#and that I have some solid upper class sources on this

[rowanhoney]

i do not want to be around people who contradict me at every turn!!!

[literallymechanical]

Okay so a guy in my solid state physics class was telling us about this muon scanning startup he worked at, GScan, and I'm going insane. I don't work there and I have no stake in the company, financial or otherwise, I just need to tell you about it.

Muons are short-lived subatomic particles, same charge as an electron but ~200 times more massive. On Earth, they're produced by cosmic rays colliding with the upper atmosphere, and they hit the ground at a rate of about ten thousand per minute per square meter.

They're moving extremely fast at ground level, like 0.99 c. So they careen right through matter, deflecting only very slightly around heavy atomic nuclei – they'll penetrate like a hundred meters into solid rock.

What do you do with this continuous shower of deep-penetrating charged particles, constantly blanketing every square inch of the Earth's surface?

(source)

The classic thing is use them to image the inside of massive structures, like we use x-rays to look inside living tissue – except instead of generating them yourself, you just use atmospheric muons. Muon archeology is a whole thing, they've used it to find hidden chambers in pyramids and stuff. Neat!

But this one Estonian company is doing some crazy bullshit and I love it.

Sandwich anything between a pair of portable muon detectors and get full 3D imaging of the interior, with sub-millimeter accuracy, by tracking the minute deflection of muons between them. Samples that are WAY too thick for x-rays, made of literally anything. Just put some muon detectors on some two by fours in a warehouse and call it a day.

You can just. Image anything??? Anything you want?? Completely passively!! Just detectors! No particle source! Put them anywhere. The detectors themselves are a mature technology, the company's tech is in the algorithms they use to get this level of spatial and elemental resolution.

You can detect failures inside cable-reinforced concrete bridges without cutting open the bridges.

Decommissioned Soviet nuclear submarine filled with concrete, with no drawings or documentation, that may or may not have spent fuel canisters in it? And you need to cut it up for storage? Just look at the muons.

One of the wackiest ideas is to put one detector under your bed and one on the ceiling, so you get a full 3D scan of your body every night, passively. I want one.

[inkingthingsintotrees]

so, like, the bitter middle-class character is showing up more and people are not registering it?

I recently watched a video essay how Saltburn mostly falls short due to its inability to actually properly criticize class, and it got me thinking about the whole kerfuffle that happened with D20 fans about Fantasy High: Junior Year and specifically Kipperlily CopperKettle. Then, I finally got into Yellow Face by R.F. Kuang and saw the same character archetype in the narrator.

When I say the 'bitter middle-class' character I mean the type of character that is not extrodinary by any standards and blames any possible external factors for what they view as a 'failing'. Here's what I mean in narrative context: Oliver covets the type of social life and charisma Felix has and fixates on the wealth that Felix comes from as the source(Saltburn), Kipperlily thinks Riz's dad dying is an unfair advantage actually its pretty fair to assume she thinks all the heinous shit the Bad Kids had to deal with regularly were unfair advantages that gained them prestige they didn't earn through 'hard work' like she did(Fantasy High/D20), Juniper Hayward blames diversity and diverse stories as a whole as to why she has found no success as a white author in publishing compared to her 'friend' Athena who has found massive success through her writing (Yellow Face).

The three of them are meant to be wrong in the end because they were lashing out at those a flawed system chose to champion. But there's some block on really digesting these characters as being part of the 'bitter middle-class' and I can't tell if it's cuz so many people who consume this media are from the middle class or cuz people can't look deeper than the surface when it comes to the media that they consume.

In the case of Saltburn I can only assume that it was because Fennel doesn't know how to write anything that's particularly class-conscious and tried to dress the movie up at the very end like a thriller eat the rich film. The ending of the film really hurts it in the end, and I have trouble believing that it was properly workshopped to actually fit with the rest of the story. I have seen so many people take Oliver's final monologue and run with it, though. Either people use the closing monologue to condemn the way the film fails at being a class commentary, or they explain away the shortcoming with the argument of the film is that it is an upper-class horror story about the middle and lower class. But neither interpretation really acknowledges that Oliver as a character lied for attention both from Felix and his family but Oliver's parents as well (sure some of what they say is likely true but there is a good chance a decent amount of the information he feeds his parents is not the truth). Oliver spends 3/4 of the movie bitter about being mediocre in comparison to those around him at Oxford. Through his own perspective, he is putting in work that his peers can omit because of their wealth and Oliver's inability to be significant socially amplifies that bitterness. To Oliver there is only two ways to be 'interesting' at Oxford and that's to be rich and cultured or poor and traumatized.

Kipperlilly Copperkettle is real interesting just from a solid fandom perspective for me. So many fucking D20ers complained about the lack of redemption of any of the Rat Grinders but especially Kippers despite the fact that she's the one with the foulest mindset. Girl, you cannot be complaining about how people with dead parents get a leg up in life and expect any sort of sympathy. She's probably the best demonstration of this character archetype (would you call it archetype?) simply because Kipperlilly is just so deeply out of touch with reality. She's mad that the way she specifically approached adventuring doesn't get rewarded in the type of world that she's in and on top of that there is nothing else to make her standout amongst the crowd of other decent adventurers. Except Copperkettle Fourdogs is also one of those middle-of-the-road kids that's incredibly upset that none of their work will ever be recognized because it simply does not hold a candle to what other people are doing. I think this is why she got the amount of sympathy that she did from certain parts of the fandom too, a lot of y'all saw yourselves in her huh? Because it is a flawed system to be like: if you show up and do the work then you'll be acknowledged, and then turn around and require more because now everybody's done the work so who really deserves it now? But the way Kippers handled that by lashing out at some of the most traumatized kids in school not even about shit that happened while they were at school and being menaces but rather something that happened way before the Bad Kids were even a party is insane and out of touch. And sure you sort of see the work being put in by Jawbone to change that mindset but Kipperlilly doesn't care. She willingly accepts the rage in order to better dominate this group of kids she believes coasted into saving the world several times.

I forgot where I was going with this outside of : There is more than just eat the rich and wrongfully outraged rich people narratives when it comes to class, and I feel like this ignoring of a whole like a subgenre of narratives involving the bitterness surrounding what society deems worthy of interest.

Jesus Christ this is long I commend you if you got this far and didn't think I sounded like a total idiot because I definitly think that I sound like one at this point

[huntershowl-moving]

verse drop: bnha !!

general info.

name: persephone aisa alias (villain): hellhound allegiance: the unseen (organized crime) quirk: voidsmoke. persephone's hair dissolves into plumes of inky black smoke that she can directly manipulate. the smoke darkens any patch of shadow that it enters, allowing her to obscure her body in dim light and darkness. additionally, as their quirk evolves, they become able to manipulate its solidity, size and shape, which allows her to temporarily create small objects from the smoke (bullets, knives) & spread it outwards to fill an entire space with pitch-darkness. all created objects must eventually return to shadow; she can only make/maintain a few at a time before they start disintegrating. additionally, there is an upper limit to how large of a space she can turn pitch-black. (this limit can be trained, though, as can the amount/size/complexity of existing objects!) additionally, it is much more taxing to create darkness in a brightly-lit area than a dimly-lit one. enhancements: advanced prosthetic arms, upper-body skeletal reinforcement preferred gear: sniper rifle, several knives, brass knuckles, climbing shoes, grappling-hook arm attachment, reinforced clothing

two versions of this verse are described under the cut:

main ( villain, age/timeline-agnostic ) — inside your head the sound of glass.

UA ( student, early seasons ) — snake in the garden.

main ( villain, age/timeline-agnostic ) — inside your head the sound of glass.

the villain HELLHOUND has only been terrorizing the world for one year. for the first several months of that year, they only plagued the U.S. with their murders. japan was unfortunate enough to become their next target one month ago, but even in that short time they have already made quite the stir.

the strange thing about her — well. one of many, lol. — is that not only does she go after civilians and heroes, but other villains as well. it seems hellhound is indiscriminate in the moral alignment of those she eviscerates in the streets. additionally, sources are inconsistent and conflicting about what her quirk actually is. most are in agreement that it has to do with their hair, which melts into shadowy smoke at the ends, but those in the U.S. who endured her presence longer insist that it is some kind of lycanthropic transformation quirk. a beast-form, a giant wolf made of shadow and rage. as time goes on, more and more of japan's populace have begun to subscribe to this belief as well.

this verse can take place after the UA student verse or independent of it, depending on how sad we want to be. if it takes place afterwards, seph was pulled out of japan at some point in the timeline and sent to the US by her employer in THE UNSEEN. she completely vanishes, going zero-contact with everyone (including her brother), and comes back two years later as a villain — a monstrous shell of her former self.

UA ( student, early seasons ) — snake in the garden.

in this verse, persephone is sent by the unseen to infiltrate class 1-A and feed back information about the next wave of pro heroes. she has not yet experienced the events that lead to her becoming hellhound, but regrettably, that doesn't make her THAT much less aggressive. sorry to add to the angy energy bakugou brings to the class, but. whooops.

as a student, persephone is a little punk. she struggles to work with others and reacts to even the smallest provocation with anger. she doesn’t go out of her way to bully anyone, unless they do it to her first, but she is known for being prickly and very solitary. they are incredibly easy to rile and often get into fights. the only person they treat with kindness is their twin brother orion, who is in the support class.

that being said, she is still much easier to get along with — and importantly, quite a bit more trusting — than she is in hellhound verses. there are certainly things she likes, for instance (wild i know): being a delinquent, alternative metal music, raspberry sweets, cool knives!

unlike the other alleged UA mole, persephone's operation as a spy does not directly threaten the other students in any way. the unseen is a criminal organization that operates primarily for profit. its leader ( amari fletch, an ex-pro hero ) is perfectly fine letting the world run the way it runs, so long as the global leaders in their pocket continue to turn a blind eye to their highly illegal operations around the world. if someone goes against them, they are violently made an example of.

all of that being said, persephone is still a trained killer. she slips away from school often, as does orion, without any explanation to where she's gone — occasionally for days at a time. she is always diligent with make-up training and assignments, however, and her grades are solid despite the distractions.

when the war starts, the unseen's allegiance is to no one. (though this is subject to change, of course. an attractive enough offer could sway them.) this allows one of two branches to take place:

either the unseen allies with all for one and sends persephone to work with him & the league,

or they remain neutral and allow her to work with her peers against all for one.

[soulless-computerbug]

Tell me ur habit thoughts

I have an ask on my main thats been sitting there for a couple years now (sorry midsy i promise its not forgotten 😭) that i want to work on now because, while i try to keep my habit as close to the source as possible, i did have some plot points in my fic that needed more, and i finally have a sort of set background for him now. Its so hard to tamper with perfection and keep it, so im trying my best 😬😩

Evan is probably my habits 4th or 5th face. He was formed during WW1, but didnt actually stick to the mortal world til after the war ended. His first sighting wouldve been the early to mid 1920s. Im debating how much i wanna chatter about it, cuz i think i wanna do a side fic about his first faces, like i plan on doing with kates background too, but ehh

Gonna slip this under a cut

Habits first face was a rail worker named Rudy. Rudy had a damn solid worker's build and a cheeky sense of humor, and a heart of steel. He was dependable if a bit brash sometimes, and to a degree his personality bled over into Habits. There was a catch though, Rudy had a family and a partner. And while Habit was tempted to just off them all for sake of ease, it would have drawn too much attention, and he was not as strong as he is now. And eventually he got caught by Rudy's girlfriend, an upper class woman named Harietta. I have art of her somewhere, I'll have to reblog with a link.

Harietta was incredibly smart and quick witted, and she found out pretty quickly that something was wrong with her secret lover. She was just never expecting it to be him being possessed by a demon. His normally playful sense of flirting was more sour, more hostile and degrading. Her and Habit did not get along for a while. But she was determined to get him to leave them both alone, and she was persistent. Habit had a loose string of plans to build his influence that she found a way to meddle in, but over time he found her more and more useful. She had connections through her wealthy father and rebellious mother, and she had a brain like a puzzle box that could find the most uncanny solution to any issue. And after a while, he found himself willingly let her coming along, being more protective of her. Needless to say, he stole his host's girlfriend.

He eventually claimed her and they got married for her comfort. The bond he gave her essentially made her immortal, and they lived as working partners and lovers well into the 90s. He kind of corrupted her a bit. He was always malcious and conniving and looking to claw himself higher and higher, wanting to rival the most powerful beings walking the mortal plane. He couldn't have some human girl swaying his ideals. So he twisted her a bit, until she was a little messed up like him. Enough to get her on board with things most people wouldn't be.

The problem with being a demon like him on the mortal plane is vessels. Other demons, like Jack and Jason, have viable appearances that are human enough to work and blend in. Habits is not. His actual form is large and very inhuman, he stands out like a sore thumb. To combat this, he has to take human vessels, an imperfect tactic to hide himself amongst humans. These people he inhabits can still die, he can make them weak or sick with his presence, and if they are of strong enough mind, they can fight back against him. One of the things he tasked Hattie to do is help him find vessels, because as much as he tried not to, he would eventually break and kill those he inhabited.

It was Hattie that found Evan. She was smitten with him immediately, and when Habit inevitably killed his current vessel, she tried to coax and eventually seduce him into their house, where she could summon her husband back into his body. Evan is incredibly strong willed, and it took a lot of work for the both of them to get him to submit enough for Habit to become a dominant existence in his body, but eventually they broke him down enough to make it work. Hattie is very fond of Evan, and when Habit isnt inhabiting him she often clings to him and confides in him what she doesnt with Habit. Evan is actually the one that knows the most about her eventual madness and disappearance.

He's still very much a Habit. Stubborn, crass clever, antagonistic. I did kinda go the more goofy route too of giving him a small group of people that he uses like fodder and foot soldiers. Rabbits if you will (lol), and he mostly uses them when he has too many things to do on his own. Or he uses them as bait, weapons, guards, whatever he needs them to do. They live on their own, and because of the way he brands them, he can call on them when he needs and they'll regroup. Funnily enough, it started as a crack idea but Natalie (Clockwork) ended up being his right hand and second in command, and she has a very interesting dynamic with him because of that. Think tired employee with sadistic boss lol. We'll see all of this in the fic; hes the last antagonist to be introduced and he almost makes himself the main antag. He's a hell of a force to be reckoned with, and he'll change the whole course of the fic when he gets introduced. It'll just be a long while til then.

Ahh. Tryna think of anything else. I'll reblog this if i think of more, its already a lot. Thanks for the ask 💕

[missmentelle]

How to Keep it Together During the Pandemic

We’re living through a scary and unpredictable global event right now, and you may be having a hard time coping. There’s a lot of advice flying around the internet right now about how to manage your mental health during this crisis - unfortunately, a lot of that advice assumes that you are an upper-middle-class person quarantined in comfortable conditions, and that your biggest issue right now is boredom or low productivity. 

But what are you supposed to do if your issues with this pandemic run a little deeper than that? What if you were barely hanging on by a thread before this pandemic struck, and now you feel like you’re in free-fall? What if you are an essential worker being run ragged at an understaffed job? What if your biggest issue right now is not “how do I make this pandemic a productive time for me, creatively and spiritually” but “how do I convince myself to keep living until this is over”? I won’t pretend to have all the answers - I don’t think anyone does - but I do have a few tips to help you get through this thing without coming completely unraveled:

Focus on your physical needs right now. From now until this pandemic ends, you are effectively a Sim. Your main job right now is to make sure that all your little mood bars are full - just like Sims, people under severe stress can’t even begin to cope with it until all of their very basic needs are met. Now is not the time to worry about things like productivity and personal fulfillment - your focus right now is on whether you need a snack, shower, or to change into some more comfortable pants. 

Stock up on easy-to-prepare foods that are high in protein. Not everyone has the time or motivation to be cooking artisan sourdough bread in quarantine. If you aren’t able to cook healthy meals for yourself, just focus on getting at least three solid sources of protein every day - protein makes you feel fuller and more alert, and is a better choice than low-protein snacks like potato chips if you’re struggling to eat every day. Look for things that require little or no effort to make - granola bars, roasted nuts, peanut butter, cheese, canned beans in sauce, eggs, canned tuna and beef jerky are solid choices.

Do a fifteen-minute ‘declutter’ every day. Cleaning may seem like a pretty daunting task right now, and you may not have the time or energy to do it. But living in filthy surroundings takes an enormous toll on your mental health, and it can be overwhelming if you let things get too bad. Take just fifteen minutes per day to deal with the obvious stuff - bag up the garbage, take all the dirty dishes out of your bedroom, wipe up obvious spills, throw out rotting food and put the dirty laundry in a hamper. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be livable. 

Make sure you are accessing whatever relief programs are available to you. Several countries and states have set up financial relief programs, loan payment deferrals, and other programs to help people get through this tough time. If you are struggling to pay your bills, call your providers and ask if your payment can be deferred or reduced. If you did not previously qualify for local programs, check back regularly - eligibility is changing all the time. 

Find effective distractions. Find things that take your mind off of your anxieties, even for a short time. These don’t have to be educational or have any self-improvement value whatsoever. If watching  old Jerry Springer re-runs at jet-engine volume is what gets your mind off your worries for an hour, then that’s what you’re going to watch. Whether it’s video games, reality TV shows or hours upon hours of YouTube ‘haul’ videos, the only thing that matters is that it distracts you.

Limit your exposure to the news. Watching people speculate wildly for hours about how bad the pandemic will be and how many people will die is not healthy. The basic information about this pandemic has not changed - it’s bad, it’s contagious, you need to wash your hands and stay inside as much as possible. Check the news only for genuinely important public health updates, and then turn it off. Obsessing does not change what’s happening, and it does not improve your mental health. 

Let friends and family know that you may be in and out. Maintaining relationships requires a lot of energy that you may not have right now, and responding to everyone’s messages quickly might just not be possible right now. Let your family and friends know that you care about them, but that you’re going through a lot right now and you might be spotty about answering their messages. Try to have at least some social contact every day with the people who are most important to you, but don’t pressure yourself to keep up with everyone right now. 

Block or mute people who share unhelpful ‘motivational’ content on your timeline. You don’t need to be reminded four times per day that Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine. Shakespeare didn’t have to work a minimum-wage job at the grocery store while people screamed at him because the place had run out of flour. We all have self-righteous people on our social media feeds right now who are lecturing others about the need to “maximize” their time and relentlessly pursue self-improvement during quarantine. You don’t need that right now. Mute ‘em. 

