#because I can never tell if my ‘eugh�� reaction to the way it ends is genuinely poor writing

[pallastronomy]

YOU. YOU GET ME

(I uh. May have gone autistic about my problems with Revue Frontier + Misc. Aruru thoughts in the tags. Oops.)

Every day I wake up and think about how irreversibly Arcana Arcadia has altered my brain chemistry. They did not have to go that hard for an arc exclusively in the mobile game and yet

[revalition]

OCT 11 - AUTHORITY Intimidate the public. Assert yourself. authority!! my guy! I love *and* hate him very much! he's such a guy.

this is late because I spent too much time yesterday writing about him and not enough time drawing him. oops. that's also why it's so ugly but it's okay. someday I'll draw something good and you'll all be very impressed. we'll see if I can get EdC in today too or not!

and ty red for giving me your authority's wings haha, theyre soo cool. ough I love wings. if someone sent me an ask saying "draw [skill] with wings" I would be all over that so fasttt

anyway! lots of content under the cut as usual!

authority quotes!

anti sorry cop authority!! harry desperately needs someone to tell him to stop apologizing for existing... but in the second case, volition is right (as usual)

a wonderful classic here

gotta include these ofc

authority NO.

this line is just. how I image he is constantly. the millisecond your authority is questioned in the slightest he gets like this.

re. arresting klaasje

authority stopping you from being very embarrassing!

NO. no authority. there's SO many lines like this. sigh

authority seems to be a nearly perfect 50/50 split of good advice and bad advice. it's great. it's fascinating

authority and volition. authority and volitionnn. you are going to hear about the motor carriage story and there's no getting off.

rare sweet authority moment! (this heals morale too!)

realllly love this one too <3

authority, cmon man...

this guy. this guy... he's so... I don't know. he's sure something

authority CONFIRMED COMPROMISED. also authority being mean to soft little suggestion is always very funny to me

he is compromised though

hghhk this line from the authority fail. you get after failing *four* times. my first playthrough I had high authority - I had 6 PSY to start, and authority boosting clothes. and I just kept failing and failing. and every time I failed this check I had to dump another point into authority to try it again... so it was *really* high by the end! but I just kept failing it!! it was so painful... by the fourth fail you can finally beg kim to take over...

on the topic of awful authority fails! we need to acknowledge: - the authority check to get kim to dance - the authority check to save kim from getting shot - the authority check to make acele wear the hat

including it so we can enjoy authority making things worse and worse

alternatively, succeeding the check. eugh. (you dont have to kick the snow. but the fact that it's an option at all...)

I passed the check my first playthrough and failed it my second. there's really no good outcome to clicking it... except harry can get a good cry out of the fail, I guess

this seems like a good place to include the mandatory sad dream dialogue. that way we feel less bad for him since we got to just see him being stupid

now we know! tobacco wards off narco spirits, and alcohol discourages use of... narcohol. wonderful!

you know it's bad when it's too much even for authority haha

authority giving better advice than volition one time??? this is if you have cuno at the end, when you meet up with your posse. persisting with insisting on the phasmid isn't productive at all

live authority reaction to harry being told no to anything ever

low stakes authority fail haha

here's another one! not all authority fails are world-endingly bad

another one. sigh. authority. NO.

and there is soo much honour points dialogue I couldn't fit in here! the first time I got the honour cop thought bubble I was like, wow! I'm never listening to anything this skill says ever again!

the thought gives you -4 !!!! to drama! because lying is dishonourable. and then if you lie to kim about what you were doing he tells you it was an honourable lie. hypocrite. (and there is a dialogue where he says "Are you going to let him get away with being a hypocrite?" so that really makes auth a double hypocrite)

I love and hate authority in perfectly equal amounts. they don't cancel eachother out either, I just feel very strongly about him instead. I also feel very strongly about Volition, and their interactions are always fascinating. so I end up smushing them together, going fight! (and kiss!) and fight! like the extremely normal person I am. yep. you're welcome.

I could probably write half an essay my thoughts on their dynamic so I'm going to stop myself now before I have regrets :)

authority is in my favourite skills list for sure, but due to his serious personality issues I can't figure out where he places <3

[calicopilledqueen]

Retarded ass "drama"

I've been thinking about this for a while, so why not share here. Around a year ago, I became friends with my ex-crushes friend and we hit it off really well. Her friend ( Who shall now be referred to as E and G) and I all started talking more and I felt happier because;

1)I have more friends.

2)They have the same nerdy interests as me.

The entire winter and spring of 2024, E, G and I were getting closer. Even to the point of E and G hanging around my friends as well. In late April, I discovered that G hated E, and so did my friends. To be honest, E can be annoying sometimes but so can they. G talked about her plans to unfriend E and I should too. I didn't have any negative feelings towards E so I didn't have the desire to. I did talk shit about her, but it was more of a vent because some of the things she did were just so.. eugh. During late May, I had suspicions that E like my ex-crush. Technically speaking we were "dating" for 2 weeks but he ended things due to his "busy schedule". I eventually asked E because it was just so obvious, I should at least ask for conformation. E followed him around everywhere, talked to and about him so much more than usual, and I just got this odd vibe from her. She admitted that she did like him, but she wasn't sure if she would act on it. Now, I feel like it is just odd to start a romantic relationship with your friends "ex". I know it was short, but this is high school so in my opinion it still matters. If you think about it, we did both like each other before and after the relationship so it technically wasn't that short. Anyways, I told her not to flirt with him anymore, or if she liked him that much she could be with him and not be friends with me. She said she'll stop but she didn't which angered me more. At the end it didn't matter because he still liked someone else.

2 weeks later I find out allegedly he does not like her at all. I was kind of relieved because she is the type of person do something like that behind my back. Our school has an event where you can buy discounted amusement park tickets which close to everyone attends. Basically my entire class went, and I over hear E's ex-boyfriend telling his friends (including my ex) that everyone should avoid her. That made me chuckle because I didn't realize most people dislike her. We both still had fun.

