#and it had a footnote that was--i shit you not--a full two pages long of the dude being pissed at structuralist interpretations of the topi

[revvethasmythh]

I think something we're sleeping on in the Gale epilogue is that he says he wants to try writing books about our adventures, which directly puts him in competition with Volo, who is also writing about the same adventures

This would--inevitably--devolve into a writer/academic feud for the ages, spreading copious misinformation to the masses as both writers can accurately claim to be primary sources, with wildly different tellings between them. There will be synthesis commentary papers written about both of their works by historians for centuries, and even though Volo's is full of blatant lies it must be considered because he is....well, Volo. and, like, he was verifiably there and involved with everything. there is no world where that is not infuriating to an academic like Gale. Gale will be blowing a gasket for the rest of his life about being in competition with Volo's Tome of Lies. There will be sniping in the footnotes of all his papers at the bard for the rest of his life. Bitter bard vs academic warfare, that's what we're looking at here

[the-bau-quinjet]

Tolerate It

Summary: Reader struggles with feeling like Hotch is growing distant.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x gn!Reader

Category: fluff/angst

Warnings: the reader has thoughts/feelings of inadequacy

Word Count: 3200+

Notes: This is my entry for @railmereid‘s 2k writing challenge! It was inspired by Taylor Swift’s song tolerate it! I think there’s only one direct quote (I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life). 

You met Aaron on accident. It could be said that a lot of people are met on accident, and that’s just how people meet other people. But with Aaron it felt different. It felt as though every little thing that went wrong that day lead you to the accident that would introduce Aaron Hotchner into your life.

After the shit show that was today, all you want to do is get home and sleep. Maybe also eat dinner, but honestly even food is on the backburner of your mind right now. 

Your drive home from work was the first uneventful thing to happen all day, a necessary moment of peace. You made it into your apartment without any trouble, swiftly moving to change into your fluffiest pajamas and sleep.

The second your head hit your pillow, the fire alarm sounded. The blaring alarm screeched in your ears as you groaned. You forced yourself out of bed to comply with the alarm. Without thinking, you put on your slippers, grabbed your keys, and walked out the front door. 

Once you made it to the street, you turned to see the building really was on fire. It looked contained to one patio, but it was big enough for you to give up your plans of sleep. Instead, you chose to turn on your heel and walk down the street to escape the crowd. 

You didn’t have a plan as to where you were going. You just wanted it to be quiet. Before long, you found yourself in a park. Looking around, you spotted an empty bench. Perfect. You can just sit, enjoy the quiet of the park for however long it takes to fix the fire issue. 

You start trekking toward the bench, now walking with a purpose, when you notice a man chasing his child. The child laughs loudly, joy so clear on his face. The man smiles at him, still running behind him. 

His smile is so infectious, it has its own magnetic force pulling you towards him.  Switching directions from the bench, you are now walking toward the grassy area they are playing in, not looking at your surroundings. You’re so captivated by the happiness on display in front of you, you don’t notice the change in terrain. 

You end up tripping on a rock, falling and tumbling down the slight decline to land in a heap at the feet of the very man whose smile distracted you.

To make matters worse, he was not stationary. No, that would have been to simple. He was, in fact, still chasing the child. So, rather than rolling to a stop and looking up at him, you rolled right into him, causing him to lose his balance and fall over you. 

The two of you were a tangled mess of limbs piled on top of each other. Slowly, carefully the two of you separated, gingerly moving arms and legs to avoid further injury. Helping each other rise from the ground, you were both speechless, equal parts amused and horrified at what just happened. 

“Are you okay?” 

You jumped at the sudden intrusion that brought you back to reality. Spinning around, you realized it was the child. 

It took you an embarrassing amount of time to form a response. “Oh, um... yes I’m okay. Thank you.” Turning back to the man, you finally realized what just happened. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”

He chuckled, a small smirk appearing on his face before he replied, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Oh, good.” Your relief was short lived as you realized what you were wearing and how you were dressed. “Please tell me you didn’t see me roll all the way down the hill?” You cringed at the thought. 

“I could say it, but it wouldn’t be very honest.”  Again, a small laugh left his lips. 

“Do you think we could pretend?” You took a deep breath as he quirked his eyebrow. “Ya know, that I didn’t just make a complete fool of myself?”

“But that’s not true! Daddy said when something’s not true it’s a lie and lies are bad.” The boy chimed in again, earning a chuckle from both adults. You bent down to talk to him. 

“You are absolutely right, lying is bad.” You nodded along with him, matching his serious expression. 

He took in your expression, as if judging the sincerity of your statement. Slowly, a smile began to form as if he was glad you agreed with him. “Do you want to play tag with us?”

Looking from him to his father, you took the slight smile and nod of his head as an invitation to accept his offer. “I would love to.”

That series of accidents led you to where you are now, though. A year and a half later you are sitting in your shared home, watching Aaron Hotchner do paperwork for what feels like the millionth night in a row. More realistically, it is the ninth night in a row, but you’re feeling lonely and dramatic. Those nine nights have been spread out over the past month, interrupted by nights he spends away from home.

You yearn to be closer to him. All it would take is for you to cross the room, but it feels as though the distance from the couch you are lounging on to the desk he is working at is too far, like there is some impassible divide preventing you from interrupting him. 

So you just keep watching. It has been 36 minutes since you started your observing. If he sticks to his pattern, he’ll pause in nine minutes to stretch, giving him the opportunity to notice your eyes on him.  You’re hopeful that this time he’ll smile when he sees you. 

So you wait. You watch him read. You notice the way his head dips just a bit lower as he tries to focus tired eyes on the smudged handwriting of a fellow agent. You notice how his hand squeezes the pen tighter than before, turning the once smooth glide of ink across the page into rushed, jagged strokes of letters. You notice the barely there wince as he flips the page, the result of the familiar feeling of a paper cut he’s grown all too used to. You notice everything he does. Which is why you’re not surprised when he speaks. 

“You’re staring.” 

Glancing at your phone, you note the time. Nine minutes later. Right on schedule. The smile you hoped for is noticeably missing, replaced by a curious tilt of his head.

“I’m basking in your presence.” 

If he wanted to, he could figure out how lonely and dramatic you are feeling. But with the majority of his energy still directed towards the many reports on his desk, he only notices the surface level. Tired, slightly miffed, but enjoying that he is home.

There was once a time when he would have noticed it all though. A time when he noticed everything about you, sometimes before you had even noticed it about yourself. You’ve learned how to hide it though, to save him the energy that would be expended to profile you. 

“You should consider a new career path. Comedy could really be for you.”

His deadpan joke doesn’t surprise you, but him rising from his desk chair does. For a minute, you expect him to come to you. To attempt to cross the impassible divide you’ve built in your head. Instead, he turns into the kitchen. He pauses at the island, drinking from the glass he never brings to his desk to prevent anything from ruining his files. 

When he returns to his desk, squandering any lingering hope that he may have been done for the night, you rise. Unwilling to do what you had hoped of him, you turn away from his desk and move toward the stairs. Just before you lose sight of him, you turn back. 

“Don’t forget to sleep tonight.” 

Your tone is soft, emphasizing your concern to cover up the lingering loneliness. 

“I’ll be up soon.”

You respond with a slight nod of your head, another thing unnoticed by Aaron as his eyes never left the files. 

You flitter through the second level as you complete your routine to prepare yourself to sleep for the night. 

You can’t help but notice the cold sheets on the empty side of the bed as you wait for Aaron, knowing you’ll likely be asleep before he comes to bed. 

--

You’re surprised to wake up the next morning with Aaron still in bed next to you. You watch his chest rise and fall with the steady in and out of his breath. His face is fully relaxed, a sight you so rarely get to see. 

You’re not sure how long you watch him sleep, but you notice when his rhythmic breathing changes pattern indicating he’s waking up. His eyes flutter open slowly, allowing you to see the exact moment he notices you. 

“You’re staring again.” 

The smile you are still hoping for is again absent from his face, too used to the frown that has taken over his features near permanently for the past month.  

“I’m still basking in your presence.”

You notice the beginnings of a grin forming on his face. The twinkle in his eyes. The slight twitch of his lips. It’s nearly there when the moment is interrupted by the distinct, shrill ringtone indicating a call from the bureau. 

You watch as he sits up to answer the phone with his typical “Hotchner”. If you hadn’t spent the last year noticing everything you could about the man, you would doubt that he had been asleep less than three minutes ago. 

His brows furrow, his body leaning forward to sit a little straighter as he takes in the information from whoever is on the other end of the phone. His eyes trace the pattern of your comforter, up until he throws the blanket off of himself to rise to his feet. He’s changing into his suit before hanging up. Without even hearing his responses, you can tell where this is headed. 

After he hangs up, you speak before he has the chance. 

“I take it you won’t be here for dinner with my parents tonight? I’ll try to reschedule it.” 

The question should express your loneliness, but you do well to hide the full truth. It’s easy to sound understanding because you are. You do understand, which is why you never plan to tell him how you feel. 

The grim expression is enough for you to know you’re right, you don’t need the verbal confirmation. You nod your head, a smile on your face that doesn’t meet your eyes as he walks out of your bedroom. 

--

While Aaron was away, you did everything you could to keep yourself busy outside of your typical 9 to 5 workday. Aside from the typical reading, cleaning, and TV watching you normally do you; you successfully navigated another conversation with your parents about why it was necessary to reschedule dinner a second time and played action figures with Jack, always in agreement about how his daddy is a hero. 

Every night you found yourself staring at the door, hoping it would swing open and reveal him on the other side. Every night you grew less hopeful and more discouraged than the one previous. 

--

Five days after he left, Aaron returned to your shared home. Despite the late hour, you waited for him on the couch. Knowing he probably hadn’t eaten dinner, you kept some food warm for him. 

When the door swung open, you were in front of it in seconds. You pulled him into a hug, one he was too exhausted to reciprocate, and kissed his cheek. 

Moving farther into the house, he dropped his files on his desk swiftly turning to head upstairs. 

“I kept dinner warm for you.”

Your words stalled him at the bottom of the stairs. He turned around slowly, barely looking at you.

“I actually ate with the team tonight.”

His words hit you like a bus, but you turned to hide it. He didn’t eat with the team often, so you never blamed him when he stayed with them a bit longer than usual. 

“Oh, okay. I’ll just put it in a container for tomorrow then. Did you want to talk about the case?”

You’ve always been willing to help him carry the weight of his job, but you’ve been trying harder to get him to open up this past month. Typically he brushes you off, tells you he’s fine, and then buries himself in paperwork. 

He surprised you this time. Maybe he could tell you were upset, or maybe he was just too far in his head. Either way, rather than continuing on his path up the stairs, he moved to sit in the kitchen while you put the food away. 

You listened as he ranted about the local officers withholding information about the case. You listened as he complained about the poor weather. You listened to every word, slowly washing and drying the dishes until they were sparkling. You listened until you were practically asleep, leaning against the sink. You didn’t dare to interrupt in fear he would shut down again. Or maybe it was you shutting down, but that’s a thought for another time. 

When he finished talking, he rose from his chair, too worked up to sleep now, he sat down at his desk. 

You watched, noticing everything you could. 

--

Your weeks repeated much the same for the next few months. Your loneliness morphed into something new with each night you spent watching Aaron work. 

It’s one such night when everything changes. You were trying to watch him work, but your thoughts drifted away from his actions as you lost yourself in your memories. 

The first case Aaron went on after you moved in with him and Jack was the hardest for you. After a straight week of seeing him so often around the house, it felt like a slap in the face to come home and not have him there. Somehow you made it through, and you were clingier than usual when he came home. 

He noticed how it affected you. That was before you started hiding your feelings from him. He told you he thought about you in every spare moment. That he wanted to solve the case even more than usual just so he could come home to see you even just a few minutes sooner.

He calmed all of your fears, protecting you from your own intrusive thoughts about holding him back when he was working. 

You couldn’t help but think about every time he recognized how you were feeling and did what he could to help. How he would reassure you that he wanted to be with you, bringing you little key chains or stuffed animals from the cities he travelled to. How he would smile when he saw you. Where was that man now? 

You thought back to the first day you met Aaron. It was like he saved you from a terrible day, bringing a smile to your face after hours upon hours of crap. 

“Do you think we could pretend?” You laugh lightly to yourself at the memory of Jack telling you not to lie.  Not realizing you spoke the words out loud, you’re surprised to hear Aaron from across the room.

“Pretend what?” The confusion is clear in his voice and the furrow of his brows. 

“Hmm? Oh, um. I was just thinking about the first day we met.” Tears begin to brim your eyes as you think about how much everything has seemed to change. “And how you became my whole world and now I feel like I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life.” The tears are now freely falling down your face. 

Aaron looks even more confused now. “What?” He’s frozen at his desk, pen in hand, reports on the surface in front of him. 

“I’m so sorry. I just feel like I’m taking up so much of your time and you have such important things to do! God, I’m so selfish. I’ve tried so hard to hide it though, so you can focus on people who actually need your help.” The panic in your voice grows as you speak, along with the tears falling from your eyes. 

“Y/N...” Suddenly, Aaron is on his feet, easily crossing the imaginary divide you’ve built in between the couch and his desk. He slows down, moving gently as he pulls you into him on the couch, moving your legs across his lap so he could pull you into his chest. “Sweetheart, you could never take up too much of my time.” He speaks slowly, so as not to start another round of sobbing. 

“What?” Your confusion is clearly communicated with the one word question, but you’re on a roll with your feelings so why stop now. “Are you saying it’s all in my head? Bu-, but, but you’ve been so busy every time you’ve been home! I’ve barely seen you, and I’ve tried so hard to not let it bother me because I know how important what you do is! I do, I understand it all so much. I could never be mad at you for working so hard. I just feel like you’re tolerating me being here when you have so many more important things to do.” 

Now breathless, your rant ends with more tears forming in your eyes. Aaron is quick to wipe them away as they fall. “You’re right. I have been busy.” His voice is full of concern and regret as he thinks about the past few months. “But please don’t ever doubt for a second that you are the most important thing in the world to me.” He pauses for a second before continuing. “Well, other than Jack.” This earns him a slight chuckle from you before you reply. 

“Jack is the most important to me too.” Your clear your throat, hesitant to voice your next question. “You’re not mad at me?”

Aaron looks so taken aback, you would laugh if you weren’t so nervous. “I could never be mad at you. Especially not for having completely valid feelings. I’m so sorry I haven’t been as present as I should’ve been. I love you so much, Y/N. More than I could ever put into words, and I will be doing a better job of showing you just how much you mean to me from now on.” There’s a slight edge to his voice, as though he’s annoyed with himself for you feeling this way. “Please, don’t ever hide your feelings from me. I never want to lose you.” His own voice is cracking, slight tears in his eyes at the idea of you not being in his life. 

“I promise.” You lean up to kiss him, trying to convey just how much you’ve missed him. 

“Let’s go to bed.” He lifts you up from the couch, carrying you toward the stairs. 

You shriek, clinging to him even more. “It’s only 9:15!” You laugh at his antics. “What about your reports?”

“I have more important things to do right now.” He smirks at you, quickly moving into the bedroom to show you just how much he cares about you. 

permanent tag list:

@mac99martin @goldeng1rl8 @measure-in-pain

[someonestolemyshoes]

The Keeper’s Introduction

Here is my fic for @levihan-drabbles Fluff Friday! 

Prompt: "I know I just broke into your apartment in the middle of the night but there are some bad people after my special power over alternate universes and I've decided to put all my faith on you to save everything."

They looked oddly at home, expertly navigating his kitchen. As though they had been there before. They grabbed the honeypot from another cupboard, and found a spoon in one of the drawers.

"Oi," Levi said. "How'd you know where I keep all my shit?"

The stranger waved their hand flippantly, "Oh, I'm well acquainted with your layout. It never really changes, wherever you are."

**

Levi had just settled in for the night when a loud echoing crack sounded in the street below.

It was well past midnight, far too late for such a racket. The sudden violence of it was almost enough to make him spill his tea. He waited with his breath held, his heart shamefully hammering in his chest. Levi prided himself on being the type who doesn't scare so easily—but one can't be blamed for being alarmed by an unexpected noise in the dead of night, can they?

The world remained mercifully still and quiet. Levi approached the open window slowly (carefully, not frightfully; there is no indignity in being cautious) and peered out into the night. The sky outside was almost full dark, saved from the pressing black by only a smattering of stars and the moon, a papery sliver of a thing hooked high over the distant rooftops. The window, open only an inch, gave entry to a gentle breeze, still balmy despite the lateness of the hour. The town was drowsy, dozing; only the occasional candle flickered in the darkness, and no sound, prior to or following the thunderous clap, could be heard.

The street, three stories below, was empty. Levi scanned the road, but found nothing unusual. The strangest thing, perhaps, was that his face was the only one peering out. None of his neighbours had deemed the explosion worth investigating.

It was, for all the world, a night as perfectly normal as any other. Levi had seen no reason to expect anything out of the ordinary might occur.

He blew out a breath. Maybe he had imagined it. He had been quite engrossed in his novel, and it was well past time for him to be sleeping. It isn't unreasonable to assume that the sound of a cat, perhaps, rattling the bins in the alley had startled his tired, occupied mind. Resolving to finish his chapter and go straight to bed, Levi gave the street one last cursory glance, and turned away from the window.

He had just settled back into his chair and picked up his tea cup and his book, when the doorbell rang.

The chime in itself was yet another oddity, for Levi received visitors only very rarely, and never at an hour so late as this.

He set down his drink and lowered the book to his lap with a frown. Better, he thought, not to answer straight away. Then they might leave without causing him any trouble—and if they rang a second time, and even a third, Levi would suppose it might be something urgent and might finally be pressed to receive his unwanted guest.

Much to his pleasure, the bell did not sound a second time. Levi waited, poised to stand, but minutes passed by with no sound at all, and eventually, mildly disgruntled now by the persistent interruptions, he settled back and tried, once again, to read.

He turned the page. Picked up his now lukewarm tea, and took a sip. Sunk down more comfortably into the plush armchair. He felt himself begin to settle. The peculiarities of the night drifted from his thoughts as he read, mind too engaged with the story in his hands to think too deeply over the strange events that had occurred.

And then, without any warning at all, a godawful shriek rent the air as Levi's window was wrenched open from the outside, the wood frame protesting with a violent screech. Levi jerked in his seat, book falling from his hands and his tea cup shattering as it struck the stone floor.

There was a person, making no efforts at all to be quiet, unashamedly clambering in through his window. Levi watched, too shocked to move, while they pulled themself over the sill and crumpled in a heap to the floor.

Levi could do nothing but stare as the intruder heaved themself up. They unfurled long limbs, straightening to their full height, and turned quickly to poke their head out of the open window. They looked left, then right, down, and most peculiarly, up, before pulling themself back inside and slamming the window closed. They drew the curtains shut, and turned to look into the room, casting their eyes about the place as though inspecting it.

They walked with a relaxed gate, seemingly unbothered by their rude intrusion. Levi couldn't be sure if they had noticed his presence, for they made no show of knowing he was even there, and Levi was still too stunned to announce it. He watched the stranger rotate in a slow circle, looking everywhere from the ceiling down to the floor. Satisfied, they slapped their hands to their hips and nodded once, and then their gaze fell on Levi, still sitting stiff as a board in his chair. The light from Levi's lamp cast half their face in shadow, glinting off the lenses of their glasses. Their mouth stretched in a wide, manic grin.

Levi swallowed hard. His courage returned to him swiftly, urging him to his feet. He faced the stranger head on with his face twisted in a scowl.

"What the hell are you doing?"

The intruder's grin only widened.

"Oh, Mike was right after all!"

They crossed to him quickly in two great strides. Levi twisted his head this way and that to watch them as they circled him. This close, Levi could better see the sharp hook of their nose, the angle of their jaw and the whiskey colour of their eyes, with strange, dark markings around their irises, like the face of a clock. He could also see the fingerprint smudges on their lenses. They wore all black, from their muddy boots up to the overlarge hood draped over their shoulders like a small cloak.

"Shitty four-eyes, answer me."

They let out a gleeful laugh.

"Oh, Mike my friend, you are a genius!" They said. And then, to Levi, they added, "Mike can sniff out you Guardians half a universe away, I swear."

Levi had no idea who Mike was, or what a Guardian was, and frankly, he didn't care. He levelled his home invader with a sharp glare. When he spoke again, it was through gritted teeth. "I said, what the hell are you doing climbing through my window? How? I’m three stories up!"

The stranger's smile finally faltered. They tilted their head. "I did try the doorbell."

"Why did you want to be in my house?"  

"Ah, well, you see—that's kind of a long story." They turned on their heel and strode into the kitchenette. Levi watched on, incredulous, as they filled his kettle with water and set it on the stove to boil. With one hand, they reached into the cupboard above the sink and rifled through the boxes until they found Levi's stash of chamomile tea, and with the other they reached for the draining board, and plucked up two clean cups by their handles. All of this, while they watched the water begin to simmer in the pot.

They looked oddly at home expertly navigating his kitchen. As though they had been there before. They grabbed the honeypot from another cupboard, and found a spoon in one of the drawers.

"Oi," Levi said. "How'd you know where I keep all my shit?"

The stranger waved their hand flippantly, "Oh, I'm well acquainted with your layout. It never really changes, wherever you are."

"The fuck is that supposed to mean, shitty glasses?" Levi tried to inject an air of disinterested anger into his tone, but the stranger’s words, said so plainly, raised goosebumps on his skin.

They chuckled. "I can't tell you how many times we've had this conversation. I'm Hange, by the way."

Hange brought the tea over to where Levi stood, and held one cup out for Levi to take. He clenched his fists by his sides instead. The tea, upsettingly, smelled perfect; brewed at the right temperature, for the right time, and sweetened with just a drop of honey. When he didn't take the cup, Hange shrugged and set it on the little table by the armchair. They spied the broken china on the floor and smirked, "you never have much luck with that one."

"Excuse me?"

"That cup. It's the one with the gold rim, right? And all the little forget-me-nots around the outside?"

Levi said nothing. Hange, irritatingly and unexplainably, for the cup was in many pieces now and the lighting was too poor to see it in any great detail, was absolutely right.

"You still haven't answered my question," he said.

"Right, right. Like I said, it's a long story. Do you want the unabridged version or are you happy with the footnotes?"

"A summary is fine."

Hange took a great slurp of their tea. "Long story short, I pissed off some very bad people, and now they are after me for my, ah—abilities."

"But why my house?"

"Mike told me where you'd be. And boy, am I glad he did! I barely made it in time. I was aiming to land right in your sitting room, but I guess my calculations were a little off…" they trailed away with a frown. Levi watched their lips work quickly, as though they were running numbers in their head. Then they stopped, and shook themselves off. "Doesn't matter now anyway. I didn't wake you, did I? World hopping can be pretty loud."  

That, at least, accounted for the sound Levi had heard outside. But...

"Hange," Levi said. "You've explained nothing."

"Give me a minute, Levi. It's complicated! There's a lot of history and I already know you don't want to hear any of it. Besides, we wouldn't have the time. We'll have to leave early in the morning."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Sure you are," Hange said. "I have to meet up with Erwin, and I need you to get me there."

"Where's there? Who the hell is Erwin?"

Again, Hange waved their hand at him. "Unimportant. Look, what matters is this: I might've messed with the timeline in another universe, and that may have caused some….upset, with some very important and very powerful people. I only changed a little bit!! I met this guy, Onyankopon—he's so cool, you know? Smart as hell. He had this idea that—well, it was the base model for an airplane."

"A what?"

"Well, see, that's the thing. Onyankopon asked the same question, and I just...told him. A little bit. I went a little too deep into the mechanics of it all, and he...well he might have developed a model that works. Two hundred years before it was supposed to exist in his universe. And now the Bureau is looking for me, but I’m not done with Erwin’s mission yet and so I am putting all my eggs in your basket. I need you to get me out of this in one piece.”

Hange looked more sheepish about this insane indiscretion than they had about breaking and entering.

"You're fucking insane," he said. Hange let out a bright laugh.

"So you've told me, more times than I can count."

Levi pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He felt a headache coming on.

"You look stressed," Hange said, sounding almost sympathetic. "Drink the tea! It'll help, though it's probably a little cold by now."

"You're the reason I'm stressed, idiot."

"Sorry about that," they said, not sounding very sorry at all. "I know the circumstances aren't...ideal. I'd much rather have come to you another time and explained everything properly, but—well, I was kind of in a hurry, and Mike sniffed you out, said you were the nearest you to my location. I didn't have much of a choice."

"Who the hell is Mike? Some kind of mutt?"

"Sort of," Hange said with a grin. "He's a Seeker. It's his job to locate people like you—people like us—when the Bureau needs us. Fortunately for me, Mike isn't overly loyal to our dear overseers—his allegiance lies with Erwin, as does mine. And Erwin is decidedly less strict about most of the timelines."

Hange circled around Levi and set their hands on his shoulders. Something strange sparked there, a heat that sunk through skin and muscle and settled right in his bones. They had already ushered him into his chair by the time he shrugged them off.

"What does any of this batshit garbage you're spewing have to do with me?"

"You are a Guardian. It's your role to protect people like me from harm."

