#and so was Billy but like. your high school aged son almost died

[grandwretch]

I think hcs were the Harringtons are fine, actually, are cool or whatever, but I genuinely don't know how you justify "good parents" accepting their son was nearly beat to Literal Death twice in one year and apparently not doing a damn thing about it

[martiandmichelle]

Me during a "blue" photo session. This is a God awful photo because, for some reason, in the middle of everything, I decided I needed a really good, deep stretch. You all know what that's like, right? You contort your body and say "fuck it" to the world until you get the kinks out. Well, that's me here, arms cocked, knees pointing in awkward directions, the works. But THE TITS still shone through.

OK, so that's my intro to what will be a kinda long post. (I wanted to give you something to look at before you went through the long read.) I need to make it a roundabout story but it's important and will kinda tie in to the one I started from the agency meeting.

So if you're completely offended by what I like to call "Relations with Relations" - RwR - or maybe more accurately "Sexual relations with relations" (otherwise officially known by a work whose first syllable is the opposite of "out" and whose second syllable rhymes with "nest" but begins with a "c;" yeah, you know what I'm talking about) than I suggest you tune out now. Otherwise, get yourself a nice cup of Joe, or glass of wine, or pint of beer, or whatever, and settle in for a totally sexual read.

(A side note: please don't hold me down to dates and names and whether or not I leave someone out. My body may look and feel like I'm in my 40's and now with my face lift, so do my looks, but my insides and brain are still 73 years old. Time in my brain is variable so dates have as much chance of being wrong as right. I no longer drive because I get lost - and because my boobs get in the way. I have no sense of direction. But, by God, I can read a movie script once and remember it on set. The brain is a weird thing.)

My first RwR happened a few days after my 18th birthday (God, almost 56 years ago!) when my 3-year older brother Chris, a big oaf of a man, not very bright but strong as hell, tried to rape me. He had a tiny small engine repair, small electonics repair shop in the middle of Nowhere, South Georgia and I would keep his books while I finished high school, what little accounts receivable he had. So it was early in my senior year of high school just after my 18th birthday that he came after me. I was already a DDD cup by then and he wanted them. I began to fight him off, as if I could, until it dawned on me: why fight it - maybe you'll like it. So I quit fighting and gave myself to him, both of us virgins. Well, I was spoiled from the beginning as the big klutz carried a 13 inch monster between his legs. For the next 4 years we had a torrid sexual relatoinship, especially after the rest of our family (parents and two sisters) moved away. We would fuck every morning before we opened his shop, during lunch, and all evening. He began selling me to his clients and friends and "his" business suddenly seemed successful.

It all came crashing down when I decided to find someone else so I could have children and he found religion. We began bitter enemies. Until about 4 years ago after his wife died. He decided he was merely human and not the second coming and came asking me for forgiveness - and forgiveness came with a big hug and a blowjob. Chris passed away last year at age 76.

May years passed before my next RwR. That was with my son-in-law and Michelle's then husband Phillip. Their marriage was falling apart as Michelle was as frigid as the ice in my water. My thinking was misguided and I hoped if I could satisfy Phillip's physical need then he would stay with Michelle and their two young kids, son Billy (4) and baby daughter Bonnie. I finally broke it off out of guilt. But remember two names on this list. That happened some 14 years ago.

The next RwR was with my niece, Josie, my youngest sister Marcy's daughter. She was having issues, especially sexual issues, with her husband and, as I tried to help her, it became clear that she was bisexual and had a burning desire to be with another woman, me in particular. I obliged happily. They eventually divorced, Josie got a series of breast enlargements, moved to Europe to do porn and got happily remarried. She keeps saying she's returning to the US, but not yet.

It was the following winter (2011, I think?) when one day my daughter Michelle came to me to do some sewing for her and her kids (I used to be damn good at sewing). The last thing she wanted sewed was the torn sweater she was wearing. She took it off and she wasn't wearing a bra, her huge (J cup tits - she was kinda heavy at the time) staring at me. To make her feel more comfortable I took my top off, too. I was much thinner than she so my H cups looked as big. She then admitted her problems with Phillip stem from her having very strong lesbian leanings and those leanings pointed to me. That day, I had sex with my daughter Michelle. Which, of course, led to me having sex with Michelle's wife, Maria, who you know well from this site.

About a year later Michelle set up a situation where my son Josh and she visiting me and she ripped my top off, knowing full well that Josh wanted me as much as she did. I was probably an "I" cup by then. And, well, Michelle was right. Josh and spent several years having sex every day until he got sick and was diagnosed with ALS. Josh died in November of 2019 and I still ache pretty much every day.

The rest of the RwR I'm going to list pretty quickly. There was my younger sister Rose (or Rosie) with whom I was very tightly bound physically if not emotionally - we never really saw eye-to-eye on anything. Then there was Chris's daughter, my niece, Becca, who moved in with us and is still a part of our lives and is also the one whose tits are as milky as mine. Then Becca's daughter, my grandniece, Zin(nia), again, still a part time lover of mine. Lastly, and I'm sure I've forgotten somebody (or somebodies) and two I haven't even mentioned here are my youngest sister Marcy and her husband Bryan.

So, in other words, I see no more boundary of having relations with relations than I would having sexual relations with anyone else. In fact, it's even sexier!

So that leads me to two weeks ago.

Often, when I have some down time, I'll go half way down the mountain from our residence to where we're building a studio. I'll wear something revealing to give the workers something to enjoy for all the hard work they do. So that day I went down there wearing some short shorts, heels, and a little tank top that maybe covered only the most delicate 25% of my boobs. I was talking to the supervisor when my cell rang. It was Roxy who was back at the house. She urged me to come back right away - that there was someone there I needed to meet with. Knowing Roxy and Kaatje and the others would never let a stranger in without plenty of reason, I agreed and took the 20 minutes walk back up the mountain.

When I walked through the front door Roxy met me with a queer expression on her face. I asked her what was wrong and she assured me that nothing was "wrong." She said there was somebody waiting for me in my study then she and Kaatje walked, unexpectedly, out the front door. Curious, I moved to my study.

There, facing a large poster of me nude on the far wall, lying on my side, my arm hiding my crotch but my huge boobs showing freely (it is my inner sanctum study after all), stood a man curiously dressed. All I could see was that he was wearing a dress shirt with, from my angle, nothing on the bottom. "May I help you?" I asked. And he turned around.

At that moment, had you slapped either one of us, our faces would shatter like cheap glass. There, wearing that dress shirt which was mostly unbuttoned and male short shorts with an impressive bulge up font stood my grandson, Billy, just graduated high school and just turned 18.

To be continued. . .

[mychemicalimagines]

Everything Changed-Embry Call-Chapter 8

Summary: A couple months before her junior year in high school finishes, something happened to the once normal Hayley Uley. Myth turns into reality. Not just for her, but for her older brother, Sam, as well. They have to drop everything they once knew for something they thought was only in bed time stories. Will things finally start looking up for once after this ‘blessing-in-disguise’?

Warnings: Cussing, Paranormal, Supernatural, Angst, Love, Bella-Bashing, Possible Smut (Please read Authors Note in Chapter 1 for Age Explanation)

Words: 5,738

A/N: Here is another chapter! I hope you enjoy! To Be Tagged: Message Me, Submit an Ask, Comment or Tag Yourself in My Bio!!

Third Person POV

Later that night, besides Jake, everyone is eating the food the girls made, sitting around a growing fire that Sam started an hour or so beforehand. Billy sits in his wheelchair with the forest to his back, starting the large circle. Old Quil sits on one side of him while Sue sits on the other side. The eldest three council leaders.

When Harry passed away, Sue joined the council, keeping the Clearwater name in the leading circle. Beside Old Quil is his grandson and the newest, fellow pack member, Quil. Jared, Kim and Paul sitting next to him, almost rough housing as usual, the female just laughing along. Beside Paul is Emily leaning against Sam, slightly cuddling. 

Hayley and Embry are next, with the female allowing her boyfriend to eat off her plate.They saved a spot for Jake, knowing that Bella would be showing up with him. Closing up the circle next to his mother is Seth, who is practically bouncing in his seat with all the excitement building in his stomach. 

They hear a car pull into the parking lot of the beach before Bella’s voice is heard to all the shifters.

“You sure this is okay?” She asks. “I really hate being a party crasher.”

“Technically, you’re a council meeting crasher.” Jake chuckles, trying to ease her anxiety a little. “See. The council leaders, Sam, Dad, Quil’s grandpa and Sue Clearwater. She took over for Harry when he died.”

“Okay, I should not be here.” She says, turning slightly but Jake stops her. 

“You’re okay. We…they thought it would be good for you to hear the histories.” He corrects himself. 

“The histories?” Her eyes widen. “The tribe's histories? Aren’t they secret?”

“We all got a role to play. And you’re a part of this. I mean, it’s the first time Seth and Quil are hearing them, too. But you’re the first outsider. Ever.”

“If I had known that, I wouldn’t believe you.” She looks up at him. “And would’ve dressed better.” 

“Jake!” They hear, causing them to face forward. 

Seth runs up toward them, almost like a puppy, a large smile on his face. 

“Hey, it’s about time you got here! Paul’s been hovering the grub. But, I saved you some burgers!” He continues.

“Good looking out, bro.” Jake smiles before looking at the female next to him. “Bella, this is Seth Clearwater, Sue’s son. One of the newest members of the pack.”

“Newest, bestest, brightest.” He grins.

“And slowest!”

Jake grabs the young boy in a headlock, both tumbling to the sand, laughing. Hayley smiles to herself, happy to see Seth being a kid, despite all the future pressure he’ll, no doubt, have on his shoulders. Sam whistles loudly, stopping the two shifters, knowing Billy wants to start. 

“Come on.” Seth grins. “Your dad’s about to start.”

The trio walk over to the fire, sitting down in their respective spots with Bella next to Seth. Billy looks around, mentally counting to make sure everyone is there before he begins. Everyone’s attention wholly on him, his voice commanding.

“The Quileutes have been a small tribe from the beginning but we’ve always had magic in our blood. We were great spirit warriors, shape shifters, that transform into the powerful wolf. This enabled us to scare off our enemies and protect our tribe. One day, our warriors came across a creature…” He says, looking around at everyone. 

To Bella, it’s as if the story was playing in the fire in the middle of the pack. She can picture every word he’s saying as if it were a movie playing right in front of her. 

“It looked like a man, but it was hard like stone, and cold as ice…Our warriors’ sharp teeth finally tore it apart but only fire would completely destroy it. They lived in fear, the Cold Man was not alone…And they were right. She took her vengeance out on the village. Our elder chief, Taha Aki, was the only spirit warrior left to save the tribe after his son was killed. Taha Aki’s Third Wife could see that he would lose. The Third Wife was no magical being, no special powers…but one. Courage.” He says, looking in the direction of each of the three imprinted couples.

The pack knew exactly who the Third Wife was. She was Taha Aki’s imprint. That’s what makes her so special, besides the lesson he is currently giving. Embry kisses his own imprint’s head before she nuzzles her face into his neck.

“The Third Wife’s sacrifice distracted the Cold Woman, long enough for Taha Aki to destroy her. She saved the tribe. Over time, our enemies have disappeared. But one remains…The Cold Ones. Our magic awakens when they near. And we sense it now, we feel the threat in our blood. Something terrible is coming. And we must all be ready. All of us.” Billy finishes, glancing toward Bella.

She has slight guilt in her stomach after hearing the story. Knowing that packs ancestors were killed by Cold Ones when she wants to be one herself. She knows this hasn’t changed her mind but it does give her some insight into her best friend’s history.

Another week has passed with no signs of the red-head or the random vampire that Jake and Hayley smelled in Bella’s bedroom. When the wolves and vampires have to switch out for their patrol outside her outside, there is no talking until the others have left. They have a truce but it is so tense, they swear they can cut it with a knife. 

That is what happened earlier when Hayley and Paul switched with Emmett and Alice. The two vampires stared at them before rushing toward their home. Emmett’s lucky that the truce was in place as well as Sam’s words of ‘wait till their feet touch the grass’. Hayley rolls her eyes and walks in her wolf form toward the front of Bella’s house. 

Her head snaps up when she hears the wheels screeching of Edward’s Volvo. She raises an eyebrow as the vampire rushes out of his vehicle straight toward Jake’s rabbit as he pulls in. Bella exits the car, holding her hand close to her body as if she hurt herself. 

“Not here, Edward. Please.” She begs her boyfriend. 

“If you ever touch her against her will again.” Edward snarls at her pack member. 

Hayley immediately phases back into her human form before getting dressed. What the fuck happened?

“Don’t do this!” Bella continues, trying to put herself between them. 

“She’s not sure what she wants.” Jake growls at the leech.

“Well, let me give you a clue.” Edward snaps at him. 

“Wait for her to say the words.”

Hayley rushes from the trees, gently moving Bella from between them. The human sighs in relief at the sight of the Beta.

“Shut the fuck up, both of you.” She growls, pushing between them. 

“Fine. And she will!” Edward glares, ignoring the female shifter.

She pushes them apart, deja-vu hitting her hard. “Just shut up! What happened?”

Jacob finally looks away from the leech as he licks his bottom lip. 

“I kissed Bella…And she broke her hand…punching my face.”

“What the fuck, Jake?” Hayley snaps, her voice rising slightly. “You know she’s in a relationship with this asshole. You can’t do that!”

“I wanted to prove…”

“I don’t care what you wanted to do! You don’t do shit like that!” She pushes his chest again. “Get your ass in your car and go to my house. Tell Sam what you did. He’ll deal with your punishment.”

“Hayley…”

“No, Jacob. Go, now!” She growls, glaring at him. 

He shakes his head before turning around, stomping toward his car. No one says anything as he speeds away from the house. Edward finally speaks up when the car is away from view. Despite her calling him an asshole, he’s glad she was there.

“Thank you, Hayley.”

She rolls her eyes and turns toward Bella. She doesn’t like the girl, but she didn’t deserve that.

“Are you okay?”

“My hand hurts pretty bad.” She admits.

“You did punch a wolf in the face. We’re practically indestructible.” She shakes her head, glancing up at Edward. “Take her back to your house.” She looks back at Bella. “I’ll inform Charlie you broke your hand on the rez.”

“Thanks.” She whispers, following her boyfriend to his precious Volvo.

“I need to start getting paid.” Hayley mumbles to herself as she walks up to Bella’s front door. “It’s like babysitting a bunch of sparkly and fevered toddlers.”

“Now, welcome to the stage, La Push High’s 2006 Class Salutatorian, Hayley Uley!” The Principal says before stepping back from the microphone. 

The entire gym erupts in applause with the pack, including Jared and Paul who are sitting in their own cap and gowns, being the loudest. Hayley blushes slightly as she walks up to the microphone, her speech in hand. Glancing around the audience, her eyes land on her boyfriend, who is smiling widely, proud of his imprint.

She is always going above and beyond for their tribe. Losing sleep so she can go on patrol and so she can finish her mountains of homework. This woman is the definition of a hard-worker. Embry puts his pinkies in his mouth and whistles loudly, causing her to bite her lip slightly. As the cheers slow down, her eyes meet her brother’s who is beaming with pride. 

He is so proud of his little sister. With everything that has happened in the last year, she stepped up and took her role as Beta seriously as well as made sure her grades were immaculate. She didn’t let their mom leaving them impede her studies and responsibilities. If anything, it made her stronger, more determined, and so full of perseverance, that Sam can’t help but be immensely proud of her.

Hayley fixes the microphone to her height before looking down at the speech she had written the night before.

“When we were five, they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Our answers were things like astronaut, president or in my case, the Queen I know I am.” She grins as the auditorium is filled with laughter for a moment. “When we were ten, they asked again and we answered - rock star, cowboy, or in my case - a vet. But now that we’ve grown up, they want a serious answer. Well, how about this: who the hell knows?” 

Loud hoots and hollers from her classmates, Paul being the loudest. 

“This isn’t the time to make hard and fast decisions, it’s the time to do what we want. Find ourselves. Take the wrong train, and get stuck somewhere. Fall in love…” She glances toward Embry who is grinning at her words. “Some of us may go on to college right away, or get our own places, and start our lives. Some of us may continue to live at home - for whatever reason - and annoy the hell out of our parents - or, my older brother, in my case, just as we’ve done for the last 17-18 years. But, at the end of the day. No matter what we do, where we go, it’ll be at our own paces, and what’s best for us in that moment of time. Change your mind. Then change it again, because there’s only two things that’s permanent. That’s family and the friends you met along the way. So make as many mistakes as you can. That way, someday, when they ask again what we want to be…we won’t have to guess. We’ll know.”

The entire gym erupts in applause once again as her words sink into every single person there, not just her graduating classmates. She grabs her piece of paper and folds it as she walks down to her seat, putting it in her dress pocket. They all listen to the Principal make the same exact speech he’s been making since he started working at the school.

When it’s time for the students to get their diploma, Hayley is one of the first people in line, due to her class title. 

“Hayley Uley.” The Principal repeats, turning slightly to put his hand out.

She takes a few steps toward him and shakes his hand, grabbing the diploma case from his other hand as her brother and Embry, as well as the rest of the pack including the two graduating, stand up and cheer the loudest out of everyone there. 

“That’s my little sister!” “My girlfriend did it! Hell yeah!” “Wooo! Go, Hayley!”

She blushes and walks past the Principal to leave the stage, glancing at the pack as she does. Her heart drops slightly when she sees Billy clapping happily for his Beta…without his son next to him. About ten minutes later, Jared’s name is called, causing Hayley to stand up and whistle about as loud, if not louder than he had for her just minutes earlier. 

He grins and accepts his diploma case in the same manner before throwing up the rock-star sign, causing his friends to laugh. Since Paul’s last name began with L, it takes a little longer to get to him but everyone in the pack cheers as if it’s been five seconds. His classmates were surprised he was able to graduate but not the pack.

With Hayley being there, she was always helping him with his homework and studying, this included when they were on patrol. She quizzed him more often than not, making sure he would be able to walk the stage. He’s thankful for her. Because of her, he proved his father wrong and proved he was able to do it.

Over an hour later, after the tassels have been moved and the caps have been thrown, Hayley rushes toward her brother, squealing as she moves.

“I fuckin’ did it!” She practically screams, jumping into his arms. 

Sam catches her, holding her close to him. “I’m so proud of you, Hay.”

“You’re the one person I want to thank, Sam. Without you, I wouldn’t be here.” She whispers, hugging him tightly. 

“I didn’t do anything. All I did was…” She cuts off her brother by leaning back and looking at him.

“You believed in me from day one. That’s what you did.” She says, tearing up slightly. “Even when mom gave up on me, on us, you never did. Not even for one second.”

Her words cause her brother to tear up a little himself, as he smiles softly before kissing the top of her head.“Congratulations, Beta. You deserve this.” 

Before any more words can be spoken, her imprint walks up and wraps his arms around her waist, nuzzling her neck slightly. 

“I’m dating a high school graduate.” He whispers causing her to wipe her tears and giggle. “That’s kinda hot.”

Sam rolls his eyes but jumps when Jared and Paul almost tackle him with their own excitement. Since the whole gym is loud with families and graduates, he didn’t even hear them running toward them. Hayley turns around in her boyfriend's arms and wraps her own around his neck.

“Hot, huh?”

“Hell yeah it is.” He grins, leaning down toward her. “I really got lucky, dating an older woman. All the guys are jealous!”

She laughs slightly and leans up, pressing her own lips to his, sparks flying. He reaches up and cups her cheek, deepening it slightly. Normally the pack would step in to mess it up on purpose but Hayley deserves this. When they pull away for a breath of much needed air, Emily decides to be the one to step in, not wanting anything to happen in public.

“Alright, time for pictures!!”

Since the pack had the legends bonfire a little over a week before, Paul, Jared and Hayley all wanted to have a nice dinner for their graduation party. Just the pack and them. The only family they would ever need. The three graduates sit next to each other with Embry next to his girlfriend and Sam next to Jared, Paul and Hayley in the middle. 

Kim wasn’t able to be there due to her own family wanting to have a nice dinner as she graduated today as well. She’s gonna be stopping by in a couple of days to spend time with the pack. The pack’s laughing, having the best time of their lives…that is until Jake walks into the room. They all quiet down and look at him, slightly shocked to see he even showed up. 

Sam notices that he wasn’t sitting next to his father in the stands earlier in the night. He’s irritated with his pack member but if he would rather be at Bella’s graduation, hiding, more power to him.

“Hey guys.” He says, putting his hands into his pockets. “Congrats.”

“Thanks.” Hayley says aloud, and very sarcastically, while her two classmates nod at his words, not wanting to speak.

“I, uh, I’m sorry I didn’t go. You know…Bella was graduating too, so.” He mumbles, knowing everyone could hear him. 

“It’s alright. We had the pack.” Jared says, watching him.

“Hell, we had your dad.” Paul shrugs, grabbing another piece of the fantastic dinner Emily created for them.

Jacob nods slightly before speaking reluctantly, knowing he’s going to make someone mad today. 