Late August, G sends screenshots of E and my ex sending photos of each other in a very provocative way...E was in a body-con dress and my ex was shirtless. That shit pissed me off so bad!!!! I asked E if they were dating, and she said no and he is interested in someone outside of school. At this point I couldn't care less if he was in love with her or if he wanted to kill her, I care about the fact that she betrayed my trust and hid the fact that there was something going on. It seems common for my friends to hide things from me. I understand that my reaction is always a lot to handle, but they never think about my reaction if I find out that they tried to hide something from me. I always find out, but I never lash out on them unless its a big secret. I am still friends with E, just not best friends you know? I think its for the best as well.

[lady-plantagenet]

Unsolicited Book Reviews (n5): Wife to theKingmaker

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Even before I had an account I had a tendency to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic novel. Certain books are either severely underrepresented where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others that are talked about enough - something more can still be said. So for my quarantine fun, I had decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: Ok swear to god this book was written by two different people. The ending was actually heart-wrenching, but so much had annoyed me throughout that I swore to myself to never again touch this genre for my own health. Twas an odd tale, and tbh the fact that it was odd probably elevated it from the 2 stars (or hell maybe even 1 if it was going to get any more richardian) to 3. Honestly, quite glad I read it in the end. Not the most historically informative, but some of the character arcs were actually quite neat (however extremely farfetched). Spoiler Warning: I’m going to divulge a lot on here because I know no one who follows me is going to read this book.

Plot: Ok, the plot... It was only after I placed my order that I realised this is the Sandra Heath Wilson of ‘Cicely’s King’ fame. I cringed and didn’t know what to do. For all you innocents out there... her Cicely series is a saga wherein Cecily of York pretty much bangs everyone who is male and from the house of york (minus her father and uncle George) and Even Henry VII(!!). She then has this kid by Richard III, calls him Leo and the rest is history(this is what I gleaned from goodreads). Nevertheless it had already shipped and honestly I had it coming; the synopsis does say she has an affair with her brother-in-law John Marquis of Montagu. Whatever, I couldn’t resist buying the only novel about Anne Beauchamp, and since it was published in the 70s/80s I knew it would at least be flamboyant and go all out. It delivered enough for it to have been worth reading.

So the novel follows Anne Beauchamp!(Nan) from when she is a 13 year old girl to 1478 when she finally leaves Beaulieu to go live at Middleham with her (as you guessed it- favourite) daughter Anne and her oh so belovéd son-in-law Richard Duke of Gloucester - You see? Since now finally the Great Other (Mr George) is finally vanquished England has its peace. Of course this is not true, Nan historically left the abbey in 1473 for Middleham and while I wanted a possible explanation from the author (who I would assume is better researched than I) for whether she went to Middleham out of her own volition or simply because the King trusted Gloucester better than Clarence... alas I got none. It was all pinned on the fact that the evil George (who as per usual alternates between omnipotent mastermind to absolute drunken himbo at the turn of a page) would not have her free for as long as she lived (for whatever reason). I really think the real historical explanation was because Edward trusted Gloucester - because after all Warwick Castle was Nan’s patrimony not Middleham. I doubt Nan had a choice in the matter but, the point is, Isabel was alive in 1473 and since there’s zero historical record or suggestion that Nan and Anne had ever seen her again, it would have been nice to have had a depiction of the conflicted feelings or a final meeting written for the three women. I’ll let it slide I guess, after all, one needs to cut some slack when it comes to books written pre-internet age by non-historians. And unlike Sunne in Splendour, this book does not purport to be completely accurate or a representation of the truth.

Christ some sub-plots were truly unexpected. One that made me groan at first was the whole arc between Nan and her niece Eleanor Butler. In this book she’s her ward (not historically true) and little Eleanor is all sweet and innocent and virtuous and, hell, at one point we get more Nan-Eleanor interaction than even between Nan - her own daughters (particularly Isabel who would have been the right age and a better substitute for Eleanor in their dialogue, but alas, who cares about Isabel right?). Eleanor even is the one to accidentally discover that Margaret of Anjou slept with Edmund Beaufort, siring Edward of Lancaster.

Ok. You’re probably thinking, god how trite eugh the Richardians are at it again, right? Yeah ok the Richardians are at it again, but it turns into something really neat at the end. Essentially, as I said, Nan has an affair with John Neville Marquis of Montagu (long story that I will expand on in characterisation) and she and him come upon Edward and Eleanor (overhearing them nothing more). So Edward and Nan then have this mutually assured destruction between them, because Edward divulges that he saw Nan and John years later when Nan confronts him (by this time he is married to Elizabeth Woodville) that she knows about the pre-contract with the intention of telling him off. He tells her that if she dares tell Warwick about the pre-contract he will tell Warwick about John, so she then agrees (also because she promised her niece that she would keep it quiet for the safety of her son by Edward). Years later when they meet again, Edward realised how much is at stake for Nan (especially since it turned out she loved Warwick all along and Edward figured that out), and so, during the period of John’s back-and-forth loyalties (we know he was disgruntled by the loss of the Northumberland Earldom)... Edward returns and tells Nan that if Montagu abandons him he will out her to Richard and cause a massive division between the brothers (militaristically speaking as well) and he knows he can do that because he figures out Nan will not out him because she blubbs about her promise to her niece. This madness then becomes bittersweet when (as history would have it) Montagu does end up fighting for Warwick, nevertheless, Nan is releaved during the whole time because there’s nothing in Warwick’s letters that give any indication that Edward ended up exposing her. Warwick dies in the battlefield, Nan is deeply aggrieved but happy he never found out at least. But then... years later when Edward comes to Beaulieu (1478 as this story would have it) to inform Nan that she may depart for Middleham, he tells her that he in fact did expose her to Warwick... but that Warwick didn’t believe him and laughed in his face because he thought there was no way she could be unfaithful because he knew she loved him. This sounds silly but it got to me a bit when I read it. Of course, we also have Edward saying he regretted his handling of the pre-contract affair because apparently Elizabeth Woodville had since lost interest in him and he’s hurt by how she shows no reaction to him having mistresses and he’s kinda given up, whereas Eleanor would have been more of a lapdog. This was essentially the centrepiece of the plot.