"The hell does that mean, people like you? I’m not fighting anyone to save your scrawny ass from anything. You fucked up, you deal with it. "

Hange stood up straight and puffed out their chest. "I am a Keeper. I'm supposed to keep order in the timelines. According to the Bureau, at least. Erwin has other ideas—but that's a story for another time. For now, we should rest. Like I said, we've got to leave early in the morning."

"To go where?"

"To Erwin!" Hange said brightly. "I don't have my pocket watch anymore, so we're gonna have to take the traditional route. There's no way I'll make it on my own. And don’t worry, you won’t have to fight anyone. I’ll explain it all on the journey."

"Look,” Levi said. “Can't you just...drop out of the sky whenever this Erwin guy is? I'm sure he's got his own window you can climb through."

"No can do," Hange said. "I can only hop between universes. I need my watch to move fast within any one universe, and mine took a dunk in a river, during my escape."

"Magic bullshit technology that lets you, what, teleport across the damn globe? And it can't survive a dip in a river?"

"They aren't watertight," Hange said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "And they still run on batteries. Moblit is working on improving the technology."

Levi's head throbbed. He rubbed his eyes and glowered up at Hange, who was watching him with a soft smile. Levi deepened his scowl.  

"What's that shitty face for?"

Hange's expression softened further. They looked at him with so much fondness, Levi felt his face grow warm.

"I've missed you, you know," they said. "Well, not you, but—you. It's been...a really long time."

"That makes no sense," Levi said. He meant it, too—nothing Hange had said to him made sense at all. It was the stuff of storybooks, fairy tales; the product of an imagination run wild. And yet, Hange's presence, alarming as it had been and frankly still was, felt oddly familiar. The warmth of their hands still rested on his shoulders. In spite of himself, Levi felt the corner of his lip begin to curl into a small, absent smile. He wrestled it back down.

Hange laughed, a light, lilting thing, and yawned. They crossed the room to Levi's small dining table and dropped heavily into a chair.

"I suppose you're right," they said with a lazy grin. "It doesn't make any sense at all. You'll just have to trust me."

"You broke into my house. You're not selling your reliability very well. And don't even think about it."

Hange looked over at him, surprised. "Think about what?"

"Putting your filthy feet on my damn table."

"Whatever gave you the idea I'd do something like that?"

Levi opened his mouth to answer, but snapped it closed swiftly as the thought, which had come to him thoroughly unbidden, fully registered in his mind. You do it all the time.

Levi pinched his eyes, staring at Hange. They sat with a curious little tilt of their head, watching him with an open, analytical look. Levi squirmed under their gaze.

"I don't know," he said. "Seems like the kind of shit you'd do."

"Like something I've done before?"

Levi flinched, and Hange smiled all teeth at him, a strange mix of impish and pleased. They propped their elbow on the table and rested their chin on their palm. "There it is," they said quietly.

"What?" Levi asked. Too eager. Hange looked thrilled as they straightened up in their chair, eyes gleaming in the lamplight.

"There are a lot of you's, one in every single universe, just like there are a lot of Isabel's, and Farlan's, and Petra's—"

"How do you—you know what, nevermind. Go on."

"But because you're a Guardian, all your you's are linked. And because you're my Guardian," Hange looked weirdly proud at this pronouncement, "it's only natural that you remember me. It'll happen a lot, I'm sure. Try not to freak out."

Levi snorted. "You say that now?"

"Would it have made a difference if I said it earlier?"

Levi mulled that over for a second. No, he supposed it wouldn’t. He’d have thought them completely unhinged either way. Instead of answering, he picked up the tea from the table and drained it in three gulps. When he looked back at Hange, they were smiling brightly at him.

"Just how you like it, right?"

"I prefer it hot."

Hange kicked their heels against the floor and shot him an affronted look. With a petulant pout of their lip, they said, " So unfair, Levi! That's not my fault."

He shrugged them off. He would never admit it to them, but he took some bizarre delight in watching Hange's tantrum. It felt all too natural. They slumped back in their chair, head tipped over the back rest to stare at the ceiling.

"Ah, you're as cruel as ever," they said. "It's good. Very you."

Hange pushed their glasses up to their forehead and rubbed at their eyes. The scene looked painfully familiar; Hange, smiling sleepily, bleary eyed in the low blush of candlelight. Only, in the image forming in his mind, they were resting against a plump, well-fluffed pillow, and their hair was down from its ponytail, still messy and falling over their face. In the image forming in his mind, Levi's own hand reached out to brush a few strands from their cheeks, and Hange turned into his palm, their lips brushing the sensitive skin there.

Levi shook his head, face a little warm. Hange was watching him again. He scowled at them for good measure, gathering up his own cup and theirs, and washing them in the sink. He let the water run cool over his hands for a long moment.

"You should rest, if you're tired," he said. From the table, Hange hummed.

"Good idea," they said. "The bed's big enough for two, right?"

Levi turned sharply to refute them, but Hange didn't give him the chance. They had already heaved themself up out of their chair and kicked off their boots, and now, with the practiced ease of someone who had lived in the house for years, they were wandering down the hall and straight into Levi's bedroom, leaving the door open behind them.

Levi dried his hands slowly on the dish towel. He looked at the armchair, big and well-cushioned, spacious enough for him to recline in for a few hours rest. It wouldn't be the first time, and he had no doubt it would be the last. And then he looked down the hallway, where Hange must have lit the lamp; warm light spilled out into the corridor, and Levi was reminded abruptly of his strange thoughts.

This Hange, they were crazy. Talking the most nonsense Levi had ever heard come straight from another person's mouth. He would be better off resting his eyes in his chair, and kicking Hange out at first light.

That was the logical thing to do. The reasonable thing. That was the desperate plea of his better judgement.

Instead, he blew out his lamp, and stormed down the hallway after them.  

"You lie on my fresh sheets in your filthy clothes and I'm throwing you back out the window, Guardian or not."

[aertifas]

Broken Mirror - Chapter 3

iii. a lot of catching up to do

Stargazer Heights is a tiny block of apartments on the east side of Sector 7 that Tifa calls home.  For a while after she first arrived in Midgar, Tifa lived exclusively on the streets, huddled near train stations at night to keep safe, taking every possible odd job she could find to scrounge up enough money to afford a real place.  Zangan had helped her as much as he could--her medical bills had put her in debt, not that she could remember much from her hospital visit--but eventually she had to fend for herself.  And at fifteen, fending for herself was a daunting task.

But Tifa held on to something.  She had to hold on.  She was the only one left who remembered them--the village, her friends, her neighbors, her father.  If she didn’t survive, who would tell the story?  Who would ever know what happened?

Certainly not the public--Shinra was quick to deal with that.  Tifa starved in those early days, but she always managed to buy the paper.  She’d sit and read it at the station, cover to cover, just to find one single word about Nibelheim.  About her home.  About Sephiroth.  Sephiroth appeared on the front page for weeks: “War Hero dies in freak accident”.  No location, no date, no details.  But Nibelheim only got a footnote; something about a reactor malfunction that Shinra had under control, nothing that the public should worry about.

Tifa’s entire life was erased from history.

And so, Tifa didn’t allow herself to get low.  She doesn’t allow herself to get low.  She survived before, and she survives now.  Not long after she’d arrived in Midgar and she met Barret, a new resident himself, and his little baby Marlene.  He’d bought the abandoned warehouse on the west side of Sector 7 and needed help moving construction supplies.  Tifa was no stranger to heavy lifting, and the two began to develop a friendship.  Eventually, Tifa suggested opening a bar--and the rest of the story wrote itself.

Shortly after, Tifa rented a room at Stargazer heights, owned by Marle.  Marle and Tifa have grown close over the years; whenever she gets exhausted at work, or tired of Avalanche’s antics, she goes to Marle for advice.  Marle’s older and she’s lived in Sector 7 for a long time, and she knows everything about living in the slums.  She never turns Tifa away from her door, even in the dead of night.

Tifa feels a little guilty that she hasn’t told Marle about her overnight guest--but now’s not the time.  There’s a lot that Tifa needs to figure out first.

************************************************************************

Tifa doesn’t tell Cloud her story--at least, not yet.  She wants to hear his.  She wants to know what he’s been through, what he was doing all these long years.  Where he’d gone.

Why he doesn’t seem like himself.

Tifa and Cloud sit across from each other in the dimly-lit Stargazer Heights laundry room.  Marle keeps three washing machines and three dryers in two neat lines in the basement of the apartment building.  Cloud sits on a chair that’s up against the wall--now clad in a white t-shirt that’s much too big for him and even baggier pants--while Tifa sits atop a washing machine.  They talk over the hum of the machines whirring around them.

“So did you end up fighting in the war?” asks Tifa.  When Cloud looks down at his hands, she quickly adds, “Uh, don’t worry if it’s a sore subject--forget I asked--”

“No, it’s fine,” says Cloud, looking back up at her.  “I… did go to Wutai.  Just once.”

��That all?”

Cloud nods.  “By the time I made it into SOLDIER, the war was almost over.”

“So what’d ya’ do after that?” asks Tifa, swinging her legs back and forth as they dangle from the ledge.

Cloud sighs.  “Boring shit, really.  They didn’t have enough for us to do as SOLDIERs, so we went around silencing Shinra defectors, mostly.”

Tifa purses her lips.  “That’s really all you did?”

“If I had more to tell you, I would,” says Cloud.

“Why’d you quit?” Tifa leans on her elbows, eyes looking intently into Cloud’s.  Initially, he looks away from her, unable or unwilling to hold her gaze.  “Sounds like an easy gig--right?”

“Yeah, that was the problem,” says Cloud.  “No risk, no reward.  Couldn’t be a hero that way.”

Tifa thinks back on that night under the stars.  Cloud’s words echo in her head.  I’m gonna be a SOLDIER.  The best of the best--like Sephiroth.  It seemed like such an impossible dream back then, but Tifa always thought that, if anyone could do it, it would be Cloud.  The boy that held the world in his sea-blue eyes.

Tifa thinks to herself, Maybe it’s better he didn’t end up like Sephiroth.  Even before the fire, I never even liked the guy.

But saying this to Cloud would only add insult to injury.  Instead, she says, “I’m sure you were someone’s hero.”

When she says this, Cloud finally looks up from his clasped hands and looks directly into Tifa’s eyes.  He has the power to hold her gaze, to freeze her in her place, though he seems to not even realize it.  Tifa finally has a chance to study his eyes--intensely blue, with a faint green glow from beneath.  Even in this dimly lit space, his eyes seem to light up like blue flame.  There’s something endlessly captivating about them--haunting, even--and they trap Tifa into their grip, shackling her to him.

Tifa hates to say it, but she misses his old blue eyes.

But this held gaze doesn’t last nearly as long as it feels.  Cloud’s eyes eventually drop back down to his hands--now, clenched into two separate fists on his lap.  “Yeah.  Maybe.”  After a long pause, he looks back up at Tifa, though not with that same wistful look as before, and says, “I’ve said enough about me.  What about you?”

“Me?” Tifa asks.

“Yeah.  You.  Who else?”

Tifa taps her fingers against the metal washing machine beneath her.  “After I left Nibelheim, I came to Sector 7.  I eventually got a job bartending from my friend Barret.”

“Barret, huh?” asks Cloud.  “Do I get to meet this Barret?”

“Someday soon,” Tifa says.  “He’s a really nice guy.”  She takes a deep breath, purses her lips, and says, “You ever heard about Avalanche?”

“Avalanche?” Cloud rests one hand on his pensive face.  “Can’t say I have.”

Tifa furrows her brows, but just for a second.  A thought pops into her head.  Funny that he went to Wutai but doesn’t know about Avalanche.  Barret talked enough about it for Tifa to know; Shinra had tried to snuff Avalanche out in Wutai, at the tail end of the war.  That’s where Avalanche had set up their base of operations.  In fact, Avalanche didn’t start gaining traction in Midgar until after the war was over.

But she doesn’t want to question Cloud.  Maybe that just isn’t his area of expertise.

“Uh, it’s a group,” Tifa says, shaking her head.  “How should I put this?... Avalanche doesn’t like Shinra very much.”

“Who does?” Cloud responds, leaning back in his chair.

“They want to protect the Planet,” Tifa explains, “and to do that, they have to take down Shinra.  Shinra’s been labeling them as eco-terrorists in the news...”

Cloud squints his eyes at Tifa, perhaps unable to discern her expression.  She hides her face a little from him.  “What about Avalanche?  You involved?”

 “Sort of,” Tifa responds.  “More like… I help them out from time to time.”

“Help how?” asks Cloud.  Now he’s sitting upright in his seat, listening attentively.  A look of displeasure washes across his face.

“Barret--he owns the bar,” explains Tifa, flustered.  “Or, his name’s on the paperwork.  He’s a part of them.  Of Avalanche.  And so every now and then, I overhear things.  And I guess sometimes I cover for them.”

Cloud looks Tifa up and down, that intense gaze returning, trapping Tifa yet again.  He scowls.  “You shouldn’t be involved in a group like that.  You’re putting yourself in danger.”

“Yeah.  I guess I am.”

Cloud leans on his elbows, moving his eyes to the floor.  “Guess I can’t blame you, though.  Shinra… well, fuck Shinra.  They don’t give a damn about anything.  I’d probably have joined Avalanche, too, if I lived in the slums.”

Tifa nods.  Her hands tightly grip the edge of the machine, turning her knuckles white beneath her gloves.  “Yeah.  I… Shinra just makes me so mad...” Tifa catches herself getting overwhelmed with this.  This anger.  It washes over Tifa in waves, pulling her under, drowning her.  But she always catches herself before that fire in her heart brings tears to her eyes.  She composes herself and continues.  “Avalanche does good for the Planet, too.  I’m… I’m glad I met them.”

Cloud’s eyes are trained on her hands, which have relaxed their grip.  When he looks up at Tifa, she swears that he appears gentler, for just a moment in time.  That harsh, constricting gaze he holds her in, replaced with softness that is uncharacteristic of him.  That permanent scowl gone, tight jaw loosened, eyebrows turned downward.  He says, “Tifa...” and Tifa looks at him, catching this expression only briefly.  But once she does, he turns away and reverts to his normal self.  The scowl returns, and the eyes glow severely, more now than before.  “I trust you to handle yourself out there.  You’re pretty strong.”

Tifa smiles.  “Thanks.”

The rest of the time spent in that basement room is punctuated by small conversations, cheeky comments (all from Cloud), and the occasional lull back into silence.  But even in these silent moments, Tifa looks at Cloud and feels a fullness in her chest.  She worries for him--God, does she worry for him--but there’s something else in her heart.  Something warm.  Something familiar.  She never admitted it before, but now she can’t deny it: she missed Cloud Strife.  That starving girl who read the paper wouldn’t just look for Nibelheim--she’d look for Cloud Strife, hoping to catch even a glimpse of his name somewhere.  She remembers even a few times where, with a heaviness in her chest that weighed her down like bricks tied to her ankle, she looked to the obituaries, and prayed softly not to find him there.

But now, he’s back.  And she missed him while he was gone.

She’s happy to have him back.

************************************************************************

“I promise you, we’ll find you something better in the morning.”

Tifa pulls out a sleeping bag from her small closet and rolls it out on the floor, a few feet away from her bed.  She insisted to Cloud when they returned to the apartment that she be the one sleeping on the floor--but Cloud wouldn’t have it.  “You’re the one doing me the favor, here,” he reminded her sternly.  “What kind of guest would I be making you sleep on the floor?”  Tifa pleaded with him once more, but that seemed to be the end of the discussion.

Now, setting up Cloud’s accommodations, she feels a tinge of guilt.  He’s gone through a lot--though Tifa can’t know exactly--and she wants him to sleep in a real bed.  But the sleeping bag will have to do for the night.  In the morning, she can find him something better.

“God, I’m exhausted,” Cloud says, slipping into the sleeping bag.

“Me, too.”  Tifa found her way to her bed and covered herself with her thick sheets.  Tifa turns so her back faces Cloud and keeps her eyes trained on the wall.  She doesn’t want Cloud to notice her sheepishness--Tifa’s always been a private person, and normally she would never share her room like this.  But this is different--this is Cloud.  So she fights her shyness and her nerves.  Even though thinking about how close he’s sleeping paints her face in a rosy hue.

“Hey, Tifa?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks again,” Cloud says, quietly.  “For everything.”

Tifa laughs lightly.  “You don’t have to thank me.”

Tifa doesn’t hear if Cloud responds to her.  She’s already drifted off into a deep sleep.

************************************************************************

Summers in Nibelheim were particularly hot and brutal--especially after Shinra built the reactor at the top of Mt. Nibel.  The Mako hung over the town in a thin blanket, trapping in heat, making the air sweltering and unbearable.  But Tifa didn’t care.  Not when she was a kid, and she had the whole summer to play, to run barefoot through the fields just beyond the town gate, to climb the water tower and watch those red and orange summer sunsets.

Next door lived Cloud Strife.  This was before he’d grown his hair out long--actually, it looked a lot like it does now.  Cut to just above the shoulders, styled in spikes.  Tifa and Cloud were friends.  She considered him to be her friend, at least.  His bedroom window looked into hers, and they’d often talk across the gap.  It would always be short, superficial conversations, “How are you?” or “What did you do today?”  But Tifa looked forward to them.  She liked talking to Cloud, even if just for a few minutes before she’d fall asleep.

But even though Cloud would talk with Tifa each night, Cloud never played with Tifa and her friends--even when they’d chase each other around in the town plaza, making enough noise for the old shopkeeper to yell at them, Cloud never asked to join.  Tifa always figured he had better things to do.

She always wished he would ask, though.

One day--particularly brutally hot, even for summer--the boys suggested playing a game they called “Save the Princess”.  One team, dubbed “Wutai”, would “capture” Tifa; the other team, the SOLDIERs, would have to defeat Wutai in order to rescue her.  Tifa always thought this was a silly game--and boring.  She always got stuck waiting for the boys to finish fighting; and, even when they finished, all she’d get to do was crown the winners as her “heroes”.  Whenever the boys suggested this game, Tifa protested.  But her alternatives were always vetoed.

This time, the boys had a problem: they didn’t have a third SOLDIER, giving Wutai an unfair advantage.

As they argued about what to do, Tifa peered across the square.  Her eyes landed on Cloud, who sat by himself on a bench, eyes to the ground, his own wooden sword resting against the wrought iron armrest.  He didn’t notice her looking at him, but watching him there, always a loner, Tifa came up with an idea.

“Let’s ask Cloud to play,” Tifa told the group of boys.

“No way!” one boy exclaimed.  “Not Strife.  He’s a jerk.”

“You wanna play Save the Princess--don’t you?” Tifa responded.  And without hearing the other boys’ answers, she skipped off to the other side of the square.

When Cloud heard footsteps approaching him, he looked up and met eyes with Tifa.  In the summer sun, his eyes appeared even deeper.  When she looked at them, Tifa couldn’t help but smile.

“Tifa,” Cloud said, as if he were in awe that she’d approach him out of the blue.  “What’s up?”

“Do you wanna play a game with us?” asked Tifa.  “We need one more person.”

“How do you play?” Cloud asked her in reply, tapping his foot on the pavement rapidly.

Tifa grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet.  He barely had enough time to grab his wooden sword and sling it on his back.  “It’s easy!” she shouted to him.  “I’m the princess.  You’re a SOLDIER.  All you gotta do is beat Wutai and rescue me--got it?  Then you’ll be my hero.”

“How do I rescue you?” he replied, eyes wide and starry.

This time, one of the boys chimed in--with an annoyed tone.  “You gotta bring Tifa to the old mansion.”

Cloud nodded.  Tifa took her place by the base of the water tower.  She caught Cloud’s eyes with her own and waved to him, shouting, “You got this, Cloud!” and eliciting a rare, shy smile from the little blond-haired boy next door.

One of the Wutai boys yelled, and they all started fighting.  Wooden swords clashing against wooden swords.  Shouting over each other, yelling at each other, saying words that Tifa’s dad told her were “unladylike”.  Tifa fell to a seated position and watched from the sidelines, arms crossed on her knees.  Eventually her eyes travelled upward, bored of the fight, to watch the blue sky, and to follow the fluffy white clouds as they drifted aimlessly above her.

But she didn’t have time to daydream.  She felt a tap on her arm, bringing her back to reality.  Standing above her was Cloud, hand outstretched to meet hers, all while the other boys were fighting just a few feet from them.

“Cloud?” Tifa asked.  “What are you doing?”

Cloud cocked his head, before simply answering, “Rescuing you, of course.”

Tifa gave him her hand and he pulled her to her feet.  Hand in hand, Cloud pulled Tifa along behind him, making his way quickly to the mansion at the edge of town.  It was only then that the other boys noticed them running, one calling out, “Hey, what the hell, Strife?” and another complaining, “That’s against the rules!”

Tifa barely had a chance to catch her breath.  She shouted to Cloud, “What about the fight?”

“Heroes always rescue the princess first,” Cloud said to her.  “Then they can deal with the bad guys.”

A red flush washed over Tifa’s face.  She looked back to see the other boys right behind them in an angry mob. But she and Cloud were faster, and they reached the mansion first.  It’s only after they arrived there that Cloud finally lets go of Tifa’s hand.

The biggest of the group of boys pushed his way to the front.  He yelled in Cloud’s face, “Why’d you have to go ruin our game, Strife?” while Cloud stood his ground, scowling back at the boy with an unwavering glare.

Tifa stepped between them.  “What are you talking about?  Cloud didn’t break any rules!”

“Yeah, he did!” another boy shouted from behind.  “He cheated!”

“You guys are being mean!” Tifa said.  “Cloud won fair and square!”

“Come on, Tifa, don’t defend him!”

“That’s why we don’t invite him to play with us!”

The boys’ shouts grew louder and more aggressive with each taunt.  Tifa was unable to yell over them, drowned out by their petty arguing.  She turned to Cloud and watched his face.  At first, he appeared angry.  But Tifa saw his expression morph, for the tiniest fraction of a moment, into one that hurt her heart.  In that second, he looked sad.  He looked as if he could break down.  He looked shattered.

But he didn’t ever express it, if he was sad.  Because the moment Cloud began to feel sad, he replaced it with anger.  He pushed the taller boy out of his face, deepening his scowl, and shouted through gritted teeth, “Fine by me.  This game is stupid anyway.”

Cloud stormed past the group of boys, stomping off to the other side of the square.  Tifa ran toward him, shouting after him, “Cloud, wait!”, but didn’t follow him.  She stopped at the fence that lined the perimeter of the old mansion and just watched him walk away, shoulders tense with anger, hands balled into fists.  Behind her, the other boys were coming up with a new plan, a new way to play the game.  But Tifa barely listened to them.  She just kept her eyes on Cloud until the boy disappeared in the distance, most likely finding refuge somewhere in the fields just outside of town.

That was the first time any boy thought to save Tifa first.  It was the only time any boy thought to save Tifa first.  And eventually, Tifa refused to play that game ever again.

*************************************************************************

Tifa lifts her heavy eyelids and finds herself transported back to her tiny apartment, staring at the piano concerto poster hung on her concrete walls by tape.  In a state of stupor, of half-sleep, Tifa groggily rolled to the other side and looked across the room with bleary eyes.

The clock on her bedside table reads 3:35 a.m.  She sighs deeply.  I really must have needed some sleep.

Tifa thinks it’s a little odd, her dreaming of such a memory.  Most of her Nibelheim dreams are tinged in bright red; some are dusted in blue and green.  But this one was colored golden--the color of the many summers she spent under that beautiful mountain sky.

And Cloud?  Tifa must have had Cloud on her mind when she fell asleep.  That’s not such a surprise, though.  Usually, Cloud is absent from her Nibelheim dreams, only appearing when she sees that gorgeous star-studded sky above her head.  He’s sitting next to her on the edge of the water tower, as he should be.  But this was a different memory; it must be because they’ve reunited after so many years.

She turns her gaze to the floor, where Cloud should be, to find an empty sleeping bag.

Wait… empty?

Where’s Cloud?

Tifa jumps from her bed and knocks frantically on the bathroom door, only to get no response.  When she throws the door open, the room is empty.  The sound of wind whirring against the walls draws her attention to the front door, which is slightly ajar, and every so often moves with the breeze and knocks against the doorframe with a metal bang.

Cloud’s sword, too, is missing from its place on the wall.

Shit.  Shit shit shit shit shit.

Tifa doesn’t have time to think.  She doesn’t even bother changing out of her pajamas.  She throws on a coat and runs outside--not even bothering to lock the door behind her.

