#and now I'M vague-ing so i can talk about YOUR vagues

[fuckinmemesman]

ohhhhh my god, i'm remembering the bad parts of tumblr

[evilminji]

Okay, as I have mentioned, I'm Ace AF. And you know that plot line in kids cartoons where the alien or foreign Warrior Royalty just sort of *violently kicks down door in full armor* "We Will Marry."? I?? Always said:

"Sure!" (#OhThankFUCK!)

Like what do you mean "No"? The powerful, attractive, monarch that is very into you has travel a great distance JUST to marry you! Now you don't have to date! They seem nice! You can skip the whole "trying to find a life partner" awkwardness.

So, Sudden New Fiancee(tm) how we doing this? Blended customs? Two weddings? One in your peoples traditions, one in mine? Should we invite your family? Tell me more about yourself.

God, this solves just... SO MUCH for me? No having to make small talk. No "do they like me?" Or "am I reading the signs here right?" No failed dates! It's positively ideal! AND they announced why they were qualified, in a VERY impressive show of power and prestige, when they arrived! Good lineage AND accomplished!! Very nice.

Don't get why everyone's so upset.

Sure the "we leave at once" thing that usually follows would have to be discussed, but that's what you DO as spouses. Really guys, it's like you think I'm incapable of common sense here.

And you know who probably agrees with me? Damian Wayne.

Hell is other people, INDEED. You expect him to just... randomly go up to people and try Courting them? What do you MEAN it's "creepy" to compile portfolios on eligible individuals of worthy bloodlines? How ELSE is he supposed to know if they are worth attempting to talk too?!

There are BILLIONS of humans on this gods forsaken rock, Richard! Is he supposed to just GUESS? Gamble and hope for LUCK? This is a MARRIAGE not a "best friends club"!

Then? Danny showes up.

Gotham heard her baby talking. Heard her KING being harassed by clearly plotting Observants and power hungry ghosts MANY times his age. Connected some dots. Formed themselves a new OTP.

Danny says "Fuck It". Worst he can say is No. According to Gotham, he is neither Shy not the meek obedient sort. Is in fact, VERY stabby. So if he's not interested he'll no doubt be BRUTALLY clear about that.

So? Danny gets Fright Knight. Go get him a horse. Someone fetch Cujo some armor. He's been told the guy like weapons and animals.

TIME TO BE IMPRESSIVE.

He goes FULL Regalia. Armor of solid night sky. Cape of frost and stardust. Crown like crack in reality itself, through which the cosmos gleam and shift. He gets a horse from the far frozen. They're wooly and carnivorous. Gets THE most impressive sword he can find to wear.

It's gonna be a gift, since he doesn't need it.

He does the whole "rend the skies open" thing. Fan fair and knights. Every title he's ever been given, no matter how embarrassing he find them in reality. And announces his intentions. Declares that ONLY Damian Wayne, aka. Robin, is WORTHY to Marry Him. And (in the traditional Ghost proposal of "either accept or tell me to fuck off" /w violence) Demands Damian accept his offer of Marriage.

Right there.

IN THE WATCHTOWER.

In front of EVERYBODY. And yes, ESPECIALLY the Bats. Who are making glitching, vaguely threatening DEMONIC NOISES. Because? You... you THREATEN the BABY? Death. Ten thousand years DEATH.

People are :O ing and backing away from the visible heatwave of unadulterated FURY being put off by Batman. Danny is nano-second from every bone his ANCESTORS had being reduced to a fine paste.

Then? Damian consider him... considers the sword being thrust in his direction, still held aloft in a steady and armored hand... contemplates those titles for a second...

And goes: "Acceptable. Very well, but I have demands."

N..... Nani the FUCK? Says local Bat-Dad. No??? You are NOT GETTING MARRIED.

Try to stop him. He very obviously IS, according to Damian, the man brought him a kick ass sword and has a giant green dog. Is the king of an ENTIRE REALITY. Yes, he realizes he probably COULD do better... but frankly? This one's cute. But if it upset you so... extended engagement. There. Happy?

NO! Because the JLA Dark are LOSING THEIR SHIT. Damian is still UNDERAGE. We don't even know how OLD this being is! NO MARRIAGE.

Damian is unimpressed. A whole six months? That he's likely already LIVED thanks to various timeloops, temporal shenanigans, and reality warping bits of fuckery? You're reaching.

Just? Marriage Meet Cute.

@hdgnj @ailithnight @the-witchhunter @nerdpoe

[plus-i-miss-you]

I LOVED THE OREKOTO AND MIKOTO HEADCANONS AUUAU!!! If it's not a bother, could you pls write a prisoner gn!reader comforting mahiru, fuuta, mikoto and amane after t2? Sorry if this is too vague !!

Seeing them all tired and beat up made me miserable... they deserve a kiss on the forehead or smth

▷ listening to:

"but i still forgive you" (gn!reader)

⇆ㅤ ㅤ◁ㅤ ❚❚ ㅤ▷ ㅤㅤ↻ ılıılıılıılıılıılıㅤ

♪ note: HI HI ELI so sorry this request has been gathering dust in my inbox for more than a month.. i really wanted to write this but life be life-ing.. i really enjoyed writing this and i hope you enjoy reading this too! (also so sorry if i sound weird but i'm assuming you meant comforting them after t1? ^^'')

♪ summary: es may have done some.. pretty strange decisions and now not only the guard and the guilty prisoners, but everyone has to deal with it, including you. you can't help but feel bad for the guilty ones, and hopefully, you can offer them at least some kind of support.

♪ warnings: description of fuuta and mahiru being in pain because of their injuries, the reader character doesn't know about mikoto and john being a system, but still treats them as respectfully as possible, mentions of cults and religious trauma in amane's section. fuuta, mahiru and mikoto parts can be seen as both romantic and platonic, meanwhile amane's part is strictly platonic.

fuuta kajiyama.

♪ fuuta was.. in terrible condition, to say the least. his personality was so different from the fuuta you knew, too. sure, you've met him not so long ago, but seeing him act like this felt.. weird. you actually kinda missed the old fuuta, yes, he was kinda rude, loud and said things without thinking, but you'd prefer that than seeing fuuta in pain and not being able to say a word. you wish you could help him somehow, but.. what could you do? you doubt that convincing es to forgive him is possible..

♪ you tried to support him at least in an emotional way, even though you knew that might not work. it's highly possible he won't be able to see with his right eye ever again, of course, that's extremely traumatizing. he also got beat up by kotoko out of all prisoners, who actually seemed to be similar to him in a way. but you told him that if fuuta wanted to talk to you about anything, like complain about something or vent, he could always do that. fuuta found your kindness weird and even suspicious at first, but.. fine, he could use a friend in a situation like this. or at least a person who could hear him out.

♪ fuuta finds himself coming to you more often than he thought he would. it's not like he has that many people to talk to here anyway. he's grateful to kazui (even though he doesn't want to admit it), but.. he's not sure if there is anything he can talk to him about. haruka and muu are really close now, it honestly feels like haruka has forgotten about everyone else. oh, but surprisingly, fuuta's been getting along with amane lately- what do you mean, you "have a bad feeling about this", y/n?.. 

♪ you will never actually hear this from him, but you can feel that fuuta is glad to have someone like you here. he looks calmer with you around and if he can't open up to anyone else about something, at least he can open up to you. it's easier for him to fall asleep when you're next to him, so you may find him suddenly doing so with his head on your shoulder or your lap. just, uh.. be prepared for him to be really flustered when he wakes up and sees you.

mahiru shiina.

♪ she's honestly surprised that you want to spend time with her and help her feel better despite her being voted guilty. she immediately starts joking (or maybe half-joking?..) about falling in love with you because of your kindness and you just roll your eyes and ask if she's okay and if she's in any pain. you remind her to take her medications, you ask shidou for help if her condition gets worse and you help her move around with her wheelchair, so that she doesn't feel isolated from the rest of the prisoners. being in milgram is already isolating enough.

♪ you try to help her feel better by doing things that are small and simple to you, but very meaningful to her. you brush her hair, you paint her nails (even if you can only do so on one hand for now..), you tell her that she still looks beautiful, and every time you do that, it makes her smile. it's still different from that usual smile of hers, but it's a smile that shows even though she's still suffering, she appreciates you being around. 

♪ mahiru doesn't understand why you're still helping her. is this because you love her?.. ah, please forgive her, that's just her being her usual silly self. but still.. she wasn't forgiven, right? that means she was in the wrong.. but she doesn't understand what made es vote her guilty. all she did was love her boyfriend a lot, right? does that mean that her love itself is a sin?.. is she not allowed to love at all?.. you gently interrupt mahiru and say that you don't know why es refused to forgive her, but you personally don't think mahiru's love is a sin at all. in fact, it's a blessing.

♪ mahiru feels like the sun itself personified to you and you hope that she gets better soon, but you're also grateful for the opportunity to take care of her like this. she always gives so much love to everyone, you wonder how much she gets back. you softly pat her head while making sure it's not painful considering her injury and ask what she wants to do today, but it takes a while for mahiru to answer because of your words still ringing in her head, but in a good way.

amane momose.

♪ .. so why exactly es decided to vote a child guilty? you know you probably shouldn't say anything about the guard's decisions, but.. this just doesn't make any sense to you. just what did es see in amane's video? or maybe something happened during the interrogation? amane's behavior has changed a lot, but you don't blame her for it. of course she would start acting differently. she's a 12 year old who was voted guilty and almost got beaten up by kotoko, kotoko ending up not doing anything to her was honestly a miracle. of course she would be mad. she should be.