Look, I don’t really read these types of novels as a habit so I don’t know if bizarre plot lines like this are commonplace. Not going to lie though, it threw me and it was pleasantly enjoyable. This is basically what is to be said about the plot... the rest goes into characterisation. Nevertheless, this novel too often fell into the exposition trap (like telling us what is happening politically instead of showing us). While I appreciated the refresher of what happened 1445-1461 and I understand that the target audience of this book aren’t Wars of the Roses experts, I’ve seen it done more smoothly in many other more literary novels (eg Hawley Jarman’s or Lytton-Bulwer’s Last of the Barons). I’ve often said Sunne in Splendour was terribly dry and exposition-heavy, but at least it had historical detail so I could sometimes switch off and treat it as a non-fiction account for battles and character locations. But with this one I a) don’t have faith that the author paid attention to detail; see what I said earlier about the years 1473-1478, so I won’t take this as information and b) know that if she had done this with the years I know more about: 1461-1478, I would have gotten annoyed because of my familiarity with those decades.

Characterisation: Well we have lovelorn saintly Dickon here - always a pet peeve of mine. Look, I don’t have strong opinions about the man but it just innures me how whenever Richardianism rears it’s ugly head the plot suffers massively and it’s always favourite figures of mine that suffer the most. George Duke of Clarence... oh god, what can I say? Wife-beater, alcoholic, is disgusted by his wife when she is ill (you know, unlike the historical Clarence who had resided in the Abbot’s home near the infirmiary for the last months of his wife’s lying-in and after to be close to her and thereafter stuck with her until she passed away and two months after that as well), is stupid yet somehow still devious, is the indirect cause of her death... the list goes on. Welp, at least this Clarence unlike the Sunne in Splendour one has an elegant bearing, sense of fashion and is a great dancer. The Sunne one had NOTHING. It’s also odd that they make his attitude towards Isabel undergo a complete 180 as soon as he realises this marriage will no longer make him king. This makes no sense as the book has them want to marry for love, like YEARS before 1469, so this sudden attitude change makes no sense. Authors really need to be reminded that crown or no crown that marriage would still have made him the greatest magnate in England. There was also a ridiculous handling on the circumstance of his death, and this was the most factually wrong part of the book. Between Ankarette being aged down by 4 decades and the whole shmaz with Stillington, I don’t know where to begin. I bet most of you can guess how it was handled. Isabel is as per usual constantly depressed and without a personality because, well, we can’t have her compared to our shining heroine Anne Neville. 3x more beautiful, 5x more vivacious and 20x more significant than her doormat of a sister who complains all day- that is when she isn’t crying. Gahhh. Of course Anne Neville also cries but it’s for her beloved Dickon who she pines for constantly. Look, I have no qualms with romanticising this pairing, but authors need to keep in mind that Anne was like 13 at most when she became estranged from Gloucester. You. Need. To. Stop. Writing. Her. Like. A. Woman. . I don’t care what anyone says, no matter the time period, you can’t make me visualise a 13 year old that could feel romantic love of that deep a devotion and maturity and not send me laughing across the floor. But want to write a strong childish infatuation coming from a place of deep friendship? Fine by me.

Ok, onto more positive characterisation points: I liked Nan, quite a lot actually (I mean blatant daughter favouritism aside). A lot of authors attempt to write the proud noblewoman and great lady character but few pull it off. This is always how I have seen the real Anne Beauchamp and I’m glad to see it here. For a novel so insensitive towards certain figures, the author wrote Nan with great empathy. She was very intelligent but not in that artificial girlboss way, she loved her daughter(s) but in that medieval mother type of way (so no baby brain here), she may have not gotten along splendidly with all the women around her but there was none of that demeaning cattiness. About that, I want to say I was shocked by what a turn her relationship with Margaret of Anjou took. Since the whole Somerset-bastard child plotline was a thing... Nan was initially revolted and lost all her respect for Lancaster, but when the two women find themselves joined by fate they gain this strange mutual respect for one another. They butt heads a bit initially but Margaret of Anjou rises above it for her son’s sake and eventually strikes up an agreement with Nan on when they are to set sail. Margaret first won’t listen to Nan because she thinks she’s a fool but when she eventually slips by to tell Nan that she had thought about her plan and that maybe she’s right, she doesn’t apologise and Nan doesn’t need her to and it’s this weird telepathic understanding from then on and I certainly did not expect to see something like this in this novel. After the landing in England and news of Warwick’s death reaches the party, Margaret doesn’t gloat but diplomatically relays the news and when Nan says she wants to take sanctuary because she lost all heart and can’t fight on, Edward of Lancaster gently says something like: well if you come with us, you’ll at least get your revenge and that’s at least something (paraphrase). You could just tell this was Edward’s way of offering condolences, the type of way a child like him raised through war and promises of vengeance only could, and it was oddly powerful. Shame it couldn’t have happened as Nan and Margaret and Isabel all travelled at seperate times. The whole theme around Nan was that she wasn’t very partisan but only followed her husband as a magnate and then as a man, which I believe and it was great to see Team Lancaster understood Warwick was a seperate entity from York, and for all intents and purposes they were all in this together. Cool-headedness is much needed in this genre I realise, god how low flies the bar ~

