#archiving for a few new quotes

[charliethomascoxuniverse]

Charlie Cox Reveals Why He Signed up for AMC Show 'Kin' and How His Wife Became His Boss

By Jamie Burton  9/8/21  (X)

Charlie Cox returns to television this week with Irish-set gangster drama Kin on AMC+.

The show follows the Kinsella family, who find the odds are stacked against them when they inadvertently enter a Dublin gangland war with an international cartel. Cox plays Michael Kinsella, fresh out of jail and trying to keep his family's empire from crumbling.

The eight-part series features a strong cast of TV talent, including Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones), Clare Dunne (Herself), Emmett J. Scanlan (Peaky Blinders) and Maria Doyle Kennedy (Orphan Black).

The show opens with Michael returning home after eight years in prison. Cox told Newsweek: "I was excited that you're meeting a man who is different from his reputation. You and his family recognize that something is different about Michael and that in the eight years he's been away, he's changed."

He continued: "I wanted Michael to be humbled severely by life. To have a desire to make a U-turn but beneath that there is, and remains, the ability to be violent and destructive.

"I feel like I know I can do delicate stuff, find vulnerability, but can I do that and reveal glimpses of a man you wouldn't ever want to cross?"

Having His Wife As His Boss and His Kids on Set

Kin wasn't supposed to be Cox's first TV role since his Netflix Marvel show Daredevil ended in 2018, but other projects fell through because of the pandemic. So, the actor turned his attention to a script that his wife, producer Samantha Thomas, was working on.

"I was so moved by it and so impressed by the script. I sat down to read it just to give my input, but I just thought it was absolutely tremendous, exactly the kind of thing I'd been waiting to read and to say, 'This is what I want to be involved with,'" he said.

Thomas is credited as an executive producer on Kin, after serving as a producer on a number of the Netflix Marvel shows such as Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage. (Not those last two, I think??)

Having his wife and kids with him proved to be an incredible bonus for Cox in 2020 and he was "thankful" for the normality this provided while they worked on Kin together in Dublin.

"We were very fortunate but I do joke that it's both a blessing and a curse to have your wife also be your boss, where she can actually fire you, but she was very diplomatic and gracious," he said.

Differentiating his Irish Accents

Cox, born in London and brought up in East Sussex, is no stranger to changing his accent for a role—but Kin was a new experience for him.

"Somehow in my career I've been cast as people with accents, probably to varying degrees of success, but my trick is I work harder than anyone I know on accents. On set I try not to come out of the accent. I live in it and eventually it starts to feel like it's part of your voice and part of your breath."

Cox says his past experience of playing a character with a Northern Irish accent was to his detriment in Kin, as his accent coach often had to correct him saying his sounds were right but he was using a Northern Irish inclination.

Now Cox has finished shooting Kin, he classes himself as "unemployed" again. After a recent run on the stage, he says he will have to "seriously consider" what project he takes on next as he'd like to be able to travel with ease.

If the opportunity to film a second season of Kin came up, though, he'd jump at the chance. "I really hope we get to do it again I had such a good experience of the first time," he said. "My only regret is we didn't get to see much of Ireland, we had to stay in Dublin [because of the pandemic]. I'd love the chance to go back and explore not just the city but the surrounding countryside."

During his conversation with Newsweek, Cox also responded to the internet rumors that his forearms can be seen in the first trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home. There has been widespread speculation that Cox appears in the film as Matt Murdock, the role he played in Daredevil.

~*~

Kin star Charlie Cox reveals why he almost missed out on the show

By Morgan Jeffery  24th February 2022  (X)

The opening episodes of the series follow Cox's character as he emerges from a stint in prison and struggles not to be drawn back into a criminal lifestyle, a journey which parallels that of Dunne's Amanda. "It's gonna be tricky for him," said Cox. "This family, they're spending their whole time trying to stay out of prison. But they are prisoners already – prisoners of their own making, by the lifestyles they've chosen to live... or in some cases have been forced into, I guess there is a distinction there.

"When we meet Michael, he's got one thing in mind and that is spending time with his daughter, and how long he can survive on the periphery of this family is going to be a question that's asked throughout throughout the whole first season."

~*~

[weirdmageddon]

the shift in lore literacy in homestuck’s fandom

i was thinking about how the people who got into homestuck after it ended—whose interactions with the comic are in a static, archived state, not an ongoing thing—missed out on information that was more common knowledge in the fandom at that time. i don’t know if this is true since i’m not on tiktok, but i wouldn’t be surprised if it was. the fandom certainly isn’t the same as it was before.

ive found that many people reading homestuck now simply do not understand things in homestuck that were common knowledge back in the day, with calls for “homestuck literacy classes to become mandatory” in response to baffling takes because so many people just now seem to have glazed over the comic without absorbing important plot points, and i think i know why this may be. i ended up writing a post reflecting on my time with the comic, my perspective and how ive seen this change. i still think and write about homestuck because it still fascinates me. earlier i quote retweeted that call in my thread talking about the temporal relativity of dave and rose’s god tier ascension in the green sun, saying “my homestuck literacy is 100% so guess im doing my part as a teacher by pointing out whatever i think is really cool about it”. this post im writing now started out as a reply to this tweet i got in response.

i joined the fandom in 2013. i was 11. i had been aware of it since at least late 2011, early 2012 when my friend ryan in fifth grade told me to read it but i couldn’t get past the first few pages. i remember writing a journal on deviantart around this time (late 2011-early 2012) that was mocking people who typed like gamzee, which ironically was very karkat of me. and i remember someone on flipnote hatena i was following was making flipnotes with the alpha kids.

i dont know what caused me to flip the switch into reading it but 2013. i got into it somewhere between april (i think closer to april—i remember it being quite a span of time between the last update before HOMOSUCK dropped.) this was the most recent page the comic, meaning there was no > [S] ACT 6 ACT 6 at the bottom.

i got into it during a pause in updates, which looking into it, was the year 4 megapause. i wasn’t sure of the month until seeing the news post detailing the reason for the hiatus and the status report of the comic’s development at that time. pretty cool i could narrow it down by referencing the dates of those updates and the news post to correspond with the pause!

according to readmspa, the year 4 megapause was a 59 day hiatus from Apr 14, 2013 ==> (EOA6A5) running to 12 Jun 2013, [S] ACT 6 ACT 6. then for a few months there were the first updates that i was apart of the fandom for.

and what an exciting time during the story get into the webcomic! when the updates resumed in june, part 4 of homestuck had begun. here was a glimpse of the updates in that span of time before the next hiatus began in october.

that hiatus was none other than the gigapause, the longest hiatus in the comic, which started october 2013 and lasted for a YEAR, and i already posted about what happened on the date of return.

but here were the main events happening in the story at the time i first actually got interested in it. i wasn’t aware of the full context of them then like i am now, but i was looking at the most recent updates anyway with interest:

the alpha kids just emerged as god tiers from their slabs in derse and prospit, blown up by the condesce and caliborn / lil cal-possessed b2 jack noir.

the journey to the new session started 24 hours after jack called an early reckoning in descend—for context that was about when dave entered around midnight central time and before jade even entered. it’s pretty easy to forget that side 1 of homestuck basically happens within the span of a single day—and at this point in the story, the 3 year journey (which was also 3 real life years) had just ended. john and jade emerged from the other side of the yellow yard through the fenestrated plane on LOMAX. john’s real body was asleep upon arrival in the new session, while his dreaming projection out in the dream bubbles came across vriska’s ghost ship to learn lord english lore with vriska and aranea, and go on the treasure hunt where they found the ultimate weapon at the X mark out in in the furthest ring. in the dream john stuck his hand in the juju, started warping all over canon which removed his real body from the ship on LOMAX. he zapped around for a while but eventually zapped back to LOMAX, now awake, completely out of the loop of what everyone else is up to, and bored as fuck. what was everyone else getting up to while john was asleep?

jade was now once again within the domain of the green sun. im pretty sure her space god doggy essence comes with the power to sense what was anywhere within the domain of the session since her face looks like she arrived at that spot with intent (and she literally has jack noir’s exact powers from bec’s prototyping. also this panel). she immediately dispatched b2 jack to the edge of the incinisphere, defending the newly god-tiered jane and jake. i think even if they weren’t in any danger, she would have warped to them instantly anyway because she COULD now, and i can imagine she wouldve been sooooo eager to meet everyone. even davesprite comments about her rapid departure.

the pre-scratch refugees arrived during the only time serious shit ever went down in the nobles’ months-long inert void session. the condesce used her freak psychic bronze-cerulean powers to commune with jade’s bestial side and mind controlled her, which is super dangerous as someone with the powers of a first guardian. she then used jade’s powers to corrupt jane with the tiaratop. no funtime meetup allowed!

the trolls’ meteor with rose, dave, and the remaining trolls was pulling up into the new session with no way to slow it down. grimbark jade warped there once it was in the incinisphere and took active control. she warped everyone off the trolls’ meteor and sent them to LOMAX.

as john was losing his mind on LOMAX waiting for everyone, the meteor crew warped in. after 3 years he finally reunited with rose and dave, and at least saw the trolls in person. close curtains, end of A6A5. this was the newest [S] flash page at the time, one of my first impressions of this comic, and still one of my favorite flashes. knowing the context of the flash in the story only enhances the retrospective joy i have at getting into the comic at the time i did because it’s such an anticipated moment in the story for everyone, while for someone with no context of the story it was still enjoyable.

so that’s what was going on plotwise when i joined the fandom.

from this time, through those few months of updates and through the gigapause, i was familarizing myself with the characters in the story and overseeing the state of fanbase, getting myself acquainted with the story and wrapping my head around everything.

at that time i found that a new-ish group called colab HQ who were producing a let’s read homestuck series on youtube. hearing the voices and the pacing of it like that really, really eased me into it (maybe it was my adhd that gave me trouble actually starting it?). i caught up to a certain point using lets read homestuck and from that point was able to continue with the comic on my own, and by the time the gigapause came to a close i was fully caught up. i remember the rebranding of colab hq into voxus about a year and a half after i discovered them.

but.. back to the main point of my post. even these posts from hussie’s tumblr exist in archived states. how many new fans know about hussie’s old tumblr? i don’t know, unless theyre a new fan that must scour the internet for more deep more dives on homestuck and its fandom as a whole. but since hussie deleted his tumblr (it exists archived now on homestuck.net which, alongside from the unofficial homestuck collection, has nearly singlehandedly kept the most important relics of the fandom and lore archived), that page is not an active part of the fandom now, because it’s gone. it’s a pile of bones. it’s not living and breathing. it’s in an archived state. the whole thing is already there. homestuck and its fandom history is something you now binge instead of slowly consume and meld with as it comes out. it’s now this rapid information intake that you might forget about if you read it now instead of engaged alongside it. you’re not surrounded by people actively talking and theorizing about developments anymore. the ability to have those sorts of conversations during the ongoing development of the story reinforced concepts, ideas, and lore over and over as we tried to make sense of it.

being in a fandom when the author is still delivering the story is like nothing else. it allows you grow alongside the characters and engage meaningfully with the media and people in the fandom space around you. it feels like you’re participating IN the media itself, especially if you’re interfacing with the creator. it’s in always having something to theorize or talk about and speculate. and people become very aware of these sorts of forgotten story facts because they were applying the logic of the newest official post from hussie into making their sburb ocs or something and share resources and discussion posts about “what just happened in this update?? recap????” it was this cultural osmosis thing. i think this is why homestuck literacy is now at an all time low, at least from what i can see on twitter.

reading homestuck then vs now is like the difference between serialized shows with spaces between episodes to discuss stuff and time to reflect and learn and become attached to the story, narrative, worldbuilding and its characters, vs the netflix model where it’s all dropped all at once and people forget about it after binging.

at this point in time im getting the sense that “homestuck elders” now are no longer just people who were there since 2009-2010, but now also people who were there while it was still updating, probably stretching into 2014-2015. there are many sources of lore that were common knowledge in the fandom at the time that, since becoming susceptible to the deletion of content and link rot, and with the thanosing of mspaforums, are no longer accessible at the source. and a lot of people moved on after it ended, especially following the epilogues, the kate drama, and the whatpumpkin-sarah z drama, leaving a void of information behind if not for archivists and people such as me who continue to keep old facts relevant in discussions. my friend has called me a fandom scholar before and seeing this post i think i get what they mean.