*

*

*

Blog Introduction/Chapter Selection | Next Chapter

[fmdtaeyongarchive]

rewriting ash’s intro post since i link it on his plots page so that the info’s up to date since my last rewrite is over two years old. i added quite a bit about his personality/characterization, so feel free to read it but also feel equally free to ignore it.

tw: mention of depression/anxiety

ashton taeyong kwon, born in san francisco, california on december 24, 1995, and was raised there until age 13

his stage name is taeyong, but friends call him ash. he’s learned to respond to taeyong tho and doesn’t mind fans and acquaintances calling him that; he just doesn’t really like being called ashton unless you’re his actual mom and he will generally make his distaste known if you do that. fans don’t really know he goes by ash in his private life so they call him taeyong and he’d like to keep it that way. (he’s not a fan of fans pretending to have a closer relationship with him than fan-artist... lmao)

was a musical baby from birth so he started taking piano, dance, and guitar lessons pretty early and fell in love with all three

auditioned for bc entertainment’s global audition in los angeles for fun more than anything else as a dancer. he didn’t know a ton about korean music (or korean language) but figured it couldn’t hurt since he knew he wanted to pursue a music career

won a contract offer and decided to go for it with his parents’ approval, so he moved to seoul by himself at 13

he knew very little korean, so he was kind of isolated as a trainee and was really lonely. his parents probably shouldn’t have let him move his life overseas alone at such a young age and on such short notice knowing his personality, but they kinda wanted to live the childfree life again since they had him so young and without plans to have a kid

(his parents are good parents for the most part, though! he loves them to death and they’re very loving and supportive, they’re just the types that didn’t plan to have a kid until it happened on accident)

by the time he debuted, he knew korean well enough to get by but he did have some attitude scandals when they first debuted because he was trying to overcompensate for not being 100% fluent

bc decided his image should be more ~broody and artsy~ to avoid more attitude scandals. since then, it’s evolved into james dean-esque bad boy heartthrob, but for the longest time his image was pretty much being quiet which led to him not being super popular until he eventually started to shape his own solo career (so he now has a lot of akgaes)

things were going pretty well for him for a while ! knight was doing great and yeah maybe he was a little overworked but he was performing ! which is what he wanted ! right ? right ?????

all hell broke loose on valentine’s day in 2016 when one rather minor dating rumor released by a media outlet led to a much bigger scandal which originated in fan communities through “leaked” pictures of him out with other female celebrities in common date locations or, in one case, entering a hotel together on more than one occasion

antis quickly ran with the narrative of him being a player/womanizer/serial dater/cheater, etc. and further “evidence” appeared on fan communities like unsubstantiated “eyewitness” stories and convenience store receipts and it took a big toll on his reputation despite the company coming out with a statement denying everything and claiming he was only friends with the women

it became a big mess and he tried to put on a strong face but in reality it tore him up because now everyone was talking shit about him online and trying to make his private life their business and he ended up in a Really Dark Place

was pretty much dungeoned outside of knight activities for about eight months before he was made one of the members of the white knight sub unit to get him back in the public’s graces which worked on a minor level. he got his first solo activities (osts) around this time as well to test out public response.

in 2017, got caught with another female idol at a convenience store at night which sparked dating rumors, but those were more easily dismissed. late that year, he got in a scandal for causing a commotion when he was wasted outside of a club in tokyo and called a female friend to pick him up from the club... not his best move.

2018 was the year of being criticized for being lazy on stage and allegedly having an attitude problem with fans during fan signs. was a bad look, but the instances causing the scandal were mainly a result of his poor mental health (depression and extreme anxiety) he was dealing with as a result of making his solo debut amidst quite a lot of online hate.

so yeah he made his solo debut in late 2017 and has had a steady career as a solo artist (he’s dropped four full albums and several promoted or non-promoted singles) and a model for endorsements and cfs (his biggest and longest-term deal has been with calvin klein, and that’s become a part of his Brand now i would say — the sexy, modern, all-american image of calvin klein fits his public image to a t) since then. he and bc have worked very hard to redeem his public image and he hasn’t had a scandal in like three years, during which time he’s had six number one singles, so he’s not public enemy number one anymore and his past scandals tend to be more of a footnote to people who aren’t actively his antis lmao

he also had a viral fancam in october 2020 that went viral for him being sexy and Very Into singing you know i’m no good by amy winehouse (because he hates himself </3)... sexy king who has internalized issues with being sexualized that he kinda has to deal with since that’s a big part of his image and also continuously gets rewarded in his career for his Public Self-Hatred Self-Flagellation... anyway

has also done a lot of work as a songwriter/producer since his solo debut for himself and others and that’s his main passion right now. this man does not leave his home studio a lot

doesn’t have much say in knight’s music but he’s fine with that since he’s pretty much over knight. would throw a party if knight disbanded today and considers other knight members co-workers over friends for the most part.

has major depressive disorder and an anxiety disorder (the former is diagnosed, the latter isn’t officially but ash knows something is up there, he just hasn’t seen anyone with the capacity to officially diagnose him) and insomnia and those took a really bad toll on him for a while and still do but he’s actively seeing a therapist again as of mid-2020 and is trying to handle those situations better

ummmmm, his main personal interest is music, he has an impulsive/rebellious streak for days, and he’s a hopeless romantic who believes his own personal search for love is hopeless

his main motivation is just ?? to find happiness that he doesn’t think he’s really felt in his adult life but he also doesn’t think he deserve it so :/ is also very driven by his desire to have a long-term impact on the world and to Mean Something

his biggest fears are heights, not meaning anything to anyone, and The Inevitability Of Oblivion

he hates being Known . he’s extremely private. doesn’t let anyone know about his relationships and tends to be weirdly private about his friendships as well. doesn’t think anything he does is anyone else’s business unless he personally makes it their business lmao

a hufflepuff who could have also been considered for gryffindor tbh but would choose hufflepuff

infj-t (”the advocate”) - “they tend to approach life with deep thoughtfulness and imagination. their inner vision, personal values, and a quiet, principled version of humanism guide them in all things.” 

i used to call him neutral good but i honestly think he’s become chaotic good

melancholic

type 4w5 (”the bohemian” / “the free spirit”) - “four wing fives fear having no impact on the world. they may be reserved, but they seek recognition and admiration. they desire their own personal identity, and may retreat within themselves to discover who they really are. free spirits tend to defend themselves either by withdrawing from others or adapting characteristics of loved ones.”

that’s all really but i can talk about him for hours if anyone ever wants to know more about him

[wegotcrowns]

13 Going on 31

The past few days have been filled with many emotions with the release of folklore’s sister album, evermore. I’ve been trying to find a moment of complete stillness to where I’ve leveled myself out enough in order to sit down and write this blog post in the manner that it deserves. With today being TS’s birthday, I couldn’t think of a more perfect time. 

I’m going to take it back to Thursday morning for a second but before I do, I just really need to get this out of my system... WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK TAYLOR. Okay, now that that’s out of the way, we can go on with our regularly scheduled programming. Where were we? Oh yeah, Thursday morning. I started to get notifications on my phone that TS was posting on her instagram page, so naturally, I dropped everything I was doing and started stalking her page. She was doing one of those things where you upload pictures as puzzle pieces that eventually create one full image when looking at the page. My first thought was, oh shit, she’s about to announce some of the re-recordings or maybe all of them???? In any case, I could feel my heart rate starting to pick up because I knew something big was about to happen. 

Never in a million and one years did I ever think she was about to release her NINTH STUDIO ALBUM!! Ya’ll when I tell you that I felt my soul leave my body, do a few jumping jacks, and then come back into my body, I’m not exaggerating. I actually felt like I was in a state of shock, but then all of the normal release day feelings showed themselves: the shaking hands, the lump in my throat, the heart palpitations, etc, etc. 

I’ve spent the last few days bonding with evermore, just like I do with any other new TS album. If you’re close to me, you know that I compare this type of bonding with the same way a mother / father would bond with their newborn baby. The idea of you already being SO in love with this precious new thing solely based on the fact of its identity and where it came from, but you still haven’t gotten to know it yet -- and that’s what this time is always about for me. 

The biggest takeaway that I’ve personally gotten from evermore and folklore is that TS has finally found her place as an artist and you are either here for the ride or saying sayonara. Ya’ll know I am the fucking captain of this ride but that’s besides the point, I just needed to make that clear. She’s finally at a place where she feels confident in who she is and has zero apologies to give out to anyone, nor should she feel the need to. It made me think that TS really needed to go through the reputation era in order to become this artist that she is today -- this fearless (hah, full circle moment), unapologetic, and bold artist that we’ve witnessed come out so neatly in just these last six months. This notion is so evident in even just the first lyrics off of folklore where TS says “I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit // been saying yes instead of no”. She talked a little about this on long ponds and explained how in the past she would always try to fit a certain persona, a certain artist that everyone needed her to be. But these days, that taylor is long gone. She is finally who SHE wants to be and all of her actions from this day forward are because SHE wants to make it happen in that way, not anyone else. 

There certainly was no lack of this new bold artist in evermore, which was very  refreshing to witness. Part of this new persona that TS has adopted includes her making small references to certain things in her past and having no shame to sort of make fun, or comment on her growth as a human being. This idea was very evident in “long story short” where TS writes “And I fell from the pedestal, right down the rabbit hole, long story short, it was a bad time // Pushed from the precipice, clung to the nearest lips, long story short, it was the wrong guy”. There is something extremely powerful about TS pointing out these huge life-altering events that she had to go through in her past and then talking about it so confidently in these new songs. To hear her speak so nonchalantly  about them makes us, as fans, feel good about it as well. It’s like she’s sending out a message to her fans saying, “Hey, it’s okay. i’m good now and we can finally move past this dark era. Let’s grow together now.” I’m not trying to make this about me or any other fan out there but TS has said time and time again that if it weren’t for her fans, she would not continue making music. We are the fuel that allows her to continue doing what she’s doing every day (her words, not mine) and there’s something so powerful about that. The fact that she’s giving us this much credit will always be one of the biggest honors of my life. 

To dive into some specifics, the song “tolerate it” is by far one of the more powerful songs for me from this album, and maybe even ever. One of the things that makes TS such a spectacular artist and writer is her ability to paint such a vivid picture when describing a feeling. Yes, a feeling. Let’s take a look at some of these lyrics before I explain any further: 

I wait by the door like I’m just a kid // Use my best colors for your portrait // Lay the table with the fancy shit // And watch you tolerate it // If it’s all in my head tell me now // Tell me I’ve got it wrong somehow // I know my love should be celebrated // But you tolerate it

I mean HOLYYYYYYYY FUCKKKKKKKKKK. WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?!? That is so insane! TS literally just described a very specific type of loneliness so perfectly and you don’t even know she’s doing it until after the fact! I immediately recognized what TS was doing with this song because she literally painted this feeling that I personally have experienced many times with a past relationship of mine. This desperate feeling of wanting to be seen, wanting to be loved in the way that you know you deserve, and the constant thoughts of you doubting yourself, wondering if you two are actually in love or if it’s just all in your head.

I made you my temple, my mural, my sky // Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life 

I mean. come. on. I know this because I’ve experienced it but being trapped in another person’s unwillingness to let someone go due to fear of being alone, uncertainty, and just pure selfishness is the loneliest type of lonely there is and TS was able to describe that so beautifully in this song. I will forever treasure this. 

Another song that stood out to me was “no body, no crime” because those country vibes that were so very prominent here made me feel a bit nostalgic to some of TS’ debut songs. Now please don’t take this as me saying I MiSs tHe oLd TaYloR sWiFt but more of a, thank you taylor for being a complete and utter badass to not be afraid to dip yourself into your roots and give your fans a little taste of the medicine that was used to get them addicted to you in the first place. It was refreshing, and fun. 

The last song I’m going to point out is “ivy” only because there is just something extremely magical about TS saying “goddamn” over and over. 

I’m going to end this blog post the same way I do many others, and that is by thanking TS for this album that is nothing short of a masterpiece. I know I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog post before, but TS will always point her creativity into a direction that her fans need the most. For example, we all know TS is currently living her fairytale life with Joe but she decided to walk through the “folklorian woods” for months to get her mind into a place where she can write these epic, imaginary tales that she knows will resonate with a lot of her fans right now. Also in case you have heard the phrase “Taylor saved 2020″ floating around anywhere on social media, I am here to confirm that that is in fact correct. 

Happy 31st birthday Taylor. I will love you forever. 

[charlies-crashcourses]

Charlie’s College Crash Course #1: How to write a 10-page paper in 1 day

Background info first: I’m in the last year of my English undergrad degree and I’ve had to write at least 3 dozen 10+ page papers in that time. That being said, I’ve never once started writing a paper more than a few days in advance, and 9 times out of 10 I go for one day only. Honestly, this should be considered my trademark at this point because after all my high school AP courses and my English degree, it’s been going on 7 years of 1 day papers.

and so, dear friends, I would like to pass on this skill to you all. I should mention, none of this will work if you’re not already pretty solid on paper writing, i.e. if you only ever get C’s on your papers now this isn’t magically going to get you up to an A with one day. This is just to streamline the process, allowing for more time for other things or, more commonly, allowing you to not freak the fuck out when you realize the deadline is tonight at midnight and you’ve procrastinated all month on the final paper for your class.

(I should also mention that I’m currently procrastinating a 2.5k word paper due tomorrow night that I’ve only read one of two books for, so. There’s that.)

Anyway, without further ado, here we fucking go:

Step 1: Prep for the Day

this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, so make sure you prep the day accordingly. Ideally, you’d wake up before noon, make sure there’s nothing else planned for the day, and tell your roommates/parents to leave you alone until you officially reemerge at midnight (or, if you’re in college and have a 24 hr library, try going there. Mine has closed off study rooms that I can chill in, but if you’rs doesn’t just find a relatively comfy quiet spot). If you’re at home, pick one spot, clear it off super quick, grab some snacks and energy drinks, make sure you have everything charged and ready to go. I don’t recommend cafes or the like simply because there’s lots of distractions and also those places close before midnight, so you can’t stay there the entire time and therefor waste time moving halfway through.

Also, I would recommend taking a break between all the steps after this one. Don’t let the break take too long, but just long enough to walk the block, or grab another snack, or do some stretches, or watch a ten minute video, something like that. I personally never break at a natural stopping point, because then I’ll never get back to it, but how you break is up to you.

Step 2: Preliminary Research

now normally I do some preliminary research beforehand. Basically looking into the topic, figuring out generally what resources would be best, etc. That can usually be done in five to ten minute bursts throughout the week or so before the due date, whenever the topic comes to mind.

But then again, I’ve also procrastinated that until the very end as well, so. Usually all that takes if you go for the day of is some quick google scholar searches, or if you have access to the MLA database that works as well. Or, if you’re more like me, you could just deep dive on wikipedia and check out what relevant facts pertain to what numbers in the bibliography, then go ahead and cite those wherever possible.

Basically, get a good base knowledge of the big facts. This step should be quick and dirty. For instance, for my paper my sophomore year on Robespierre (14 pages written in a record 6 hours) I combed through his wiki, some websites on the French Revolution, and watched the Crash Course youtbue video on the subject. The rest of the research was done after I did my first outline. 

Step 3: Outline #1

This is just a basic “What the fuck am I talking about” outline. It can be bullet points, numbers, stream of consciousness, i don’t care as long as it works for you. 

For the Robespierre paper, my first outline was something to the effect of: -born poor -school -elected to govt -took over govt -killed people -got killed

and that was it. It’s like, before you build a house you have to clear off the right amount of land, make sure there’s nothing in your way, and give yourself a vague area in which to build. Super simple stuff.

I did get some advice, from somewhere I can’t remember, that a paragraph is basically equal to half a page, and so (excluding one page length for your intro + conclusion) you should have around two paragraphs or ideas per page. So my outline above would need some more points, there, to keep me on track for my page count. I eventually added a whole paragraph about how he was chosen to read for a visiting King Louis at his school and was then ignored which made him hate the monarchy, and another about what happened after he died what with the government in shambles, etc etc. So two bullet points per page should do it.

Step 4: More Research

This is where you get a little more in depth. Look at your bullet points and learn everything you need to about them. 

For my first bullet, I found stuff like: “Robespierre was born in France in 1758 as Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (the third of this name), to a lawyer and the daughter of a brewer, he had two siblings, and he could read by age eight. he also loved pigeons and started a lifelong feud with his sister over one that he gave her that she let die."

and then I would move on to the next bullet point, and so on and so forth, filling in the gaps. Make sure to keep track of where your info comes from, as well. It doesn’t have to be a full citation, but just the hyperlink after the fact is going to save you so much time, i promise

Pro Tip: don’t throw out anything as irrelevant just yet. Just gather all the facts, no judging. Trust me on this.

Step 5: Better Outline

this is where you start to have fun with it. I would like to remind you that no one, unless you have some crazy micromanaging professor, sees your outlines. This is for you and you only, so write it in whatever way makes sense to you. It can be colorful and fun and whatever you need it to be.

 I actually took screenshots of my outline for that robespierre paper (hence why i chose that one as an example) so here’s a look at what I do:

so, really, honestly, as shitty as you need this to be, or as many jokes, or whatever works for you my dude. Explain it like you would if it were a story you were telling, not a biographical/argumentative paper. Get informal with it.

Step 6: Write the Damn Thing

Okay to now that you did the research and wrote your fun outlines and all that, all you have to do now is write it! I tend to do this in the same doc as I do my outline, but starting again from the top so I can see what I need to add next right under where I’m typing, then delete it once I’ve covered the material. 

If you did your outline well, this is really just cleaning that up so it’s “school appropriate” and “not an affront to people’s eyes and sensibilities” or whatever. At this point, it should go super quick, maybe 2 hours max to finish up writing what you need to write, here.

Pro Tip: do your citations as you go. Better yet, make your bibliography first so that A its already done and B you know what your in text cites will be from the start so that you don’t have to add them in later. If you kept your hyperlinks next to your research, just open up citationmachine and get those cites, then replace the links in your outline with the actual citations so it’s easier to line them up with in text cites while you go

Step 7: Fudging

oh, you thought we were done after writing the paper? nah fam. Chances are, you didn’t hit the page count you wanted to, you’re probably around 1 full page short, unless you love long sentences. This is where my pro tip from all the way back on step 4 comes in.

First, before you do anything drastic, make sure your formatting is correct. If your prof wants the big long “name, date, class, assignment, etc” in the top left then that adds a lot of length. Fonts will also change your page length, and so will footnotes and citations.

If you did it right and saved all the less relevant details, congratulations! Just sprinkle a few of those in there and you’re magically at your page count. This is the only reason I included the pigeon story in my paper (and this post), because I was about 3/4 of a page short of passably saying I got to 14.

If you didn’t save those inane details, don’t go looking for them now. Trust me, it’s much more pain than it’s worth. Your best bet, then, would be to either A. Add one more point if you can think one up, B. do some more research for relevant details to add in, or C. expand on the details you already have with more examples or effects or whatever applies.

do not, i repeat do NOT, just try and expand the words you use, like changing “to” into “in order to” or whatever those deflate your phrases charts tell you Not to do. They tell you not to for a reason. 1. it sounds stupid adding them in after the fact, and 2. your professor absolutely 100% will know and will mark you down if you do that in excess. Inflated phrase charts like that are well known by professors, and also adding them in after the fact won’t fit in at all with the voice that the rest of your paper was written in, so it’ll stand out like a sore thumb. just don’t do it unless it’s your last possible “i have ten minutes to turn this in” effort.

Step 8: Celebrate!!

And that’s it! If you did it right, this whole process should have taken you around the equivalent of 1 hour per page you had to write or so, so in a regular twelve hour day you’ve got time to take breaks and eat and all that shit. Go turn it in and celebrate your victory!

[heyktula]

Closer, Chapter Two: Aware - Bonus Features

(I'm sorry about the chapter titles, lolsob. They are, in fact, "Risk", "Aware", "Consensual", and "Kink", plus a surprise title for the fifth chapter.)

((Okay, fine, I'm not nearly as sorry as I should be.))

Chapter two of Closer, the first installment in Somewhere in Canada (the Terror kink AU)... is now up! What is wordcount! (Apparently shit to me, since this chapter is three times the length of chapter one!)

Same deal as last week--technical notes first, story notes after, line notes to finish it all up. (Although I still blame Edward, a number of this week's line notes are Jopson's fault, and he's a lying liar on a number of occasions, the terrible sweetheart.)

Alright, here we go.

Technical Considerations:

Chapter Length: So, this story was intended to be much shorter than it is. Initially, the fic was a one-off. After all, it's only taking place over a weekend, how long can it be? (lolsob--sixty k, as it turns out, and that's with a significant number of hard cuts. I cringe for the future Fitzier, because the winter conference is longer than the summer one.)

Initially, I'd followed the same chapter structure I used in one of my earlier fics--one day = one chapter. Obviously, that worked fine for Friday, but didn't work for Saturday or Sunday, both of which I've split into two chapters. I still feel like the chapter length is a bit obnoxious--I prefer a 7k chapter, and chapter two is 15k, but it's the best place to make the cut, I think. I considered a cut after Edward's talk got derailed by Hickey--but that would have left Edward in a really ugly headspace for a week while everybody waited for the next chapter, and I didn't want to let him chill there knowing that Jopson is gonna make him feel better, like, immediately.

Hard Cuts: One thing I really like about the source material for The Terror is that it uses hard cuts liberally, and something about that feels like it frees me up to do the same in my own work? So I cut the things that don't matter to the story, even when they're things that I care about. (That rope suspension scene with Sophia and Gore and Dundy was real good, but Edward did not give one single shit about it, and thus, it is not on the page.  Similarly, we didn't get dragged through any of the other panels, etc, that were happening throughout the day, and the one panel we actually did attend, Edward is giving by rote, without thinking about anything he's saying, because Jopson! is! there! oh! god!)

Story Considerations:

Goodsir: Like, of course Goodsir moved to Canada. I don't think it was for Silna, necessarily--and she would have been super unimpressed with that if it had been--but it wouldn't have been not for Silna either. I just think he really loved it here on his first visit, and that was it for him--he came home, he missed Canada, he went back, and he stayed. I'm sure he's in the process of getting his citizenship, and in the meantime, he's going out for hikes and taking pictures of elk and going ice-fishing and organizing kink conventions and generally just having a wonderful time living his best life, and I love that for him.

(And if he's on the receiving end of Silna's strap in increasingly regular frequency, I love that for him too.)

The Tozer-Little Experience: So, outside of the joplittle, which was my primary reason for writing the fic--I also have, like, the world's biggest soft spot for Solomon Tozer. And the dynamic that I ended up developing for Tozer and Little in this fic is a hell of a lot of fun, because it's deeply intimate, and steeped in years and years of shared experiences, but it's platonic at the same point--or, at least, what constitutes as platonic for them, which is more intimate and open than you would see for a lot of male friendships. (I'm putting a pin in the discussion of feelings as feelings relate to their friendship, but we'll come back to it in a few more chapters.) If you asked either of them to describe an ideal partner for the other person, they could both do it, and they've got all kinds of stories about each other, which Tozer shares easily and at length, and Edward keeps his goddamn mouth shut about.

That easy camaraderie between them is, I think, why the takedown panel goes so wrong so quickly.  Tozer has no reason to suspect anything is different than it has been any other time, and Edward isn't admitting how much he's obsessing over Jopson, so he's also just stubbornly pretending things are fine. I don't think that Tozer had any intention of letting Edward win, no matter how good Edward thinks his chances are, because it's Tozer's panel, and goddamn it, if Sol's going to all the effort to give a talk, he's gonna try to get his dick sucked as part of the aftermath, am I right, lads?

(Conferences that I've been to are hyper-careful about bodily fluids, and for good reason--so if blood is a possibility, everything should be tarped off and proper protective gear should be used, and Edward visibly bleeding all over everything would have been a Very Bad Look. Thankfully, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.)

((Also, just as a side-note, can we talk about Tozer's quick transitions between "shit, fuck, Little--", "and that is a takedown!", and "do not bleed in here, don't fuck this up for me, I don't know what the fuck your dumb ass was doing"? Because I love that Tozer's first reaction is "holy FUCK are you OKAY" and then he immediately takes control of the room to finish his talk, and then leans in to threaten Nedward. As though the threat is gonna take away the part where your first reaction was being horrified that you clocked him in the face, Sol.))

The Jopson-Little Meet Cute: Okay, fine, I guess it's not really a meet cute when one of you is bleeding into a sink, and the other one of you snuck into a takedown panel late in the hopes of seeing your crush and gets the bonus experience of watching your crush totally get hit in the face. But, whatever. They'll work with it.

One of the things I love about this scene is that the balance of power is exactly the opposite of where it would normally be--Jopson is the one controlling the scene here, through service, and Edward is the one that's following Jopson's lead. Jopson is, in canon, a caretaker, primarily, and I set this scene up so that he would shine, and I think he does that effectively here. Edward is the kind of guy that gets easily rattled when things don't go the way he expects them to, and it's indicative of their compatibility that he unwinds so easily for Jopson.

Also, I appreciate the hell out of Jopson gently bullying the topic of conversation around to giving talks, so that he could just slide his own talk under the door to gauge Edward's reaction. After all, if one is a trans man, and one's crush is a transphobe, better to find out before this goes any further. Between us, Jopson was reasonably sure things would be fine--after all, as Blanky notes later, he's had his face in Edward's blog*, and I'm pretty sure Edward went through his blog a while back and edited all his posts for gender- and trans-inclusive language, and left a footnote indicating he'd done so--but it was important for Jopson to make sure everything was on the table, and Edward's meandering discussion of the requirements for giving presentations was as good an in as any.

*Jopson clearly didn't know who Edward was by name on Saturday morning, but knows by Saturday afternoon. There's any number of ways he might have found out Edward's name, but I suspect he talked to someone** who had attended the power play panel he was on with Tozer earlier that day.

**I have a candidate in mind for this, but we'll get back to it later.

The Rough Physical Play Panel: Well, when that went wrong, it went real wrong, huh?