Now onto the characterisation most people are wondering about. What of Warwick? He was the saving grace of the novel. He has the common touch yet he is sophisticated, he is idealistic yet he is shrewd, he is impassioned yet collected, he is dramatic yet subtle, he is ... I can go on and on. What is all the affair plot point about then? It doesn’t diminish the bond between the two main characters; to tell you quite truthfully the relationship the author wrote was bizarre yet still really touching. They used to hate eachother because Nan thought herself above him (after all the Warwick earldom was far more valuable than the Salisbury one- remember it was briefly a dukedom at one point), but then she sees what he made of himself and becomes proud of him and falls in love with him. However, he starts to get carried away with his ambitions, gets all-consumed by the legend of Warwick that he had cultivated and essentially becomes impersonal without wanting to (and realising). Nan feels she has lost him to the people of England (which are apparently all hypnotised by his presence, which ok is a fact grounded in history) and because of her wounded pride she starts seeking comfort in his brother (although, it makes little sense how this would work as I would gather he would also be away, especially at the Scottish boarders). When he refuses to support Warwick over Edward later on, she loses all feelings for Montagu and thinks him a coward, and when Warwick apologises for being amiss she realises that this whole time it was him she loved all along and is racked with guilt. I found this exploration of what it is like being wed to a man of such public standing quite interesting, the idea of losing him not to another woman or such but to his cause (which in this book is a mixture of belief in the french alliance, the common weal and subconsciously his own wounded pride brought on by an extreme adherence to inflexible chivalric values on his part and Edward IV’s actions), I confess, is not something I saw portrayed in this particular manner anywhere else. I mean it’s not like I’ve been searching for this particular motif, but this was a refreshing depiction of a medieval couple and it was a poignantly written relationship which the author had me invested in. The relationship was heartfelt because it was very distinct, Nan and Warwick weren’t just some stand-ins for a cash-grab but some consideration was paid to the real historical figures. The John plotline, sure I would in principle protest against something like this but it seems to have had two plot purposes: To illustrate the strain caused by the aforementioned issue and to kick off the whole Edward-Eleanor Butler-Montagu-Nan arc, which bizarre and unbelievable as it was, kept me on my toes. I’ll let it slide. Also, Edward IV was portrayed as quite a chilling villain in this, beholden of this weird mix of indifference, charm and wickedness.

Prose: This is what made me briefly wonder if this book was written by two different people. It failed to engage me in the first half, the descriptions were trite (except for the natural scenery bits), there was very little variety in sentence structures which gave it the stilted heaviness that thus afflicted The Sunne in Splendour (and most modern literature). There was a lot of redundancies eg the type of stuff like ‘whispered quietly’ or ‘yelled loudly’ and the author’s misunderstanding of certain period fashions drew me out eg references to bodices (not a thing then), calling the henin veil a silk scarf etc. She didn’t pull a Penman: exposit emotions to us, making me feel like I walked into a therapy session, but it was often heavy-handed. It first felt very much like an uninspired debut novel. A bit try-hard and I was wondering if this was the way of the bodice ripper... I wouldn’t know, I never read one before (though I’m unsure if this qualifies as it’s really not graphic and the focus is really not on sex nor is there much of it).

However, out of nowhere, the prose suddenly changed a little before half of the way in; colours, emotions, thoughts and the like started to blend masterfully. The sentence structures started varying to convey the way Nan was feeling. It became very show don’t tell, and it drew me in emotionally a bit (I must confess). Of course, that’s also around the point the plot had sort of started redeeming itself. Nan’s grief at her husband’s passing was particularly well conveyed - how she became a husk of her former self... I could read fifty pages of that. Her realisation that it had been him all along was also well written, and you could feel all the urgency and regret she felt at all the time she had wasted disregarding him as the plot grew nearer to Barnet. The mutual longing was also subtle yet strong, and it really was down to the effective use of sentence structure and waylaying of inspired thematic details. The mingling of past memories with present day in her later years was also very well done and with flow, and the adjectives etc used were no longer becoming distracting as before. My favourite part by far was the very last scene when she rides ahead of her escort to Middleham and she imagines a horse riding beside her caparisoned with the Neville standard; you can really feel how this is the first time that she had felt joy in years and she lets the ghost follow her.

... In Conclusion, this novel gave me very mixed feelings. I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it as much as I did had it not been for the fact that I entered it with a massive pre-formed love for the figures. It’s a bit like my experience with ‘Death Be Pardoner to Me’ (review #2 on this tag), was the book actually good or do I just have an affinity for the protagonist (Clarence in that case)? As such, I don’t think I would reccomend it. Indeed I wrote this spoilerish review because I was sure no one would fly off to Amazon after seeing this post. I can’t say if it’s above commercial historical romance in standard as this is the first time I’ve ever read a book from this genre. I think I’ll take a loongg break from historical fiction (after I finish with Jarman) because the Clarence portrayal was a bit of a nail in the coffin for me and I don’t want to continue upsetting myself for no reason. As I have now truly lost hope in reading a balanced depiction of him and if the literature isn’t absolutely expemplary why bother? Nevertheless, Warwick’s portrayal was a saving grace and made it impossible for me to give it two stars - it wasn’t perfect but still the best I’ve read (minus Last of the Barons Ofc). This is also a bit sad when you think about it, Warwick is also due some fictional justice. Even scholarly if you ask me.

The experience was educational as I learned a valuable lesson in what to avoid and include in my writing, what pitfalls/clichés not to fall into etc. I think I can draw another valuable lesson from this: Dear Histfic authors, if you happen to not be historians, heavily-researched in this time period, objective or literarily talented etc don’t take yourself seriously by publishing some tome of a work but just go nuts like this novel. At least this way you’re not sharing misinformation, inducing people into error and your work still gets to be engaging as opposed to a repetition of the previous amateur historical novelist. Yeah. For all the Sunne in Splendour’s superior quality, I must say I prefer this one better.

Tagging @pythionice who I have recently discovered has also read this book! Welcome fellow fan of Warwick <3

[hvlfwygod]

aquaman | griffin, zoey & reid

summary: does anyone even knock anymore? tw: teen angst

Griffin was on Zoey's couch, and Aquaman was playing on her TV, but he wasn't watching. Instead, he was angled toward Zoey, awkwardly leaning, kissing her. They'd started without really discussing it, and he hadn't had the time to adjust his position in a way that was more comfortable or even remotely cool. But he didn't really want to stop for long enough to shift, so he just dealt with the weird angle and the quiet protest in his back.