♪ you try to talk to her and she kinda ignores you at first. however, you're not as bad as shidou, so.. fine, maybe she can hang out with you a little bit. it's hard not to feel sorry for her though, because of how messy her hair is and how empty her eyes are. you try to cheer her up somehow, like maybe you can do something really cute with her hair or maybe you can cook something for her (while still respecting her dietary restrictions and not forcing her to eat something she's not allowed to).. amane finds your attempts to become closer with her strange, but.. maybe she could use some company.

♪ every time she mentions her "god" around you though, you try to change the topic. you like amane and you genuinely want this kid to get better, but you're not really feeling like becoming a part of a cult.. amane just sighs and says you'll understand it someday. sometimes you catch her mumbling something about being forgiven this time and es needing to make the correct judgement. you can't really help her much when it happens and you can't do anything other than say that es will definitely forgive her, but amane manages to turn even something simple as that into rambles about her god. you can't help but wonder what amane's life used to be like.

♪ you can't convince amane that her family wasn't as kind as she thinks they were. you can't convince her that the way she was raised was too cruel. you know she won't believe you. and you know you're not a therapist. but at least you can be her friend. at least you can gently guide her, while still giving her a choice, so that she feels more free. more free than she possibly ever was in her life. and even though amane never talks about it, she does appreciate it. she feels strangely warm when you're around. she wonders if it's okay to feel this way and if god would ever forgive her for that. 

mikoto kayano.

♪ you didn't know why mikoto suddenly started to act like this. you tried to get at least some information from others, including es, but nobody gave you a proper answer, even though you had a feeling like kotoko and es know what's going on. for some reason, this mikoto just didn't.. feel like mikoto to you. it's like it was.. different mikoto? no, that doesn't sound right. it felt like it was a completely different person. you couldn't prove it and when you tried to say it out loud, it sounded weird, but.. it felt like a correct answer to you. 

♪ when it felt like it was the mikoto you knew, you always made sure to tell him what's going on, what happened, basically all the information he needed. he always looked so lost and confused, you couldn't help but feel sorry for him. you assumed that it was probably because of the trauma related to being voted guilty. you actually couldn't understand es's decision at all. just why would they vote someone like mikoto guilty? was his video really that bad? it didn't feel like mikoto was pretending to be less smarter than he is. why would he even have to do that? you all are murderers here, there's no reason for him to try and trick anyone.

♪ when it felt like it was someone else, you still tried to treat him with kindness. you couldn't understand why everyone started to avoid this person so suddenly. yes, this person was.. quite different from mikoto, but.. maybe at least they could try to accept him? you actually found it surprising how quickly he calmed down after you showed him that you don't intend to hurt him or mikoto. maybe this was the only thing he needed: someone telling him that he's safe and that he's not in danger. or maybe it was something they both needed.

♪ both mikoto and this person seem to actually like you a lot.. well, it's not like they have much of a choice here, considering that other prisoners don't really want to spend time with them. but it looks like they don't mind it that much. yes, mikoto is definitely still worried about it and he doesn't seem to remember what happens when the other person is here, but the other guy doesn't really care about the other prisoners and the only thing that bothers him is how possibly dangerous they can be. and even though he still has his suspicions.. you don't seem that dangerous to him.

[utilitycaster]

I've been seeing complaints that Spenser was 'trying too hard to kill the cast' this episode, which I have to say I wildly disagree with, but I will admit to be a little confused why the players sometimes took one or even two marks after rolling a six. Or I guess I'm not confused so much as I wonder if the mechanics for injury, success, failure, etc could be too vague atm? Candela doesn't really have anything like CR rating or DC which it doesn't NEED, but I guess could create some grey area?

Good question! Here's the secret: all TTRPGs I'd consider worth my time have a huge swathe of gray area, D&D very much included (indeed, I find a lot of the more baseless criticisms of D&D, especially from Game Based Heavily On D&D But Different fans (derogatory) to come from people mad at that gray area) and as long as the players and GM have agreed on it, it's fine. With that said I admit that paying attention to individual rolls is not what I am inclined, personally, to do, but if this is about Sean rolling a six and taking two body...that is because he was going to take four body off the bat and reduced it with a good roll that the GM permitted him. (It also might be about Marion taking in the rift, which was similarly stated beforehand to cost him a Bleed scar no matter what he rolled, the roll reflecting how successful he was.) Now, we can talk about the implications of taking four body seemingly out of nowhere, but do recall that is coming off an earlier 1 roll in his interaction with Duncan.

CR ratings generally are a poor understanding of difficulty, and the thing about DCs is you can set them arbitrarily high (or for that matter, secretly low). Like...to use D&D, you cannot make a persuasion check for someone who dislikes you to give you all their belongings and run away forever. The DM is going to set the persuasion check at 50 and it is going to be unreachable by any means. Even a nat 20 will give you a result of "they think you're joking and laugh it off instead of run after you with a sword." If you jump off a sufficiently high cliff in D&D and roll a nat 20 to land, you still might take enough damage to die during your three-point landing. And so on.

So: while we don't have all the rules of Candela Obscura, it is valid from my knowledge of the Forged in the Dark engine, which Illuminated Worlds was heavily influenced by, for Spenser to say "this action is unbelievably dangerous and there is no possible way you are escaping unscathed, and a full success means that you live to tell the tale with only a gunshot wound or bleed damage rather than outright death." That's the other thing: completely valid for the GM to come in planning to kill the players. That's the premise of EXU Calamity. I would assume the table discussed that this was going to be a much darker and more dangerous game than Chapter 1 and everyone shares those expectations, and is prepared to possibly lose these characters. Which is, frankly, another thing that comes up specifically in actual play: what the table knows and expects and is prepared to accept is often something much harsher than the audience is prepared to accept. I mentioned being irritated at the presumptive nature of a lot of safety tool discussion (and am feeling very validated by Spenser's tweet about how he handled the letters to Sean) but like...when the CR or D20 or Candela tables prepare for their games, they have talked about expectations of tone and whether the GM will be trying to gently usher new players to victory, flat out gunning for a potential TPK, or somewhere in between.

This was a long, pre-full dose of caffeine way to say that one of the biggest rules of GM-ing is that the GM sets the tone of which the danger and difficulty of the world is part, and also that, based on everything about how this chapter has been presented, if someone accuses Spenser of being very hard on the party my answer is "...yeah, no shit, did you fail to realize that from the tone and text of literally every trailer and interview?"

[world-fire-entity]

Can we agree that Needles is just Jonny Sims f****ing with us? The joke is Sims couldn't find a more creative name than Michael for a very similar character and went with needles (I bet his name is revealed the be John with an h tbh)

But I feel like we think this solely because Needles is f***ing with the policeman and through that Jonny, Sims is f***ing with us.

They both exhibit the same speech patterns for being annoyingly vague and creepy, but Needles feels so much more like an imitation of Michael (Or some horror movie antagonist). Michael has the horrific elder god experience and the title of distortion to back him up. He has the default ability to cause fear and confusion when he speaks because he's literally the spiral, Something that has existed for hundreds of years. When he talks, your default is to be scared because this thing is threatening your sanity solely by interacting with you even if you don't know what it is.

He is a monster with a few human qualities attributed to Michael.

Needles is literally just some guy covered in needles. ITS SO FUNNY. This seems to be his first few murders as evidenced by the police not being able to identify who he is (Death by Needles feels infamous enough to stick) and he's baffled when "I'm Needleman and I'm going to hug this man" doesn't work by default. He has NOTHING under his belt to justify why he would speak this way. In fact, He literally stops doing it for like 2 sentences when he figures out (what was obvious to us) that the policeman doesn't believe him. "Not sca– This isn’t some poxy blood test, some little pinprick, this is hundreds, thousands of razor-sharp points pushing into your flesh. We’re talking about the embrace of an iron maiden, an excruciating agony formed from a thousand tiny hurts." He repeats the policeman in shock, interrupts himself while doing it, and then starts using what I think is human slang. "Poxy" - Lousy in British apparently Some - Informal We're talking about - Informal. A thousand tiny hurts - Idk if British people just talk like this but this phrase is adorable to me, an American. like aw

Contrary to Michael, He has to convince, not that this is real, that this is scary. It feels really human of him, to be honest. In addition, he does that thing where we learn something in a movie, and it turns out to be incorrect/not the whole truth. Like "Wdym you can't find my location, I thought police could track phones."

LIKE Michael feels like a monster that has become a poor imitation of a human. He still speaks like a monster and is a monster even if he has a name now. Needles feels like a human trying their best to become a poor imitation of a monster. Attempting to speak like a monster and scare like a monster and stumbling while doing it.

I'm gonna be honest. This whole post is just me begging for a reveal that Needles was never a monster. He's just some guy who spent a week gluing needles to his free hugs short and occasionally guesses police stations in London.

[fablesrose]

Ch 9 - The Top Hat Job

Series Rewrite Masterlist 

Pairing: Eliot Spencer x Ford!Reader

Description: The team has to play as magicians to get into a food company that has contaminated food on the shelves. *Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about magic, so don't come for me*

Words: 5377

A/n: So I've burned through my stock of chapters after this and I've been having a bit of a tough time for the next couple of weeks. I've got final weeks and then surgery to fix my wrecked knee, I want to get back to this as soon as possible, but I'm not sure when that will be. Thank you all for reading this far, it means so much to me!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While Nate and Sophie were downstairs in the pub meeting with the client. I was watching as Eliot, Hardison, and Parker were starting recon on the target: Lillian foods. From what brief background we already had, their frozen food was contaminated, but one of the higher-ups calculated the risk and said that the amount of deaths was acceptable relative to cost in lawsuits vs pulling the food off the shelves. So, a real dirtbag, like all the rest of them. 