If you need to pretend the pandemic isn’t happening for a few hours, go for it. Contrary to popular belief, dissociation is not always a bad thing - it’s one of the most basic emotional defense mechanisms we have. If dealing with the reality of the pandemic is too much for you right now, then put your mind somewhere else. Pretend you are the hero of a dystopian novel, or an early settler who has to figure out how to feed her family with limited food supplies. You can mentally deal with the enormity of the pandemic after it’s over - for now, find whatever narrative helps you get through this while still following public health guidelines. 

Access domestic violence resources if you need them. If you are quarantined in a violent situation situation and you feel your safety is in danger, please remember that domestic violence shelters are still open and they are still taking new clients. If you have a family member or friend that you can stay with, that’s also a good option - the health risks of breaking quarantine to move in with a friend are not as serious as the health risks of remaining in an abusive and violent household. 

If you need a prescription refill, make arrangements well before you run out of medication. Doctors’ visits for non-essential appointments are seriously limited right now. If you know that you are almost out of prescription refills, call your doctor’s office well ahead of time to let them know, and see if they can renew your prescription without an appointment, or if they can conduct an appointment over Zoom or via phone call. Medical professionals are extremely busy right now, so it’s important to make arrangements well in advance to make sure you don’t run out of your medication. 

Let someone know if you need to be checked on. If you know you aren’t doing well but you don’t necessarily have the energy to talk about it, just let someone close to you know that you would like them to check on you - this could be a weekly check-in to see how you’re doing, a daily reminder that you need to eat dinner, or having them remind you to go to bed if they see you online past a certain time. Figure out what you need, and communicate your needs to someone you can trust. 

Find one thing to look forward to every day. Find one tiny thing about tomorrow that’s not going to suck, and hang onto it. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Maybe you’re going to have a can of your favourite soda, or watch an episode of your favourite show. Maybe you’re going to call a friend or read another chapter of a book you’re enjoying. Find something that you can latch onto as a reason to get up tomorrow, no matter how small. 

Let yourself rest. If you find that you need a lot more sleep than you normally do, that’s totally fine, and you shouldn’t feel bad or guilty about it. Living in a constant state of high stress is exhausting, and you may find that you need a lot of rest. If you don’t have the energy to do much more than sit in front of the TV and do a few basic chores, that’s fine - you don’t actually need to be spending your spare time reading War and Peace or learning to play the mandolin. If you need rest, let your mind and body rest. 

Just get through the rest of today. If getting through the rest of the pandemic seems daunting or overwhelming, don’t focus on that. Focusing on getting through the rest of the day. And then tomorrow, get up and do the same thing all over again. Take this situation one day at a time - the key to enduring this is not figuring out how to sustain your mental health for six months all at once, but to focus on sustaining your mental health just for the rest of the day, over and over again. 

This pandemic is a scary thing for a lot of people, and we don’t yet know how this will play out or when it will end. But we do know that it will end someday. Do the best you can to take care of yourself, no matter what your circumstances are - we will get through this. 

[elliewritessometimes]

hello! me n @mattieswheelers wrote another fic!! tiff is the most incredible writing partner and i- i just love them???? thanky so much for writing with me you are a stunning writer aaaa (y'all there will be a second chapter stay tuned fdhhddh aLSO we are posting this on ao3 it will be there at some point)

in other news: this was originally a request!! @notsomightymightytiger it may have taken me uh- a good couple of months but here is your fic!!!

for reference, these numbers apply to these tropes: first kiss/flowers of romance/blind date

LOVE YOU KIERA AND TIFF AAAAA HOPE YOU LIKE

tw: swearing, alcohol and drunkenness but not in an angsty farrah way just in a silly oops first date way, as per usual if there's anything at all you want me to tag let me know :D

---

Eva thought she was doing perfectly fine without a romantic partner. Her life was normal, one filled with work and friends and scrolling through Pinterest.

Apparently, in the eyes of her best friend, this was not a normal life. Farrah had always been a bit extra, that one kid in highschool who always seemed to know where the best parties were, or who was known by name to the baristas at the local Starbucks, and by the ripe old age of 22, she believed that a romantic partner was crucial to living a fulfilling life.

Or, at least, that you should at least try romance once before becoming a hermit in the woods, especially if your name was Eva Sanchez.

(“Look, normally I wouldn’t be like this,” Farrah drawled, leaning against a counter, “But deep inside  you are nothing but a useless gay at heart-”

Her phone buzzed.

“-and you haven’t dated anyone, like, ever, and if I have to be the only one constantly dragging you out to social gatherings, I’m going to die early. So do me a solid, will you?”

“Hey-!”)

Eva did not agree.

But, she was a loyal friend, and that was how she found herself sitting in an overly posh restaurant on some random blind date with some random person that she’d never even seen before. It would be an understatement to say she was a little bit nervous, but then again, whenever Farrah was involved, that was normal.

***********: hi sorry i got your number from the blind date place thing but uh are you the person at the table in the corner

***********: ???denim jacket ?? pride pin??

Eva smiled, glancing up at the door. There was another person looking a little lost in the entrance, very obviously trying not to draw attention to themselves, their phone held close to their face as they squinted around at the restaurant. They were pretty, dark hair pulled up into a loose ponytail, obviously not dressed for a restaurant as upper class as this one. Eva liked them immediately. Raising a hand, she waved in their direction, laughing as her date gasped dramatically, hurrying over and nearly overturning a tray of drinks on their way.

“Hello.”

“Look-” Eva’s date slumped in the seat opposite, one hand awkwardly held behind their back. “I dunno about you, but I certainly did not willingly sign up for this. You see, my friend wanted me to apparently live a more interesting life and stop relying on Tumblr as my only source of interaction with anyone, and my friend is very persuasive, so here I am.”

Eva raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, so I wanted to get that out of the way before we even introduce ourselves. I am here out of spite only, so, uh, I hope you’re not too desperate.” They paused, finally taking a breath. “Right. The more I think about this, the more embarrassed I get.”

“It’s okay.” Eva gave a noise which sounded suspiciously like a snort. “Let’s not think about it then. I’m Eva. She/her. It’s nice to meet you, unwilling datemate.”

They grinned. “Kate. She/they.” She gasped a little like she’d forgotten something. “Oh! I brought flowers. Chess said it would be romantic.”

Eva accepted the offered flowers with a blush. This date was going better than expected. Farrah was going to lose her shit when she heard about it. “Wait- You have a friend called Chess?? Like, the game???”

Kate rolled their eyes, casually snatching a bright pink cocktail off a passing waiter’s tray. “Duh. You didn’t really see me walk in this fucking posh ass restaurant in my flannel and converse and think I’d be normal, right?”

Eva laughed then, properly. It had only been a few short, chaotic minutes, but she was already warming to this mystery person and, God, they had good taste in flowers. Even if Eva’s nerd hermit brain did helpfully choose that moment to remind her that this particular bunch of flowers presented a meaning that translated almost exactly to ‘fuck you’. She wondered if Kate was aware of that. However, perhaps that was a fun fact for the second date.

-

“Hey, Eva?” Kate was slightly tipsy. Only a little bit! Really not that bad. Not at all. Definitely not too drunk for a first date. Shut up. “Hey! You’re- so cool.”

Eva giggled - she was equally as drunk, but not quite so intoxicated as to stop wondering why the restaurant hadn’t thrown them out yet. “Noooooo. ‘m a nerd.”

“Yeah, but a cool nerd.” Kate twirled the decorative candle between her fingers, drawing stares from disapproving patrons. The flame reflected in Eva’s glasses, making her just a little bit more smitten by the second. They enclosed their hand around the candle holder as best they could, standing up just a little shakily. “Eva-” It was like they got a rush from just saying her name. Eva thought it was endearing. “Hey- we- we should go…”

“Why?” She narrowed her eyes, also standing up, her long-discarded denim jacket slung over one arm, the other naturally slipping to link arms with Kate.

“....Arson.” Kate sounded entirely serious, still twizzling the candle in one hand. Eva blinked dumbly at her, mouth slightly open. They pressed a gentle kiss to the side of Eva’s mouth, giggling uncharacteristically at the motion. “I’m jokingggg! Don’t look so shook, my dude.”

Eva stuttered a little, letting Kate pull her finally out of the restaurant, marvelling at the fact she’d only known this incredible, crazy person for a matter of hours. Who knew where tonight would take them?

-

They found themselves in a park, gazing up at the stars, now dim in the reflections of the city lights. Kate’s phone flashed 11:46 in the dark, the lock screen filled with notifications from a contact who’s name consisted only of a chess piece.

Eva lay down on the grass, spreading her arms out towards the stars. “Do you ever think about life?”

“Sure. All the time. I’m alive, and so are you, and I think you’re really pretty. Does that count?” Kate flopped down beside her.

“I- I mean, yeah- um,” Eva tried not to sound flustered, thankful for the darkness that hid the color rising in her cheeks. “But like, life. Scientifically. Relatively.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, I totally do. Um. Do I?”

Eva laughed, turning her head slightly to gaze at Kate. Under the light of the stars, they looked… ethereal. And really, really, really beautiful. And-

Eva coughed slightly, turning back towards the night sky. “Just… think about it. I’m lying here beside you, on a giant marble that hurtles through space. Relatively speaking, our orbit and path are unique, and all around us, the other planets are… swirling in harmony, and we’re just. We’re just here to see it.”

Kate hummed. “You sound like those philosophical people, all ‘if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, did it really fall?’ and ‘relatively speaking I am relatively here, and I’m relatively certain… blah blah blah.’”

“Huh. Do I?” Eva shrugged, putting her hands behind her head. “I dunno. I’m drunk. I think. Oh, no, I’m relatively drunk, ha ha- okay no, I’m just drunk.”

“You are,” Kate nodded wisely. “We both are.”

“Do you know what Albert Einstein said once?” Eva asked abruptly, closing her eyes. “He said, ‘When you’re courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.’ And if that isn’t the most relatable thing he’s ever said, then, well- okay yeah I’ve lost my train of thought.”

“Wow,” said Kate. “Did Albert Einstein court lots of nice girls?”

“Pfft.” Eva rolled onto her side, laughing openly in Kate’s face. “Sure. Why not.”

They rolled to face Eva, curling up into a ball, softer than the 22-year-old had seen her all evening. “Not as nice as the one I’m courting right now.”

“Even though neither of us really wanted to be here earlier?”

“Yeah. Y’know, I’m fucking glad our best friends basically set us up. It’s very pog of them.”

“You did not just say ‘pog’. You did not.” Eva groaned into the slightly damp, slightly disgusting grass, listening to Kate cackle next to her.

“Shit, dude, my secret’s out. I’m just as much of a nerd as you.” She leant their head on Eva’s outstretched arm, burrowing into her side.

Eva paused then, draping her other arm around Kate, thinking quietly. It was stupid, really, that they were cuddling in the openness of a park at almost midnight. Dangerous, definitely, especially when you took in the candle still flickering far too close to Kate’s now loose hair. Some more sensible people, maybe Farrah’s sister, would say that it was stupid how close they’d grown in so few hours. But Kate and Eva weren’t sensible people, not really, and maybe this was completely normal for them. Nerds lived life differently. “We’re not like other girls… we’re nerds.”

Kate barked out a laugh again, pressing yet another small kiss to the top of Eva’s head.

Eva thought she might melt into a puddle right then and there.

God, she was so in love.

Kate looked up at the sky. “Y’know, for all your philosophical talk, you should be an inspirational speaker. Be on goddamn TedTalks or something, blow the crowd away with all that ‘the future’s in the palm of my hand!!’ bullshit.”

“Well,” Eva said, trying to sound completely sober (and failing), “I think all I could ever want is in the palm of my hand, right now.”

Kate paused for a moment, registering the fact that Eva had just cupped her hands around their face. “Wow. That was smooth.”

“Right?? I’m honestly impressed and I was the one who said it. Wait, is that hubris? Oh shoot, am I developing an ego? Or maybe I’m just drunk?” Eva’s head was seriously starting to hurt.

“You deserve an ego,” Kate nodded sagely. “You are so amazing. Seriously. You should have an ego. Dab on the haters and all that jazz, right? Right.”

Eva giggled, unable to take her eyes away from Kate’s. “What the shit?”

“Dude! Dab on the haters. ‘m fuckin’ right, and you know I am.”

“Mkay.”

“Lit.” Kate dragged her gaze from Eva’s, instead staring up at the stars. “If we weren’t drunk right now, I’d be kissing the hell out of you.”

Eva pouted. Apparently Drunk-Eva was limited to the facial expressions of a twelve year old. “Who’s to say you can’t kiss me now.”

“We’re drunk, Eva.” They waved their hands, casually flipping off the moon. “Consent.”

“If you think about drunk...ness. Drunkenness? Drunkness. Whatever.” She coughed. “If you think about it like maths, then because we’re both drunk, it cancels out, right? Like, drunk you minus drunk me equals zero drunks overall, yeah?” Pausing, she ran a hand over her face, watching Kate smirk and wriggle closer out of the corner of her eye. “What I’m saying is, yes, I give you permission to kiss me-” Kate leaned closer and Eva laid a gentle finger on their lips. “But only if I get to kiss you back.”

The two met in the middle, naturally coming together. Some might describe them as magnets, two poles attracted, unable to stay away from each other. Others might say soulmates, meant to find each other from birth. Or, just maybe, stars, gravitationally pulled together, ready to explode into another plane of existence, one so different from our reality that we can’t even begin to imagine the wonders that they’ll find.

However, this is reality, and somehow Kate and Eva are still grounded on our Earth, stars maybe, but ones made of ancient stardust no longer free to travel the universe. They found themselves pulling apart after two worlds collided, an unknown period of time passing as it happened. Eva’s fingers didn’t untangle themselves from their comfortable seat amongst Kate’s hair, the closeness making their noses brush, spouting giggles from both young adults.

“Well, that was fun.” Kate brushed hair out of Eva’s face, one arm still wrapped tight around her waist, pulling her closer as she shivered in the night air.

“Yeah?” Eva pressed her forehead to theirs. “Why don’t we try it again, huh?”

---

“I told you so,” Farrah smirked, picking at a freshly baked blueberry muffin. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Eva huffed, failing to come up with an argument.

Over by the kitchen counter, Mattie snorted. “I find it kinda funny that the single girl insists that love is the answer to anything.”

“Well- it’s not like I’ve never dated!”

“Suuuuure,” Mattie rolled her eyes, hopping off the counter and snatching a muffin. “Anyways, at least Eva has a significant other now. That’s the biggest victory, right? Other than the celebratory muffins, of course.”

Eva sighed. “Is it really that big of a deal that Farrah’s plan worked?”

“Yep!” Farrah grinned, taking a bite of muffin.

“Technically, my plan, but okay,” Mattie shrugged.

Eva almost dropped her muffin. “What.”

Mattie grinned, a devilish glint appearing in her eye. “Believe it or not, I am also friends with none other than the amazing Chess, and since her friend Kate- who is also my friend, by the way- was being a mopey mess around the same time as you, I just had to take it upon myself to play matchmaker! So I’d like at least 50% of the credit and reward, please and thank you.”

“I- what-” Eva sputtered, trying to come to terms with the new information. “Mattie- you- oh my God.”

“Oh my God indeed,” Mattie bit into her muffin and swallowed. “So anyways, you’re welcome for getting you a girlfriend.”

Eva stared at the younger girl, mouth slightly open and muffin hanging loosely in her hand. Farrah clapped a hand over her mouth as she wheezed through a mess of sugar and blueberries, earning herself a death stare from Eva. Phone in one hand, Mattie continued eating her muffin as though nothing had happened, the teasing look on her face only exaggerating as her phone pinged with a message. “Oh! Speaking of, Chess is outside-”

She was cut off as the door burst open, the handle crashing into Eva’s bookcase, knocking her alarm clock to the ground and presenting two dishevelled figures in the doorway. One of them, a tall student probably in their last year of uni, puffed out a breath, a hand tightly clinging to a much shorter student squirming angrily. “Before you say anything, I tried to prevent any of this happening. Wheeler, I’m blaming you entirely for this.”

Mattie only laughed, offering Chess a muffin with her free hand, “Dude, it was totally your idea.”

Eva tried very hard not to stare as Kate finally freed herself from Chess’ grasp with an indignant yelp. “Fuck off! Eva, babe, sweetheart, love of my life, tell me you didn’t fucking know about this beforehand or I will break up with you.”

“No! God, no! You know I didn’t want to be there just as much as you did.” She rested her head gently on top of Kate’s, arms draped over their shoulders. “Believe you me, I’ve also been sorely betrayed today.”

Farrah gagged across the kitchen. “Ew. We should never have set you two up.”

“Bitch.” Eva grinned affectionately at her best friend, batting Kate’s hand down as they sent a middle finger in Farrah’s direction. Conversations carried on for a while, Chess finally being introduced to Farrah, with a muffin being forcefully placed into her hand. Kate whispered to Eva for a second before going out to take a call. Eva smiled knowingly, leaning on the counter to address Mattie, “So…”

Mattie made a face as Eva raised an eyebrow in her direction. “What are you thinking, Sanchez, I don’t like that face.”

“I don’t know…” She feigned thinking, sticking her tongue out as Kate re-entered the room. “Maybe, a little thank-you gift?? Y’know, me and Kate were thinking just now… Seeing as you set us up so nicely, how about you try a blind date yourself?”

Chess and Farrah stifled a laugh in unison, choking a little on their muffins as Mattie’s eyes got wider in horror. “You didn’t.”

Kate smiled sweetly. “Yup! Tonight, seven thirty. It’s payback time, kid.”

“I hate you.”

[3pirouette]

Fic: Virtual Insanity: Career Opportunities (1/1)

Title: Virtual Insanity: Career Opportunities By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette Disclaimer: They're not mine. Word Count: Distribution: AO3 Anyone else please ask first :)

Story Summary: It’s career day on Mr. Roger’s Zoom class, and Peggy needs to come up with something, quick. Sequel to Virtual Insanity.

Chapter A/N: I needed to write something fluffy and I’ve been DYING to find a way to get back to this little universe. This satisfies the “Sharon Carter” square for my Steggy Bingo. (We’re not talking about FATWS/CAATWS right now. I can’t. I just can’t.)

~*~

Don’t be mad at me.