EDIT: there is a series of video essays ive watched multiple times (because theyre that good) and they are exactly what modern fans need to see more of. they really help contextualize the comic and the themes present in it help you appreciate the basic fabric of homestuck a hell of a lot more. i highly recommend them and encourage any fan of homestuck to watch them, or someone considering getting into homestuck to watch the first one.

i think this is arguably as close to the “mandatory literacy class for homestuck” that person was talking about as you can get, especially the first video.

additionally, there is also the website https://rafe.name/homestuck which is essentially a sparknotes for homestuck and can help you follow developments in the comic itself.

[formosusiniquis]

Robin's Guide to the Care and Feeding of Your Newly Adopted Former Mean Girl

Happy @stevieweek everybody! This is Day One: Stobin with none of the bonus prompts, but keep an eye out cause i've got a few more incoming this week.

Robin Buckley & Stevie Harrington; Pre-Stevie Harrington/Eddie Munson WC: 9483 | T | No Archive Warnings Apply | Tags/Themes: transfem!Steve Harrington; Platonic Soulmates Steve & Robin; Robin Buckley is the Stevie Harrington Defense Squad

AO3

On July 4th, 1985, Steven Joseph Harrington died in the Starcourt Mall Fire. 

The story Robin Marie Buckley tells, after two weeks of hospitalization and an additional month in Indianapolis for “personal reasons,” when she returns to her senior year at Hawkins High a full week after the first day of school is one of abject heroism on the part of Steve.

It’s true, even if it isn’t the whole story. Just like it isn’t hard for her to play morose and avoidant, because that’s how she feels. She might know Dustin, but it’s too hard to spend much time with him and she doesn’t want to be the weird friendless senior who only talks to freshmen. She’ll leave that to Eddie Munson, who snatched Steve’s weird little child friends up only a few weeks into the first semester. 

Nancy and Jonathan avoid her as much as she does them, she doesn’t think they know what to do with the new girl in the know. It paints a picture, well she realizes later that it paints a picture, but she doesn’t want to sit at a table and eat her peanut butter and jelly sandwich while Nancy Wheeler’s big beautiful eyes are staring at her like she’s an article that’s half an inch too long and needs to be dissected while Jonathan Byers is also there.

So she drifts through the halls of Hawkins High like a ghost, she’s Cathy on the moors. Avoiding anyone who might try to ask her too many questions about the final days of Steve Harrington and Starcourt Mall.

Until the day she spots a baby blue jeep pulled into the Henderson’s driveway, a tall brunette unloading a single suitcase from the back. She’s got her bike across the road before she can even think of a game plan. A noise that’s almost like a scream erupting from her mouth the entire time she coasts over.

“You’re here, you’re here, you’re here!” It’s an uncharacteristic bit of grace, that lets her drop her bike to the ground and use its momentum to catapult herself into the other girl’s arms. Too excited for a second to remember that she’s in a place where small town gossip exists, and a new neighbor can fuel the mill for days.

But she enjoys her hug for a second before settling into a more appropriate character. She extends a hand, ignoring the laugh it gets her, “Welcome to Hawkins, I’m Robin, occasional Dustin babysitter.”

The girl’s smile pulls lopsided at her mouth, kissed with a bit of irony and undeniably charmed. “It’s nice to meet you Robin,” her voice is soft, and a little unsure. Wavering like Becky Simpson’s tone deaf oboe playing, unsure of what pitch and timbre to land on. “I’m Stephanie Henderson, Dustin’s cousin.”

The bit crumbles immediately between Robin’s fingers.

“Stephanie? You went with Stephanie? Are you kidding? We workshopped so many names!”

“I liked my name! But it’s weird apparently to be a girl named Steve.” She distributes finger quotes randomly throughout the sentence like Robin hadn’t been the one to say she didn’t know any girls named Steve. “Stephanie is pretty!”

Robin looks her best friend dead in the eye, unsurprised that there’s not a hint of humor even underneath the drama. “Never mind that it sure would be strange for Steve Harrington to die just for girl Steve who looks like she could be his cousin to move to town.”

“Affair baby,” Stephanie presents the solution with a flick of her hand. Robin notices that her nails are still chewed short, more noticeable  after they talked about what it would be like for her to grow them out and manicure them.

“Give me the whole name right now,” Robin demands, “I wanna hear how it sounds.”

Steph, cause they’re going to have to figure out nicknames immediately they just aren’t the kind of friends that can go around being Robin and Stephanie, kicks the curb with her scuffed up Nike. Her arms crossed across her middle accentuates the way her body has already started changing, Robin feels like a creep for a second for noticing her friend’s boobs before deciding that they weren’t the kind of friends with those kinds of boundaries.

“Stephanie Marie Henderson.”

“Oh my god!”

“Shut up, don’t even.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“You’re already making a big deal out of it, which it’s not.” Stevie insists.

“You stole my middle name, you’re so obsessed with me.” It’s the best thing she’s ever heard actually, that Stevie might be as into this friendship as she is. She’s always the friend that’s too much.

Stevie’s smile is small, shier than she’s used to seeing it. “Yeah well whatever Stephanie Robin sounds like a straight to VHS Winnie the Pooh movie character or some shit.”

Dustin comes scrambling out of the house before Robin can make another joke. “You were supposed to call before you left! Ma isn’t finished setting up your room, and Tews is stuck under your bed.”

They share a look, and Robin thrills a little that she has a friend that she can share looks with. “Henderson,” Stevie shouts, sounding a little more like she did this summer. “Are you really going to make me carry my own bags in? I'm a fucking lady, dickhead.”

“Sure don't fucking talk like one,” Dustin hollers back from the door, already trudging out of the house.

“Gonna have to work on your feminism,” Robin says. wondering what kind of weird shit a person would have to sort through when they realized they were transsexual. “Just because you're on estrogen doesn't mean your arms are atrophied.”

The butter-wouldn't-melt smile is still the same, even though her face looks softer. She hands off her suitcase, patting Dustin on the head as he visibly stumbles under the weight. “Don't drag it on the sidewalk, it's new,” she directs. 

He can't flip them off when it takes both hands to lift the luggage in his hand, “How are you more of an asshole, oh my god.”

“Is that anyway to talk to your cousin, Dustbunny?”

Dustin doesn't answer directly, but he's muttering under his breath the whole way to the house. 

“My ribs still hurt some when I'm doing heavy lifting,” Stevie says when he's out of earshot. “Better to be a high maintenance girl all of a sudden than someone he doesn't think he can count on.”

“Don't love the way you used girl in that sentence, Dingus.” Robin shoves at her shoulder, “Let's go look at your room, we can plan how you want to decorate.”

“I'm not saying I'm upset we got the job, Rob, just that it's weird the way Keith was acting. He always hated me, you know that. Before all this,” she gestures down her striped top, well Robin supposes she’s actually gesturing down at the way it hugs her figure, “he hated me. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire.”

“That seems a little dramatic, but welcome to your first workplace sexism.” Robin gives Stevie a comforting pat. Hopeful that it communicates a ‘welcome to the bad parts of everyone knowing you're a girl’ and not how she’d been prepared to work some of that sexism to their advantage. But apparently Keith was charmed by Stevie’s list of favorite films, he’d even laughed when she said her favorite Star Wars movie was the one with the teddy bears. When they’d gone to pick out movies last week she’d heard him lecture a guy for five minutes on how it was Episode VI not ‘the third one.’

Stevie flips her hair, sending Robin a playful glare, “I’ve experienced sexism, thank you, have you already forgotten what I used to look like.”

“I’m sure he’ll go back to hating you once he realizes you working here is going to mean this is one more place that Henderson and the brats are always hanging around.” She went with Stevie to the arcade once and she almost understood why Keith always hid in the back when they walked in. 

“Probably, but at least then I can stop being nice to him. He’s such a-” Robin can hear the way Stevie swallows the rest of the sentence. A frustrated, red blush flooding her cheeks as she bites down on her bottom lip. It’s confusing, the small shake of her head and how upset she suddenly seems to be with herself. “Sorry, sorry, never mind.”

Maybe it’s stupid, but for some reason that’s when Robin realizes that Stevie was about to say something mean. That Stevie stopped herself but she is, Robin supposes, frustrated that the instinct is still there. And it’s not like Robin doesn’t remember that they’ve talked about this before. Stevie with that eyepatch on from where they reattached her retina and Robin laying in the hospital bed next to her still under doctor’s supervision. Neither one of them were high anymore, it had been almost sixteen hours since Everything, they were only in the hospital at all because Robin’s mom had found them both passed out in her bed and panicked. When Mrs. Henderson had seen them both in Hawkins General and did what Stevie said was panicking and had them shipped to the city, her car speeding closely behind.

The only thing they could possibly be high on was the sudden crushing awareness of their own mortality, when Stevie’s one good eye locked with hers and she said, “I don’t want the first thing people think of when they remember me to be how I was a douche or an asshole. Or a bitch, I guess, if they actually let me change like they said they would.

“All the girls I know,” she paused and seemed to consider that, “all the girls that I still like, are good and kind and badass.”

“Including me?” Robin had teased, but she had remembered the way she had given Stevie such a hard time from the second they started working together until the moment they as the ‘adults’ realized they were going to have to protect Dustin and Erica from something that might kill them all.

“Especially you.”

So yeah, of course, when she catches herself about to verbally eviscerate Keith behind his back two weeks after being back in town she shuts down. But Robin isn’t about to let that happen. Stevie is good and kind and definitely a badass, if Keith were in trouble she would absolutely risk her life to save him -- as long as saving him didn’t keep her from saving one of the kids. 

Stevie was a good person who had some mean girl tendencies, Robin wasn’t going to make her feel bad about that. As long as she was using her powers for good, or like Claire in the Breakfast Club she was kind of Mean Girl lite.

“He’s kind of a slimy creep,” Robin admits. The kind of comment she thinks, but couldn’t ever really say with her last group of friends. It would break the loser code.

Stevie’s shoulders drop from around her ears. She’s still idly picking at the nail polish they just painted on her thumb, but she smiles over at Robin. A little sly, a little catty. “He touched my shoulder while we were leaving and I swear to god he left orange cheese puff residue behind.”

“Maybe half of your new clothes shouldn’t be dry clean only.”

“ Maybe he should help cover my dry cleaning bill if he’s going to put his hands on me in the workplace. I could call Family Video HR, probably. You know his dad owns like half of this strip mall, and people gave me shit about having money, I’m pretty sure they own the dry cleaning place too.”

“So why do these polyester nightmares smell like the BO of employees past?”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

With the job and Stevie back, Robin almost forgets that she spent the first three weeks of school sad and miserable. She’s maybe even a little distracted that they have plans tonight, and forgets that there are reasons other than the threat of bacterial infection to avoid the girl’s room in the language hallway. And more than any of that, it’s really hard to think about any of that when she can feel her bladder starting to pickle her brain.

The door to the bathroom swings open before she can exit the stall. Voices she recognizes as Patty Taylor and Molly Smith already mid-conversation filter in. “I mean she’s pretty, like really pretty, but I mean why would you even move to Hawkins.”

It’s definitely too late to leave.

“Carol said that she heard from Heather that she moved in with her aunt, she was from the city or something.”

The squelching sound of a lipgloss wand leaving the tube is punctuated by a bitchy hum, “Well, you know who spent all that time in the city this summer.”

“I mean yeah, but how would they have even met? I’ve heard like six different stories about why she was there.”

Patty’s voice echoes, through the crack in the stall door Robin can see her lean over top of the sink putting her face even closer to the water spotted mirror above it. “Well she was in that mall fire, but I heard she had to stay so long after initial treatment because she…”

There must be some facial expression she’s missing, Patty trails off like she’s dropped some grand secret. Robin isn’t a total loser, she hears gossip. She knows that Mrs. Click is going through a bitter divorce from her husband because he had that affair with the gas station attendant from the Chevron by the highway. She knows that Tim Morris got sent to military school after he put a cherry bomb in Mrs. O’Leary’s mailbox. She knows that Vickie is definitely a shoo-in for clarinet first chair even though Michael Lewis had it last year and he’s a senior this year.

And yeah okay two of those she had heard from Stevie.

But she thinks she should have had some clue that there was some kind of rumor going around about her. Molly wrinkles her forehead, maybe she isn’t the only one who has no clue about this rumor. “Because she what?”

“Because she lost the baby and they put her in the psych ward,” Patty says loud enough that it bounces off the tile walls of the bathroom. A hand covers her mouth and they both look around like they’ve just remembered that they’re in public. Robin pulls her feet up on the toilet seat with her.