“I know today is a big one but I wanted to know if Hayley, Embry and Quil were ready…”

“Ready for what?” She raises an eyebrow.

“To go to Bella’s graduation party.”

Embry and Quil growl slightly, pissed at their best friend's words. 

“The fuck, Jacob. You knew since we graduated too we wanted a nice dinner with the pack so why the hell do I have to go?” She asks, throwing her napkin down onto the table.

“Because Sam said I can’t go alone and…”

“You didn’t tell me it was today!” Sam growls. “Can’t my sister have one day without your damn leech problems?” 

“Hay,” He looks at her, begging. “I’ll make it up to you. Please. I need to apologize for what happened a few days ago.”

Hayley shakes her head, glaring at him as she tries to hold back her vibrating body. “Fuck this! Fuck you, Jake! I’m not going. I’m tired of coming second to your little puppy crush on a leech lover. If you want to apologize, you can find a way that doesn’t include me!”

The tension in the room skyrockets and Sam sighs, rubbing his eyes. 

“Fine. Because you’re such a selfish asshole.” He turns to his Beta. “Hayley, will you please go with him and tonight, you and I will watch Harry Potter all night.”

Growling softly, but nodding as she stands up. “Fine.” She looks at Jake, glaring at him. “Just know, I’m done doing anything for you. I’m only going to this cause Sam asked. Next time you need something, why don’t you ask your new leech friends. Cause I’m done.”

“But the pack?” He starts as she walks away.

“No!” She turns, pointing toward him. “No. You do not get to lecture me on the pack! You’ve put me and the pack second to you and your leech loving best friend who’s not even your imprint! If you gave a damn about the pack, you’d have been there today, Jake. You’d have supported us. You’d have chosen your pack before all this. But no. You weren’t. You haven’t. And you didn’t! So, don’t you dare start in with the ‘but the pack’ bullshit! You’re the fuckin’ wolf that cried boy!”

Jake sighs and nods softly. “Fine. But…please?”

Hayley flips him off and growls as she turns away from him to go put her shoes on. Embry shakes his head, anger filling his stomach.

“You’re such a fuckin’ dick, Jake.” He stands up, throwing his own napkin down onto the table. “She got one day this year to do whatever she wanted and you ruined it.”

“I know but…”

“No buts, Jake. The only butt here is you.” He looks at his best friend. “Since the day you phased, she’s done whatever you asked, despite her being the Beta of our pack. A role you tried to take from her. When they wanted you to sniff Bella’s room for a new leech, she was there after getting literally an hour of sleep. When you needed help on homework, she canceled one of our rare dates so you’d get a good grade. She was the one that took every shift outside of Bella’s house she could to make sure that house was safe. If you truly knew how important this day was to her, and even - just slightly - gave a shit about her, you’d have been there for her. You’d have done the one thing that you knew you should’ve, the one thing she shouldn’t even have to ask of you. But you didn’t. You showed her - and everyone else here - just how little she, and the pack, means to you. How little you actually care about her.”

The teenage boy looks down at his shoes, not knowing what to say. Paul glances up slightly.

“He’s right. I didn’t care if you showed up. Jared didn’t either but she was the one to ask you. Personally! Out of all the times you’ve let her down, this has to be the worst. It’s the only thing she’s ever asked of you, and you gave a rat’s ass about it.”

“Forget it, guys.” Hayley speaks up, her heart full of love from her friends. “If he doesn’t care, then why should I? Let’s just go get this over with so I can come back and watch Harry win the Triwizard cup with the people that do actually care.”

She grabs her truck keys and walks out the back door. Embry rushes out after her, gently curling his fingers around her wrist once he’s close enough. He gently tugs, getting her to stop and face him. Leaning up, he kisses her softly, cupping her cheek with his other hand, absentmindedly wiping the tear that falls down her cheek. 

She deepens the kiss slightly, happy she has at least one good thing in her life and that's her imprint. He’s had her back through everything since the day their eyes met in Jake’s garage. When they pull away, he looks deep into her eyes, wanting to show how much she means to him.

“I love you, Hayley.” He whispers. “Even when everyone is shitting on you, I’ll love you until the end of time.”

Another tear falls down her cheek as she takes in a breath, wanting her heart to stop pounding hard at his words. 

“I love you, too, Embry. So much.”

She wraps her arms around his neck, nuzzling against him slightly. He holds her as close as he can, wanting her to feel his love.

“No matter how much worse Jake can make tonight, this moment, with you, Em, it’s the best part of my day. Of my life.” She whispers.

“You’re already the best part of my life.” He whispers, kissing her temple before pulling away.

Quil stomps out of the house, rushing straight for his best friends, mumbling about how much an ass Jake is. Jacob walks out slowly, embarrassed about everything Sam, Paul and Embry have said to him. Emily even said something when Hayley rushed out of the house. Their Beta drives them to the Cullen’s house, the disgusting smell of sweet bleach hitting their noses as soon as they pull in. 

Embry and Quil growl, but exit the car, knowing that they better get this over with so they can get home as soon as possible. Hayley turns off her truck and puts the keys in her pocket before looking at Jake.

“We’re going to go in. You’re going to apologize. I’m gonna get some cake then we’re leaving. Understood?”

He nods softly, swallowing the small amount of spit in his mouth. She leaves the car and walks to the two boys who are waiting for her. It doesn’t take long for them to find the entrance after hearing the loud music and teenagers talking from the truck. Despite how tense they are, Embry and Quil flank Hayley while Jacob stands a few feet to the side.

Since he’s in the house of the Cullen Coven, he’s calm and confident, not wanting them to know his pack just ripped him a new one for even wanting to be there. Bella catches sight of the four of them before sighing to herself, maneuvering off the dance floor.

“What are you doing here?” She asks, glancing at the other three.

“You invited me, remember?” He smiles slightly.

“Was my right hook too subtle for you? It was me uninviting you.” She scoffs before gesturing to Hayley. “She has more of a right to be here than you do and she doesn’t even like me.”

The Beta smirks to herself, glancing around the party.

“Look, Bella. I’m sorry…about, you know…The kiss and your hand.” He says, causing the two boys to look at him in confusion. “I’d blame it on the whole inner animal thing, but it was really…just me. Being an ass. I’m really sorry.”

Bella sees how sincere he is with his words before nodding slightly. 

“I brought you something. A graduation present.” He says, pulling something out of his pocket. “I made it myself.”

Embry rolls his eyes and puts his hand on his girlfriend’s back. He didn’t even give his pack members a card for their graduation. Hell! Seth handmade cards for the three graduates. Hay immediately put it on her wall so she can look at it everyday. 

“You made this?” Bella asks, looking at the intricately hand-carved miniature wolf that is attached to a bracelet. “It’s really pretty! Thanks.”

Jacob grins widely and helps her put it on, glad she likes it. Hayley pulls on her boyfriend’s shirt slightly, gesturing to the door. He nods slightly, knowing what she means before turning to Jacob to tell him where they’re going. Before Hay can try to move past a couple of the Forks High graduates, wanting to get some food since Jake rudely interrupted their dinner, a voice captures her attention.

“Hey! It’s Taken!” 

She groans slightly and turns around, mumbling softly. “As if this night couldn’t get any worse.”

Embry raises an eyebrow at her words and turns around, looking to see a blonde pale face, checking out his girlfriend, a slight glare appearing.

“Mike.” Hayley says, putting her hand on her boyfriend’s arm to calm him down. “What do you want?”

“I didn’t know you were going to be here.” He grins, stepping in front of her. 

“Well, my great friend Bella graduated today so I thought I’d stop by and say hello.” She says, forcing the words out.

“Oh! Well while you’re here we should dance or something.” He checks her out again before looking up at Embry who steps up toward him.

Hayley bites her lip slightly, loving the protective feeling that’s radiating from her imprint. She’s also trying to hold back her laughter at the sight of her 6 foot 4 boyfriend, towering over the barely 5 foot 10 inch tall teenager.

“And you’re who?” Embry narrows his eyes. 

“I’m Mike.” He puts his hand out. “You must be the guy she’s happily and forever taken to?”

“I am.” He says, ignoring his hand shake. “So, you already knew that she’s taken? But you still thought you’d shoot your shot?”

“I, uh…” He stutters slightly. “I thought she was lying…”

“She wasn’t and she still isn’t so why don’t you go and dance with someone else because this beautiful girl is mine.” He wraps his arm around her waist.

“Yeah, uh, sure. Sorry.” Mike gulps before turning around, rushing back toward Jessica who was still on the dance floor.

When he’s out of earshot, Hayley turns to look up at her boyfriend with a smirk.

“And you say I’m the hot one.” She whispers, knowing he can hear her. “I’d have to say, you’re the hot one here.”

He looks down at her, the glare immediately erasing from his face.

“Me?” He chuckles and shakes his head. “Nah, it’s still you.”

Before she can reply, the air in the room quickly gets thick, not that any of the humans around would notice. The couple turns around to see Alice near the staircase, frozen in her spot. She’s having a vision.

“Shit.” She whispers before following Bella, Jake and Quil to the know-it-all vampire.

“Alice, what did you see?” Bella whispers, looking at her friend.

“Okay, something is going on. Tell me.” Jake says, looking between them.

“I…need to talk to Jasper.” She says, turning to the side.

The shifter puts his arm against the wall, blocking her from moving.

“Why don’t you tell me?” He growls slightly.

“I suggest you remove your arm…before I do.” Jasper says, appearing almost out of nowhere.

“Nah, how about you back up away from my pack before I remove yours.” Hayley glares at the vampire. 

He turns toward her, his lethal expression falling as he sees she’s flanked by her imprint and best friend. He swallows the venom in his mouth, not wanting to start anything with her.

“The decision has been made.” Alice says, breaking their eye contact.

“What’s going on? You’re not going to Seattle?” Bella asks, looking at her again.

“No…They’re coming here…”

The four pack members follow behind the vampire couple to Carlisle’s office where the rest of them were waiting. Once again Quil and Embry are flanking their Beta while Jake stands near Bella but he’s far enough away from Edward to be happy.

“How long?” Edward asks, looking at his ‘sister’. 

“They’ll be here in four days.” She answers.

The four pack members glance at each other, confused at the conversation that’s going on. 

“This could turn into a bloodbath.” Carlisle says, glancing at his family.

“Who’s behind it?” The mind-reading vampire continues his questioning.

“I didn’t see anyone I recognize. Maybe one.” Alice thinks about her vision.

“I know his face. He’s local, Riley Biers.” He says, glancing at his girlfriend. “He didn’t start this.”

For the last year, her father, the Chief of Police, has been searching for him since he’s been missing. Now she knows what happened.

“Whoever did is staying out of the action.”

“They must be playing with the blind spots in your vision.” Carlisle speaks up again.

“Either way, the army is coming…” Jasper stands straight. “And there aren’t enough of us to protect the town.”

Hayley has had enough. She steps forward, putting her hands out, shaking slightly at the conversation.

“Hold up. What damn army? What are you talking about?”

Carlisle looks toward his ‘youngest son’ who shakes his head. He sighs and looks toward the Beta of the pack.

“Newborns. Our kind.”

“What are they after?” Embry asks, glancing at his imprint.

“They were passing around Bella’s scent. A red blouse.”

“The scent Jake and I smelled. Must be this Riley kid.” Hayley says, glancing at the oldest vampire.

“They’re the ones after Bella?” Embry raises an eyebrow.

“What the hell does this mean?” Jacob speaks up.

“It means an ugly fight. With lives lost.” Carlisle sighs.

A sudden weight falls on Hayley’s shoulders. Lives lost meaning that these newborn vampires can get past the Cullen’s and get to Forks or the tribe, killing everyone. She can’t let that happen. Innocent people can get hurt and she, as a spirit warrior, has sworn to protect every innocent human she possibly could. 

She looks over her right shoulder at Embry who, despite not being a mind reader, knows exactly what she’s thinking. He puts his hand on her lower back, silently informing her ‘whatever you say, I’ll do’. She looks toward Quil who gives her an almost invisible nod, knowing what the risk is. She blows air from her nose before looking at Jake. 

Even after her large speech barely an hour ago, she knew she had to do this.

“Alright…we’re in.” 

“No!” Bella speaks up, shaking her head. “You’ll get yourselves killed. No way.”

“I don’t need your permission, Isabella.” She states before looking toward Carlisle. 

Before she can speak any further, the human looks toward her boyfriend.

“Edward!”

“It means more protection for you.” He shrugs, happy that Hayley came to the conclusion she did.

“Jacob!”

“If I was in Hayley’s position, I’d do the same.” He says, thankful for the Beta of his pack.

Her speech was still lingering on his mind so he knew he couldn’t outwardly ask Hayley to do this…save his love but knowing she was willing to do this…even if it wasn’t for him, it makes him question his intentions with the pack. 

“Do you believe Sam will agree to an understanding?” Carlisle asks, looking at the female pack member.

“Innocent lives are at stake here. Her father. Jake’s father. My tribe.” She says, crossing her arms. “Not just Bella.”

“Jasper.” He says, looking at his ex-war veteran. 

“They’ll give us the numbers. And the newborns won’t know they even exist. That’ll give us an edge.”

“We’ll need to coordinate.” He says, looking toward Hayley once again.

“Carlisle, they’ll get hurt!” Bella speaks up again.

“We’ll all need some training. Fighting newborns requires knowledge that Jasper has. You’re welcome to join us.”

“Name the time and place.” Hayley looks toward Jasper.

“Tonight…Dawn?” Jasper asks, making sure the time was okay with her.

“I’ll talk with Sam.” She says, turning around toward her imprint.

He keeps his hand on her lower back, ushering her out the door, Quil and Jake following her. 

“There goes my damn Harry Potter marathon.” She mumbles, causing Embry to rub her back. 

Before they can fully exit the house, Bella runs up behind the four pack members.

“Hayley, Jake. You don’t know what you’re getting yourselves into!”

The Beta turns around to look at her. 

“Bella, this is what we do.” She shakes her head. “I’m doing this for your father and every other innocent person you’ve dragged into your bullshit.”

“You should be happy.” Jake looks down at his best friend. “Look at us, working together. You’re the one who wanted us to get along, remember?”

Not allowing the human to say anything else, the four pack members quickly leave, getting into Hayley’s truck, ready to go back to her house.

[mandareeboo]

ok now im curious what your most petty thing is (regarding the dp post)

Oooh boy, here we go! Buckle up fuckers this is gonna be a longer one.

My senior year of high school, I took a creative writing class. Partially because I needed to fill the slot, mostly because I wanted to improve my writing (spoiler: I did not). Now, my high school was a three floor building- first was mostly gym, second was general, and the third was senior lockers and art classes. I spent a good chunk of my schedule senior year on the second and third floor, going between an art class to my earth science (I took that one entirely as filler, but also bc I like science) to my locker and so on.

Creative writing? Creative writing was in the fucking basement. Go to the first floor, go to a corner generally used for health and development classes, to another corner, follow a ramp and some stairs, and boom there it is kind of basement. (Side note but this teacher was REALLY into attendance and would get you in trouble if you were late which was really annoying since basically no other class was in that part of the building).

My creative writing teacher wasn't bad, per se. I've had worse teachers. I had an algebra teacher who delighted in making freshman girls cry and mocking them for it. I had a journalism teacher who would use her class time reporting how Hilary was secretly ill during the election. I had a history teacher say trans people weren't real to an openly gender nonconforming student (I didn't know them well enough to ask for specifics on their alignment, but they were using they/them at that point) and set up assignments just to mock students on the take they were told to make. It was more that she was uncreative and took it out on the kids doing creative writing.

She gave us two books to read. Basically “how I write” by published authors. I don’t remember the first one well enough and I donated it ages ago, but the second was Stephen King’s “On Writing”. It was 3/4′s personal stories about his life and 1/4′s “also write a bit every day”.  I mostly remember the first author bc she had those fake dreadlocks white people do when they destroy their hair and she gleefully told a story about making her son have a meltdown at a party or wedding or something bc he got overwhelmed and she wanted him to learn that “sometimes you don’t get what you want”. So. You know. Not much there.

She also instructed us to write in a journal every day, which she would check every few months or so. It had to be at least half a page. She would leave little comments in every one else’s journals when she checked them, but not mine- I realized pretty quickly she was a bit uncomfortable with LGBT+ content, so I made it my mission to make every journal drabble as gay as possible bc I was bored and she couldn’t mark them WRONG when she just stated we needed to write.

But it doesn’t end there! Through the entire class, we got exactly five writing projects. Stories that follow very specific guidelines that we would then read in front of the class, group proofread, and then have the teacher give final grades for. These things were approximately like a thousand words a piece, and I was writing out my 10,000 word “It Starts off Small” story in class when I got bored, so it wasn’t difficult. 

Our first project was a character going through a difficult decision. Or... something? I honestly forget the criteria. Anyway, I was HYPE. I’d had this idea for a long time now a human choosing between peaceful death or reincarnation, and this gave me the push to write it! I had a whole thing planned with death being a deer and reincarnation being a wolpertinger (bc reincarnation leads to many possibilities, ed boy, so a Frankenstein bunny made sense to me). Anyway I poured my heart and soul into this bastard and, bright eyed and bushy tailed, handed it in. My classmates all thought it was pretty good. Not to toot m’own horn, but there was some pretty bad ones going in, so I thought I’d get a solid B or something.

I got a D. I guess the struggle was too metaphorical, or it didn’t perfectly fit her criteria. I was devastated. Then I was mad. Bc I was a bored senior who thought they’d made something pretty decent for this completely optional class and her refusal to see that really hurt me at sixteen (I was always a year younger than my other classmates, so despite being a senior I didn’t turn eighteen until almost a year after graduation)

Well, fuck it, I decided. I’m going to parody the shit out of this class.

Our next project was a fantasy story. I was bitter and grumpy. The other fantasy stories read aloud were stuff like “yeah this dude fought a wizard and got a girl, then they went home and banged” (this was not hyperbole, he would’ve written and read the smut if allowed, I knew him personally) and “this girl that NO ONE UNDERSTOOD was called CRAZY but this S@!$ cheerleader who Stole Her Boyfriend so she killed them all” (fun fact: the girl who wrote that was my age and a sort of half-friend from middle school. She was a yaoi fangirl who didn’t mind lesbians as long as they, you know, didn’t FLIRT with her or something.) 

So I get up there. It’s the last day of presentations. And I present with a polite cheer. My story is about two magical shepherd type figures who are called Sister Brighten and Brother Dick as they chase down a werewolf who was drunk off his ass and accidentally bit someone else. They then revealed they were basically supernatural designated drivers for the whole town. I made Brighten mention that Dick’s name wasn’t even Richard. I titled it “His Favorite Brand is Grayhound”. It fit every single criteria. I got an A. I could tell she didn’t want to, because there was no comments or anything like everyone else’s, but she had to follow her own criteria.

Our third was a conjoined effort thing so I didn’t pull any fuckery there, but the fourth one was about common myths and spinning them into real or fake. One girl did the hook-handed door handle thing and the boyfriend ended up above his truck hanging (somehow???). I think someone did the age-old adage of a haunted wedding dress? I kind of read through those presentations. 

Now, I’m salty-salty at this point. I wasn’t expecting His Favorite Brand is Grayhound to get me a good grade. I half-assed a lot of it. I am in full Not Happy Teenager at this point. I grab a daddy long leg and settle in.

My fourth story of the year is “Paperskin.”

Paperskin is about a boy named Billy with the thinnest skin membrane ever. Just full on body horror. You could see his teeth behind his lips. Billy gets bored one day and wanders out of his house, tries to kick a soccer ball, and breaks a leg. As he’s laying in the grass a daddy long leg bites him- and his skin is so flimsy the fangs sink in and he dies. I’m actually still pretty proud of Paperskin. It’s a horrifying, Edgar Allen Poe of a monstrosity, but it made people squirm, which was the point. The teacher is clearly a bit unnerved at this point, but she gives me another A. 

I wrote a more “normal” story after that of a contentious objector forced to house kids going to see if any confirmed soldier deaths were any of their parents as my final one and I could feel her spite as she gave me a B.

So, yeah. That’s the story of when I tormented my creative writing teacher with The Gays and my weird ass sense of humor after she called one of my best works at that age a piece of shit.

 Here’s a google drive of these bad boys, because yes I do still have these things. I turned these fuckers in for grades, people.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

I would love for you to talk more indepth about the montage. To me it feels so off and weird. Almost like a parody? So many scenes in it are "funny" moments that just don't make sense in the context of an emotional overview of the road so far... (Like all the scenes where Dean is eating, Donna with donut dust on her face, Sam getting hit during the game show.) I don't know. Isn't the montage supposed to make me nostalgic, teary-eyed? This one definitely doesn't do it for me!

Here I am! Yes, I absolutely agree. The montage is Weird(TM). It’s kind of a tone rollercoaster. It’s very full of funny/silly moments, with some serious moments smacked in. And it definitely looks like... there’s something about it.

For an easier consultation I will reference the gifs I have made of the montage sequence here.