Hardison and I were in Nate’s apartment monitoring all of the tech stuff while Eliot and Parker were doing the leg work. Eliot was posing as a pizza delivery man with comms and a button cam, going into the heart of the beast. We watched as he approached the front desk where a pretty brunette sat taking phone calls. 

“Her name is Katie,” Hardison told him as he balanced a tennis ball on his forehead casually, “Likes wild horses, dislikes vanilla toothpaste.”

“Please stop talking,” Eliot responded. 

I laughed a bit, “The fact you can find those things is wild.”

“Hey,” Eliot greeted the receptionist, and I could hear the smile in his voice, “How ya doin’?”

She didn’t respond to him, only lifting a finger signaling for him to wait a moment. 

He turned away from her in a way that I could visualize him leaning against the counter. “Oh, I’m so in,” he said a bit cockily.

My smile soured a bit, remembering just how much of an eye for pretty chicks Eliot had.

“Hey Eliot, what’s that blocking your button cam?” Hardison asked him. I furrowed my brow, as while it was a bit warped because of how small it was, it wasn’t too bad. That was until Hardison finished his thought, “Oh yeah, it’s your ego!”

That made me smile a bit again before moving it along, “Parker? Whatcha got?”

“First ten floors are free climbing heaven, but after that, it's a slip and slide,” she responded easily before a random person started to vaguely harass her, saying she had pretty hair. 

“Uh, Parker, maybe don’t stay next to that person.”

I didn’t get a response from her as Nate and Sophie walked in bickering.

“When was the last time you had a date?” Sophie asked him which caught my attention. “A real date… with food?”

“Stop,” Nate responded before his attention turned to us, “Hardison…”

“I don’t think that counts,” Sophie commented before turning to me to answer her question.

I only shook my head to indicate that it had been a long time. 

“Are you running recon on Lillian Foods?” he asked us. 

“Uh, yeah?” Hardison responded for the both of us. 

“Don’t you think you should consult with me first?”

“Did he just…?”

“We do this all the time, Nate,” Sophie defended. 

“Hey, look man, where do you think all my intel comes from? For the last time, there is no blueprint fairy.”

“Yeah, well, I want you to pull them out. Do it now,” Nate told him as he poured himself a cup of coffee. 

“Why? What’s up?” I asked him. He seemed a bit more strict than a usual job.

“Look, we know what we’re doing, man. It’s a food company,” Hardison rebuffed. 

“No, you don’t. No. Not with a place like this. You don’t know what you’re doing,” Nate insisted. 

I watched on the screen as Eliot started to get escorted away, “Eliot?”

“Give it exactly two seconds before this becomes a train wreck.”

And just like that Eliot responded, “Hardison, we’ve got a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” He asked. 

“They’re MRI-ing my pizza and their stance says ex-CIA.” 

“You could tell somebody worked for the CIA just from how they stand?” Hardison asked before I could. 

“It’s a very distinctive stance,” he whispered back. 

I watched anxiously as a bunch of red flags and alerts popped up on Hardison’s screens. Hardison started to hack back with a vengeance to try and take back some control. I had faith in him, but the beeping and buzzing and flashing lights really didn’t make me feel better. Suddenly it took a turn for the worse where the screens said system lock out. 

“Uh, Eliot, I think you should get out of there,” I said into the comms before the power in Nate’s apartment went out. 

“Right now,” Hardison added on. 

I glanced back to where Nate was sitting at the kitchen table with his hands raised as if to say, ‘see? This is what happens.’

“I’m working on it,” Eliot responded, accompanied with the sounds of fighting. “Parker, I’m comin’ out hot.”

“Okay, all clear out here. Just me-” she started to respond before the same person from earlier’s voice came through. 

“Copy that, I think I got one out here, too.”

“Parker, did you stay next to that guy? That doesn’t sound good,” I commented, partially to her, but mostly myself. 

It sounded like Eliot got through the worst of his escape as he whispered, supposedly to the receptionist, “I’ll call ya.”

I rolled my eyes to myself, of course he would do that. 

“You know when I said you had pretty hair?” the guy next to Parker asked, “I was lying.”

I gagged, what a creep.

“Yeah, well, so was I when I said you didn’t… wait, damn it.” Parker responded before it sounded like she made her escape. 

“Hardison?” Nate asked him after a little bit. 

“Wait for it,” he said as he typed on his keyboard before the lights came back on. “See? There wasn’t no problem. I mean, I had it under control.”

He rambled on for a little bit longer, clearly flustered, as I laid my head back against the chair I was sitting in, letting out a sigh of relief that it was okay. 

Later, when Eliot and Parker were able to make it back to the apartment, we sat around the kitchen table as Nate talked to us. I was still trying to figure out if he was going to chew us out or be nice and just explain what went wrong. 

“So, pizza delivery guy was your big plan?”

“You know what man?” Hardison said, “It was recon, okay? Information gathering has historically been a very safe and peaceful business. It was a food company! Wasn’t like they were making weapons.” 

I glanced at Eliot as he shifted an ice pack he was holding to his arm. 

“Listen,” Nate said, “I’ve worked insurance for companies like this. Anyone gets their hands on the company’s food patents could cost them billions. And by the way? The guard that stuff better than defense contractors.” Nate explained. 

Hardison looked at me in disbelief, but I shook my head, “Hey, I didn’t know that.”

Parker poked at Eliot’s arm, “does that hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“Well that explains all the ex-spooks hanging around the lobby then,” Sophie commented. 

“You know what?” Hardison said a bit aggressively, “Ya live and ya learn.”

“No. I lived, alright,” Eliot cut in, “You sat behind a computer and acted like Kool Moe Dee.”

“What’d you call me? Kool Moe Dee? Like you even know anything about Kool Moe Dee. I was gathering very crucial information.”

“Does that hurt?” Parker poked Eliot again.

“Yeah.”

“How about now?”

“Alright!” I stood from my seat and smacked my hands on the table, a little overstimulated with all the arguing, which stopped it. “Parker, please stop poking Eliot, assume that it hurts. Eliot, we are very glad you lived, and Hardison…” I sighed, the little bit of adrenaline that I had worn off already, “what crucial information did you happen to gather in this train wreck?”

“Yes,” Nate said, backing me up a bit as I slowly sat back down, “How about you share that crucial information with the rest of us.”

I glanced up at Eliot who was looking at me with a softer expression, but I looked back down at the table, my hands in my hair.

“You know what?” Hardison answered Nate, “You ain’t said nothin’ but a word.” He pulled a remote out of his pocket, starting up the screens. 

We all started to make our way to the living room to hear what Hardison had gathered.

“Hey, you heard y/n, stop it,” Eliot said to Parker after she poked him one more time. 

“Eliot, what are you doing?” Nate asked, walking around the table towards him. 

“She’s poking me,” he replied, watching as he came closer. “Don’t man…” He said, shrugging him off as Nate grabbed his hurt arm too, rubbing it in a little more. 

I chuckled, “Come on Eliot, I’ll protect you from the meanies.” I walked ahead of him and was pleasantly surprised when he sat down so I was next to his injured arm.

He tapped his knee to mine, “you better.”

I tried to fight the smile that was growing a bit too wide as Hardison began the briefing. 

“Lillian Foods is the third largest food company in the world. Last year it made 12 billion dollars,” Hardison started. “This is the vice president of the frozen food division, Erik Casten. Erik with a K, Casten with a C.”

“How is that relevant?” Nate asked. 

“Oh,” Parker answered, “Eric with a C, nice and friendly. Erik with a K, evil.”

“I mean, she has a point,” I corroborated. 

“I didn’t know that,” Sophie commented. 

“Everybody knows that,” Parker replied.

“According to Dr. Jameson,” Hardison continued, “Erik with a K is trying to cover up salmonella in the frozen dinners so his division doesn’t have to pay out for the recall.”

“That’s why I grow my own food,” Eliot said next to me.

“How do you find the time?” Sophie asked. 

“You make time. I only sleep 90 minutes a day.”

“I didn’t know that,” I whispered to him, “The growing your own food part. That’s super cool. I only have a basil plant on my window sill. But I don’t think that that little sleep is good for you.”

“The basil’s a good start,” he whispered back, not addressing my sleep comment. 

I could never tell what the next thing I was going to learn about him was. I’ve started to seriously wonder what this man couldn’t do. I already knew that failing to steal my attention was not on that seemingly shorter list. 

“So what we have to do is, we have to get a hold of Casten’s report and make it public,” Nate said. “It’s on the servers. How do we get into the building?”

“I think pizza delivery guy is off the table, for the record,” I commented, nudging my knee against Eliot’s, purposefully avoiding his gaze, but I heard him huff a laugh anyway. 

“I am so far ahead of you, man, it’s scary,” Hardison told Nate. “Look, I can’t hack their system from the outside, so I sent a Trojan phone. It’s hacker 101.”

I pulled out my phone, “Oh, if this is a course, should I be taking notes?”

“You might as well be,” Hardison answered before continuing, “What I did was messenger a smartphone with an extended battery to an employee that’s on vacation. The package sits in the mail room. It scans for wireless and bluetooth access points. Unfortunately, even their internal servers are locked down like the CIA. So all I was able to get was employee emails.”