“What baby?” Molly asks in a whisper that seems even louder with the way she forces it out.

“Come on, everyone knows the reason she was so upset that Steve died. He knocked her up while they were working together and with the stress she lost the baby. She was such a freak already, the new girl and her must have been in the same padded cell in the loony bin.”

“Really? I mean with Steve Harrington? ”

“I mean Carol said it so I’m pretty sure it has to be true, you know how close she used to be with Steve.” 

The bell rings, sending them both fleeing from the bathroom with muttered curses. Robin stays in the stall too stunned by what she’s heard to move. Stunned and filled with the thought that all she wants right now is to see Stevie.

She bumps into Eddie Munson on the way to the payphone. He gives her an unreadable look, mostly eyebrows that she can’t see beneath his bangs anyway, so she isn’t sure why he even bothers. Is he wondering why she’s skipping class? Or did he see her running from the bathroom and now he’s wondering if maybe the rumors were only partially true, that she’s still pregnant and she hadn’t lost the baby like apparently half the school thinks.

If a wet rat like Munson knows more about her status in the school than she does she really might have to go back and hurl.

She puts in her change and dials the increasingly familiar number for the Henderson place.

“Hen-”

“I need you to come pick me up, now.”

It isn’t hard to convince the school nurse, who’s more worried about when she can slip away to sneak her next cigarette than she is about doing any nursing, that she’s too sick to stay. So she’s waiting out front when Stevie’s new Jeep rockets into the parking lot, the woman of the hour flinging herself out of it before it’s fully in park. 

“What happened? What’s wrong? The kids are fine right?” She’s pressing the back of her hand to Robin’s forehead, the other at her side clenching into fists as she looks over Robin’s head for any creature or person that might need to be put down.

“Everything’s fine,” she lies, “I needed to see you.”

A single eyebrow raises, Robin helped her pluck that eyebrow into that arch and now it’s being used in disbelief at her own blatant lie. “Fine,” she relents, “I’ll tell you when we aren’t standing in the middle of the parking lot, okay?”

The radio is off but so are the doors, so even as Robin refuses to talk the sound of the wind rushing past them fills the silence of the car. With no destination in mind, Stevie seems to be driving a slow meandering circuit of Hawkins.

“I overheard Patty and Molly talking about us in the bathroom today.” She says only after they’ve passed Melvalds twice with no sign of parking.

“They were talking in the bathroom about us or they were talking about us in the bathroom.”

“That’s the same sentence twice.”

“No it’s not. In the bathroom or in the bathroom.” The emphasis is nonsensical, but after a second it clicks.

“They were in the bathroom. I guess I was also in the bathroom but it was definitely not about our bathroom conversation.”

“What were they saying?” Stevie noses out gossip like a search dog noses out missing kids.

Robin sticks her hand out the side of the car, dancing it up and down in the wind like a wave. Letting the force of it glide up and over her like she wishes she could just get over whatever it is that has her so upset. Gossip and rumor that she knows isn’t true.

“Technically you got to be two characters. They think we know each other from the psych ward because boy you got me pregnant and when you died I lost the baby and went crazy.”

Her seatbelt catches her hard against the chest, forcing the air out of her lungs. Stevie’s hit the brakes so hard that the smell of rubber is in the air, uncaring that they’re in the middle of a main road. She’s just looking at Robin with something, disbelief or outrage, maybe a little bit of that rage she gets when her people have been hurt.

“Patty said that? Patty Taylor? Patty with the retainer breath whose lipgloss makes it look like she’s always drooling on herself, Patty?”

A nod is enough answer for Stevie to let out a little humph, setting her eyes back to the road and easing them into drive like they’d just been caught by a stray redlight.

“What?” 

She shakes her head, gazing around the upcoming turn like they don’t both know it’ll be the rundown place that used to be Benny’s. It’s going to be something mean, something she’s worried will make her sound too much like the person she used to be.

As far as Robin is concerned whatever it is won’t be any different than when she swung that phone at that Russian guard. Or crashed that car into Billy’s. It’s all just different ways of helping to protect the people she loves that aren’t as good at protecting themselves.

“Tell me,” she insists, wheedles even. “Whatever it is I won’t tell anyone else. It’s time honored girl code you have to tell me.”

“Girl code?”

“I’ll mimeo you a copy of the handbook, tell me. It’ll make me feel better.”

Stevie’s sigh is audible over the wind rushing past them, her side eye not bad enough that Robin is at all worried about it. “I just think it’s funny that she’s passing judgment on you and your possible pregnancy when everyone knows she’s banned from the U of I campus because she went streaking to impress a guy that wasn’t even interested in her. The only reason she doesn’t have an arrest record for it is because her dad is a former professor or donor or something and threatened funding if the Dean pressed charges.”

“Oh my god, really?”

“Totally, the guy was on the basketball team. He came back and told everyone when he came home for the pre-season kegger.”

She grabs Stevie’s hand off the gearshift, holds it just because she can. Relishes in the closeness the two of them can have now that she’s back and everything is better again. “You are the strongest woman I know, all this knowledge and you just keep it to yourself all the time.”

She snorts, squeezing Robin’s hand, “I literally don’t, I just told you something. Pretty sure that’s like if I had the nuclear launch codes or something and I gave them out to just one person because they’re having a really bad day.”

“Oh! Do you remember doing those stupid duck and cover drills in elementary school?”

“Oh that's really nice of you, Mrs. Buckley, but Aunt Claudia is expecting me home for dinner.” Stevie's voice calls from outside the door, only a surprise because they didn't have plans to hang out today.

She scrambles from her bed, the wire on her headphones tangling around her neck until the weight of her walkman drags them off her. Flinging the door open she's just in time to save her best friend. “Thanks for bringing her up, Mom, we’re just gonna hang out in my room til Steph has to leave, okay?”

Shoving Stevie toward the bed before her Mom has a chance to say anything else, Robin at least smiles before she shuts the door in her mother’s face.

“What happened?”

Stevie is digging through her jewelry box, has a ring Robin picked up at a garage sale because it looked cool and didn’t think about trying on, and doesn’t bother looking ashamed at being caught snooping. “Why does something have to be wrong?”

She slips the ring on her finger, the gold band and mossy green stone looks better on her than it would have Robin. “You can keep it if you admit something happened.” Stevie starts to raise an eyebrow, but it halts half way up her forehead when Robin gives the Family Video vest she’s still wearing a tug.

Her smile goes lopsided, tilts too high on one side before she wanders over to flop down on the bed. “I, maybe, did something stupid.”

Flopping down beside her, Robin swears when she lands on her walkman first. “Stupid like when you put Re-Animator in the romance section or stupid like when you tripped into the Back to the Future cutout and apologized cause you weren't wearing your glasses.”

“Stupid like I don't know, Rob, you know how at first I was pretending that I didn't know anyone when they came in right, cause I'm supposed to be new in town.”

“Like bad witness protection because they put you right back where you left.”

“Right, well I kinda forgot to do that this morning when I was working by myself?”

Looking now she can tell this is something that has had Stevie really worked up. The strands of hair at the front of her face have lost some of their beachy wave from where she's been fussing with it, pushing it back, tugging at it. Waiting for when she saw Robin again.

Sitting up from the bed, she grabs Stevie's hand in a too tight grip. “What happened? You're okay right? They didn't recognize you and do anything shitty, right?”

“Well that's the thing,” she somehow looks even more distressed, it gives Robin another clue. Stevie is afraid she's broken some unspoken rule of girlhood by doing whatever it is she's done. Which means the story will be interesting.

“So Roger came in, you know Roger right? Second stringer on the basketball team, his footwork was too slow to ever actually be any good on the court but he had an amazing three pointer as long as no one was ever anywhere near him. So he'd make a great professional HORSE player but not really going anywhere with the actual game. He came in with his girlfriend-”

“Mindy Peterson.”

“Right, and when did they even get together?” She shakes her head. “Not the point, I was flipping through the Tiger Beat that Cindy left in the drawer after her shift, cause this months Car and Driver was a total waste of money. And he wanders up, surprising me cause the bell over the door still doesn't work and I thought I was alone in there. He starts talking to me like he already knows me.”

“He was flirting with you in front of his girlfriend!”

“That wasn't flirting, he was just being friendly; and I didn't know Mindy was there, she was back in the romance section picking something out.”

“So he's flirting with you while his girlfriend is picking out something for date night.”

Stevie rolls her eyes, shoving not so gently at Robin's shoulder. “He was talking to me like he already knew me, and I do know him so I did the same. I mentioned the last game he played in, well we played in. And then he starts looking at me and I realized what I look like.”

She gestures down at herself, and Robin isn't sure if this is a compliment time or a diffuse the situation time. Stevie really doesn't look that much like she used to. Her face has softened, her hair is longer, and she's leaned into the blonde highlights that she had in the summer.

“He's all ‘Do I know you?’” She continues, and Robin laughs, it's crazy how deep she can still get her voice and even though Roger does not have anything approaching the bass that Stevie has given him. It makes the situation feel even more bizarre. “it's not like I can say, ‘What you don't recognize me from all the times I gave you advice on how to keep yourself open on offense so you could actually get a hand on the ball?’”

Robin reaches for the nail polish on her bedside table, the robin's egg blue Stevie has taken to and the taupe brown that she likes but doesn't clash with Stevie's. They both pick at their nails when they get nervous, and Stevie has definitely been nervous.

“You could have said that,” she says just to be contrary, Stevie hand held in hers it means Robin avoids the smack that would have come.

She puts blue on every finger but one, letting Stevie think as she caps the polish and grabs the taupe to finish the hand. “Hi remember me, I faked my death so I could get boobies without getting murdered in the pumpkin patch I already avoided almost dying in once. Did you know they give you a new social security number for that?”

“So what did you actually do?”

“I lied, obviously.” She blinks twice, opens her eyes wider so she looks doe-eyed and vacant. “Oh gosh, well I guess you wouldn’t remember me. I used to only come to Hawkins during the holidays to babysit my little cousin, and I always try to catch a basketball game when I’m in town. Sometimes I’d sneak out and go to the parties, but I’m shy so...”

“Oh my god, like you’ve ever been shy in your life.”

“I’m going to have to be now!” She throws her hands up, fingers spread wide to avoid accidentally smudging her fresh nails. “It’s not like I can lie my way out of admitting to sharing homeroom with someone next. I’m just lucky Roger’s never took his eyes off the bottom button of my blouse.”

“Do you remember that movie I made you watch a couple months ago, the black and white one?”

“Oh yeah, that really narrows it down.”

“Gaslight, the one with the opera singer’s niece and her new husband tries to make her think she’s crazy. We just lie until everyone is convinced that it’s the truth.”

“The truth being that Stephanie Henderson always existed?”

Eye contact isn’t easy, unless it’s Stevie. They hold each other’s gaze as the excitement bubbles between them. “Exactly,” Robin says, “and that if they think anything else, they’re crazy.”

“You’re ridiculous.” She says, but it sounds like ‘you’re on.’

“Can I be a bitch for a second?” Stevie asks. She doesn’t look up from whatever magazine she was already flipping through when Robin walked through the door. It’s too casual, too calculated.

Progress has been slow but she’s slowly getting Stevie to the point where she doesn’t feel like she has to be nice all the time just because she’s a girl. Where she still acts like the bitchy dingus she'd been before, just a happier version.  

“Obviously, just let me clock in.”

When she gets back Stevie has a stack of returns that she’s working on rewinding. One thumb in her mouth as she chews at the cuticle. “So what’s-?

“If I hear one more word about Eddie the Freak, I’m going to lose it, Rob. I mean what’s he got that’s so great? I could have taken us to the All State Championships if I hadn’t gotten that last concussion saving the twerps. I’ve saved all those twerps’ lives at least two times! I was cool. I am cool! But all I get to hear these days is ‘Oh, Stevie, Eddie just did the coolest thing in the campaign today.’ ‘Thanks for the advice, Stevie, but I’m going to go with what Eddie said instead.’ ‘I know it’s your only day off, Stevie, but could you pick us up late after school? There's Hellfire today.’ ‘Stevie, since Keith actually likes you could you hold Ladyhawke for us. Oh, no we’re going to do a movie night with Eddie.’”

She’s panting slightly when she’s finished, like she’s been holding this in for weeks. With all the quotes she’s racked up she probably has been.