[Gif 1] It starts pretty much like I’d expect a Supernatural goodbye montage to start. The two brothers meeting for the first time in the pilot, a reminder of their childhood with John, their banter still from the pilot, a couple moments of them driving in the car in the first seasons, Dean saving Lucas in 1x03 which is the first Dean-heavy episode and also an extremely symbolic moment for Dean’s entire journey - just think at how Lucas as a mirror was still relevent during the “drowning” Michael possession arc. Everything feels normal so far. We’re starting from the beginning! Now--

[Gif 2] Interesting and weird choices start here. Them pretending to be high school teachers from After School Special 4x13 - actually a very iconic moment for the fandom, remember that post of Dean in shorts from that episode that you had to reblog when it came on your dash? (Actually I’m not sure if I ever reblogged it lol.) Dean celebrating getting young again from The Curious Case of Dean Winchester 5x07 (and Jensen showing off his agility). The two of them showing their FBI badges to Jesse Turner’s biological mother in 5x06. Dean mowing the lawn of Mary’s house in the Djinn dream and immediately after Jess and Sam kissing also in the Djinn dream, from What Is And What Should Never Be 2x20. Then Dean after killing the witch when he was under the memory loss spell, in Regarding Dean 12x11. Sam happy when they celebrate Christmas in A Very Supernatural Christmas 3x08. Them being “lucky” under the effect of the rabbit’s foot in Bad Day At Black Rock 3x03. Sam also happy in Baby 11x04.

Again the present, then the montage starts again with the water-related ghost from Red Sky At Morning 3x06, a Bela episode, and then Bela herself from her first episode, 3x03 again.

What do these moments have in common? Not all of them, but for many of them I’d say reality being manipulated. The Djinn dream, the rabbit foot, Dean’s aging, the Antichrist... and it’s not over yet. Also, them pretending to be teachers, agents etc - not “real”.

[Gif 3] The tone suddenly gets more serious and relevant to current events: Chuck in The Monster at the End of This Book 4x18 (eh). Death in Two Minutes to Midnight 5x21 (the first appearance of Death, while now we’ve had Billie’s last and a very short-lived new one), and then two major moments from Lazarus Rising - Dean emerging from the grave and finding the handprint on his shoulder. Crowley’s first episode, Abandon All Hope 5x10. Zachariah’s death in Point Of No Return 5x18. Anna from The Song Remains The Same 5x13, where she is the antagonist having been brainwashed successfully by heaven. Michael burning and Sam jumping in the cage with Michael in 5x22, then another moment from 4x01 (the brothers hugging after reuniting). A moment from The French Mistake 6x15 (reality fuckery again!). Sam in Frontierland 6x18.

[Gif 4] Reality fuckery continues with Becky marrying Sam in 7x08. Funnily enough, this is the peak of Becky’s obsessive behavior which she went to therapy for and grew away of - it definitely emphasizes how far Becky has come. Donna’s first appeance in 9x13. That iconic shot of Dean in Bloodlust 2x03 because he’s pretty. Charlie’s first appearance in 7x20 while she dances to Walking On Sunshine (relevant?), Kevin’s first appearance in 7x21 when he becomes a prophet (lots of firsts). Abaddon’s first appearance in As Time Goes By 8x12. Then there’s the first appearance of the bunker, in the next episode, a couple shots in fact. Then more 4x01, Ruby pretending to mistake Dean for the pizza man (eh). Then more present...

This section seems to be mostly “first appearances” - including Ruby’s s4 meatsuit, i.e. Genevieve’s first appearance.

[Gif 5] We suddenly jump to more recent events with Kelly and Jack in heaven in Byzanthium 4x08. Jack’s iconic hello from 4x16 Don’t Go In The Woods. Dean teaching Jack how to drive in 14x07 Unhuman Nature. But then we suddenly go from Jack things to something completely different on the surface: two consecutive moments from Changing Channels 5x08, including the iconic Nutcracker scene, and Sully from Just My Imagination. We are actually back to the previous theme: reality fuckery. Gabriel’s episode was about placing them in “television shows”, Sully, while real, is literally a child’s “imaginary friend”. And then... a moment from the cartoon part of Scoobynatural! It doesn’t get more reality fuckery than that. Oh, wait! Charlie and Dorothy going to Oz in 9x04. That’s a pretty strong contender. Dean being hit in the face by a fairy in 6x09 - also about a realm Dean briefly went to. And, in case we felt like we hadn’t gotten enough 4x01 yet, Pamela’s first appearance (her last, albeit a hallucination, was about the whole “How come you only want what you can't have?” thing).

[Gif 6] We continue again with a mixture of firsts and weird things. Ellen’s first appearance in 2x02, Dean and Cas in 4x18 (we saw Chuck from that episode earlier), Jody’s first appearance in 5x15 Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. Rufus in 6x04 Weekend At Bobby’s (not his first but a good episode...), Garth in 9x12 Sharp Teeth (not his first but the first in which he is a werewolf and is married... relevant to recent lamp events??), Missouri in 1x09 (her first appearance).

Then Gabriel from 13x21 Beat The Devil (an episode where he plays a trick on Lucifer) and Rowena from the same scene (in fact a scene where they’re flirting).  Then Eileen coming back to life in 15x06 and smiling at Sam. Jo flirting with Dean in 2x02 - her first appearance, again. Funnily enough, she had been introduced as a love interest, but ended up being repurposed as a sisterly figure. Tempted to say it’s relevant in an ironic way. Mary in 14x11 Damaged Goods, when Dean has a goodbye mother-son moment with her. Amara in 11x09 Oh Brother Where Art Thou when she was looking for her brother. Then Lucifer in two different vessels (12x07 Rock Never Dies and 12x21, when Lucifer regains control over the vessel).

Then Metatron doing the find a wife make babies speech to Cas in 8x23! Relevant??? Dun dun dun. Then Ketch for some reason (the first episode where we see his face, 12x08 LOTUS).

[Gif 7] Then Jo/Anael in 13x13, another first appearance. (I cropped these horribly I should have cut them when the present happens lol.)

Sandwiched between two shots from the present, Dean Sam Mary and John having dinner together in 14x13 Lebanon.

Then we start again with Dean riding Larry in 12x11, Dean and Cas dressed as cowboys in 13x06 (mini pattern here...), Asmodeus with the archangel blade in 13x13 (insert meta about Asmodeus in Christian lore here), and the really intriguing “Intermission” shot from the play in 10x05.

[Gif 8] To continue a certain pattern we might be tempted to see, Dean eating piecake from 14x06 Optimism (an episode about a distorted version of romantic love), then Dean eating noodles from 10x13 Halt & Catch Fire (the ghost is a husband that passes on thanks to his wife). Dean after his dentistry session with Garth in 15x10. Meg from 6x10 Caged Heat (the episode with the pizza man porn). Dean and Sam investigating in 4x12 Criss Angel Is a Douchebag (an episode about growing old poorly). Crowley in 10x16 Paint It Black (that episode). Dean playing that game in 14x17 Game Night (the episode Cas calls for God, and when Mary dies - the one playing the game was God...). Sam and Dean getting out of the car in 13x05 when they visit the traumatized kid (peak mourning Dean episode...). Then we go into reality fuckery territory again with 14x15 Peace of Mind, Sam under the psychic’s control and Cas disgruntled about it.

[Gif 9] Mick Davies from 12x16 Ladies Drink Free, when he learnt a lesson about monsters. Dean geeking out about the Hatchet Man - so heavy with mirror significances - in 14x04 Mint Condition. Belphegor - Jack’s dark mirror - in 15x03 The Rupture, the break-up episode. Donna’s first episode again, this time Dean and she eating donuts. Dean, Sam and Mary hugging in 12x22 after the confrontation in Mary’s head. Kaia in 13x09 The Bad Place, when Jack uses her to find the way to where Mary is (Mary pattern?). Claire&co rescuing Jody and Donna in 13x10 Wayward Sisters. Dean in 1944 dresses as a sailor in 11x14 The Vessel. Baby nyooming in 15x11 The Gamblers...

Aaand more Changing Channels, the genital herpes ad. It’s almost like reality fuckery is a theme. Followed by Sam drinking the anti-cold concoction at Garth’s in 15x10 and the two of them outside the monster fighting pit in the same episode. Then Cas, Dean, Sam and Jack on a video call with Ketch in 14x09 The Spear when they talk about the egg to trap Michael.

[Gif 10] We stay in the same episode with the four of them heading to Michael. Then the four of them celebrating Jack’s return to life (after Cas’ deal with the Empty). More present, and then the iconic “we’ve got work to do” [trunk closes] moment from the pilot.

So: some of these moments seem like genuine moments you’ll want to put in a montage, but there’s a weird predominance of characters smiling and looking happy or goofy. It’s kind of... not exactly representative of the show as a whole, you know? There are moments that fit as, you know, iconic steps in the story, but surprisingly few, and many moments you’d expect to be in a “final” montage are blatantly not there. Several moments with, let’s put it like this, suspicious meta connotations. Moments that, well, we don’t know what happens in the finale yet, but smell like they might be relevant to future developments. (Metatron’s speech to newly human Cas anyone?)

What really strikes me is the amount of moments connected to reality being manipulated or distorted in some way. Lots of Changing Channels, fantasy elements of various kinds (the Djinn dream, Scoobynatural, Oz, the imaginary friend Becky’s wedding to Sam, the fairy, ...), them acquiring luck (s3) or losing it (s15), and so on. It’s almost like the sequence is telling us something...

Thoughts?

[electronicgrowth]

Can’t Get Enough- Prologue

I’ve had probably about half of this fic just sitting on my computer for over a month now. Maybe if I start posting it, I’ll find the inspiration to finish this. So, here’s a Lee Bodecker x OFC fic. I say OFC because I feel weird not having it in there plus I think it’s weird to make characters of parents and still make it a reader insert (I don’t know your parents!), but feel free to pretend that it’s you, or imagine yourself as Billie. It will have smut, mentions of violence, time period typical sexism. 

Summary: The two most stubborn people in Knockemstiff, Ohio have eyes for only each other. Lee Bodecker is determined to become the town’s next sheriff. He knows that image is everything. Billie Dechswaan doesn’t care about her image at all. All she wants is to leave Knockemstiff and never come back. But Lee has other plans for her. Both are far too stubborn to give up their own plans. What happens when they can’t get enough of each other?

Lee Bodecker’s life fell apart the day his sister died. His thoughts were plagued by everything he should have done different. He should never have let Sandy marry Carl. He should have forced Sandy to divorce the miserable man. He should have killed Carl himself. But he didn’t do any of those things. And now Lee was left with no family and a severely bruised ego. 

The kid— Arvin Russell— shot Lee, he got him in the shoulder. It wasn’t enough to really hurt Lee, but the fall knocked him out and the kid got away. The optics were good for Lee. He was shot and injured trying to protect the town. It would probably help him with the election. And without Sandy, he was free to arrest the men involved in pimping out local girls. It would look good to shut down such a widespread underground business. But never had Lee been so alone. It turned him more vicious. He was constantly angry. Shouting at deputies and his secretary. Drinking himself half blind almost every night. 

But tonight was not one of those nights. Just as Lee was about to leave the station, he got a call about a man dead from a car wreck just on the border of Knockemstiff and Meade. Lee went with two of his deputies to the scene. The man had already been taken away by the coroner. The car had rolled multiple times, it didn’t look like another car was involved in the wreck. The deputies who were first called to the scene said that they instantly knew the man. You can’t live in such a small town and not know most folks. It was Mr. John Dechswaan. And he left behind a large farm and a large family. 

The Dechswaan family was one plagued by tragedy. Joseph and Wilma—John’s parents— moved down from Columbus. Both were born in the Netherlands and immigrated as young children. After they married they desired to settle down and raise a family in a more rural area. Joseph worked for the state building highways. Wilma stayed home. Wilma was pregnant no less than 8 times. She only gave birth to five babies. And only two of those made it past the age of two. Everyone in town pitied her plight. How awful that must be for her. 

Two boys, Ray and John. Ray moved away after high school. Met a nice girl in California and stayed there. John fought in World War II. When he came home he met Joy. For a while it seemed the family’s luck had changed. Joy gave birth to six children with no issue.

The eldest son was young Joseph, for his grandfather. He’d married a local girl named Marianne. They had two boys of their own and she was pregnant again.

The next eldest child, Thomas, married a nice girl from a few towns over named Paulette. Thomas would have preferred to stay closer to Paulette’s family, but he worked for John at the family’s farm. And now Joseph would need all the help he could get from his younger brother. 

The oldest daughter was named for her great-grandmother, Wilhelmina, but she went by Billie. Billie made no secret of her disdain for Knockemstiff. And she had always planned to move away as soon as she could. She worked as a librarian in New York. But the Dechswaan family curse reared its ugly head. She met a guy who she thought was a good man, but he wasn’t. It took Larry next to no time to start hurting Billie. Rumors touched Billie like no other member of the family. Many said that Billie had left Knockemstiff because she got herself knocked up. Her family didn’t speak of her much after she left, which only added to the intrigue. 

Sylvia came next. She was too beautiful and too gullible for her own good. She fell for the quarterback and he was quick to promise her everything she wanted. They married quickly when Sylvia was nineteen, much to her parents pleasure. Tim, the husband, joined the county police department. Just a five months after marriage Sylvia had her first baby. A girl named, Rose. She was as beautiful as her mama. But everyone knew that Rose wasn’t a baby conceived in holy matrimony. Everyone whispered about Sylvia as she walked by. But she bore it. She finally grew up enough to realize that you can’t always get what you want. 

Wesley was the youngest boy at just seventeen. He was the high school’s star quarterback. He was rambunctious and headstrong. He never thought things through. But he didn’t have to. He was a young man after all, with his whole future ahead of him. Who cared if he stepped on a few girls on his way to the top?

Then there was Clara, fifteen, nearly a young woman, but she could barely speak. Doctor said it was because she was just shy. But when she worked up the courage to speak she stuttered and stumbled over her words. Her father bitterly thought about how he would be stuck with her forever.

Yes, Sheriff Bodecker knew all about the Dechswaan family. He had always paid close attention to Billie. She was beautiful. Long dark blonde hair that she bleached bright blonde—trying to look just like Marilyn Monroe but she could never get it quite light enough—as soon as she could and bright blue eyes. She’d been a cheerleader for the football team her senior year. Lee had never thought about those cheerleading uniforms until Billie put one on. It was a good thing she was 18 at the time or else Lee would have been obliged to feel guilty. But he never looked at her until she was legal, and he’ll maintain that until the day he dies. And once he started thinking about her, he couldn’t stop even after she took the uniform off for good. She was a spitfire. She stayed out late, drank with boys in cars, and just generally did whatever she wanted. But she kept good grades, never did anything beyond kissing a boy, and never missed a church service, so no one could say much. Lee was bewitched by her. And the problem was that she knew it.

[lils-writes-stuff]

Spinning Wheels

Spencer Reid x reader

Best Years Season 2 part three | part two | part one | season one

summary: a local case hits a nerve with the reader

warning: normal criminal minds things, angst, description of shooting, yk fun stuff

A/N: based on season 8 episode 8; *chanting* angry reader, angry reader!

“Penelope,” Y/N sang as she entered the woman’s bat cave. She carried a coffee in each hand, one for her and one for Penelope. “I bring you a present.” 

 “Oh my gosh, you’re so sweet!” Penelope gushed as she grabbed the coffee from her hand. She pulled the lid off to look inside the cup. “This is my favorite, oh my gosh, you know I-”

 She looked up at Y/N to see her sheepish smile. She only brought Penelope her favorite, kind of expensive coffee, when she wanted something. 

 “No.” 

 “You don’t even know what I want!” 

 “I know that it’s big enough for you to bring me my favorite,” Penelope set the cup down and began typing on her computer. 

 “Garcia, I’m desperate,” Y/N admitted. She sat on the small open area on Penelope’s desk. “I can’t get anything out of JJ on what Spencer’s been doing up here at seven when we don’t have to be here ‘till nine. So I was hoping you can work some of your Garcia Magic and...” 

 Penelope stopped her typing, she knew exactly what Spencer had been doing. 

 Y/N noticed how Penelope stopped typing. “Oh my god, you know!” 

 “No, I don’t,” she lied. “Okay, well I know kind of what he’s doing, but I can’t tell you.” 

 Y/N knew she could get somewhere with Penelope, she was terrible at keeping secrets. 

 “Penelope,” Y/N drug out the name in a pleading tone. 

 “Uh-ah, my lips are sealed.” She ran her finger across her lips as if she was zipping them.

 Y/N gave her a pout and some puppy dog eyes, but Penelope turned away and stuck her nose up in the air. She was determined to not break and ruin Spencer’s plan. 

 Y/N sighed, if Penelope was going to be this persistent, then she wouldn’t get it all out of her. 

 “Fine, then can I admit something to you?” 

 Penelope turned to her, hearing her serious and almost shy tone. 

 “Of course.” 

 “I, um, I bought him a ring,” Y/N confessed, wringing her hands together like she normally did when she was nervous. 

 Penelope gasped and a gigantic smile formed on her face. “You did!?” 

 “Yeah, I did, here-” she reached for her purse she set on the desk behind them- “I bought it about a week ago.” 

 She pulled out the grey box and revealed the simple gold band on the inside. 

 Penelope, extremely excited, grabbed the box with shaking hands. “Oh my gosh, Y/N!” 

 “Is it weird? I know it’s not normal for a girl to propose-” 

 “It’s not weird at all, I think it’s a great idea,” Penelope interrupted to clear her doubt. “If he doesn’t do it-” 

 She stopped and cut herself off, almost revealing the secret she had been trying so hard to keep. 

 “If he doesn’t accept it, then he’s a total loser,” Penelope stammered as she tried to correct her words. 

 Y/N laughed at her phrasing, and Penelope laughed too, glad she didn’t think anything of her almost slip up. 

 “I also got, um, I got our initials engraved on the inside,” Y/N pointed to the small initials on the inside of the band. 

 “Y/N…” Penelope sighed and took the ring out of her fingers to look at it. “You are so amazing, Spencer will love it.” 

 Y/N sighed in relief, she needed to hear that. The two kept talking and Penelope was trying to give her some ideas of when to ask him. 

 “Does anyone else know?” Penelope asked, handing the ring back to Y/N. 

 “Just my mom and London,” Y/N answered. “London actually helped me pick out the ring, we-”

 She stopped herself when her eyes caught the TV.

 “Penelope,” Y/N hit the woman’s shoulder to get her to turn around. 

 “What?” 

 They both stared at the TV in horror. The headline read “High School Bus Is Taken Hostage”. One cue, Penelope began to get alerts and texts signaling that they have a case. 

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

 “What we have is a school bus abduction which accrued at approximately 1 P.M. this afternoon. What we know is there twenty-four students on board, along with the driver and a monitor,” Y/N said to the small group of detectives that sat in front of her, JJ, and Spencer.   

“The GPS appears to have been disabled, the last known ping was a little over two hours ago,” Spencer added. 

 “Highway patrol has traced the route it was last traveling but has found no signs of any accidents,” Y/N continued on their knowledge of the situation. “We also have helicopters and ground units in the D.C. area working local search and rescue. Which means we’re likely dealing with more than one unsub.” 

 “We’ve attempted to contact everyone on board, but so far all calls have gone unanswered,” Spencer said. 

 “But we can confirm that the students dropped off at the first two stops have been accounted for,” JJ added, shedding some hope on the gloomy situation. 

 “The average school bus holds approximately eighty gallons of diesel fuel, making it possible for them to travel up to 550 miles on a single tank,” Spencer explained, his hands moving as he spoke each word. 

 “Which is why we believe they’re still within a 200-mile radius,” Y/N closed as she nodded to the detectives. 

 “The SUVs are outside and we’ll set up our command post at central high,” Hotch said as he rushed past and to the elevators. 

 Spencer, Y/N, and JJ all glanced at each other, giving a look all the same. Silently saying, ‘This is gonna be a long day’.

 They quickly made it down to the front of the building and into the SUVs.

 On the drive to the high school, the sirens were on as they tried to make it there as fast as possible. 

 “Okay, thanks,” Penelope hung up her phone. “Local P.D. says they just found a backpack full of the kids’ cell phones half a mile from the second bus stop.” 

 “Disarming the GPS, disposing of cell phones, makes it feel less random and more premeditated,” Y/N said as she looked back at Penelope from her seat upfront. 

 “There were seven other buses from different schools on their route. Why target this particular bus?” Spencer said as he tried to dive into the minds of the unsub. 

 “Maybe a group of kids got together to pull this off?” Y/N posed. 

 “Waited for their friends to get off at an earlier stop, then made their move,” Spencer said as he dove more into Y/N’s theory. 

 “Okay, I’m checking school disciplinary records to see if I can find any recent suspensions.” Penelope pulled out her tablet and began searching. 

 “It could be about a specific target and the other kids just got in the way,” Hotch added his own thoughts in. 

 Y/N pulled her phone out of her pocket as it rang. “Hey, Blake you’re on speaker.” 

 “Uh, I’ve been looking over the personnel files of the bus driver, Roy Webster, something isn’t adding up,” Blake said over the phone. 