“Oh, anything useful there?” Sophie asked. 

“Oh yeah, you know what?” Hardison sat on the edge of his seat, leaning towards her, “Marie from Payroll has a crush on Steve from Accounts Receivable.”

She and I were more invested in this gossip then we probably should have been. 

Hardison pulled up a picture of a shirtless below average guy, “Look, that’s Steve right there on his vacation in Florida from a month ago.”

“She likes him? Really?” Parker asked half-heartedly, voicing my own thoughts as well. 

“Oh yeah. That man is a sexy man-beast right there” Hardison half insisted before moving onto the next piece of gossip. “Now, Shannon and Chris from Marketing, they got a little fight going on with Lauren from Ads.”

“Office politics,” Sophie concluded, “God. It’s lucky we don’t have that.”

Eliot and I shared a look that showed we were both skeptical of that. It was just different kinds of politics. 

“Everybody’s up in there complaining about this state of the company thing tomorrow,” Hardison continued, “And Brian from IT-”

“That’s it right there,” Nate cut in, “That’s our way in.”

“Brian from IT?” Hardison asked, “No, he is not a team player.”

“No no no no no,” Nate responded, “That’s our way in… yeah. Yeah yeah. That’s it. The state of the company meeting. Here we go.”

“What is that?” Eliot asked, “I don’t know what that is.”

“Me neither,” Parker said. 

“It’s like State of the Union?” Hardison offered. 

“What is that?” Sophie asked as well.

“Nate,” I said, “You’re the only one here who’s had like a traditional corporate job. Even with me, the places I worked never did that.”

“Oh right, right,” Nate said, finally understanding, “You guys have never had real jobs.”

The rest answered in the affirmative while I gave him a pointed look. He nodded apologetically as if to say, ‘I know you did, but yeah.’

“Alright,” Nate began to explain, “so when I used to work for IYS we would do this all the time. The company, big companies, they make their employees sit for an entire day listening to these boring speeches, lame entertainment, bad food. It’s…” 

Parker huffed a sigh, “I’m so glad I don’t live in the real world.”

I nodded in agreement.

“It’s mandatory,” Nate added. “It’s the only time that all the employees are away from their desks at the same time.”

“Alright, so we go in as caterers. We download the report while everyone’s chucking back the mini quiches. Easy,” Sophie concluded. 

“No,” Hadison contradicts, “see, it’s a food company. All the catering is in house. The only outsiders involved in the whole big operation are the entertainment.”

“And who would that be?” Nate asked.

“Oh, you gonna love this… It’s a magician.”

Nate perked up, looking at me, “ah…”

I, in turn, deflated, “no…”

The now former entertainment was a magician, and from what Hardison told us, he was pretty slimy. A couple of sexual harassment charges didn’t help. It didn’t take much for Hardison and Parker to dismantle his show and get him arrested for punching Hardison in the face. 

The next day Sophie called Lillian Foods to explain the problem and give us an in to replace ‘Chronos the Magnificent.’ Nate went in first as ‘head magician’ talking to the head of security.

“Harry Turner,” he said, handing the security guard a business card. 

“The magician, I know.”

“Illusionist,” Nate corrected, “Magicians do kid’s parties. I do Fortune 500 companies.” He waved us over, “Uh, right this way gang.”

“Woah, and who are these people?” The security guard asked. 

“Oh, this is my team, I believe you spoke with my manager, this is Nell Carver,” he waved towards Sophie who was rolling in a cart of supplies before introducing the rest of us, “my illusions designer, Frank Brunner, my lovely assistant Clea, and of course my beloved apprentice Miss Birdie.” 

I fought to not roll my eyes at Nate introducing me as such, hoping we could get past security without me blowing it. 

Hardison stepped forward towards the guard, “Hey man, I hope you have a doctor in the house, because this man right here is gonna blow your mind.”

“Alright, come on, we’re on a very tight schedule,” Nate said as he started to walk forward. 

“Nothing gets in or out of this building without being scanned,” the guard said, stopping him. 

“These crates contain my illusions, my life. I’m not gonna reveal my secrets. Come on.”

“That’s not my problem, is it?”

“I’ll take care of this,” Sophie said, stopping Nate from continuing, “Mr. Markland, I’m sure we can figure something out. It’s not possible-”

“Let’s pull up the van, Frank, and let's get out of here,” Nate said. 

“Harry, are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

Then an older man walked up to the commotion we were making, “what is going on here?”

“Mr. Price, sir, this is…” the guard started.

Nate turned and introduced himself with a business card, “Harry Turner, illusionist extraordinaire, you are Mr. Price, CEO of this company?”

“I am, what’s going on here?”

“I would like very much, sir, to give your people a wonderful show, but your doorman here would like to look at our boxes of illusions and destroy the illusion.”

I bit my lip to try not to laugh at the obvious manipulation that Nate was pulling, particularly with the context of us being magicians. I never would have dreamed of us being in a situation like this.

“Markland, just lighten up, will ya?” the CEO asked. “It’s a magic show for Pete’s sake.”

Nate repeated him as he followed Mr. Price and led us through security into the building. 

Once we were on stage Nate said, “Okay, we’re clear, let him out.”

Harison opened the giant upright box to let Eliot out. He was dressed in his black stealth related outfit with a beanie on his head that I liked a little too much. He held a classic white rabbit and hat in his arms and carefully stepped around a bird cage at his feet when getting out. 

“It’s a good job you’re not claustrophobic Eliot.” Sophie commented. 

“I was when I was a kid,” Eliot said, shoving the rabbit into Nate’s hands, “take this damn thing.”

“Really? How’d you get over it?” Parker asked while taking the rabbit as Nate handed it to her.

“I locked myself in a woodshed behind my house for a couple nights. After that I was fine.”

I looked at him in disbelief, pausing my task of unpacking the bird cage and checking on the birds inside, “That is the worst form of exposure therapy I have ever heard of… Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“That is so funny,” Parker said, “I was scared of the dark and did the exact same thing.” She then relayed a story of how her friends buried her alive in a wood chest when she was a kid.

“That is not the same thing,” Eliot responded. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I take it back Eliot, Parker’s is worse.” There were moments like this where I questioned where my life path has taken me to get to the point where my friends are these people. Then I remember that it is my own damn fault for willingly following Nate’s hard left turn in life. I shrugged to myself before continuing to prepare.

“So, you’re actually enjoying this,” Sophie said to Nate. 

“You know, being a magician, it’s the next best thing to being a con artist, you know? It’s all about misdirection and control.”

“So no one actually told you that you can’t control life. You see, this is why you’re not in a relationship.”

“No, Sophie, I’m just very focused on my work right now. You know, I was out of control before. Now I’m in control, it's a good thing.”

Hardison turned to me, “You do not seem very pleased about this, but you are kinda confident right now, so I’m confused.”

I glanced at him as I kept unpacking stuff, “Uh, yeah, because when I was in middle school, Nate and I went through a magic phase where we worked together and learned a lot of this stuff. We got pretty good at it, not gonna lie…” I then pointedly said, “Though I don’t understand why I have to go by Miss Birdie like I did when I was like 12 and Nate can’t go by Monsieur Kitty!”

“Do you hear yourself right now, y/n?” Nate asked.

“Yes, and I can be petty when I want to be, you’re using my childhood nickname against me.”

“So you know how to do all this magic stuff?” Eliot asked.

“Absolutely,” Nate answered, “Positively, yeah. It’s all about the rabbit. You know having… by the way, where’s the rabbit,” he asked, turning around before shrugging it off. “Hardison, let’s go over the plan.”

We all gathered around Hardison as he started to outline the plan. As he did so, I couldn’t help but notice how my heart was beating faster than it should be. I knew I was nervous about this, the stage, performance, how much the team was relying on this distraction, and every little thing that had to go right, but I maybe didn’t realize how much until we were here and I took the moment to stop.

“Okay, the show opens with our friend Erik Casten delivering the state of the company speech,” Hardison said. “The speech is scheduled to last an hour, giving myself, Eliot, and Parker enough time to go down to the server room, hack the servers, download the report, and get back downstairs.”

“So, massively there will be no magic show,” Sophie said. 

This helped calm my nerves a little bit, but something in my gut told me something was going to go wrong.

“Oh no, there might be a magic show. Absolutely,” Nate said which counteracted Sophie’s statement and its effects. “We might want to treat these people to the illusionist extraordinaire!”

Eliot and Nate laughed a bit as Nate bowed to the empty auditorium. I tried to laugh with them, but all that came out was a shaky breath. To counteract this, I turned my attention back to the props, including the birds, and pantomimed the motions of making them appear and disappear. I vaguely heard Sophie say something about Nate getting a girlfriend, but I was too focused on practicing the few tricks that I remembered. 

My gut turned out to be right, unfortunately. Instead of giving an hour long speech, Erik Casten’s speech was barely five, keeping it ‘short and sweet.’

“...and let’s give a warm welcome to… Harry Turner, illusionist extraordinaire,” Erik finished. 

“Shit,” I said, mostly to myself. 

“That’s you,” Sophie realized. “Hey, you’re on.”

“Parker, I need my assistant,” Nate said into the comms, as the other three were somewhere in the building going to hack the servers. 

“How come Parker gets to be the assistant?” she asked. 

“How come Nate gets to be the magician?” Hardison asked. “I do card tricks too. I do great card tricks.”

