there’s not much around for it to eat. Except desert.

Also, I’m fairly certain any contact with other dimensions will go something like this:

But back to the book: character-wise, the one character we get to know best is Rose, which makes sense as the novel is written from her first-person perspective. Unfortunately, we don’t get to know the side characters as well - Blaine, Becca, and Jeremy aren’t nearly as well-developed. Charlie, aside from being a mysterious child who can see into other dimensions, doesn’t have much of a personality. He’s just an odd kid and Rose absolutely adores him. Rose’s mom falls by the wayside entirely - most of the novel has Rose laser-focused on finding Charlie, while her mom is a bit of an afterthought. But, again, that’s the limitation of the first-person perspective. Aside from Rose, the most developed character is Ian, who apparently has starburst eyes.

Both he and Rose are on the run from their pasts, and being in the Fold is forcing them to confront some pretty harsh truths about themselves and their lives.

My biggest complaint concerning Before I Disappear would be the ending. The story just ends. I would’ve loved a denouement or an epilogue or something where we could see what happens to the characters after the end of the main action...but instead we get action action action action end. So many stories end that way, I wanna know what people get up to when they get home after the adventure, damn it! I’m guessing lots of people, as soon as the adventure is over, just go home, shower, stuff food into their faces and then sleep for the next three straight days. Or maybe go to a hospital. Or immediately get arrested, like in Keanu. Either way, I wish we could’ve gotten more than just “hey it’s over!”

RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone just fresh off a binge of season 3 of Stranger Things and are desperate for another cool inter-dimensional teen drama involving mysterious research facilities, wormholes and disappearing towns. Also fans of YA genre stories and Oregonians.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: non-YA fans, anyone currently living on the Oregon Coast, scientists currently working at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

RATING: 3.99/5 (0.1 point removed for the abrupt ending. I wanted more! *cries*)

RELEASE DATE: July 23, 2019 (Ha! I got this review done on time!!)

THE GORGEOUS OREGON COAST:

FOR ANYONE CONFUSED ABOUT THE TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Learn some German.

[sly-punk1712]

It started out as a joke. That’s how she usually got into this shit, joking around or not thinking things thru. It didn’t really matter, Darcy supposed. No one knew she could just toss it in the trash and no one would ever know. No harm, no foul. 

Her fingers swirled around the knob of the drawer she had shoved the stupid thing in absently. What to do? The phone rang and she jumped pulling the drawer out a little in her alarm. She grimaced and took a deep breath. 

“Coulson’s office, Gatekeeper speaking” She tried to be as chipper as she could hopefully whoever wanted to nag her about paperwork wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Luck, as it would have, was not on her side. 

“Come here Gatekeeper and bring whatever’s in your top desk that’s keeping you from working” Coulson hung up before she could protest. She gingerly set the phone down and slide the slim envelope out of her desk clutching it tightly. She could probably just walk away. Maybe hide in the building? She’d never make it outside without being stopped, and being caught means surrendering proof of her idiocy to someone who may not be as forgiving and silent as Coulson. Then He’d know. Everyone would here about how she tried to flee rather than face a brief interrogation with Coulson. And even if she did manage to escape HQ she’d have to go on the run forever because she’d never wanted to answer the questions this would raise. SHIELD was far reaching she’d be on Interpol's most wanted in hours. 

Fess up in the privacy of Coulson’s level Billion secure office or life as an international fugitive?

“Now Agent!” Coulson’s voice floated out to her. Darcy cringed and stood. It could honestly go either way. “For the love of...!” He began.

“No! No I’m coming!” Darcy scurried to Coulson’s door looking carefully around before rushing threw locking the door behind her. Coulson raised a brow from his seat at the desk. He didn’t look at all like he’d been moving to drag her in for interrogation. Sneaky.

“Was that necessary?” He questioned without looking up from whatever form he was filling out. Darcy gulped but pressed further into the room taking a seat on the arm of the couch closest to him.  

“Yes. Actually I’d like to request we make this a B&R proof meeting.” Darcy rarely spoke SHIELD jargon and maybe that’s why Phil stopped working to look up at her. 

B&R proof rooms where office slang for Barton and Romanov, of course B&Ring a room usually just mean’t there would be a few hour delay before they knew someone was keeping things from them. but that would be enough for now. 

Coulson spun his chair around and tapped at his computer, a low hiss sounded for a few moments and then a soft beep meant all he could do had been done. He turned back to her expectantly. Darcy was being childish, air locking a room to avoid talking about one silly thing. Be that as it may, Darcy loved that Coulson was taking it seriously at her word.

“Let’s see it” He held his hand out gesturing to the envelope in her hand. Darcy pulled another face and hesitantly passed it over. Coulson impatiently swiped it and thumbed open the side she’d yet to seal shut. 

“It was a joke and then suddenly I’d bought it and signed it and now I feel like a weirdo. What if he’s really freaked out and never talks to me again? I mean that’s totally creepy right? I was just thinking about when he rescued drunk me that first weekend in New York and that time he worked on my car and the thing with Ian.” She took a huge breath. “ Then I was scared to leave it at home because He comes over unannounced a lot and I was trying to decided how to throw it out. I’m honestly so stupid.” Darcy rushes out hiding her flushed face in her hand as Coulson read the brief card. He closed it carefully and looked at her. 