 “What did you find?” Spencer’s voice spoke up from his backseat spot behind Y/N. 

 “Over the past three years, Webster had several altercations with students, but was never formally reprimanded,” Blake answered.

 “It sounds like the school hasn’t told us the whole story,” Rossi’s voice was heard over the phone. 

 “We know how disrespectful some teenagers can be, maybe he snapped,” Derek’s voice was heard next as he posed his thoughts.

 “It could be payback for years of abuse,” JJ’s voice said next. 

 “What about the woman who was on the bus?” Spencer asked. 

 “That would be Carol Roberts, a retired teacher, assigned to monitor Webster’s bus six months ago,” Kevin Lynch’s voice said. 

 “What’s that about?” Rossi questioned. 

 “I took a bus all through high school, we never had a monitor,” Kevin said as he didn’t know the formal answer to the question. 

 “Makes you wonder who she was there to keep an eye on-- the kids or Webster?” Derek posed. 

-----------  

 Y/N had sat through many family interviews before, comforting them after a loved one had been murdered or taken. She had done it plenty of times to know what words to use, how to act depending on the family, she was trained for it. 

 This though was a whole new level.

 Her chest felt heavy as she listened to the mother explain how her son was a good kid and how it was just him and her. She didn’t know why this one particular interview was taking so much out of her. It felt emotionally draining to watch this mother cry over her young son named Billy. Maybe it was because she could relate to it.

 After her older brother died and her father left, it was just her and her mom. She was around his age too when it happened. 

 Walking out of the classroom she had the interview in, she stalked into the closest bathroom she could find. Her hands pressed against the ceramic sink as she leaned on it to keep herself up. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the white surface tightly. She could feel her pulse course through her hands as it picked up. This was not the time to be emotional, so she didn’t let this moment last too long. 

  She took a couple of deep breaths, looked at herself in the mirror, and walked out of the bathroom.

 She had gotten past her brother dying, sure she missed him every day, but her grief had passed. When she thought about him it was wistful and happy, so she didn’t know why this was bothering her. 

 She tugged at the bottom of her maroon blazer, making sure it was straight after she opened the door of the bathroom. She took two steps out into the hallway, and glanced to the left and then to her right looking to see if anyone saw her walk out. After assessing she was alone, she let out another sigh and walked down the hall to the performance room. 

 “Y/N,” Derek called as he jogged down the hallway. 

 “What’s up, Morgan?” She asked as she turned to the man coming down the hall. 

 “We’ve got an address.” 

 The SUVs and squad cars turned up the dust as they parked in front of an old barn. The team hopped out of their respected cars, pulling out their guns as S.W.A.T. unloaded in front of them. 

 The team stood in anticipation as Hotch nodded for the captain to open the door. As the doors swung open, the S.W.A.T. team entered and walked around the school bus that was parked on the inside. 

 “Bus is all clear!” Derek yelled from the inside of the bus after checking it.

 Y/N followed Spencer as the two walked around the rest of the barn to check it, making sure it was clear and there was nothing else there. When they finished, they walked outside and met Blake who had just checked a shed. 

 The three holstered their guns as they walked over to the head detective on the case who nodded for them. 

 “Barn was registered to a Violet Burgin, she died a few months back. It's been abandoned ever since.” the Detective said as he approached them. 

 “Making this a perfect transfer point,” Y/N said as she glanced back at the barn. 

 Blake was about to say something, but she was stopped when the sound of the bloodhounds barking was heard. 

 “They found something,” Spencer said and took out his gun. The four of them along with some others in the immediate area ran towards the dogs.

 They approached a wooden door that was latched closed. The Detective placed his hand on the latch, waiting for the S.W.A.T. team member to give him his cue. When he nodded, the Detective pulled the latch and pushed the door open quickly. 

 “Please don’t hurt us,” a young girl said as they were met with the light from the outside.

 “It’s okay you guys are safe now,” Spencer said as he began to undo the bindings on their wrists.

 Y/N looked up and began counting the kids in the room as quickly as she could, but of course, Spencer beat her to it. 

 “There’s only fourteen here, we need to find the other ten,” Spencer looked back at Blake and Y/N who were still standing in the door. 

 Y/N gripped her gun tighter. She let out an agitated sigh and walked away from the room. 

------------ 

 The students ran to their parents as the doors to the cafeteria opened. Y/N sauntered in behind them, watching as the parents hugged their kids, grateful they were okay.

 JJ walked up next to her and sighed as they watched the families. 

 “Where’s Billy?” The brown hair woman who Y/N had interviewed earlier asked walking up to her. Another student, who’s name was Sean, dad walked up behind her. 

 Y/N’s mouth opened and closed, for the first time in a long time, she couldn’t phrase the words to tell them that their kids were still missing. 

 “There’s still a number of students unaccounted for,” JJ answered for Y/N, noticing that she was struggling.

 When Billy’s mom gasped, Y/N’s eyes widened and quickly added, “But we’re still looking.” 

 Sean’s dad walked away but Billy’s mom stayed. “Oh, my god,” she muttered. 

 Y/N’s lips formed a tight line and she placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder to comfort her. 

 Once the woman had calmed down, Y/N started to make a beeline for that same bathroom she was in before. On her way there, Spencer stopped her, noticing her disheveled state.

 “Hey,” he whispered as he stepped in front of her. 

 She sighed, she didn’t want him to stop her, she didn’t want anyone to stop her. 

 When she tried to push past him and continue to the bathroom, Spencer put his hand gently on her arm. 

 “Hey, what’s wrong?” 

 “Nothing, it’s nothing,” her voice cracked. 

 “No, it’s not,” he said. 

 She let out a frustrated sigh. “I was over this, I was over my brother, I thought I was over it.” 

 “Your brother?” Spencer gave her a confused look. Of course, he knew about her brother, how when he was seventeen he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. How her dad walked out because of the medical bills, how her mom picked up two jobs to help pay for medical bills. How even Y/N, when she was legally allowed to work, picked up a job to help. 

 “One of the victims, Billy,” she let out a shaky breath. “It’s just him and his mom, and he’s about the age I was when I lost my brother, and it just hit a nerve, I guess.”

  Spencer reached to give her a hug, but she pulled away. 

 “No, I don’t- no,” she held her hands out as if she was putting up a boundary. “I just need a second to be irritated, just give me one second to be angry at the son’s of a bitch’s who decided it was a good idea to take a bunch of teenagers.” 

 So Spencer did, he watched as she paced side to side in the locker filled hallway. One hand on her forehead and the other on her hip, muttering curse under her breath. 

 This is the most irritated Spencer had ever seen her in a case, she was so calm and collected usually. Sure, every now and then she got a little emotional, but so did everyone. This though, this wasn't a sad emotion, she was angry. Furious even. 

 Spencer jumped as the sound of Y/N’s boot hitting an empty trash can echoed through the hall. She stopped pacing, standing in the middle of the hallway now, her face laying on her palms. 

 “Okay, I’ll take that hug now.” She walked over to Spencer and wrapped her arms around his waist. 

 His arms wrapped around her shoulder, his cheeks pressed against the top of her head. He turned his lips to kiss the top of her head softly, keeping them there until they pulled apart from their hug. 

 Another reason she loved Spencer so much, he knew when to give her a second to breathe. Sure he was always there for her when she needed him, and vice versa, but sometimes she just needed to deal with her emotions on her own. And Spencer understood and respected that.

 --------------- 

 “Dividing them into groups-- you think that was to maintain control?” JJ asked as they stared at the pictures of the still missing students on the board. 

 “Mm, could be, but how do you explain the shock collars?” Blake asked as she remembered the collars that one of the students told her about. 

 “Torture,” Y/N said in a monotone voice. She stirred the coffee in her cup with a straw aimlessly, still upset about not being to find all the kids. 

 “Still, there doesn’t seem to be any method to how or why they were chosen,” Spencer added the thing they still hadn’t figured out.

 “Okay, so far we have two white males, early twenties, and wore gas masks of all things,” JJ recapped on their findings. 

 “Abducting a bus, a form of transportation, gas masks, shock collars, dividing people into teams…” Rossi trailed off as he walked up to the board. 

 “Sounds like ‘Gods of Combat’,” Y/N muttered as she listened to what Rossi was listing, the thought just coming out of her mouth like it was nothing. 

 “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Rossi pointed at Y/N. 

 “Wait, Rossi-” Y/N pushed herself off the desk she was leaning on- “We’re not seriously considering-” 

 “That this is a video game to them? Yes, I think it is.” 

 Everyone in the room looked at each other, all of them knowing it made sense and it was probably the most probable with what was going on.

-----------

 “These guys are replicating a video game?” Derek asked as he, Rossi, and Blake entered the room. 

 “In the game, you take over a form of public transportation; subway, train, bus. That’s how you get your players,” Rossi explained. 

 “Wait a minute,” Blake stopped Rossi. “You’ve played this game before?” 

 “Well, I may have once or twice,” Rossi admitted. “But so has Y/N.” 

 When Rossi pointed an accusing finger at her, she raised her eyebrows in shock. “Rossi, I only played it because the kids I babysat made me, what’s your excuse?” 

 Everyone shook their heads as they laughed. 

 “If I remember correctly though, the game consists of five players.” Y/N walked up to a whiteboard and pulled out a marker. “Captain, lieutenant, a pair of soldiers, and the pawn.” 

 She wrote each of the positions on the board. 

 “Maybe the unsubs picked them based on their personality type,” JJ said as she looked at the pictures of the students. 

 “Well, Sage and Trent-” Derek pointed to the two pictures- “are both athletic. So they probably would have been considered lieutenants.” 

 “Wendy would most likely have been considered the pawn,” Rossi added. 

 “They preselected these kids.” Y/N crossed her arms as she turned back to face those behind her. 

 “Probably got details about their lives from social media sites. Most teens don’t use privacy settings, anyone can gain access,” JJ said. 

 “They planned their attacks and struck the bus when it was the most vulnerable,” Blake nodded. 

 “That explains why the unsubs only needed ten of these kids and left the rest behind,” Derek added. 

 “So how do the collars fit into all this?” JJ asked, looking between Y/N and Rossi. 

 “They’re used to keep your player from straying from their mission,” Rossi replied. 

 “The object of the game is to destroy as many of your opponents as possible,” Y/N added on to the game.

 “The one with the highest body count wins,” Rossi continued. 

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

 “So these guys just got together and decided to pull this thing off?” The Detective asked as Spencer, Y/N, and he walked down the hall back to the performance room. 

 “You know, something this elaborate, it’s likely they’ve known each other for years, actually,” Spencer clarified. 

 As the three continued to walk, Penelope appeared behind them as she walked out of the computer lab with her laptop. 

 “Hey, I just got off the phone with the people who produce ‘Gods of Combat’--”

 “Lovely people I assume,” Y/N joked, trying to keep some light heart in the air. It was mostly for herself though, so she wouldn’t think too much about being upset. 

 “Uh-huh, it turns out they have six million players worldwide, 40,000 of which are D.C. residents,” Penelope continued. 

 “Garcia, if they’re capable of this type of violence in real life, do you think we’d see some sort of evidence of it in their gaming history?” Spencer asked, stammering as he tried to find the right terminology.

 “What type of evidence?” The Detective asked. 

 “He’s talking about the universal online gaming code of conduct,” Y/N answered. 

 “Yeah, prevents stuff like harassing, threatening other players, cyber-bullying, that kind of thing,” Penelope gave some more elaboration on the subject.  

 “How’s that supposed to help us find these kids?” The detective asked confused as to why it was relevant. 

 “Instead of looking for people who play the game, we need to look for people who were kicked out,” Hotch answered.  

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

 Y/N sipped on her fourth coffee of the night. She sat criss-cross applesauce on the table next to Spencer as they waited for Penelope to come up with some findings from the new info Kevin narrowed it down to. 

 “Okay, a month ago two players were kicked out at the same time for hacking into hell mod,” Penelope said as she continued to type on her computer to find more. “Previous to that, they both logged thousands of hours playing the game, dating back to early 2000.” 

 “You got any names, Garcia?” Derek asked, back still faced to the three sitting at or on the table. 

 “No, just online handles, but--” she stopped herself as a ping on her computer sounded- “You know what’s weird? They were both playing from the same IP address.”

 “So they live together.” Y/N peered at Penelope’s screen. 

 “They’re roommates, maybe?” Spencer posed, walking to stand beside Penelope as she typed. 

 “Or siblings,” Derek argued. 

 “Oh that’s not good,” Y/N muttered into her cup as she took another sip. 

-

 “It doesn’t make sense,” JJ said after those in the room caught her up to speed with their findings. “If they are siblings, how do you explain the gaps in time when they weren’t logged in at the same location?” 

 “Yeah, it looks like it happened several times a year, sometimes from different states,” Penelope agreed as she looked at the time logs. 

 “Maybe their parents got divorced.” Spencer looked up to JJ and Y/N who were currently standing next to each other. 

 “Maybe the parent got divorced,” Penelope repeated and began typing again. The new thought gave her a fire that had burned out after the confusion formed. “Leave it to the genius to come up with the obvious, here we go.”

 As her ramble ended, two pictures popped up on the screen. 

 “Joshua and Matthew Moore. They both went to central high, their parents worked two jobs each to make ends meet, led to a messy divorce. Joshua went to live with his dad in Arizona, Matthew stayed with his mom in D.C.” 

 “That’s how they knew when to strike,” Y/N pointed her finger. “Probably rode the same bus route.” 

 “Long hours, different schedules, they were latchkey kids,” Derek added. “Video games became their babysitters.” 

 “As they got older, they got more competitive and it became more about bragging rights,” Spencer continued the deep dive of the unsubs stressor. 

 “This game became the core of their sibling rivalry,” JJ continued. 

 “But it wasn’t just a game,” Y/N corrected. “ ‘Gods of Combat’ was their one constant connection to each other.” 

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

 “Picked up a ping on the E.L.F.,” Kevin said as he entered the room. “It’s emanating from somewhere in this 25-mile radius, west of Bolivar.” 

 Kevin circled the area of the map he set down.

 “What fits?” Blake asked as she looked down at the map.

 “Well, there’s a few old factories and a couple of bunkers from the ‘70s,” Kevin replied. 

 “What’s this?” Y/N pointed to a building on the map. 

 “The old paper mill,” Kevin answered. 

 “You know, given the size and location, that could be the perfect spot.” Spencer used the pencil in his hand to tap the spot on the map as he spoke.  

 They all looked up at Kevin. 

 “I’m gonna pull the schematics,” Kevin exited the room to do so. 

 Soon after Kevin did that, Penelope was able to get in contact with one of the kids, Billy, by hacking the feed. They compared the rooms they could see on Billy’s camera and established it was the paper mill. 

 Then they were on their way there. 

 The team walked into the paper mill, mixed in between different members of S.W.A.T.. 

 Y/N crept down the hall with Derek, each of them turning to check a different opening as they saw one. When they heard pounding footsteps, they jerked towards the sound. 

 “FBI, drop your weapon,” Y/N commanded the person she couldn’t quite make out in the dark, all she could see was the gun. 

 “I’m Agent Morgan, this is Agent Y/L/N,” Derek said as he tried to calm the boy. “We’re the good guys, now drop the weapon.” 

 “How do I know this isn't part of the game?” The boy whimpered.

 “Kid, you gotta trust me,” Derek said, trying to make the boy back his guard down. 

 “Are you Billy?” Y/N asked calmly. 

 At his name, the boy turned to look at her, his gun lowering slightly. 

 “Yes.” 

 “Billy, you gotta trust us, you talked to our friend Penelope, remember?” Y/N spoke in a soothing tone. 

 “Come on, now, I know you’re scared, but don’t do anything stupid,” Derek spoke in a not so soothing tone. 

Billy hesitated, still afraid this was a part of the game, but then bent his knees and put the gun on the ground. Y/N sighed in relief and was about to walk towards him, but out of the corner of her eye she saw movement.

 Joshua Moore appeared, a large gun held to his side. 

 “Drop your weapon!” Derek yelled.

 When he realized he was cornered, his finger went for the trigger. 

 In an almost slow motion moment, Y/N aimed her gun and shot before he could do the same thing. The bullet went right through his chest, and the blood began to spread on his white shirt. 

 Joshua dropped to his knees, then fell to the ground as he let out a breath of pain. 

 Derek rushed over to check Joshua, but Y/N’s only concern was for the teenage boy whose mom had told her about. 

 “Hey, Billy, it’s alright.” She grabbed his arm and led him out of the room, not allowing him to look at Joshua’s now dead body. “Your mom has been worried sick about you.” 

 “You-you saw my mom?” He stuttered as a smile of joy and relief washed over his face.

 “Yeah,” and as they walked into the cool night air, his mom called his name. 

 He broke away from Y/N’s grasp and ran to his mom to give her a hug. And even though the circumstances wouldn’t normally allow it, Y/N smiled. She smiled as she got to watch the boy hug his mom, holding her like his life depended on it. 

 “I’m sorry, Trent,” a girl behind Y/N whimpered as a body bag rolled past. 

 For a moment, Y/N forgot where she was and what she had been doing, because she was thinking about the last time she got to hang out with her mom and brother together. The memory used to be painful, but now she looked back on it happily. The last time she saw her older brother smile a real smile. One that didn’t show pain from chemo, one that didn’t show he was dying, one that showed how happy he was to be with them. 

-----------

 Y/N closed the report from the case on her desk softly, laying her hand on top of it. She let her cheeks bubble out as she filled them with air, then let it out slowly from her lips. The office was quiet, everyone else gone. The team was still there though, finishing up some reports and the political side of the job. 

 “We saved them,” Spencer reminded her as he walked over, his tall figure towering her sitting one.

 “Yeah, I know, it’s not that,” she confessed, but didn’t look up at him, knowing he could read her eyes like the back of his hand. Or the back of anything really, seeing as he had an eidetic memory. 

 “What is it then?” He asked, leaning against her desk. 

 “For a split second today, I forgot I was at the scene of a crime,” she finally met his eyes. “I saw Billy reunite with his mom and I forgot where I was...because he reminded me of him.” 

 “Your brother?” 

 Y/N nodded. 

 “Oh, sweets, it’s okay to miss him you know? He was your older brother, and it was a terrible thing that he got sick--” 

 “Spencer, I know that, I know all that,” she cut him off, her voice soft and not cutting. “It’s just, I don’t know…”

 She rubbed her bicep with her hand and averted her gaze. She turned in her swivel chair to the family photos on her desk. In a line three photos sat; one of her and her mom at her college graduation, one of her and the team at a dinner Rossi hosted, and one of her and Spencer, from JJ’s wedding. These photos all showed people who were so important in her life, people she loved...people who were there. 

 “You feel guilty for not going to visit him,” Spencer said, catching onto her guilt as she stared at the photos. 

 “I think so,” she murmured looking up at him. 

 He smiled at her sadly. Reaching down, he grabbed her hand, pulling her out of her seat. “How about we go home, order some food, then tomorrow, you can talk to Hotch about going home to visit your mom?” 

 “I think I like that idea,” she quivered, a stray tear falling down her face. Man, was she grateful for this man.

 She picked up her bag from beside her desk, lacing her fingers with his and walked out of the office with him.    

Tag List (let me know if you want to be added!!):

@throughparisallthroughrome @word-scribbless @nintendumbfuck @confused-and-really-hungry  @andiebeaword @itsarayofsunshine @baby-i-am-fireproof @abitofeverythinggg @nanocoool @marceline-is-my-spirit-animal @fancyfaucet @im-a-raging-gay @atletino @mo-whore @peterparkersdestiny @bandsandjill @mbowles23-blog @sarcasm-n-insomnia @citrussirus @nerual222 @april-14-blog @reidloversisforever @heavenlyholland @justawildmarebae @sana-li @thesailbells @l0ve-0f-my-life @spencer101reid @spencersdolore @delicateprunecashpony @sader12345678 @dashlilymark @mysticalmagicmoon @onebigfangirlworld @saturn-mp4 @hurricanejjareau @thatweirdo466 @angryknightstatesmantrash @nograciass @danandphilfan6 @la-vie-en-amour1 @squirrellover1967 @reidswords @skyirates @spideyspencer @harrypressman @justine-en @absolutelynotsophie @dr-reid-ismyspiritanimal​ @mailikestruecrimetoomuch​ @dadchi-oya​ @marley1773​ @lashtonandmalumsbaby​

[knightsimp]

End of Time (1)

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x Reader

Series Summary: (Y/N), a girl from 2024, is dropped into 1984. She needs to find a way to get back home, all the while helping her newfound friends fight off the dangers threatening Hawkins and it’s people.

Word Count: 2,000+

Date Posted: April 17, 2020

Note: Even though this is meant to be Billy Hargrove fic, the ship is not the primary driver of the plot.

Writing Masterlist: Link

(Y/N) tapped her fingers to the beat of the music playing from the radio as she drove on the highway towards town. Another twenty minutes and she should see the “Welcome to Hawkins” road sign. She was excited to be in her mother’s hometown for the first time, as she was a California native. Good old San Francisco was her home, but it was time for a change. She graduated from high school a year earlier to be able to spend a year with her mother in Hawkins. After a year, she will be back on a regular education track and become a college freshman with her friends.