The rest of them were bickering over comms, asking about doing each other's jobs, while the stage was sitting empty. I eventually shoved past Sophie and Nate to get on stage, ignoring the nerves and my rapidly beating heart. I approached the center of the stage and looked at the crowd of people sitting in the previously empty auditorium.

“Hello Lillian Foods!” I said, trying to decide if the waver in my voice was noticeable to anyone else. “As you might suspect, I don’t quite fit the name ‘Harry Turner.’”

To my relief, the crowd laughed a bit which drowned out the bickering still going on in my ear. 

“To everyone’s relief, as well as my own, that is not my name. I am Harry’s apprentice. You may call me Miss Birdie.” The thought of changing my stage name crossed my mind, but I thought it was easier this way. As some people in the crowd said hi to me, using the name, it made me smile. “I think I am on the same page as most of you when expecting a big long speech from your vice-president. And while you may all have been relieved…” 

The crowd cheered and laughed as they could see where this was going. 

“My mentor was not as prepared as he should have been to be on stage this soon, that is where I come in. I’m sure any interns in the audience know the feeling.”

That got a particularly large roar from the crowd. I glanced off stage where Nate and Sophie were arguing still, though not as much as before. Nate gave a pointed eyeroll and shrug at me which encouraged me to continue. 

“I must apologize as I am a little more familiar with close up magic, so let me know if you can’t see anything and I’ll try to make it work. Do you see what is in my hand?” I raised my hand to show some quarters pinched between my fingers. 

The crowd responded in the affirmative before I continued. I did some subtle disappearing tricks before making them reappear with the exception of one. 

“Hmm, it seems I lost a quarter somewhere… Any ideas?”

The crowd booed a bit with the skeptics yelling out where the quarter could be. ‘In your hand! In your pocket!’ etc etc. 

“In my pocket?” I asked, I pulled out my pockets inside out and a few coins came out. “There's some coins, but they look like pennies to me, how about my coat pockets?” I took my blazer jacket off and shook it upside down. A comically large amount of pennies fell out of it. “I need some help examining all these coins… Is there a Dave Bickle in the audience today?”

There was some cheering in one corner as he stood up. 

“Dave, do you mind coming up here and helping me?” He started to walk over before I added, “Bring your coffee, I know you can’t live without it.” 

The crowd chuckled as he came up, coffee in hand. I asked him if he saw my missing quarter anywhere in the spread coins, which he said no. When he wasn’t paying attention, I was able to slip the ‘missing’ quarter in his coffee mug. I was glad it was a mug rather than a covered cup or tumbler, which made it easier. I made sure there was no splash and that it was out of sight for most of the audience. 

“Well, I guess I’m too good at making things disappear, but not great at making them come back… You know something about that, especially with coffee, huh, Dave?” I knew I was milking this bit, but Mr. Price didn’t give us much to work with for crowd work. When Dave laughed and took a sip of his coffee he came out with the quarter in his mouth. I held up my handkerchief to take it back from him, “Oh! You found it, thanks, that’s my bus money for later!”

The crowd laughed and gave a little applause as Dave went back to his seat. I glanced over to Nate to see Parker had joined him and Sophie backstage. I took this as an okay for me to finish up since they seemed a bit more prepared now. 

I quickly introduced Nate as Harry Turner and had him come on stage for his performance. He graciously brought me a broom to sweep up all of my pennies so they wouldn’t interfere later.

“That was really good, y/n! You have all the skills of a pickpocket with sleight of hand, why didn’t you mention it earlier?” Sophie congratulated me once I got off stage. 

“I have blocked out those memories up until yesterday and to be completely honest, I can only half hear you over the blood pumping in my ears right now, how is everything else going?” I kind of laughed to myself, I couldn’t believe I had done that. As I picked up the coins from the floor I could see that my hands were still shaking. 

“That’s natural after being in front of a lot of people, we’ll get you trained up as a grifter and thief in no time!”

I smiled at her sentiment, but didn’t encourage it. As I slowly calmed down I could hear that things were not going great upstairs; Erik had the same idea as we did: accessing the server room while everyone was downstairs. Except he was deleting the files we were trying to access. 

Hardison and Eliot were able to make it up to a higher level to gain access to the computers but they needed higher clearance authorization to gain access. Nate was able to gain Mr. Price’s fingerprints by simulating a trick on stage, but then Hardison said we needed him for retina scanners as well. Nate caused Mr. Price to ‘disappear’ in a magic box by switching it out for an empty one. Sophie and I pushed the box Mr. Price was in to the elevator and shipped him up to Eliot and Hardison. 

It wasn’t long after Sophie and I returned to the backstage that Hardison gave an ‘uh oh’ in addition to the fact that Erik had deleted all of the files before he could get to them.

“Uh oh? What do you mean uh oh?” Eliot asked.

I heard a security guard demand that he get out of the elevator.

“Oh. That uh oh.”

Sophie and I looked at each other in worry and returned to the elevator as we heard Eliot beat up some guards. 

The elevator opened and Eliot stepped out over the guards, “Show’s over. We’re blown.”

“Nate, bring down the curtain,” Sophie said. 

“We’ve got to go!” I added. 

The three of us made our escape and listened for the others to do so. We all made it out with the exception of Hardison who had been caught in the locked junction room where he accessed the servers. They had brought Hardison out of the building to try and find the rest of us when Parker swiped Erik’s phone. 

Nate proceeded to call one of the guards and talk to Erik on his own cell phone and blackmail him into removing the frozen food line that was contaminated off the shelves. He did so by planting the company’s patents on Erik’s phone. The client was there to stick the final nail in the coffin by informing Mr. Price and getting Erik fired.

When we rendezvoused at Nate’s apartment, the rest of us were unwinding and eating dinner while Nate continued to research clients… Working. 

Sophie voiced her concern about him.

Eliot shrugged her off saying that he’s fine. The fact that we pulled this one off proof that he’s at the top of his game. 

“Well that’s the problem. He keeps winning.” Sophie said, “And everytime he wins he believes a little bit more that he can control… life.”

“It’s what gets him through the day,” he replied. 

“What happens when he loses? The last time he lost, it broke him. He breaks again… I don’t think even we can pick up the pieces.”

I didn’t know what to say to that since I thought she might be right. Instead, I stood and moved to the fridge behind Eliot to see if there was anything there that tickled my fancy. Eliot followed me with his box of takeout, leaning against the counter beside me. 

“Do you want some of this Kung Pao?”

I looked at it for a second before grabbing some chopsticks off the counter and grabbing a bite.

“So, you really know some of that magic stuff, huh? I heard it over comms, the crowd was digging it,” Eliot said between bites.

I laughed, “Yeah, a little bit.” I took another bite before saying, “I didn’t get to do my signature trick though.”

“Oh yeah?” He smiled, “show me.”

I thought about it for a second before obliging him. I moved to tuck some hair behind his ear, a slight misdirection. He watched me closely, eyebrow raising slightly at my movement. When my hand was slightly out of his sight, I flipped my wrist and released the dove that was sleeping comfortably in my sleeve. It made a louder rustling noise than I had anticipated, but he didn’t even flinch. I pulled my hand back so I could show him the bird sitting on my finger.

He smiled as he looked at it. He then looked between me and Nate, “birdie.”

I nodded, “Birdie, but he’s the only one that can call me that.”

He laughed and stroked the bird, “That’s alright. I’ll stick to sweetheart.”

A/n: Reblogs and comments are welcome and encouraged! Thank you for reading!

Tags: @isoldeahlstrom @kniselle @technikerin23

[gemmahale]

Some thoughts rolling around in my head today:

*I'm purging these because I have to get something productive done today and this is stopping me because brains are DUMB. I'm also playing with color because I am a child inside an adult body.

There's a sentiment I've seen rolling around (in multiple fandoms, for an extended period of time) of "I do this for free, I can't pay for a sensitivity reader/proofer/beta/etc." If we're a community, couldn't that be bartered for? Hey, would you read my thing - I want to make sure I do X right. I'd be happy to proof your work if you want (or other equitable non-monetary exchange). Or even: Hey, can we talk about your experience as [a first responder, a teacher, a <insert descriptor here> as it might pertain to this work? Did that go away with the need for speed posting? The never-ending rat race of constantly trying to catch the attention of the masses every day? Where did that community sense of "I'll help you, you'll help me" go?

Follow up: If anyone wants me to consult on plants, or beta-ing their work, or whatever, I gladly will. Or I'll help think of people who might be willing to help with the specificity of experience to add to what you're writing about.

I really need to get a stapler for my desk, jfc.

Can we just do away with the vague posting? Just as a whole? Go fucking talk to the person that you're vague posting about. Pull up your pants and do the thing. I know it's scary and I know it's hard and fuck's sake I'm terrified that I have to talk to my boss about some shit tomorrow, but I know it'll get resolved a lot faster than winding myself up over what might be a simple oversight.

Do I need another WIP? No. Do I have another WIP? Yes.

PUMPKINS. So many thoughts on pumpkins.

Okay. That's all for now. I think.