It was like this every time he came over now. No, they never talked about it, but it was more an unspoken rule at this point. They start movie, or a TV show, or maybe a game. It didn't really matter, because whatever they did they hardly ever finished. (He could still feel the ghost indents of the Battleship pieces pressed into his hand when they started making out before clearing it away.) At least the couch was soft and his shoes were off so he could, if he wanted, tuck his legs up and make himself more comfortable and— did he always think this much while he was kissing her? He could never remember, everything always blanketed out into white noise by this point. Griffin pulled back for a breath, and he quickly rolled his shoulders as he pressed into her lips again.

Zoey was in an apparently more comfortable position than Griffin, not at all bothered by the explosions in the background. She was always tempted to turn off the movies or shows that they had running, since it was pretty obvious that neither of them were actually interested in watching them, but the idea of kissing in silence was weird, and she wasn’t quite desperate enough yet to make a make out playlist.

She ran her fingers through his hair before she snuck them under the hem of his shirt at the back of his neck, and felt satisfaction curl in her stomach at the contact. How lame. She moved unconsciously towards him as he pulled away, felt dumb, and made a small, pleased sound as he kissed her again. She hoped that Griffin would react to it positively instead of making fun of her; something he hadn’t done yet but something Zoey feared any time she gave him opportunity.

“Ten minutes is enough of a heads up, right?” Reid didn’t wait for an answer, not like they’d get one from Koa anyway. The enormous dog just kept chewing on one of his toys. They grabbed the boxes of hair dye on the kitchen counter and checked their hair in the mirror, admiring Devin’s 2am handiwork. Taking a few steps, Reid reached the kitchen door, checked their phone one last time, and disappeared.

It was dark. And fuzzy. “Which way is the— fuck. Where’s the door?” Reid grumbled, pushing past clothing until they bumped their shoulder into the closet door.

He made a small, pleased sound in return to Zoey’s, his own hand moving tentatively from her thigh to the small of her back. He paused there, trying to decide without pulling away where his line was. He liked it when she splayed her fingers along his neck, so maybe she would, too… But before he could continue, he heard something. Maybe he was imagining it, but Griffin heard the faintest thump from… somewhere. Further in the apartment? Reluctantly he pulled back, just long enough to ask, “Did you hear…?” But he didn’t wait for an answer before he was kissing her again.

Zoey moved closer at Griffin’s touch. Maybe one day she’d tell him about how much she wanted to bottle up the sound that he just made, but any opportunity she’d had was never taken. If she ever said that out loud, it would be so embarrassing that she’d combust on the spot. She looked at him through a heavy lidded gaze when he spoke, and realized that she made a mistake immediately. He was gorgeous and she wanted to make him pay for it. Too focused on the task at hand to process his question or any distant sounds, she moved her hand to his jaw, and pulled away this time to kiss Griffin’s neck.

A pair of Zoey’s sunglasses sat askew atop Reid’s head as they burst into the common area. They threw out their arms, calling to their best friend. “Honey, I’m hooo—“ Zoey was on the couch, tangled up with— “-ly SHIT. Griffin?” Reid’s hands flew up to block out the euphoric expression on Griffin’s face before it was burned into their retinas. “MY EYES!” They wailed, turning away from the couch.

He knew he heard something. As soon as he was recovering from the near-euphoria of Zoey’s kiss against his neck, he heard an ungodly yell. The first thing he did was scowl. Something that piercing and grating didn’t belong in this moment. And then, his mind caught up with him and he leaned backwards, but not by much. The scowl remained, and he glared at Reid, hoping they felt it through their hand. “Dude!”

It was a lot to process at once. The yelling began once her lips met Griffin’s skin, and in a moment of panic, she pulled away. And then Zoey realized that it was not Griffin yelling but her teleporting best friend. Better? Not by much. She felt the heat rising up from her chest all the way to the top of her head. For a single, horrible moment, she was afraid that she might cry in front of Reid and Griffin. Instead, she pressed her hand to her forehead and laughed.

One arm over their face, vision obscured, Reid turned back around. “Dude? Dude!” They did their best to jab a finger in Griffin’s direction, but completely missed the mark, pointing a few inches too far to the right. “What are you doing?! Zed, blink twice if you need help.”

"Oh my gods," Griffin grumbled, rubbing a hand over his eyes. He just wanted to go back to kissing, but Reid of course had to ruin everything. Zoey's laughter only grated him further, and he felt his whole body getting way too warm. "She doesn't need— can you leave?" Griffin crossed his arms over his chest.

Zoey sucked in a short breath before laughing again, Reid’s appearance and continued reaction getting the better of her. She finally contained herself, rubbed the space between her eyes, and sighed. “Can we, like,” She wasn’t really sure which one she was speaking to or where she was going with the sentence, but she felt pretty swindled by the fact that she didn’t get the teleportation powers that her friends did, because then this wouldn’t be a problem for her anymore. “Let’s just– look, let’s,” she kept expecting the rest of the sentence to fill itself in. She groaned and pressed her fingers into the space below her eyes. “Can we just, like, Reid, can you give me like, ten minutes?”

“Can you leave?” Reid countered, crossing their arms. Eyes still screwed shut, they turned in the direction of Zoey’s voice. “I gave you ten minutes already.” Their voice sounded whiny, even to their ears, and Reid scrunched their nose in distaste. “Didn’t you get my text? I thought we were doing my hair. Is that still, like, on the table?” They tried to point at Griffin again but this time their aim was a few inches too high. “Or did you knock it off the table while you were eating each other’s faces off?” Reid shuddered dramatically.

The heat spread and got more intense, not only because of Reid, but also because it seemed to him that Zoey was planning to blow him off. He wasn't sure if he felt hurt or annoyed more. His jaw clenched and unclenched as something loud crashed on the TV screen. "I got here first," he grumbled." And then, louder: You texted her and she didn't answer and you came anyway?" The acid was clear in his tone. "Who does that?"

“The one fucking time I’m not on my phone,” Zoey huffed. She’d picked up a nearby pillow and was running her hands over it. “Dude, you can open your eyes, we’re literally just sitting here.” She turned the pillow and ran her hands in a different direction. They hadn’t set a specific time for hair coloring, and she didn’t think that it would end up a problem. She was going to request that they push it back a few hours, but frowned as Griffin spoke. “Woah, dude, chill out.”