The text itself was fairly innocuous, but her brain started to race, anyway. Peggy’s fingers flew over the keyboard, texting back: Is there a reason I should be?

She stared at the phone screen, waiting while the three little dots that meant he was typing appeared and disappeared twice over. Now she was worried.

“Aunt Peggy?” Sharon’s voice carried through her small apartment.

Peggy hummed a question in her closed mouth as the girl took off her headphones and bounded towards her, but the phone vibrated in her hands and pulled her attention back.

The Principal decided to observe me today instead of Thursday. Said he wanted to see a more interactive lesson plan, so I had to switch things up on short notice. I swear I was going to give you a heads up.

Before she could ask him anything else, Sharon sat herself next to Peggy at the tiny kitchen table, her notebook and pencil in hand. “Mr. Rogers gave us an assignment and I have thirty minutes to do it before I have to go back to my class and talk to them about it.”

Peggy smiled tight, the girl missing the tension in her sigh. “Oh? And what is the assignment?”

Sharon smiled. “I need to ask you questions about what you do for work.”

Peggy nodded, her mind racing as she tried to come up with what she was going to tell her niece. Not sure how you’ll do with the principal, she texted Steve, but that promotion to boyfriend you were looking for might be in serious jeopardy.

She waited a second then sent him a winking emoji, just to lighten up the mood. Having gotten to know Steve as well as she had over the last few weeks, she knew he might think her serious.

“Alright,” Peggy turned and faced Sharon, “how can I help?”

Sharon smiled and wiggled herself around in the chair, picking up her pencil before turning seriously to Peggy. “What do you do for a job?”

The honest answer would have been that she was making an obscene amount of money online by bouncing around her house doing chores in lingerie. That was not, however, the answer she could give to Sharon. “Well,” she bit the corner of her thumbnail and turned her phone over, not wanting to read the text that had just popped up from Steve, “I used to work for a company that helped other companies…” Peggy sighed, she wasn’t sure how to explain corporate espionage to Sharon, either.

Sharon looked up. “What did you do there? How did you help other companies?”

Peggy tapped her nails on the counter nervously, trying to come up with a good example. “Well, the company I worked for helped businesses keep secrets. For instance, you know how that chicken you like always says there are eleven secret herbs and spices?”

Sharon nodded. “Kentucky Fried Chicken!”

Peggy laughed a little. “Yes, well, those eleven are a secret for a reason. It’s what makes the chicken taste good to you.” Peggy leaned in dramatically and Sharon’s eyes widened. “But if everyone knew the secret, anyone who wanted to could make their chicken taste like that, and then that man with the silly bowtie—”

“Colonel Sanders,” Sharon interjected as she made some notes.

“Yes, he would have a hard time making money from the recipe he developed because it wasn’t a secret anymore. I helped other companies keep their secrets.” Peggy smiled to herself as the girl wrote furiously, satisfied. She wasn’t sure if she’d managed to make her job understandable to an 8-year-old, but it was close enough for now.

Sharon stared at her seriously. “And did you get to know the secrets or do you just have to stop other people from finding out?”

“Sometimes I got to know them, but most of the time I just had to help hide them, or help the company have enough security.”

Peggy’s stress melted away as Sharon asked her question after question and she was able to answer honestly, if not a little vaguely, for the next fifteen minutes. When she ran out of questions, Peggy cut her up an apple and put that and a spoonful of peanut butter on a plate for her at the table, where she waited for her class to start again with her snack.

Finally, she picked up her phone again.

I am so, so sorry. Really, I am. It was planned for Friday. I was going to tell you on Facetime tomorrow. I’ll have her go last. Billy Ryan can TALK. I’ll just let that kid go and maybe we’ll run out of time. Principal Clark won’t know the difference.

Peggy smiled, letting her fingers fly over the keyboard. Did you not see the ;)? It’s fine, and I’m not upset. Good luck on your evaluation and call me when it’s over. She paused for a second, watching Sharon put on her headphones and knowing her texts wouldn’t get an answer until their next break.

Peggy pulled out her own laptop and reviewed her e-mails. She was, in point of fact, looking for a new job. While the Only Fans was a surprising source of a lot of income, she was missing the excitement of her old field. There still weren’t many jobs to go around, but she found new ones each day and applied. Talking to Sharon, however coded, made her miss the day to day of corporate espionage: finding new ways to secure and protect trade secrets, while simultaneously trying to extract others. It had been challenging and thrilling work, and she missed it. While there was something to be said for the ease of her newest endeavors, it wasn’t the challenge she wanted or needed.

She smiled over the edge of her laptop as Sharon asked a question about dogs. Seemed a parent was a trainer or a vet of some sort. She could just barely see the screen from where she was, the Brady Bunch like squares filled with smiling little faces as they talked and asked questions. Steve was sitting in his own square in the upper right corner, smiling away as he listened intently and there was a fairly neutral man in the bottom left she assumed was Mr. Clark. She’d heard a bit about the administrator, but not enough to have an opinion on the man.

She posted her resume on a job-hunting site and crossed her fingers yet again. Six months of getting dressed up for a camera was enough for her. She wanted more.

More from a job, and more from Steve.  

They’d been talking nearly every night, facetiming, too, and had met just once, socially distanced, in the park in the fall for lunch. His mother, who lived in the apartment next to him and that he took care of, was considered high risk. He’d been apologetic, but careful about how and when he went out, and it was something she appreciated about him. She’d asked him, quite seriously, to be her steady significant other, but he’d flat out refused until he could take her out on a proper date. It was a conversation that had both made her fall a little more in love with him and completely frustrated her at the same time.

He was getting his second dose of the vaccine next week, and she was scheduled for a week after that. She already knew exactly which dress she was going to wear when that fourteen-day waiting period was up.

It was red and tight and screamed anything but staying socially distant.

She was daydreaming, one she had often, about pushing him back on that desk of his and straddling him, her dress riding up her thighs as his hands followed, kissing him and laying him down and taking him right there, when Sharon’s voice rang out loudly in the room.

“Ok. So, my Mom and Dad are at work, but I do school with my Aunt Peggy so I asked her the questions.” Peggy looked down at her watch. They had only ten minutes left in the morning session before lunch, but apparently that was enough for one more kid. Stupid Billy Ryan. Peggy closed her email and moved her laptop, listening. “So, my Aunt Peggy lost her job, which is why she can watch me, but before that she had a job she was really good at and she really liked. She worked for a company that I’m not allowed to tell you the name of, but for her job…”

Sharon took a deep breath and leaned into the screen. “For her job, she protects the recipe for KFC chicken.”

Peggy’s head fell in her hands as she heard the gasps of excitement from the kids. She couldn’t believe, after twenty minutes of questions, that was what the girl had understood.

“Sometimes, she protects the chickens. And sometimes, she tries to get the recipes from other places. She didn’t tell me exactly, but I think I guessed it and she just couldn’t say.”

~*~

Peggy laid back against the pillows, wine in hand, waiting for Steve to pick up his facetime. She’d just finished a short online session. Her heart hadn’t been in it, but she’d needed something to do while Steve was finishing his review with the principal after Sharon had been picked up.

His face popped on the screen and he wasted no time, slyly smiling. “So, you protect the KFC recipe?” She just shook her head, but he laughed. “I mean, I gave you a solid five minutes, you couldn’t come up with anything better?”

Peggy laughed loudly at that, leaning back into the pillows. “I swear, I did not tell that child I protected the KFC recipe.”

Steve lifted his phone and moved around his apartment, pulling a beer out of the fridge and sitting heavily on his couch before he set his phone on the table. “So, what did you tell her, exactly?”

“The truth!” Peggy sat up, pulling her robe tight around her. “I mean, how do you describe corporate espionage to an eight-year-old?”

“Corporate espionage?” Steve almost choked on his mouthful of beer. He sat up, eyes still wide with surprise. “You went from corporate espionage to an Only Fans?”

Peggy shrugged. “I wasn’t in IT. When everyone started working from home the demand was in IT because they had to lock down computer systems and access codes.” She sat up and took a long drink of her wine. “Quite frankly it was a move that was coming, anyway. More and more information is just digital.”

“So, uh,” Steve’s fingers played with the label on his bottle, “So you did what, exactly?”

Peggy bit her bottom lip and bent towards the camera. “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” she purred out.

Steve feigned getting hit, grabbing his chest and falling back. “Ouch, Aunt Peggy.”

She hummed at him, humoring his silliness while she played with her glass. She sighed. “I think my favorite part was where she literally told the children I protect the chickens. As if I were a farmer out there with a pitch fork keeping coyotes away!”

Steve started laughing far harder than was necessary. “Oh, I am getting the best mental image.”

Peggy rolled her eyes and laid back in the bed. “Oh? Do tell.”

“I’m thinking…” He smiled, took a deep breath and leaned back, his eyes sparkling. Little Daisy Duke short shorts, maybe a tied up plaid shirt, some dirty cowboy boots…” Steve drifted off closing his eyes, his smile growing wider.

Peggy laughed. “Oh really? Should I put my hair in pigtails, too?”

His head popped up, a guilty look crossing his features. “Well, I mean…”

She bit her lip at his stammering. “Your image of me protecting chickens and my image of me protecting chickens are vastly different images.”

Steve could only shrug.

~*~

The link that she texted him wasn’t familiar, but he trusted her by now. He clicked it, ready for anything.

When the video connected his jaw dropped.  

Peggy, in her shortest jean shorts and a tied up red gingham shirt he was sure was so small it must have been a handkerchief in a previous life, was standing in front of a green screened video of chickens in a chicken coop.

She smiled widely at him, putting on her best American accent. “Howdy, Partner!”

He laughed so hard he dropped his phone.

[tarragonthedragon]

like hear me out right we all love literature nerd jason we all know the man loves him some austen which is valid as heck but allow me to project massively for a hot minute

why do we never talk about jason loving dickens thats my main question like if you’ve got a hatred of the upper classes, a taste for the classics, and a vicious streak you like dickens thats just the facts

specifically i would say he like the old curiousity shop best, has an on-off relationship with great expectations, and has never been able to quite stomach oliver twist

also, on books jason definitely has strong feelings about and my source is i was also a homeless kid with a heady fear of addiction and an intoxicating love of literature

fearless by tim lott: yes absolutely jason read this book. he found it in a school library where it was absolutely not in the right section probably but he read it and he wept buckets, it was probably the first book to make him cry. the weirdness of it. the escape. the hopelessness. the fact that finding your parents isnt actually the solution and indeed your parents can be meaningless or causative to your struggles. broke me, definitely broke him for a solid hour. this is the book he doesnt usually talk about because it hits deep but if you ask him for an honest, earnest rec for a heartbreaker he is prepared

plath i can see jason being into honestly (i cant stand the bell jar but thats a me problem).

guilty pleasure i would 100% stake being wodehouse. red hood era jason hides his jeeves books under a collection of dirty magazines in a box under  false bottom in his gun safe but he reads them whenever he needs cheering up.

hugo maybe. possibly he lliked them but finds the stylising a little tedious. as french classics go i’d see him as more of a dumas kinda guy

i’m stopping here but god i have more i have so many more

[autolenaphilia]

My thoughts on the 1989-2010 BBC Radio Drama adaptation of Sherlock Holmes with Clive Merrison

Michael Williams and Clive Merrison

The Sherlock Holmes BBC radio drama series starring Clive Merrison is known to be the first adaptation to adapt every canonical story. It is also in my opinion, the best adaptation.

But let’s start with the basic facts of this radio series. There were technically two series of Holmes adaptations, both starring Clive Merrison as Holmes.

The first was the complete adaptation of all 60 of the canonical stories. They were broadcast from 1989 to 1998. They starred Michael Williams as Doctor Watson. They were made in two formats. The short story adaptations were about 45 minutes long, and were broadcast from 1990 to 1995 in the order the original stories are in the book collections (probably the first adaptation to be that systematic about it, earlier adaptations did them out of order). Each adaptation of the four longer stories are in two parts, each one hour long. The first two novels were first broadcast in 1989, the latter two in 1997 and 1998.

The 45 minute format for the short stories matter because while Holmes has often been adapted to radio before this BBC series, it had seldom or perhaps even never had a regular series of this length. Most adaptations for radio of the stories until that point were just 30 minutes long. That was what Rathbone and Bruce had to work with in their radio series (even less actually due to the commercials), and also that was the episode length of the Gielgud/Richardson series and the Carleton Hobbs/Norman Shelley series. The 45 minute format meant that the stories had time to breathe but also meant that especially the shorter and simpler stories had to be expanded upon.

The adaptations are still largely faithful, the basic plot and characters of the original are still there in the radio dramas, but they all have extra scenes to work out in the 45 minute format.

This extra material is technically filler, but doesn’t feel like it. Instead of just taking up airtime, the writers actually try to add something to the canonical story being told. The radio plays dramatize what is only talked about in passing in the original, try to add emotional depth and motivations to characters, or even outright try to fix faults in the original story.

To name some examples, we get to hear the dramatic backstory actually be dramatized in “The Crooked Man”, Violet Smith gets to confront Carruthers about how he played cards for her in “The Solitary Cyclist”, a socially awkward Holmes tries to invite Watson to spend Christmas with him in “The Blue Carbuncle” and we learn who the mysterious Mrs Turner is in “A Scandal in Bohemia” (one of Conan Doyle’s many continuity errors, where he forgot Mrs Hudson’s name and called her Turner. This gets elegantly solved solved by making Ms Turner someone Mrs Hudson hired to fill in for her when Mrs Hudson was ill.)

The results are overall brilliant, thanks to the quality of writing. The adaptations of canonical material is generally well-done, with the expansion of the stories strengthening the episodes instead of just being filler. The writers varied over the series, even if the most prolific was Bert Coules, who wrote the scripts for all four of the novels and 24 of the short stories. Yet the radio series feels quite tonally coherent and the quality of the writing is overall high.

The adaptations of the great stories in the canon never let down their source material and are overall well-done. Practically all of my own personal favourites, like “The Copper Beeches”, “The Naval Treaty”, “Charles Augustus Milverton”, “The Bruce-Partington Plans” and “The Illustrious Client” (to just pick one from each collection, I have several more favourites of course), get solid adaptations.

The adapters are able to find the merits of even the odder stories in the canon and make good use of them in their adaptations. A good example is “The Engineer’s Thumb” (odd because Holmes and Watson largely don’t do anything and just listen to their clients story), which skilfully turns the suspense of the original story into suspenseful radio.

At its best, the radio dramas actually improve on the original story being adapted. “The Dying Detective” is not a bad story, but the radio drama is actually better. The original is a rather short story and there is a lot of extra story material needed to make it work as a 45 minute radio play. And the script by Robert Forrest uses all this free airtime to expand Culverton Smith’s character into something more complex. Here we get to hear scenes depicting the lead-up to his nephew’s murder, and Smith’s reasons for committing it. Smith is more sympathetic in this version, the nephew is depicted as a foolish rich racist snob, even if the flashbacks come from Smith’s own monologue, making him potentially an unreliable narrator. The expanded adaptation also gives Holmes more to do in his role as a dying and raving man, and Merrison makes the most out of it.

“His Last Bow” is another radio episode that improves on its source material. The original is a thin story, a simple propagandistic spy story notable really only for being Holmes and Watson’s final adventure in-universe.  The script for the radio adaptation makes it feel more epic by depicting the lead-up to the central scene in the original story in detail. It imagines Holmes’s personal reasons for retiring (something left unexplained in the canon) and makes Von Bork into a far more formidable foe worthy of Holmes’s attentions.

Probably the adaptation that most improves on its source material is probably “The Lion’s Mane”. If I would rank all the stories, I’m pretty sure “The Lion’s Mane” would end up towards the bottom, and I think most fans would agree with me about that. Yet the radio drama adapted from it is one of my favourites from the series. The adaptation radically re-imagines the story and is odd even by the series’s own standards.  The events of the original story are already past, with Holmes already having solved the mystery when the radio drama takes place. Instead it takes place when Watson later visits Holmes in his retirement. And during that visit, Holmes tells him about the mystery he experienced and invites Watson to solve it himself for fun. It has an odd structure for the series, where there is no supporting cast or characters, no dramatized flashbacks to the events being talked about, only Merrison’s Holmes and Williams’s Watson. The entire episode is a series of dialogues between the two. And it works wonderfully. The repartee and general chemistry between Holmes and Watson is one of the strengths of this radio series, and this episode is full of that.

Let’s talk about Holmes and Watson in this series.

Merrison has a remarkable resemblance to Sidney Paget’s conception of Holmes

Clive Merrison’s Holmes is outstanding. It is a performance filled with manic energy, eccentricity and theatrical flair. Holmes is energetic when interested, bored with life when he can’t divert himself. Occasionally rude (especially against the upper class) and socially awkward, he also is capable of great kindness, has a drive for justice and a close friendship with Watson. If this description sounds exactly like the Holmes of canon, it is because Merrison’s Holmes is exceptionally true to the text. It is a great voice actor doing his utmost to bring the Holmes of the page to life using his voice. It is an immense achievement and Merrison is my favourite Holmes. Whenever I imagine Holmes’s voice, it is Merrison I hear.

Michael Williams played Watson in all of the canonical adaptations, and he is equally great. Watson is an equal partner in these adaptations, not any kind of comic relief side-kick and Williams plays him accordingly. Williams’s Watson is a strong, intelligent, courageous and warm-hearted man. He is the embodiment of Victorian virtues, the “normal” antipole to Holmes’s eccentricity.

He is tolerant, yet naturally exasperated with Holmes sometimes. Watson often verbally spars with Holmes, with them bickering with each other like an old married couple. Yet there is always a strong sense of the love, friendship and undying loyalty in their relationship. Again, if Williams’s Watson sounds like the canonical Watson it is because he basically is. It is a great performance, and like with Merrison and Holmes, Williams’s warm voice is what I imagine the character of Watson to sound like.

Merrison and Williams are the only constants in the series, but they are far from the only good actors. The acting in this series is of the highest quality all the way through.

Recurring characters are sometimes re-cast but it seldom proves jarring. John Hartley is a good Myrcroft, very soft-spoken but sharply intelligent. Mrs Hudson is sadly under-used, but played very well by Joan Matheson especially (Matheson was the most frequent but not the only Mrs Hudson). Judi Dench (who was married to Michael Williams) also appears in the role as a special guest in “The Hound of the Baskervilles”.