Her mother moved back to Hawkins, her hometown, when (Y/N) was only sixteen to escape the heavy, burdening reminders San Francisco was weighing on her. (Y/N) stayed in the city with an aunt and made a plan to move closer to her mom when she graduated.

Now, the time finally came.

Like good guardians, (Y/N)’s mother and aunt were scared about her driving across the country to Indiana. She was scared too, as she was only seventeen, but she knew it needed to be done. (Y/N) knew she would need her car while she was living in Indiana and New York. She gave updates to both women constantly, making sure they do not worry too much. Yes, it was not conventional, but it had to be done and (Y/N) was more than willing to do it. She was mature enough to not make dumb decisions while on such a trip and knew how to take care of herself due to many days alone while her aunt was at work. She had her mom’s help money-wise for the trip and was talking to her every step of the way. Things so far were going smoothly.

(Y/N) felt a little giddy after she passed the “Welcome to Hawkins” road sign. She has not been this close to her mother in years. She heard her phone buzz on the passenger’s seat. Feeling confident, as there was no one else on the road, she tapped the answer button on the screen.

“Hi, mom!” She yelled, hoping her mom could hear her over the phone.

“Hey, sweetheart.” Her mom said back cheerily. “Where are you? I thought you were going to be here by six!” (Y/N) sighed, annoyed, seeing on the car’s clock that it was almost seven in the evening. “There was some traffic a while back. I just entered Hawkins.” She paused, allowing for her mom to respond and, probably, scold her.

But nothing.

(Y/N) looked back at her phone, pressing the start button, but the screen stayed black.

“Dammit!” She hissed, gripping the steering wheel tighter. Her phone had died. Mom is probably panicking, thinking I’ve been in an accident. She thought to herself. Better find a payphone or something. An old town like this should have one, right? She drove deeper into town, trying to spot an area to stop.

As she drove, she saw a lot of the town’s tourist traps. All of them seemed to surround the idea of the Demogorgon. It was a local myth that came from the eighties. (Y/N) was never one to believe in this kind of stuff, but she found the stories interesting. Her mom had told her about these stories when she was an early teenager and they laughed about them together.

She drove into a shopping center, hoping one of the stores had a public phone out. She parked in front of a pizza place, seeing the phonebooth right in front of it. She took her bag, a messenger bag she doubled as a purse, with her and stepped out of the car, locking the door before shutting it. Looking up, she read the neon sign of the pizza place. It was in an eerie font and one could see the red glow as the sun’s light was fading.

“Demo’s Pizza.”

(Y/N) smiled to herself before walking straight to the phone booth. It had definitely seen better days, but judging by the tiny screen on the phone’s base, it still worked. She entered, shutting the clear glass door behind her.

She put the phone to her ear. She listened to it ring, hoping her mother would pick up, but it went to voicemail. Damn.

“Hi mom!” She said into it after the beep. “I’m just calling to let you know that I made it; I’m in town!” She looked around to see where she was. “I’m currently near the pizza place on Eleventh street. My phone died. I’ll just be sitting in my car and waiting for it to charge before I can make it to your house.” (Y/N) sighed happily. “Can you believe it, mom? I drove all the way here! I made it to Hawkins, Indiana!” As soon as she put the old phone back on its hook, she started to feel a little queasy.

Must be the burger I ate for lunch. She thought. Should’ve known spicy food on an empty stomach was not a good idea. Should have eaten a banana or something first. Her knees buckled and she fell to the floor of the phone booth. The nauseousness was not getting worse, but (Y/N) could feel as she slipped out of consciousness. She rested her head against the clear glass as her vision seemed to blur and warp before seeing nothing but black.

(Y/N) awoke with a start, vigorously coughing as if her lungs were filled to the brim with dust.

“Mom! Jonathan!” She could hear a boy yelling over the chaos. He sounded young. “She’s awake!”

“Mom, get some water!” Another person called. His voice was deep compared to the boy, but not deep enough to be older than (Y/N). He helps her sit up and collect herself. A woman, seemingly the boys’ mother, comes in with a glass of water. She kneeled by (Y/N), beside the older son, and guided the water to her mouth and she drank as if she had never tasted water before. As her coughing subsided, she took the chance to look around. The things that caught her eye were the large “The Evil Dead” poster and the vintage stereo set. She felt the springy mattress and cotton sheets under her. The walls of the bedroom were not exactly white, as they had a green tint to them, making the atmosphere a tad more comforting.

“Where am I?” (Y/N) asked between her heavy breathing.

“It’s okay.” The mom said. She was small but visibly older than the boys. Her brown hair just passed her shoulder and her long, wispy bangs framed her face. Her brown eyes were calming “You’re safe. What’s your name, dear?” (Y/N) stuttered out an answer, still unsure of what was happening and who these people were. “Boys, leave for a moment.” The brothers glanced at each other before leaving the room and closing the door. (Y/N) felt a little uncomfortable with less people in the room. She was stiff like a deer in the headlights, ready to run if she needed to.

“Where am I?” (Y/N) repeated, defensive in front of the unfamiliar woman.

“You’re in my home. This is my son’s room.” (Y/N) stayed silent and allowed her to speak further, but kept her defensive demeanor.

“How did you end up out there in the woods?”

“In the woods?” (Y/N) mumbled. She assumed the woman was talking about the woods just out of Hawkins. She sat up a little straighter. “No, I passed out in a phone booth.” The woman gave her a strange look. (Y/N) looked to the distance, trying to recall how she got to her current situation. “I was on the far side of town. I had forgotten my mom’s new address and my phone died, so I had to call her.” She took another pause. “I parked in front of the pizza place, grabbed my bag-” The mom’s eyes seemed to light up.

“We found you with a bag.” She dragged over your messenger bag, seemingly unopened due to the buckles still being locked. “Jonathan found it. We didn’t find anything else around you. I hope you aren’t missing anything else.” (Y/N) rummaged through the bag. From what she could recall, nothing was missing. There was not much in there. It was just her phone, her laptop, chargers, a notebook, her car keys, and a few pens. She swiftly threw her legs off of the bed and moved to stand. She felt bones crack and winced at her tight muscles. From the sun shining through the sheer sheet acting as curtains, she figured it was morning, which meant that it was the next day.

“Thank you for your hospitality, ma’am,” (Y/N) gratefully, but quickly, said. “But I really must be going. My mother must be worried sick. I already arrived in town later than we thought I would.”

“Oh, of course.” She was a little hesitant about letting the teenager leave, fearing that she had sustained a head injury or something else, but if she had someone waiting for her, she should not stop her. She also stood and handed (Y/N) her bag. When she opened the door for her, (Y/N) heard the scurrying of feet and saw the two boys from earlier standing suspiciously. It seemed as if they were listening in on the conversation between her and their mother. She gave her sons a pointed look. (Y/N) laughed to herself, but said nothing. They seemed like a sweet family. Maybe she could visit since she and the older son seemed around the same age. It was a small town, so maybe her mom knew this woman and her sons.

“I’m sorry, I never introduced myself.” The woman turned to her with a smile. “I’m Joyce.” She gestured to her sons. “These are my sons: Jonathan and Will.” Then, with a happy sigh and a shrug, she added, “We are the Byers.”

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Byers.” (Y/N) brought her hand out to shake and Joyce accepted. “I’m (Y/N) (L/N). Again, thank you for the help.”

“(L/N)?” Jonathan inquired. (Y/N) turned to him and smiled, nodding.

“Yeah. My mom actually lives out here. Name sound familiar?” Jonathan thought for a moment but shook his head. (Y/N) could tell something was on his mind, but chose not to push further.

“Here, let me.” Joyce opened the front door for her and (Y/N) thanked her again. She glanced back into the house one more time.  Before (Y/N) could put one foot out of the house, she was taken aback by the greenery surrounding the house.

“That is a lot of trees.” She mumbled, pausing between each word. The forest seemed fuller than when she entered the town. It was almost as if the forest was engulfing Hawkins. “You said you found me out in the woods, right?”

“Yes, near the edge of town.” Joyce tried to clarify.

“The phone booth must have been smack-dab in the middle of town.” (Y/N) groaned and held her head with her empty hand. “My car is just parked outside that phone booth.” She turned back to Joyce. “You wouldn’t happen to know which way to a place called “Demo’s Pizza,” would you? It’s a bit old looking, but seemed to still be in business.” She felt dumb after describing a pizza place these locals have probably been to in such a small town like this. Joyce thought for a moment.

“We don’t have a pizza place here in Hawkins,” Jonathan added from behind Joyce and beside Will, leaning on his right side and putting his hand in his jean’s pockets. (Y/N) started to question her sanity.

“What?”

“We’re a pretty small town. For sure, we don’t have a pizza place here.” Something seemed to click for her as her eyes widened and she felt her blood go cold. I was found in the woods. The woods seem a lot more full. The pizza place doesn’t exist. Hesitantly, she asked,

“What’s the date today?”

“It’s the 20th,” Jonathan answered her after a moment of thinking. She rolled her eyes, but broke out in a cold sweat, fearing the worst.

“Give me the full date.”

“Saturday, October 20th, 1984.”

[viktcrr]

「maxence danet-fauvel & nonbinary」⇾ samuels, viktor, the senior radcliffe student’s records show that he/they are a capricorn and 24 years old. he/they are studying visual arts, living in noland and can be observant, ingenious, reticent & dependent. when i see him/them i am reminded of a sculptor’s hands clay-ridden, the insistent hum of tv static, and a crying preacher inside a dusty funeral home.  ⇽「james & 21 & est & they/them.」

hllo !!! i’m james n here’s one of my big idiot muses <3 he’s not actually dumb he’s :/ a bit evil. bt thts okay hes still <3 beloved <3 LKDSFHLSADLKGFSHLKD anyways!

TW DEATH, HEAVY GRIEF, OVERDOSE / DRUG ADDICTION, HOSPITALIZATION, HYPERSEXUALITY, RELIGION MENTIONS, MENTAL ILLNESS

aesthetic.

old tvs and their static, worn tapes, horror movie screams, spilled ink, a sculptor’s hands, clay-stained, chicken scratch handwriting, messy notes, messy hair, scoffs and eye-rolls, bruised knuckles, sore throats, funeral homes and a crying preacher, shattered ceramics, knife fights, high ledges, vertically-striped pants, red lights, the moon shrouded in clouds, cigarette butts, graveyards and half-empty wine bottles, sitting there for hours and talking to nothing, about nothing, a god complex, gold rings adorning both hands, barbwire baseball bats, having never played baseball in your life, deep eyebags and broken mirrors, a permanent chip on one’s shoulder, yearning, longing, wishing.

basic info.

full name: viktor phillip samuels

nickname(s): icky vicky :/

b.o.d. - jan 2nd

label(s): the black hole, the crepehanger, the impious, the opaque, the tempest, etc.

height: 6′1″

hometown: rochester, new york

sexuality: pansexual uwu

pinterest

stats

inspired by: beetlejuice (beetlejuice), sid (toy story), jack sparrow (pirates of the caribbean), francis wilkerson (malcolm in the middle), azula (avatar: the last airbender), vicky (the fairly oddparents), stu macher / billy loomis (scream), marshall lee (adventure time), bojack horseman (bojack horseman), any it’s always sunny character :/

biography.

born to mama and papa (preacher) samuels in rochester, new york - fifteen minutes after his twin sister, tatiana samuels. years later, rosa samuels joined the gang.

was an awkward, quiet kid growing up, he didn’t interact well with others and preferred being left alone to dig up worms and draw on the walls of their childhood home. the only exception was his twin, really.

as he got older he grew out of this, but instead became like … sort of an asshole? maybe to compensate for years of childhood awkwardness. he’s the sort of person who will bite the hand that feeds him & developed into a full time nuisance by middle school, unlike tatiana who was much more subtle about her conniving manners.

always has been a fan of ‘darker’ materials. grim & creepy morbid shit. probably the biggest tim burton fan, ever since he was a kid … not a good look for a preacher’s son, but he never really felt ‘in’ with the rest of his family to begin with. classic black sheep syndrome.

drew disturbing pictures as a kid that probably prompted one or two or five phone calls home to assure everything was fine.

just really had a knack for art at a young age, from drawing to painting to playing with clay. it’s always been his Thing and probably is the only thing he’s good at.

being twins with tatiana was hard. they were near opposite besides both being quite mean-spirited. tatiana handled being in public better, left a better image behind - but viktor had talent, more than she did. they loved each other deeply - y’know, those unbreakable twin bonds as cliche as it sounds - but found each other as competition for their parents’ attention. a rivalry for affection.

in high school is when viktor really started to act out. it started extreme, like losing his virginity in their church and vandalism around the neighborhoods. faked being possessed in the middle of sunday service & almost had an exorcism performed on him.

his only redeemable trait was like … just his sheer talent in the arts. was in a 3D art AP course and specialized in sculptures. he could pretty much create anything he wanted with enough dedication.

because he was the problem child, the one who deserved to be disciplined for all his antics, tatiana could sneak away and get away with whatever she wanted much easier. on the bright-side, for her, i guess.

not a very motivated person - wasn’t planning on going to college, much less going to radcliffe but his parents literally wrote & sent his college application for him because they weren’t going to house a deadbeat but had too much heart to kick him out onto the streets. cool!

he’s actually pretty smart but he just doesn’t apply himself. has a minor in english because he didn’t care for an extra course-load, but he’s good at writing & analyzing literature. is going to use it to write and illustrate his own series of children books with a style similar to tim burton’s. not for the kids, but because he likes to leave a trail of terror in whatever he does.

has been experimenting with himself since high school but college is where he really had started to crack down on himself. was out as pansexual & nonbinary by his sophomore year of college just … not to his parents, who don’t really need to know.

if you asked him if he believed in twins having a psychic connection with each other - he’d tell you he wouldn’t know. it felt believable at times, but sometimes he had no idea what was going on inside of tatiana’as head. on the other hand - viktor had always felt oddly transparent to her, like she knew all of his moves before he did. the only person who could predict him accurately.

( TW DEATH, GRIEF, OVERDOSE / HOSPITALIZATION BEYOND THIS POINT )

when tatiana disappeared, viktor knew something was up. it was a twist in his gut, pure instinct that something wasn’t right. and it wasn’t right - and when she was proclaimed missing, they couldn’t find her.

and when tatiana died - viktor knew. it felt wrong, something cut so severely in him he could pinpoint her death to the second. he didn’t know how, or why, but he knew it. knew it before anybody else had.

afterwards he went on a sort of bender. he’d begun to struggle with a mild drug addiction late senior year of high school / early college, but he was managing it up until this point.

his mental health had also sunk to an all-time low, when it’d never been great to begin with. (manic & depressive episodes. once fixated on a sculpting project for six months and then knocked it off the table and destroyed it as soon as he finished it for no apparent reason.)

tatiana’s body wasn’t found immediately, and when it was … viktor went off the rails. ended up overdosing & being hospitalized. spent six months in & out of psychiatric care after that.

came back to radcliffe to finish his senior year because … for the reasons above, he hadn’t been able to complete it. just wants to get his credits and get out of here.

is still dealing with a lot of trauma & grief, especially since the one year anniversary of tatiana’s death was this month (january) - causes him to spiral and be unpredictable in regards of his mental health. he stopped taking his medication, so. :/ some days are alright, other days are pretty bad.

UPDATE: now that summer’s come n go ... viktor hs been thru <3 a lot <3 recently. switched therapists (his :/ last one got her license revoked) & started new medications, went to a treatment center briefly��‘cos .. he wasn’t doing too well :/ bt now he’s back baybey! trying to be better n trying to be sober but ... :/

personality.

the human embodiment of a gremlin that was fed after midnight. a goblin, if you will. one of those cats with a narrow head and really big ears … that’s them!

a big horror & halloween enthusiast. loves the old campy horror movies & probably has an abundance of masks from different movies. dresses like a grimy millennial beetlejuice more than they should because they just … love those black & white vertical-striped pants.

can appreciate the lore & cryptids at radcliffe and likes to feed into the fear that surrounds them. is probably the cause of a few ‘anomalies’ and ‘paranormal sightings’ because they’re just … a jerk.

fashion alternates between e-boy (they would be tiktok famous if they were 17 & didn’t think that a majorly minor based app was weird.), millennial beetlejuice, and goth in a crop top & sweatpants. big fan of crop tops and a big fan of sweatpants.

they can be really fucking mean? petty, aggressive, a major instigator. will literally spit in your face for little to no reason, you could just look at them the wrong way. the kind of person who will stick their gum into someone else’s hair. other than that? they’re like … sort of okay. they’re not always mean, just a dick about 90% of the time lmao

like okay yeah they’ll call someone a stinky bitch for no reason except they feel like it and believes it. it’s fine, they’re fine, we’re fine.

despite the fact that they’re probably getting into a fight whenever, considers themself to be a lover and not a fighter but that’a primarily because they fuck a lot. uses it as a coping mechanism, like they’re this big fancy carnival show that’s like ‘come one, come all! fuck the dead girl’s twin brother!’ and it’s … a Lot. might have a problem with hypsersexuality but they’re not fully aware of it.

the preacher’s whore son, basically :)

pansexual & nonbinary, switches between he & they pronouns often and without a pattern, but they have such a fragile grip on their identity that you could call them ‘dog-faced bitch’ and they’d turn around like. sup.

vastly impulsive … like i said, they destroy their own creations for the fun of it. spends all teir money on useless shit, will cheat on someone because they feel like it & likes the thrill, screams into the night sky frequently like a cat in heat.

will also spend months creating useless shit for no reason too. spent six of them sculpting a hollowed out tree the size of them & then took a sledgehammer to it.

they’re very super dramatic. would play the organ at church when nobody was looking after them and service was about to start. would just churn out these super haunting, creepy melodies like they were phantom of the opera. would do the same exact thing at home on their keyboard with the pipe organ setting whenever they got grounded until their parents took it away HBDSJFNGKH

will absolutely not talk about their ‘time away’ because it’s not anyone’s business, not even their own younger sister. still refuses to talk about tatiana’s death, or their mental health, or their addiction (fallen back into it but it hasn’t gotten severe … yet :/), or anything involving their own emotions.

will just change the topic abruptly, no warning. asks about the jonas brothers instead and they fucking hate the jonas brothers.

that being said they’re absolutely not over tatiana’s death & it’s to the point of obsession over it. like there’s some kind of secret that needs to be uncovered, even though there just. isn’t. tatiana was their rock and they were pretty much dependent on her. kept them grounded. could control them when nobody else could, got into their head easier than others. it’s sort of like rosa lost two siblings that day because viktor hasn’t been the same since.

emotionally unavailable while also crying twice a day. cries during their brawls but still wins. is stony-faced when they tell you they cheated on you with your much hotter best friend.

will tell you straight up what they want from you, no bullshit & no beating around the bush. just blunt. if they want to fuck, nothing else, then that’s it. if they feel deviation or developing feelings then they’ll ghost in less than a second. is awful like that but feels no shame.

but also emotional as shit and it’s confusing. will cry on a whim and then flip you off if you try to console them or ask them what’s up. will bite you.

they go to therapy but they just fuck around and wastes their therapists’ time … also is fucking their therapist, but that’s neither here nor there. so they’re not really getting the help they need.

likes to be intimidating but not … with their body or anything because they’re a TWIG but uses their love & knowledge of horror and creepy shit to their advantage. has an abundance of fake blood. has channeled the energy of jack nicholson and used it on tatiana’s boyfriends before (also is a big fan of sfx makeup & has dabbled in it)

probably chases kids around with a chainsaw without the chain on halloween every year.

generally never doing good, both mental health wise & morally. would probably steal candy from a baby for funsies.

i don’t know if there’s a good to them somewhere deep down, but they don’t see any issues with themself either. nothing really breaks through to them anymore because the only person who ever made them stop and think about their actions was tatiana, and well, y’know. :/

an introverted reclusive type who doesn’t like most people or going out, but does so anyway if it means a quick high & a cheap thrill.

pretty observant and likes to analyze people even though they’re often like … partially wrong. judgmental because they like to make people feel bad, not because they’re a righteous mighty person. because they’re not. so like, a hypocrite!

wanted connections.

a roommate… but it’s an absolute nightmare to live with him.

enemies… because viktor would have a lot of them…

familiar faces… people who knew tatiana or of her / were her friends. maybe even those who dated her, and who viktor would’ve tried to intimidate / scare at any given chance :/

pitiful glances… people who take pity on viktor and he hates it sooo much.

hooligan gremlin kids… just a friend group of grown ass adults who do drugs and fuck shit up around town like they’re edgy teenagers.

high school girlfriend… probably the one he lost his virginity to inside his family church :/

childhood acquaintances… people who knew him from his youth.

exes… good & bad terms, but mostly bad terms because viktor is an actual demon. probably cheated on them.

soft… i don’t know if he’s soft towards anyone and/or is capable of it but we can try. we can try.

unrequited… either viktor just doesn’t like them or he’s holding back because he’s :/ got issues with relationships & is self-sabotaging as one does

enemies with Tension… of the … spicy kind if you know what i mean. wink.

friends… old friends, new friends, bad friends, good friends, close friends, frenemies, etc. i don’t know how many he had but if your muse likes to cause a ruckus and fuck shit up then viktor’s your man.

hook-ups… current or old. friends with benefits, one night stands, anything and everything because he fucks around a lot.

ride or die… friendship but make it extreme.

bad influence… he’s just toxic to be around and brings out the worst in people :/

bad egg… he’s gotten into a few fights :/ maybe you witnessed it. maybe you were in it.

literally anything i wld love all sorts of plots.