I think one of the things I'm enjoying so much about writing a modern Terror AU is that it lets me explore Hickey in more detail, because canon!Hickey just makes me so goddamn furious (the motherfucking BOOTS, he took James' BOOTS, and then EVERYTHING ELSE, and I CAN'T) that I can't even delve into him right now without wanting to throw things. But I can dig into him here, because I have the protection of this, you know, not being canon.

One of the things I really love about Hickey is that I think, one hundred percent, that he's exactly the kind of person that pays attention to the things you're interested in, and that makes it easy to start a friendship with him. I can guarantee that he knows every single item Tozer has ever stocked in his booth, and how well each of those items sells. I also know for sure that he's read every single post on Edward's blog, and can talk intelligently about any of them. However, Hickey is also exactly the kind of "friend" that will use that information against you at the drop of a hat if it benefits him in any way--and I can guarantee that the temptation was irresistible for Hickey here, because not only is it an excuse to deliberately trigger Edward's anxiety in front of a room full of people right immediately before those people leave the room, thus guaranteeing it's the last thing on their minds--but it's an opportunity to do so in front of the guy that Edward has been interested in all weekend. From Hickey's perspective, it's for Edward's own good--any idiot can see that Jopson is way out of Edward's league, and the sooner Edward stops making an ass of himself, the better it'll be for everyone involved. (I would also argue that ��if any of their friend group "deserve" to have more status in the community, Hickey feels that's him, so any attempt by Edward to "rise above" by, say, associating with someone linked to Crozier, is going to be viciously stamped out.)

The miscalculation here, of course, is that Hickey has misread Jopson just the same as everyone else has misread Jopson. We'll come back to why this mistake is important next week, I think.

(It's unfortunate we didn't get the good version of the panel, with the demo, because it's very good--Edward picks a random audience member, demonstrates the consent negotiation in front of everyone, and then walks through an entire gamut of activities, the intensity of which varies depending on how the person he's chosen is enjoying it. This is the way that I had my first exposure to this type of play, and watching the talk was a goddamn delight--and there's nothing that makes someone look competent more than them just improvising an entire talk on the spot.)

Dungeon Setup: So, again, because Canada, every dungeon I've ever been in has separated the drinking section from the fun section for safety reasons. Usually they're in separate rooms, though I've been in a couple dungeons where the drinking section runs along one wall of the fun section. Because this is my fic, and I'll improve it if I want, I went full bore on this and created that second-floor lounge that's open to the dungeon below, so you can stand up there and drink and watch the dungeon from above (or you can sit up there and drink with Hickey, but yuck).

The showcase performance thing isn't something I've seen at a kink conference before--I borrowed that from burlesque conventions I've been to because I needed it for the upcoming Fitzier fic. I kinda wish Edward had paid attention, I feel like that was a really good rope suspension scene. But, he was standing too close to Jopson, and thus, nothing else mattered.

Also, is it really a dungeon if it doesn't heavily rely on Enigma's music? I don't think I've been in a dungeon once without hearing Return to Innocence or Sadeness, and at this point, if I hear either of those pieces outside of the context of a dungeon, I get really nostalgic for dungeons.

(I guess while we're talking about setup, I'll also confirm that pretty much everybody* is staying on-site here--the hotel has a bunch of space set aside for the kink conference, and as long as people booked their rooms quickly, their hotel rooms are also in the same venue, so there's no need for transport, or going outside, or anything like that. Poor Nedward can have his meltdown about collars without needing to call a cab once.)

*I know a certain repressed somebody who has opted not to stay at a hotel full of perverts, but, uh. I mean, it's a Choice, but maybe sit with yourself a second, John.

Line Notes:

“Dude,” Tozer says, swinging his duffel bag off his shoulder and booting it under the table. “I had the most repressed guy in my talk this morning, it was fucking brilliant.”

Hi, Irving.

Edward can’t quite tell what Jopson is talking about, they’re too far apart for him to be able to eavesdrop. He wishes he was over there, though. Listening.

They're talking about you, Edward. Jopson knows who you are by this point, and he is three hundred percent telling Blanky about your blog right now.

He hasn’t paid attention to the specifics, because it’s not his talk, and it doesn’t matter.

Except it does matter, Edward, because one of those times the door opened and Jopson came in.

Jopson takes another step forward, his hands down at his sides, palms facing Edward. “I saw what happened,” he says. His voice is gentle, low. Hypnotic.

I appreciate Jopson approaching Edward like Edward is a wild animal that's going to spook at any moment, because Edward is, in fact, a wild animal that's going to spook at any moment.

“One of the better quality sessions I’ve seen this weekend,” Jopson says.

Thomas Jopson, you are a lying liar. It is the first day of the convention, and this is the first instance in which you've left your booth for any significant length of time.

“—you must see there are gaps. I was thinking, maybe, there’s another conference in six months...”

I can guarantee that this is a conversation that has been had with Francis in slowly increasing levels of volume, and I can also guarantee that Francis has been very supportive of Jopson wanting to fix those gaps. I would also side-eye the length of time (none) it took Jopson to pull up his fully-completed notes for a talk that Edward notes later is ready to go, and doesn't need any alterations. (Anyone taking bets on whether or not Goodsir has seen this? Yeah, I wouldn't bet against it either.)

It’s only after Jopson’s left that Edward realizes his black handkerchief is still on the edge of the sink.

Remember that conversation we had last week about the hanky code? Good, because Edward doesn't.

“Don’t wanna have a discussion about feelings if we don’t have to,” Tozer says gruffly.

Translation: if your eyes are wet because I smoked you in the face, then we'll have that conversation, but for fuck's sake please provide me with literally any other explanation--oh, thank fuck, I forgot about your septum piercing, perfect, good, onwards.

(I'd argue that Edward's probably all up in his feelings from Jopson's talk, BUT both of them are talking around everything in this scene, so I guess we'll just let them have that.)

They’re walking down the hall, and literally anyone could walk past Edward right now—fucking James Fitzjames could walk past Edward right now—and there is no way in hell he would notice, because Jopson is right there...

James Fitzjames, "that online guy" and most recognizable kink celebrity, would be So Offended by this, and it would be good for him.

They’re walking side-by-side, Jopson just a fraction behind Edward, and Edward can’t tell if it’s on purpose.

Jopson knows how to sub--it's on purpose, Nedward.

(I should note that this isn't at all a requirement for subbing--but it's part of how Jopson, in particular, submits, and since that's how he wants to interact with Edward, that's how he's behaving now.)

—not a blog post from five years ago that he’d kept up because there’s hardly any information out there and he wanted to make sure that people were aware of the risks and safety concerns, and—

And, I mean, also because you like to do this, Edward. Let's not beat around the bush here, you're not writing entire blog posts about things you have an academic interest in for safety reasons, although it would be totally valid if you did. But you aren't. You wrote an entire post about how to safely fit your fist into someone's ass because you did a lot of research as to how to do it safely and then subsequently did it on multiple occasions.

“It’s right there on the blog post,” Jopson continues, fingers clenched on his notebook. “The exact same blog post you’re citing has the answers to the questions you’re asking, and it’s disingenuous of you to…to purposefully derail his panel and pretend that the answers aren’t right there.”

If Edward was thinking critically about any of this instead of just bluescreening, he'd realize that it's Significant that Jopson knows this without consulting his cellphone, which he hasn't needed to do here, because his hands are still on his notebook, which means that Jopson either a) sought out this post specifically, b) made it multiple years back in Edward's blog archives, or c) both AND remembers it in detail.

But, he's Edward, and he's not thinking about shit right now except possibly how nice it would be if the building just randomly caved in on top of him. Not everybody else. Just him.

Jopson’s posture relaxes slightly as he exhales. “I was wondering about aftercare,” he says. “What you would normally recommend.”

Translation: Reassure me that you know what the fuck to do with me after we've just done everything that you've been talking about, because I AM DOWN TO DO THIS RIGHT NOW.

“Fucking peckerhead,” Tozer says, straightening up and rolling his shoulders, his eyes flashing. “I needed him to do some goddamn work.”

Yeah, well, Hickey’s got no fucking work ethic, so I dunno what the fuck you were thinking, Tozer. Duty owed, indeed.

It’s the guy that was watching Tozer. His eyes are burning with fanaticism. “It’s not too late,” he repeats. “Your crisis is an opportunity to repair yourself.”

Irving, sweetheart, buddy. You are at a fetish convention. Nobody here is interested in repairing themselves, and neither are you or you would not be here.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Jopson says. He’s still behind his booth, which is entirely too far away from Edward. “And Blanky’s due back any minute, so unless you want an interrogation over what you’re planning to do with the collar, you might want to come over to my side and look at books instead, I promise I won’t give you the third degree about anything.”

JOPSON, you are a LIAR. You fully intend to give him the third degree about everything, you just want him physically closer to you while you do it.

He’s not quite close enough to hear the conversation, but he is close enough to watch the way Jopson’s hands move in front of his body as he speaks, realizes after a moment that he’s signing. Realizes a few moments later that the words he’s saying aren’t English—and only then because it’s a different rhythm than Jopson usually speaks in, a little more halting, less fluid.

Francis' crash course in Netsilik went alright, apparently! I'm sure Jopson is disappointed in himself for not being fluent, but Silna will confirm to Francis that Jopson tried hard.

“We’re acquainted,” Jopson says carefully. Then adds, “It’s been a bit since I’ve spoken to her.”

LIAR, Jopson, you were literally in a deep conversation with her YESTERDAY. Edward, of course, does not notice this, even though he observed said conversation. (*cough*himbo*cough*)

Jopson shrugs, the motion a little self-deprecating. “That’s it. I’ll be finished then.” He sets his jaw, looks away. “I imagine we’d need to be more concerned about your availability than mine.”

Bold of you to assume that Edward "anxiety" Little actually checked his Fetlife messages and sorted out any play dates with anybody in advance.

Blanky grins at him. “That’s more like it. If you’ve got a couple minutes to wait, I’ll cut back the extra leather on the straps here for you.”

A number of people who make collars leave extra length on the straps in case it's needed. In this case, Blanky knows it won't be, so it can get trimmed back before Edward even leaves the booth. (Also, the Edward Little energy of Edward dropping a bunch of money on collars for Jopson, and then immediately freaking out and sticking them back in his hotel room?)

As an aside, considering Blanky is #teamjoplittle, I would give so much to see the content of the inevitable groupchats that are happening right now.

Phew. That's it for this week! Chapter three, Consensual, goes up next Friday! See you then! And if you have questions or anything in the meantime, you can always drop me an ask on tumblr or Curious Cat. I know I didn't cover everything, even in this long-ass entry, cuz there's a fuck of a lot of stuff going on in the foreground, much less the background. I honestly don't mind if you ask, it's totally cool. :)

See you next week!

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 2 of 26

Title: City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris #1) (2002)

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Genre/Tags: Weird, Short Story Collection (kinda), Horror, Fantasy, Metafiction, Mushroompunk (yeah), LGBT Protagonist, First Person, Second Person (sort of), Third Person, Unreliable Narrator.

Rating: 8/10 

Date Began: 1/7/2020

Date Finished: 1/17/2020

This edition of City of Saints and Madmen is a collection of 4 short stories and a massive “appendiX” of other stories/notable worldbuilding pieces, all of which explore a fictional city called Ambergris. Ambergris’ world is not unlike our own, with technology that somewhat mirrors ours, but is nevertheless distinctly surreal and fantastical. One Ambergris’ most notable elements are creatures called the gray caps (or “mushroom dwellers”), who are basically humanoid mushroom people that play a role in each of the stories. 

More details and a look at each of the stories under the cut. 

Surely, after all, it is more comforting to believe that the sources on which this account is based are truthful, that this has not all, in fact, been one huge, monstrous lie? And with that pleasant thought, O Tourist, I take my leave for good. 

I’ve read VanderMeer before-- the Southern Reach trilogy (which he’s most well known for) is one of my favorite series of all time. While I haven’t seen it yet, the film Annihilation is loosely based on the first book, and I hear it’s quite good as well. This will be my first foray into other stuff he’s written.

While this may put some people off, one thing I really liked about this book was it DIDN’T paint a clear picture of Ambergris. Each of the stories focus on particular details their respective protagonists find important, so the view we have of the city is always incomplete. There are tenuous and sometimes contradictory connections between the stories that often made me wonder what’s true/real, a recurring theme throughout the stories. Several of the stories are works of fiction within Ambergris, which skews perceptions even further. To me, all of this made the setting much more interesting, and the actual revelations more rewarding.

My personal favorite stories were The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris, The Transformation of Martin Lake, King Squid, and The Cage. I’ll go into more detail on all the individual pieces under the cut, but rating them individually doesn’t much sense due to the weird format.

The Main 4 Stories 

Dradin, In Love 

An unsuccessful missionary priest named Dradin comes to Ambergris to plead assistance from a former mentor. However, when he spots an unknown woman through the window of a shop, he becomes convinced he is in love and becomes obsessed with her. As an event called the Festival of the Freshwater Squid looms, the city itself begins to change in startling ways. 

From what I can tell skimming other reviews, this one trips people up because Dradin is just... a piece of shit. He’s terrible. There are some sympathetic traits to him -- he’s a fish out of water with no one to help him, he had a traumatic childhood, etc. But the more you learn about him the worse he becomes. He believes he’s superior to pretty much everyone he meets, has committed various atrocities you gradually learn about in the story, and he believes he’s in love with someone he’s never met and spends a great deal of the story fantasizing about her and their future relationship. It’s pathetic-- but it seemed pretty clear to me I’m not supposed to like him, so I read the story knowing that. 

Anyway, this wasn’t my favorite, but it is an interesting introduction to Ambergris. It’s from the perspective of an outsider, so alongside Dradin you learn things about the city such as the various religious sects, the gray caps, and the Festival. It is jarring when the Festival starts out as this whimsical parade and then goes full Purge for the rest of the story. That feeling pretty much lasts the rest of the book. 

The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris 

The conceit of this one is that it’s a travel pamphlet written for tourists to provide a quick rundown of Ambergris’ early history. But the writer Duncan Shriek is so obsessed and passionate about the subject that he goes into way more detail than necessary. He also makes extensive use of the footnotes (often longer than the actual page) to (1) insult the reader, who he assumes is a stupid tourist who will skip them, (2) go on long rants about various other historians, and (3) go into intricate, intense detail or speculation about seemingly innocuous things in the main text. Honestly relatable. 

Personally, I love a good history text, so a well-done fictional one is lots of fun. The stylistic choices are engaging and a great characterization tool. The “story” really came together for me in the third act. Super eerie and surreal, and a lot of details about the gray caps and a vast underground kingdom-- but there’s still a sense of unreality, because the account exploring this may or may not be a fake. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one. 

The Transformation of Martin Lake

This one is technically two stories at once. Martin Lake is an unknown painter looking to make his big break in Ambergris, when he receives an anonymous letter inviting him to a beheading. Alternating with these novel sections are excerpts written by art critic Janice Shriek (recognize the name?) which analyze the creepy and grotesque paintings made by Martin Lake-- Ambergris’ most famous artist. 

This piece was by far my favorite of the main four. Janice evaluates various paintings created by Lake and speculates on the meanings behind them. The Gothic horror story sections star Martin, and the events within reveal the true origins of each painting. The horror story is very creepy and well written, and I really like Martin more than most of the protagonists. It’s also amusing to see just how incorrect Janice’s analyses are. Overall this was a very well structured and entertaining read. (Side note: to whom it may concern, this is where the LGBT Protagonist tag comes from.)

Also, Janice and her brother are apparently the central characters in the next book? I enjoyed both of them so I'm excited for that.

The Strange Case of X

A psychiatrist interviews a mental patient known simply as X, who believes he has invented the world of Ambergris, and he’s actually from a place called Chicago. 

I'm torn on this one because I feel I accidentally ruined it for myself. The premise sounds like a pretty cliche setup, but there's a  twist at the end that keeps it interesting. The only problem is I went into the story assuming that twist was the case. It's not even like I guessed it or picked up on hints or whatever... I just assumed the twist for whatever reason, so I got to the reveal and was just like "...yeah?" 

Anyway, this one’s a good read, just not my favorite. X is obviously a fictionalized version of VanderMeer. I didn’t find him as important in the context of this story, but notes found in his cell make up the appendiX. I *did* really enjoy the story excerpt within this one that starts like a children’s book with very simple sentences, then slowly evolves into more complex language over time until it’s like the rest of the book. The swap between third and first-person in the story, then the narrator commending himself on how clever he is, was pretty funny and good characterization. 

The appendiX 

Dr V’s Note + X’s Notes 

Technically this is 2 “stories” but they’re presented together. Dr V’s note is just an outline of the stories in the appendiX, which are apparently various notes, pamphlets, writing journal excerpts, and pieces of paper he found in X’s cell. He speculates on the meaning behind some of them. It’s a handy reference that I turned back to a few times. X’s Notes are literally just some misc author’s notes/ideas. The final note, though, draws back to the surreal scene I mentioned from The Hoegbotton Guide, which implies it is in fact real. 

The Release of Belacqua 

This one is about an actor named Belacqua who’s been typecast into a specific role, which he plays every single day. One evening at his hotel room home, he gets a super weird phone call from a woman looking for someone named Henry. Based on what happens in the story, I’m guessing Belacqua was probably supposed to be a character in one of the stories but got scrapped, and this story is literally about scrapping him. It was kinda meh for me. 

King Squid 

No, I’m not transcribing the entire title of this one -- it’s, uh, quite long. This one is sort of like The Hoegbotton Guide, except it’s a biological treatise written by a man named Frederick Madnok about the King Squid, which is Ambergris’ main economic staple. Like The Hoegbotton Guide, the author goes into intricate detail on what he considers important and makes extensive use of footnotes. The thing is, Madnok is clearly going through a nervous breakdown as he writes, and the footnotes and tangents grow weirder over time, often delving into vague memories and details about his home life as a child. 

I think this one really shines when you get to the bibliography and notice it’s longer than the rest of the story and seems to list every single book Madnok has ever read. Personally I found a lot of the titles funny, but you could be forgiven for skipping them. However, certain titles have side notes, supposedly to point out notable things about them. Some of these, however, are disturbing and clearly unrelated to the title. Eventually, Madnok goes into a full breakdown and starts to describe himself transforming into a squid -- a phenomenon he described earlier in the text. His breakdown, juxtaposed with the absolutely immaculate formatting of the story, really made this one stand out to me. 

The Hoegbotton Family History

The Hoegbottons are a merchant family. Their company Hoegbotton & Sons is basically the Wal-Mart of Ambergris and is present through multiple stories. This text is interesting for some context for the next story, but not particularly notable on its own. V’s notes at the beginning say as much. 

The Cage

One of the early Hoegbottons visits a mansion which has been condemned after an attack by the gray caps to purchase the remaining assets to resell. Among the items he finds a strange, seemingly empty birdcage which he can’t stop obsessing over. 

This was my favorite story by a long shot. It was insanely creepy and surreal with the best visuals in the book. There are references everywhere to fungi and decay, and there’s something very odd going on with Hoegbotton’s blind wife that defies explanation. And obviously, the cage itself and what’s going on with it is very disturbing. Contains very very very good body horror which is apparently just A Thing for me. Of all the stories this one had the most Southern Reach-y vibe. 

In The Hours After Death 

This one describes what happens to a man after he dies, and it’s not quite what you think. It’s a short piece and I liked the writing; very melancholy and surreal. It’s one of those stories that just incidentally takes place in Ambergris, but would be a good story outside of it, too. Until the end, that is, which ties it back to the gray caps in another creepy way. Thanks. 

The Man Who Had No Eyes 

This one is notable because apparently, in the original release, it was written entirely in code. You had to use page numbers, paragraph numbers, and lines in the rest of the book to decode it. Because this edition is an updated re-release which shifted the pages and format around, it doesn’t work anymore. Instead Dr. V provides a decoded version. However, some of the words are wrong, and the final paragraph is still in code (supposedly because V was afraid to keep going). I had to look up the story online to get the full picture. 

Anyway, I suspect this story is foreshadowing for stuff that’s going to happen in future installments. It describes the gray caps taking the city back over and flooding it, and how they mutilate a writer living in the city so he has to find alternative ways to keep writing. It mentions the goddamn cage again. It’s kind of fever-dream creepy. 

The Exchange 

Depicts a short story about the Festival of the Freshwater Squid (remember that?). Apparently this story is provided by Hoegbotton & Sons for people who purchase a safe house to avoid getting straight-up murdered during the Festival. The story itself is entertaining and has a great twist at the end, but what’s interesting is someone’s made extensive annotations to the piece describing the fallout between the author and illustrator. I found it most fun to read the base story, then go back and read the annotations-- it felt like I was seeing the same story from very different perspectives. 

Learning to Leave the Flesh 

This one’s referenced in The Strange Case of X. Unlike every other story, this actually doesn’t take place in Ambergris, but our world. However, like The Strange Case of X mentions, details and names from Ambergris seemingly appeared in the story even though he had no recollection of putting them there. 

Honestly, it’s an OK work of fiction but was probably my least favorite. Mostly it felt like lengthy flavor text for a story I’d already read. The ending was pretty good, though. 

The Ambergris Glossary + A Note on Fonts  

Putting these two together. The Glossary actually answered a lot of questions I had and clarified some events from the various stories. (”What the fuck is with the Living Saints. What the absolute fuck-- oh.”) It’s implied that some of the entries are written by Duncan Shriek. Hi, again. 

A Note on Fonts describes the various fonts from different stories as if it’s a wine tasting, which was hilarious. 

[cromulentbookreview]

Sonata in A! K331! 3rd Movement!

Funny thing is, this is surprisingly accurate. 

And by that I mean: The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu!

You don’t have to be a music fan to know the name Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In fact, you probably have no idea what in the hell a Sonata in K K331 Third Movement even is until you hear it. Then you’ll know it immediately. In fact, you can know nothing about Mozart but still be familiar with many of his pieces. Maybe you had the misfortune to be forced to watch the movie Amadeus* in your German class (a movie that is probably not appropriate to show public high school students even if it’s dubbed in German) or have seen the 30 Rock parody episode where, instead of writing music, they create a porn video game. My point is: you know Mozart. Everyone knows Mozart, especially kids who were made to learn piano. Or, in my case, piano AND violin**. The main reason for that is, well, public domain, but also because Mozart is the shit. 

I mean, I’m more of a Beethoven girl myself, and I have a lot of love for the 19th century Russians (Tchaikovsky and The Five FTW!), but, seriously, if you learn anything about music, you learn about Mozart. And, as someone semi-fluent in German, who has dedicated most of her life to learning German, you have no choice but to learn about the greats of German music. Yes, Austrians count as part of German music. As I’ve mentioned before, there was no “Germany” until 1871, and I’m including any and all native German speakers as part of German music. Austrians speak German. Kind of. I mean, 99.9% of my German teachers were either from southern Germany or Austria, so I may have a bit of a bias...though my main bias is against Swiss German which literally is not German stop calling it that, Switzerland!

What were we talking about?

Oh. Yeah. Mozart. 

You know he had a sister, right? One who was a musical prodigy in her own right, who used to play for the courts of Europe alongside her little brother, right?

No?

Yeah, you probably don’t. Because back in the 18th century, women weren’t allowed to be composers or musical prodigies. Once they grew up, they got married, had children and were subsequently erased from history while the men in their family achieve immortality. 

Meet Maria Anna Mozart, known by her family as Nannerl. 

The Kingdom of Back is Nannerl’s story.

Salzburg! 1759! Nannerl Mozart is only eight, but is desperate to please her father and prove her mettle as a musician. The Mozart family is in a perpetual state of one-missed-paycheck-away-from-homelessness, and Nannerl’s stage dad, Leopold, hopes to cash in on the whole child prodigy thing. Unfortunately, Nannerl’s first demonstration for a court musician goes wrong when she’s distracted by her baby brother, Wolferl. That night, Nannerl dreams of a beautiful kingdom full of music, and of a beautiful boy with glowing blue eyes. 

As she gets older, Nannerl is as shocked as her parents when Lil Wolferl shows a knack for music. She’s horrified to discover that she feels jealous of her baby brother, who idolizes her. One night, Nannerl and Wolferl are woken up by a strange light coming from their music room. When they investigate, they find the beautiful boy from Nannerl’s dream, in the flesh. He steals Nannerl’s music notebook then promptly jumps out the window.

Like so:

Complete with broken glass.

Anyway, the next time Nannerl sees the boy, she’s out in Salzburg with her brother on a shopping trip when she opens the door to a shop’s storage room, only to find it leads to the magical kingdom she’d seen in her dream. The boy, Hyacinth, wants Nannerl’s help to reclaim his throne. In exchange, he will make sure Nannerl gets her greatest wish: to be remembered forever.

Shortly after, Nannerl and Wolferl are called to Vienna to play for the Emperor and Empress. Wolferl puts on quite the show, charming everyone in the room and even proposing to the Emperor and Empress’s youngest daughter. It’s after this that Nannerl and Wolferl’s parents decide to take them on a massive tour of Europe. In the long, dull carriage rides between destinations, Nannerl and Wolferl come up with a name and origin story for Hyacinth and the magical kingdom that they saw: The Kingdom of Back. As the tour continues and Wolfer’s fame rises, Nannerl worries more and more about being forgotten - that her fate is sealed: she will never be a composer and a musician, instead she will become a wife and mother and nothing more than a footnote in history.