Unlike other adaptations, the radio series has the sense to not over-use Lestrade and they don’t put him in stories where he did not appear, instead having a variety of inspectors like in the canon. Still Donald Gee and Stephen Thorne both do an admirable job of portraying the police inspector.

Of course the Holmes stories are just as much about the people Holmes and Watson meet during their adventures as it is about them. There are many well-known actors which fill those roles like Brian Blessed and Denis Quilley, yet also relatively unknown actors like Imogen Stubbs. The quality of the acting however never wavers and is overall very fine indeed.

The quality of the acting attests to the overall high production quality of this radio series. The direction, largely by Patrick Rayner and Enyd Williams who between them directed and produced most of the series, is excellent.

The sound design and effects are very well-made, and create the kind of convincing atmosphere that great audio drama is so good at. I forget that I’m listening to actors in a studio, and instead get a vivid impression of the environments they are in through the sound design.

The result is perhaps the greatest of the many Sherlock Holmes adaptations. It is the first to adapt every story, but the radio series is not just complete, the quality of the adaptations in writing, acting and production is excellent.

If any adaptation is definitive, this radio series is it. I love and respect the Granada series, but the BBC radio series is more consistent in quality and did actually finish adapting the entire canon. The only reason it isn’t more well-known I suspect is the popular prejudice against audio drama as a medium. Audio drama is seen as outdated and suffers from invisibility compared to tv and film. It is an unfair prejudice and the BBC radio Holmes adaptations is more than proof of that.

After the entire canon was adapted, the popularity of the shows led to the decision to continue the series with original scripts, all written by Bert Coules. This new series was called “The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”.

It consists of 16 episodes, all around 45 minutes long, and aired in four series from 2002 to 2010. The final series was one story in two parts as a grand finale for the whole venture, making 15 stories overall.

Clive Merrison continued to star as Holmes, but the unfortunate death of Michael Williams after he had finished the complete adaptation of the canon led to the role of Watson having to be re-cast.

  Andrew Sachs and Clive Merrison

The new Watson for “The Further Adventures is Andrew Sachs. Most well-know for playing Manuel in Fawlty Towers, he had an extensive career in radio drama and appeared previously on the show playing the King in “A Scandal in Bohemia”.

Hearing Merrison as Holmes with Sachs as Watson is admittedly a bit jarring at first after being so used to Williams’s portrayal. But I soon got used to him and the fine qualities of the performance became evident. This Watson is similar to Williams’s Watson in his intelligence, capabilities and compassion. The most evident change is that Sachs’s Watson is more soft-spoken. This changes the tone of the dialogue between Holmes and Watson, with Watson less often directly expressing anger and indicating his disagreements through subtle uses of wit and sarcasm. Yet the love and loyalty of the relationship between Holmes and Watson is still very much evident. The “old married couple who bicker but love each other” feel of their relationship is perhaps even stronger in their arguments now, with Watson almost literally going “yes, dear” in response to Holmes’s outlandish actions. It is an excellent performance.

The new stories written by Coules are based on references to untold stories in the canon. We get to learn about Colonel Warburton’s madness, the peculiar prosecution of John Vincent Harden, the Abergavenny murder, who “Merridew of abominable memory” was, and in the finale, “the whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant“.

The scripts are in general very good and present several enjoyable mysteries with strong characterizations. Some of my favourites are “The Singular Inheritance of Gloria Wilson”, “The Abergavenny Murder” and “The Remarkable performance of Frederick Merridew”. There are some lighter episodes, but the tone overall is noticeably dark, with Coules having the goal of exploring subjects that Conan Doyle wouldn’t because of the time he was writing in. We thus get episodes involving child murder and suicide.

The new episodes feel like a natural continuation of the early canon adaptations. The style is of course not a direct pastiche of the canon, but rather of the earlier BBC radio adaptations of the canon.

This form of auto-pastiche succeeds thanks to the production values being of the same high standard as before. Patrick Rayner, one of the main director-producers of the original series of canon adaptations continues his work here as the sole director-producer with similar great results. The sound effects and design are just as immersive in this series.

The acting is once again superb. Merrison continues his great performance as Holmes and Sachs is an excellent replacement for Michael Williams. The supporting cast is made-up of the same high quality actors as before, with famous names like Tom Baker and Toyah Wilcox having guest star roles.

“The Further Adventures” is overall a worthy continuation of the BBC’s adaptations of the Holmes canon. The high standards of the original series in writing, acting and direction are once again fulfilled and anyone who has enjoyed the canon adaptations and wanted more stories with Merrison as Holmes made by the BBC will probably be satisfied with “The Further Adventures”.

In particular, “The Marlbourne Point Mystery” is a worthy finale to the great undertaking that the BBC series starring Merrison has been. And the final scene, with Holmes and Watson reflecting on how Watson’s stories have made the two immortal is extremely moving.

I must also mention the book “221BBC” by Bert Coules, which is published by the Wessex Press and available from their website.  This book is a personal account of the making of the BBC series, with information on every episode Coules was involved in. The book is well-written and the anecdotes and information in it is highly interesting for any fan of this radio series. The book can be a bit pricy if international shipping is factored in, but very much worth it.

Other resources worth mentioning are the semi-official site about the series. There are also some podcast interviews of people involved that are well worth hearing, like The I Hear of Sherlock everywhere podcast interviews with Bert Coules and Clive Merrison. Coules has also appeared on the Baker Street Babes podcast.

The radio series can fairly easily be found online, both legally and otherwise. And if my fan-girly ramblings haven’t made it totally clear, I fully recommend you to listen to it if you have any interest at all in Sherlock Holmes.

[scoutception]

Yet again ranking the 5 animes I’ve watched most recently

After losing the will to just sit down and watch it for quite a while, I’ve finally gotten through 5 anime series yet again, and, as is tradition for me by now, I’ve decided to just type out my thoughts and rankings of them, with my first two posts of this nature being here and here. As usual, this is just my personal thoughts, and the only other thing worth noting before I start is that, unlike last time, I do think everything listed here is at least decent on its own. With that, I’ll just get to it. 5. Robotics;Notes

Number of episodes: 22. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation. Robotics;Notes is an adaptation of a visual novel, which I actually just wrote a review on, which can be found here. Long story short, it’s the third entry in the Science Adventure series, the same series Steins;Gate is part of, unknown to most people, with Robotics;Notes technically being the sequel to it. Originally aired in 2012, the same year as the visual novel was released, and made by Production I.G, Robotics;Notes is in an interesting middle ground between the acclaimed and popular Steins;Gate animes and the downright awful and obscure Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child animes, and until 2020 was the only option those who didn’t speak Japanese had to experience it at all. Since I went into so much detail in said visual novel review, I’m mostly going to focus on how the anime holds up both by itself and as an adaptation. Ever since its creation nearly ten years ago, the dream of the Chuo Tanegashima High Robotics Research Club has been to finish Gunbuild-1, a lifesize recreation of Gunvarrel, the titular mecha of an insanely popular anime that’s credited with starting a “robot boom” within Japan, and the club’s current president, Akiho Senomiya, the little sister of the club’s founder, Misaki Senomiya, is extremely determined to see this dream achieved. Unfortunately for her, the club has fallen on hard times, with its funding being cut, its advisor being completely unreliable, and the few other members it has, namely Kaito Yashio, Subaru Hidaka, Junna Daitoku, and Kona Furugoori, aka Frau Koujiro, being quite difficult in their own ways, and often more than Akiho can handle. While Akiho puts her all into finally bringing the club to greatness, the otherwise apathetic Kaito finds himself involved with a mysterious AI called Airi, who exists within the augmented reality app IRUO. Airi’s creator, the deceased Kou Kimijima, turns out to have also created several AR annotations scattered throughout Tanegashima, titled the Kimijima Reports, which warn of a grand conspiracy that will utterly devastate humanity if unopposed. I’m not the most unbiased viewer, since I had played, and enjoyed, the visual novel months before watching this anime, but generally, it’s actually an enjoyable time. Some of Robotics;Notes’ biggest strengths were always its cast of characters and lighter tone, and for the most part, the anime preserves both well, keeping it mostly silly, but endearing early on. The artstyle actually matches up fairly well with the VN’s CGs, and the dub, which I watched just to spice things up, since I already knew the Japanese voice cast was quite good, is overall solid, with Clifford Chapin as Kaito, Lindsay Seidel as Akiho, and Monica Rial as Junna especially sticking out to me. As an adaptation, on the other hand, it falls short in quite a few places, namely when it comes to characterization. While obviously, no adaptation could feasibly fit in every detail from its source material, the Steins;Gate anime managed to preserve almost all of its cast’s characterization, whereas in Robotics;Notes, several characters lose prominent details to their backstories or personal conflicts, or act differently in scenes unrelated to that, making quite a few of them come off different. While instances of the latter case, such as Junna coming off as less shy and hesitant, don’t necessarily worsen anything for the most part, the former definitely does, as it makes the affected characters much less developed and interesting. Nobody suffers from this worse than Kaito himself, who loses most of his backstory, motivations, and arc, to the point of one of his best moments being changed from something intentional to completely accidental, with the end result making him come off as a completely different character, and an inferior one, at that. Additionally, around episode 16, the anime starts diverging pretty significantly from the VN, and not in ways that are improvements, to the point it even leaves a few otherwise preserved scenes in earlier episodes without context. Overall, I can imagine the Robotics;Notes anime still being a decent, if unremarkable watch on its own, and was certainly an interesting and fun way to reexperience the story, and definitely fares better than many visual novel adaptations, but I can’t quite say I’d recommend it. If Robotics;Notes interests you, the visual novel is very much preferred. 4. Nichijou

Number of episodes: 26. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming options: Funimation. Here we have one of the most acclaimed anime comedies out there, an adaptation of Keiichi Arawi’s surreal sketch comedy manga series, produced by Kyoto Animation, a name that’ll be showing up here again later. Nichijou mainly focuses on two different trios of characters. There’s the ordinary high school girls Yuuko Aioi, a rather dim and reckless girl with terrible luck, Mio Naganohara, the most relatively normal one of the cast, whenever she’s not having explosive freak outs that involve beating people up, and Mai Minakami, a stoic girl who enjoys messing with people just for their reactions. On the other hand, there’s the far less ordinary Shinonome Laboratories trio of Professor Shinonome, an 8 year old girl who happens to be capable of building incredibly advanced machines, Nano Shinonome, a robot built by the Professor who desperately desires a normal girl more than anything, and Sakamoto, their pet cat who, thanks to a special scarf also made by the Professor, is capable of talking. The series focuses on their would-be ordinary lives, were it not for the seemingly daily chaos they get involved in, from witnessing the school principal wrestle a wild deer, to being trapped in an elevator for hours, to the school science teacher attempting to capture Nano for study. It also follows the antics of several other side characters, such Koujiro Sasahara, the seemingly upper class student who is actually just the son of a family of farmers, to Misato Tachibana, a very typical tsundere towards Sasahara, whose tsun side manifests as assaulting him with military-grade weapons, to little effect, to the equally quirky teachers of their school. Needless to say, it’s a very silly and chaotic series, and that’s exactly what makes it so memorable. The humor is pretty hit and miss in the first half of the series, but from episode 14 onwards, they thoroughly master it, with every episode having at least a few scenes that got me laughing. Beyond the silliness, though, the series actually has a lot of heart to it. There’s a few moments that change up the status quo, or even develop the characters just a bit, and some scenes are surprisingly sweet, if still played for laughs more often than not. There’s also a lot of continuity, which in later episodes often provide the punchlines to some of the best gags, which definitely encourages watching the whole series. The Japanese voice acting is fittingly crazy for each character, and the animation fits perfectly, as while the character designs are quite simple, there’s many would be mundane moments that have contrasting overly impressive and exaggerated animation that makes them very memorable. All in all, Nichijou is a very enjoyable series once it finds its groove, and about the only reason its not higher on my rankings is just because pure comedies aren’t really one of my favorite genres. Still, if you ever want a good laugh, you can’t go wrong with this. 3. Soul Eater

Number of episodes: 51. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Netflix, Funimation. Soul Eater is yet another adaptation, this time of a manga by Atsushi Ōkubo, produced by Studio Bones, who also did the Fullmetal Alchemist animes, and is quite similar to the original FMA series in that it outpaced the manga and, rather than simply overloading itself with filler, decided to go in an entirely different direction by the end. The Death Weapon Meister Academy is a school founded by Death himself, dedicated to the training of Meisters, who wield Weapons, humans with the ability to shapeshift into weapons, for the purpose of destroying Kishin Eggs, evil beings who have consumed the souls of others, and pose the risk of transforming into extremely dangerous demons. Any Meister who can collect the souls of these corrupted beings, as well as the soul of a Witch, can transform their Weapon into a Death Scythe, the personal arms of Death. Among the students of the DWMA are seven Meisters and Weapons who stand out in particular: the teams of Maka Albarn, a kind hearted and responsible, though temperamental, girl, her Weapon, Soul “Eater” Evans, a laidback and snarky wannabe “cool” guy, Black Star, a prideful and loudmouthed ninja who’s seemingly always out to make a spectacle of himself, regardless of how it hampers him, his Weapon, Tsubaki, a humble and levelheaded woman, Death the Kid, the son of Death and one of the top students in the cool, held back only by a crippling obsession with symmetry, and his Weapons, Liz and Patty Thompson. While these seven gradually come together as a team, a Witch named Medusa begins to put an ambitious and destructive plan into motion, one involving her “child”, Crona, and the strange, insanity inducing black blood that courses through their veins. Soul Eater has a lot going for it. A likeable and crazy cast of characters, even the side ones, like the maniacal Doctor Stein, or the surprisingly goofy and casual Death, or the tragic Crona, or the hilariously egotistical Excalibur, to a lot of fun action scenes, to its great animation and overall unique visual design, including the sun and moon having giant, creepy laughing faces. It has a lighthearted, comedic tone that doesn’t detract from the serious moments, and the main characters get some pretty good development as the series goes on. The dub is also great, with Laura Bailey as Maka, Micah Solusod as Soul, Brittney Karbowski as Black Star, and Todd Haberkorn as Death the Kid especially sticking out to me. In general, I don’t have a lot of significant criticisms, besides how the story is handled once the villainous organization Arachnophobia is introduced, which is also about where it begins to deviate from the manga. Most of the villains part of it never really feel like a threat, and the story becomes much more simple and typical compared to how the manga went, and when the ending arrives, it just kinda, happens, with several notable subplots just kinda left unfinished. It definitely feels like an underwhelming ending, and is a big reason why I place this lower on the list, but Soul Eater is still a pretty entertaining watch that’s worth a try if you want a decently lengthy, but not horribly long shonen. 2. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Number of episodes: 28. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation. Here we have the big one, an extremely memetic and famous series by Kyoto Animation, based on a series of light novels by Nagaru Tanigawa, a series that was finally completed back in November 2020 after its start in 2003. Kyon is a lazy and down to earth high school student who wishes for little more for himself than an uneventful, normal high school life- a hope that’s abruptly shattered when, on a whim, he becomes involved with Haruhi Suzumiya, an eccentric, hyperactive, and thoroughly self centered girl, who claims to have no interest in ordinary humans, and instead wishes to discover things thoroughly unusual, such as aliens, time travelers, or espers, and forces Kyon to form a club, the SOS Brigade, with her to achieve this. Haruhi quickly pulls three other students into the brigade, those being Yuki Nagato, a stoic and quiet bookworm, Mikuru Asahina, a shy and passive girl often subjected to humiliation and abuse by Haruhi, and Itsuki Koizumi, a calm transfer student who acts extremely subservient to Haruhi. While Kyon initially writes off the club as an unreasonable use of his time, his fellow members reveal an unexpected truth to him: the subjects of Haruhi’s fascinations actually do exist. Yuki is an alien, of a sort, created and controlled by an entity known as the Data Overmind, Mikuru is a time traveler from some point in the future, and Itsuki is an esper, and member of an organization of similar people. All three of them have been sent to observe the oblivious Haruhi, who appears to have the unconscious ability to change reality itself according to her desires, and is at threat of remaking the entire world if not placated. With Haruhi apparently having taken a unique interest in Kyon, he finds himself taken along for all sorts of supernatural adventures spawned from Haruhi’s whims. There’s a lot I could go on about regarding Haruhi, but in the interest of not turning this into a full on rant, I’ll keep shortish. It’s more or less an insane mishmash of several different genres, from slice of life, to science fiction, to fantasy, just depending on what each individual story feels like being. The episodes are mostly adapted from the early light novels, mostly the multiple stories from the third and fifth novels, The Boredom and The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya, respectively. It’s not often you’ll have any idea just what to expect from each individual episode, which makes the series very chaotic, but interesting. The characters are likeable and memorable, including the side characters, and the sheer ridiculousness of what goes on makes for many amusing moments. At the same time, the series is surprisingly complex, with many possible interpretations of its characters and the events they go through, furthered by the antics Kyoto Animation pulled when it was originally airing, such as airing the episodes out of chronological order, meaning the plot would often jump from the middle of an arc to something else. The end result is a very unique and enjoyable product, helped by the fantastic dub, with the actors capturing each character perfectly, from Crispin Freeman as the grounded and snarky Kyon, to Wendee Lee as the aggressively energetic Haruhi, to Stephanie Sheh as the gentle, yet secretive Mikuru. That said, there is one pretty disappointing part of it all, and that’s the second season, mostly thanks to the infamous Endless Eight arc, an eight part arc that’s more or less the same things happening over and over, with only the first and last episodes having anything noticeably different. Regardless of its own uniqueness, more than half the season is taken over by this, and something that may have worked if cut down to three or four episodes instead singlehandedly killed off the series’ goodwill. About the only redeeming factor of the second season is the five part adaptation of The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, which has some of the funniest moments in the whole series. Overall, Haruhi is still a very fun series, and I’m really gonna have to watch its movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of these days. 1. Trigun