[altviktcrr]

『MAXENCE DANET-FAUVEL ❙ NONBINARY』 ⟿ looks like VIKTOR SAMUELS is here for HIS/THEIR SENIOR year as a VISUAL ARTS student. HE/THEY are 24 years old & known to be OBSERVANT, INGENIOUS, RETICENT & DEPENDENT. They’re living in NOLAND, so if you’re there, watch out for them. ⬳ JAMES. 20. EST. SHE/THEY.

hllo ,,, again ,,, this is my last child i SWEAR ,,, at least fr now ,,, hes also the most problematic one ,,, the most dramatic ,,, one of my absolute faves ,,, pleathe love him. as always if u wish to plot please like this so i can msg u !!!

TW DEATH, HEAVY GRIEF, OVERDOSE / DRUG ADDICTION, HOSPITALIZATION, HYPERSEXUALITY, RELIGION MENTIONS, MENTAL ILLNESS

aesthetic.

old tvs and their static, worn tapes, horror movie screams, spilled ink, a sculptor’s hands, clay-stained, chicken scratch handwriting, messy notes, messy hair, scoffs and eye-rolls, bruised knuckles, sore throats, funeral homes and a crying preacher, shattered ceramics, knife fights, high ledges, vertically-striped pants, red lights, the moon shrouded in clouds, cigarette butts, graveyards and half-empty wine bottles, sitting there for hours and talking to nothing, about nothing, a god complex, gold rings adorning both hands, barbwire baseball bats, having never played baseball in your life, deep eyebags and broken mirrors, a permanent chip on one’s shoulder, yearning, longing, wishing.

basic info.

full name: viktor phillip samuels

nickname(s): icky vicky :/

b.o.d. - jan 2nd

label(s): the black hole, the crepehanger, the impious, the opaque, the tempest, etc.

height: 6′1″

hometown: rochester, new york

sexuality: pansexual uwu

pinterest

stats

inspired by: beetlejuice (beetlejuice), sid (toy story), jack sparrow (pirates of the caribbean), francis wilkerson (malcolm in the middle), azula (avatar: the last airbender), vicky (the fairly oddparents), stu macher / billy loomis (scream), marshall lee (adventure time), bojack horseman (bojack horseman), any it’s always sunny character :/

biography.

born to mama and papa (preacher) samuels in rochester, new york - fifteen minutes after his twin sister, tatiana samuels. years later, rosa samuels joined the gang. 

was an awkward, quiet kid growing up, he didn’t interact well with others and preferred being left alone to dig up worms and draw on the walls of their childhood home. the only exception was his twin, really.

as he got older he grew out of this, but instead became like ... sort of an asshole? maybe to compensate for years of childhood awkwardness. he’s the sort of person who will bite the hand that feeds him & developed into a full time nuisance by middle school, unlike tatiana who was much more subtle about her conniving manners.

always has been a fan of ‘darker’ materials. grim & creepy morbid shit. probably the biggest tim burton fan, ever since he was a kid ... not a good look for a preacher’s son, but he never really felt ‘in’ with the rest of his family to begin with. classic black sheep syndrome.

drew disturbing pictures as a kid that probably prompted one or two or five phone calls home to assure everything was fine. 

just really had a knack for art at a young age, from drawing to painting to playing with clay. it’s always been his Thing and probably is the only thing he’s good at.

being twins with tatiana was hard. they were near opposite besides both being quite mean-spirited. tatiana handled being in public better, left a better image behind - but viktor had talent, more than she did. they loved each other deeply - y’know, those unbreakable twin bonds as cliche as it sounds - but found each other as competition for their parents’ attention. a rivalry for affection.

in high school is when viktor really started to act out. it started extreme, like losing his virginity in their church and vandalism around the neighborhoods. faked being possessed in the middle of sunday service & almost had an exorcism performed on him.

his only redeemable trait was like ... just his sheer talent in the arts. was in a 3D art AP course and specialized in sculptures. he could pretty much create anything he wanted with enough dedication.

because he was the problem child, the one who deserved to be disciplined for all his antics, tatiana could sneak away and get away with whatever she wanted much easier. on the bright-side, for her, i guess.

not a very motivated person - wasn’t planning on going to college, much less going to radcliffe but his parents literally wrote & sent his college application for him because they weren’t going to house a deadbeat but had too much heart to kick him out onto the streets. cool!

he’s actually pretty smart but he just doesn’t apply himself. has a minor in english because he didn’t care for an extra course-load, but he’s good at writing & analyzing literature. is going to use it to write and illustrate his own series of children books with a style similar to tim burton’s. not for the kids, but because he likes to leave a trail of terror in whatever he does.

has been experimenting with himself since high school but college is where he really had started to crack down on himself. was out as pansexual & nonbinary by his sophomore year of college just ... not to his parents, who don’t really need to know. 

if you asked him if he believed in twins having a psychic connection with each other - he’d tell you he wouldn’t know. it felt believable at times, but sometimes he had no idea what was going on inside of tatiana’as head. on the other hand - viktor had always felt oddly transparent to her, like she knew all of his moves before he did. the only person who could predict him accurately.

( TW DEATH, GRIEF, OVERDOSE / HOSPITALIZATION BEYOND THIS POINT )

when tatiana disappeared, viktor knew something was up. it was a twist in his gut, pure instinct that something wasn’t right. and it wasn’t right - and when she was proclaimed missing, they couldn’t find her.

and when tatiana died - viktor knew. it felt wrong, something cut so severely in him he could pinpoint her death to the second. he didn’t know how, or why, but he knew it. knew it before anybody else had.

afterwards he went on a sort of bender. he’d begun to struggle with a mild drug addiction late senior year of high school / early college, but he was managing it up until this point. 

his mental health had also sunk to an all-time low, when it’d never been great to begin with. (manic & depressive episodes. once fixated on a sculpting project for six months and then knocked it off the table and destroyed it as soon as he finished it for no apparent reason.)

tatiana’s body wasn’t found immediately, and when it was ... viktor went off the rails. ended up overdosing & being hospitalized. spent six months in & out of psychiatric care after that.

came back to radcliffe to finish his senior year because ... for the reasons above, he hadn’t been able to complete it. just wants to get his credits and get out of here.

is still dealing with a lot of trauma & grief, especially since the one year anniversary of tatiana’s death was this month (january) - causes him to spiral and be unpredictable in regards of his mental health. he stopped taking his medication, so. :/ some days are alright, other days are pretty bad.

personality.

the human embodiment of a gremlin that was fed after midnight. a goblin, if you will. one of those cats with a narrow head and really big ears ... that’s them!

a big horror & halloween enthusiast. loves the old campy horror movies & probably has an abundance of masks from different movies. dresses like a grimy millennial beetlejuice more than they should because they just ... love those black & white vertical-striped pants. 

can appreciate the lore & cryptids at radcliffe and likes to feed into the fear that surrounds them. is probably the cause of a few ‘anomalies’ and ‘paranormal sightings’ because they’re just ... a jerk.

fashion alternates between e-boy (they would be tiktok famous if they were 17 & didn’t think that a majorly minor based app was weird.), millennial beetlejuice, and goth in a crop top & sweatpants. big fan of crop tops and a big fan of sweatpants. 

they can be really fucking mean? petty, aggressive, a major instigator. will literally spit in your face for little to no reason, you could just look at them the wrong way. the kind of person who will stick their gum into someone else’s hair. other than that? they’re like ... sort of okay. they’re not always mean, just a dick about 90% of the time lmao

like okay yeah they’ll call someone a stinky bitch for no reason except they feel like it and believes it. it’s fine, they’re fine, we’re fine.

despite the fact that they’re probably getting into a fight whenever, considers themself to be a lover and not a fighter but that’a primarily because they fuck a lot. uses it as a coping mechanism, like they’re this big fancy carnival show that’s like ‘come one, come all! fuck the dead girl’s twin brother!’ and it’s ... a Lot. might have a problem with hypsersexuality but they’re not fully aware of it. 

the preacher’s whore son, basically :)

pansexual & nonbinary, switches between he & they pronouns often and without a pattern, but they have such a fragile grip on their identity that you could call them ‘dog-faced bitch’ and they’d turn around like. sup.

vastly impulsive ... like i said, they destroy their own creations for the fun of it. spends all teir money on useless shit, will cheat on someone because they feel like it & likes the thrill, screams into the night sky frequently like a cat in heat.

will also spend months creating useless shit for no reason too. spent six of them sculpting a hollowed out tree the size of them & then took a sledgehammer to it.

they’re very super dramatic. would play the organ at church when nobody was looking after them and service was about to start. would just churn out these super haunting, creepy melodies like they were phantom of the opera. would do the same exact thing at home on their keyboard with the pipe organ setting whenever they got grounded until their parents took it away HBDSJFNGKH

will absolutely not talk about their ‘time away’ because it’s not anyone’s business, not even their own younger sister. still refuses to talk about tatiana’s death, or their mental health, or their addiction (fallen back into it but it hasn’t gotten severe ... yet :/), or anything involving their own emotions.

will just change the topic abruptly, no warning. asks about the jonas brothers instead and they fucking hate the jonas brothers.

that being said they’re absolutely not over tatiana’s death & it’s to the point of obsession over it. like there’s some kind of secret that needs to be uncovered, even though there just. isn’t. tatiana was their rock and they were pretty much dependent on her. kept them grounded. could control them when nobody else could, got into their head easier than others. it’s sort of like rosa lost two siblings that day because viktor hasn’t been the same since.

emotionally unavailable while also crying twice a day. cries during their brawls but still wins. is stony-faced when they tell you they cheated on you with your much hotter best friend.

will tell you straight up what they want from you, no bullshit & no beating around the bush. just blunt. if they want to fuck, nothing else, then that’s it. if they feel deviation or developing feelings then they’ll ghost in less than a second. is awful like that but feels no shame.

but also emotional as shit and it’s confusing. will cry on a whim and then flip you off if you try to console them or ask them what’s up. will bite you.

they go to therapy but they just fuck around and wastes their therapists’ time ... also is fucking their therapist, but that’s neither here nor there. so they’re not really getting the help they need.

likes to be intimidating but not ... with their body or anything because they’re a TWIG but uses their love & knowledge of horror and creepy shit to their advantage. has an abundance of fake blood. has channeled the energy of jack nicholson and used it on tatiana’s boyfriends before (also is a big fan of sfx makeup & has dabbled in it)

probably chases kids around with a chainsaw without the chain on halloween every year.

generally never doing good, both mental health wise & morally. would probably steal candy from a baby for funsies.

i don’t know if there’s a good to them somewhere deep down, but they don’t see any issues with themself either. nothing really breaks through to them anymore because the only person who ever made them stop and think about their actions was tatiana, and well, y’know. :/

an introverted reclusive type who doesn’t like most people or going out, but does so anyway if it means a quick high & a cheap thrill.

pretty observant and likes to analyze people even though they’re often like ... partially wrong. judgmental because they like to make people feel bad, not because they’re a righteous mighty person. because they’re not. so like, a hypocrite!

wanted connections.

a roommate... but it’s an absolute nightmare to live with him.

enemies... because viktor would have a lot of them...

familiar faces... people who knew tatiana or of her / were her friends. maybe even those who dated her, and who viktor would’ve tried to intimidate / scare at any given chance :/

pitiful glances... people who take pity on viktor and he hates it sooo much.

hooligan gremlin kids... just a friend group of grown ass adults who do drugs and fuck shit up around town like they’re edgy teenagers.

high school girlfriend... probably the one he lost his virginity to inside his family church :/

childhood acquaintances... people who knew him from his youth.

exes... good & bad terms, but mostly bad terms because viktor is an actual demon. probably cheated on them.

soft... i don’t know if he’s soft towards anyone and/or is capable of it but we can try. we can try.

unrequited... either viktor just doesn’t like them or he’s holding back because he’s :/ got issues with relationships & is self-sabotaging as one does

enemies with Tension... of the ... spicy kind if you know what i mean. wink.

friends... old friends, new friends, bad friends, good friends, close friends, frenemies, etc. i don’t know how many he had but if your muse likes to cause a ruckus and fuck shit up then viktor’s your man.

hook-ups... current or old. friends with benefits, one night stands, anything and everything because he fucks around a lot.

ride or die... friendship but make it extreme.

bad influence... he’s just toxic to be around and brings out the worst in people :/

bad egg... he’s gotten into a few fights :/ maybe you witnessed it. maybe you were in it.

literally anything i wld love all sorts of plots.

[stellarbisexual]

STS3E1

Welp, here we are.  I’ve watched the recap, I’ve gotten emo over Mom Steeb, I’ve relived Bob’s death against my will. Let’s do this.

Some Evil Science Shit is going down. Oh those dickwads be opening the gate??? And remember: it’s never a scifi without insanely vaginal imagery. 

LMAO of course they’re Russian. 

OH BRO THAT THEME SONG GOT ME FEELING THINGS

So proud of Priah Ferguson tho for getting bumped up to a regular. #bless

Oh shit Mileven be makin’ out. OK lmfao Mike is officially in Teen Tool Mode. hahahaha. 

I could not love Hop more than I do now. <3333333 That vintage Tostitos bag. 

LUCAS ILU “I wish we could make out forever and never hang out with any of our friends” HE KEEPS IT SO REAL

“ISN’T IT TIME YOU DIED?” hahahahahahhahahahhahahahahah 

I feel like the writers saw IT and incorporated Richie Tozier qualities into Mike’s character for S3 TBH. 

okay sooooooooooooooooo hear me out

but are lumax and byeler officially on a double date?

ps finn is eleventy million feet tall

my lumax heart is F U L L they are the best otp

o god my poor gay son :( :( :( ptsd comin’ for ya

oh jUESUS CHRISTAOSN DJSG DLASFNKL THE BYELER IS DFSBAASGODAFBNSLJG the intimacy of that “hey, you ok?” and will looking at mike like a giant hearteyes emoji come to life

THANKS FOR PLAYING IT LIKE YOU’RE TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH MIKE, NOAH SCHNAPP. THANKS FOR MAKING MY LIFE

oooooh jancy are in full effect; nancy that perm tho

“i’m not gonna fall in love” holy shit guys i can’t handle will byers OKAY

oh hell yeah get that 80s workplace sexism kickin’

HI DUSTERS MAH BOI and so glad his mama’s back

Uhhhh y’all have been through some supernatural shit and this is the prank you choose to play on your poor boy Dusty?? Liek? kids are so dumb lmao

mrs. wheeler and company: y’all are nasty

THO I DO APPRECIATE THE THROWBACK TO THOSE OLD DIET COKE COMMERCIALS

ugh w/e billy, go and die already. for reals. 

OOF THIS IS IT. THIS IS WHAT I’M HERE FOR. THAT JOPPER GOODNESS.

“I NEED FOR THEM TO BREAK UP.” LMFAO HOP YOU FIVE YEAR OLD.

haahahahahhahahhahaa david harbour’s delivery: “it is COOOONSTANT”

“maybe you could do it for me?” HAHAHAHAHAHA. i can’t stop laughing.

omg they’re not even together and they’re already coparenting, i can’t.

lumaaaaxxxxxxx <33333333333 “is that a new zit??” LMAO they are such relationship goals

suzie!!! dusty has a gf!

mike: *skeptical face* “is she cute?” mike you fucking tool

STEEB <3 poor boi feels like he’s being left behind

holy shit maya hawke sounds JUST like her mom, it’s freaky

i would watch five thousand episodes of joyce teaching hop how to be a person

I HAVE NEVER SQUEALED SO HARD INN MY LIFE GUYS. HIS FACE WHEN SHE HELD HIS HAND. HIM ASKING HER OUT AWKWARDLY ALSFJNSGLFKSAMFSGLAFNL MY HEART

fuck i want jopper flashbacks to high school give it to meeeee

“it’s GROSS” way to sound gay af will

speaking of gross, exploding rats? for real?

what’s even more gross is this billy/mrs wheeler content. i did not sign up for this. guh-ross. 

HAHAHAHHAA lucas you haven’t learned how to be a good boyfriend. 

aww joyce coming home to an empty house. it’s like she needs the discipline of hopper. it’s almost like they should be together or something. 

HOPPER CLUTCHING A PILLOW WHILST CHAIN SMOKINNG WHILE HIS DAUGHTER MAKES OUT IN THE NEXT ROOM. WHAT A MOOD HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA

hahahahah i love protective crazy dad hop more than pretty much anything

ugh too many coming of age feels

ooh yes billy crashed his car. 

oh no he’s still alive.

me while billy gets dragged to his death:

[theyearoftheking]

Book 1: Carrie

I wish I could write you a melody so plain

That would save you, dear lady, from going insane

That would ease you and cool you and cease the pain

Of your useless and pointless knowledge...

-Bob Dylan

I first read Carrie seven years ago as part of the Rory Gilmore reading challenge (sense a trend yet?). Despite reading a handful of books in the challenge, I quickly gave up because the prospect of reading Finnegan’s Wake was just too much. Even as an English major, I just can’t stomach Joyce. But I digress, and promise to stick with this challenge until the bitter end. Besides, I have a blog. I’m obviously big time now.

Carrie was first published in 1974 and the overriding theme for me was relevance. What’s old is new again, human beings never really learn lessons and bullying is a tale as old as time. Let’s do a deep-ish dive, shall we?

The book opens with a pretty embarrassing scene set inside high school hell: the girl’s locker room. Carrie is showering after gym class, and gets her period for the first time, blood streaming down her legs. She’s scared as hell,and has no idea what’s happening, because she was raised by an evangelical crazy woman. Her classmates lose their shit, begin throwing menstrual products at her, and yelling, “plug it up!” 

So cringy. 

But on the bright side, this didn’t happen during the age of social media. This would have made Snapchat, Insta, TikTok, or whatever social media thing the kids are into. But you could still see it happening in 2020. Hell is other people, particularly high school girls of a certain bitchy persuasion. 

After this humiliating moment, Carrie heads home to lick her wounds, and wonder why her mother, Margaret, never talked to her about menstruation. Her mother informs her, “And God made Eve from the rib of Adam...Get up, woman. Let us get in and pray. Let’s us pray to Jesus for our woman-weak, wicked, sinning souls...” 

At this moment, my blood ran cold. This statement should sound like the ramblings of a crazy person. But instead it reminded me of another matriarch...

Yeah. Michelle Duggar of 19 Kids and Counting, and Counting On fame. Michelle with her crazy eyes and crunchy perm, who believes women shouldn’t be cutting their hair, wearing pants, or bikinis, or any article of clothing that might entice men to think wicked thoughts; because apparently women do nothing but illicit sinful thoughts in men. It would be funny, if it wasn’t for the legions of fans and multiple babies she and her evangelical brood keep popping out on their living room couches with alarming frequency. We won’t even get into the whole, “covering up the fact her son molested several of her daughters and brushed it under the rug, because... Jesus”. 

Shudder. 

After Carrie’s locker room situation, the school administrators try to punish several of the girls responsible for the tampons/pads attack. One of the ringleaders, Chris Hargensen is a right little bitch, and sends daddy into the principal’s office to plead on her behalf so she won’t miss prom. He and the principal get chippy with each other, and Mr. Hargensen says, “I don’t intend... to sit here and listen to a tissue of half-truths or your standard schoolmaster lecture, Mr. Grayle. I know my daughter well enough...”

This whole interaction between Mr. Hargensen and Principal Grayle cracked me up. Millennials (of which I am not) get a bad wrap for not being held accountable for anything. They are stereotyped as special snowflakes who need participation trophies, and their parents make excuses for all their bad behaviors. 

Bro. 

Tale as old as time. Need I remind you this book was published in 1974? 

Ok, Boomer?

The story progresses with Sue Snell, one of the ringleaders of the Plug It Up debacle feeling guilty for her actions, and convincing her boyfriend, Tommy Ross to ask Carrie to prom. Tommy loves Sue, and agrees to do it. Carrie sews herself a crushed velvet prom dress, her mom repeatedly calls her a slut, and Carrie ends up looking beautiful. I imagine it much like Rachel Leigh Cook’s “startling” transformation in She’s All That. 

 Tommy and Carrie go to prom, and he realizes she’s actually kinda pretty, which makes her worthy of his respect. The crushed velvet dress gets all the compliments, and the night doesn’t start out as a total disaster. Well, bitchy Chris Hargensen isn’t having it. She convinces Billy Nolan, her greaser boyfriend, to pull off some kind of spectacular prank at prom to put Carrie in her place and remind her of her station. 