But the Kingdom of Back is more than just a fantasy story shared between two bored kids. Hyacinth’s magic has an effect on our world, causing calamities and illness. As Nannerl struggles to cope with her conflicting emotions, Hyacinth starts to seem less like a fairy prince and more like something sinister. But his promises of fame and immortality to Nannerl are so very, very tempting. I mean, wouldn’t you be a little jealous if your baby brother was an 18th century child rockstar? 

(Ok, the throwing of underthings may not have happened to Mozart, but it definitely happened to Liszt so that episode of the Simpsons isn’t entirely inaccurate).

 If you come into The Kingdom of Back expecting it to be something like Marie Lu’s other novels - namely, action packed sci-fi/fantasy serieses - you are bound to be disappointed. The Kingdom of Back is unlike all of Lu’s other novels - it is a standalone historical fantasy dedicated to someone who, in spite of her talent, was relegated to the dustbin of history just because she was a girl. I adore Marie Lu’s books (the Legend trilogy is probably one of the best YA trilogies ever - if you haven’t read it, stop everything and do that now, please) and I’m also a fan of music, 18th century Germans, and 18th century German musical composers so I wasn’t at all put off knowing that The Kingdom of Back wasn’t going to be like her other books. It was more like “holy shit, Marie Lu is wrote a book about Mozart’s sister, put it in my brain immediately, please.” The Kingdom of Back is just wonderful, you guys. Lu beautifully captures what it’s like to have a sibling that you love, but also envy. Lu’s writing is lyrical and enchanting without crossing into purple prose territory. Music can be difficult to capture in prose, but Lu manages to do so without alienating the reader with too many weird technical musical terms that would be off putting to the average reader (hi!). The way time works in the book is weird - you’re never quite sure when you are at any given time or how old anyone else, unless you have the timeline of the Mozart children’s grand tour open while you read. Months can go by in a single sentence which can be a bit jarring, but the book manages to condense a decade into 300 pages. I’d rather have 300 pages and a few pacing issues than way too much detail within 900 pages. 

My absolute favorite aspect of this book is Nannerl herself. Nannerl, as an 18th century girl, is bound by 18th century constraints - she’s not allowed to compose openly, as herself. She’s not allowed to talk back. She’s expected to look after her brother, as her position as older sister makes her mom-in-training. Nannerl is a good and proper 18th century lady, and she hates it. She hates the limits placed on her by society, but at the same time, she’s desperate to please her parents and earn their praise. Because what else can she do? It’s the shit situation women have experienced since time immaterial: conform, or else. Nannerl may seem meek and submissive compared to the likes of June from Legend or Emika from Warcross, but make no mistake, she is just as strong as they are. Her strength lies in her quiet resilience. Nannerl can’t exactly fight back against the system the way June and Emika do, so she rebels in other, quieter ways. She maintains eye contact for her father, waiting for him to break first or stays quiet when she’s expected to voice her praises. She creates a whole fantasy world in which to take refuge. Nannerl’s way of fighting back is subtle because it has to be. 

Unfortunately, it takes only a click of a Wikipedia link to know how Nannerl’s story ends. It is bittersweet and something that will definitely strike a chord (pun absolutely intended) with any girl or woman who reads The Kingdom of Back. 

RECOMMENDED FOR: Any girl or woman who has ever seen her accomplishments ignored or passed over in favor of a man’s, anyone with a sibling they’re just a little bit jealous of, music fans, Mozart fans, Marie Lu fans, anyone in the mood for a gorgeously-written YA historical fantasy.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Haydn aficionados, Leopold Mozart, children who were forced to learn piano, men’s rights activists, people who would mistake an 18th century girl’s quiet resilience for weakness.

RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020 - hey, I promise cromulent reviews, not “on time” reviews or “reviews in advance of publication.”

RATING: 4/5

MOZART RATING:

BEETHOVEN FANS, WHEN ENCOUNTERED BY MOZART FANS:

You can hear the 5th symphony with every haw.

*Please remember the movie Amadeus is also a historical fantasy - Salieri and Mozart were peers and were most likely friends, if not friendly. Also, Salieri had like, 8 kids and at least 1 mistress, he wasn’t some pious weirdo like he’s portrayed in the movie. I mean, he was Italian. F. Murray Abraham was awesome in it, though. My point is, don’t get your history from movies. It’s a bad idea.

Get it from Wikipedia, like a normal person.

That soundtrack, though. If you want an intro to Mozart’s music, that is a good way to go.

**Ahahahaha I was, then and now, and will forever remain, terrible at both. 

[aerialsquid]

Back on my nonsense.

A small fic that spun entirely out of the idea that 1. A guy named David Shield in a canon wher everyone has meaningful/pun names has a strong likelihood of being Jewish, 2. Melissa’s birthday is in early October, 3.  Her bat mitzvah Torah portion was probably one of the last few chapters of the Torah.  Also it’s been nearly two decades since my b-mitzvah so apologizes if I got some details wrong. It was a long day and I fell asleep on the bimah so my memories are kinda hazy in general.

Fandom: My Hero Academia 

Characters: Toshinori Yagi, David Shield, Melissa Shield, Assorted OCs

Content Warning: Contains Angst and Feels.

There were three types of people in the room at Melissa Shield's bat mitzvah. .

The first type saw the massive full-rack-of-beef blonde man awkwardly wedged next to Melissa's father in a pew too small for him and assumed he must be a member of the family. A brother, perhaps. His shimmering blonde hair was only a few shades darker than that of the girl leading prayers from the bimah, after all. If anything, the huge man looked more like Melissa Shield than her father did, and he was close to David in age.

The second type knew David Shield a little better, and knew that David had no brothers but had a 'good friend in Japanese hero work', so assumed the giant muscled stranger was some gentile friend of the family. The huge man didn't pray out loud with them but didn't have that look of polite awkwardness that most non-Jews had when they were invited to attend services for a faith they didn't know in a language they didn't speak. Instead, the man watched everything with quiet determination, as if this service was the most important event of his life, as if every syllable Melissa dropped was an awe-inspiring victory.

The third type didn't know why he was there and didn't care, because the third type was two teenagers silently shrieking throughout the entire service because HOLY SHIT THAT'S ALL MIGHT HE'S SITTING RIGHT THERE THAT'S ALL MIGHT.

(There were only two people in the audience that knew all three were correct. That All Might - a friend and more than a friend - was bound to the Shield family not just by love but by blood, by the gift that Yagi gave a brilliant man who could create anything except a child. Blonde hair was a recessive trait and Dave was a brunette, but in a world where children were born with scales and spider legs, no one thought to ask inappropriate questions.)

"Five bucks says you're going to tear up before she even gives her speech," Dave whispered, smiling. "I know how you are."

"I'm not taking that bet," Yagi muttered back. "I mean, look at her." 

Melissa was radiant in her red dress with ruffled hem. A custom-made talis hung around her shoulders, white and blue cloth shot through with silver thread along the edges. You could power cars with the glow coming off Melissa Shield.

Yeah, Yagi was glad he'd packed a few hankerchiefs.

Melissa's eyes sought out the two men sitting in the front row. Yagi shot Melissa a discreet (as discreet as hands that huge could be) thumbs up, and he saw her mouth twitch upward in a nervous smile. It wasn't some pass/fail test, and even if it was, she'd score with flying colors like she did every other exam. Still, she was nervous enough that she almost walked into the stubby wings sticking out from under the gabbai's talis.

"Barchu adonai hamvorach," intoned the man doing the first aliyah.

"Baruch adonai hamvorach layolam vaed!" echoed back the parts of the congregation that knew the words. Yagi, silent, tried instead to exhude as much confidence and support as he could without physically getting up and shouting how wonderful she was. It was a near thing.

Melissa stepped forward, put on a bright smile, bent her head, and began to read from the scroll laid out on the podium.

Parashah Haazinu. Book of Deuteronomy Chapter 32. Yagi's thick finger traced the tiny lines of text, following in the English. It was mostly poetry, God saving this and smiting that. Toshi had never been one for religion, especially the way it was done in America - not opposed to it either, just unfamiliar with it. Dave was the first Jewish person he'd ever met and he'd had to go halfway around the world to meet him. He knew the dramatis personae  - Adam, Eve, Abraham, Moses, etc. - mainly from pop culture.

There'd been a brief moment in college when he'd decided he was going to read the entire Bible, cover to cover, in English, just to impress David. The vow had lasted for the first three or four chapters before he'd given up in frustration at how wordy and dull the text was.

Melissa's voice stayed strong, not faltering for a single syllable, and Yagi's chest ached with pride. (Mostly pride. It ached for a lot of reasons these days.)

Melissa had been practicing reading her Torah portion for months, and she'd read it out to him over video chat several times, slowly tracing the lines of Hebrew with her finger as she read them out in a sing-song tone, stopping and retracing steps when she transposed one extended vowel for another. Yagi had heard it enough times that he almost could have done the reading himself, though he had no idea what any of it meant.

His mind wandered as he read and he found himself lingering on the English side of the page, gaze occasionally hopping down to the itty-bitty footnotes printed in text he almost needs a magnifying glass to read. The book was tiny in his hands already. Yagi pushed his reading glasses up his nose and skipped past the poetry and the logistical details to the final section of the portion - Moses, leader of the Jews, going up on the mountain to die within sight of the land of Israel.

Yagi felt a twist in the stomach he knew for a fact was no longer there.

He peeked ahead a few pages. There wasn't much left, Melissa was reading from the tail end of the final book of the Torah, but there might be some shocking twist...nope, no last minute reprieve. After all his hard work, Moses died without setting foot in the land he'd lead his people to. God permitted him to climb a mountain and look into the land, but not to live in it. There was a lot of tiny-printed commentary discussing, justifying, and criticizing it, but no one was arguing that Moses was actually just resting.

Yagi's hand touched the still-healing wound at his side, then flinched away before Dave could see it.

It seemed unfair. But maybe it was sufficient to know you'd succeeded. To know your children - the ones you'd raised, the ones you'd lead to safety through adversity and hardship, the ones you'd stood as a beacon for - would find peace. Perhaps Moses was content with that.

If it was good enough for a prophet of a god, it was good enough for the Symbol of Peace, right? It had to be good enough, because if Nighteye was right it was all he was going to get.

"See? I was right," David muttered with a chuckle.

"Hm?"

"I told that you wouldn't make it through the service without crying."

[thesinglesjukebox]

CHANCE THE RAPPER - I MIGHT NEED SECURITY

[4.64]

And we might need a better song.

Will Rivitz: Even two full years after its release, I still struggle with just how monumental a step back Coloring Book was for Chance The Rapper's artistic evolution. How could the man who characterized the convolutions and uncertainties of young adulthood so adroitly and poetically set all of those poignant observations aside in favor of an uncritical appreciation of the glories of fatherhood and a shallow nostalgia for how things used to be? I guess what got me was the album's unprecedented change of attitude: I would never in a million years have guessed that Acid Rap's nuanced self-criticism could have morphed into a Disneyfied version of itself not even three years later. In that regard, at least "I Might Need Security" does indeed have a precedent: this is the narcissistic and toxically insecure Chance we've all gotten to know since 2016. "I ain't no activist, I'm the protagonist" is consistent with the Chance who, when a poem he wrote for NPR's Tiny Desk last year was interrupted by the sound of an elevator, started again from the beginning, because the idea of continuing where he left off would have been inconceivable. "I donate to the schools next, they call me a deadbeat daddy" is consistent with the Chance who slid into a Twitter rando's DMs to tell them to "get off [his] dick" because the user had the nerve to say Chance's proposal to his baby mama may have come a few years too late to generate goodwill. "I'll make you fix your words like a typo suggestion / Pat me on the back too hard and Pat'll ask for your job" is consistent with the Chance who made MTV remove a review critical of Coloring Book because it wasn't well-suited to his tastes. (The review, which sums up my thoughts on the album better than most anything else I've seen, was reposted by the author on his Medium page.) At least he's being honest here. [2]

Maxwell Cavaseno: Interesting thing about Chance the Rapper's debut mixtape 10 Day: It wasn't good, it was fine. Besides songs like "Juke Juke" in which you could sort of see his more manic tendencies emerging, a lot of Chance's earliest material was mealy mouthed rappity rap that was adequate but ultimately boring. It's why Acid Rap, where he did find his voice, was so much more rightfully received and recognized. While Chance's excesses and tics have now become downright aggravating, it made sense that he went in that direction because as a straight rapper there's just nothing compelling to his plain lyrics and delivery. Apparently, you might need proof as well, and lucky for us Chance decided to provide such. [2]

Ryo Miyauchi: The Jamie Foxx sample is the only redeemable thing here with Chance throwing random fake-deep rhymes to a piano-led beat that vaguely channels The College Dropout in feel. It's a life update as a stopgap release between his album presumably in the works, and yet another reminder that Chance has been a hero to Chicago since Coloring Book. It's an exhausting point he keeps on reiterating. Will he lighten his sense of self-importance if we erect that statue he so craves to be built? [5]

Julian Axelrod: Chance's nice guy phase was never going to last. You can't be that rich and that famous for that long without a few compromises and some dirty laundry, and the distinctly Obama-era rap star has had a decidedly post-2016 descent. The Noname collabs gave way to DJ Khaled features; the label aversion morphed into Apple Music kowtowing; the social media savvy proved ineffectual in the face of fan criticism. So "I Might Need Security" presents a new Chance: bitter, prickly, his grin warped into an wary smirk. Luckily, this Chance is still a hell of a rapper, and even in the midst of a 45 degree heel turn he's bubbly enough to spit over a cheeky Jamie Foxx sample that makes no bones about his beef. I might actually like Chance 2.0 better than the original; he looks good with his back against the ropes and some dirt under his nails. But I'm predisposed to like any song that big ups Verne Troyer and clowns Rahm Emanuel, so take my opinion with a grain of celery salt. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A mixed bag, just like everything Chance has done since mid-2016. Points in its favor: Chance announcing that he bought a news site in the second verse of a loosie, "I'm only 25 but I'm Motown 25," calling for Rahm to resign. Points against: all the woe is me, heavy is the crown shit, the Verne Troyer pun, half of his punchlines in general. And yet "I Might Need Security" still works, in spite of itself-- maybe it's just the Jamie Foxx sample, but Chance is channeling mid-2000s Kanye here at his most maddeningly likeable. [6]

Vikram Joseph: An airing of grievances and a settling of scores (some of them on a widescreen, political scale, and some which need Infinite Jest-level footnoting to comprehend), juxtaposed with Chance's laconic flow and a hazy, sun-bleached beat which almost drifts into "Drinking in L.A." at one point. The dreamy "fuck you" hook serves as microcosm for the song - there's anger here, but it's so palatable. [8]

Ian Mathers: Some of the content here is good, even possibly important. But I don't remember Chance sounding this outright halting in places before, and that sample really sounded like such a good idea they're just going to let it have the last 45 seconds of the track, huh? [3]

Alfred Soto: He's twenty-five ("Motown twenty-five"), expects to see a statue in his honor, and samples a Jamie Foxx routine's "fuck you." Relative to his modest talents, his ego annoys the hell out of me but not as much as his irregularly deployed sing-song: he can't decide whether to cram too many syllables per line or speak-sing the leaden moments. His good intentions scare me most. [4]

Stephen Eisermann: The problem with Chance is his commitment to telling us he's a good guy - the protagonist, even - without doing any of the work. He continues doing the same here, and even though he makes some good points while calling out some bad players (with shaky wordplay, at best), his lack of self-awareness is nearly as hard to swallow as his pride. [4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The cover of this single is a rendering of the Arthur's fist meme and the song is held together by a chipmunk'd Jamie Foxx sample. These things make "I Might Need Security" a smart PR move of a song: there's a clear link made between his happy-go-lucky personality and what's present here. He sounds more self-conscious than ever, well-worn to the point of actual aggression. When he finally takes the sample's lead and declares "fuck you," it's clear that he doesn't want it to read as anything other than acerbic. While this may sculpt a more complete image of who Chance is, it unfortunately sounds more labored over and tedious than the majority of his catalogue. Hearing Chance's straightforward talk-rapping recalls his poetry slam past--especially since it's coupled with a beat as static as this--and it doesn't particularly play to his strengths. As listeners, we're asked to primarily revel in the lyrics. When I do, it sounds like a whole lot of boring whining. Which begs the question, why would I want to listen to this? [2]

Nortey Dowuona: Smooth, chipmunk curse coos echo in the back as they hit the slack, soft drums, as purring, bulging bass then drizzling. Deep piano is lathered over as Chance snarls thin threats that bulge out of the cotton candy wool of the production. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[johannesviii]

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street

Some highlights of the last EDA I’ve read (The Adventuress of Henrietta Street).

I took these screens while reading, along with my reactions. As usual, this is full of spoilers.

“Let’s wish for something simpler next time. I need a break.” (me, right after reading Grimm Reality)

OH SHIT OH PLEASE NO NOT NOW. NOT. NOW.

This is not what I wanted.

I’m not going to make any friends here, first because I’m sure this book has a ton of fans, and second because I don’t dislike it for the reasons you might expect. Sure, it sidelines Fitz and Anji, sure, the ideas aren’t as numerous or groundbreaking as the ones in Alien Bodies and Interference, sure, the pace is extremely slow, sure, it does some debatable things with the internal logic of the series, and yes, sure, it mostly takes place in a brothel. But while these things can be considered problems, they’re not real problems to me. Some of the most creative things in this story are actually possible thanks to them.

No. I have a problem with the way this story is written and framed. And I can already hear someone saying something like "what, is the academic style too much for your small brain?", but I actually think it doesn’t go far enough with its fake academic style.

By all means, write a fake pseudo-academic paper! Invent a ton of fake sources and names! Write horribly long digressions in footnotes until they eat up the rest of the page! Analyse this story like a bad history student and put on paper some really weird conclusions about it- most of them probably wrong. Even if you don’t go all out and write House of Leaves lite, at least write Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell lite, please. Have. fun. with. it.

But it’s not written like a fake master thesis, because there’s no sources, no footnotes, no actual goal or real analysis (right or wrong), and in the end, it’s mostly written like a normal novel, except it has a very flat tone and often digresses to talk about historical events. Reading Henrietta Street is not like proof-reading a badly organised master thesis written by a dispassionate student: it’s like trying to read a novel buried under piles of gratuitous infodumps. And that’s a real shame, because there’s an interesting story somewhere in there. 4,5/10

Okay, this is interesting.

That’s VERY cool.

That part made me laugh pretty hard.

Apparently the biggest danger that sex workers face in their line of work is accidentally summoning demons, and that also made me laugh pretty hard.

I’m not sure this is supposed to be funny, but it sure is.

Aaaaaaand she actually summoned a demon by accident and that guy was killed. Okay.

That’s very nice but there’s a distressing lack of footnotes and fake references in that pseudo-academic book. Also if there’s no quote from the dream journal (or if there’s some, but boring), I will riot.

Okay, first, I have to say Scarlette sounds incredible.

Second, I immediately pictured her like Mylène Farmer’s 18th century libertine persona, except with black hair.

This is probably a bad thing.

Oh my god

Ah, I was starting to wonder where our main idiot was.

Please tell me Eight is fencing with Scarlette. PLEASE.

YESSSSS Oh my god what a wonderful mental picture.

SCARLETTE, NO.

WAIT WTF EIGHT HAS A BEARD NOW?!

Ooohhh, he has finally discovered where he was from and probably what happened to Gallifrey! Interesting!

We already kinda knew that was what made The City of the Dead and its magic possible, but it’s always nice to have a clear confirmation.

I’M HOWLING

"Hello I’m the Doctor, can I stay here" "Sure"

So he’s looking for magicians. And clearly doing some research. I have to ask, though: where are Anji, Fitz and the TARDIS?

Meanwhile, on "The Doctor Is Asexual", episode 75647

These books have recently acquired a strange taste for tarot reading.

Wait, the Doctor is sick?

That’s all very interesting but could you please hurry up a little bit?

Again, I wish this kind of fake document had fake sources and/or footnotes to accompany it.

Again, I wish there was a fake drawing and a fake source there.

Interesting.

Also... is it bad if I’d like to read that book instead of the one I’m currently reading?

So the demons actually look like apes. Uh.

How much do you want to bet these creatures were inspired by this painting?

I love this dialogue.

What is your plan and what the hell are you trying to do.

"When Scarlette asked reasonably what on Earth she thought she was doing"

I laughed out loud at this awful, awful typo in French. That should be "par les couilles" and the level of sheer incompetence on display here is worse than any misused French ever printed in these books (yes, even the non-sentences of The Turing Test).

If you don’t speak the language, don’t pretend you do & send it to an editor anyway. You already know I don’t speak English very well, but you don’t see me trying to get my English typos printed in a book costing actual money and bought by actual people.

What are you trying to achieve.

Well you’re not wrong.

FINALLY

This is a wonderful little scene.

"It’s worth stopping" YEAH YOU THINK

WAIT WHAT, THEY DIDN’T ARRIVE WITH THE TARDIS

WHAT’S GOING ON

Another wonderful mental image.

Okay so I think that’s an important character. I don’t think anyone spoiled me anything too important about this book, but I’m pretty sure this guy comes back later.

The fact I didn’t stop to consider how awkwardly Fitz would behave in a brothel is all you need to prove how innocent minded I tend to be

This would be so much better if it was either written completely like a fake academic work or completely like a novel, because this weird hybrid thing isn’t working.

CUTE

How much do you want to bet he did a James Bond impression.

Fitz no.

Also this is a pretty great scene.

Is that a compliment or an insult

Oh. So he was looking for magicians of sorts who could act as a replacement for the Time Lords?

Anji as a prophet and a force of nature is a marvellous thought.

"But they had a tendency to giggle every time [Fitz] walked past"

Okay, I guess Sabbath is bad news, then.

 Is Sabbath actually human? Because if he’s a Time Lord survivor, that would explain a lot of things.

Probably panic.

It’s not a real EDA until someone is coughing up blood

Or because this book is clumsily organised.

And here’s another typo in French (éventrés).

Also who is that random guy with a rosette and why is he, like, metaphorically eating popcorns in the background?

Is that battleship a TARDIS?

It’s completely anachronistic, so it could very well be.

A question you could be asking yourself in quite a lot of these books, Doctor.

Take a shot every time an adjective reminds you that Sabbath is fat.

I’M HOWLING

Ohhhh is it his fault because he destroyed Gallifrey? Is that it?

What the fuck are you two talking about.

So the wedding is some sort of ritual? What?

What inspired the author to sit down and write this book also remains unclear.

That still sounds wonderful and I’d gladly read that book if it existed. Although it’s easy to picture it like some sort of Codex Seraphinianus variant.

A strange way to talk about regeneration, but a pretty cool one.

Of course, Doctor, of course.

Why is the author so fucking terrified by this very mundane detail about women.

"Assassin" as a noun doesn’t have a feminine equivalent so this is yet another typo in French.

Ohhh, is he trying to rebuild a TARDIS? Where is the real TARDIS, anyway?

You really don’t want Anji to have any kind of major role in that story, do you?

So this is what the ‘horizon’ is like. I like the black sun thing. Well okay it’s a bit of a goth cliché, but still.

I SPAT OUT MY TEA

DON’T MAKE ME THINK OF BETTER STORIES

And I’m pretty sure this would be a lot more dramatic if this book was written like a novel OR like a cold academic piece, but it’s neither, so it just sounds disinterested.

At least we have excerpts from the dream journal mentioned at the beginning!

...we know. It’s a very, very mundane thing, dude. It happens when a lot of women are living together. It happens in nunneries too. There’s nothing magical or evil about it, and this is getting very ridiculous.

Recently, in one of these liveblogs, I was wondering how many stories had living planets in Doctor Who and particularly in the EDAs... so I’m glad somebody else thought it was a recurring theme as well.

No seriously who the fuck is this guy.

Okay okay I laughed pretty hard.

I seriously doubt that.

138 PDF pages, and next to nothing has happened yet, apart from a lot of exposition.

Yes okay but could you please do something with this idea instead of just exposing it layer after layer?

A bit too meta for my taste, but still enjoyable.

Again, more explanations for this very cool concept, but nothing new.

Okay. Now do something.

We knew this already. Now do something with it.

An interesting parallel but the book still refuses to do anything with its ideas at this point.

Meanwhile, nothing happens.

YOU DON’T SAY

OH. Okay. At least we know the purpose of that wedding thing now.

It’s… very weird, honestly. I mean, the Doctor never really had ‘roots’ with Gallifrey, he hated the place (in Classic Who, at least – and in New Who as soon at it existed again) and tried to get away from it as soon as he could. But hey, fluidity in canon and all that, so why not. Can’t say I like it, but yeah, why not.

Meanwhile the Doctor gets worse and worse and Fitz finds yet another girlfriend "out of boredom"- which is understandable at this point.

Usually I would be like "OH NO" but since something is happening at last, I’m like "OH MY GOD, FINALLY"

Wait wait wait.

You know I try to avoid spoilers for these books but I couldn’t avoid this one. So.

Is this the book where Eight loses a f█cking HEART

I WISH

And now the Babewyns have a leader, since you persisted to do nothing.

Again, I wish this book was full of fake sources for this kind of things.

Good description of the TARDIS’ sound!

Finally, someone’s doing something about the Babewyns! Go Scarlette!

I like this detail.