Number of episodes: 26. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation, Hulu. Finishing off this list is an adaptation of a manga series by Yasuhiro Nightow, produced by Madhouse and another adaptation that overtook its source material. Compared to how Soul Eater handled it, however, Trigun went down much, much better, to the point Nightow himself had nothing but praise for how the anime turned out, and the series is generally considered one of the best animes of the late 90′s. On the harsh desert planet of Gunsmoke lives a wandering gunslinger known as Vash the Stampede, the “Humanoid Typhoon” with a large handgun known to leave tremendous destruction in his wake, who amassed a bounty of $$60,000,000,000 after destroying the city of July, leading to an endless trail of bounty hunters out to collect the price on his head. In the middle of all this, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson, two representatives of an insurance society which is often forced to pay for damages caused by Vash, track him down for the purposes of minimizing the chaos he causes. Upon catching up with him, however, the duo discovers that, contrary to his reputation, Vash is a kindhearted goof, and self proclaimed hunter of love and peace, who absolutely refuses to ever take another person’s life, even at great personal risk to himself. Vash continues his travels carefree, helping out whoever he can, with the occasional assistance of Meryl and Milly, as well as a traveling priest known as Nicholas D. Wolfwood, only to one day have an encounter with a mysterious and cruel man known as Legato Bluesummers. Vash soon learns that Legato has hired a group of assassins known as the Gung-Ho Guns to kill Vash, and leave a trail of bodies wherever they go, seemingly for the sole purpose of tormenting Vash. As Vash hunts down Legato, he is gradually forced to face his past, and consider whether he can truly stay committed to his pacifist ideals. In general, Trigun is just a very, very well made series. It has a likeable and developed cast of characters, with special mention going to Vash, who is a very compelling and sympathetic character, and Wolfwood, who makes a great foil to Vash with very interesting development of his own, with characters outside of the main cast being memorable as well, from Legato himself, to even some of the more minor villains, such as the varied members of the Gung-Ho Guns, or Brilliant Dynamites Neon, who makes an inexplicably strong impression for a one off villain not even important to the overall plot. The space western setting is quite good, and the designs are great, with many villains having distinctive looks that further help them make an impression. The action is great, and the animation is also quite good, and has that 90′s anime charm. The dub, while a bit rough around the edges, is generally solid too. From Lia Sargent as the ditzy but kind Milly, to Dorothy Elias Fahn as the hotheaded Meryl, to Jeff Nimoy as the weary Wolfwood, to Richard Cansino as the calculating and disturbing Legato, with special mention needing to go to Johnny Yong Bosch as Vash. Despite it actually being his first voice acting role ever, he does a great job in portraying the many sides to Vash, and absolutely sells many of the biggest moments in the story. Speaking of which, the series started quite lighthearted and wacky, with the first four episodes actually being filler, but gets gradually darker as it goes on. The earlier episodes are still quite enjoyable on their own, though, and manage to slowly reveal new aspects to Vash in each one, before finally setting his nature in stone in episode 5. What really sells the series and makes it so memorable, however, are the themes it explores, of the practicality of unwavering pacifism, and whether taking a life, whether for heinous crimes committed without remorse, or with the purpose of protecting others, is ever justifiable. While quite a few series have touched dilemmas like this before, what makes Trigun stand out with it is the emphasis placed upon it throughout the whole series, with many episodes touching upon it in some regard. It genuinely fairly looks at the different sides of it all, and the consequences of each, with many emotional moments coming from it as a result. While the manga did ultimately take a very different turn from the anime, the anime actually preserves several of the most important plot moments, and manages to come to a satisfactory conclusion of its own regarding the themes. Ultimately, Trigun makes for a very fun and interesting watch that I highly recommend. And with that, my ranking is complete. With the exception of Robotics;Notes, I can pretty confidently recommend every show on this list. Got some more shows I plan to get through soon, so another ranking like this may be soon in the making. Either way, till next time. -Scout

[yespolkadotkitty]

If you are taking requests. Reader is a chef that does at home cooking classes. Henry's family hired her to do a private cooking class for Henry's birthday. Henry decides that he needs more classes so books her for the month. Then takes her to Italy to source ingredients and wine.

Sweep Me Off My Feet, pt 1

“Dance, sweetheart?”

You looked up from your after-dinner macchiato to see Henry standing before you, hand out in invitation, his radiant smile showing just a hint of shyness. He cut a fine figure in his linen shirt, open at the neck, no tie. 

Rose-gold street-lights lit the Venetian piazza, casting long shadows and an air of romance over the entire area, cloaking it in mystery.

The two of you had spent a dreamy day together, exploring the picturesque Island of Sant Erasmo. The biggest island in the lagoon, Sant Erasmo was famed for its delicious local produce and its wine. After meeting the local farmers and hearing about their lives and crops, you had enjoyed a private vineyard tour and wine tasting. It had been such a leisurely, beautiful day. You had tamped down your annoyance when dinner time came. You’d wanted your time with Henry to last forever.

Helplessly, you suddenly felt this idyll slipping through your hands, sand through an hourglass.

Too much, too fast.

The anxiety of it all had churned in your stomach all through dinner – a delicious seafood risotto, littered with fat, garlicky prawns and butter-soft scallops, with a side of freshly baked, herbed breadsticks.

“Really?” You asked, nervous. You were an excellent chef but an awful dancer. “Why?”

“Because we can. Everyone else is,” he insisted, a grin tugging at his lips. It occurred to you that you had seldom seen him so carefree. “I do love to dance, you know,” he added, cheekily, and the mischief dancing in his blue eyes drew you in, irresistibly.

You shifted, trying to fight the battle between your wish to dance in Henry’s arms, and your intense discomfort at doing anything that involved co-ordination in public.

Finally the hopeful, boyish look on Henry’s handsome face won you over and you took his hand. His fingers closed around yours; warm, reassuring. He pulled you towards him, spun you around for a second. Giddy, you leaned into him as the string quartet outside the café started to play a gentle waltz. You breathed in the now-familiar scent of him, the tang of coffee and a kiss of woodsmoke and cedar.

“This is absurd.” But you rested your free hand on his broad shoulder just the same, and let him lead you in the steps. Heat radiated off his body through the pale, grey linen shirt he wore, and you looked down at your feet. “When was the first time you waltzed?”

“I Capture the Castle rehearsals. They didn’t use the footage in the end.”

You looked up into his eyes. They looked almost blue-black in the half-light as he met your gaze.  “Shame.”

He laughed softly. “It wasn’t. I was twenty-two, all gangly limbs.”

You’d seen the film. His character, Stephen Colley, was so beautiful in the flush of youth that it had hurt to breathe, looking at his rosy cheeks and lean build. “I sometimes – and it’s ridiculous – forget that you’re so…. Famous,” you breathed as he swayed you gently, confidently.

“Good.” His gaze dropped to your mouth, and that gorgeous tumble of chocolate brown hair fell into his face, a little long, a little messy. The way you liked it - that errant curl that teased his forehead was your favourite. “That’s what I wanted.”

The expression on his arrestingly handsome face – so naked suddenly, not a trace of artifice – made you bold suddenly. Or perhaps it was the alcohol. But you were in Venice with a man who made your heart turn over with joy with your chest. You were dancing a waltz in a piazza. Rose-gold light kissed everything, bathing the city and your heart in a kaleidoscope of fuzzy joy, and just for now, you would be brave. You would believe in magic, and you would believe in happy endings.

And you wouldn’t think further than this beautiful, vibrant, kind, man in your arms. He was solid and real and right now, he was yours.

Tears burned your eyes as your heart constricted. Right now, he’s mine. Yes, you would be brave.

And you would pay whatever cost would be levied later. And it would probably be high, but you suddenly couldn’t care.

“Is that all you want?” You tucked his tumbled hair back behind his ear. It felt so soft. That unruly curl sprang forward.

You’d surprised him. You knew because he held still for a long moment before continuing with the waltz. Someone else might not have noticed the slip, but you did. In some ways, you had never stopped noticing everything about him, ever since the day you’d met.

“Oh, sweetheart. You know what I want.” His words were so soft, they were nearly carried away by the notes floating off the nearby violins. But still you caught them. “You.” He swallowed and you watched the movement of his throat, transfixed for a second. “Any way I can get you. Any way you’ll have me.”

His hand on your waist tightened, pulling you a fraction closer. You pressed your face into his neck, loving the rasp of his stubble against your skin, knowing you had reached a tipping point. 

He wanted to make love to you. 

“Tonight?” Your words came out squeakier than you’d hoped. You wondered if Henry would laugh.

He didn’t.

“Tonight,” he confirmed, his voice dropping half an octave.

You stopped dancing, and he mirrored you . You both held still for a long moment. You closed your eyes, knowing that your decision was about to change everything between you two. Maybe forever.

Breathing in, you opened your eyes again. Henry stood before you still, so solid and real. And yours, for now anyway.

And you would take the now, for as long as it lasted. “Henry.”

“Yes, love?” He brushed his lips over yours, gently, a simple kiss without pressure, but a question all the same. He tasted of bitter black coffee, and of rich, sweet chocolate.

“Take me back to the hotel. Right now.” Before you could lose your nerve.

* * * * *

The rosy streetlights of Venice winked at you both as Henry navigated the maze of little streets. People gathered here and there, but the late hour meant it was mostly quiet. You could smell the salty edge of the lagoon, the heady scent of wine, the richness of chocolate and cream. Snippets of indistinct Italian reached you from far away windows.

Henry paused in a quiet alley to get his bearings. Behind him, the moon shone down on you both, bright and silent, hanging like a lightbulb in the endless black fabric of the night sky.

You slipped your arms around him as he pulled his phone from his pocket, bringing up Google maps. “Hmmmm. I swear it was just the next street along….”

The alley was silent and dark. And really quite nice, as alleys went. Closed shop windows were lined with flower boxes, the wooden containers bursting with campanulas, ivy and heliotrope. Their perfume filled with the air, mingled with Henry’s intoxicating cedar scent. 

You felt…  brave. Bold. Aroused.

“What if we didn’t wait until we found the hotel? “ you asked.

Henry’s gaze shot to yours, his mouth opening slightly in surprise. “Sweetheart, we shouldn’t-”

All the pent up desire you’d felt for this man in the months you’d worked together bursting out of you like a dam breaking. You grabbed the lapels of his button-down shirt - Henry, chic and casual in a linen shirt with no tie and the sleeves rolled to his elbows just about killed you - and pressed your mouth to his.

Dimly, you heard the clunky thud as his phone fell to the street floor, unnoticed. He slid his hands around your waist and pressed you to him, and you thrilled to the evidence of his need for you pressing urgently against your stomach. “Oh my God, Henry,” you murmured, aching already, wet under your pretty dress.

“Are you sure, love?” he bit off against your mouth, and you thought he sounded like a man on the edge of control, his words guttural and raspy. “Be. Sure.”

He pulled back and gazed into your eyes, and you saw something just a tiny bit feral in the blue depths. It made the pulsing need inside you kick up several notches.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

With a low growl in his throat, Henry scooped you up. You scissored your legs around his waist as he ravaged your mouth, the day’s growth of whiskers on his cheeks scraping at you pleasantly. He moved his attention down to your neck and you arched to give him better access. 

Henry moaned your name throatily as you squeezed a hand between your body to cup him through the denim of his worn jeans.

“Want you, now,” you murmured, impatient, your heart hammering. 

Henry deftly leaned you against the brick wall, keeping you held up with one arm whilst he undid the fly of his jeans with the other. You tugged his shirt tails out of the denim, covering him a little, and then you let yourself play.

He fell into your hand, no underwear barrier, hot and heavy and large, better than you’d imagined, all steel in velvet, and you savoured the stuttered, shuddering breath he let out when you palmed him, stroking until you found a rhythm that made him chant your name like a prayer in that gorgeous accent. 

He boosted you up a little higher, easy with his upper body strength, and you used your free hand to pop open the buttons of your shirt dress so he could lavish attention on your breasts. Your nipples peaked at the kiss of balmy breeze of the Venetian night. His tongue was warm and wet and his touch there sent a direct spiral down between your legs.

“Now,” you whispered urgently. You kept one arm around his neck, teasing the hair curling at his collar anchoring yourself as he reached down and toyed with you, working your thin cotton panties aside to feel how wet you were. You knew what he’d find and your heart raced as he groaned against your neck. 

“Baby girl, you’re so wet for me, aren’t you?”

You mewled a response and a hot rush of pleasure filled you as he circled the tight bud at the apex of your body. And the sudden, sharply delicious orgasm made you gasp out loud. You were beyond caring if you were discovered, the pleasure eclipsing any small doubts you had.

Henry brushed a gentle kiss over your mouth before he slid slowly, painfully slowly, inside you. You tilted your hips up just a little, and he pushed right into the hilt.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathed, and the expletive in that cut-glass British accent just destroyed you.

Then he started to move, bottoming out each time he thrust back in, and all coherent thought flew out of your head. His pelvis brushed your clit with each thrust and you bit your lip, trying desperately to be quiet, and only partially succeeding.

It was over quickly, both of you too aroused to last long. Your muscles convulsed around Henry’s cock, and you bit down on the curve where his neck met his shoulder to keep from crying out. Moments later, Henry followed you over the cliff, groaning into your hair, his chest heaving with the effort of being quiet.

You wound down slowly together, floating back to Earth. Henry gently set you back on the ground, frowning.

“I meant to have you in a bed, the first time.”

You grinned, feeling like a goddess, leaning up to kiss him, your body still trembling from the tiny aftershocks of really good sex. “No, but now we can enjoy round two at our leisure in the hotel.”

His delighted laugh echoed into the balmy Venetian night, and you held hands and walked the rest of the way back together.

******

Two months earlier

Your boss called your name and you looked up from the day’s menu to be prepared. Cooking was your calling, no doubt about it, but even working as a sous chef in a five-star hotel could be a drag when the clientele could be so exacting.

“Everything okay?” you asked.

Your boss beckoned you into his office and you crossed the kitchen briskly in your chef’s whites.

The best-looking man you’d ever seen waited in the tiny manager’s office, all dark hair and smouldering blue eyes, broad shoulders and lean hips.

“Mr Cavill, this is the best sous chef I’ve ever had,” your manager began, adding your name.

The stranger held out a hand, a smile tugging at his lips. “I can’t wait to work with you.”

To be continued....

Tagging some folk who may like this: @chamomilebottom (thanks for the gifs!) @brexrif @mary-ann84 @wolvesandhoundshowltogether @hnryycvll @henrythickcavill @henry-cavill-obsessed @ohjule @iloveyouyen @summersong69 @ly--canthrope @the-soot-sprite @littlefreya @dancingwendigo @fishcustardandclintbarton @gardensofwhimsy @wondersofdreaming @dr-kayleigh-dh @mrsaugustwalker @andahugaroundtheneck @pinkzsugar @geralt-of-baevia @radaofrivia @princess-of-riviaa 

[phoebehalliwell]

Do Penn and Dency have like more a of sisterly than a cousin one since they’re so close in age (and they kinda grew up together since they only a few months apart). And like on a slightly different topic, what does Penn think of Dove? Did Penn and Dency share friends in Magic school or did they run in opposite circles?

tl;dr yeah they’re more sisterly & penn and dove don’t really like each other that much, & penn and dency definitely ran in different circles, especially as they got older. there’s like. a full on deep dive under the cut. i highly recommend u read if u wanna know why penn’s Like That & her complex relationship with both dency & dove, but um. it’s 3.7k words. but u should read it♥

i would definitely say they’re more sisters than they are cousins because like. i don’t know how close y’all are with your cousins. but like. cousinship is really not what i’d call a solid unbreakable fraternal bond you know? like penn and dency are like. 2.5 months apart so They Are The Same Age (even tho dency’s born in 02 & penn’s born in 03) and also because while in dency’s early years there is a phoebe/coop thread running, it still takes a while for those two to enter a committed relationship and move out so for the first. three? or so years of their lives, dency and penn literally shared a bedroom in the manor like they were raised kinda like twins just from a proximity standpoint. and then, of course, since they’re the same age and all, they hit milestones at the same time & are always in the same school year (which i feel like both these girls went to private schools which are like. always catholic schools idk if this is universal but like. i feel like in sf almost every single private school is tied to a church but maybe i just don’t know that many people who went to private school. and yes this is because i just really really want dency to go to a catholic school her being the antichrist so to speak all that i want her to be genuinely afraid that if she touches holy water she’ll burn it’s fun (it doesn’t burn her, for the record. she like. tried when she was 9/10 and it’s like one of those things like you know how you can lick your fingers and pinch out a candle flame so as a kid you wanna try it and you have saliva all over your fingers and you keep going in a chickening out because that’s fire!! that’s a flame!! what the fuck!!! so its a back and forth until you just gotta do it yeah that she ends up like plunging her full hand in when the plan was kinda only dip a finger but good news! she’s fine she does not burn with holy water.) maybe they go to public high school but like. private elementary and/or middle school. because high school who cares but going to a catholic middle school will leave the funniest long term effects on people).

and then, of course, magic school. they both go to magic school. which as i’ve stated before i think there are many magic schools this magic school is tethered to san francisco and i think really any west coast witches will attend that school but there aren’t That Many so class sizes are still like. 30 kids. and then, of course, as this is Charm School (as so it is dubbed as it is the school run by the charmed ones) they do kinda host their fair share of magical events which is mainly like the elders being like okay can we all get together let’s host a yule celebration here which they do in this world but not in the canon!gen2 due to one major defining factor: penn. because like. she’s the twice blessed man. magic literally shut down just like globally for a full day when she was born (dency actually retained a limited amount of magic as you know she has a bit of source. it’s a magic source. but like. very little it was insanely dampened). but you know globally no one really knew this was coming all of magic was left standing there with their dick in their hands until it turned back on and now there’s only one question: what the fuck was that? and the answer was a baby literally so powerful was born that all magic rested for a day to welcome this child. the twice blessed has arrived. And That’s A Big Fucking Deal! and again: the elders don’t really like the charmed ones all that much bit of a two way street here because the charmed ones don’t like them so they would love to take away this ability maybe save it for a rainy day with a family they don’t already have a dicey history with but um. source’s heir is right there. so we’re gonna keep the twice blessed in tact. but yeah basically the elders have kind of these magical holidays at magic school and penn has to be in attendance just because she’s kinda the representation of the best of good magic. she’s an idol everyone can kinda get behind you know rejuvenate the spirit of good magic unite the witches behind one figurehead.