Billy and his crew of greasers go to a local farm, kill two pigs, and collect the blood. Later on at prom when Carrie and Tommy are announced king and queen, Chris pulls the cord rigged to the buckets of pig blood, and douses them both. Carrie loses her shit, and uses her telekinetic powers (did I forget to mention that’s a thing she has?) to blow up the school, kill her classmates and destroy the lovely town of Chamberlain, Maine. After prom, she walks home, where Michelle Duggar, Mama White is waiting with a knife, and stabs Carrie in the chest. Carrie uses her powers to slow Michelle Duggar Mama White’s heart down, until she’s dead. Then (with the knife still stuck in her chest), Carrie heads back into town to finish her reign of terror and kill Chris and Billy. Then she dies. 

And they all lived happily ever after. Well, Sue Snell kind of does, since she’s one of the only ones to make it out alive. No good deed goes unpunished, am I right? 

A few notable, funny moments... 

1. Early on in the novel, a reference is made to a letter Michelle Duggar Mama White wrote to a friend in Kenosha, Wisconsin. How did Steve decide on Kenosha? Such a strange city in Wisconsin to choose... Did he look at a map and randomly pick a city? Had he made a stop at the Mars Cheese Castle once and it left an impression? Did he throw a dart at a map of Wisconsin? Does he know Kenosha doesn’t have an especially high evangelical population? So many questions. As a Sconnie Cheesehead Homer, I’ll be keeping a Wisconsin Mentions tally throughout the challenge. 

2. At one point in the novel, a fictitious scientific article compares the genetic-recessive characteristics of telekinesis to hemophilia. Hemophilia is referred to as, “King’s Evil”, I couldn’t help with wonder if Steve threw this fact in here just to use the term, “King’s Evil”. Random observation 

I enjoyed re-reading Carrie, and still find it relevant and timely. And I think it speaks to King’s talent as a writer that he’s able to create a character like Carrie, who blows up a whole damn town and kills almost everyone, and you still feel sorry for her. She’s not quite a villain, but she’s not far off. 

In summation:

Total King Wisconsin Mentions: 1

Dark Tower References: 0

Book Grade: B+

Now, time for Salem’s Lot. It’s been on my to-be-read list for quite a while, and I’m looking forward to diving into it. Be patient, it’s 700 pages, compared to Carrie’s 290. 

I should mention, I’m reading all of these books in actual BOOK form, no e-books. I find when I use my Kindle, I get distracted by marathon games of Candy Crush, and lose focus. But with an actual book? No candy to be crushed, no FB messages to check, no cute dog pictures to upload. 

Speaking of dogs, Steve has Molly, The Thing of Evil. I have Biscuit Beast the Beagle. 

You can see her handiwork here on a bookmark a friend was nice enough to bring back from The Stanley.

 Beagles... to know them is to love them. 

Until next time- long days and pleasant nights, readers!

Rebecca

[dustedmagazine]

“1, 2, 3, 4!”: Jennifer Kelly’s 2018 review

Jennifer Kelly is a frantic romantic.

Rock and roll forever, sure, but it’s hard to avoid the fact that the guitar/bass/drum idiom has been pushed way off to the side in the cultural conversation. Mainstream sites list “best rock records” as a weird, subcultural genre, with a slightly bigger audience, perhaps, than best cumbia records or top Hawaiian slack key recordings (but not much). Worse, to come up with a reasonable size list they include all kinds of things that don’t belong. I mean, really, is Mount Eerie rock by any definition?

Rock isn’t dead, but it’s been made to sit in the corner. The only time in 2018 when everybody thought at once about a guitar band was when Pitchfork’s Jeremy Larson dropped his scathing, hilarious review of the Greta Van Fleet. For a moment, we all snickered as one.

Big rock was terrible in 2018. It almost always is. Yet there’s something disingenuous about the genre of year-end write-ups that laser in on the absolute worst and most bloated of rock bands to make a point about the art-form as a whole. Sure, Imagine Dragons suck. Yes, “Africa” is a soul-destroyingly awful song no matter who sings it. No, I’m not wading into the whole 1975 thing. Who has time? Who has the heart for it?  

Because this year, against a tide of commercially viable horse shit, against a backdrop of monolithic indifference, rock bands of all configurations, from all countries (but really especially Australia), continued to make great punk and rock records. And, I, for whatever reason, heard more of them than usual, and it made me happy. And maybe that’s the secret to being happy in music, in any year…find your niche, listen to the best in it, forget about what the mega-corporations are trying to sell.

Also see it live. My big highlight this year was seeing the Scientists in October (with Negative Approach, too!), but it was a pretty great 12 months for live music. It started with a fantastic show comprised of Mike Donovan, the Long Hots, J. Mascis and his Stooges cover band and Purling Hiss (with J on board for one song) at the Root Cellar, a venue I’d never heard of before that show, and that ended up putting on a string of great events. I saw Marisa Anderson, Paul Metzger, Speedy Ortiz, Howling Rain, Trad Gras Och Stenar with Endless Boogie, that Scientists show and Gary Higgins at the Root Cellar this year, and I missed a lot of shows I would have liked to see. Other great shows happened outside the Root Cellar – The Thing in the Spring in Peterborough with William Parker, Bonnie Prince Billy and others, Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric at the Parlour Room, Messthetics at the Flywheel. Western Massachusetts has been in a commercial chokehold for years, with one organization controlling most of the venues, but there were a lot of options this year.

So, here’s to the drummers with their sticks in the air, counting off the four. Here’s to the guitar player wrecking his knees jumping up and down as he/she furiously slashes away. Here’s to the sweat and muck and black humor of $10 shows with four bands on them, two of them still in high school. And here’s to the people (me at least and possibly you) who like these things. Eddie Argos of Art Brut, who used to top these lists and now merits a footnote, spoke for this tiny, beleaguered sub-cult when he urged “Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s rock out.”

Indeed. Let’s.

Amy Rigby—The Old Guys (Southern Domestic)

The Old Guys by Amy Rigby

Let’s just set aside the fact that the first and best song on this album is an imagined email exchange between Philip Roth and Bob Dylan on the eve of the Nobel ceremony or that Rigby namechecks three of my favorite ever TV characters in “New Sheriff.” Let’s forget, too, how rare it is for a woman of roughly my age to be making her own music and controlling her own destiny even now in 2018. No, let’s focus on the songs which are sharp, smart and full of hooks, the clean, romantic chime of Rigby’s electric 12-string, the viscous pleasure of the arrangements. This is the very best kind of rock record, one that doesn’t attempt to remake the genre but somehow makes it bigger, brighter and more necessary. The songs sounded great, live, too, with the great Wreckless Eric in tow, and the two of them bickering like old married couples do, and Rigby glowing with triumph by the end of the show.

 Shopping—The Official Body (Fat Cat)

The Official Body by Shopping

Bubbly in a hard way, strict and minimal in a manner requires body movement, this album arrived early and stayed on my go-to list all year. For Dusted, I wrote, “You could bounce a quarter off the bass lines in this third Shopping full-length. They’re pulled hard and tight against minimalist syncopated drums, the leaning, waiting, anticipating space between the thwacks as important a character as the beats themselves. The London-based trio harks back to the funky, stripped down post-punk of bands like ESG and Delta 5, with hints of the boy-girl bubble and pop of the B-52s and Pylon.

 Salad Boys—This Is Glue (Trouble in Mind)

This Is Glue by Salad Boys

Always weak for NZ lo-fi and equally a fan of the early R.E.M., so of course I fell for this buzzy daydream of a record. “Psych Slasher” bursts with immoderate, glorious joy in the chorus, then cuts back to uncertainty in the verse, the ideal blend of rambunctious rock and wistful pop. “Exaltation” is a gentler sort of classic, just as radiant but moodier, its murmur-y vocals disappearing into cloud banks of fuzzed guitar tone. The whole record sits on the knife edge of rock and indie pop, leaning one way and the other, but never falling over.

 Patois Counselors—Proper Release (Ever/Never)

Proper Release by Patois Counselors

I went all in for “So Many Digits” in my Dusted review this year, but the two great punk songs on Proper Release are “The Modern Station” and, especially, “Target Not a Comrade.” This latter song chugs and lurches on guitar and bass, trembles with wheedly keyboards and crests in a massive, hummable refrain. It’s a catchy, twitchy punk tune that’ll hit you in the part of your brain where you keep Wire and the Buzzcocks, hooky as hell in a weird, distorted way.

 Bodega—Endless Scroll (What’s Your Rupture)

Endless Scroll by BODEGA

Flipping the gender cliché, Bodega is an all-woman band with a male singer. Its tight, nervy, jangles wrap around themes of internet-age dislocation and movie references. Smart, sarcastic, ironic, sharp, Bodega bristles with what you want from a garage punk band but reveals a surprisingly soft heart uncovered round about “Charlie,” a wistful song about a boy who died too soon.

 Bardo Pond—Volume 8 (Three-Lobed)

Volume 8 by Bardo Pond

The eighth in a series of improvised albums, this year’s Bardo Pond record towers and surges with monumental heaviness. I wrote at Dusted that, “The sound, vast and muscularly monolithic as ever, seems more like a demon summoned periodically from a ring of fire, than the product of any sort of linear development.”

 Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore—Ghost Forests (Three Lobed)

Ghost Forests by Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore

This year’s most beautiful album, Ghost Forests undergirds lyric folk melodies and angelic pizzicato harp plucks with roiling, violent darkness. My Dusted review observed “The best and most interesting [tracks] juxtapose the muted violence of electric guitar with a harp’s serenity. A guitar howls from a distance throughout “In Cedars,” pushing a simmering turbulence up under sun-dappled lattices of harp picking. Later “Painter of Tygers” does the same trick of joining muscle to fairy dust, the electric guitar raging from far away, while harp and voice spread delicate magic over the tumult.”

 Seun Kuti & Egypt 80—Black Times (Strut)

Black Times by Seun Kuti & Egypt 80

Fela Kuti’s youngest son inherited his dad’s fierce political commitment, his rhythmically unstoppable Afrobeat style and a few of his band members, but this wonderful album is more alive and present than a tribute. “Struggle Sounds, “ with its hard-bounce of a beat, its blurting sax, its ecstatic backing chorus, its swagger of horns and fever-dreamed keyboards dances through history right up to the modern day. “Last Revolutionary” enumerates past African heroes and connects them to the now. I wrote, “Kuti extends his father’s legacy, its tight rhythmic interplay, its fervent political engagement, its relentless exhilarating uplift, while bringing it a bit further into the present.”

Ovlov—Tru (Exploding in Sound)

TRU by Ovlov

I first noticed Ovlov at the Thing in the Spring Festival, on an eclectic Thursday night in a book store, where the sweet surge of guitar sound felt solid enough to body surf on. Later, for Dusted, I said of Tru that “Ovlov churns a monumental fuzz, a wave of surging, undulating, feedback-altered sound …. You can almost poke it with your finger, this onslaught is so palpable. It stirs your hair like an oncoming breeze.”

Speedy Ortiz—Twerp Verse (Carpark) 

Twerp Verse by Speedy Ortiz

There’s something so bendy and unpredictable about Sadie Dupuis tunes. They hare off in unexpected ways. They stop and start. They interpose weird little intervals of pop and noise. They refuse to behave, and end up exactly as they should be, though never what you’d expect. Twerp Verse takes more pop turns than other Speedy joints, but in the tipsiest, most eccentric way, with acerbic asides in the lyrics that catch like fishhooks and stay with you. “Speedy Ortiz offers a serrated sort of pop pleasure, full of rhythmic complexity and gender confrontation,” I observed in my Dusted review.

 Had enough rock? Me neither

Here are some more punk rock and garage records that I couldn’t squeeze into the top ten overall, mostly in the order that I thought of them, but Constant Mongrel and Richard Papiercuts are pretty great and that’s probably why I thought of them first.

Constant Mongrel—Living in Excellence (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Richard Papiercuts— Twisting the Night (Ever/Never)

GOGGs—Prestrike Sweep (In the Red)

Hank Wood & the Hammerheads—S-T (Toxic State)

Obnox—Bang Messiah (Smog Veil)

Zerodent—Landscapes of Merriment (Alien Snatch!)

Sleaford Mods—Stick in a Five and Go (Domino)

Ethers—S-T (Trouble in Mind)

IDLES—Joy as an Act of Resistance (Partisan)

Bad Sports—Constant Stimulation (Dirtnap)

Lithics—Mating Surfaces (Kill Rock Stars)

Art Brut—Wham! Bang! Pow! (Alcopop)

 Whoa, slow down!

Also a shout to the musicians who made more than one really excellent album this year. Ty Segall made five, I think, but I didn’t love all of them as much as Freedom Goblin and Prestrike Sweep.

Obnox—Sonido del Templo/Bang Messiah (Astral Spirits)/(Smog Veil)

Mount Eerie—Now Only/(After) (Elverum & Sons)

Ty Segall—Freedom Goblin (Drag City)/GOGGs—Prestrike Sweep (In the Red)

Ryley Walker—Deafman Glance/The Lillywhite Sessions (Dead Oceans)

  Nevertheless, they persisted

And finally, hats off to the bands and artists that have been going forever and continued this year to produce great music.

Kinski—Accustomed to Your Face (Kill Rock Stars)

Low—Double Negative (Sub Pop)

Loma—S-T (Sub Pop) (Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg plus Cross Record)

Oneida—Romance (Joyful Noise)

Wreckless Eric—Construction Time and Demolition (Southern Domestic)

Messthetics—S-T (Discord) (The great Fugazi rhythm section plus a young guitar ripper—one of the best live shows of the year for me.)

Charnel Ground—S-T (12XU) (This is Kid Millions from Oneida, Chris Brokaw and James McNew from Yo La Tengo, and as you’d expect, it’s really good.)

[bee-kathony]

Casualties of War

#QLPromptExchange - @thelallybrochlibrary

PROMPT #13: Claire has a relationship with another female nurse during the war.

Thank you @jules-fraser for making this beautiful moodboard!

CHAPTER 1 | BEDSIDE MANNERS

When the war broke out across Europe, there was no questioning mine or Frank’s involvement. My husband, Frank of only two short years became an officer with MI6 while I began training as a nurse at Pembroke Hospital in England. The hours were long and exhausting, days spent on my feet with little sleep. But the reward was being able to help heal in any way possible the brave men that were fighting for our country.

During my combat nurse training I became close friends with a few girls who were assigned the same shifts as me.

Cecelia Davies, a girl about my age, came from Brighton and had volunteered because her two eldest brothers had been enlisted. A girl named Nancy Thomas who was two years older than me, outspoken and mischievous, had volunteered because her parents told her she couldn’t. Then there was Emily, my closest friend. Emily Hampton was one year younger than me, she was sweet, quiet and loved to read just like me. We had bonded quickly, discussing our favourite authors and novels, never failing to find a conversation topic.

It was quite hard to be away from Frank, having only been married a short time, I missed him dearly but it was Emily who comforted me on those cold dark nights when I found myself missing him the most, wondering if he was even still alive.

We were all so pleased when we learned that we had all been stationed at the same field hospital in Amiens, France. We had been here for roughly one year already and there seemed to be no end in sight to the war.

Today was slow, unlike yesterday when a bomb went off in a nearby village and swarms of civilians and soldiers were brought in. I hadn’t bothered to eat, simply forgetting my own needs as I cared for the wounded; amputating two arms, one leg and bandaging as many heads as I could.

There wasn’t much for us to do besides make our rounds, checking on the patients, emptying bedpans and reapplying soiled bandages. I found I had a pretty strong stomach, having spent most of my youth with my Uncle Lamb who was an archeologist, out in deserts and in foreign countries, eating their delicacies and being exposed to all elements of the world. Emily on the other hand, did not have a strong stomach.

I watched as she re-wrapped a man’s bandage, he had a brain injury and part of his skull was missing. She nearly gagged three times but managed to finish the bandage and gave the man a glass of water.

I laughed to myself as she put her hand over her mouth, walking over to me and then grabbed the closest bin, throwing up whatever food was still in her system.

“I really should have volunteered to be a clerical worker instead of this.” She groaned, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “Imagine me sitting at a desk, the window open blowing my hair gently around my face and not a bloody bandage in sight!” She laughed and sat down next to me on the spare bed I was now occupying.

I took the hand she had not wiped across her mouth in mine, giving it a gentle reassuring squeeze. “But then you wouldn’t be here with me and that would be quite dreadful I think.” She rested her head on my shoulder, “Besides… I don’t think I could put up with Nancy’s flirting with all the patients if I didn’t have you to talk about it with afterwards.” That made her laugh which in turn cheered me up. I had had another rough and sleepless night worrying about Frank, I always did after treating wounded soldiers, which was practically everyday.

“When do you think Cecelia will be back from her brother’s funeral?” Emily asked me. Cece’s brother, George, had died in battle. He was stationed here in France and was caught in crossfire, her family had received the telegram a week ago.

“I expect by the end of the week and if not then, definitely the next. I was surprised Sister Lamarche let her go back to England for the funeral. What’s even more surprising is that she managed to find transportation there. I still wonder how they recovered George’s body and got him to his family.” People died all the time, it wasn’t often one of us was allowed to leave and grieve back home with our families.

Emily lifted her head off my shoulder and looked up at me, “You didn’t hear?” She asked.

“Hear what?” I replied.

“They didn’t bring George’s body back to his family. They only knew he died because they found his army badge out in the rubble… amongst limbs.” She forced herself not to gag at the thought.

“I thought it was only crossfire? A bomb?” There would be no body to return to his family, the funeral was for the family to grieve and mourn the loss of their son as a casualty of this bloody war.

“Poor Cece. She must be so heartbroken.” I sighed, squeezing Emily’s hand in mine. Often, I found myself squeezing my own hands into fists whenever I became emotional or on the verge of tears. Emily had picked up on this weird habit of mine and so when I squeezed her hand she looked at me, the unspoken question in her eyes.

“I’ll be alright Em. Promise.” I reassured her and she squeezed my hand back.

“Tell me something happy Emily, something to take my mind off of Frank and whether or not I still have a Husband.” I half laughed but my heart wasn’t in it. War took its toll on the human spirit.

She crossed her legs at the ankles and leaned her head back against the pillow. “Hmmm, something happy, something happy to cheer up Mrs. Claire Randall…” she said, her voice thick with amusement. “I can tell you about my first kiss and how awkward it was? Shall I?” She asked and with a slight nod from me she began talking.

“I was thirteen and he was fourteen, a year ahead of me in school. I barely even had breasts for crying out loud but there I was, kissing a boy.” She laughed, “His name was Billy, cute for a fourteen year old I guess but the thing was… he was shorter than me.” I fake gasped like it was the most horrendous bit of news she could tell me and she swatted my hand playfully, “Yes! He asked me to go to the cinema, with my parents sitting three rows ahead of us, don’t even get me started on that.”

“He held my hand throughout the film which was sweet but nothing happened past that. You see, I had a bet with my friends that he would kiss me during the movie but he didn’t so I assumed I was out two pounds.” Emily rubbed her thumb and pointer finger together as if she had the two pounds in her fingers now.

“But after the movie my parents drove us to his house and I told them to drive around the block. My Dad wasn’t too thrilled by that idea but my Mother coerced him into it.” She exclaimed. Emily was quiet and typically shy but with me she could talk for ages, she was also a natural story teller once you got to know her.

“So there I am walking next to Billy Smith and we’re standing on the steps before his house. I though ‘oh here we go, this guy’s not gonna kiss me, even after I sent my parents away’, but all of sudden he found his balls and kissed me.”

“That doesn’t seem so awkward, it seems sweet actually.” I said.

“Claire, don’t forget, he was shorter than me, to kiss me, he had to stand on the tips of his toes. So he kissed me, it wasn’t hot and heavy, he just put his lips on mine and didn’t move them. I had seen the movies Claire, I knew what kissing was supposed to look like and this wasn’t it.”

“I wanted to heat things up a bit so I grabbed his hands and put them on my waist but he had other ideas, that little bastard moved his hands and squeezed my arse! And here’s where it gets really awkward… my parents… my God, my parents drove up just as Billy’s hands touched my arse.” This had me laughing, I now had forgotten my worries about Frank.

“My Father put the car in park and jumped out so quick! Billy jumped so high and barely said ‘goodnight’ and he opened his front door and ran in before my Father could kick his little arse.”

We were both laughing now and I heard a loud “Shhh!” From across the room and we put our hands over the other’s mouth. That only made us start laughing even harder and soon tears were streaming down both our faces. What was it about trying to hold in your laughter that only made you want to laugh more?

I took a few deep breaths and wiped the tears from my cheeks.

“What was your first kiss like Claire? Juicy I’ll bet.” Emily said, reaching to grab a tissue from the side table and handing me one.

“No. Not really. The first time I ever kissed a boy was in grade school, he almost missed my mouth in fact. Nothing juicy or special.” I had actually only ever kissed three people in my life. That boy from school, a young archaeologist that was traveling with my Uncle Lamb and then Frank.