WAIT A F█CKING SECOND

IS THAT THE MASTER

IS THE MASTER JUST CHILLING IN THE BACKGROUND OF THIS STORY WITH POPCORNS WHILE WAITING FOR THE SHIT TO HIT THE FAN

Okay, so the wedding plans had to be changed and now the bride will be Scarlette.

And the Master is drinking in the background, like:

Eh eh, so Moffat wasn’t the first one to think about this!

Take a shot every time an adjective reminds you that Sabbath is fat.

Holy shit, Scarlette rules.

And this is very sweet.

Well you’re not wrong.

Eight you are literally dying, there is no shame in using a wheelchair, okay

This is a great mental picture.

I’m pretty sure "howl of laughter" wasn’t the intended reaction, but I’m sorry, he kissed Scarlette and instantly started the apocalypse, I can’t stop laughing

You know what, just for fun, I am going to pretend this is a post-apocalyptic version of the Library of the Serpent’s Hand from the SCP mythos.

Ooooooh boy.

YEP. YEP, YOU ARE THE MASTER. YOU LITTLE SHIT.

At least he’s being reasonable for once.

How very convenient for you.

Yes I was about to ask, could you please hurry up and die already?

OH SHIT JULIETTE HANGED HERSELF.

YEAH YOU THINK

ISN’T THAT OBVIOUS WTF

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

FDSDFGHFDSGHFDFH I KNEW IT

To be honest, this book is FINALLY getting intense and interesting.

WELP, FITZ ISN’T THE LEADER ANYMORE, BYE BYE FITZ

YOU DON’T SAY

Bye bye, Master.

You weren’t very useful, were you.

YOU DON’T SAY

This place looks terrifying in my head.

Finally, FINALLY, this book is gripping.

But it took the Doctor, literally dying on the floor, in a pool of black blood, in a post-apocalyptic dimension for it to become gripping.

Or just a self-insert.

OHHHH HERE IT COMES, FOLKS.

Ah yes, one last typo in French, just because.

YOU DON’T SAY

Hey, isn’t that the cover?

SFSDFGHGFDHHHH ONE OF YOUR HEARTS WAS LITERALLY TORN AWAY FROM YOUR DYING BODY FIVE MINUTES AGO, CAN YOU PLEASE SIT DOWN FOR A SECOND BEFORE CHALLENGING GIANT MONSTERS IN A FIGHT TO THE DEATH

Hi happy Eight, we missed you!

YES BUT SCARLETTE WITH A SWORD IS AMAZING

Holy shit, Eight.

Holy shit dude.

I hope Scarlette isn’t really dead.

Apparently she is. F█ck.

There’s hugs, though. Hugs are always good.

DOCTOR WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING

COME BACK HERE THIS INSTANT

OH SHIT SCARLETTE FAKED HER OWN DEATH

And she’s still pretty great, too.

How very convenient for you.

EXTREMELY OMINOUS.

Phew. I’m glad this book is over. It was just as exhausting as the previous one, although in completely different ways.

[italicwatches]

My Hero Academia, season 2 - Episode 38

Alright, that’s paperwork in finally. Now, let’s move forward. It’s My Hero Academia, episode 38! Here we GO!

-We begin where we left off…And Tomura wants these assholes out of the bar. Kurogiri encourages at least hearing them out, especially if someone like Giran with an excellent reputation brought them here…And Giran also properly introduces his guests.

-First, the murder-loving high schooler, who’s currently on the run as a prime suspect from a series of bloody deaths. Meet Toga Himiko! She is super enthusiastic about getting to kill people. She wants to become as infamous as Stain, and then usurp him and take his spot as the biggest, scariest, killingest motherfucker in the room! YEAH!

-Look, even Tomura is freaked out by her. TOMURA. Do I need to say more?

-And then there’s stitch over here, or rather, Dabi. Who’s a very firm believer in Stain’s ideology. And holds his real name close to his chest…Also, Tomura is really starting to dislike all of these Stain worshippers, as he decides to just rot them all to dust! So out come his hands, and Dabi’s hands, and HImiko just busts out some knives, and Kurogiri has to get all the children to play nice-nice. Man I just feel sorry for this guy now. He’s nothing more than the Evil Babysitter for this fucking team.

-Anyways, he tries to get Tomura to realize they can use these two…But then Tomura just stomps off in a huff. And even Giran realizes he’s way too much of a handful to worry about, as Kurogiri has to ask Giran to hold these two at the ready for a bit. Tomura just needs time to come around, but he’ll agree they can use this pair very well. Just give it a little time.

-Opening!

-And we’re back. So the people who didn’t pass their practicals are all full of sorrow and despair, since they’re now doomed to summer school. Though at the same time, nobody really knows what the scores are going to look like…

-Which is when SHota arrives…And reveals that everyone gets to go to the training camp! The ones who failed the practical, which includes Cellophane since he got taken down, managed to pass their written…If only by the skins of their teeth in some cases.

-And given the training camp is a training camp, well, the people who got their asses beat in the practicals need it most of all. Also putting the fear in their hearts was all part of the plan! Tenya despairs at having been lied to, even though he passed. …Also, the people who failed will still get extra lessons at the camp.

-Of course, when everyone gets talking, they realize most of them don’t actually own the stuff they need for training camp. Soon…Mall trip? Mall trip! They’ll all go together and do a big huge group run! Also Kirishima insists Katsuki comes, but he says no. Also Shoto has to pass because he’s got to go visit his mother, something he does every weekend now. …You’re a good kid, Shoto. A damn good kid.

-So skip to the mall trip! Where Deku has never been to this big-city mall before and it is way the hell better than anything back in his little podunk town. Covering different body types, different Quirk expressions, baseline fashions, and just tons of possibilities. …Oh and they get noticed by the crowds after their awesome sports festival showing.

-And Momo and Kyoka are hanging out together and suddenly the shipping of those two makes sense. Also Tenya is being…Very Tenya. But eventually everyone decides to break loose and then gather back up…

-And when it’s all done…Ochaco and Deku realize they’re the last ones still standing here. And then their brains both break like eggs. Ochaco would have been fine just a few days ago but fuckin’ laser belly got into her head and now she has to fleeeeeeee!

-So Deku finds himself totally on his own.

-…I mean until a totally normal guy in a totally normal black hoodie comes up on him that’s totally not Tomura in any way. Totally.

-Iiiiiiit’s TOMURA as Deku finally recognizes the voice, and realizes four of the man’s five fingers are on his throat. Here. In a crowd. With nobody else. No warning. All Tomura would have to do is drop his middle finger down with the others and Deku would die right there. And even if he could get away, get room to work…

-Well, his options are few, as Tomura invites him to go sit down for some tea. Some very threatening tea.

-Episode 38: Encounter

-Flash back to a few minutes ago. Tomura ended up in the mall, trying to clear his head, looking at all the people without a single care in the world…Some controversial mall shop, the kind of place that’d be selling “WWII memorabilia” here in the States, even has fucking Stain cosplay clothes up for sale, that’s how little fear he managed to really conjure once he was caught…And the people who want to follow in Stain’s footsteps are here for the killing, not for the twisted justice.

-A twisted justice that Tomura can’t even see the difference in, the difference between what he does and what Stain tried to do…And that’s when he spotted Deku.

-And now here they are. As he just wants to talk. So play it natural, Midoriya, if you want to keep your throat. And in this crowd…How many people here do you think have lethal Quirks, kid? How many can only live life by believing it’s impossible that anyone would actually try to kill? How long do you think it would take anyone to actually properly respond, if he just started killing? You’d sure be dead. And a lot of others, too, before anyone could actually do anything. Sure, a Hero would be here fast…But not, fast, enough.

-So, Deku has only one choice. He forces himself to relax. To breathe. To go along with Tomura to sit at a bench, and chat.

-…Cut to Tomura mostly just venting about how much shit sucks. You know here I was expecting a bunch of big villainous monologuing but I think he legitimately just needed to fucking tell someone “All these assholes are ruining shit for me” and have someone hear it. You know he was behind the Nomus that same night as the Stain attack? But no, instead of upstaging the asshole, he just got turned into page five footnotes. It sucks, you know? That guy’s just pretending to be full of justice, but he’s just destroying things he hates…Do you even see any difference, huh?

-Meanwhile, Ochaco is trying to convince herself that she doesn’t want to go shopping with Deku or anything, b-baka. …Give it up, Ochaco, you can’t do tsundere. She insists she’s going back to just go apologize for being weird, and that she doesn’t want to do stuff with Deku at all…

-And downstairs, Deku is forced to admit that yeah, he sees plenty of difference. You and Stain are both killers. You’re both villains. But Stain, he at least understands. He can at least put together what Stain was trying to do, and see the logic path, even if he doesn’t agree with it. He saw just enough of himself in Stain, to see a man where hero worship went wrong. But you…You’re just rampaging. He can’t even understand the method to the madness with you.

-That’s when Deku realizes he might have just said far, far, far too much, and he’s about to die. But Tomura puts it all together, and finally realizes what he was missing. The linking part. It’s All Might. The symbol of peace. The symbol birthed all of, all of this. And you. And Stain. And made everyone think the whole world is safe, even though he knows far too well it isn’t, and so it all comes together. The method to the madness. He needs to be aiming for All Might…And his grip tightens around Deku’s throat, as Deku struggles to breathe…

-And that’s when Ochaco finds them. And realizes something, is, not, right here…Deku panics, tries to keep Ochaco away, and Tomura is up and gone. …Follow him and he starts taking out children, Midoriya.

-Deku’s left gasping for air…But he glares into Tomura’s back, and wait. Wait, Shigaraki Tomura! What’s your master after? What is All For One planning?!! …He has no fuckin’ idea. Watch your back, kid. Next time they meet, it’ll be a real fight.

-And then he’s gone, his mind clearer than it’s ever been…Stain thought he was a man without ideals or conviction. But he had all the conviction he needed right here, as he pulls out one hand, and knows he has to take down All Might…

-In the aftermath, the whole incident got reported, and a huge investigation was done, and Deku was able to give some information to the police…

-Information that connects some dots, but nowhere near enough to actually catch the guy. And the investigator can only praise Deku for managing to keep things from getting any worse. Your staying calm is why everyone in that mall got to go home, kiddo. You did good.

-After their chat, well into the night, is when No Might arrives, having been so very worried about Deku when he heard what happened…And Deku has something he has to ask. Something from what Tomura said. Have you ever…Have you ever failed?

-…More times than he dares count. More times than he could ever admit. How large is the world? How large is even just the country? Someone is probably injured right now, or in danger. And sure, there might be other heroes coming for them…But there might not be. Despite everything, he’s only human. He can only do so much. People have died, and their last words were begging a hero to save them. Begging him to save them. It’s…It’s just a statistical fact. But…It’s all that, that means he has to be strong, has to put on a strong smile. Because the only way he can go on…The only way anyone can go on…Is believing their presence made things a little better. That even if he can’t be everywhere, his existence as a Symbol of Peace can help tip the scales.

-Of course, the officer says how All Might has a perfect record of actual action, has never failed to save anyone who was still alive at the time he arrived on the scene…But just one look at his face. That’s not true. That might be the public record, but All Might has watched death. There’s no way he hasn’t.

-But enough of that. Because Deku’s mom is here for him. And of course she’s so utterly terrified of what could have happened to her baby boy, her poor heart unable to take this…They’re both taken home by another officer, leaving No Might and the investigator alone…

-And they got lucky this time. It was a coincidental meeting, one that neither Deku or Tomura were prepared for. It could have gone a lot worse. And the next time, it probably will go worse. …You need to consider leaving UA. You don’t have to actually do it, but…Consider it. And whatever happens…They have to bring All For One in this time. They have to make damn sure he can’t hurt anyone else.

-Eventually, it’s a proper closing ceremony for the first semester. Deku’s endured a lot, as have they all…And they all have a lot to get strong enough to face. The training camp is awaiting, and it’s only the first thing…To say nothing of all the other things some have to chew on. Like Tenya, going to the hospital again to see his brother’s slow recovery through. Or Shoto, staying with his mother late into the night. Or Deku, on his own, running across that beach he cleaned up with his own two hands…Only for No Might to be there with a bottle of water and a helping hand. Because when you boil it down, everyone’s fighting for something…And everyone has someone at their back.

-Meanwhile, over to All For One, who’s quite enjoying seeing that spark of conviction in young Tomura. He’s taken in Dabi and Himiko now, seeing them as useful tools at last…The boy has a lot to learn, but he just might be able to succeed All For One…As yet another Nomu cooks in its vat…

-Fin.

Shiiiiiiiiiiit. That was…Fuuuuuuuuck.

And that’s how we’re ending the season.

-Now you might be asking, what about season 3? Am I doing it? …Not right now, I’m not, no. It’s not done yet, and I am not double-dipping. I’ve tried that and I nearly broke. No, we’re going to let it cook for a little longer. Plus, quite frankly, I want to get a couple more small shows in before we dive into another big blast…And I’ve still got tokusatsu to chew on. So there’s a lot to do. But next time, I think we’re going to…Hrm…What are we going to do? …Well I’ll figure out something, I’m sure. So hope you’re ready for something that’s a surprise even for me, next time! Wait for it!

[bakechochin]

The Book Ramblings of February and March 2019

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There - Lewis Carroll I am a jammy fucker, and so when faced with all of the editions of Alice in Wonderland that I could have bought, I had to go with the deluxe edition of The Annotated Alice, because it’s big and fancy and I could get my fill of cheeky secondary reading from it. However, upon purchasing it I realised that there is definitely a line that needs to be established when it comes to analysing books like this, and you’ll have to forgive me for repeating some of my thoughts on Peter Pan in this ramble, because my thoughts are much the same for both texts. Unlike Chesterton, who fought against the scholarly intellectualisation of Carroll’s works, as well as giving us the great quote on the subject, ‘Alice is now not only a schoolgirl but a schoolmistress’, I think that there can be benefits for reading Alice with a scholarly eye, especially when focusing on Carroll’s own life and outside influences of his that may have explicitly affected the writing of the stories. (Brief side note, I’ll stick to referring to the author as Carroll as opposed to Dodgson in this ramble, for simplicity’s sake). Whilst I do think that there are a lot of annotations in this book, which I will consider representative of fields of study done on the subject of Alice, only vaguely relevant and interesting in a detached way from the overall narrative, just additional embellishments to the reading rather than explicitly making the stories better to read, I’ve still got time for them because such extra tidbits of information are interesting in their own right. Of course, sometimes the information tidbits aren’t as interesting as what Carroll did with them - why would I care to read the sensible proper versions of verse extracts that Carroll changed into nonsense verse when it’s the nonsense that’s far more entertaining? - but, again, it has its use. What I do have qualms with are the annotations attempting to over-intellectualise the nonsense aspects of the story with real-life physics or mathematics application, retroactively attributing theories and shit to Carroll’s formulation of his nonsense and judging the nonsense by the sum of its (supposed) parts, and of course it’s awful when the annotations spend paragraphs upon paragraphs comparing the twenty billion different drawings of Alice within the framework of Carroll’s hatred of crinoline fashion. That shit can bugger right off. But let’s actually talk about the stories. These stories are, if not the first, than certainly the definitive examples of literary nonsense, and what proved most interesting to me was how said nonsense specifically manifested itself for comedic effect. Alice’s straightforward thinking and no-nonsense attitude (no pun intended) to all the kooky shit around her is always fun, and this book deserves kudos for its bold strides in the direction of really dark comedy in a children’s book. Similarly to a lot of people, I was familiar with the Alice nonsense before reading it, thanks to the 1951 Disney film and the sheer ubiquitousness of the stories’ content in pop culture, but it didn’t make it any less fun to read. I know that this is far from a novel takeaway, but there’s some things in a written text that a film just can’t capture; the writing has a fantastic way of being able to gloss over Alice’s low moments to firmly cement her as a fearless protagonist who accepts all the challenges thrown her way head-on, whereas the film needs to cover every low point in the story with heartstring-pulling poignancy. This is helped greatly by the fact that we know that everything will turn out alright in the end, either because the tone conveys it or because Alice explicitly tells us; there’s strife and peril along the way, but there’s no real risk of the whimsy giving way to any real danger, and so the story can just revel in its nonsense. Reading how Carroll describes all his fun Wonderland nonsense is, of course, incredibly enriching and fun; going into the story, I was expecting a lot from such well-known characters as the Caterpillar or the Cheshire Cat, and was subsequently surprised to see how little they actually figured into the overall story, but this gave way to the inclusion of scenes and nonsense I hadn’t seen before, like the tart debacle in the Queen’s Court. I was advised by a friend to leave it a while between reading Wonderland and the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, because the novelty of the nonsense would lessen were I to read them one after the other, and whilst I agree with his advice I feel that there is so much overlap of content between the two stories (especially considering how the film adaptations pick and choose story elements from both stories) that the new story wasn’t the completely novel experience I was hoping for. Whilst Wonderland didn’t have much of a story structure, with events unfolding and characters appearing as the story went along, there is more of a structure to Through the Looking Glass, however loose it may seem. This structure is that of a chess game, a fact I am left in little doubt about on account of the annotations giving me a constant fucking running commentary of the game’s progress, a progression which only ties into the story in terms of the characters’ idiosyncrasies in a humorous way once or twice in the whole fucking story. I know very little about chess, so any complex nonsense surrounding that fell way the fuck by the wayside when I was reading this, and therefore I was grateful that the usual Wonderland nonsense persists; my favourite encounters are the ones that reflect Carroll’s academic interests and experimentations, including a really interesting discourse on semantics and nominalism held by by none other than Humpty fucking Dumpty. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: YES

The Third Policeman - Flann O’Brien Nonsense writing is a fun concept to me, but my introduction to the genre, and indeed my full understanding before reading this book, was limited to texts by Carroll, which, don’t get me wrong, are of course great nonsense texts, but are familiar to us on account of how ingrained they are in pop culture, and thus you go into them knowing what to expect. I had no fucking idea what to expect from this book, and what I got was great. The story follows a chap with no name getting embroiled with a station of bizarre policemen, a vague setup into which is slotted in subplots about a league of one-legged men, inter-dimensional maps hidden on the ceilings of innocuous bedrooms, colours that make one go mad, and a conspiracy involving men taking on the attributes of bicycles and vice versa. This is supplemented with our narrator linking the banal sights and sounds around him to the speculations on said subjects by the insane savant writer de Selby, leading to pages upon pages of footnotes talking about de Selby’s ideas on bottled darkness or the world being shaped like a sausage, and all the contrasting and fucking ridiculous critical responses and hypotheses about said de Selby nonsense. I don’t need to tell you that this is all fucking amazing stuff. Not only is it always fun, it is described frankly and without laughing at itself, and while there is a lot to keep one occupied, it never gets overwhelming (or at least, the density of nonsense content in the prose never weighs on one’s brain in an information overload). The story is short, but dense with nonsense as mentioned above, and the fact that the few events that do progress the plot occur without warning nor aplomb is perhaps forgivable, because honestly the plot isn’t really the point as much as it is a vague backdrop for the nonsense at hand. All the way through it we have our nameless narrator, who challenges the farce around him but not incessantly or obnoxiously, and has a great patience for the shit he has to endure, greeting every new slab of ridiculousness with a polite nod and a smile; it’s very easy to align with the narrator without feeling like your interests clash with his. What I will say about this book is that, whilst it is purportedly many different things, from a murder mystery to a love story to an allegorical tale of guilt and despair, the sheer quantity of its bullshit means that it cannot be any of said things effectively. As a murder mystery, the plot hook that sets the pieces in motion for the circumstances of the murder is swiftly forgotten as the story barrels onwards. The love story element, whilst being ridiculous because it’s between our narrator and a stolen bicycle, is just one minor element of our narrator’s journey and is only dwelled upon for as long as it takes for the story to travel onwards to the next wacky plot thread. And as an allegorical tale of guilt, any attempt at inspiring guilt or sadness or whatnot is immediately offset by the knowledge that you’re reading a book with sentient bicycles and robes made of woven wind and policemen who refer to a difficult-to-solve problem as ‘an insoluble pancake’. This point does, however, bring us to the ending, which I will not explicitly spoil, but I will say that a) it does come as a surprise, but b) it pretty much juxtaposes the spirit of the entire work, and as such I thought it was a bit of a cop-out (no policeman-related pun intended). A thought-provoking cop-out that came as a bit of a shock, but a cop-out nonetheless. WOULD I RECOMMEND: HELL YES

Complete Stories - Clarice Lispector I like to review books based on whether I have personally got something out of them, and I am subsequently at something at a loss with this collection; as much as there is to recommend in the short stories of Lispector, they’re really not what I, or indeed those who know me, would consider to be ‘my thing’, and so my recommendations for the book may come across as a wee bit disingenuous. But let’s talk about these stories anyway. Lispector’s thing is incredible prose, almost prose poetry in some stories; it is florid and it is evocative and it is captivating, describing the emotions and thought processes of the narrator characters with such zeal and passion and complexity and verbosity. On this basis alone, I can recommend her stories, and presumably also her novels, to which I understand follow the stories in similar ways. However, I myself am loathe to pick up a novel from Lispector, because I find her short stories draining enough; I don’t mean this in a negative way, please simmer down and let me finish. These are incredibly dense short stories, with pages upon pages breaking down and analysing thoughts and feelings, snapshots of life extrapolated on and made to seem like powerful life-changing moments, the grand momentous prose depicting something as banal as a misinterpreted situation or a moment of embarrassment as cataclysmic disasters or mind-boggling enigmas to be contemplated by the finest philosophers. Only once could I sit back and laugh at this (the story ‘The Chicken and the Egg’, if you’re interested); for the rest of the time, I was fully and unequivocally invested in the strife and troubles described in these stories. But that’s not to say that they don’t take a toll. It took me quite some time to read this anthology because, were I to sit down and read these stories one after the other, I feared that the emphasis, the fucking punch that these stories had would become saturated, and it would just be a weary slog through turgid prose. I asked my friend (i.e. the bloke who gave me this anthology) why he considered the novels of Lispector to be some of the best he’s read, and he said that he loved how Lispector could pack seemingly everything into the world, every issue and matter and question and philosophy, into such small events; I won’t argue that Lispector excels at this, but I will protest having to read an entire novel’s worth of it, because I don’t have the patience nor the willpower. Anything else that I can think to say about the stories pales in comparison to Lispector's major strengths, but I’ll say what I’ve got anyway lest anyone were to accuse me of half-arsing these rambles. Some of the stories are unflinching examinations of the darker side of human nature, whilst others sacrifice this rumination for succinct twist endings and a black comedy tone; whilst I am fond of these stories, it can be a tad misleading or even anticlimactic when some stories set themselves up as examinations of curious human nature only to change course at the last second for the sake of the comedy twist (see ‘A Chicken’ for a good example of this). Though I scoffed at the suggestion of such in the introduction, believing it to be too much like base-level GCSE-tier literary analysis, the focus (and to an extent style) of Lispector’s works do noticeably change as she gets older; her earlier works are often first-person stories about love and confusion and vanity, but by her collection Covert Joy her stories are often framed around nostalgic or formative experiences. I prefer Lispector’s earlier stories; they’re more representative of the amazing storytelling I’ve been gushing about for this entire ramble, whereas her later stories are told like wistful recollections, good in their own right but not what I think of when I think of Lispector. I’ll recommend my favourite stories (in the order that they were printed in my collection), with the caveat that not all of these stories are good because of the reasons outlined above: 'Obsession', ‘Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady’, ‘A Chicken’, ‘Happy Birthday’, ‘The Smallest Woman in the World’, ‘The Dinner’, ‘The Solution’, ‘The Fifth Story’, ‘Covert Joy’, ‘Remnants of Carnival’, and ‘Where Were You At Night’. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: YES