“You know he kicked my tray off the lunch table last week,” she encourages. She snags a box of Sour Patch Kids from the candy counter. Popping one in her mouth before waving the bag under Stevie’s frowning face. She doesn’t even have a movie turned on. Well she does, but it looks like it was one of the weekend returns Stevie wasn’t going to put on Watership Down.

“Well he’s inconsiderate,” Stevie says, digging around in the box until she finds a red one and popping it into her mouth. “Everything is all fuck the man until he’s the man in question and then he’s the only one anyone should listen to about anything. Lucas is going to make the basketball team, he’s been working really hard on it with Jay and some of the other guys on the team.”

She’s basically taken the whole box of candy at this point. Robin doesn’t even care, just watches as Stevie picks out her favorite colors and lines them up on her magazine on the counter like a sweet and sour army. Completely oblivious to the quiet devastation that’s playing out on her face. Her brow furrowed and tight when she talks about Lucas, basketball another thing Robin wonders if she’s being unintentionally left out of.

“I just know Munson’s going to turn it into some us or them thing, like it isn’t possible to like more than one thing.”

“Maybe you-”

“And maybe that’s why they’ve been so cool with all of this,” she shrugs her shoulder in place of gesturing down at herself, too busy tearing apart a lone sourpatch general, “like it was a send off before they moved on to an actual guy who can actually do something for them. That’s probably a better send off than I deserve even right, like I mean, the kind of person I used to be. Maybe I don’t get more than one happy thing.”

Robin flattens the little red and green army underneath the flat of her hand, “Absolutely not. You are not going to let a… a… a dumpster raccoon with Mrs. Goble’s mystery meat on the bottom of his stupid shoes make you think that you don’t deserve the entire world.”

“But-” Stevie tears at the cardboard of the box between her fingers, leaving little pieces of it on the floor between her feet.

“But nothing, your little shithead kids might have latched onto the first giant nerd that looked at them when they crossed through the doors of the high school like freshly hatched ducklings but you’re the coolest person they’ve ever had the chance to meet and it’s their loss if they don’t notice.”

“I mean they’re in high school so-”

“So they’ve decided to get all the stupid decisions out at the start. It’s a bold decision but maybe that will keep them from-”

“From crashing their dad’s truck into half the cars at prom?”

“I wish one of them had been yours,” she steals the last red Sour Patch from between Stevie’s fingers, popping it into her mouth before her best friend can do anything about it.

“You’re never going to pass your driver’s test, I hope you like the bus.”

“You’re going to drive me to work forever because you love me,” she drags love out as she dances away from Stevie’s slapping hands, snagging a stack of tapes to return to the shelves as she goes.

There’s no way Stevie isn’t rolling her eyes, but Robin also knows that she’ll look all soft and pleased. Knows because a yellow candy smacks hard against the copy of The Breakfast Club that’s right beside her head.

“What the hell is going on with that rabbit?”

“Pretty sure it’s proof that you should never be trusted to pick the shift movie.”

“Stevie’s being a total headcase this week, will you tell her to chill out,” Henderson delivers what Robin is going to generously call a request after cornering her between fourth and fifth periods. Cause if it isn’t a request then it’s an order or a demand, and her small friend is not going to be happy with what she has to say in that case.

“Well that depends, Dusty, why are you calling my best friend a headcase?”

He rolls his eyes at her, a trait that Stevie might put up with but Robin is not about to. “Because she’s being one, every time I try to talk to her it’s like…” he trails off. That’s probably for the best.

“It’s like all you can talk about is your new best friend Eddie? It’s like you aren’t interested in her now that you’ve got some new brother that you can hang out with instead? It’s like all she’s good for is a ride to see the boys? It’s like you can’t ask her how to talk to girls anymore or how you should do your hair because she’s not the same anymore.”

“I didn’t say that,” he shrieks, hands waving between them like he can swipe away the thousand bees that are her accusations. She feels stinging mad actually now that she’s started putting words out there for the things that she’s feeling.

“You don’t have to say it, it’s what you’ve been doing.”

“Did she say that?” Robin gently swings her locker door just shy of closed. Dustin looks younger than she thinks she’s seen him since the first time they met. Looks smaller than she’s seen him in her life. Looking up at her with big watery eyes, waiting for her to make it okay.

Stevie’s gonna be pissed if she doesn’t at least try to make it okay.

She picks each word carefully, not wanting him to feel completely off the hook, “She didn’t say it exactly like that.”

Dustin looks at the floor, his hat obscuring his face enough that she can’t tell if he’s followed through on the watery eyes to full crying. The ambiguity makes him easier to talk to for a second, now that she doesn’t have to worry about watching what his expression is doing.

“She’s still the same person who walked down the train tracks with a kid she barely knew looking for his runaway science experiment. She’s still the person who did your hair for the snowball. She’s the person who went hunting for Russian spies with you. She’s the person that would like to keep giving you terrible advice on how to date.”

His next breath is phlegmy and ragged. “It wasn’t terrible advice.”

“Right, right, your Moonchild Empress or whatever.”

Dustin hasn’t been quiet once in the entire time that she’s known him so Robin assumes the quiet means he’s done talking. Swinging her locker back open she goes back to what she was doing before he interrupted, which had, coincidentally been Stevie related. Deciding whether or not she was going to bring her copy Watership Down to work with her so Stevie could see what was up with the rabbits.

“They should meet.”

Robin had also been leaning toward introducing her to Fiver and Hazel, but she doesn't think that’s what Dustin means.

“Who should-”

“Stevie and Eddie,” he looks at her with a wide grin. An expression she recognizes from shortly before she found herself in an elevator to hell. Dustin thinks he's just had a good idea. “Stevie can see that Eddie's super cool, Eddie will stop- And once they know each other we can hang out all the time, why didn't I think of this before!”

It does occur to her that she could remind Dustin that Stevie existed before July of 1985. That she went to school here and definitely already knows Eddie, that's where half the problem comes from even. But then she thinks of how much fun their next sleepover will be, when Stevie has brand new things to hate and make fun of.

“Maybe you're right Dustin, maybe that is the problem.”

He pumps his fist in time with the warning bell. “This is going to be great, I can't believe I didn't already think of this.”

He's still talking to himself as he starts to scamper off to a class he's going to be late to. But she isn’t about to let him leave without making sure he took away the real lesson he was supposed to. “And pass along to your little friends that her new meds didn't lobotomize her brain or amputate her legs. She can still tell you how to talk to girls, she can still shoot a free throw, she can still show you how to change a tire after it's blown out on the interstate.”

Dustin's staying with the Wheelers, Claudia has the night shift which means she and Stevie have the whole house to themselves.

Robin is making herself at home in Stevie's room, moving extra quilts and pillows from the linen closet into a fort she's making on the floor. Because today is going to be the best bitch day in the world, once Stevie makes it home from playing chauffeur. Because today Stevie gave in and went to lunch and a movie with Dustin and his new best friend Eddie.

She keeps trying to imagine what Stevie will say. Maybe Munson dips his fries in syrup or something disgusting. Maybe he showed up to the movie in his nerd brigade shirt. Maybe he showed up thirty minutes late! And the Stevie in her head has devastating things to say about all of those things, but she knows none of them are right. She just can't manage the right amount of even toned bitchery that Stevie can, the clever double entendre that makes the person she's insulting look all the dumber for getting upset at the blatant quips.

“Did you really bike here, you weirdo? You know I would have picked you up.” Stevie's voice carries down the hallway, accented by the sound of her keys hitting the bowl by the door and her shoes getting picked up from the floor and set down in the shoe tree.

“You got that bike rack for the Jeep. I wanted to make sure it actually got some use.”

The answering laugh is the one Robin possessively thinks of as hers, a little ugly, high pitched and snorting. It makes it to the bedroom just a second before Stevies face. A face that's wearing the lipgloss with the glitter in it, the one she saves for when she's trying to impress someone or make them look at her mouth.

“You look nice?”

“Such a charmer, Rob, no wonder you've got so many girls banging down your door.” She eases herself down onto the floor beside Robin, smoothing out a buttery yellow skirt that has to be new. She knows every single item in Stevie's closet, except this skirt.

She isn't going to think about how Stevie went out shopping without her though. She'd rather focus her attention somewhere more entertaining. “How was lunch?”

Stevie fusses with the edge of her skirt, rolling the hem of it between two fingers. Her face pinking though under that she's smiling. “Ugh you wouldn't even believe Henderson was a twerp, as usual. Insisted that he had to have one side of the table to himself, ordered two milkshake flavors so he could mix them together, and of course I'm paying for the whole thing.”

“Dustin being a dweeb is old news, what else happened at lunch.”

“I mean,” she trails off, making a face Robin has never seen before. Which shouldn't be possible, she thinks she is supposed to have seen all of Stevie's faces.  “Munson was a total freak, obviously. Kept calling me ‘My Lady’ and all that nerd shit. You’d think I came in with a cast with the way he opened every door and kept pulling out my chair.” 

It all sounds decidedly unfreakish to Robin, in fact it sounds like Stevie finds the guy charming. She realizes with something close to horror that she does actually recognize the expression on Stevie’s face. Just not on her best friend. It’s the bashful, twitterpated expression of a girl at a sleepover trying not to admit she has a crush. An expression that might as well be a death knell, cause the only time she’s ever seen it is right before date night started beating girl’s night.

“Not that it matters, the guy doesn’t know how to take a joke,” Stevie goes on, her smile still too shy to fully bloom but no less in place. Even as she pretends that whatever this is is supposed to be some dealbreaker. “I asked him what he gets out of playing Halflings and Half-wits with the dweeb squad and I thought he was going to climb on the table right there. Ed-weird went on for like five minutes on how the gremlins are some of the best players he’s ever played with, and they're an endless fount of creativity that keeps him perpetually on his toes.”

Stevie never actually stood a chance. And if Robin had been paying attention she would have realized that. 

There wasn’t anyone who loved passionate, nerdy people as much as Stevie.

Eddie Munson wore his king of the loud mouthed nerds crown with pride. And he was as obsessed with the gremlins as Stevie was 

“Why are we talking about him?” She flops over until her head is in Robin’s lap, flopping one arm outside of the pillow fortress to reach under the bed. She crows, victorious, holding a jar that's pond scum brown like it’s treasure. “Had to hide this after Dust put it in his hair. Put this goop on your face and tell me about what Vickie said in band yesterday again. Cause I'm pretty sure she was dating Dan Summers last year, and he didn't really seem like the type of guy to stay with his high school girlfriend.”

It's coincidence, pure and simple, that puts her right outside O'Donnell's fourth period class. Thompson's study hall, her own fourth period, was technically across the building but everyone knew Mr. Thompson came to work on Mondays too hungover to care about attendance.

And study hall didn't have a certain wannabe friend-dater standing outside it, debating whether or not he was going to go inside.

She is still figuring out her angle of attack when it looks like he's decided he is actually going to class. Considering O’Donnell is the type to write office referral slips to kids who aren’t meant to be in her room for ‘being a distraction’ there isn’t really any time for subtlety. Still, she’s surprised by the tone of her own voice when she shouts, “Munson!”

Heads turn in the hallway, of course they do. Faces she only knows by virtue of twelve years of school watching on with a lust for future violence she recognizes from that concrete bunker. But if Munson is concerned that a girl he's never spoken to is yelling at him, he doesn't look it as he turns on both heels to face her.

He smiles first, benignly pleasant. But Stevie taught her that trick, smiling to diffuse anger or hide how she has no idea how the person talking to her actually knows her. Munson is doing both, they had two classes together last semester and she was in the orchestra for the last school musical.

The blankness eventually clears from his eyes, “Bye Bye Buckley!”

Not about to be distracted by the dumbest reference she's ever heard, and with the eyes of at least two people she can see on her, she drags Munson away from class. It's bound to be all around the school by the dismissal bell, but rumor is less important than the mission.

The girls room by the library is always abandoned. The mirrors are dingy or cracked and it always smells like cat piss for no discernable reason. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” He looks around the bathroom with an inquisitive eye like the grimy bluish tile is somehow more interesting than her. “I'm not actually carrying if you were-”

He doesn't have the decency to stumble when she shoves at his chest, trying to push him back into the stall doors.

“What are your intentions with Stevie?”

“Ah yes, the mysterious cousin Henderson. Who says I have intentions?” His only saving grace is that it takes her too long to get her thoughts in order. A miasma of rants at the tip of her tongue about Stevie and how she was too good for him and any thoughts he might be having about her. 