[thewickedbohemian]

Thoughts on a way early Tracker S2 premiere (seriously, this does not feel like an 8pm timeslot show)

so we're just recapping everything out here

ok can we see...

why does it look like Colter's trying to rob a house

nice distracting the dog but what about the way out

and what was on the notepad and why break in just for a picture of it

I feel like Colter got a lot of satisfaction out of that dramatic reveal

so just like last season we start at the end of another job kind of

I was worried the reason the other handler was gone was going to be something tragic

you go girlboss Reenie starting your own damn firm

Lindy Booth guest appearance, that's a nice surprise

so the marshal's a condescending prick, surprise

whole family gone, car there, no phones that is weird

so the other guy might be good might not be who he says he is

so the family doesn't exist, wtf (and there's the sneak preview that Lindy's playing the mom)

and there's the kids, where's the parents

WitSec, they were right about weird

that gas station just had the aura of "Colter's about to step in metaphorical shit"

blue lights, hope they keep up dark-that-isn't-pitch-dark

So yet again Lindy's playing a badass bitch at the metaphorical center of that kind of shitstorm

was that a bad guy or did she tase a mf just to get his keys

some of this conversation veers uncomfortably close to Cassandra's arc themes something something fate echoing in the multiverse (esp. given Colter's Stone vibes, not saying she's gonna recur but who knows)

does Lindy look a bit off or is it just me (could be age, weird makeup job or something I didn't notice/was covered when I saw her as Cassandra but it got my anxiety worried about her health)

called it, other marshal's a bad guy (didn't call him being her ex and now he has the kids...)

could have been a little quicker on the phone call Colter

I don't get the feeling he put the knife away because his heart grew three sizes

non-WitSec-name reveal (and there's some biblical parallel one could make with it being Rachel)

so what ace does Colter have up his short sleeve by making the evil ex think he's won?

Surprise sniper, motherforker

he gets some reward, she set up a charity, I would say everybody wins but people died

the law offices of we are eventually going to expand the ensemble or make a damn spinoff

another mythology-arc-case, another instance of setting up the pattern of blowing his team off for his work so it'll be much sweeter when he doesn't

another new love interest who dis (besides Maggie from Supergirl if my faceblindness isn't failing me)

Gina's sister? talk about involvement in a case

chekhov's notepad, it wasn't the content he was concerned about but the handwriting

next promo vague-ing about case but Russell appears to be back (and now given common Smallville connections I'm wondering if/when Aaron Ashmore's gonna guest star)

[phoenixradiant]

Writer Questionnaire

My thanks to @paeliae-occasionally for the tag! This gets pretty long so I'm putting it under the cut

About how long have you had your writing tumblr/writeblr?

Dunno, probably a bit over half a year at this point? Was it around February?

What led you to create it?

@ theidealistcynic (not actually @-ing him but he doesn't have a nickname like I do so) had one and he saw some people being less vague than he was and was like "Hey Fen here's a place where you can anonymously rant!" So now I'm here.

What’s your favourite thing about the writeblr community?

Probably the way we can joke about each others' characters. I don't do it too too much because I've gotten aspects of my mutuals' characters wrong before, but it's always fun either way.

What’s one thing you’d like your mutuals to know about you?

If you ever want real-life advice, I'm always willing to oblige. Can't promise it'll be helpful, but I'll try. You're all people with lives, same as me, and I'd be remiss not to try to help when I can.

Is there anything you’d like to see more of on your dash?

I actually made a post about this awhile back, but I'd love to see more unprompted rambling. I run across a lot of tag games, which are great, but not as great as someone choosing what they want to talk about for themselves.

Which wips or writing projects are you noodling about, lately?

I'm actually sworn to just the one until I finish Act II at the very least. Which means it's Kelovir, has been for awhile, and will be awhile longer.

How long have you been working on them?

This is a pretty loaded question to be perfectly honest. I've been working on the prose draft for a bit over a year and three-quarters at this point. But the larger world it's set in has been lodged in my mind for over a decade. I suppose it came to fruition in what can reasonably be called its current form in late 2021/early 2022.

Do you remember what inspired them/what got you started?

No. Ink runs through my veins, light resides in my lungs, lifting me into the sky to see worlds and powers beyond our own. It just sort of happened, kinda like how you just happen to think some things taste better than others. I prefer to write rather than play sports or draw. It's always been that way, I suspect it will always be that way.

How much time, in your best estimation, do you spend thinking about them?

Too much for how little I write.

When someone asks the dreaded, “what do you write about,” question, what do you usually say?

I'm an antisocial prick to 97% of people, so I don't often get asked that. My non-writer friends and family are all decently smart avid readers, so they're familiar with a decent number of fantasy classics and figure that's what I write because that's what I read. Among my writer friends we're all SSF writers, so we don't bother asking for generics. If someone asked that question right now, though, I'd probably say something along the lines of "A fantasy story about finding purpose in a world hellbent on destroying it." Most people who don't know what fantasy is proceed to disparage it if I bother to explain, so I leave off the explanation usually.

Name any characters you created. side characters, protagonists, antagonists, characters who’ve never been written, your first original abomination; whomever you’d like!

Hmm. I'm going to name Jikolovor. He's a very minor character who shows up for one scene with Maiph and Lycoris, but he has a lot of backstory importance for Radiaten specifically. He's an odd fellow who is very big on order and intentionality. He doesn't think of emotions as bad, but they must be in agreement with reason, and he doesn't hate freedom, but thinks it must be bounded to certain moral lines.

Who’s the most unhinged?

Kesh Anyraz. Unfortunately his whole personality is being unhinged so that's hardly an interesting answer. Cellic gets pretty unhinged for a bit there, but he comes out of it, so the character who was once on hinges that has since become unhinged would probably be Anesaru. She's just sane enough to be really dangerous, but just insane enough to... do what she does as a villain (spoilers).

Who comes the most naturally for you to write?

Cellic feels very comfortable to me because I understand and enjoy him. Kar is comfortable-ish because his narration style and speaking style is very informal. Narra isn't ever very comfortable, but her difficult moments are never as difficult to write as the other two either. As to non-PoV characters, Radiaten has a very consistent personality and shares my sensibilities for when is appropriate to quip, so he's about as close to a personality self-insert as I get. So not super close but you get the point.

Do you ever cringe at them?

Only when I'm intentionally writing them to be cringeworthy. Other than that, I have an actor's sensibilities when it comes to earnesty in art. I cringe at real life far more often than I do at my characters, not because people in real life are earnest, nothing against that, but because I'm socially inept and even I can see how tactless and out-of-place they are.

How much control do you feel you have over your characters? do they ever “write themselves,” refuse to cooperate, or do things you didn’t expect? to what degree? are some less cooperative than others?

I'm a student of the "driver's seat" school of art, so I'm in control the whole way along. Characters can nudge me certain directions, sometimes I decide on the spur of the moment to add an extra scene or something, but ultimately I decide on the start and end points and most of how they get there. Sometimes that changes, but individual characters are never the cause of that. It's always two or three characters in confluence or, more often, a more thematic moment. I'm pretty good at wrangling my characters into shape... it just sometimes means writing new scenes takes awhile.

Do you enjoy people asking questions about your characters? and do you have a preferred means of receiving said questions? for example, as asks, as replies, as reblogs, as tag notes, as comments on ao3, etc.

Nods in laconic appreciation.

What makes you want to follow another writeblr account? do you follow ‘em as you see ‘em, or take time scoping out the blog to make sure you align with its content? do you follow based on wips, or vibes?

I follow people who I consistently see making or reblogging posts that I'm interested in. Simple as that. I suppose I can be a bit stingy with my follows, but a lot of it is that I don't want to find out they made one good writing post and then spend the rest of their time complaining about how everyone they know irl except them is a selfish bastard who deserves to be bound, gagged, and thrown into the ocean (yes I have someone in mind, no it's not any of you, don't worry). I am, I have discovered, a more plot-focused reader than a lot of people, and so I appreciate writeblrs who talk about their story as a cohesive unit, rather than just plot or just characters or just world. The weaving of all that together is definitely something I look for.

What makes you decide against following?

Oh whoops probably should've saved part of last question for this one. Ah well. Openly hostile and ungrateful people, mostly. Show common courtesy and you'll be fine.

Do you interact with non-mutuals often?

I mean... Do I?

Okay, so I looked into it, and I do routinely interact with a few non-mutuals, but I follow all three of them. I don't remember the last time I interacted with someone who I am not now following (actually I think I reblogged one writing advice post about dialogue tags). So not much, but sometimes, I guess.

Solid meh

Do your mutuals’ characters occupy space in your noodle?

A couple of them do. Not all of them, but a decent number. There's like a critical mass of information after which they can reliably stay in my head. The ones who I hear more about are the ones who take up occasional residence in my imagination.

This was fun! NP tagging @the-ellia-west, @pluppsauthor, and @somethingclevermahogony!

[the-force-awakens]

Hey, Nym, are you okay? I'm so sorry someone was ableist with one of your (amazing) hcs 🥺 I'm here if you wanna talk about what happened. But no pressure ♡

I debated answering this one publicly. Debated answering this one at all. Because sure, for all my playful kvetching, my passionate rants about why the things I like are cool and people shouldn't be dicks about it, and my occasional relatable depression text post reblog, I don't get negative on here. It's kind of my thing, or at least I like to think it is. I love to think my brand on here is that weird, positive autistic girl who is completely obsessed with Poe Dameron, and I also like to think it's a well earned brand. You don't stay on this bullshit for three years if you're normal.

So yeah, debated answering it because I didn't want to post the honest answer, but honestly this is a shitty situation, and it's important, so I am: I'm not okay.

I won't go into details, because contrary to what some clowns may believe I don't vague post (oh, oops, guess I just did a little), or at least if I kind of do, it's usually vaguing behaviors I see spread across multiple parts of a fandom, but I will talk about what it's like to be disabled and in fandom. What it is like to be autistic and in fandom.