which, for the record, piper and leo are Not Really Game for because what the fuck so it’s like. at first when the elders are like. let’s host a litha celebration here invite magical families around the world extend olive branches so to speak you know it also tells the underworld that good magic is strong on united really keeps them at bay (because they really have yet to recover from s7/s8 there’s still not centralized ruler demon/monster attacks have been way down and quite frankly the sisters wanna keep it that way. they love a world where their lives aren’t constantly at risk). so initially they’re like yeah sure they bring their kids because what are they gonna hire a babysitter the kids can be there and like. everyone fawns over penn. and penn initially loves it because like you’re 7 who doesn’t love being special being the center of attention. but piper & leo are like 😐 because they’re starting to see the game the elders are playing but you know. in the early years penn really likes going to these. i should state penn’s full name is actually melinda penelope halliwell and when she was young she did go by melinda but she really didn’t like how much she was compared to melinda warren esp with all the twice-blessed stuff (she also has leo’s hair color (i.e. blonde) so she does look a lot like her ancestor) so around 13 14 or so she starts going by penelope which people shorten to penny which is just another ancestor to be compared to so she shortens that to penn. so yeah through the elementary school era i think penn really likes attending these functions she likes being liked and piper and leo are like no really you don’t have to go in fact we’d prefer it if you’d stayed home but she’s like 9 she doesn’t get the minutia of it and she’ll like cry if she can’t go to the fun party. by the time she hits middle school tho she’s like no this shit is draining lmao can all these adults back off. but then like. by the time she hits high school she’s kinda caught on and if it’s her being a charming, polite, dazzling little twice blessed that keeps good magic solid and the underworld at bay, she can play that role. she will play that role. but now there’s a sense of duty to it.

so. i’m still talking. i think it magic school penn was really popular because she was like a household name you know, that and like she’s really got her father’s kind heart and can play mediator like her mother so she kinda can do the saintlike role given to her (which again is something she starts at a young age not realizing what all this is before and it grows into the core of who she is & now it’s inseparable. it’s kinda like the male gaze. but the elder gaze. even pretending you aren't catering to elder fantasies is an elder fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. you are a witch with an elder inside watching a witch. you are your own voyeur. lmao. haha but yeah penn has a really big circle but while people fawn over penn they are inherently distrustful of dency because again these are kids and they get their opinions from their parents. and some parents really don’t want the source of all evil going to school and learning alongside their kids. and this is kinda penn’s crucial flaw is she was kinda always taught to be so temperate that when people are mean to dency, she doesn’t like. go to bat for dency. she mediates. she’ll mediate in a situation where someone is clearly in the wrong but is like. let’s reach a peaceful agreement let’s try to see both sides because you know her parents especially leo raised her with this peace love & understanding mentality and she’s so young she doesn’t get the nuance of situations.

so, rather than kinda sit and field catty comments from other witches in penn’s social circle & watch penn try to turn this into some kind of socratic seminar on how we’re all different and we should all try to understand each other dency kinda just voluntarily breaks from penn’s circle. it’s not too difficult as not that many people really wanted her anyway and also she’s not always in the same classes as them as she needs lots of private tutoring to kind of. you know. hone her demon powers, which function differently.

and then this is where we bring in dove who is a witch with no active powers and two mortal parents, so she doesn’t actually realize it’s weird not to have active powers until she reaches magic school (after being enrolled by paige, who has basically assorted sidequests going at all time where she like. finds witches who don’t have the resources to learn the craft proper and rather than let them just risk it she enrolls them in her school. she does this in canon!gen2 as well that’s kinda like her whitelighter job as i don’t think she has too too many Charges in a traditional whitelighter sense). and then a bit of history on dove her parents are fucking loaded. the type of rich you eat, not just upper middle class. and her dad does fuck knows what tech shit in the silicon valley and her mom’s basically just a socialite. so dove, like penn, from a very young age learns the art of being the little doll at the party. we’re sitting this baby down at the grand piano and you’re all gonna coo and aww as she knocks out für elise okay? but the primary difference between penn & dove is dove was being coached. dove knew from a very young age what she was doing. penn was just what the john mulaney quote shiny and dumb and easy to trick? yeah. piper and leo didn’t want her there they didn’t want her exposed to like the notion of white magic politics, dove’s mother on the other hand basically trained her in the art of the social kill.

So. dove as a kid gets to magic school and kinda quickly realizes she’s not like the other kids. and yes, there are some late bloomers, but like. she’s really not like the other kids i mean she’s a witch with no lineage and no active powers and everyone else seems to have family friends and people they already know and she’s alone. so. ever the social strategist, she aligns herself with penn. and dove joined about late elementary school early middle school so she got contact with dency before she broke, but she knows her mostly by reputation because dove loves gossip and there’s a lot to be whispered about dency. unfortunately, there’s also a lot to be whispered about her. and it’s usually like. if you’re a late bloomer and you don’t have an active power, by the time you hit puberty one develops (there’s also like. the other marker is when the brain stops developing around age 25 sometimes power develop then and dove’s currently like 24 so she’s lowkey still holding out for that one). but dove kinda goes through puberty and doesn’t get an active power and now kids are calling her dud and this is where penn’s middle road logic fails her again because she just. she’ll be kind to dove and be like that’s really mean and they shouldn’t have said that, but she’ll also speak kindly to the bullies and be like hey that’s not nice don’t say that. and dove is not a temperate person so when she’s attacked she goes for the jugular. and penn pulls out again this peace love & understanding card like i understand you’re upset but you shouldn’t stoop to their level you should try to always be understanding because you don’t know what they’re going through and it pisses dove off because penn literally has no backbone. like she’s never really seen penn stand for anything and quite frankly she’s a little pissed about it because she specifically befriended penn for like protection for a place in the magical community and penn just like. does not offer that because she’s just do spineless.

so i think dove kinda just slowly distances herself from penn and penn doesn’t really do anything to keep friends so to speak because as the twice blessed kids kind of just flock to her she’s definitely got a really weird dynamic just with others as a whole so it’s like when dove stops invited penn over for playdates it’s not like penn’s gonna Start inviting dove over for playdates because that’s simply not how penn’s mind works. also almost all her playdates from like a really young age were really weird because it was just witches being like oh my god let’s set up a cute little playdate for our kids i’ll bring them over at 1 and piper and leo were game because you know yay socialization for my daughter, but you know it quickly became obvious that it wasn’t for the kids. like it was for these parents who get to be in the halliwell manor talking to a charmed one, the twice blessed is right there, & it was kind of sickening. so yeah. that happened one too many times. but like the further dove drifted from penn kind of the less she held her tongue because you know penn’s so kind and temperate that she really doesn’t like hearing insults quick jabs you know like obviously. but dove’s great at it. and yeah, there are kids dove just doesn’t like because they’re dicks to her. so when they go after dency, dove’s immediately ready to tear them to bits. it’s kind of like sticking up for the little man, but it’s more just like attacking the bully bc now you have a reason to. but what surprises dove is dency also has some bite to her words, dency also fights back. which dove again ever the social strategist thinks dency shouldn’t to that because she already has the title of the source’s heir hanging over her it’s not wise to pour fuel on that fire but at the same time she’s glad dency just like. does fight back. is a dick about it. she loves that she’s someone who doesn’t play the social game, someone who’s true to herself and isn’t going to water herself down in order to be liked by other people. you know dency’s got backbone she’s got chutzpah and dove loves to see it after everyone in magic school who are all just like. 11 year old sycophants finally someone who’s real. so i think dove and dency kind of become besties as they willingly mark themselves as the social outcasts who just. do what they want to do. it’s like dency’s basically a demon and dove’s basically mortal and together they’re just having like. a great fucking time. i think they really like each other. it’s also dove’s first friendship that literally has no exterior advantage if anything it brings down her stock but she doesn’t care because dency’s just like cool man.

and then nowadays they’re all like 24 and dency and dove live together dency works as a freelance journalist (even though elise is constantly offering her a permanent position at the bay mirror, dency doesn’t accept it because she “doesn’t want a nepotism job” to which elise is like dency i wouldn’t offer you the job if i didn’t think you were any good my own niece has been trying to get an internship here for two years but she writes absolute drivel okay i don’t want you here because you’re my goddaughter i want you here because you’re an excellent writer. but dency still always turns her down because she doesn’t like the optics. she still spends a lot of time a the bay mirror just because i really love the visual of punk rock antichrist rolling up to the bay mirror and immediately getting the biggest hug from elise when most employees have yet to even see elise smile) & then dove on the other hand 100% has a nepotism job she like does pr for her dad’s company. penn i think works in piper’s kitchen as a line cook where she literally like addresses her mom like yes chef all that like people don’t know she’s the owner’s daughter hell they barely know her name and she kinda loves it like that.

and dency and penn definitely have this kind of testy relationship because dency never leaves well enough alone. i mean that’s literally her job right as a journalist, but it carries over into magic too & penn hates it because someday dency’s gonna get herself killed. but the fact of the matter is their fighting styles are not compatible. penn and dency are not good side by side in a fight & dency would much rather work alone. but, if penn knows anything, she’s gonna be there. she refuses to let dency go in alone because if dency dies and there was something she could have done about it she’d never forgive herself. this is why dency doesn’t go to penn for healing anymore because again they can’t lie to each other given their lie detector power, so rather than get penn involved dency goes to her friend jack who is both a mortal & and nurse & went to like the same private elementary school as dency, tho i think he was in on a lottery. And. Of Course. there is a vice versa going on here because dency does not tell penn things because like. if penn dies because she was following dency into some dangerous battle she’d never forgive herself. because, quite honestly, dency knows she’s powerful. she has a skill set that practically no one has the ability to counter. but also. she’s the source’s heir. penn’s the twice blessed. the world needs penn a lot more than it needs her, you know? dency does kind of view herself as more expendable than penn, you know again penn is the embodiment of all good magic and the story’s definitely been spun that penn and the elders kind of unifying good magic, creating a strong bond keeps the underworld at bay. penn’s death would be a devastating blow. and on top of that, penn’s really not a fighter. dency is, she’s great at it. and you know, if penn was always running headfirst into battles like dency, it really would be a mirror relationship but penn really does not practice magic outside of magic school. so that’s not a concern. but yeah. given this fact that penn is really more important symbol-wise & the fact they do not fight well together & the fact penn’s just not great at fighting & she does not remotely know the demonic world like dency does, dency really does try to keep her cousin in the dark as much as possible.

dove and penn kind of in the present have a bit of a rivalry going at least penn considers it a rivalry because penn genuinely considers them equals, dove on the other hand does not because penn is the twice blessed and dove is a witch without powers but yeah. no one really can argue the way they argue because it really doesn’t sound like an argument it’s like. written down it can seem like a perfectly friendly conversation but there is kind of this intense vein of malice running through most of their interactions. which, while we’re kind of positioned to side with dove because she’s more of a main character than penn is, she’s besties with our protagonist, also i love her, dove is definitely the instigator. and it’s not like penn’s deserving of any of dove’s harassment but dove is just still really bitter about how penn was supposed to be her shelter as a young girl but penn never stands up for anything leaving dove really vulnerable as a kid. which she has not ever voiced to penn, penn just thinks dove’s a bitch (which she is, but like,) but at the same time penn almost always seeks dove out or even invites her (not directly, but rather by extension by insisting dency has to come no no you have to come listen you can bring a friend okay but you have to be there. because dency will only ever bring dove.) to these magical functions because a) dove’s kind of already so low on the food chain that she’s really fine with making snide comments to the faces of these really pretentious parents who are only in it for power and optics. like penn always has to pretend not to smile when dove makes the comments she always wished she could say just like. to an elder’s face. and then on top of that, dove’s about the only person who doesn’t view penn as sacred, and by extension, now that they’re older, dove is about the only person penn doesn’t have to act sacred around (outside of her own family, obvi). like. penn has piper’s bitchiness. she just never gets to say what’s on her mind because she’s too busy being The Twice Blessed. unless she’s around dency & dove & co, where nobody cares who she is, and she can be kind of the dick she is. she’s not as temperate as she seems. 

[the-empress-7]

Cheers to the lawyers over the Tatler win! But isn't that just the online version? Which has surely been archived in it's original? And still exists as a print copy? At the very least it's going to make the Tatlers think twice next time, but I can't help to feel that it's a hollow victory. That article would not have been printed in the present day if Harry had married a fun and beautiful but dutiful and low-conflict woman. There wouldn't have been a market for comparing the women in that way.

Tatler has major egg on their face, especially as the editor initially refused to back down. Which means the writer, Anne Pasternak was unable to backup her sources. I am also glad that this was accomplished without a lawsuit, Kate simply followed the complaint process. It turns out Kate had a solid case for libel and slander.

I am honestly surprised by how much Tatler has had to withdraw:

Paragraphs - and entire sections - deleted by Tatler

WHAT IT SAID: Yet, privately, said another friend, 'Kate is furious about the larger workload [caused by Harry and Meghan quitting]. Of course she's smiling and dressing appropriately but she doesn't want this. She feels exhausted and trapped. She's working as hard as a top CEO, who has to be wheeled out all the time, without the benefits of boundaries and plenty of holidays.

NOW: Paragraph erased

WHAT IT SAID: It's been a rapid ascent for a girl born into an upper-middle-class family in Reading. She and her siblings attended Marlborough, thanks to her parents' thriving mail-order business, and while there she had a poster of Prince William on her wall.

NOW: Reference to the Prince William poster, which Kate has previously denied, has been erased

WHAT IT SAID: Another country grandee says: 'I've heard that Prince William is obsessed with Carole. She's the mummy he always wanted.' Yet it's Carole, with what some call her Hyacinth Bucket aspirations of grandeur, who, rumour has it, puts people's backs up in a way Kate does not. Some people have apparently found her exacting. A skilled craftsman who worked on Anmer Hall, William and Kate's country home, and is used to a roster of prestigious and potentially tricky customers, said that he found Carole 'the most difficult client' he had ever worked with: 'She was exceedingly demanding, fussy and questioned everything.' Carole has put her stamp on Anmer décor-wise. Far from being a typical aristo abode, with threadbare rugs and dog hair everywhere, like, say, Windsor and Balmoral, it is, according to a visitor, 'like a gleaming five-star hotel, with cushions plumped and candles lit'. Another adds: 'It's very Buckinghamshire.'

NOW: Entire section erased

WHAT IT SAID: While Kate has praised her close family and happy childhood, there's no denying that Carole is a formidable matriarch. 'Carole is a terrible snob,' alleges a friend of Donna Air, ex-girlfriend of Kate's brother, James. 'Donna is really a lovely girl, but Carole got quite grand.' She adds: 'Carole is the masterminding force between those girls.'

NOW: Paragraph erased

WHAT IT SAID: Kate and her sister, Pippa, remain the closest of confidantes, presumably because it feels safe. 'Pippa now speaks like the Queen, too, and is absolutely paranoid about the paparazzi,' says one of her circle. 'She refers to her sister as Catherine or 'the duchess' in public, which feels too regal and try-hard. Pippa is a bit lost now and is struggling to find her place. She's always in the shadow as someone's sister or someone's wife. But they are all utterly loyal to each other. The Middleton family will always close ranks. None of them can quite believe that they have hit the jackpot, so between Kate, Pippa and Carole there is an unspoken bond. A sort of 'We have to bring it to fruition at all costs'.'

NOW: Paragraph erased

WHAT IT SAID: Then there's her 'Turnip Toff' crowd, the Norfolk Sloanes, including Sophie Carter and Robert Snuggs, who live near Anmer Hall. And the Cambridges' glamorous Houghton Hall neighbours, Rose Hanbury and her husband, the Marquess of Cholmondeley.

NOW: Paragraph erased

WHAT IT SAID: Outwardly, it seems that with years of scrutinising public pressure Kate has become perilously thin, just like some point out – Princess Diana. One could argue that Kate is naturally slim and indeed, like Pippa, a vigorous exerciser. Or perhaps her size is down to the stress of being a multitasking mother of three – one countenancing the additional worries of defending a Royal Family seemingly under siege. 'William is absolutely incandescent about Megxit,' a courtier confides. 'Every time the Sussexes issue a statement, it hits everyone like a fresh bombshell. The Cambridges are left reeling like everyone else. Everyone is terribly worried about how this is affecting the Queen.'

NOW: Paragraph erased

WHAT IT SAID: [Kate] is a royal ballast, William's most trusted adviser, and someone who puts duty above all else. Endearingly, following the spirit of Diana, both William and Kate consult psychics. A medium who went to Kensington Palace to 'channel' for them found William to be 'open-hearted and lovely'. Kate, while scrupulously polite, was more 'shut-down'. Maybe she was merely going through the motions to appease her husband?

NOW: [Kate] is a royal ballast, William's most trusted adviser, and someone who puts duty above all else. Whatever the truth, as the woman behind the man who will reign from what William Churchill called 'the greatest throne in history', Kate has emerged as the ultimate power player.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8751405/Victory-Kate-Middleton-society-bible-Tatler-caves.html

[k7l4d4]

Owl House AU Ideas, fresh out of Spacebattles!

This here is a collection of ideas that I originally posted over on spacebattles, and sadly ended up not doing anything with. Let me know what you all think of them!