But in the time it takes to see through her friend based rage, she’s able to watch a transformation take place on Eddie’s face. The smug aloofness that had taken over his face from the moment she cornered him in the hallway washes away. Leaving behind something giddy and young, bright eyes and a flushed face. “Unless she was asking about me. You two are bosom friends, are you not Diana? That would make me Gilbert Blythe, hell of a role.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of people who wish they could break a slate over your head.”

“You’re probably right, doesn’t answer my question though. Was your dear Anne Shirley talking about me?” He scuffs a boot against the floor. Doing an impressive impression of a bashful school boy while standing in front of her in his ratted out, heavy metal glory. There are at least four chains that she can spot on his outfit right now but his face would be just as at home on Opie Taylor.

But she isn’t going to get fooled by some routine. She has something to say and she’s going to make sure she says it.

“She’s really special, Munson. She’s not some cheerleader you fuck in the woods because she wants to get back at her parents that are divorcing and you’re the scariest thing available that isn’t actually dangerous.”

“Tell me how you really feel, Buckley.” The retort seems to drag itself from his mouth on instinct. Cause the aw shucks routine he’d been giving is lying broken on the floor replaced by open mouthed shock.

“I am.” The bell rings, marking them both officially late for class. She glares him down, waiting to see if he’ll leave, effectively flinching first. He glares back. “She’s an athlete, likes sports.”

Maybe it’s wrong to list the things about Stevie that she knows Munson won’t like. But she also isn’t about to let her best friend water herself down for some stupid boy.

“Wayne will be thrilled to have someone who understands what he’s talking about. Go team.”

“She hates fantasy. Dustin loaned her his copy of Fellowship of the Ring and she gave it back when they kept singing.”

“I’m sure she’d like it if I sang them for her.”

“She isn’t going to become some demure, church mouse just because you’re around. She’s snarky and confident and, and…”

He sets a hand on her shoulder in a way that is so patronizing she wishes she were as good at being a bitch as Stevie was. But she suppresses her first instinct to bite him if only because she’s working at keeping up her record of 4578 days without biting a classmate.

“I don’t know what any of that means,” he says, “but it sounds like you and your hot best friend have been talking about me. So thanks for that intel, Bucks.”

People wearing leather and motorcycle boots shouldn’t be able to skip. The stupid hanky in his stupid pocket flaps behind him like a wagging tail as Munson leaves her in the girls room with the smell of ammonia.

Stevie has Breakfast at Tiffany’s playing on the TV when Robin makes it to work. Keith let them have most of their shifts together but drew the line at letting Stevie shut the store down to come pick her up after school. So on days where Stevie works a double, she’s stuck arriving to work sweaty and guessing at whatever movie will have ended up on the big TV.

And today she gets to catch Stevie standing in the middle of the floor, a stack of tapes in her arms, while she watches the party happening in Holly Golightly’s apartment. Audrey Hepburn swaying with her guest in the middle of the floor.

“Someone’s in a mood.” 

From over her shoulder, Stevie sends Robin a look. Something loaded with dry humor and a smugness that usually means something juicy happened in the time before Robin got there.

Usually.

There’s something about the look today that feels personally directed at her.

“Well it was this or Some Like it Hot, and the stay at home moms are weird about black and white movies that aren’t the first few minutes of Wizard of Oz.”

“That’s sepia.”

“Bless you.”

Making sure Stevie can see her rolling her eyes, she heads to the back to clock in. By the time she makes it back, Stevie has the volume turned down on Holly Golightly’s romantic disasters. She’s back behind the counter, head pillowed in her hands and Robin remembers why people used to be a little scared of her popular kid cabaret. Walking up the center aisle, she feels like she’s headed straight toward a tiger with its mouth open and she’s about to put her head in there. 

“So you’ll never believe what happened earlier,” Stevie taps her nail against her cheek.

“Paul Collins came in with his mistress to look at porn again?”

Humming, Stevie doesn’t say anything as Robin comes behind the counter with her. There’s a stack of tapes that need to be rewound and a roll of Be Kind Rewind stickers that need to be stuck to cases.

“Still time for that,” she says right as Robin started to think they were going to drop it. “Sally Tyler called from the payphone.”

“Sally from the basketball team?”

“Yeah,” that smile is even wider. This is almost certainly payback for the You Suck board. “I’m thinking about joining her rec team but we’ve played one-on-one in the park once or twice.”

“And she had a Family Video emergency that only you could solve?”

“Sorta. She was just really concerned, she’d heard a rumor that my best friend was dragging the guy she saw me having lunch with this weekend into the girls room.”

This is definitely payback for the You Suck board. Stevie’s looking a little too pleased with herself as she smiles at what can only be Robin’s slack jawed surprise.

“I get if you're mad,” she says and that’s all she can assume is happening, she isn’t sure how else to read what’s happening on Stevie’s face. “But-”

“Thank you.”

“I was just trying to- What?”

“Come on,” she rolls her eyes, swipes a half hearted smack to Robin’s shoulder. “I’ve been on the other side of that, you know. Well meaning friends pulling me aside to ask what my intentions are.”

“Oh my god, did she follow us in there?”

Delight makes Stevie’s eyes sparkle, “Did you actually? I love you. Did you give him hell?”

“I think he got the upperhand.”

“I think it’s all the playing pretend. The shitheads will run circles around the unprepared too.”

It seems a little too good to be true. “You really aren’t mad?”

Someone abandoned The Breakfast Club at the scene where Ally Sheedy gets the makeover. It had seemed like a stupid scene when she’d seen it in theaters, now it makes something weird pit in the bottom of her stomach. She doesn’t get the chance to hit rewind, to send Allison back in time so she can be strange and herself again, because Stevie is flipping her around and pulling her into a bone crushing hug.

“First of all,” she says into the side of Robin’s hair, “the only thing I’m even a little miffed about is you thinking I couldn’t kick Munson’s ass myself. But no one’s ever done anything like that for me before so I’m cool with letting it slide.”

“But we are acknowledging that you definitely have a thing for the guy with the rattiest hair in the school. Probably even Roane county.�� Robin says, face pressed into the meat of Stevie’s shoulder.

Stevie shoves her away with a groan that Robin’s laughter is already drowning out. “Yeah, alright. He’s kind of okay I guess.”

“Such sweet words for the father of your brood.”

“He’s not the father of my anything,” she flips her hair over one shoulder, “anyway I think he gets off on it so I’m gonna keep being mean to him.”

“That was more than I wanted to know about either of you.”

“No it wasn’t, you like that I’m mean too. You get all sad faced when you think I’m trying to bury my impulses.”

For the second time today Robin is left too surprised to say anything. She’s left gaping, not that Stevie is looking at her now; too busy picking at the nail polish left on her pinky. 

“I like it,” she says quietly after a moment. Robin has shut her mouth by the time Stevie looks up at her again, something soft but serious on her face. She reaches across the counter to grab Robin by the hand, melding what’s left of their coordinating manicures by linking their fingers. “You’re my number one. Even if Eddie does anything about anything, he’s going to have to compete with you.”

Neither of them move as the weight of the moment surrounds them like one of Mrs. Henderson’s quilts. Heavy and homey and right. But they are still at work and as the bell beside the door dings, and they break their silence to greet their new customer in tandem, they shrug off the heavy sincerity for something more functional. Stevie’s smile turns sly, and she tugs Robin closer while keeping an eye on the man now browsing the comedies. “You’ll never guess who came in earlier to ask if we had Nine and a Half Weeks yet.”

[thinkingimages]

@claudiopogo and @wysocka.magdalena take-over @archivalzone with their project @the_stacks

stacks were shot over a couple of visits at the New York Public Library's Picture Collection @nyplpicturecollection

About the Picture Collection:

"Since its creation in 1915 as a resource for artists, Illustrators, designers, teachers, students, and general researchers, The New York Public Library's Picture Collection provides 1.5 million circulating images clipped from books and magazines across 12,000 subject headings, from clothing and dress to military battles to insects. The collection also features extensive holdings of prints, photographs, vintage postcards, and greeting cards, and around 150,000 non-circulating reference images from the early 1900s and prior. The Library has digitized 45,000 of these historic items as part of its online Digital Collections.

The Picture Collection's unique arrangement of items into subject headings makes it useful to researchers in many creative fields, including artists; documentary filmmakers; set, prop, and costume makers for stage and film; graphic novel writers; and fashion designers. The collection has provided inspiration and insight to some of the most well-known and influential visual artists in the world-including Diego Rivera, Andy Warhol, and Taryn Simon-and it continues to serve the needs of the creative community to this day." (Quoted from the Library's Website)

The project is a work in progress and intended to become a photobook published by @outerspacepress in the near future.

We hope you'll enjoy browsing this amazing archive of photography with us in the upcoming few days.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Meghan was once hated, but now she is merely derided; South Park saw to that. The Sussexes only appeal now is the comedy gold to be mined in the gaping chasm between what they believe they look like (fearless fighters for freedom and justice) and how they appear to the rest of us (two spiteful toddlers attempting to be bosses of a sandpit)

It’s a great article I thought you may be interested https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1928834/julie-burchill-meghan-markle-comic-creation

Archived Link

The article is…biting. There probably isn’t enough burn cream in the state of California! Some more quotes:

It was, ironically, nostalgia for the Diana Effect which paved the way for Meghan Markle in her bid to be Princess of Hearts Mark II; her apparent warmth and informality seemed to echo our lost Princess. But an effect is all it was - a special effect, from a professional actress who liked to boast that she could cry on cue from one eye or both.

and

When I coined the phrase ‘the Grabication’ I thought that Meghan would eventually settle for a few bangles and some voice-over work. I had no idea that what this grim pair were actually seeking was the destruction of the House of Windsor, ostensibly on the grounds of racism, but actually because this was the one chance two mediocre people would get to feel mighty.

and

With the Invictus Games in Birmingham on the horizon, it’s now reported that Meghan won’t show up as security won’t be up to scratch. She overestimates her importance: she might once have merited a crack sniper team, but now all that’s necessary is a few men in high-viz vests to remove any random eggs or milkshakes which the crowd may have stashed about their persons.

Oh look. Everyone can see right through Harry’s ITV interview.

and lastly:

What next for this two-bit hustler with delusions of adequacy? No longer really a royal but abandoned by her old showbiz coterie - from Oprah to the Beckhams – and rejected by the new stars (Taylor Swift and her selfies with the Waleses) she is now little more than an amped-up, damped-down reality star, famous for being infamous.

The world has moved on; in a bitter twist of fate no one saw coming, the Big Beast that was the House of Windsor is now a wounded lion, with the serious illnesses of both the King and our adored Princess of Wales. Meghan, formerly the couture-clad figurehead of the Victimhood Olympics, stands revealed as the world’s biggest cry-bully; it’s now the Sussexes who look like the aggressors, which is a delightful irony, and one they’ll need extremely fast footwork to manage. When Meghan arrived, she seemed so modern; now she looks like a relic from another age, a bored, rich, housewife whose only status comes from marrying well.

As I’ve been saying it all along...well, let me just show you this time.

[newsfromstolenland]

I actually had someone say to me that slavery never existed in canada

and I really don't think it should be that difficult to like, google it. or crack open a book.

but I'll get you started:

The link above is the official government of canada write up on chattel slavery.

This one is an article and radio excerpt about the colonial campaign to deny and erase canada's history of enslavement.

This government archive describes the history of enslavement of both Black and Indigenous people on this land.

(note: Indigenous people (especially enslaved ones) are sometimes referred to as Panis- a french bastardization of Pawnee- in historical documents and quotes)

And here's a discussion about the need for reparations

more sources:

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

[son-of-a-top-gun]

Sky's The Limit Part 3

we're back baby and things are getting spicy (ish)

Warnings: alcohol consumption, mention of strippers/lapdancing, two horny people who desperately need to get off, shameless flirting, Bradley being a babe as usual, continuation of the bob fucks agenda

Sky's The Limit Part 3

Bradley could tell you were starting to get a little down. As one of the only people who actually knew about the book, he was also one of the only people you can tell about how it was really going. You had been giving hints that it was not going well, but after he catches you lying face down in one of the Hard Deck boothes, he decides that’s enough. It was time for you to have a bit of fun, even just for one night.

“Bradley, it wasn’t what it looked like.”