The Warden - Anthony Trollope I was a tad ill at ease as I started this book and started discovering some startling truths, most notably that I had been deceived once more into reading something out of my comfort zone. All I knew about Trollope going into this was his misplaced pride in his disgusting beard, but the introduction to the story cheerfully informed me that Henry James had referred to his ‘complete appreciation of the usual’, whereas Carlyle had more scathingly called him ‘irredeemably embedded in commonplace, and grown fat on it’. I was here for larger-than-life characters embroiled in a grand scandal in a sleepy cathedral town, perhaps some boisterous near-deaf old men or some juicy satire about lascivious priests, but I’d only gone and signed up for a quiet and relatively uneventful novel of everyday folk embroiled in quiet affairs! What a fool I am! However, whilst I worry that by saying this I am resigning myself to walk down the long path of boring realism-centric literary classics that I have long reviled, I’ve got to admit that this book is really rather good. Trying to describe the plot may very well deter any prospective readers in much the same way as it initially repelled me, but the general gist of it is a scandal coming to light (or, more accurately, being somewhat fabricated and blown out of proportion) involving the distribution of charitable funds in an almshouse in the quaint cathedral town of Barchester, and the story follows the main people who become embroiled in the affairs, either because they started it or because they’re under threat by it. You’d be forgiven to gloss over this as a load of old banal quotidian twaddle, but where this book shines is in its storytelling. The narrative voice is warm and affectionate, the characterisation is fucking stellar, and the story getting into the minds of its characters with every encounter and fantastically describing how events unfold for different people is all bloody incredible. It is perhaps the warm and inviting quality of the storytelling which results in this not being the most effective of satirical texts, because satire requires you to step back and think about what you’re reading and why it’s funny, whereas beyond recognising a few real-world allusions (my favourite of which is Mr Popular Sentiment, Trollope’s less-than-complimentary imagining of Charles Dickens), you as the reader think and react along with the characters rather than from a lofty distanced position, and the material that you find funny is funny in-world rather than necessarily because is aptly reflects real-life folly or works in some other meta-textual way. The warmness of the story which, at its heart, is a story of an old man trying to do right by his morals and his friends, doesn’t really allow for the most dramatic of plot resolutions, and indeed this book displays some rather odd choices in its pacing of such plot resolutions. Things are established as relatively chaotic in the storyline, with different characters with different motivations striving away and characters with the same motivations approaching their problems in different ways to overcomplicate the affairs at hand, but ultimately there is little payoff for all these hectic antics. The law suit that sets the plot in motion is established to have been poorly founded and generally worthless from the get go, which isn’t a problem in of itself because the titular warden’s guilt about the matters of the law suit are well-founded even if the law suit is not, but the law suit is dropped without fuss and without any serious consequences around halfway through the book, despite all the elements at play and the goings-on behind the scenes that led to the law suit being dropped. The warden’s story ends without fuss or without anything particularly dramatic happening, save a few heated debates and incredulous blustering figures imploring him to reconsider his choices, and overall just seemed a bit empty because of the lack of any real stakes. The actual ending was at times very poignant (and without any real clue as to how things may be resolved), and at times a tad rushed to tie up its loose ends and get in a bit more quaint narration endearing the characters of the story and speaking regrettably of leaving this story to face times to come; I suppose this somewhat reflects the book’s content, if perhaps losing sight of the life-affirming nature of it, and it is if nothing else bittersweet. By fuck it’s going to make me read the next book in the series to see what happens to these lads next, because hell yeah there’s a series of these. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YES

Dead Babies - Martin Amis I was cognisant of the preponderance of texts that I’ve been reading recently being all warm and powerful and life-affirming, and therefore I decided to read this and Wilt for a mindless black comedy experience. This was perhaps not the most mind-numbing of reads, being a rather fucked up book, but it’s a bloody good read regardless. Amis’ writing is absolutely incredible; his strengths lie in giving life to abstract scenarios and feelings with evocative metaphors, and characterisation that is complex and beautifully written. With this writing Amis paints a picture of a fucked up urban setting, a setting that I would attempt to succinctly summarise but know in my heart that to try would only be to amateurishly ape Amis’ own fantastic scene-setting descriptions, and so I will instead merely say that it is fucking good. It works because it’s a very grim setting, but it is also curiously sensationalised, while still being grounded in its grim content; there are gangs of cold calculating men who perform elaborate synchronised morbid atrocities, there is a pseudoscientific drug-mixing station with different uppers and downers to chemically alter or emphasise any aspect of a person’s character, and one of the main characters is a grotesque dwarf with nails digging into his feet from shoddily-constructed platform boots and a collection of grotty vintage porn magazines. Everything is primal or gross or part of some sort of beautiful chaos, and it’s an incredible hyperbolic depiction of society’s seedy underbelly, reminding me at times of A Clockwork Orange. The powerful narrative voice lends the grotty and grotesque setting a touch of high-mindedness or high society flare. The characters make up a fun array of misfits, from the pathetic to the neurotic to the braggart to the horrifyingly fucking villainous, and with a small cast of characters we get to learn everyone’s opinions of one another and how they bond, which was surprisingly well done considering how diverse and angsty all of them are, and pleasantly surprising that they don’t all just genuinely hate each other because of how different they are from one another. The narrative voice also helps out here; its direct commentary on the main narrative reminded me of Trollope, but this is not narration to warmly speak of the characters or implore the reader to think upon them positively, but rather to remark with grim resignation the actions of the characters or the shitty direction their lives are taking them. And now we come to the tricky subject of comedy, a tricky subject because some people will no doubt argue that this book is too fucking awful to be considered as such. The setup of the story seems like Trainspotting, a grim world periodically ameliorated with little scenes of light-heartedness and comedy, and at the start of the book it’s easy to laugh at the vileness of of the characters’ actions. As the book goes along, however, the narrative moves from the overall setup of a debauched weekend of dissolute youths to being determined by the dramatic actions of the characters, spurned by simmering emotions (and sometimes catalysed by large quantities of experimental drugs) and often ending very very poorly. It is here that some of the more disgusting plot points of the story occur, and yet interjected into it are elements of farce so ludicrous that you have no recourse but to laugh at them in the face of all the horrors surrounding it. Or maybe that’s just me. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YES, IF YOU’RE IN THE MOOD FOR SOME FUCKED UP SHIT

Wilt - Tom Sharpe This may well be my shortest book ramble to date, and indeed I deliberated whether or not it was worth writing, simply because it is another example of books that I’ve liked in the past and continue to enjoy. There’ll probably be a bit of a crossover between this ramble and my ramble on Roald Dahl’s short stories, as their black comedy content has much in common. This is a relatively short book that takes you on a pretty wild fucking journey of farce; ridiculous situations and misconstrued motivations abound, and even from the confines of a prison confinement our eponymous protagonist is able to escalate the plot like you wouldn’t fucking believe. The general premise, such as it is, revolves around an uneasy marriage of a domineering wife and a put-about unmotivated husband who humours himself with elaborate dark fantasies of murdering her, and the plans of actualising these fantasies (catalysed in part by some villainous Americans) spirals into all sorts of wacky shenanigans that I shan’t spoil. I went into this book at a friend’s recommendation, and at around one hundred pages in I commented that there are parts of the story that veered too far into plain old cringe, and that overall the story seemed to be shaping up to a rather vengeful story written as the author's attempt to vent frustrations. My friend said that Sharpe was ‘playing [me] like a pipe’, and so I persevered, and can subsequently say that all such thoughts are swiftly quashed by the rest of the book, which is an absolute tour de fucking force of fantastic time-wasting and nonsense that leaves all that real-world cringe or vengeful thoughts of worldly injustice behind. And of course we get a satisfying life-affirming ending, because this is that sort of book; everything’ll be resolved in the end with smiles and ironic twists. This isn’t exactly a book with incredibly florid prose or life-changing writing, but what it is is a book written by an incredibly smart person, which is instrumental in shaping this book’s fucking fantastic (and often dark as fuck) comedy, contributing some phenomenal turns of phrase, and as a source, much like Dahl, of a hundred throwaway references to miscellaneous academic tidbits that Wilt employs in his endlessly hilarious time wasting. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: YES

Other shit that I read that I couldn’t be arsed to ramble about: Shakespeare’s Local by Pete Brown (conspicuously NOT about Shakespeare’s local pub but nonetheless about the long history of my all-time favourite pub (The George in Southwark), funny and informative (if noticeably written by a man who is not a specialist in some of the subjects he talks about, for people who are also not specialists in said subjects), would recommend if you can go down to the George and have a pint there while contemplating the history) and Green Men and White Swans by Jacqueline Simpson (a great and informative book with a subject matter seemingly tailor fucking made for me, greatly enjoyed Simpson’s none-too-subtle asides about peoples’ over-intellectualising of pub names, was mildly disappointed that my own home town has got fuck all in the way of cool folklore-inspired pub names, would absolutely recommend alongside a cheeky bev).

[texanredrose]

Tex, if you do one of those buisness aus, so help me world, there better be a lesbean in a suit.

*bangs fist on table* I FINALLY FINISHED THIS… well… the first part, at least. Thanks to @fallintolife for developing this universe with for me. Also, @cass-burger and @maburito, here y’all go. Business AU now affectionately nicknamed Joint Venture. And thank you, anon, for the suggestion!

Yang sighed, squinting at the computer screen and rereading the proposal for the fifth time. Something felt off about it- entirely too accommodating, no blatantly ambiguous wording, no footnote to turn to an obscure page for some loophole- and she’d become adept at noticing when all the standard hallmarks of greed were absent. It often meant a more cutting clause lay buried somewhere in the text but she couldn’t, for the life of her, find it. Normally, she’d stop any task that threatened to get her this frustrated, but she simply couldn’t, not with the project deadline looming on the horizon. The entire floor consisted of harried office workers doing their best to finalize the details and she- being the CEO’s intern- had her own responsibilities to ensure everything would go off without a hitch. Which meant she had to find the blasted thing, and the quicker the better.

Probably anyone who’d known Yang Xiao Long in high school might be absolutely shocked at the turn her life had taken. A tri-sport athlete who got a full ride on her boxing skills wouldn’t strike many as the type to become a paper pusher, yet here she sat, pouring over contracts for Remnant’s largest dust company, and busting her ass every day to make sure she impressed her boss, which was no small feat.

Winter Schnee, eldest of the Schnee siblings and current CEO, redefined the concept of a ‘take no shit’ attitude. Tall, elegant, with piercing blue eyes and a perpetual resting bitch face that could make even the blonde’s usual brash confidence falter, the woman radiated an aura of unquestionable power and authority unlike anything Yang had ever seen before. Her business acumen tended towards the ruthless side, a by product of military training that served her well in many other ways, too, but she could definitely be compassionate and treated her employees fairly- even the Faunus ones, a decision that broke the mold from her father’s practices and earned her quite a bit of flak from stodgy old curmudgeons on the board at first. But Winter was a compelling force, especially when she had her younger sister and COO, Weiss, backing her up. Where the elder had laser focused remarks and an imposing demeanor, the second born child of the Schnee line had a razor sharp wit ready to explode at a moment’s notice. Between them, they could intimidate just about anyone into bending to their whims, and had used that clout for several social gatherings to walk back their father’s previous policies and improve trading and commerce within their sector, relinquishing the iron clad grip they had on the monopoly to allow new blood to enter the scene.

When it came right down to it, that glimmer of hope constituted the sole reason she’d even taken the internship at all. Ever since they were kids, Ruby had two distinct passions: being the hero and tinkering with weapons. What better way to combine them than open a weapons shop that catered to everything a Hunter could want? Although she had her own Hunter License and could go slay the Grimm to her heart’s content herself, four years at Beacon Combat Academy had given her a real drive to create better weapons than the hand-me-downs she saw her classmates using, improving the Hunters’ overall capabilities and hopefully one day eradicating the Grimm threat entirely. Her little sis always had a pretty good head on her shoulders, able to see the bigger picture, and she had no desire to jack up the prices so they could get rich. Just enough to break even, or maybe a little extra, would be enough for her, considering the rather ludicrous sums she got from the kingdoms for killing Grimm.

However, seeing as Ruby dedicated herself to learning about weapons and Grimm and Dust, if she wanted to see her little sister’s dream come true, Yang would have to schlep through the boring stuff that businesses entailed, like negotiating contracts, learning business laws, and getting a sweet reference and/or deal with the biggest Dust company on the planet. That meant finding this thrice damned clause if it was the last thing she did!

“Knock knock.”

Yang blinked, concentration broken even as a smile came to her lips. She’d recognize that voice anywhere. “Who is it?”

“Please, could we not-”

“Is it a broken pencil?” She pushed off with her feet, causing the office chair to swirl around so she could look at the entrance to her little cubicle. Her desk sat on the west side of the floor, directly in front of her boss’ temporary office, with a little partition blocking her view from everyone else. The opening to her small space was on the side facing Winter’s office door, a thick plane of one-way glass separating the CEO from everyone else. Usually, they would be at the very top of the building- the floor that housed only Weiss’ and Winter’s offices and yet managed to take up the entire floor anyway- but both the CEO and the COO had decided the very nature of this particular project and all the moving pieces required more direct supervision. The move had caused quite a bit of fuss among the poor bastards who worked on the floor, but they eventually came to realize that the big, scary, Ice Queen and Ice Princess duo were more concerned about getting the job done without running anyone ragged than obsessing over the cleanliness of one’s desk.

Despite knowing full well how this would end, the Faunus’ ears perked up in curiosity. “A broken pencil?”

“Ah, nevermind.” She shrugged, an apologetic smirk on her lips. “It’s pointless.”

Almost immediately, Blake rolled her eyes, a hand coming up to cover her face as she sighed in deep disappointment. “Why do I set myself up for these things? After four years of living with you…”

“One would think you’d have developed a sense of humor!” The blonde finished for her best friend, laughing while sitting back in her chair, trying her hardest to be mindful of her skirt. Personally, she preferred suits or dresses- if she wanted to be really fancy- but a little variety in her wardrobe couldn’t hurt her chances, not that they were particularly noteworthy anyway. Crossing one leg over the other, she cocked her head to the side and gave the Faunus a once over. “Trying something a little different today?”

Between the two of them, Blake always tended more towards the traditionally feminine side. Maybe it came from how long she wore a bow in her hair to hide the feline ears marking her heritage and her penchant for eye shadow but, for whatever reason, dresses and skirts seemed to be more up her alley than Yang’s when it came to formal attire. Yet, today, she was sporting a rather flattering black pantsuit with purple pinstripes ensemble that made her eyes positively pop. Not to mention she wore her usually long, flowing black hair up in as tight a bun as her mane could be wrangled into, exposing her slender neck, made all the more obvious when she shrugged. “I thought it might work.”

The blonde let out a low whistle, lilac eyes scanning her best friend’s form for a second time. “You saying she hasn’t done anything with you wearing that?”

“Nothing,” the Faunus replied with a weary sigh. “I’m beginning to give up hope.”

They were both in a pretty terrible situation. On the one hand, they needed their internships to go well for obvious reasons- Yang had a sister’s dream to make reality and Blake had the hopes of her entire family riding on securing a good standing relationship with the new and improved Schnee Dust Company. That’s a lot of pressure to be the best interns the CEO and COO could hope for, respectively. But on the other… their bosses were hot. Colder than ice in their business dealings, imperious in their looks, downright flawless in their beauty, and Winter got every gear in the blonde’s motor spinning at full speed. The same could be said for Blake in reference to Weiss, the Faunus having lamented more than once that, had they just gotten the other’s position, perhaps every work day wouldn’t feel like walking a razor’s edge between their responsibilities and their desires.

It would be easier if they could be overt. Drop a few pick-up lines, bat their eyelashes, maybe even be bold enough to outright ask the women on dates. But, seeing as that would create a conflict of interest- something neither could afford given their aforementioned responsibilities- they were left to count lingering looks and brief brushes as their only victories. Conversely, if there was no interest to be found, then at least they would know; Yang had been through the wringer a time or two for hitting on straight chicks, so she already had a patented apology system worked out that resulted in nine women out of ten being flattered by her interest, even if they didn’t swing that way. Blake, always being the more hesitant- she would say ‘selective’- of the two, hadn’t quite reached that point, and hoped things never got to it.

“Don’t say that, Blakey.” She propped her head up on one fist, resting her elbow in the chair’s armrest. “Our internship’s almost over. There’s still the 'go for broke’ plan, if everything else fails.”

“I don’t know, Yang.” Crossing her arms over her chest, the Faunus leaned against the partition, careful not to crinkle the manila folder in her off hand. “Maybe we should just quit while we’re ahead. Go… I dunno, hit the bar or something.”

“Now, I know you’re getting into your own head when you are the one suggesting we spend a night in a loud bar instead of a book store.” She frowned, getting up and putting a consoling hand on her best friend’s shoulder. “Keep your chin up, Belladonna. Even if you’re right and they are straight, or just not interested, we aren’t going out to get hammered like a couple of clueless chumps.”

“Oh, is that right?” One black brow arched up. “And what’s your plan for getting over this entire mess?”

“Simple.” She smiled. “We grab to go from that sushi place you like, hunker down in my living room, and eat our weight in ice cream while watching Love Letter from Vale on repeat until we both slip into a food coma or fall asleep crying, whichever comes first. Like perfectly well adjusted adults.”

Although she was expecting some manner of ridiculous response- hey, she did know who she was dealing with, after all- Blake still let out a surprised laugh, amusement shining clear in her eyes as she shoved at the blonde’s shoulder. “You goofball. Can’t you take anything serious?”

“Hey.” Her smile stretched wider. “Where’s the fun in that?”

From the other side of the one way glass, Winter Schnee watched her intern closely. Perhaps a little… too closely.

She sat behind her temporary desk, having appropriated an unused one from a vacant corner office rather than have the movers they kept on retainer haul hers down from the top floor. Her relocation didn’t affect any meetings she held and purely served to make communications between the various project leads, their teams, and the executives easier, given how much was riding on the whole deal going through. One would think that, as the premiere Dust supplier in Remnant, they could dictate their terms to the kingdoms to suit their needs, but ever since she and Weiss had forged a new way ahead for their family’s company, throwing their weight around to get their way was reserved for the causes that truly deserved it, not day-to-day business.

One would think that managing the company would consume all her hours, every thought put towards second guessing and triple guessing the movements of anyone who might stand to profit if the SDC took a nosedive, but she actually had a surprising amount of free time. The team working for her operated like a well oiled machine, the brightest minds applying themselves wholeheartedly to tackling any task she threw their way, and with her sister ready to check over her shoulder with a fresh set of eyes, they effectively recovered from the severe hit their 'radical’ policies caused, sitting now with a higher profit margin and cleaner consciences than a year ago, and their diversified employee base had wrought many, many returns.

Unfortunately, there came a steep downside, too, that caught her entirely by surprise. And- her eyes narrowed as a familiar figure approached her intern’s desk- she wasn’t the only one.

Already, her hand moved to intercept the call she knew was coming, hitting the blinking speaker button before the ringer could even sound. “Why must you vex me so?”

“Because I cannot focus and these expenditure reports won’t audit themselves,” her sister replied, the edges of her voice sounded frazzled. “It’s your turn to be distracted.”

“I can’t say I blame you, Weiss.” Her lips turned down at the corners, eyeing the Faunus’ clean, crisp suit as she stepped up and knocked on the partition separating her intern’s desk space from the rest of the floor. They’d thought offering internships to the local universities would be a good step in building rapport among the up-and-coming business leaders of the new age, one free of the archaic traditions of their father’s time. It certainly helped open their doors to aspiring Faunus graduates, many of whom applied to the specialty departments and improved efficiency in unexpected places purely from longstanding habits adopted on Menagerie. Limited resources spawned unique methods of minimizing waste and, all in all, the improved diversity was a boon in every way… except when unexpected complications arose. “But I’m not sure you’ll be able to get much done if you divide your attention between the audits and talking to me.”

“Sister, I don’t ask much or often, please.” The shuffling of papers and clacking of a keyboard could just barely be heard over the phone line. “I’m quite certain I’ll explode at this rate and you aren’t faring much better, I’d imagine.”

She wished she could play the role of the calm, patient, supportive elder sister at that moment. However, both of them knew better than that. “Very well, you first.”

“She’s perfect.” Weiss lamented over the phone, practically growling out the words. “She listens to The Sterlings, she has strong opinions and she’s exceptionally articulate in expressing them, she’s always current on world events, she has no problems speaking her mind, her ears are adorable, I think I’ve gotten lost in her eyes at least three times today alone, and have I mentioned that she’s possibly the most kindhearted person I’ve ever met?”

“Maybe once or twice,” Winter replied, despite there being no need. It helped distract her from the display just outside her office, on the other side of the glass, where her intern just happened to be flirting with Weiss’ intern. The blonde was laughing about something or other, mirth shining bright in those vivid lilac eyes as she leaned back, one leg crossing over the other, bringing that nearly skin tight skirt just a bit higher up muscled thighs. The modest heels she wore made her calves look fantastic while standing, true, but even seated there was such latent power on display, strength packed and ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

“Blake Belladonna is intelligent, charming, sweet- the list goes on, and ends with 'entirely straight’.” A dull sounded from the other side of the line. “Why? Just… just, why?”

“I have sincere reason to doubt that.” The woman pushed back from her desk, stalking around it so she could lean back against the hard wood, arms crossing over her chest as her gaze never once deviated. How her sister could continue to be so emphatic about such an obviously incorrect conclusion remained beyond her comprehension. “Have you never watched them interact?”

The question itself served no point except to vent the frustration mounting within her as she watched Yang leaned back in her chair, lilac eyes flicking approvingly over her fellow intern’s form. On paper, she didn’t look too terribly different from any other applicant for the internship- a student athlete with the physical prowess to become a full fledged Huntress while also possessing a keen intellect, maintaining high marks throughout university while also earning a few sports titles on the side- but it truly came down to the part of Winter that personally enjoyed disproving age old adages. The moment she saw the attached photo of Yang Xiao Long, with her luscious, wild blonde locks, shining lilac eyes, and beautiful smile that distracted from the slightly crooked nose, the CEO recognized the untapped vein of potential for the SDC and like-minded businesses lying in wait. For far too long had the stuffy elite thought a pretty face could hold nothing more than meeting dates and perhaps a to do list, leaving positions like CEO open to only the masculine or those dictated by birth to bear the title; to have someone so conventionally attractive working directly under her would surely give the younger woman a leg up on the competition, encourage her to persevere where others might falter. She certainly had the determination, that much was evidenced by her grueling course schedule piled on top of her workout routine.

“I think you might be reading too much into it.” Her sister sounded nearly despondent. “They seem more friendly than romantic.”

Both interns shifted, their postures relaxing as always. They were so… comfortable around each other, and she didn’t miss the way Yang got up and reached out towards Blake, contact between them a staple of every interaction. She bit her lip lightly for a moment, watching as whatever momentary unpleasantness they were discussing gave way to more laughter. “They’ve got to be fucking.”

“Winter!” Her sister- caught between frustration and scandal- snapped across the line. “For one thing, that’s hardly a fitting topic for discussion and, quite frankly, I know that’s not the case.”

“And what makes you so certain?” Winter watched as the blonde leaned back against her desk, crossing her arms just under her ample chest and highlighting not only the soft curves concealed by her blouse but the rigid muscles of her arms as well, the fabric pulling taunt against her skin. Something her counterpart seemed to notice too, reaching out to lightly pull on one cuff.

“I found out Blake’s boyfriend’s name is Sun.” Weiss sighed. “They’ve been together a while, apparently.”

The woman hummed, mulling over this new information while she watched, the vile sensation curling in the pit of her gut at once entirely obvious yet something she didn’t want to name quite yet, if only so she could convince herself she was above such pettiness.

“I’m serious, Yang, you’re going to rip that shirt,” Blake said, shaking her head as her ears laid back. “Maybe you should lay off the curls for a little while.”

“Aw, c'mon, I can’t disrespect the armory like that!” She laughed, quickly curling both hands into fists as she pumped her arms- only briefly though. The Faunus wasn’t wrong, after all, and she could practically feel the seams protesting her movements. “But, yeah, I grabbed the wrong one this morning. Too busy looking at what matched, totally missed the fact that I outgrew this one years ago.”

“It’s a shame; the cream color really brings out your eyes.” Her lips quirked into a smirk. “But I’m guessing your luck is about as good as mine.”

Yang sighed, crossing her arms again. “Yeah. I mean, I get it, but I thought I would’ve gotten at least a second glance when I came in this morning.” Wanting to distract herself with the cursed blessing of her boss’ obliviousness regarding every flirtatious attempt she made, the blonde hit on another common topic they discussed. “Hey, how’s Sunny Boy doing, by the way? He found a job yet?”

“He’s got an interview this week, actually. I had to let Weiss know that I might be a little late; I promised I’d give him a ride.” Her expression pinched into one of mild annoyance. “I really hope this one goes well. He’s a great friend and all but I’m not sure I can put up with his habits as a roommate much longer. I swear- if I find one more banana peel in the shower, I’m going to kick him out.”

“Aw, you don’t mean that.” She cocked her head to the side, lowering her voice to strike a balance between supportive and chiding. “You two have been besties for twenty years and he hit a rough patch. Even if it drives you insane in the meantime, you’d let him keep crashing on your couch until he’s back on his feet.”

“You have more faith in my patience than I do.” Blake chuckled with a shake of her head. “At any rate, if this falls through, he’s applying to more places today. I told him to stop wearing open shirts to the interviews might improve his chances but… you know how he is. Plus, he keeps inviting Neptune over, and I’m not sure how much more 'bro-tastic movie marathons’ I can take.”

“Well, if you ever need to retreat to somewhere with less testosterone, you can always crash at my place.” She smiled wide. “It would be like college all over again!”

Her best friend rolled her eyes fondly. “If you’re done being ridiculous, Weiss wanted me to touch base with you about our latest trip to Mistral. She’s auditing the expenditure reports and we need to verify our charges.” Her eyes narrowed. “You did keep the receipts, right?”

“Yeah, I got 'em here, somewhere.” Yang turned around, shuffling through the papers on her desk before snapping her fingers, some niggling reminder popping into her head to check the bottom right drawer of her desk. As she leaned over to sift through it, she flicked her hair over her left shoulder, so she could glance back at the Faunus, who was also leaning over with her ears cocked forward in interest. Somewhere in those amber eyes, she could see the urge to joke about the blonde’s less than stellar organizing system, but Blake refrained by the barest margins. “Oh, hey, when’s that big, super important meeting with the kingdom council, again? Winter’s given me, like, three reminders and I keep spacing the date.”

“It’s next Tuesday.” A little chuckle fell from her lips, the interns exchanging a knowing look. “They’re going to be insufferable over the weekend, you know.”