I'm on Tumblr because it's a space where I can have a little dragon hoard of my special interest. It's where I can infodump about it. It's a space where I don't have to mask (much). In 2020, I jumped feet first into a certain special interest because life was shit and it made me happy. For every shitty take, every negative opinion I was hit with, I threw out more positive creations. I wrote. I giffed. I meta-ed to my heart's content and I was so fucking happy.

Then it....became a thing. I don't mind, as previously mentioned, my brand being that girl weirdly obsessed with a fictional pilot who isn't that popular outside of his fanon ships from a trilogy that this website loathes with as many burning suns as I hate - I don't even know something I hate that much. Anyway, I didn't mind that. But suddenly I became a wikipedia search bar. And....for the first little while, I didn't mind. Because I got to infodump about him, and I don't get to infodump irl, and my friends had heard plenty. And besides, I liked helping people! I like pointing people in the right direction of things.

But like I said. It became a thing. People were comfortable dm-ing me questions, getting mad about the answers I had, and sending back their own headcanons to contradict them. I got praised a lot for....having a special interest and being passionate about that subject. It started to feel a little bit...weird. But then I started realizing that people mostly only talked to me when they needed information from me, and that felt. Awful. It made me feel used just a little bit, and I took a step back from fandom because of it and some other mental health issues I was having.

(apparently if you're autistic this means you're 'distant')

But I wanted to keep creating, because making stuff makes me happy, and I'm autistic and I want a space to be autistic, and don't always want to (I know it does not bother you, but still) bother my friends with it, because there's loads of other conversations to have.

Fandom is more isolated now, but I feel that more keenly as someone who is disabled and audhd. Characters I relate to are seen as villains and monsters in the fandom, or manipulators that pressure people into doing what they want, or arrogant assholes who really just need to be put in their place. I try my best to ignore it.

It's harder to ignore when a not-super popular headcanon you made out of comfort after dissing your abled a bit more and living through a fairly traumatic job experience (and ergo losing out on a job because no one believed you were disabled), gets taken and written in an explicitly ableist way that mimicks precisely the trauma you were seeking comfort from.

I don't know who fandom is for anymore, but it's certainly not for me.

[lorei-writes]

👀👀👀👀 do you know who I'm inviting to your weekend party? Just Sasuke, Licht and Dazai of course. I told them there would be swimming. Whether or not there is actually swimming isn't the point, the point is that I have lured them.

❤️❤️ You and I have talked a little bit about my OC Masami which you can switch out for me if you feel comfortable with it ❤️❤️

Lovely! Now, let me see what I can make with this... On the topic of swimming, if somebody requested Silvio and Gilbert, I have an entire Little Mermaid AU ready for them, just saying...

Okay, a Casino AU, but it's a weird one.

Surrounding circumstances:

Dazai uses a door for once, but it's The Door (trademarked), and it breaks in the middle of the *gestures vaguely* door-ing, I suppose,

Sasuke runs away from Kenshin, and behold, he is now double dead, for he dares disappear! Well, that wormhole is conveniently timed,

Clavis forces Licht to go out and have fun in the town. However, their ideas on what fun is aren't exactly the same... So, concerned Masami follows him, juuust in case. Well, they end up having to run away from a gigant (paper-mache; filled with eggs; leaking) boulder -- and so, they fall into a hole. Cradle-style, if you catch my meaning.

And so, they all wake up in a Casino, somewhere. Except this entire universe is the Casino. As stated on the leaflet by the door, the only way for a person to leave this space is to win in at least one game.

They start with billard. Dazai doesn't seem to take the entire thing particularly seriously, but he doesn't need to. Licht doesn't know the rules, Masami doesn't either and Sasuke is too busy considering the implications of the existence of vampires to: a. focus on playing; b. offer any explanations. The fact that Dazai has changed into something more fitting for the occasion has absolutely nothing to do with this outcome.

Then, there's poker. Dazai has already won, so he's losing intentionally. Sasuke loses unintentionally -- this time, he's considering the logistics of being a vampire, wonders whether he shouldn't offer any blood donations, and a part of his brain is also occupied by the similarity between his and Licht's facial expression range. (Kindred spirits?) Whether Masami knows the rules is unclear, but he panics too much. Licht wins!

Now, Sasuke is a smart guy. As soon as he works through his initial shock, he secures himself a win easily.

The real problem is Masami.

The poor servant just... He's not coping well, okay? He can see all those human and vampiric auras, they narrowly escaped becoming a part of art project that met scrambled eggs, they have to try unfamiliar games. It's plenty to take in! So they wind up playing tick-tack-toe. Masami is still very much overwhelmed, so Licht, Sasuke and Dazai do their upmost to lose.

However, the Casino universe forced them to play on 64 by 64 squares board. It takes a while.

Weekend Party

[boglady]

4, 8, 23, + 24 for the fic writer asks 🎉

4. a story idea you haven’t written yet I've been thinking A LOT about Roy in the post canon space. How he would tackle his life in Ted's footsteps without Ted there to guide him through it. But I've only very barely written about him at all since the show ended, including in my various unpublished WIPs and I really want to change that at some point and just write something vaguely melancholy about his experience with all that, possibly with a ship attached, but maybe just as a gen fic.

8. if you had to write a sequel to a fic, you’d write one for… I have actually been attempting to write a sequel for another person's fic for ages now, and it has been shelved for so long now t that I don't even want to even say which one it is in case that would jinx it!

23. pick three keywords that describe your writing this is too hard to think about so here are three that sort of come to mind and may or may not be accurate: introspective, sincere, curious.

24. how do you recharge when you’re not feeling creative? I feel like I have two major modes of not writing. If I'm genuinely just too overworked/sleep deprived/sick/tired, attempting to write only makes things work, and I try to not allow myself to prioritise very basic levels of self care before getting back into to. If I'm just not feeling what I'm writing I find there are three ways to get over it. 1. keep writing anyway. 2. reading (+sometimes listening or watching) critically, taking note of what I enjoy about it, and thinking about all the cool things words can do. 3. Having a beta and beta-ing other people's works has been really helpful for me in terms of thinking about the minutia of writing if I've been putting words on a page without really feeling it. Sometimes just talking about what a story is trying to achieve and how to achieve it, or figuring out that the reason a sentence sounded weird is that I've repeated a word or messed up a grammatical rule is so helpful.

[spindrifters]

1 & 18 for the ask meme

1. What’s something new that you tried in a fic this year? How did it turn out? Would you do it again?

Well. I stopped letting myself be all freaked out and judgmental of the Alternate Universe - Slavery tag on AO3 and just wrote the fucking thing. And I'm so, so glad I did. Because yeah! Behind every fic genre there are trope-y implications and some truly bad fanworks out there! But once I realized that my intent was actually a deconstruction of the genre, it freed me up to do some of the most uncomfortable yet liberating writing of my life. Like, if you're gonna do it, just do it. Doesn't do anyone any favors to half-ass it. 10/10, highly recommend scaring the shit out of yourself.

18. Share an excerpt from your favorite scene.

On that note...

Remus doesn’t mean to do it. He doesn’t plan to. It’s happening anyway. His hand reaches out to grab Sirius’, the one that’s bleeding now where he’s been savaging it, so it’s warm olive-tan over palest white, and Sirius is so, so cold.

“Stop that,” he says, and he doesn’t really know which he’s talking about — the bleeding finger or something else, maybe both, but the way Sirius is looking up at him now makes him think that maybe he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing to himself until just now. Remus doesn’t think of himself as strong very often, but in that moment it feels as though, if he wanted, he could break Sirius clean in two.

“It’s not your fault, though,” he says, then, because this is important. “You… you do know that, right?”

“Sort of is, though.”

“Isn’t. Go around crucio-ing yourself often, do you?”

“No, but that’s not — ”

“Not your fault, then.” And Remus grips Sirius’ hand even tighter in his, the other boy’s grey eyes fixed on where they meet. “Fucking hell, Sirius, you were a kid. That’s not on you. It’s just… it’s just not.”

Children get hurt. They just do. Scraped knees and bloody noses. The fact that they’re children doesn’t exempt them from it, and so much the worse if you’re born a servant — Remus learned that very early on. Only those hurts always came from places of clearly delineated lines. Places of greed and hatred and fear and real delight in causing pain. Places of indifference, those could often be the very worst. Those hurts come from people who don’t see certain children as worthy of protection based on a fluke of birth.

Remus doesn’t have a mother. Not anymore. The only vague memories he has of her are dark, tumbling curls and someone calling him kerido in a voice he can no longer place. Otherwise, they're all more sensory than fact. Love. Safety. Home. The only hurt he associates with her was ultimately done to them both — that final violent act of separation.

Walburga Black, on the other hand, owns him. She owns him, and she considers that the right and natural way of things, so it hadn’t phased him really to know that she could also cause Sirius to bleed. But he can appreciate now, for what’s really the first time, that Walburga is also Sirius’ mother. And he can hardly reconcile the idea of a mother who causes that sort of pain.

Maybe Sirius can’t, either.

ask me about my 2022 fics in review

[mathmusicreading]

Blog(ger) Shift

I am, so weird and bad about original posting and about reblogging and about saving things on Tumblr and that's why my blog has been mostly inactive or the lurking consumer type. But I don't want my fears about putting myself out there, being seen and known, articulating myself well vs. having been told my whole life I'm too wordy and opinionated vs. not managing to articulate myself well enough to justify being verbose and passionate, etc. to continue to control me so much.

So for my new specific-interest sideblog that I'm not locking, I hope it being themed will help me with making more original posts and reblogging, and I'm publicizing that here to push myself and also welcome interaction.