Idea THE FIRST!: Lost In a New World. The premise is that Belos does something that ends up destroying the Isles, with only a small portion of the residents making it off of the Isles to the Human World for safety, via Eda's Portal. The survivors are divided into those who lost faith in Belos or never had it to begin with, and those still loyal to him, with each side headed by Eda and Lilith respectively. To clarify, this all is supposed to take place BEFORE Canon. The destruction of the Isles results in shock-waves through the Human World in the form of tremors, with the resulting Chaos being enough for Camila to convince Principal Hal (I think I got the name right) to allow Luz to attend Summer Classes and a Therapist as opposed to Camp Reality Check, or expulsion. As a side-effect of the Isles' destruction, Magic has been released into the Human Realm, and is now gradually reproducing itself, though the effects aren't too noticeable by anyone right away. To gain info on how to best blend in with the humans, the two factions elect to send one of their own to a Human School in order to gather intel. The choice? Amity. (Gus through his hat into the running but was rejected when it became clear that he couldn't curb his enthusiasm)

Hmmm... I like some of this, and will clarify some points I deliberately withheld in my original posting to see what kind of response I would get. As for shelter and food, let's just say the destruction of the Isles wouldn't exactly be what could be considered CLEAN. Lots of random structures, plants, and animals fell into the Human Realm along with Magic, though not exactly in one piece. They were essentially consumed in a wave of magic, damaged as a result of it, transported to the Human Realm IN MIDAIR, and fell to the ground, with the left over magic from the transfer cushioning them enough for any damage to be negligible, if still highly unpleasant for those mentioned animals and plants. The residual magic basically sent the transported plants into a shock of growth, causing them to instantly put down roots, regardless of their orientation to the ground at the time. The structures... their state upon landing varied based upon the materials used to construct them, what state they were in when transported, and where they actually ended up landing. At least one Witch house ended up in a tree in the Amazon Rain Forest. Most shelter for them consists of whatever structures made it through near their arrival point, along with cooperation between what Construction and Plant Coven trained witches made it across, with Illusionists working together to keep suspicious folks away (for the sake of convenience, let's just say that some of each and every coven and a few outright Wild Witches made it off the Isles), and food is usually gathered through a combination of Plant and Beast Keeping witches, though they are currently trying to ration what they already have and have managed to gather. Initial long-term plans mostly consist of ensuring they can gather the resources they need to survive, and finding out as much about the Human Realm as they can to avoid possible conflict, with most contingencies being under-developed as a result of infighting, with the only concrete plan being to figure out how to construct a new portal and retreating somewhere else, or standing and fighting in the hopes of driving off whatever enemies come their way and carving out a settlement just for them. Suffice to say, they don't have a lot of options on the table that they all agree on. They didn't bring a whole lot of material, with most of the Witches who made it off prioritizing food and essential supplies, but some of the Construction and Beast Keeper Witches managed to wrangle the tools of their respective trades, and some Potion Witches managed to bring over their supplies and potions, as well as the tools to make more. Beyond the initial destruction of Belos' Castle, which was the first to go for plot convenience, the destruction of the Isles lasted approximately a week, starting with just the typical disasters of the Isles occurring slightly more than usual, and escalating to entire chunks of the Isles dropping into the sea, with some of the chunks being landlocked. No one really realized anything was wrong until about halfway through, and it wasn't until the last two days of the destruction that anyone who hadn't already managed to see the that "No, the Emperor isn't coming back and saving us from this mess" was willing to admit that they were basically doomed and decided to convince Eda who, as the only person on the Isles with a consistent source of Human Realm goods, was quickly deduced as having a way to there for help getting off the Isles, with Eda herself figuring out the oncoming destruction almost immediately, and basically spent the entire time selling as many non-essential goods as she could while transporting everything else to Earth and waiting for people to come groveling to her for help. For intelligence gathering... I am sorry if this comes across as rude, but you do realize that very FEW witches actually have a strong enough resemblance to Humans to serve as suitable for Intelligence Work, with a lot of witches having unusual traits even discounting the pointed ears, with one Witchling in particular having an Eyeball for a HEAD. That also applies to those that could mix with the Underworld, they still have very attention grabbing appearances. Also, Witches of the Boiling Isles, Eda included, are so out of touch and ignorant of Humanity as a whole that Amity is basically the only acceptable choice at the moment, as she has a sufficiently human-like appearance to pass muster, being an excellent student who can record a lot of potentially useful information, and having an unflappable demeanor to keep any and all surprise in regards to Human behavior and culture from leaking through and potentially giving away that she isn't what she seems. Seriously, the only things that managed to make her lose her cool in Canon were when she thought (correctly) that Willow was cheating, which she cannot stand, the end of the Covention Duel, where she was publicly humiliated, and Luz, after she developed her MASSIVELY OBVIOUS CRUSH! Even when she is very clearly furious, Amity can keep a civil, level demeanor up until the very end. The only Witch that would be a reasonable option is Willow, and she is supposed to be busy helping out with the Plant Witches in gathering food and assembling shelter, massively boosting her prestige with the other Survivors. I suppose Willow could be sent in as backup for Amity, as well as to serve as an additional source of info, but any other Witches would have to hang back until they gain enough info to pass as Humans. The reason I decided on having a Witchling to act as the informant was because, even if they have any kind of odd behavior that would attract attention, eccentricity is much more tolerated among children than adults, even in an intolerant town or community, or at least that is how I understand it, as adults who don't fit whatever accepted mold is going on usually having nothing to fall back on, whereas kids usually have it treated as a phase, even when it is very clearly not or when it is treated harshly by others. As for easy money, the Witches still need to have a basis of understanding for Human Culture before they can start with that, though I agree that it is going to happen eventually. Any and all Lumity isn't going to happen until way later, and will NOT be the focus beyond being a convenient justification for gags based on Amity's behavior around Luz.

Idea THE SECOND!: Gargoyles. The premise is that their exists a subset of witches with abilities beyond the usual; they are, you guessed it, Gargoyles! Gargoyles are identical to other witches, aside from small, nearly unnoticeable horns at their hairline, and vestigial glider-style wings affixed to their upper arms and back. Gargoyles are naturally stronger, faster, and surprisingly lighter than other witches, and have a natural connection with Wild Magic that can flare up at any time. Gargoyles need to be constantly hydrating, or they will freeze up like a statue, with a solid indicator as to whether or not a Gargoyle is about to freeze is when their skin takes a noticeably gray-ish tone and gains a rock-like texture; the freeze will reverse when they are exposed to a significant enough source of water, at least enough to drench them entirely. Gargoyles occasionally enter a state known as "The Rage," in which they expand in size and enter a berserker style frenzy, usually occurring in moments of extreme stress and panic/anger. Gargoyles are treated as second-class citizens at best, ostracized and hunted at worst, with Gargoylism being undetectable until puberty starts. Amity is a Gargoyle in this AU, and the heavily implied emotional abuse she suffers in canon shifts to physical when it becomes apparent she is a Gargoyle, with regular threats made of what will happen to her if word of her status gets out. Lilith is also a Gargoyle, with only Belos and Eda being aware of her condition.

Priestess!: Premise, Camila, pregnant with Luz, ends up on the Boiling Isles, and, after scrounging to survive, during which she gained a friendly acquaintance relationship with Eda, ends up in the not so tender mercies of the Emperor's Coven. It also just so happens that Luz is a natural born Priestess of the Titan, who is NOT happy with the way Belos is running things. In order to keep things under wraps, Belos takes in the two, raising Luz in extreme isolation, while Camila is basically kept under house arrest. Luz has no idea that she is human she has been so deeply isolated from others, and is genuinely confused by her inability to perform magic. Lilith and Camila strike up a friendship, during which Camila slowly breaks down Lilith's delusions over the nature of what she has done and the relationship she has with her sister, who she does not know is Eda, and bonding over their mutual fondness and exhaustion over the ever excitable Luz. Belos is operating under the belief that if he can keep Luz pacified, the Titan will grant him back its favor, not knowing that his insistence one retaining his policies and methods as they are are what gained its ire, and is basically running down the clock on a time bomb. Camila has grown to accept her stay on the Isles, and even enjoys it from time to time, you know, aside from the whole "held against her will in an ominous castle" thing she has to deal with, but desperately wants to return to Earth with Luz. The storyline kicks off in full when Luz accidentally wonders out of the castle and makes her way through Bonesburough, and meets the Eda in the market. Luz has a direct bond with Magic at the spiritual level, not just the magic of witches and the Wild Magic her Canon self wielded, but all magic, making her incredibly powerful when she finally comes into her own, and her connection with the Titan allows her prophetic impulses, insight into any potential danger that may befall her and the nature of those around her and the magic they wield. Don't worry about her being a Mary Sue, her magical abilities, aside from her mental based ones like her danger sense, are horrifyingly unreliable; they either don't work when she needs them to, or she just flat out can't control them in any sense when they are cast. Also, due to being so sheltered, Luz has even less of a survival instinct them in Canon, resulting in her walking into what could be easily considered a literal death sentence without any form of hesitation. Her isolated early childhood has resulted in an unreliable world view, as she has an unsettling mix of teenage hormones, emotions, and impulses, with all the care, control, and understanding of a five year old on a sugar high. Still sweet as a button, but her naivety often frightens those around her, as she is perfectly willing to inflict fatal injuries on another person, simply because she was never taught why she shouldn't; to clarify, if she has fatally injured someone, she WILL be upset if they die, even if they were a massive jerk who tried to kill her first, she merely doesn't understand how her actions could have resulted in their death. When Eda pegs on to just how messed up this version of Luz can be, mentally speaking, she genuinely worries about Luz trying to rape someone the first time she experiences sexual attraction to someone, as Luz confirmed to her that she knows what sex is, but has no understanding of consent in any sense of the word. This is not meant to be a lighthearted prompt, in any way. Though I guess anyone interested could change it into something less... scream/cringe inducing.

Where Were You?!: This is a twist on the classic role swap. It basically hinges on my Head-Canon that Luz once visited the Boiling Isles as a child (Seriously, she, on her first try, created what was apparently a perfect taxidermy replica of a Boiling Isles style Griffon, and only received confirmation she was right when she actually visited the Isles. That is far too much of a coincidence for me). In this premise, Luz and Amity both end up stumbling into portals leading to the Demon and Human Realms respectively, and both are INCREDIBLY YOUNG when this happens, like around 4 or 5 each. Luz, lost and alone in the incredibly dangerous woodlands of the Isles is taken in by LILITH! Note: This Lilith is a member of the Emperor's Coven, and has not switched places as a Wild Witch with her sister, but, due to certain circumstances, loses her trust and faith in the Emperor and in the Coven system, only staying out of a self-admitted misplaced sense of guilt and obligation. After heading into the Woods to vent her frustrations about life, the Emperor, and her choices, she stumbles across Luz after she had been attacked by the wildlife. It... it wasn't pretty. Overcome with horror over what had happened to a literal child, and probably projecting her grief over her ruined relationship with Eda onto the event, Lilith rushes to save her, but, due to the sheer extent of Luz's injuries and how much is... missing, she is forced to improvise, using a series of forbidden spells and some stolen body parts, along with her own blood, to literally put Luz back together. The trauma is so intense, Luz loses all her memories, including her name, and is subsequently adopted and renamed Lucelyn by Lilith. Amity, upon arriving in the Human Realm, is scared, confused, and hopelessly lost. She essentially wanders around the woods Luz Canonically chased Owlbert through in the first episode, avoiding predators only due to her underdeveloped magic and sheer luck. After days of no food, poor shelter, and limited water, which she only got due to a scare about the rain, Amity FINALLY stumbles her way out to civilization, ecstatic to be free of the woods, hopeful to find her family... and gets hit by a car. She lives, obviously, but her being taken into the hospital following the hit leads to some... awkward discoveries. Like with Luz, the trauma she experienced messed with her memories, but she does retain some. She has fond, if unclear, memories of Willow, and a deeply disturbing to witness panic to the words "Mother, Father, Mom, Dad, Family, etc." The revelations on her anatomy, and how it differs from humans, is something that results in her being called into the hospital for observation and study for years to come, or at least up until Canon time. Due to the potential fallout of the discovery of both her anatomy and DNA getting out, all of Amity's hospital records are highly classified, and officially listed as benign but irreversible/irremovable birth defects, and she is required to take a supplemental drinks to help replenish her bile. After the initial panic over the fact that no, humans are not the only sapient species on earth, is over, Amity is given to a mildly despondent Camila to care for. She doesn't properly remember her original name, and answers to Amy. Lilith raised Luz to the best of her ability... which isn't saying much. While Lilith genuinely loves and cares for Luz, she has no idea how to raise a child, and the accident and subsequent "healing" she received as a youngster really screwed her up. She can perform magic, due to the witch parts fused into her along with Lilith's blood and genetic information, but her control is so deeply connected to her emotion that, if she were to lose her temper, any spell she cast would instantly shift targets to the source of her current ire. The only way she can actually control her spells is to use glyphs, the use of which Lilith encourages in her newfound contempt for the Emperor, and training wands. Due to Lilith's poor child rearing skills, Luz isn't exactly well adjusted, often switching between cool yet kind, to polite but hostile, with her wishy-washy personality often being the source of teasing among her friends, though she is still the same sweet, excitable girl she is in canon, as demonstrated by her taking over Amity's Canon duty of reading to the kids. Amity inherited Luz's canonical trouble with making friends, with most people finding her appearance, particularly those aspects which give away her heritage, frightening. Amity is a sweetheart, but timid and severely lacking in confidence. After rediscovering her magic shortly after moving in with Camila, who loves Amity like she truly was her daughter in spite of her emotional hurt over Luz's disappearance, Amity made it a point to study and discover as much about magic as she possibly could, relentlessly researching any and magical knowledge the Human Realm has, with many of the ancient traditions of humans themselves translating into workable spells and magic practices. Amity is a huge nerd, but also one of the best jocks in her school, which helps counterbalance her otherwise less than stellar reputation as a klutz and a slacker. She isn't actually a slacker, but her obsessive magic research has given her a mild case of chronic insomnia, resulting in her randomly falling asleep at the strangest of times and places, including in class. Amity liberally takes inspiration for her magic from a variety of sources, including blatant ripoffs from anime, though she usually saves those for special occasions, with a lot of her spells falling under the umbrella of "Awesome but Impractical."

Willow is very different as opposed to Canon. After Amity's disappearance, and subsequent funeral after her parents gave her up as dead, Willow felt the need to toughen up. She never once believed that Amity had died, and wished to grow stronger to ensure she would be able to keep her safe when (and Willow knew it was a matter of when, not if) Amity managed to return. This training culminated in the second-year anniversary of Amity's funeral, where she met Boscha. Boscha, being, well, Boscha, didn't make the best impression on Willow, not that it mattered later. A tremor ripped through the area, opening up a deep crevasse beneath Boscha, nearly sending her plummeting to her doom, only to be saved by Willow in an impressive, not to mention frightening, display of Plant Magic. The incident led to Willow being hailed as a hero, and a local celebrity, but Willow quickly pegged on to how people, particularly those with known agendas, were cozying up to her in the hopes of gaining favor with the new local darling. To protect herself, Willow grew cold and distant, maintaining a professional distance from everyone at all times. She was eventually approached by Luz, and grew fond of her when it became clear Luz didn't give a hoot about her status or power. Boscha never fully recovered from the shock of her brush with death. The fall left her sullen and riddled with self-doubt, destroying her faith in her skills, along with resulting in her developing a fascination with Willow, going out of her way to confront her, only to be brushed aside like dirt on the road every time, which really didn't help her low self-esteem. Her self doubt translated itself to all aspects of her life, leaving her near totally isolated and struggling academically, with the only person willing to really interact with her being Skara. Her only outlet is her Grudgby skills, which allow her to vent her frustration and gain something resembling respect. Gus is much more mischievous than in Canon, as well as even more insecure. After his status as a mild prodigy became apparent, resulting in him skipping a few grades, Luz quickly took an interest in Gus, and subsequently took him under her wing, acting as a shield to those who would bully or dismiss him due to his age. While this has made him more comfortable in his skills, it has also resulted in a mild form of hero-worship in regards to Luz, constantly fearing that if he can't measure up to her expectations (she has none) that she will abandon him to fend for himself. Due to this self-doubt, Gus is envious of Willow's power, as it means, in his mind, that her position with Luz is secure, though Willow herself is indifferent to his feelings on the subject; they are both more Luz's friends than they are each other's friends. Due to Luz protecting him from bullies, Gus is far more willing to use his magic to goof off, even more so than how he uses his clones to skip class. Skara is a peppy cheerleader type girl, so kind that she genuinely struggles with saying a mean word to, well, anyone! As a result of never having to go along with Boscha's bullying, as it often seemed to me like her Canon self was just doing it because it was expected of her, she is highly empathetic, acting as willing listener to other's problems, and a comforting shoulder to cry on. She is fascinated by music and art in any form, and eagerly shakes Amity down for everything she has to offer. Because she associates with someone so far down the social ladder compared to Canon, Skara isn't nearly as popular, but her kindness means she is highly regarded by pretty much everyone, even Willow smiles when talking to her. Lilith is a persistent worrywart in regards to Luz, calling her at all hours of the day to make sure she is okay. She is cognizant of the fact that she didn't do a good job raising Luz, and has constructed a thousand and one practice apology letters in case she ever meets Luz's biological family. Due to her newfound contempt for the Emperor, she makes no real effort to apprehend Eda, and makes it a point to be as amicable as possible when talking with her. The only real point of contention between them on her own end is that Lilith frequently criticizes Eda for not using her status as the greatest Wild Witch to gather followers and build a power base for herself, often punctuated by her ominously rubbing her hands together, which Eda finds unsettling in the extreme, though Lilith will often backtrack and (poorly) change the subject whenever anyone calls her out on her blatantly treasonous thoughts, including Eda. Lilith has developed a habit of muttering schemes to dethrone the Emperor when she thinks other people aren't listening, and cackling maniacally, which often causes people to stare and ask if she's okay. While aware that she did a poor job rearing her, Lilith is insanely proud of Luz, willing to pull out a ridiculously large number of photos (or whatever the BI equivalent is) to shove in people's faces, including Eda. One of Eda's newest escape strategies is to ask Lilith how Luz is doing, as it instantly makes her drop whatever she is currently doing to ramble on about how proud she is and what Luz has most recently accomplished; everyone, including Lilith herself, agrees that it is annoying. As a result of no longer having Amity to push all their negative attention to, the Blight parents switched to the Twins, who they are much more critical of their faults now that they don't have Amity as a deliberate scapegoat. Emira was subjected to an immense amount of scrutiny due to her position as the (slightly) more responsible twin, and was aggressively pushed to be the perfect Blight. While she can put up the act, Emira deeply resents both of her parents, and eagerly awaits the opportunity to slip their control. She despises how they brushed aside Amity's disappearance, and while putting up the goody-two-shoes act, she longs for the good old days of pulling pranks and teasing her little sis. Edric was shoved aside, regarded as an embarrassment now that Amity was no longer around for him to look good in comparison to. Because he wasn't subjected to the same expectation of being the face of the Blight Family Emira was, he lashed out in the extreme, garnering a reputation as an out of control troublemaker and was switched to the Detention Track for all that he has done. On the few occasions that he and Em have been able to slip away from their parents' notice, they act similarly to Canon, but with a noticeable tension between them. Both latch onto Luz as a surrogate sister, though they both are adamant that she is not and can never be a replacement for Amity, and affectionately nickname her Kittens as a reference to her love of cats and her catlike capriciousness. They are the first to peg onto the fact that "Amy" might be the missing member of the Blight family, as she reflexively hissed upon hearing the name Mittens, something Amity did when younger when the twins first started using the nickname as a way to tease her, though they are both apprehensive over the idea out of fear of being wrong. How's about that? Oh, and before I forget, as a result of Amity repeatedly casting magic and testing spells in the Human Realm, magic has slowly started to accumulate and proliferate over the years, resulting in several groups with magic and magic-adjacent practices and beliefs to discover that they suddenly have true powers, much to their shock and delight. Also, I head-canon that residents of the Boiling Isles treat a lot of stuff that is exceptionally weird on Earth as being a result of their influence, and, because of the whole "banished the giraffes" thing, that they often brought over creatures and things from the Human Realm out of a belief that it was actually theirs. When they couldn't stand the giraffes anymore, they sent them back to where they originally found them, and that was that. They didn't realize that the small portion they had originally taken was such a small part of them, and probably never will. Edit: I know that the Twins almost definitely received plenty of negative attention from their parents in Canon, I just feel that Amity originally got the Lion's Share due to physically standing out more and not being as inherently talented. Without those traits around to target, they switched to attacking the twins over their trouble-making ways.