“I don’t think you’re stupid Darcy” He said softly. “It was sweet” 

“It’s gross and emotional and he’s never gonna talk to me again if he sees it. I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do” She groans. Coulson shrugs and reaches into his desk to pull out a form she knows too well. 

“Nooo, Phil isn’t my life terrible enough?” She begs falling dramatically over the arms and into the sofa. He shakes his head and pulls a different pen out of his desk. He fills all his paperwork out in boring blues and blacks but Phil keeps the every colour under the sun gel pens Darcy had bought him (also as a joke) in his desk and he likes to update files by color coding them. The pens he usually uses for Darcy are green but he pulls out a purple one, because it’s about Clint. 

“Darcy Lewis, Pros and Cons, regarding Hawkeye, June 16th” He dictates. Darcy throws an arm over her face but doesn’t protest. 

“Okay Pro” He says looking expectantly at her. 

“It’s nice?” He rolls his eyes but writes it anyway, scrawling loopy  scribbles under pro. 

“Con”

“Eternal embarrassment”

“Facing you emotions” He corrects. “Pro?”

“I won’t be wasting the dollar fifty I spent on the damn thing?” 

He doesn’t correct just scribbles. 

“Con?” 

“He may hate me” 

“Rejection, That’s underlined, I think it’s your biggest fear” He says his pen makes the sounds that say he really has underlined it. Fucking Nerd, she thinks in a voice that sounds like Clint.

“Pro?” 

“Now I’ve acknowledged it to myself, giving him the damn thing will get this off my chest.” She admits, the safety of Coulson’s office and her closed eyes allowing her a moment to be brave.

“Facing your emotions,” He says dryly. “The plot thickens”

Before he can ask for another Con there’s a knock on the door. Well a knock is putting it politely, It’s really some asshole pounding on the door. 

“WHAT THE FUCK PHIL DID YOU B&R YOUR OFFICE!?!?!?!” A muffled voice drifts into the room. Ah that Asshole. Phil looks guilty and Darcy doesn’t know if it’s for locking it down or for getting her busted. There is no escape. The vents are even sealed during these locks. 

“PUT YOUR DICK AWAY I’M BREAKING IN” He shouts. Darcy leaps up from her spot on the sofa and snatched the pro con sheet crumpling it in her pocket before cramming the damning thing back in its envelope. She’s licked the seal right as the door gives a groan and swings open air rushing out. Clint talks in and slams the door behind him. He stops at the sight of Darcy. His eyes narrow and he looks between the two. 

“I’m so against this” He says simple crossing his arms. “I thought you’d know better than to seduce him at work Darce” He shakes his head. The jokes are to make light at his confusions. Why is she in here?

“I... uh... Got this for you” She launches the envelope as if it were a ninja star across the office. Clint snatches it easily from the air and arches a brow. He and Coulson hang out too much. 

He rips it open ungracefully and Darcy’s breath hitches as her heart thuds wildly in her chest. She can feel Coulson’s eyes on her and no doubt Clint’s even as he scans the words.

“Thanks?” He reads in confusion before opening it. Darcy’s face burns but Clint doesn’t read the inside out loud thank Thor.

He doesn’t need to Darcy knows just what it says: 

                Thanks for stepping up because my real dad’s a twat.

and she had printed under that. 

                I didn’t know what the hype was about til I met you. Love you Dee

Clint hasn’t moved. He hasn’t awkwardly told her thanks but don’t contact him anymore, so that’s good, right? 

Thankfully Clint crosses the room in two quick strides and gathers her to him in a breath stealingly tight hug. Darcy sighs and clutches his backs keeping him wrapped around her. He’s warm and smells like smoke and home. She remembers him coming to pick her up her first week. Remembers him rolling out from under her car with that cheeky smile. Remembers him juggling the ice creams he brought to her after Ian. How could she have thought this was a bad plan?

“That’s what was B&R worthy?” A voice interrupts. Clint pulls back a little and Darcy flushes seeing Natasha perched on Coulson’s desk reading the card. 

“What did you think it was?” Darcy asked looking up at Clint. His cheeks pinked a little. 

“He was serious when he thought you and Phil were banging.” Nat sniggers. Coulson blushes a little dispute his calm face. “I thought we were finally being disappeared to the bottom of the ocean” She shrugs,

“Well that doesn’t sound like an entirely bad Idea” Coulson glowers. Darcy grins. 

“Ohh Get the Sparkly Red Natasha pen and we can use the back of my Pro Con sheet!” Darcy attempt to smooth the page on the edge of Coulson’s desk. 

“You made a pro con sheet for giving me this card?” Clint looks indignant. 

“Fucking Nerd” Clint and Natasha chime.

“Shit like that is why B&R exists” Darcy pouts.

“You have no idea” Phil agrees reaching for the Sparkly Red Natasha pen as requested.

“I love you Darce” Clint says lowly to her while Phil and Natasha bicker about the color of her gel pen. Darcy nods. She knows. He doesn’t have to say, the things he does show her. 

“I’ve never celebrated this holiday” Darcy admits. Clint beams. 

“Me neither, if it counts I think you’d be a good dad too.” He grins. Darcy snorts.

“Thanks, I think, Happy Father’s Day, Clint”