“I know.” He keeps staring ahead, hands still on the wheel. He had offered to give you a lift to his house, where you were supposed to be having a few ‘casual drinks’. You took one look of the bag of balloons and had known exactly what that meant.

“You don’t have to throw me a stupid party.”

“But this isn’t just any party, baby girl. This is a Bradshaw party, which only get offered to the creme de la creme. Besides, you haven’t even been given a proper welcome to San Diego. There’s no way you can stay here one more day without an official welcome.”

You smile at him. Bradley truly was one of the best friends a girl could wish for. Losing his parents only meant he loved people harder and you loved that about him. You couldn’t have imagined anyone more perfect for your sister, you just wanted them to hurry up and realise they were in love with each other so he could legally become part of the family.

“Ugh fine, But you best make -

“Those biscuits you like. Honestly what do you take me for Ladybug? I’ve already got the ingredients in the back.”

You turn around. Of course he did.

******

Of course the party is perfect. Bradley had cued all your favourite songs, supplied all your favourite snacks (as well as some supposed San Diego delicacies) and invited all your new pilot friends, who you had really become quite fond of. They’d all been extra nice to you lately, which made you wonder what sort of desperate vibes you were giving off. Even Jake had been less annoying the last week, perhaps sensing your stress, making less sassy comments, leaving you well alone when you were trying to write and even occasionally letting you rant about the inaccessibility of online archives. The most surprising thing was that your favourite coffee had been turning up at the Hard Deck every morning before you arrived with a little ladybug drawn on it, along with anonymous notes that had literary motivational quotes on it. You had initially attributed it to Bradley, but he denied it and no one else at the party would fess up either.

The party is in full swing, and you are a couple of drinks in, starting to feel relaxed for the first time in weeks.  You were listening to Phoenix tell everyone about her new girlfriend, which was nauseatingly adorable. You couldn’t remember the last time you felt like that about someone. The last guy you went on a date with tried to give you his manuscript to read over the minute you said you were a writer, and after that you swore off casual dating. Which was lucky, because it seemed all the men here were Navy men, which you had sworn off a long time ago.

Without thinking, you find yourself scanning the room. 

Everyone is here, except one particular blonde pilot. You don’t know why you are looking for him. It was just wherever the pilots were, so was he. You had to admit, It was sort of odd for him not to be there. You find yourself wondering if he finally got that hot date he seemed to be begging for. From what the other pilots told you, Jake had always been a massive flirt and had been known to get around most of the women of San Diego. You hated that you were thinking about this so much and took another hefty swig of your drink.

“Hope you didn’t miss me, darlin’.” A familiar voice leans into your ear.

You almost leap out of your skin. “Jesus Christ, Bagman you can’t sneak up on people like that! You nearly scared the pants off me.” He looks down on you with that annoying smile of his and you suddenly feel very cold in your little strappy vest top.

He leans down. “Trust me,  don’t need to scare you to get you out of your pants sweetheart.”

You roll your eyes at him and are about to come back with a witty retort when you see out of the corner of your eye Bradley brandishing an empty bottle. He claps his hands and everyone turns around.

“I think it’s time for a game guys.”

“Really Bradley?” You raise an eyebrow. “Spin the bottle?”

“What, are you scared?” Jake immediately chimes in. You shoot him daggers.

“Only of having to touch you.” You smile sweetly at him as he mimes an arrow going through his chest.

“Can it lovebirds!” Bradley announces, rubbing his hands with glee, “We’re not so basic to play Spin the bottle.” Bradley looks at you and grins. You know this means trouble. “It’s time to play Truth or Dare!”

There is a chorus of cheers across the room.

“Bradley, you are in your thirties.” You tut under your breath, but he ignores it.

He spins the bottle first. It lands on Fanboy first, who chooses truth. 

“Which superhero would you bang?” Bradley asks

“It’s got to be Catwoman right?” Jake is indignant.

Fanboy takes a moment to really think it through, “I dunno, I like to think about what Wonder Woman could do. The lasso could come in handy. What about you guys?”

“I like Batgirl.” Bob offers.

Coyote suggests “Mystique, you know, for roleplaying. It’s basically like having infinite wishes. Also love me a bad girl.” Payback sagely nods.

“How much have you guys all been thinking about this?” You turn to Natasha, who shrugs.

“Jean Grey does it for me.” This made sense, having seen the pictures of her new ginger girlfriend.

They spin the bottle again, this time landing on Bob. He says Truth and you can see Jake already brewing the question, so you jump in.

“How many hookups have you had in the last year?”

“That’s not fair, I was going to ask!”

“Quit your whining.” You turn to Bob, whose cheeks have tinged pink. “Go on.”

“Oh, er, I don’t know, maybe” He starts counting in his head. “Twenty, twenty-five” He looks up. “Are we counting repeat incidents?”

“As in you had sex with them more than once?”

“Uh, yes, I guess.”

“Sure.”

“Because that would bring it up to sixty, seventy- “ You watch as everyone’s jaws go slack. 

“Are you joking?” Jake is stunned. Bradley turns his head. “How?”

“I don’t know, I just like helping people, and I tend to run into women who need help with their coffee, or taking things to their car, or need something tall fixing around the house…” As Bob rambles, it’s cute to see how unaware he is. You lock eyes with Jake, raising your eyebrows to say I told you. Bob fucks.

Third time around, the bottle lands on you. 

“Truth.”

“Oh come on, not everyone can say truth or we are all going to die of boredom.” Jake folds his arms.

“Firstly, I don’t think Bob’s truth was boring at all. In fact I found it very interesting.” You say, throwing a wink to Bob. “But fine, have it your way. Dare.”

This time, Reuben, who has been very quiet, pops up. 

“You have to give Jake a lapdance.”

“What the hell Javy? I thought we were friends.” He shrugs. 

“Just for one minute.

“No way.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” Jake sits back.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean Bagman?” There is a chorus of oos from around the room.

“Nothing, it means nothing!” 

“I get it that I’m not your usual type Seresin, but you think you wouldn’t enjoy it?”

“No, just… I mean you seem like the sort who would hate strip clubs.”

You go to speak but bite your tongue.

What Jake didn’t know was that for your last book you had a whole plot involving strippers which meant you spent several days with dancers researching their life. One of them, Brandy, became one of your best friends in New York and had given you many a lesson in lapdancing (to make your writing accurate, of course). But you figured this was a fact best left unsaid. Besides, this was a rare chance to get Jake to eat some humble pie.

“Yeah…But a dare is a dare. Javy…put on Pony.”

You were grateful that the hot weather had meant you had put on a vest and a fairly cute pair of daisy dukes. If you had been wearing a dress there was no way this would be happening. You make a show of stretching while they set the room up, Jake sat on a chair on the middle. You wink at him as you bend over and you see him flush just a little. 

Javy gives the signal for the music. You are kneeling on the floor in front of Jake,.

“Hope you’re ready to have your world rocked Bagman. Bradley, look away.”

“Yes ma’am.” Bradley, seeing you as his honorary younger sister, did what he was told. “You took a deep breath and then a large swig of whisky.

You sat on your knees and let your hair down, slowing rolling your neck as the music starts to play. You try to ignore the hand shaking and slowly look up towards Jake. You expected him to be smug but he’s looking at you with such a look of confusion and pity that you suddenly realise. He genuinely doesn’t think you can do it.  You are suddenly filled with a devilish combination of spite and rage and power. You close your eyes, slowly rolling your body and feeling all the way up yourself, grinding up on some imaginary guy until you flash your eyes open and send him one cautionary wink before slowly licking your fingers. 

You crawl towards Jake and push his knees apart, slowly rising up between them. It’s a good thing he’s wearing shorts right now, his thighs exposed, so you can feel how his skin burns under yours. The look of pity has turned into something else, both fear and astonishment and something darker, but you have no time for this. Your nails dig slightly into his flesh as you rise up slowly between his legs until you are eye to eye. You slowly wrap your legs to the outside of his thighs and slowly start grinding down on his crotch until. 

Oh. 

At least Jake’s arrogance was starting to make sense if all of what you were feeling was true. With this realisation you look up and lock eyes. Jake’s look burns through you like he could devour you whole and you feel him grip onto your thigh, just a little squeeze, and then you suddenly have a terrible physical urge between your legs, when the music suddenly stops.

“That’s one minute!” Reuben calls out. For a moment, neither of the two of you move.

“Guys? You can get off each other you know?” Phoenix interjects. You both leap away from each other. “Although I should say that was phenomenal.” You croak out a thanks before heading to the kitchen.

What the hell was that? You wonder as you pour yourself a glass of water. I guess it really had been a while. Your heart is racing and you steady yourself against the counter, closing your eyes.

“What the hell are they teaching you on that pHD of yours?” Your eyes open to see Jake standing in the door with his arm leaning against the frame. He must know how his arm looks when he does that. You hate how much you like it.

You take a moment and reassume your confidence, laughing a little. “Oh that? Just a little something I picked up back in New York.”

He walks towards you until he’s right next to you on the counter before leaning in. You can feel his hot breath in your ear. “I knew there was something fishy about this pHD stuff. And now I know.” Your breath hitches. Surely there was no way he could have figured it out, could he? Your lapdance scene wasn’t that similar in the book. He looks away from you. “I thought you reminded me of someone and now I know it’s JLo in Hustlers.” He looks over you with a slightly more sincere look. “So are you..you know?” He waves his hand. You can’t believe that out of all the things, the subject of strippers would make Jake Seresin awkward.

“And what if I was?”

But much to your surprise, Jake shrugs. “Everyone has to pay their bills somehow.” He turns back towards you.  “It’s just if you’re not, I think you should seriously consider it. I think you would earn a lot of money.”

“Would you come to my club then?” The alcohol is making you overconfident, so you gently stroke your index finger down his chest.

“Baby.” He now leans his arm on the kitchen cabinet behind you. His face is so close, just above you. You could smell his cologne again and you find yourself wishing you could lick it off his neck.  “I would be there every damn day.” You felt a flutter in your stomach. This was dangerous territory, but it was too late. What would it be like to kiss Jake Seresin, you wondered, leaning forward just a little -

“There you are Ladybug!” Bradley’s voice booms and the two of you pull apart once again. “Hangman, I hope you’re not trying to get seconds.”

The two of you return to the party. You don’t see Hangman for the rest of the party except once where you catch eyes across you the room. You smile at him and he smiles back, before you are pulled back into conversation. When you go to find him again, he is gone.  Weird that he left without saying goodbye. 

When you finally get home and get to bed, you find yourself instinctively reaching your hand between your legs when it happens. Who flashes into your head but a certain blond, handsome and potentially well-hung pilot.

You were fucked.

---

hope you all enjoyed! Let me know if you want to be tagged in part four!

Tagged:

@dizzybee03 @mrsroosterbradshaw @tgmreader @dgs8891 @alldaysdreamer @eloquentdreamer @ravenwtfbro @dempy @milkbummm @memoriesat30 @yourfavouritecitizen @burningwitchprincess @il0vebeingdelulu

[dendrochilums]

HELLO MURDERBOT FANS!!!!

after finishing the books, have you found yourself wishing that you could immerse yourself in three hundred thousand words of fanfic so deliciously written and so masterfully constructed that you will NOT be able to stop thinking about it, ever? then i have GREAT NEWS FOR YOU:

NULLverse: The Bot-Construct Disaster Squad by @blessphemy

this series is a canon-divergence AU from the moment in Exit Strategy when Murderbot narrowly escapes the clutches of the Combat SecUnit it's fighting. In this AU, it is captured by Palisade (the security company running that whole showdown), experimented on, and forced into death matches with that very same CSU. That's the premise of the first installment! I'll tell you for free that they escape.

What follows is a few hundred thousand of the most riveting words I have ever read, an incredibly carefully woven story following murderbot and the machine intelligences and humans that it meets on its journey. note that this series does NOT closely follow canon--all the same characters will come back one way or another (with the addition of the CSU as the most delightful and deranged technically-canon OC you will ever see) (plus you will get LOTS more ART screentime), but it does not retread the path of the canon series. i truly cannot overstate how FRESH, CREATIVE, and UNIQUE this AU is.

To quote the series description on AO3: Consider this series if you like: feral shit, disaster, continuity of identity+memory, societies of people with divergent needs/wants, chaos, robot creation ethics, violence vs security, suffering, healing, bad puns.

there is no murderbot shipping here. there are a few short installments with some robo brain sex involving other characters, but those are also designed to be skippable if that's not your jam

I'm making this post because this series is STILL updating and the latest chapter was possibly the greatest thing I have ever read. It has filled my mind with electricity in the most fireworks way possible. The payoff you will get for reading this series is exquisite, and you will have so much fun along the way. Come join us!! Weekly updates await you if you catch up before the latest installment is complete.

SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?? GO GO GO READ THE FIRST INSTALLMENT

[milkteamoon]

2023 fanfic review ✨

Meant to do a wrap up a few days ago but I got busy — so I'm doing it today! Here's a big long list of fics I read and enjoyed in 2023 (not all were published in 2023, but several were!). Ratings may vary, so please read the tags!

▷ Ask an Exec by shinyopals — (rated T, complete, 6/6) A series of posts to a workplace management advice form made by a particularly strange poster. This one was so fun to read along with, and Opal always nails it with the unique storytelling methods.

▷ And We Are Full of Stories to be Told by saintbleeding — (rated T, oneshot) a meeting somewhere else. Just...just read it. You'll like it, I promise.

▷ Particular by aza — (rated G, oneshot) Jon doesn't like anyone, but sometimes he likes this one. I love a good ace Jon fic.

▷ Stay Here Under My Tail by ravenxavier — (rated M, oneshot) after Jon's statement habits are discovered, him and Daisy take a ride. I love this fic's depiction of Jon and Daisy's relationship, with just the right amount of s4 anxiety.

▷ The Wounded and the Blessed by hihereami — (rated T, oneshot) an au set in the 1950s where a priest makes friends with a very lonely doctor. Y'all, the yearning in this fic...... literally left me staring at a wall for hours after finishing. A must read.

▷ Strange Manner by inkfingers_mcgee — (rated T, complete, 17/17) needing money, Martin signs up for a dubious app for blood donors and meets a very particular vampire in the process. Also kept up with this fic as it was coming out and had so much fun being tugged along for the ride. A great universe and a great lot of fun!

▷ A Measure Outside the Lines by rend_herring — (rated E, oneshot) after fleeing to Scotland, Jon and Martin navigate their post-Lonely relationship. I know there's a million safehouse fics out there, but this one is just...so sweet... There are so many lines I want to quote but I'd just end up quoting the whole fic haha.

▷ It Blooms by godshaper — (rated M, oneshot) Martin meets a mysterious stranger the day before his wedding. Fae au!! This one has a really fun universe and a deliciously excellent fast burn.

▷ On the Factual Particulars of the Death of Mrs. Blackwood by saintbleeding — (rated T, ongoing, 5/?) primarily sourced accounts from one Mr. Martin Blackwood regarding his new job at The Magnus Archives. This is a really fun victorian au that really nails the style and character voices.

▷ Sun in an Empty Room by transjon — (rated T, oneshot) the in between after the apocalypse. I love a romantic bad-ish end fic, and this one is very fun.

▷ Communion Past the Need of Speech by pieandsouffle — (rated G, oneshot) a hologram and a former borg drone have a lunch date. Star Trek au anyone?? Star Trek au.

▷ Gertrude is Still Around by occudo — (rated T, series) an au where Gertrude is still archivist and the archival crew members are her assistants. This one is technically a comic series but I'm putting it on this because it's my rec list and I can do what I want okay!!!!!!

[factcheckingmclennon]

Can you fact check This One being about John? It's an interpretation that really annoys me because I think it just comes from one rambling answer about relationships in general where he vaguely connects John and George's relationship to the song and not one where he's saying anything meaningful about his and John's relationship. I love the song and it's so outside of my interaction with it that I find the way it's accepted as McLennon fact really hard. But maybe there's a source out there I'm not aware of

oh i can answer this one immediately bc i am one of those believers (sorry anon, sob) & probably one of the folks who has annoyed you w this over on my main

but my answer is the same as it will be with pretty much Any lyric interpretation (unless it's a song that's like obviously and blatantly and said a million times to be about the other, like "here today" or "how do you sleep?") which is...

bc ultimately, as fans, we are all going to have our own interpretations of songs and that's fine! i mean, people shouldn't be repeating it as hard fact, but at the same time sometimes u just gotta breathe out & let people interpret how they will. (like i, for one, don't think "dear boy" is about john, but it's not my business if someone thinks it is)

so i will say now (& it is in my pinned, a bit), unless there's some definitive answer on a lyrics based fact-check (like, again, "here today" or "how do you sleep?"), my answer is pretty much Always gonna be neutral. but i will do on any of these types of questions is try & find both sides of the interpretation as well as any quotes from john/paul/others on the song.

so let's get into it ! i'll present both sides & try to remain as unbiased as possible but do know i Am one of the people that thinks it's about john and it's okay that you're not and it's fine that i am. we are all living in peace and harmony and mclennon here lmao

so here's the quote in question (which i'm sure you know, but for everyone else):

Interviewer: Let me ask you about one of your new songs, ‘This One’. About a marriage? Paul: A relationship, yeah. Interviewer: And about not expressing emotions and feelings.  Paul: You get those moments where you always think; "I’m saving it up. I’ll tell him one day." And you know what happens. A lot of people, John for instance, getting back to that subject. He died. Um.. I was lucky. The last few we- months that he was alive we’d managed to get our relationship back on track. We were talking, having real good conversations. Real, nice and friendly. George, actually, didn’t get get his relationship right. I think they were arguing ‘till the end, which I’m sure is a source of great sadness to him. And I’m sure in the feeling of this song that George was always planning to tell John he loved him, but time ran out. That’s what the song’s about. Like, there could never be a better moment than this one. Y’ know now. Take this moment to say… "I love you."

(source) (again, an archived blog, but it's audio so i'm using it as a legit source)

argument for it being about john

well, to start with, paul immediately answers with "i'll tell him one day" which, regardless of if it's about john, is a very blatantly queer answer. maybe a slip of the tongue, who knows, but there's not much question at the least that this song is romantic. so paul saying it's about a "him" is very interesting, even if it's not john. (edit: given the youtube video linked below, it can also be heard as "them". i still don't hear "them" or think it's continuous, but that is one interpretation & hearing of this interview and it's a valid one!)

second, he does connect it to george and john's relationship, but he does it in a way that's just again connecting the song to him and john. he says "i'm sure in the feeling of this song that george (...etc)" which is just him saying he thinks george can relate to the feeling of the song.

and ofc back to the beginning of the quote, right after saying "i'll tell him one day" he says "a lot of people, john for instance (...)" which is just connecting that sentence to john. he goes on to say they got their relationship right, but then at the end loops back around to saying the song is about regretting not saying "i love you", which we know from "here today" and other paul quotes he does deeply regret not saying to john. so an Entire Song about that regret is not like. unfeasible to be about john.

i will say, i at least think this song is about more than one thing. he says here it's about that type of relationship he had with john (or the nebulous "him" who i mean. who else would that be? tara?) and then he does also talk about how he had fun w the storytelling w the word play on "this swan" and the hindu imagery. (edit: also with the full context of the youtube video below, this is even more relevant, because paul also talks about family and a "her". imo, it's more than likely a song about many people/relationships. some people think that one of those is john, myself included!)

argument for it not being about john

like you said, it is a bit of a rambling answer! and saying it's about john IS just an interpretation. paul saying "him" could've been a slip of the tongue, or maybe he had some other romantic relationship with a man we're not privy to, or maybe he did completely mean all those lines platonically and it's about various men he's been friends with or even john in a platonic way.

he does also connect the song to george and john, so it could be about that. i've also seen someone posit that here he is trying to reach out to george in his own way- thinking george must have the same regrets as him with john & thus this is his attempt to repair that relationship before they have those regrets with each other too.

and ofc, it could just be a totally hypothetical song. he never says it's about his own life, and he does include a lot of fictional imagery about a swan in this song. he could just be telling a story he doesn't necessarily relate to.

edit: there is also a full youtube video (time mark for part of this interview comes at 59:51). in the video, paul also mentions parents as someone you might regret not telling how you feel. following another edited clip, he says the "I’m saving it up. I’ll tell him/them one day," line, which can also be read as a "them" referring to parents rather than a "him". he also mentions a "her" in this interview as well, which adds credence to the fact that this song is about many types of relationships/people and this doesn't necessarily mean it's about john at all. or that if it is, it's romantic, since he mentions parents as well.

[vesuviaweekly]

Vesuvia Weekly: Event details, Submission guidelines, and Masterlists

EVENT DETAILS:

This is a sideblog from my main, @iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia, dedicated to hosting creative events for the Arcana visual novel! (Note: none of these events are competitions. They're simply opportunities to create together and appreciate each other's work!)

Every Wednesday, an Arcana-themed prompt will be posted on this blog with the tag #vesuvia weekly and a tag for the specific prompt. For the next two weeks, any creative work falling under the guidelines and tagged accordingly will be reblogged here and added to the prompt's masterlist (see submission guidelines for details)!

On the same post, there will be a poll for the next week's prompt! You are more than welcome to send prompt ideas to the ask box (see submission guidelines for details)!

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

PG-13, please! If you've made something spicier and would still like to share it, please tag a PG-13 preview to be reblogged here :)

All creativity is welcome! Here are a few examples of what would count: incorrect quotes, digital and traditional art, WIPs, oneshots, headcanons, sprite edits, scripts, character sheets/analysis, etc

To take part: post your creativity themed for an active prompt and tag it with #vesuvia weekly and the prompt's specific tag. Your post will be reblogged here and on my main account, and linked to the masterlist under that prompt

Please do not pass someone else's work as your own! In that spirit, since this is a space intended to boost and celebrate creativity, hate of any kind will not be welcome

TL;DR if it's your own creativity, PG-13, and tagged appropriately, it's perfect :)

FOR PROMPT IDEAS, please keep it PG-13 and open-ended enough to be engaging to multiple creative formats ^.^

MASTERLISTS: new masterlist for each Wednesday prompt post, for ease of browsing/archival organization Red: Retired Prompts Green: Active Prompts

Jan 10th: Your MC/Their LI's dynamic

Jan 17th: How Things Went Wrong (feat. the Arcana familiars)

Jan 24th: Borrowing Clothes

Jan 31st: Cooking Class

Feb 7th: The Impulsive Thoughts Won

Feb 21: MC explaining our world to the M6

Feb 28: How to Hold Your Loved One

March 6: "That's not how that's supposed to work"

March 20th: "Where Did You Learn to do That?"

March 27th: The First Post-Crisis Date

April 3rd: Nightmares & Daydreams

April 10th: Things That Changed

April 17th: Rare Smiles

April 24th: Inside Jokes

May 1st: How to Cry

May 8th: "Your Other Left!"

May 15: First Kiss

May 22nd: MerMay

May 29th: Baby Fever

June 5th: Watching Them Sleep

June 12th: "Why are we hiding?"

June 19th: Sharing a Bed

June 26th: Stolen Kisses

July 3rd: Learning Languages

July 10th: Guilty Pleasures

July 17th: A Modern MC Romance

Jully 24th: Midnight Adventures

July 31st: "I see where you got it from"

August 7th: What Nobody Else Knows

August 14th: Sleepy Mumblings

August 28th: Our First Argument

September 4th: A Date with Disaster

September 11th: To be loved is to be ...

September 18th: "Hear Me Out"

[4dkellysworld]

Welcome ♡

Welcome to 4dkelly's world. You may call me 4dkelly or Kelly. @4dbarbie-archive and @ndjournal are my side blogs and I keep most of my reblogs @4dkellyreblogs. Most of my understanding of non-duality is from 4dbarbie (Ada), Lester Levenson, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Robert Adams and my own experiences as Self! I would say my primary teachers are Lester and Robert so a lot of the excerpts and quotes I share now are from them ❤️ I made an AI chatbot with Lester's teachings. If you want to ask it a question, see this post.