“Aw drat. I was hoping to get an enthralling tale about the beginnings of Claire Randall’s sexual encounters.” Emily poked her finger into my side just under my left breast.

“Nothing enthralling, I’m afraid. Just plain vanilla sex.” I blushed and then realised that Emily’s hand had not moved from my side but had actually slid just under my breast.

“Have you ever kissed a girl Emily?” I asker her, she was staring down at her hand, her fingers moving slowly against my stomach.

“No.” She said quietly, “Have you?” The touch of her fingers was sending little tingles throughout my body. I hadn’t been touched this intimately in months.

“No.” I repeated her answer. Emily looked up from her hand and into my eyes. I noticed for the first time how green her eyes were, so unlike my muddy brown ones.

Before I knew it, Emily’s mouth was pressed against mine. Her eyes were closed but I hadn’t even a chance to close mine before she had pulled away. “I’m so sorry, Claire. I don’t know what came over me.” She blushed a deep crimson and made to move off the bed. “Please forgive me.”

I grabbed her wrist so she couldn’t leave and forced her to look at me. “There’s nothing to forgive Em, it was an innocent kiss.” I smiled, “A bit short but enjoyable nonetheless.” Now I was blushing.

She sighed and moved back to her spot on the bed next to me. “I suppose I just got caught up in the moment, it’s hard you know… being so far from our loved ones… not being touched unless it’s your own hands.” Her statement made me blush even deeper, I had heard soft moans coming from her bed a few times in the time we had known each other but I only assumed she was having a bad dream, never did I think she was touching herself.

I guess I was feeling that same ache of wanting to be touched because I placed my hand behind her neck and turned her head to kiss me.

Emily’s lips were stiff against mine but then she relaxed once she realised what was happening. She moaned gently against my lips when I pressed my hand against her breast, cupping its full weight.

The kiss lasted a few more moments but ended too soon as I heard footsteps coming down the hall and remembered that we were sitting on a spare bed in the infirmary, the privacy sheet barely shielding us from the rest of the patients.

I pulled away and moved a stray piece of hair behind her cheek. “I guess I got caught up in the moment then too.” I smiled and then stood from the bed just as Sister Lamarche walked through the doors and spotted us.

“Ms. Hampton, get out of that bed and come with me. Ms. Randall, come with me as well.” She ordered and Emily stood from the bed, bending quickly to straighten the crumpled sheets.

We followed Sister Lamarche out the door and I dared a glance at Emily who reached out and took my hand in hers, giving it a gentle squeeze.

[officialmollymauktealeaf]

I always like hearing about OCs, so could you do a playlist for Bladen or Oz (or maybe one you haven't talked about as much)?

A new challenger approaches after seven years! And for taking so long I’d like to make up for it by explaining my reasoning behind each song. They’ll be in no particular order and McFucking extensive in the lyric explanation I am so sorry (Like this shit is really fucking long and it’s best to just look at the titles and yeet) 

1. Hey Look Ma, I Made It by Panic! At The DiscoThis song is honestly just… taken as fucking spitefully as possible. His mother abandoned him and here he fucking is? A loving partner and three beautiful, strong children who he will go to his grave defending and swearing they are all destined for greatness. 

Are you ready for the sequel? (I take this as him talking about his boys)I’m gonna be the greatest (Bladen’s thirst for power)

And if you never know who you can trustThen trust me, you’ll be lonely, oh (Referring to those childhood years where everyone except his foster father was an enemy)

2. Boy in The Bubble by Alec Benjamin This song is for his foster dad. Bladen was technically a sheltered child with no real connections except for that man who greatly worried for him. It reminds me of him because Bladen never wanted fights but even knowing what the results could be 

Punch my face, do it ‘cause I like the pain (Reminds him he’s alive)Every time you curse my nameI know you want the satisfaction, it’s not gonna happen (Bladen is nothing if not prideful. He knew what the kids wanted and he refused)Come the lightning and the thunderYou’re the one who’ll suffer, suffer (He always knew that the one that would regret it most are the people making life hell for him)

3. IMNOTYOURBOYFRIENDBABY by 3OH!3It’s half a joke song? He’s a horny son of a bitch I’ll be honest he’ll fuck almost anything that moves but miss him with that commitment bullshit. But there’s a verse that makes it less of a joke 

Kill the lightsThese children learn from cigarette burns Fast cars, fast women and cheap drinksIt feels right  All these asphyxiated, self-medicatedTake the white pill, you’ll feel alright (He’s learned that experience is the best teacher, regardless of how harmful it is in the end)

4. Unheavenly Creatures by Coheed and CambriaI’m gonna keep it real with you, chief. This playlist? Half of it is about how fucking much he loves his partner. He lives and breathes for her and if she fucking told him to die for her he would. 

We were young and had it all figured outShe was the quiet one and I had the mouthUntil she fell to me We escaped through the alley in the back Judge told me, “creature, don’t you dare go back!”But I couldn’t dodge the ringing in my headThe lonely, subtle voice, through the echoes as it said“Please don’t leave me here, my love”(Like I mentioned in the backstory, he had a plan and so did she. But then they really just forgot the plan, ran away, and decided all they needed was each other. He really still does feel guilty for taking her away from that life of luxury and, as he would say, dooming her into raising children [not that she ever minded? She loves them all so much])

There was something I forgot to tell her thenBetween the kiss and “knock 'em dead, kid”“There will be no other like you” (I don’t know what to tell you man he just fucking loves her and feels like he doesn’t tell her enough? As years go by he starts panicking about how he’ll outlive her. Every wrinkle on her face is a reminder that he’ll lose her)

5. As The World Falls Down by David BowieI fucking told you bro he just loves her. Side note: this cover? Fucking superb holy shit

As the pain sweeps through,Makes no sense for youEvery thrill is goneWasn’t too much fun at all,But I’ll be there for youAs the world falls down (He feels guilty about what she had to go through, being a vessel and all and now seeing her children carry that same risk because of his dumb choices and how he blindly sought out power. It’s not until years later that he realizes how much of a mistake it was and all he can promise her is being there for her through it all) 

6. Saint Bernard by Lincoln Tell me where I came from, what I will always be:Just a spoiled little kid who went to Catholic school (He really is just a brat and while not catholic, he was part of a faith and that cult will forever be a part of him) When I am dead, I won’t join their ranksBecause they are both holy and free (This part is referring to his first cult because at one point he lost the faith he had in their deity, the deity that left the cult free in a sense due to them having something to live for)And I’m in Ohio, satanic and chained upAnd until the end, that’s how it’ll be (He’s the polar opposite of the cult, his chains are exactly that. The difference he bears from them and it’s a secret he’ll carry until he either dies or gets caught which could easily be the same)

7. Take Me Dancing by Will Joseph Cook Surprise! Another song about him loving her partner. This is an early days song, back when he was trying to win her over 

And as I fall into the bottle bank [broken glass] You can make me into anythingAs long as I’m reflecting you (Bladen always saw the good in her. If him being broken by her meant he’d be reshaped into anything even remotely similar to her he wouldn’t have cared) 

Don’t let this loveWell I could be the answer toAll of your prayersTake me dancing (Once he really started to fall for her, since that day one, all he ever wanted was for her to give him a spin)

8. Save My Soul by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Man this is one of the quintessential Bladen songs in my book. The rhythm, the words, and just the general aura of it 

I consider myself lucky to have fallen in loveWith a girl, the city and the river of mud (He of course means Lilith and the place they’ve been hiding/living at) 

Let me knowWhere I can go to save my soul (That deal with a devil eventually started to eat at him and he just wants redemption)I’ve heard Gabriel singin’ & playin’ his hornAnd lived to see the day both my babies were born (Rapture is always close behind him, or at least he feels like. His one consolation are his children and how they’ll carry out that legacy of his)

9. I’m Not a Saint by Billy Raffoul This one really fucks me up for him? This one is for when he’s entering those early thirties, seeing the real impact of all he’s done and just… reflecting to his best extent. 

Had the taste of one too many lips hanging of my tongue, oh, oh (He’s had way too many partners, not that him or Lilith mind, but those lips brought some unforeseen responsibilities (more kids than he knows what to do with))  Sunday morning getting high, drinking here alone (Alone being what he’s now afraid of)Thinking up a brand new alibi for not coming home, oh, oh (He tends to disappear more than he should) And I’m sorry I lie so much (It’s all he knows how to do but he really is sorry) 

Lord knows I don’t learn from mistakesAnd I’m not here unless I’m here by your sideI’m not a saint, but I could be if I tried (He starts to realize a lot near this age and all he wants to do is try. For her and for his children. They’re no longer some experiments in a cold search for power. They’re part of his life and he’s ready to dedicate himself to them but at this point it’s more than too late.) 

10. Came Out Swinging by The Wonder Years This was one of the first songs I ever considered for him, tbh? It’s just such an optimistic song with the right amount of sad. This one is a mix of his early days and him nearing an older age

I’m running on empty The late nights and the long drives start to get to meI’m just so tired. (He’s been running around for a while. Oz is Lord knows where at the danger of being possessed at any moment, Mordei hates him and refuses to acknowledge him at this point, and his eldest has adopted their last name as their first name and is undead) I spent this year as a ghost and I’m not sure what I’m looking for. (This is in his youth, him just… searching)

I spent this year as a ghost and I’m not sure where home is anymore (Once again in his youth where lines started to blur) 

My body feels rejected and I can’t say that I blame itMy heart keeps saying stay youngMy lower back seems to disagree (The contract was too keep him looking young, never aging so at later years it really takes a toll on him. He stops feeling like himself at some point and his body becomes more of an accessory)

And I spent the winter writing songs about getting betterAnd if I’m being honest, I’m getting there (This is a mid point in his life, this is after realizing how much he actually needs to try) 

[blackkudos]

Billy Eckstine

William Clarence Eckstine (July 8, 1914 – March 8, 1993) was an American jazz and pop singer, and a bandleader of the swing era. He was noted for his rich, resonant, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. Eckstine's recording of "I Apologize" (MGM, 1948) was awarded the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999. 

The New York Times

 described him as an "influential band leader" whose "suave bass-baritone and "full-throated, sugary approach to popular songs inspired singers like Joe Williams, Arthur Prysock and Lou Rawls."

Biography

Eckstine's paternal grandparents were William F. Eckstein and Nannie Eckstein, a mixed-race, married couple who lived in Washington, D.C.; both were born in 1863. William F. was born in Prussia and Nannie in Virginia. His parents were William Eckstein, a chauffeur, and Charlotte Eckstein, a seamstress of note. Eckstine was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; a State Historical Marker is placed at 5913 Bryant St, Highland Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to mark the house where he grew up.Billy's sister, Maxine (married name Whedbee), was a well-respected Spanish teacher at Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh.

He attended Peabody High School before moving to Washington, DC. He attended Armstrong High School, St. Paul Normal and Industrial School, and Howard University. He left Howard in 1933, after winning first place in an amateur talent contest. He married his first wife, June, in 1942. After their divorce in 1952, he remarried shortly after to actress and model Carolle Drake in 1953, and they remained married until his death. He was the father of four children by second marriage and two step-children, including Ed Eckstine, who was a president of Mercury Records, Guy Eckstine, who was a Columbia and Verve Records A&R executive and record producer, singer Gina Eckstine, and actor Ronnie Eckstine.

Heading to Chicago, Eckstine joined Earl Hines' Grand Terrace Orchestra in 1939, staying with the band as vocalist and trumpeter, until 1943. By that time, Eckstine had begun to make a name for himself through the Hines band's juke-box hits as "Stormy Monday Blues" and his own "Jelly Jelly."

In 1944, Eckstine formed his own big band and it became the finishing school for adventurous young musicians who would shape the future of jazz. Included in this group were Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, and Fats Navarro, as well as vocalist Sarah Vaughan. Tadd Dameron, Gil Fuller and Jerry Valentine were among the band's arrangers. The Billy Eckstine Orchestra is considered to be the first bop big-band, and had Top Ten chart entries that included "A Cottage for Sale" and "Prisoner of Love". Both were awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.

Dizzy Gillespie, in reflecting on the band in his 1979 autobiography To Be or Not to Bop, gives this perspective: "There was no band that sounded like Billy Eckstine's. Our attack was strong, and we were playing bebop, the modern style. No other band like this one existed in the world."

Eckstine became a solo performer in 1947, with records featuring lush sophisticated orchestrations. Even before folding his band, Eckstine had recorded solo to support it, scoring two million-sellers in 1945 with "Cottage for Sale" and a revival of "Prisoner of Love". Far more successful than his band recordings, these prefigured Eckstine’s future career. Eckstine would go on to record over a dozen hits during the late 1940s. He signed with the newly established MGM Records, and had immediate hits with revivals of "Everything I Have Is Yours" (1947), Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s "Blue Moon" (1948), and Juan Tizol’s "Caravan" (1949).

Eckstine had further success in 1950 with Victor Young’s theme song to "My Foolish Heart," and the next year with a revival of the 1931 Bing Crosby hit, "I Apologize".

His 1950 appearance at the Paramount Theatre in New York City drew a larger audience than Frank Sinatra at his Paramount performance.

Eckstine was the subject of a three page profile in the 25 April 1950 issue of LIFE magazine, in which the photographer Martha Holmes accompanied Eckstine and his entourage during a week in New York City. One photograph taken by Holmes and published in LIFE showed Eckstine with a group of female admirers, one of whom had her hand on his shoulder and her head on his chest while she laughed. Eckstine's biographer Cary Ginell, wrote of the image that Holmes "...captured a moment of shared exuberance, joy, and affection, unblemished by racial tension." Holmes would later describe the photograph as the favorite of the many she had taken in her career as it "...told just what the world should be like". The photograph was considered so controversial that an editor at LIFE sought personal approval from Henry Luce, the magazine's publisher, who said it should be published. The publication of the image caused letters of protest to be written to the magazine, and singer Harry Belafonte subsequently said of the publication that "When that photo hit, in this national publication, it was if a barrier had been broken". The controversy that resulted from the photograph had a seminal effect on the trajectory of Eckstine's career. Tony Bennett would recall that "It changed everything...Before that, he had a tremendous following...and it just offended the white community", a sentiment shared by pianist Billy Taylor who said that the "coverage and that picture just slammed the door shut for him".

Among Eckstine's recordings of the 1950s was a 1957 duet with Sarah Vaughan, "Passing Strangers", a minor hit in 1957, but an initial No. 22 success in the UK Singles Chart.

The 1960 Las Vegas live album, No Cover, No Minimum, featured Eckstine taking a few trumpet solos and showcased his nightclub act. He recorded albums for Mercury and Roulette in the early 1960s, and appeared on Motown albums during the mid to late 1960s. After recording sparingly during the 1970s for Al Bell's Stax/Enterprise imprint, the international touring Eckstine made his last recording, the Grammy-nominated Billy Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter in 1986.

Eckstine made numerous appearances on television variety shows, including on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Nat King Cole Show, The Tonight Show with Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson, The Merv Griffin Show, The Art Linkletter Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Flip Wilson Show, and Playboy After Dark. He also performed as an actor in the TV sitcom Sanford and Son, and in such films as Skirts Ahoy, Let's Do It Again, and Jo Jo Dancer.

Culturally Eckstine was a fashion icon. He was famous for his "Mr. B. Collar"- a high roll collar that formed a "B" over a Windsor-knotted tie. The collars were worn by many a hipster in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1984 Eckstine recorded his penultimate album, I Am a Singer, arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo and featuring Toots Thielemans on harmonica. Eckstine's final recordings were made in November 1986, with saxophonist Benny Carter and released on the 1987 album Billy Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter.

Illness & Death

Eckstine suffered a stroke while performing in Salina, Kansas, in April 1992, and never performed again. Though his speech improved in hospital, Eckstine later had a heart attack, and died a few months later on March 8, 1993, aged 78. Eckstine's final word was "Basie".

Tributes

His friend Duke Ellington recalled Eckstine's artistry in his 1973 autobiography Music is My Mistress: "Eckstine-style love songs opened new lines of communication for the man in the man-woman merry-go-round, and blues a la B were the essence of cool. When he made a recording of Caravan, I was happy and honored to watch one of our tunes help take him into the stratosphere of universal acclaim. And, of course, he hasn't looked back since. A remarkable artist, the sonorous B." ... "His style and technique have seen extensively copied by some of the neocommercial singers, but despite their efforts he remains out front to show how and what should have been done."

Sammy Davis, Jr. made several live appearances and impersonated Eckstine. Not just for comedy reasons, but because Eckstine was a close friend and a supporter of Martin Luther King. Eckstine was a pallbearer at Davis' Funeral in 1990.

Quincy Jones stated in Billboard: "I looked up to Mr. B as an idol. I wanted to dress like him, talk like him, pattern my whole life as a musician and as a complete person in the image of dignity that he projected.... As a black man, Eckstine was not immune to the prejudice that characterized the 1950s." Jones is quoted in The Pleasures of Jazz as also saying of Eckstine: "If he’d been white, the sky would have been the limit. As it was, he didn’t have his own radio or TV show, much less a movie career. He had to fight the system, so things never quite fell into place."

Lionel Hampton: "He was one of the greatest singers of all time.... We were proud of him because he was the first Black popular singer singing popular songs in our race. We, the whole music profession, were so happy to see him achieve what he was doing. He was one of the greatest singers of that era ... He was our singer."

The Title of a 1956 promotional movie by the C. G. Conn Company, Mr. B Natural, is derivative of Eckstine's nickname "Mr. B." (The title character bears no resemblance to Eckstine.)

Discography

Albums

With Howard McGhee

1948 Howard McGhee and Milt Jackson (Savoy [rel. 1955])

LP/CD releases/compilations of note

1960 Mr. B: The Great Billy Eckstine and His Orchestra (Audio Lab) – 12" LP reissue of The Great Mr. B from DeLuxe/King

1963 Billy & Sarah [with Sarah Vaughan] (Lion) – compilation

1971 Billy Eckstine Together (Spotlite) – 1945 live "radio broadcast" recordings

1979 Billy Eckstine Sings (Savoy Jazz) – compilation

1986 Mister B. and the Band: The Savoy Sessions (Savoy Jazz) – compilation

1986 I Want to Talk About You (Xanadu) – This compilation features Eckstine's earliest recordings, thirteen selections from his 1940–1942 Bluebird sides with the Earl Hines Orchestra; plus three ballads from a 1945 live "radio broadcast" with his big band.

1991 Everything I Have Is Yours: The Best of the MGM Years (Verve/PLG) – 2-CD anthology with 42 tracks (note: the original 2–LP set was issued in 1985 with 30 tracks)

1991 Compact Jazz: Billy Eckstine (Verve/PLG) – compilation

1994 Jazz 'Round Midnight: Billy Eckstine (Verve/PLG) – compilation

1994 Verve Jazz Masters (Volume 22): Billy Eckstine (Verve/PLG) – compilation

1996 Air Mail Special (Drive Archive) – reissue of the 1945 live "radio broadcast" recordings.

1996 The Magnificent Mr. B (Flapper/Pearl) – anthology/compilation of material recorded with Earl Hines (for the Bluebird label), and Eckstine's recordings with his orchestra (for the DeLuxe and National labels).

1997 The Chronological Billy Eckstine And His Orchestra 1944-1945 (Classics) - anthology/compilation

1999 The Chronological Billy Eckstine And His Orchestra 1946-1947 (Classics) - anthology/compilation

2001 Mr. B (ASV/Living Era) – anthology/compilation

2002 Timeless: Billy Eckstine (Savoy Jazz/Denon) – compilation

2002 The Legendary Big Band 1943–1947 (Savoy Jazz/Denon) – 2-CD anthology (all of Eckstine's recordings for the De Luxe and National labels).

2003 The Motown Years (Motown/UMe) – 2-CD anthology

2004 Love Songs (Savoy Jazz/Denon) – compilation

2004 A Proper Introduction to Billy Eckstine: Ballads, Blues and Bebop (Proper) – anthology/compilation

2005 Jukebox Hits 1943–1953 (Acrobat) – anthology/compilation

2005 Early Mr. B: 1940–1953 (Jazz Legends) – anthology/compilation of material recorded with Earl Hines (for the Bluebird label), and Eckstine's recordings with his orchestra (for the DeLuxe, National and MGM labels).

2006 Prisoner of Love: The Romantic Billy Eckstine (Savoy Jazz/Denon) – this is a reissue of Timeless: Billy Eckstine.

2008 All of My Life (Jasmine) – 2-CD anthology (contains 35 tracks recorded for MGM; includes all 10 of his 1956 RCA recordings; and 10 of his 1957–1958 Mercury recordings).

2013 Billy Eckstine: Seven Classic Albums (Real Gone Jazz) – 4-CD reissue package includes these 7 albums, Billy Eckstine's Imagination; Billy Eckstine & Sarah Vaughan Sing the Best of Irving Berlin; Billy's Best!; Basie-Eckstine Incorporated; No Cover, No Minimum; Once More With Feeling; At Basin Street East.

Wikipedia