Reid twitched slightly at the sound from the TV. A scowl passed over their face. Opening one eye, they squinted at Griffin. “I got here first.” Mimicry was not Reid’s strong suit but it was clear that they were poking fun at Griffin. “Yikes, did you really say that?”  They had been about to offer to give the couple (ew)  some space for a few minutes but the way Griffin was talking to them frayed on Reid’s nerves.  It felt good to have Zoey back them up— even if she had been sucking face with Griffin, at least she wasn’t blind to the fact that he could be a dick. There was another loud sound from the TV and Reid finally opened their other eye, face turned towards the screen. They jabbed a finger in its direction, taking the excuse to turn away from the couch. “You made Aquaman witness that too? Eugh. A crime.”

"What?" Griffin looked to Zoey this time, his nostrils flaring as she turned on him, too. Hurt flashed across his features, but then he just looked annoyed yet again. "Are you actually—" He didn't know how to continue without turning this into even more of a disaster, so his mouth just hung open while Reid continued, pointing now to the TV screen. Eventually he pressed his lips together, then grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. "Happy?" He tossed the remote back on the table then sank into the couch, his head dropping into the back cushion. "Didn't realize this was so..." That, too, he didn't know how to finish, so he didn't.

Zoey glared back at Griffin. “You can’t–“ But her jaw twitched as Reid continued, and the background noise and distraction was cut. She made a disgruntled sound and threw the pillow across the room, vaguely in Reid’s direction, but there wasn’t enough force to actually pose a threat of hitting anything but their ankles. “Stop acting like you don’t walk in on Devin and her fucking pick me boyfriend doing way worse. At least this is my place. I’ll do whatever the fuck I want in front of Aquaman.”

Reid raised their eyebrows slightly at Griffin, the room feeling too quiet now without the buzz of the movie in the background. "Son of a shit," they muttered, not caring if he heard them. The pillow Zoey had thrown collided with one of Reid's ratty Converse and settled limply on the floor. "Ow," they deadpanned, looking over at her. Immediately their face screwed up in an expression of disgust. "Don't remind— Yuck. Okay, yeah, and it's awful every time. I have to ask Logan if he can wipe my memory like he's one of the Men in Black but he hasn't yet." They shrugged, jamming their hands into the pockets of their jacket. It would be easier to leave, since their dramatic reaction had been less funny than Reid had thought it would be. But leaving meant that Griffin was getting what he wanted so they stayed where they stood, waiting to see if Zoey would ask them to go again.

His jaw clenched again at the mention of Eli, and he sat up again, this time glaring at Zoey. "Dude. If I can't talk back to Reid when they're the one who walked in on us, then you, neither of you," he swung his angry stare to Reid and then back to Zoey, "can talk shit about my friend." He didn't want to be the one to leave, but the longer he sat here, the less he wanted to stick around. "I think I should go," he grumbled, but still he didn't rise from his seat.

Griffin had a fair point, Zoey guessed, but she was too angry about the situation to admit that. Her eyes burned as she watched him. She didn’t want him to leave, but the fact that he hadn’t actually moved to do so riled her up until she was the first one to stand. “Cool, take your time thinking about it.” She walked around the back of the couch so that she wouldn’t have to pass Griffin on the way to her bedroom, and kept her gaze on the door so that she didn’t glare at Reid as she passed them. “Just–“ She opened and closed her mouth but just made an exasperated sound as she slipped into her room and slammed the door behind her.

The desire to say 'yeah, maybe you should' was so strong, Reid had to turn away to avoid making the situation worse. They closed their eyes, tilting their face upwards as they inhaled through their nose. Zoey's retreating footsteps were expected, as was the following slam of the door. The look they cut in Griffin's direction was icy. It's message was clear: look what you did. Reid took a few steps down the hall, their voice drifting through the cabin as they knocked on Zoey's door. "Zed?" It would be easier to use their powers and pop into the room but, with the way the day was going, Reid decided against it. "Zed, you dramatic ass Leo. Come back out here, this is your house."

Griffin felt the slam of Zoey’s door through his whole body. He stood as soon as she was gone, all the pent up energy escaping through his limbs as he stalked around, picking up his things. He sneered at Reid once he noticed their accusatory look. “This is all your fault,” he sniped, returning the blame right back to them. And even though they were already walking away, he continued, speaking to their back. Somehow he seemed to be getting even angrier with every word he spoke. “Thanks for always making my life a little worse. You suck.” He ground his teeth together as Reid spoke to the closed door, evidently ignoring him. He couldn’t believe Zoey was picking them over him. “Yeah!” he shouted, hoping she heard from her room. “The gross boy is leaving so it’s safe!” Suddenly, the strap to his backpack broke clean in half, and the bag crashed to the floor. Griffin glared at it, confused and frustrated that nothing seemed to be going his way, then quickly snatched it back up and then stormed out.

Zoey pressed her back to the door and slid down it to the floor. She felt like screaming, but apparently not everyone knew that slamming a door meant that an argument was over, Zoey wasn’t actually available, try again later. She pressed her palms into her eyes until she heard Griffin make his exit. “Go. Away!” She brought her fist down against the door with the second word, hoping that it covered up the shake in her voice. “Just fucking leave, Reid. Like, literally get the fuck out.”

He couldn't see it, but Reid rolled their eyes at Griffin's words. When his backpack crashed to the floor, they snorted. He deserved it for the way he'd spoken to them. The tension only left their shoulders when he stormed out.  Zoey's words, however, were a different matter entirely. A defeated groan rose in the back of their throat and Reid tapped the door twice with the side of their hand, almost too softly to make a sound. "I'm going," they said quietly, already heading for the door as the past ten minutes replayed in their head.

[samclownchester]

Supernatural Rewatch 01x06

Skin

(Next Episode | Masterlist | Previous Episode)

So we start out with Sam and Dean talking about Sam’s attempts at maintaining contact with his college friends.