Everything that I share on this blog are intended to be pointers, suggestions and helpful tips for people on the same journey. If you resonate with it, feel free to explore it further and if it doesn't, you can disregard it :)

Note: I'm taking a break from Tumblr for an undecided amount of time. I feel like it's the right time to step away for now. Maybe (or maybe not) I'll pop back in in a few months and answer if there's any asks/submissions @askailester or @ndjournal. Take care everyone and don't forget that You are your best guide on this path. You don't need to take anything that doesn't resonate. Keep living your truth! ❤️

Navigation

Masterlists: My writings and My 4dbarbie adaptation posts

Other adaptations: Remixes, Highlights

From: Excerpts and Quotes (Buddha, Jesus, Conversations with God, Lester Levenson, Robert Adams, Paul Brunton, Siddharameshwar Maharaj, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Ranjit Maharaj, One Truth One Law)

Practice: Self-inquiry, Witnessing, Surrender, Attitude, Exercise, Releasing

Topics: Ego, Desire, Problems, Pitfalls, Mind purification, Fears, Healing, Faith, Progress

Other: Asks, AI Writings, Resources, AI Chats, Diary notes, Thoughts, Reply notes (replies to anons), Reblogs, Personal, Realisophie, AI 4dbarbie

For ND books, see my Google drive (only take what resonates for you)

If you're new to non-duality and want a place to start, I suggest reading my 4dbarbie adaptation posts first (in order from the masterlist) then the practical guidance tag. Also be discerning about what you read and your sources.

If you have a suggestion, leave a comment in my suggestion box

Read this if you are going through a difficult time on your journey.

[praxidice-carcajou]

Cryptid of the Day!

The Fresno Nightcrawlers:

Ahh of course we have to talk about the Fresno nightcrawlers, they are my favorite spooky pairs of pants after all! These funky guys are just that; funky. In fact, I’d even argue that these guys are the very definition of funky, perhaps even the funkiest of them all. Keep in mind that later on I will be getting into some weird shit, but there is little as biologically bizarre as whatever’s going on with these guys. Now, this cryptid was brought to the media in the form of blurry CCTV footage, leaving us to gather little on its appearance. Nonetheless , years passed after the blurry video footage was posted and we actually ended up with a couple of supposed sightings that basically described them as exactly what we had assumed them to be in the footage. So for appearances, let’s just imagine a stump with legs. Let me tell you, these guys never missed leg day, not once. They have an itty bitty upper body with little features, some stating that they have round tops and wide eyes, but otherwise devoid of a face. The rest of their body is just legs, lanky, white/grey legs.

“THEY TRIED TO PUT ME ON THE COVER OF VOGUE, BUT MY LEGS WERE TOOOOO LOOOOOONG.” A 100% real Fresno nightcrawler quote. Totally.

The tea:

Of course, these guys were first spotted in Fresno, California, strutting their award winning legs out on some random guys lawn. This was where the infamous ‘Fresno nightcrawler’ footage came from! Later on, they were also spotted on a trail cam in Yosemite, national park, where the ‘mysterious’ corpse of a deer was found near by. I don’t know about you, but I would pay see how the hell these guys supposedly killed this deer. Seriously, did they crush its head in with their thighs?? Can you imagine taking a walk in the woods, everything is nice and serene and then BOOM! BUFF LEGS JUMP YOU AND SMASH YOUR SKULL IN WITH THEIR THIGHS! They’re was also a few sightings around the world, specifically in Poland and Montana. The were never described as violent, more like they were just vibing!

Considering the incredibly unrealistic chances of long term survival for an arm less, slow, bright white creature, many doubt these guys are anything more but a pair of pants on a string. That’s boring though, so more fun theories range from categorizing these guys as alien life showing off their thighs to the planet Earth, advanced species of fungi, deformed monkeys, or perhaps even a new, undiscovered type of animal!

Where to find in other forms of media:

Fact or faked Actually did an episode on these guys, declaring their famous video to be impossible to prove OR disprove!

They have a variant that can be found in ‘Singing Monsters!’

Credit to Cryptid Wiki and curious archive for information!

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Is the divorce coming?

The Sussexes have reissued their demands to Charles. This time, through Roya Nikkah (scroll to the end for the link). Except...I don't think this is Meghan. I think this is Harry trying to negotiate the terms of returning to the UK after a Sussex divorce with ultimatums (e.g., "I'll come back like you want me to, Pa, but only if...").

Look at this quote that Roya attributes to an unnamed friend of Harry's: "Meghan seems to have decided that coming back more [to the UK] is not what she wants to do, but Harry would like to." This is probably the most obvious, if not outright, hint that Harry and Meghan are planning to separate soon, if they haven't already. Reading between the lines, Harry planning for his children to live in the US while he works as a full-time royal in the UK.

Anyway. Harry's demands.

"Diplomatic" status back via official Counsellor of State status: "[Charles's] decision to keep Harry as a counsellor of state...has created a dilemma. By law, counsellors of state are requried to have a UK domicile, but Harry has no home here...courtiers have discussed leasing a property on the royal estate"

A permanent residence in the UK: "There is work to be done here [in the UK] in terms of the charities, and there would be opportunities in the future where [Harry] will want to be here a bit more. If they could have kept Frogmore, they would have done - it was the perfect setup for them."

The return of Harry's full permanent security detail: "The prince has challenged the decision by the Home Office to remove his Metropolitan Police protection when he is in the UK, even though he has offered to pay for it himself. A legal representative for Harry has said he is 'unable to return to his home' with his family because it is too dangerous."

BRF to make amends first: "...if Charles offered the Sussexes a home on the royal estate, 'it would be an ever-so-slight softening of relations.'"

Also, Roya's article makes it pointedly clear that from the Harry's perspective, it's the courtiers and the Waleses who don't want them back despite Charles leaving the door open for them:

Throwing the courtiers under the bus: "last week, courtiers were keen to ensure that William returned to the UK from his solo trip to New York on Wednesday morning, before Charles and Camilla departed for their state visit to France on the same day."

Throwing the Waleses under the bus: "According to royal sources, courtiers have discussed leasing a property on the royal estate to Harry and Meghan to try to resolve the counsellor-of-state conundrum. One option understood to have been considered is accommodation at Kensington Palace, where the Prince and Princess of a home and their private office. They spend few nights there, having moved their family to Windsor."

Here's the archived link to Roya's article: https://archive.ph/Gr8pJ

(I'm having a lot of trouble getting this link to post. Let me know in the comments if it doesn't work for you.)

[wingsoverlagos]

Beatles Radio Shows

My recent ~endeavors~ have led me to dig up a bunch of old radio shows by and about the Beatles, and I wanted to share them in one place.

These are unofficial uploads. If you've ever searched out old Beatles-related content - particularly audio or video content - you have likely experienced the crushing devestation of locating a download link to some obscure interview George Harrison gave in 1977, only to click it and find the link dead! If you're interested in listening to any of the shows listed here, or think you may be interested one day, I recommend downloading them now rather than suffering the bitter sting of a dead link in days to come.

By the Beatles

Paul McCartney's Routes of Rock (Host: Paul McCartney; Approx. Runtime: 2.5hrs)

A five-part series that aired on BBC radio in October and November 1999. It was part of the promo for Paul's mostly-covers album, Run Devil Run. In this series, Paul plays old rock 'n' roll tracks along with his recent covers, interspersed with discussion of his formative musical influences and some cute early-Beatles anecdotes.

Ringo's Yellow Submarine (Host: Ringo Starr; Approx. Runtime: 26hrs)

A twenty-six-part series that ran on the ABC Radio Network from June 4 to November 26, 1983. Unfortunately, I only have links to the first three episodes atm. Episode 1 // Episode 2 // Episode 3

About the Beatles

The Lost Lennon Tapes (Host: Elliot Mintz; Approx. Runtime: 221hrs)

Perhaps the most famous Beatles radio show of them all? The Lost Lennon Tapes ran from Januar 24, 1988 to March 29, 1992. The huge draw here is the inclusion of audio from the Lennon/Ono archives. I believe this is the only publicly available source for audio from many John Lennon interviews. Unfortunately, you only get to hear a few minutes of any interview at a time!

The show also features interviews with people from John's life (e.g. Julia Baird and Sean) as well as Beatles experts (including a young Mark Lewisohn!) There's huge depth here, and it's very much worth the listen.

The above link includes episode names, but this site has a more detailed list of what's included in each episode.

The Beatles - The Days In Their Life (Host: Ira Lipson; Approx. Runtime: 30hrs)

A 21-part series that aired in 1981 and followed the Beatles career from their genesis to the modern day. Includes archival interviews as well as (I think) new interview material with many people in the Beatles' stories.

The Beatles Story (Host: Brian Matthew; Approx. Runtime: 14hrs)

A BBC Radio 1 series that came out ~1972, with an extra episode that came out ~1974. Many original interivews were conducted for this series, but I believe we only see a subset of the existing material on this show. From the quotes in Tune In, it appears there are full tapes out there, perhaps in the BBC Archives - if anyone has any idea where the full interviews (conducted by Johnny Beerling) may be accessible, I'd love to know!

Collections of Misc. Radio Interviews

Series aside, here are a few accounts that have uploaded a number of one-off interviews with the Beatles:

The Beatles Interviews on YouTube. Lots of great, lengthy interviews, along with a few shorter clips. Disclaimer: the video titles don't always correctly identify the year/interviewer. Fortunately, Beatles fans live to correct things, so there is always lively discussion in the comments to sort out who the interviewer actually is, and when the interview was conducted.

Beatle Stories on YouTube. While the above channel's video titles are at times incorrect, this channel's titles are mostly straight-up unhelpful lol. Still, there's some good content here.

The Beatle Tapes 2 on the Internet Archive. This is the same user who uploaded The Beatles Story (see above). They have over five hundred uploads including many radio interviews, some video interviews, and several live performances as well. A treasure trove!

[lady-jane-asher]

New!!

February 21st, 1967. Beautiful Jane Asher in Fifth Avenue, New York, February 21st 1967. Asher was on tour with the Bristol Old Vic Theatre.

Picture 1 and picture 2 ( a new release plus my colourisation) and picture 3: ��Harry Benson/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Picture 4 to 8 Date Book magazine scans from my lovely friend Vio that has allowed me to use! July 1967 issue.

Jane’s here!

DATEBOOK MAKES THE NEW YORK SCENE WITH JANE ASHER. Braving New York's traffic.

The girlfriend of an old friend of ours came to town recently and we showed her a bit of the Big City. When Jane Asher was performing with the Bristol Old Vic in New York, we lunched with her and took her to a pop-art dinner party on her last night in town.

When we picked her up for lunch she was wearing a bulky, horizontal-striped fur coat she had bought the day before. "Red fox?" we asked. "That's what you're supposed to think,"she said. "But it's really opossum!"*

We had lunch in the Italian restaurant in the hotel (Gorham) in which she stayed—it was across the street from the theater. We talked about everything-her acting plans (to do Shaw's "Arms And The Man" when she got back to London), Paul's plans (to write and direct a movie in which she will star—a short experimental film, that is), Paul (she'd just had a letter from him in which he told her that he'd had the whole London Symphony improvising), her refusal to sign up for more than one movie , at a time ("no long-term contracts for me"'), her interest in pop art ("I'm really fascinated by artists like Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. My brother Peter has a gallery, in London, you know.") We chatted away about New York she think's she loves it, but it will take more time to be certain), George and Patti (she wonders if they'll some day go to live permanently in India), Beatle fans at her performances ("It's so marvelous to see them react to Romeo and Juliet as if it were a contemporary story. Many really don't know how it all ends and they sob and laugh so naturally.")

Jane talked about Paul unseltconsciously when his name came up naturally in the conversation— and it did now and then since we discussed pop music and all the personalities in it. But, the subject of her relationship with Paul did not come up. And we decided not to bring it up since it was obviously a personal matter which she felt was not in order.

(Jane said a New York newspaper interviewed her and then made up a quote "Paul is not exactly my Romeo'' and used it as the headline, although it had nothing at all to do with the interview.)

What's Jane Asher really like?

She's much more beautiful than her pictures would lead you to expect. Her hair is a marvelous orange-red and her skin a milky white. She has delicate features and a lovely Puckish grin which breaks into a wide smile very often. She's shy-but she knows exactly what she wants and is strong enough to fight for it.

Jane was very eager to meet some of the top pop artists and we invited her to a gallery opening, party and dinner the following Saturday night.

She accepted and a few nights later, bedecked in her red minidress, her red coat and her red hair, she made the artscene with us. Jane impressed everybody with her glowing beauty, her quiet intelligence, her gentle humor and her real interest in the world around her.

By this time, we knew for sure why our London friend was so involved with her!

When we said goodbye back at her hotel, we wished her a pleasant tour (she was to leave the next day) and we asked her to give our regards to Paul. She told us to be sure to look her up in London next time we were there.

Gentle Jane waved goodbye to us as the elevator doors closed. Her next stop was to be California and then Denver, where a big surprise would be awaiting her. Turn page for the big surprise.