RIP to my other public specific-interest sideblog and the fandom sideblog I took over for someone that I didn't take further and to my private sideblogs that were meant to make me reblog and save and say stuff because they would be personal and just for me. I still would like to make those happen and reblogging and posting things that matter to me here, and oh my heart for the content ideas I haven't been working on, but they're pipedreams with how I'm (not) managing my life and I keep kicking those cans down the road.

To the person who I developed a real relationship with as a beta but who by now I probably count as having disappeared on with how long it's been and my not coming back to explicitly say I still can't help and don't know when I can, I am so sorry. I'm being a coward languishing in hoping I can tell you soon that I can get back into beta-ing for you and talking, but that's turned into me not talking to you because I'm waiting to be able to say something positive. Hopefully my vaguing here can help push me into talking to you, or at least this is here for you to read if you happen to see it; and I want you to know you absolutely can talk to me, can call me out, and if you're so gracious as to still want to be friends with me and just chat despite my dropping being your beta, I'm here for you and still want to be your friend even if I don't know if I'll have the spoons to be a good one and I know my saying that preemptively isn't apology or justification enough.

Honest assessment, I'm going to curse and say my living situation and work have both become even more of a shitshow, and with those things in mind I can't begin to imagine handling a real project until basically literally a year from now.

Which segues back into the main topic of this post. My goal isn't to have my new sideblog be like an active mainblog nor to abandon this blog—people interested in that blog can and should still interact with me here given how primary vs. secondary blogs on Tumblr work, and in terms of using that blog to help make me be a better Tumblr user, I think I should make certain original posts here and reblog them there as opposed to them being original there. With my mental-emotional and time resources, I want that blog to be "active" for a given definition of active, but really I think I should see my objective as "clear out tabs and likes and photos and lists and notes and drafts, etc. from the last four months" by saving stuff there, as opposed to my goal being the original posts I want to make there, and actually my long-term goal should be to use that momentum to do the same for older digital and physical storage that hasn't been lost or stolen. In my failure to be an interesting person, do I at least manage to be fascinating as a basket-case? Ha. But, also, as expressed above the Read More, the exercise of my danmei/Chinese sideblog is supposed to be a foray into me allowing myself to be an interesting person.

[pesterloglog]

Feferi Peixes, Jade Harley

Act 5, page 2991-2994

cuttlefishCuller [CC] began trolling gardenGnostic [GG]

CC: Glub glub glub glub glub!

GG: oh.............

GG: noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

CC: )(ey, take it easy!

CC: I'm not )(ere to give you a )(ard time like my buddies )(ave been.

GG: but youre a troll

GG: and thats what trolls do!

GG: even when they say they wont

GG: sometimes especially!!!!!!

CC: Ok t)(en, you can be t)(e judge of t)(at. I won't be long!

CC: I've just come to say a couple t)(ings.

CC: FIRST!

CC: None of t)(is is really your fault!

CC: T)(is is swimmingly obvious to everyone )(ere w)(o takes a glubbing moment to t)(ink about it rationally.

CC: W)(ic)( isn't many of us! But still.

GG: ok.....

GG: even though i still have no idea what youre talking about

CC: I mean, your lusus jumped rig)(t in t)(ere to save you!

CC: Just like mine did.

CC: Well ok, mine was dead at t)(e time. 38(

CC: And s)(e just kind of...

CC: F-ELL IN!

CC: Kinda drifted down like fis)(food, and POW, GL'BGOLYBSPRIT-E.

CC: )(e)(e)(e)(e)(e)(e)(. S)(e was so funny.

GG: whats a lusus!!!!!

CC: It's a big ol' monster custodian you grow up wit)(!

CC: S)(-E-ES)(, )(ow freaking retarded do you )(ave to be not to know somet)(ing like t)(at?

CC: I'm joking, of course. 38)

GG: :\

CC: I wanted to glub somet)(ing -ELS-E to you well before you started playing.

CC: Just to get t)(e idea in your )(ead!

CC: I am Feferi, by t)(e way. Abdicated empress to be!

GG: ok feferi. what is it?

CC: Soon I will go to sleep and speak to t)(e gods.

CC: I will convince t)(em to establis)( a series of stable dream bubbles, w)(ere we can meet in our sleep!

GG: i dont understand

GG: whats a dream bubble?

CC: YOU'LL S-E----------E! 38D

GG: ugh

GG: feferi i thought you said you were going to stop using your typing quirk!

CC: Did I?

CC: When??

GG: i dont know... im sure i remember you said that

CC: )(mm.

CC: Jade, t)(is is t)(e first time we )(ave ever talked!

CC: Isn't it???

GG: oh

GG: yeah it is

GG: i dont know what i was thinking....

GG: i just had a major case of deja vu!

CC: W)(at's t)(at?

GG: i felt like we already had this conversation

GG: actually

GG: it still sort of feels that way

GG: its not going away :o

CC: Well, maybe we did!

CC: )(ey, by t)(e way.

CC: W)(at exactly are you doing t)(ere wit)( t)(at toy?

CC: You never did explain it to me!

GG: ummm

GG: what do you mean i never explained it to you?

GG: if this really is the first time we talked, why would i have?

CC: Good point.

CC: Maybe I'm feeling it too.

CC: I )(ave... w)(at was it? Orca vu?

GG: XO

GG: feferi that one was a stretch even by your fish punnery standards

GG: aaah why do i know that you like to make fish puns???

CC: 38?

GG: actually

GG: i do remember this conversation

GG: it was in the past!

GG: but if it was in the past, then where am i now?

CC: In the future! Duh.

GG: so what is going on?

GG: i dont think i am asleep....

GG: i am not on prospit

CC: Yes, you are asleep. But your dream self died, just like mine, remember?

GG: oh...

GG: vaguely

CC: Now you don't dream about Prospit. You have normal dreams!

GG: so this is a dream?

CC: It is a dream, and a memory. It is the past, brought back to life by a witch! It's all those things.

CC: Although we are getting off the script here!

CC: This is not how the conversation originally went, obviously.

CC: You were a lot less patient with me! When I was just trying to ENCOURAGE you.

GG: sorry

GG: i think

GG: i am in the game now, right?

CC: Sure!

CC: Hey, why don't you tell me about this cool robot bunny you we're making?

CC: I've been pretty glubbing curious about it!

CC: Mind if I take a look?

GG: um

CC: It's great!

CC: Wish I could make something like this. Never had the gills for technology.

CC: Hard to work with under water!

GG: why are you here!

GG: are you asleep too?

CC: Nope!

CC: I woke up from my nap a while ago.

CC: Remember how I woke up and then messaged you? You had just had a bad dream!

CC: And I told you there was nothing to be scared of.

CC: Which there isn't!

GG: oh yeah

GG: i do remember that

GG: then why are you here now?

CC: Because, stupid.

CC: I'M D------EAD!

[thoughtlessthinkythoughts]

For no reason in particular (or rather, for reasons I'm only vague-ing in this post) I have been thinking of this quote from the TMA season 4 q&a:

JONNY

The…[chuckles] It’s a really interesting thing because as the fandom has grown it’s not longer a-a-a monolith, well, it was never a monolith, really, but it’s no longer it’s more or less a unified group. I need to be a lot more careful how I interact because things that I would say potentially i-ingest, like, they have resonance now I can’t simply have – I can’t have an opinion on my work because my opinion is not an opinion.

ALEX

Yes.

JONNY [CONT.]

My opinion is something that people can take and deploy in fandom contexts and it’s – it’s very much like… I have made a big party and as I have made this big party I myself have grown, so that I am now a huge stone giant. So, if he attempts to attend the party he will destroy the party and everyone will die because he will – I will crush them with my giant stone hands. That’s how I feel.

Now, I know this approach isn't that much fun for creators. It sucks to not be able to take part in your own work way you'd like to. It sucks to hold your tongue when people have negative opinions and reviews online.

However, I feel like it is absolutely correct and really important, especially in smaller indie fandoms where there doesn't seem to be as much separation between the people involved in a project and the fanbase. And this quote applies to much more than just sharing your personal headcanons or interpretations of a work. It applies to all interactions with people discussing your work.

Whether people like or dislike something you were involved in making, they have a right to say it online without worrying about being called out by you. There is a power issue there. People have the right to post mediocre to negative reviews of a thing you made.

There is a purpose to reviews. Reviews are for other fans or potential fans to give them information about the quality of work involved. The purpose of most reviews isn't communication with anyone officially involved with a project, and creators need to respect that.

I'm not naming names, but I will say I am thinking of more than one individual here. Yes, I'm thinking of the project that just released some subpar rewards. I'm also thinking of a twitter conservation I saw, where some podcast creators were of the opinion that any work make with passion and love deserved a top tier ranking or review. Which, quite frankly, completely defeats the point of reviewing something.

This is fundamentally different from current lines of thinking on criticism in fandom. Because, when we are talking about fanworks, we are operating in a gift economy. Fanworks are made with no financial benefit to the creator, and therefore the rules are different.

But once you are making something professionally, the rules change. People can criticize whatever they like.

Basically, here is the tl;dr. Fans are allowed to have any opinion they please of something you make, and they are allowed to discuss it on social media. (Note: this is not about harassment, mistreatment, smear campaigns, etc. Those are different, and creators absolutely have the right to respond to those. This is just about people having opinions.) And you, as the goddamn professionals in this situation, need to learn when your input has the potential to destroy everyone else's party.