Dean: So you lie to them? Sam: No, I just don’t tell them everything Dean: Yeah, that’s called lying.

Interesting … considering how Dean reacts to being lied to in later seasons, it is interesting to note that he kind of has this black and white view of it while Sam is more comfortable telling people what they are comfortable hearing (look back at 01x01 and their different reactions to their dad letting them know about monsters at a very early age) Dean doesn’t like half-truths, even for other’s protections. (Not that he never lies throughout the series, this is another good idea for analysis)

Sam: So, what am I supposed to do, just cut everybody out of my life? You’re serious? Dean: Look it sucks but, a job like this, you can’t get close to people, period.

This episode we get to see more of Sam’s focus on people he cares about.

Did Sam really just ask his friend Becky to make them sandwiches?? Wow. (I know that this was to get her out of the room, but this was before “make me a sandwich” became such a big meme. It’s extra funny that they do it again in season 15 (When Deans asks the woman to leave so he can confront the Djinn) but they’re much more self-aware about it)

Dean: “One thing I learned from Dad, not matter what kind of shapeshifter it is, there is one sure way to kill it”

Sam: “silver bullet to the heart”

So they have dealt with Shapeshifters before, or at least Dean has. But maybe it was a different kind? One that didn’t shed the way this one does?

 Dean: I hate to say it, but this is exactly what I’m talking about. You lie to your friends because if they knew the real you, they’d be freaked. 

(file under – the queer coding of Sam Winchester)

Ok, I don’t know how much we can rely on the Shifter’s words about how Dean feels but, assuming we can;

Shifter!Dean: You got to go to college … I had to stay home with Dad, you don’t think I had dreams of my own? But Dad needed me, where the hell where you? … deep down, I’m just jealous. You got friends; you could have a life. Me? I know I’m a freak, and sooner or later everybody’s gonna leave me.  … You left. Hell, I did everything Dad asked me too and he left me too. No explanation, nothing just – left me with your sorry ass.

 So, this tells us that Dean did have dreams of his own, that he’s thought about a life away from hunting (contrary to what he tells Lilith in Season 15). It’s also interesting because we usually see the word “freak” applied to Sam, when he realizes he’s psychic, when he gets addicted to demon blood, later when he is defending Jack. But here we see that Dean feels like a freak in his own way. He knows that he can never have a normal life, never be seen as normal by other people, so he doesn’t even try. Sam tries to have friends, tries to give them the portions of himself that they can handle, but Dean knows nobody in the normal world will be able to understand him – how he grew up, what he’s been through – so he doesn’t let anyone get too close.

In 15x07 we learn that Dean did have friends in his 20’s. Hunter friends, but still friends. He hunted with Lee while Sam was in college. So why do we never hear about him? Why doesn’t Dean call him up sometimes, or fondly remember him? (well, realistically because the writers didn’t invent Lee until they wrote season 15) But, there’s a canon reason too. Dean mentions that he thought Lee had died by the time he sees him in 2020. He obviously cared about Lee, enjoyed spending time with him, but he didn’t make the effort to stay in contact, to find out if his friend had lived or died, most likely because he was afraid of losing him. It’s easier to walk away from people than have them walk away from you. In this episode (1x06) we see Dean chooses to stay disconnected from people around him.

Sam needs people, so he adjusts himself to their expectations and their comfort, but Dean would rather have no connection than a partial one, or one that will inevitably end in hurt.

“you mean like a Vulcan mind meld?” (Ok, so Dean canonically watched Star Trek, at least enough to immediately think of this reference. good to know. For reasons) “maybe he needs to keep us alive, for the psychic connection” (Ok, maybe never mind about the shapeshifter in season 13, I don’t know if she would be able to get the thoughts of the deceased loved ones. )

 “maybe this thing was born human but was different. Hideous and hated. Until he learned to become someone else.”

Ok, so this line is said by the shifter, as Dean, about the shifter, but I want to talk about how it applies to Sam. Sam Winchester is born human, but he has demon blood. We learn in season 8 that, although he didn’t know about the demon blood or about his psychic abilities until his 20’s, as a child he felt that he was “not clean.” Not only is raised to fight and kill monsters, very unlike a normal kid, he also has this intrinsic sense of … wrongness. Additionally, he has never been encouraged by his father to be himself or to pursue his own interests. He likely doesn’t believe that anything about who he is  is good or worth anything. So, he learns to be something else. He goes to college and tries to leave his entire life behind him. He doesn’t open up about his real life to anyone, not even his girlfriend. He tries to adapt. Fit in, even though he doesn’t fit. Then he goes hunting with Dean, but he won’t tell Dean about his visions, he doesn’t open up to him. He dutifully plays the role of little brother, and hides anything that could cause Dean worry or pain. We see this repeat throughout the seasons, Sam adapting, tucking away parts of himself, letting go of his opinions, his views on things, letting Dean be right. The one time when he doesn’t do this is with Jack. He sees himself in Jack, a scared little boy who is so afraid of being evil, and he can’t watch what happened to him happen to somebody else. He has to step in, speak up on Jack’s behalf. He CAN’T tuck his feelings away this time, because it’s not himself on the line. He doesn’t often stand up for himself, but he will stand up for other people.

 Shifter: All alone, close to no one. All he wants is somebody to love him. He’s like me

Rebecca’s eyes: *THE F*** IS THIS GUY SERIOUS*

SAME Rebecca SAME

EUGH I forgot how gross shifting was.

Ok, well Dean is officially a wanted man. Wow, to go from a few torture/murders to attempting to assassinate the president. He really has beefed up his resume.

The Samulet!! Weird that the shifter took that from Dean and wasn’t able to replicate it … O.O That’s such a good little detail to let us know that it’s important.

Oh, so now Rebecca knows the truth about Sam.

Rebecca: “Will you call us sometime?” Sam: “It might not be for a little while.”