To break it down; firstly, I am basing some of these decisions on Canon elements, with Amity being considered frightening/weird looking being a result of her biological traits, yes, but also because she would be growing up in Luz's hometown which, apparently, doesn't have a good track record with ANYTHING even remotely unusual, as a lot of what got Luz in trouble back in the Human Realm was weird, but ultimately very much harmless stuff that apparently was enough to send all the other kids screaming. Seriously, the most dangerous things Luz did were the spiders and the snakes, everything was just, well, weird! So, I think it would be fair to say that Luz's school wouldn't react well to Amity's appearance, or it would at least create some kind of obstacle social wise. For the bile thing, a sample to analyze would be taken shortly after bringing her in after the accident, at least once they peg onto the fact that she isn't exactly human. The drink wouldn't be made early on, I was honestly thinking it wouldn't be available until she was entering her preteens. The drink would be to stimulate her body's natural production and reproduction of bile, like those medicines used to help with blood loss. I head-canon that using magic in the Human Realm is very taxing for Witches as they don't have the ambient magic of the Titan to draw on to bolster their reserves and accelerate their recovery, though particularly powerful Witches would need to seriously work if they wanted to even make a dent in their own reserves. Amity's experiments with magical techniques early on are supposed to be what kick off the development of the drink, as she only has the reserves of a child and is using a lot of magic in an environment where she can't recover easily. I also head-canon that bile is merely metabolized when Witches cast magic, it NEEDS to be metabolized when Witches cast magic at that, and as such all Witches have the exact same amount of bile, discounting variances in weight, height, etc. A Witch's magical power is based on how much magic they use in relation to how much bile they "burn" at any given time. The idea that Camila is one of Amity's original nurses... I LIKE IT!! But as to the government thing, they don't immediately know, as the vast majority of Hospitals are privately owned businesses and don't actually answer to the government. I'd say that, depending on how many shenanigans she gets up to, Amity has a solid year before the government finds out about her, at which point they essentially take over the research into Amity, who I will remind you is suffering significant memory loss in regards to her past and was an incredibly young child when she came to the Human Realm so anything she knew would be massively incomplete to start with, and more or less leave everything alone once they cotton on to just how bad it would be take an apparently super-powered alien child from her foster mother to experiment on her. As for Reality Check, I haven't figured that part out yet, or if I'll keep it at all. For native magic users and the jumpstarting of magic on Earth... I have two ideas about how magic functions in The Owl House. The first type is internally originating magic, otherwise known as Witchcraft, which is where bile comes in, and externally originating magic, otherwise known as Shamanism and Wild Magic, which draws on magic from one's environment. Magic returning to the Human Realm is something I envision as being well under way for quite some time, with Amity jumpstarting the process being due to her living there for years, casting magic constantly, or near enough, in her research, merely acting as the straw that broke the camel's back in this scenario; she didn't actually start it so much as she accidentally finished it, and even that took a few years. Witchcraft would be like what you said, human descendants of Witches using proto-bile sacks to fuel their abilities, whereas Shamans would be useless until the Magic Jumpstart actually happens. Witchcraft doesn't actually need circle drawing, it was just the preferred method of BI Witches, so much so that it is now partially built into them. Shamanism always needs some kind of symbol-based focus, or something that has been infused with magic, preferably something that once was or was at least part of something alive at some point. I also head-canon that, due to the supplement speeding up recuperation times, Amity practices magic a LOT, so she has gradually gotten better at metabolizing her bile to perform spells and such, making her much more powerful than she would be at that age, the only problems being that, due to her obsessive studies, her understanding of the various types of magic she can perform are patchy, relegating her skills to either the absolute basics, or Awesome but Impractical; to give an extreme example if this, in one particular school of magic, she knows exactly two spells, one that will move any object within her line of sight exactly one foot in any unobstructed direction so long as she can physically move it on her own if need be, and one that involves summoning a beam of light strong enough to destroy a house made out of concrete that can only be performed during a thunderstorm on a full moon while standing on one leg and blindfolded (that particular spell was created whilst the original caster was drunk out of their mind on a dare, and no one, not even the creator themselves, are sure who thought it was a good idea to write it down).

This is a free to use collection for anyone looking for something to try their hand at or to sink their teeth into. Note: Some of the story elements I used to build this were ones found within the fandom rather than my own opinions on the characters in question.

[geraltofriviasleftbuttcheek]

eat your heart out, lover

geraskier | 2.5k | teen | modern witcher au, canon-typical violence

he reads, again, the string of messages from one of geralt’s followers, describing a beast that looks like a cephalopod of some kind that floats in the air, attacking with quick strikes and engulfing its poor victims in its tentacles, leaving them half-eaten if they’re lucky, and brain dead if they’re not.

jaskier shudders, and it’s not from the cool bite in the air. it sounds a bit unbelievable, a flying octopus-squid that eats people, but jaskier has been with geralt long enough to know all manner of creatures roam the earth.

( read on ao3 )

“So, what are we hunting again?”

“Not sure,” Geralt replies. He sweeps his flashlight across the edge of the beach, illuminating the waves gently rolling in. Their steps are muffled in the sand as they walk.

There’s no moon visible tonight, just a sky full of stars, and Jaskier thinks it might be considered romantic if not for the lingering smell of rotten flesh and overall atmosphere of death now permeating this once-tranquil place.

It makes Jaskier roll his eyes, reaching into his pocket for his phone. “Oh, joy,” he mutters, pulling up Twitter, “Just what I wanted to do for Valentine’s day: sneak around a beach in search of something we don’t even know. Excellent! We could be at home, eating dinner and making love, but no!”

Geralt just grunts, and Jaskier looks up long enough to imagine the smirk Geralt throws back at him, because it’s too dark for him to see it properly. “Like you don’t get all hot and bothered watching me get covered in gore.”

He’s not even wrong, that’s the thing. Jaskier sputters in offense anyway. “That’s—! Wholly beside the point,” he finishes lamely, and Geralt snorts. “Shut up.”

Geralt does, and Jaskier looks back at his phone, muttering under his breath. He reads, again, the string of messages from one of Geralt’s followers, describing a beast that looks like a cephalopod of some kind that floats in the air, attacking with quick strikes and engulfing its poor victims in its tentacles, leaving them half-eaten if they’re lucky, and brain dead if they’re not.

Jaskier shudders, and it’s not from the cool bite in the air. It sounds a bit unbelievable, a flying octopus-squid that eats people, but Jaskier has been with Geralt long enough to know all manner of creatures roam the earth, mostly keeping to themselves until humans start intruding on their spaces.

Either way, the description of this particular monster is absolutely hideous, and Jaskier makes a face. They drove all the way to the coast for this one, two restless days in the car with maybe nine hours of sleep between them. They’d crashed at a little bed and breakfast about three miles from where the sightings had been to wait for night, when the creature was most active, according to the owner.

And, well. It is now very dark and very spooky on this particular beach, and Jaskier wraps Geralt’s hoodie he’d stolen on the way out the door tighter around his body, moving closer to Geralt.

“Scared, Jas?”

Jaskier scoffs, bumping his shoulder into Geralt’s. “As if,” he says haughtily. “Disgusted, mostly. Nothing about this thing sounds even remotely interesting. A cephalopod that eats people? Talk about the tables turning. Do you think they call us sushi?”

It makes Geralt laugh, and Jaskier smiles to himself. They might be on a deserted beach in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, searching in the dark for a creature that supposedly might eat them, but at least they’re together.

They walk a handful of steps further, and the temperature suddenly drops, a freezing sort of chill engulfing them, much more ominous and unsettling than before. Geralt is immediately on high alert, swinging the flashlight toward the rocky outcrop ten or so meters in front of them, where a faint, almost indiscernible glow pours into the night.

“Stay behind me,” Geralt says, and Jaskier huffs, but does as told. He’s not useless—he can put Geralt on his ass three times out of seven in their practice spars at the gym, and he’s been taking self-defense classes for almost four years now—but he supposes with unknown creatures, it’s better safe than sorry.

Satisfied that Jaskier is going to listen, Geralt pulls out his sword—Jaskier hears the shing! of it leaving the sheath—and they creep closer to the outcrop. Jaskier’s skin crawls, and the stench of death gets stronger, curdled milk and rotten eggs and sewage that’s almost suffocating. There’s soft, low growling, and something squelches in a way that makes his stomach turn and his insides squirm uncomfortably.

A sudden screech pierces the air, and Jaskier stumbles back as something rushes out of the rock, presumably emerging from its cave. It’s only by sheer reflex that he catches the flashlight as Geralt tosses it to him, and he immediately points it at the thing hovering—actually floating—several feet before them.

Tentacles—actual tentacles! Holy shit!—undulate beneath an almost humanoid upper body, graceful and hypnotizing in the most bizarre way. Its arms reach toward them, billowing what almost looks like sleeves behind them, and it screeches again. It leans back, and Jaskier has a bad feeling as he watches the tentacles twist and wind up, his heart beating fast against his ribs and blood rushing to his ears, and he wants to close his eyes so he won’t see whatever’s coming but he can’t—

—and Geralt is in front of him, sword braced against the lunging attack, the tentacles hitting the silver and flying apart as the creature is forced back with a simultaneous burst of Aard from Geralt’s palm.

“Get back!”

Jaskier doesn’t have to be told twice—he turns and runs, hopping lightly over the sand to put as much space between him and the creature as possible while Geralt stays on the offensive and attacks. He doesn’t go as far as he probably should, because as utterly terrifying as that thing is, he won’t leave Geralt alone, and heightened witcher senses or not, having an actual light source does help, thank you very much.

He keeps the flashlight trained on Geralt, adrenaline pumping through him and making him itch to move. The creature has retreated a bit, tentacles calm once again as it watches Geralt approach, feet placed precisely where he means, stance solid, sword raised.

It really is a hideous thing—the description was spot on about the octopus-squid parts, but Jaskier is mildly intrigued by the almost human upper-half, the way it almost looks like it’s wearing a high-collared coat typical of pirate period fashion.

He is, inexplicably, put in mind of Davy Jones, and this is truly shaping up to be one of their weirder hunts for sure.

He must laugh or make a noise of some kind, because the creature suddenly jerks its head in his direction, and Jaskier has only a beat to think before it’s coming at him, a horrible sound erupting from it as it lunges, and Jaskier scrambles back, nearly dropping the flashlight.

It opens its mouth, and Jaskier is frozen in place as a fine, chilled mist pours from it, immediately engulfing him. He lets out a yelp, fingers twitching and his skin stinging, eyes watering and doubling over. When he breathes it in, he chokes on the sickly sweetness of it, saccharine to the point of tasting sour and rancid.

“Jaskier!”

He coughs, falling to his knees, trying to avoid the tentacles as he crawls away from it. The creature’s attention is drawn back to Geralt, and Jaskier claws at the sand to pull himself out of the mist.

“I’m fine!” he shouts back, though it’s very much belied by the hacking retch that follows. The sting in his skin is abating slowly, and his eyes don’t hurt quite so much, though there’s now a deep ache in his bones. “I think it’s just meant to stun! Not poisonous!”

“Oh, so now you’re an expert? You were the one complaining we don’t know what it is!”

Jaskier hears Geralt grunt as the thing launches itself at him again, screeching when it comes up against the silver sword and another burst of Aard. He huffs, spitting up the taste of rancid sour candy, and manages to roll his eyes. His witcher sometimes, honestly.

“I’m still alive!” he shoots back, gripping the flashlight he’d dropped when the creature came at him. “That’s got to mean something!”

“Yeah,” Geralt grunts, and Jaskier can hear the eye roll, “it means you’re fucking lucky, you idiot!”

When Jaskier gets the beam of light trained back on where he thinks Geralt is, he sees him taking swings at the creature, aiming to cut off the tentacles or even one of its arms when it makes to grab him. He lands a solid hit to its chest, knocking it back, and it roars in outrage, backing away and floating higher in the air.

Jaskier sees its next attack in slow motion—the beam of the flashlight catches its attention as he moves to follow the creature, to keep it in his sight. It looks directly at him, face contorted, and rears up again, tentacles twisting beneath the tails of its coat. Jaskier is rooted to the spot, watching it with wide eyes, unable to move, foreboding and fear gripping his limbs and keeping him still.

“Jaskier, move!”

But he can’t—and the creature dives, an ear-shattering screech piercing the air, and Geralt is quick but not quick enough, not this time, and Jaskier forces his legs to work, to move, to run—

—but it’s too late.

Cold, slick appendages wrap around him, dripping with mucus or slime or some combination of both, Jaskier isn’t sure, but it makes his skin crawl and his stomach heave as he’s pulled from the ground. He wants to yell, to scream, but his mouth is full of the slick-mucus-slime as the creature pulls him into itself, and tiny, razor-sharp needles latch onto him like teeth, piercing his skin and drawing blood, and he’s suddenly very dizzy, and it feels as if his brain is on fire, being pulled out of his ears and nose and mouth and eyes, suffocating and choking on his own spinal cord, and he hurts, he hurts so much, please stop just stop please please please just stop stop let go let go—

“JASKIER!”

There is a roar, and a squelch, and a squeal, and Jaskier is suddenly falling, dropping back to the ground, the wind knocked from his lungs as his knees buckle beneath him. He gasps for air, coughing and spitting out the rotten taste of dead flesh, and he wipes away the sticky substance from his eyes to try to stop the burning. His face and neck sting, as well as his hands, and he can tell he’s bleeding.

Gods, he’s going to need so many bandages and Neosporin.

The dizziness has abated, thank the gods, and he can think clearly. He looks up, squinting in the dark, and the flashlight has fallen so that it illuminates the space in front of him where Geralt stands, steel sword now drawn, held protectively in front of Jaskier’s head while the silver sword is brandished in his other hand.

The creature drips a sickly colored substance—blood, maybe—and cries out, lunging at Geralt in one last, desperate attempt at an attack.

Quick, graceful as a dancer, Geralt brings the steel sword up and forward, shoving it into the center of the creature’s chest.

It screeches, thrashes, arms swinging wildly, and makes another grab at Geralt—

—and Geralt shoves the silver sword through its head, deep into its brain. He breathes heavily, muscles tense, braced in the sand, and with a yell he brings the swords toward himself, cutting through the creature and yanking blood and organs and meat and flesh along with it, and the creature dies with an agonized sound, dissolving into the air in a mist of shimmering blue dust.

And it’s over.

The tension stringing through his own body snaps, and Jaskier sinks towards the ground, unable to hold himself up. A long, silent breath leaves him, heart pounding against his ribs, and he closes his eyes as the adrenaline fades.

Warm hands cup his cheeks, trailing gentle and feather-light over his skin, and Jaskier melts into Geralt’s touch, melts into Geralt.

“Are you okay?” Geralt asks, and his voice is tight and thin, worry and anger threaded into his normal rough tone. “Jaskier. Are you okay?”

“I’m alright,” Jaskier says, and enjoys the attention. He’s absolutely shot in the brain, is what, and he doesn’t want to think. “Looks worse than it is, I’m sure.”

Geralt growls, something dissatisfied and upset. “It looks like you were mauled, Jas. Gods, I’m so sorry.”

“Battle scars,” Jaskier says, waving it off. He reaches up to grip Geralt’s arms, hanging on tight—grounding himself. The slime from the creature squishes between his fingers and he makes a face. He’s disgusting right now. “I’ll heal.”

Despite being covered in strange muck and probably half an intestine, Geralt leans forward and presses his lips to Jaskier’s forehead, lingering and inhaling the smell of him. It can’t be pleasant, not covered in monster goop like he is, but the tension leaves Geralt’s shoulders and he relaxes too, wraps Jaskier in his arms and holds him close.

They stay like that for a long moment, feeling each other alive and breathing and well, if not covered in strange substances and blood. Eventually, Geralt pulls away, no doubt looking over Jaskier with his heightened witcher sight. He makes a sound in his throat, but at Jaskier’s exasperated look, he bites his tongue and doesn’t comment, which Jaskier appreciates.

They’re alive, and the monster is dead—Jaskier will take his victories where he can.

Geralt puts his arm around Jaskier and they hobble to their feet, ready to head back to the little bed and breakfast. They pause so Geralt can look at the remains, mostly just entrails and blood, and Jaskier holds the flashlight pointed at the mess on the sand, wrinkling his nose when Geralt steps over to inspect it.

“If you touch any of that, you’re sleeping on the floor tonight,” Jaskier warns him, shuddering in revulsion.

Geralt, standing back up from where he was poking around in the gore, gives him a cheeky grin and holds out his hand. In it, crusted in drying blood, and oozing something out the side, is what looks like a lump of grey matter, and Jaskier thanks his lucky stars he hasn’t eaten in almost twelve hours.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Geralt says teasingly, and Jaskier realizes it’s the thing’s heart that he’s holding out to Jaskier.

It’s disgusting and vile and Jaskier wants to set it on fire so the ooze doesn’t get on his shoes—

—and it’s probably the most romantic thing Geralt could have done for him on a night like tonight.

With a shake of his head, Jaskier reaches out and takes the gross thing in his hands. It feels as slimy as it looks, and Jaskier kind of wants to throw up at the smell.

“I hate you,” he says, with feeling, “and I love you, you insufferable witcher.”

Geralt just laughs, and Jaskier supposes it’s only in the spirit of the day that he shut him up with a kiss that tastes like creature ooze and stale breath mint.