“Eh, we’ll talk 'em through it.” She smiled, pushing to the side the uneasiness that immediately rose in her. The moment they’d finalized this report, she’d have to dive back into the contract; there was a huge difference between knowing she needed to turn in her annotations on Thursday and realizing that the deal would be sealed the following week. The blonde would have to double down hard on dissecting the text if she wanted to be on time- which meant Wednesday morning at the latest, because Winter would pour over it for two days herself before accepting it and moving forward. It took a while for her to understand that the double- and triple-checking of everything she handed in stemmed not from a lack of confidence in her abilities on her boss’ part but, simply, the fact that every Schnee tended towards obsessive perfectionism that could probably qualify as intense anxiety, if they would ever own up to it. Thankfully, both interns had learned a thing or two about dealing with the executive’s tendencies, and each had their personally tailored list of how to reassure the CEO and COO that every ’t’ was crossed, every 'i’ dotted, and every stone set in place. “If there’s one thing we can actually get across to them, it’s that we’ve got this deal on lock.” At least, they would, no doubt about it. But first, the receipts, which she’d found tucked into an envelope in the drawer. “Alright, so, what do you have?”

Winter bit into her knuckle, pinching her brows together and growling around the digit. “They have to be dating.”

“Blake. Has. A boyfriend.”

She watched the blonde bend over, searching for something within her desk, and the way her counterpart stepped over, looking down as if to offer assistance but refraining. The CEO couldn’t see where her gaze remained trained but she wouldn’t blame the Faunus for sneaking a peek at the way Yang’s skirt rode up just a little, clinging to the curve of her rear. Nothing indecent, of course; while she wouldn’t be so delusional as to claim Yang particularly cared for 'classy’ actions, the woman had the sense enough to conduct herself in an appropriate way at all times, though she did… bend the rules every now and again. Like throwing a wink in at the end of an affirmative response, or making absolutely abysmal puns that never failed to put cracks in Winter’s armor, or nodding off during a meeting when it ran longer than two hours- a few dozen moments flitting through her mind’s eye where Yang had exhibited some action, some mannerism that would’ve driven her father to frown severely at best or fire the blonde at worst. Each contributed to the larger picture, this portrait of a woman who would stop at nothing to achieve her ends and do it all with a smile on her lips and a swagger in her step, brimming with confidence while also showing vulnerability freely, like just then when she ducked her head at a comment Blake made. The woman’s sense of humor, her charismatic demeanor, her firm embrace on the duality of organized chaos, a sharp mind hidden beneath firm muscle and a disarming smile. She could be exacting when the situation called for it but clueless and clumsy the next, vacillating between strong enough to move desks around herself and dropping things for apparently no reason other than them slipping from her grip- she was just so dynamic and vibrant. How could one person be so much, all the time?

“And I refuse to entertain the notion she could be unfaithful. It’s just… not like her. Unless- perhaps it’s one of those… polyamorous relationships? The two of them and this… Sun character? That’s a thing, right?”

The elder Schnee bit harder into her knuckle as the two interns seemingly began pouring over receipts and the file Weiss sent over, Blake leaning over Yang’s shoulder as the two examined everything on the desk. They stood awfully close together and one could make the excuse it made comparing the receipts to the report easier, but Winter could see the way the Faunus leaned against her counterpart’s frame, allowing her weight to rest against the woman’s slightly larger form. That sort of contact spoke of an intimacy that went far beyond coworkers or acquaintances, indicating they’d spent many hours in close proximity to one another, invading the other’s space without so much as a word of complaint.

Naturally, as lovers would.

“That would make everything fit…” Weiss sighed, more shuffling of papers and clacking of keys accompanying her voice. “But it still seems like a stretch. It’s more likely you’re reading their interactions entirely wrong.”

Something must’ve caught her intern’s attention, the blonde going stock still for a moment before hurriedly pushing the little receipts aside to claw through the papers on her desk, desperately searching for something amid the chaos that seemed to constantly surround Yang Xiao Long. She found it almost immediately, hunching her shoulders as she examined the papers intensely, all the while her counterpart straightened up and backed away a step, knowing when to let the woman work. Seeing Yang in action- a whirlwind of focused intent bearing down on whosoever was foolish enough to stand in her way- usually brought a smile to her lips, recognizing in the other woman the same determination that she herself had towards accomplishing her tasks. They went about it different ways- usually, Winter would begin issuing orders in her crisp, military fashion while the blonde seemed more inclined to attend to things personally- but she could respect such passion in motion.

She probably looked even better when working out, that same fire lighting in those devastatingly attractive lilac eyes.

“You stopped listening to me, didn’t you? Or did you mute me again?”

Pulling her knuckle away from her mouth, the elder snapped off a quick response, ignoring the non sequitur inherent in her words. “Weiss, do you have any idea what Yang is wearing today?”

There was a moment of silence before the frustration came back to her sister’s voice. “Winter, I know full well you can see what Blake is wearing, so you tell me- are either of us really faring any better than the other?”

Gritting her teeth, the CEO watched as her intern suddenly stood straight up, fist pumping the air before leaning over and pulling her counterpart close enough to plant a kiss on the Faunus’ forehead. “No.”

“Yang, what was that for?” Blake raised a quizzical brow, more than adjusted to her quirks by this point but curious nonetheless.

Honestly, she was far too ecstatic to really care about how ridiculous she looked right then, dancing in place while holding their receipt from the Mistrali hotel the four had stayed at during their business trip. “I finally figured it out! Why this contract seems too good to be true!” Interest caught, the Faunus leaned over, looking at the paper herself. “See, the council has a standing contract with a specific hotel chain for a discounted rate, but I didn’t make the connection until just now!” She pulled the relevant section of the contract over so her friend could see, setting the hotel receipt they were both just reviewing next to it. “I figured, no big deal, ya know, we don’t stay overnight when the meeting’s within the borders anyway, but they’ve got branches all over Remnant under different names.” She pointed towards the trademark in the bottom corner of the receipt, the same name as on the contract. “According to the contract, part of our obligation would be to honor the kingdom’s standing agreements, so we’d have to use this chain whenever we traveled to see the other mine sites or negotiate with the other kingdoms, and we’d be liable for any charges incurred.”

The Faunus hummed. “Not seeing the issue yet.”

She quickly started scrabbling through the mess of papers, looking for the one she needed. “Well, that contract has a specification- where did it, oh, here we go- see? Only a certain amount of nights are allotted per year before the council has to pay double to offset labor and accommodations. But with how often we travel-”

Feline ears perked up as realization dawned in amber eyes. “We’d burn up the allotments and they’d shunt the excess charges to us or sue for breach of contract.”

Yang smiled, tapping her finger against the paper to accentuate her point. “All this knowing they’ll get a cut of the pie anyway from taxes, because the main chain is just two blocks down Fifth.”

“That’s sneaky.” Blake’s lips lifted in a small smirk, begrudging respect reflecting in her expression. When navigating the treacherous minefield that constituted the cutthroat business world, one had to acknowledge the more clever pitfalls when they appeared, or risk getting fooled later on down the line. “And it wouldn’t be for another six months at least that we realized it, which would be after the initial exit clause closes.”

“Exactly!” Grabbing a red pen from the holder on her desk, she circled the hotel chain, quickly skimming down the rest of the contract and circling various other vendors as she came across them. “I bet if I did a little more digging, I’d find they have other contracts that would screw us over like this, too. I knew this was too good to be true!” Finally, she could assemble a decent review of the contract and pass it off to Winter, allowing the CEO to begin outlining the drafts she wanted for amendments to protect the SDC’s interests. Pride and excitement coursed through her, practically sending her into a tizzy purely from the rush of picturing the look on her boss’ face when she handed in the report. While the blonde might not be able to catch the woman’s eye in a romantic sense, earning a small smile for a job well done quite nearly made up for that. “Thanks for the boost, Blake; talk about good timing!”

Her friend chuckled, holding out her hand. “A lucky coincidence. Here, give me the receipts and I’ll-” A buzzing stopped her short, one hand digging into the pocket of her jacket and pulling out her scroll. As amber eyes read over the text she’d received, her shoulders and ears slumped. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What’s up?” Quickly scribbling out an arrow to mark her place, Yang turned her attention to the Faunus, concern pinching her brow.

With a frustrated sigh, Blake gave her an annoyed look, ears creating a flat line across the top of her head. “Remember when you brought the dog back to the dorms that one time?”

“You mean Zwei? My dog?” She couldn’t help the grin that came to her lips. There were few times during their friendship when she thought the Faunus might consider outright murdering her in her sleep, and bringing the family dog to college for a visit certainly topped the list.

“Yes.” She flipped the scroll around. “Look what Sun just sent me.”

Blonde brows raised in surprise at the little tabby kitten, quite obviously kneading the comforter on the feline Faunus’ bed mercilessly. “Aw, but it’s a cute kitty!”

“And my apartment doesn’t allow pets!” With an aggravated shake of her head, Blake began furiously tapping out a reply. “I swear, he doesn’t think things through, ever. The last thing I need right now is getting slapped with a warning for breaking the complex’s policies.” Her scroll buzzed again and she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Great, now he’s guilt tripping me.”

“C'mon, Blakey, just tell him to take that kitten over to Neptune’s or something; if he really wants to keep the little guy, he can pick 'em up after he gets his own place.”

“I’m trying.” Blake pressed her lips into a thin line. “He knows I want a pet, but right now isn’t a good time. I need to find a new apartment first, and-

She straightened up, nudging the Faunus’ shoulders with her fist to pull her attention away from madly typing into her scroll. “Hey, how about pizza at my place? I could bust out the old '64 and we could play some Smash Brothers like old times. Get your mind off the roommate troubles.”

For a moment, it looked like she’d be shot down, but slowly the stress seemed to slide away. “You know what? That sounds great.” Yang could hear and see the door opening out of the corner of her eye but kept her attention focused on her friend’s relaxing posture, a reassuring smile on her lips. “Your place, say seven o'clock?”

“We could just leave straight from here!” Her smiled pulled wider but she tried to cut off the conversation quickly, considering Winter was just now stepping out of her office, likely to follow up on her assessment of the contract. The CEO didn’t seem to mind if she discussed personal matters at work from time to time, but there was an unspoken rule that she had to keep on top of her daily tasks in the process. “That work for you?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Yang.” Blake gave her a grateful smile before collecting up the manila folder and the receipts, turning to nod politely at the CEO as she stepped out. “Ms. Schnee.”

The blonde probably should’ve acknowledged her boss, too. Unfortunately, every synapse in her brain shorted out at the same moment as her eyes grew wide. She had already seen the woman that morning- and experienced the exact same mental overload of 'oh wow she’s hot’ and a continuous mantra of 'oh shit oh shit oh shit’ being the only things in her head- but now she wished she’d prepared herself mentally for when it would, of course, inevitably happen again.

Winter Schnee always looked good, that much the blonde had accepted as one of those things that shouldn’t be possible yet was, but today she looked killer. A crisp white suit in pseudo-military design, with the pants tucked into thigh high black boots and a coat held closed by a single button at her waist, the long tails trailing behind her while the front opened up, practically putting the dark blue vest on display, especially the way the ensemble framed her chest. And if that wasn’t enough, she even had a little yellow tulip bud tucked into the breast pocket, just above the Schnee’s emblem stitched in cool grey, a splash of color that drew the eye… well… she should probably look up. White locks were bound in a bun atop her head, not quite as severe looking as the framed photographs of her time in the Atlesian military but damn close, bangs framing those sharp, piercing blue eyes that fell on her with all the weight of a Goliath, the sheer power of her aura silencing any and every thought- even her ability to breath for a moment.

“Miss Belladonna, Miss Xiao Long. Please. Don’t let me interrupt.” The words, spoken in that pointed, well enunciated tone she used whenever she was trying to hide anxiety, snapped the blonde out of her stupor rather effectively. Here they were, a week out from an important deadline, and she was getting lost in how hopelessly attracted she was to her boss!

“Oh, M-miss Schnee, uh, I was just working on the report on the council contract,” she said, turning around and quickly scrabbling together the various papers. “I need to do a little more digging, but Blake helped me find an indemnification clause they tried to sneak past us.”

“Regarding Dust shipments, I assume.” The CEO’s lips lifted slightly in a smirk; the SDC hadn’t missed a shipment deadline since the sibling duo took the reins of the company, the amount of terrorist activity working against them drastically reduced once they started making headway in protecting their Faunus employees.

“Actually, third party vendors.” She put the relevant pages on top of the stack and turned it over to the now surprised and curious woman, who immediately set about reading through the red marked passages. “Guess the color scheme confused them; it looks like they’re trying to set us up to be their sugar mamas.”

Mentally, she smacked a hand to her forehead, somewhat mollified when she caught sight of Blake doing that exact motion behind the CEO’s back. The self admonishment by proxy would have to do for now, seeing as blue eyes immediately flicked up to meet her gaze. “Sugar… mamas?” Her pale lips pressed into a thin line- full lips, kissable lips, lips she really wanted to taste- before she nodded, favoring the blonde with a small grin. “So it would seem. Excellent work, Miss Xiao Long. When can I expect the full report?”

“After lunch,” she replied a bit quickly, a tad bit too eager and belatedly realizing that she still had to cross reference all the vendors, following the bread crumbs throughout all of Remnant and double checking everything through kingdom records. “A-at the earliest, I mean. But, uh, definitely by the end of the day, Ma'am.”

Winter frowned, handing back the red inked contract. “I’m afraid that won’t do.” The blonde blinked, worry lancing through her chest at the thought she might’ve let her boss down. “There’s entirely too much left for you to sort through for that to be feasible, not unless you work through lunch and stay late, which you’ll be doing neither.” Her gaze briefly flicked over her shoulder to where Blake stood. “I’ll let Weiss know that both of you are to be out of this building by four thirty at the latest, seeing as you have… plans.” The pause before the last word seemed laden with something, though Yang couldn’t begin to decipher what with how quickly Winter continued. “As for lunch, Weiss and I have reservations at a restaurant just a flew blocks over. I will be amending them to accommodate the two of you joining us.”

The words brooked no room for argument and Yang let out a surprised chuckle, trying very hard not to react too strong this time. She had to keep her cool for just a bit longer; their internship was just a few more weeks. “Well, I- I appreciate that, but, uh, we wouldn’t want to impose-”

“Nonsense.” The CEO waved off her concerns. “I know quite well that if I leave you to your own devices, you’ll work through lunch without even realizing it. Someone has to ensure you eat.”

“Thanks boss.” A wide smile stretched her lips, lilac eyes flicking over to her best friend. It wasn’t often they spent lunch with their respective executive, so the prospect appealed to both of them; maybe in a more relaxed environment, they could push the boundaries just a little. Because, honestly, she really wanted to know the woman’s favorite color, purely because if things got down to the wire and she thought she stood even a ghost of a chance, she wasn’t about to waste her 'go for broke’ shot on anything less than her absolute best. “What’s the place called? I can-”

“You can continue with what you were doing.” Winter nodded, looking over towards the Faunus, who had schooled her expression into one of polite interest the moment she noticed the motion. “Both of you can. I will attend the arrangements myself.”

With that, the woman disappeared back into her office, shutting her door and allowing the best friends to relax entirely. At least, in theory, anyway.

Naturally, the blonde said the first thing to come to her mind. “If I just… laid myself out in front of her door like a rug, do you think she’d step on me? Because I suddenly think I might be into that, all memes aside.”

“You dork.” Blake sighed, rubbing at her temple. “We’re hopeless. Sugar mamas, really?”

With a heavy sigh the moment the door closed, Winter trudged through her office until she reached her desk, bracing herself against the sturdy wood with both arms. Several emotions swirled in her head and tugged her every which way- a strange pain in her chest, a touch of nausea, a weakness in her knees- but she managed to compose herself.

Mostly.

“Well?” Weiss’ anxious voice intoned from the speaker. “Did you invite them to lunch?”

That was the plan. A last minute plan hatched to get a little space, perhaps open avenues to casual conversation that had nothing to do with work. Learn a bit more about their interns while maintaining their professional facades- dinner meetings, after all, came with the trade- and they were foolhardy enough to think it a good idea.

And it backfired spectacularly.

“Yes,” she said, turning around and slumping against her desk, crossing her arms over her chest and proceeding to do something she hadn’t since she was eight. Winter Schnee, CEO of one of-if not the- most powerful companies in Remnant, eldest daughter, decorated military officer, certified huntress… pouted. “They have a date tonight.”

Silence.

“They what?” Her younger sister’s voice, caught between incredulous and heartbroken, filled the space briefly but long enough to drive the static from between her ears.

“I overheard them finalizing their plans. They’re going to Yang’s after work.” Marshaling her thoughts, the woman shook her head slowly, coming to terms with this new information. She couldn’t even take solace in being right; instead, she just felt… hollow, empty, and that wouldn’t do. She wasn’t a child, after all, and the corporate world held too many dangers for her to afford such distractions, anyway.

“Oh.” A long pause. “I was… so sure. Maybe…” The listless shuffling of paper- she could imagine just how lost Weiss looked right then, trying to puzzle through her conflicting emotions. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. At least- at least they seem… you know… good for each other.”

“Right.” She straightened up, smoothing out her jacket before walking around to reclaim her chair. Although the… distraction wasn’t a pleasant one, she now felt entirely capable of throwing herself back into her work. “However, I think taking them to lunch is still a good idea. Despite our personal failings in remaining professionally detached, they’ve been two of the best employees we’ve ever had working directly under us.”

“That’s… true.” Her sister seemed slower in recovering and, honestly, it didn’t surprise her. Comparatively, Weiss had less experience in such matters, lacking the years her elder spent in the military meeting new people and maturing in that sense, remaining dedicated to her studies in order to take the COO position at such a young age. The woman was the same age as their interns, after all, and had held the position for two years already; there simply wasn’t time for much of a personal life. She’d fleetingly admitted to an unobtainable crush or two over the years- the famous huntress Pyrrha Nikos came to mind- but they were few and far between, always with the added benefit of distance and improbability to keep heartache to a minimum. However, she’d always been resilient, and she seemed to shake off the lingering melancholy after a few more moments to get her thoughts in order. “And their internships end in three weeks. Once we finalize this agreement, we have the quarterly review and then we’ll part ways.”

“Right.” Winter nodded for her benefit alone, already setting her fingers to the keyboard and diving back into the slew of emails awaiting her attention.

“Right.” A few moments of silence in which she thought the line would disconnect were followed by a small, somewhat defeated sigh of acknowledgement. “I’m… planning on getting a bottle of wine after work. Maybe two.”

“Get two, and double that order.” Her shoulders slumped ever so slightly, though she straightened them immediately. She would not allow herself to become bogged down by useless self pity. “We’ll both need it.”

Blake took a surreptitious breath, steeling herself before knocking on the door to the COO’s office. Now that she had confirmed the expenses from their last business trip, Weiss could complete the expenditure report for the finance department and they could both move on to their next task for the day. While Winter and Yang focused their attentions on the impending contract, Weiss and Blake had taken on the standard day-to-day operations, and they still had to review the previous weeks reports from the various mines, not to mention pick which ones they’d be auditing for human- and faunus rights violations.

Her feline ears perked at the quiet but distinct order to enter, quickly slipping into the woman’s office and closing the door behind her. Behind the desk sat Weiss Schnee, second born to the family name, her off center ponytail peeking up and over the triple display screens occupying the majority of her desk space, the tapping of keys only interrupted by the occasional click of a mouse. They’d already spoken a few times that morning- quick notes about their to-do list, aggregating data for the audits, and clarification regarding a less important meeting later that week- but the Faunus still found herself mentally preparing for when she walked around to the side of the desk, allowing her amber eyes to fall on her boss. She didn’t favor the same strict, military style dress her elder sister did; more often than not, she wore skirts and dresses that swirled around pale, creamy thighs and ankles, dipping collars that accented the hollow of her throat and the curve of her-

“Is that the Mistral trip?”

Blake stiffened upon realizing she’d drifted off into her imagination again, silently cursing herself. “Yes, Ma'am. I just confirmed everything with Yang.”

A quick expression passed over the woman’s face- despite being Weiss’ intern, she’d yet to unravel the mystery of her boss’ quick expressions that never seemed to last long enough for her to discern, if they even appeared at all- before she accepted the manila folder, opening it up and quickly glancing at the papers within. “Thank you, Miss Belladonna. Is there anything else?”

The Faunus frowned, trying valiantly to keep her ears from twitching. Weiss wasn’t normally this curt after she’d had her morning coffee and certainly seemed a bit… friendlier before she’d gone over to check the receipts. The woman would at least look her in the eye, as if she truly held Weiss’ undivided attention for those precious moments, but now she felt more like a bothersome fly a second from being batted away. “Uh, did you… want me to get a status check on the Vacuon mines first? Or contact our Vytal branch office regarding their quarterly numbers?”

Usually, the woman would pause, look thoughtful, weigh the estimated time for completion against deadlines, accounting for timezone differences, and decide on a course of action- all in under a minute. This time, the reply was instantaneous. “We need the numbers; the status check can wait until after lunch.”

“Yes, Miss Schnee.” Without another word, Blake left the office, closing the door behind her and frowning. Rather than sit down at her desk and get back to work- wrangling the numbers out of the Vytal branch wouldn’t be easy, seeing as they often waited until the last minute and the reports weren’t technically due until the end of next week- but instead she leaned back against the solid wood, thinking back to just a few hours before.

She’d watched Weiss come in- white skirt swirling with every sharp step, the clack of her heels, those bright blue eyes softer than her sister’s but so entrancing, wait, focus Belladonna- but, now that she thought on it, the woman hadn’t had anything in her hands aside from her briefcase. No to-go bag from the bakery across the street, no pastry wrapped in a paper towel from home, and the doctor’s appointment she’d had that morning probably meant that she hadn’t eaten in a while, if at all.

Forgoing her desk, the Faunus strode towards the break room tucked into the middle of the floor, pouring a little coffee into a paper cup and tasting it herself. While it wouldn’t win any awards, the sharp bite was satisfactory, and she quickly added two packets of sugar and a splash of creamer to the cup before filling it nearly to the brim with coffee and swirling the concoction together with a stir stick. She grabbed a napkin and picked out a donut from the box sitting on a table- plain glaze, since the only other option was a bearclaw or some monstrosity layered with sprinkles- and went back to the COO’s office, carefully rapping her knuckles against the wood without losing either offering.

“Come in.” Pushing into the office, Blake quickly set about returning to the side of the desk and waiting for acknowledgement- the barest flick of those blue eyes her way- before setting down the coffee and donut. The movement seemed to be enough to prompt the woman to pause her work for a moment, watching as both items were set upon her desk. “What’s this for?”

“I… didn’t see you come in with anything this morning.” She took a step back, trying her hardest to will away the light blush rising in her cheeks while her ears trembled from the force of being held still. “It’s not good to skip breakfast.”

For a moment, Weiss did nothing but stare before eventually sighing. “You’re right. I was in a bit of a rush this morning.” She reached out to grab the donut and broke it in half, holding out one side to the intern. “But, here- you usually grab a snack about this time, do you not?”

“I do,” she replied, somewhat cautious.

The woman made a vague gesture, enticing her to take the offered half. “I’d rather not eat it all myself. We have a lunch arrangement soon, after all, and I don’t want to spoil my appetite.”

Her ears flicked, having caught a distinct consonant sound after the word 'lunch’ that her boss had quickly covered up, but she brushed it off as her nerves playing tricks on her. She hadn’t thought Weiss paid enough attention to her habits to notice she often ran to the vending machines about this time of day, if she hadn’t brought something in with her. Accepting the donut, she quickly took a step towards the door, seeing as her mission was complete. For the time being, at least. “I’ll go get started on those numbers.”

“Thank you, Miss Blake.”

The Faunus stopped, eyes flicking up to meet those steady, sparkling blue ones as her breath caught in her throat. Sure, it wasn’t quite as casual as when anyone else said her name, but… it was the first time the woman hadn’t been entirely formal. “A-anytime, Miss Weiss.”

For a moment, she’d thought the momentary distraction provided by the COO’s use of her name had just condemned her to losing her position entirely- really, calling the woman by name, what was she thinking- but those pale lips curled slightly into a little grin. With no reprimand forthcoming, she quickly left the office, once again leaning back against the door and releasing a deep, satisfied breath of relief. Whatever had the woman in a terse mood, she seemed to improve it, if only a little, which could only mean good things for their lunch da- the lunch their bosses would be treating the interns to, no doubt.

After she got the ball rolling on the numbers, she would text Yang to gush about the way Weiss said her name, unable to wipe the smile from her face as she sat down and got to work.

Within her office, Weiss watched the door close as her intern slipped out, releasing a breath she’d unconsciously held since she’d slipped up. Slowly, she lowered her forehead to the space between her keyboard and the edge of the desk, waiting for the dull thunk of impact before groaning, trying valiantly to ignore the way those amber eyes seemed to light up when she’d accepted the offering, when she’d crossed that invisible line in her mind between professional and personal by uttering the Faunus’ given name, when she seemed just so… happy about something in that quiet way she had.

Eventually, she reached the only logical conclusion left: these three weeks would be the death of her.

A business AU romcom starring Yang “Open Mouth Insert Foot” Xiao Long, Blake “Surrounded By Children” Belladonna, Winter “So Far In Denial She’s Drowning” Schnee, and Weiss “Needs Remedial Romance For Dummies” Schnee. 

I’m getting Weiss and Yang in suits before I let this AU go, I fucking swear it.