(and she was never heard from again … I imagine because Sam started to realize that Dean was right. It’s easier to stay away from connections. This is also probably a part of his growing guilt, and fear that anyone close to him will be hurt. It is interesting to think … now that she knows the truth and the fake version of him no longer exists in her mind, he doesn’t try to maintain the relationship?)

 DEAN: Sorry, man.

SAM: About what?

DEAN: I really wish things could be different, you know? I wish you could just be….Joe College.

SAM: No, that’s okay. You know, the truth is, even at Stanford, deep down, I never really fit in.

DEAN: Well, that’s ‘cause you’re a freak.

SAM: Yeah, thanks.

DEAN: Well, I’m a freak, too. I’m right there with ya, all the way. (SAM laughs.)

SAM: Yeah, I know you are.

 I know Dean means this as a playful joke, but it’s the first time we see Sam being referred to as “a freak” which will occur much more after this.

[shapeshifting-arch-mage]

12/04/2018

Raver Temmie and I fly on our broom to the Island. When was the last time we were here? We've come here again because we need to buy some glowsticks to pass out to the partygoers who've agreed to come to our private rave party. The one that we never got around to having because we went to Baku's rave over at Port Town's dance club. Now that was an experience.

"hey tem?"

"ya, hooman?"

"wen we get back, were gonna rite Baku a nice thank yu lettr, okay?"

"ooo, yaya!! thank u letr!! dats a grate idea!!1!" We fly our broom to the seaside store, which, unbeknownst to us, now has a new owner...

Raver Temmie and I fly our broom to the seaside store, where we'd last browsed for glowsticks. We dismount our broom, put it back inside our hat, and open the door. "i hope dis time i can find some-"

...The store looks different. We do not remember the store looking like this when we were last here. We step inside and close the door behind us. "h-hooman...?"

"yea?"

"wat happend to da store??"

"i dunno, its been a wile since we wer here. maybe sum1 redecorated it?"

We haven't seen who that someone is just yet, but if he were to look at the one who'd just entered his store, he'd see a bipedal Temmie in a pointy hat who appeared to be having a conversation with herself, as if she were two people.

"ok, but who did it?"

"i dunno." Our eyes look left and right as we take turns talking out of the same mouth.

[Salandit] The lizard frowned a little, holding the sandwich in its mouth. So... he could take random trash he didn't want, give it to this person, and they'd give him sandwiches...? ...He'd have to remember that, then. His tail flicked once more, and... before Jevil even finished his sentence, he was out the door- running at full speed towards... somewhere.

[Jevil] Jevil exhaled happily, tail wagging a bit. From his perspective, it had worked. It now knew the basics of capitalism. He laughed a little, having been greatly amused with the creature. Now though, he had a new priority. His small pointed ears shot up at the sound of the entrance bell and his attention was drawn to the newcomer: some sort of anthropomorphic white cat/dog. Them holding a conversation with themself was slightly off-putting to Jevil, but he wouldn't judge! Well at least he wouldn't let himself be too nervous, he had to serve this creature after all!

"Hello, hello to you, you! You come seeking wares is that true, true? Well, well tell me what you're looking for and I'll see what I can do, do!" Jevil wore his iconic joyous grin, mitten covered hands tucked beneath his chin as he awaited an answer.

[Rave Witch Temmie] Whoa! What was that that just darted by?! We flinch a little as the Salandit runs out the door. Once the door closes again, we turn back towards the counter and...

...Oh dear lord, what the heck is HE doing here?! He's not supposed to be out of his cell! We flinch again when he greets us, and begin to shiver, a look of dread forming on our face as he talks. After he finishes, our shivering culminates in a shudder as we cry out, "w-w-waaaaah!" We then hide our face behind our front paws.

[Jevil] He blinked once at the flinching reaction, deciding that it was only due to how loud he can become and often is to counteract the quieting nature of the shop's fabric walls. His voice would trail off somewhat as he noticed the shaking and expression. Maybe if he was quieter when he next spoke, this customer would be more comfortable here. The shudder and tears truly did distress the imp-like being, causing him to recoil a bit and spend a bit trying to figure out what he had said to cause such a reaction. Or maybe this person had very recently heard the rumors he had spread in his own world. He tensed a bit, taking in a breath, holding his hands out in front of him in the universal sign of harmlessness.

"H-hey calm down, calm down I say! There is no need for tears and no need for fears, I promise you won't be hurt, dears!" He had mainly pluralized it for the sake of rhyming rather than any knowledge of the newcomer's state.

[Rave Witch Temmie] Eugh, that voice... our shivering subsides somewhat, but not entirely. And did he just call us dears? Nnnngh...

We gingerly lower our paws from our face. They feel a bit moist... did we stain them with a tear or two? Oh geez, I didn't even notice- now that I think about it, our eyes do feel a little wet. How embarrassing...

"w-w-w-w-wat'd yu do to da store???"

[Jevil] "Just a little bit of renovation. I added a little things here and there to create what i saw in my imagination! Uee hee hee, and what a creation i've worked to see, see! No harm either considering the shop belongs to me, me!" He couldn't help but smile at the sensation of pride that whirled around in his stomach and warmed his chest. Jevil knew that there could have been countless others who sought this job and store, so he couldn't help but pride himself in the fact that the higher-ups, whoever they might be, had chosen him as the shopkeeper. No matter the poor experiences he has had so far, the bird-based robbery and the assault via spaghetti, he couldn't help but be happy and excited for all the new faces he'll be able to bring smiles to. His T ended tail swayed gently as he stared off into the distance at the thoughts.

Jevil was somewhat embarrassed when he emerged from his little day-dream. "Well, well now that you know my little slice of the resort, may I ask what wares you seek with some importe?"

[Rave Witch Temmie] "i... uh... um..." Oh geez, the little snot's gone and taken over the place, has he? Well, isn't that just faaaaan-tastic!

"human, whys a scary clown guy in da store??" Temmie thinks to me.

"Er, um, well, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure he's actually a jester." I think back. 

"watsa jester??"

"It's just what it sounds like- someone who jests."

"wats that mean??"

"You know... they tell jokes, and act silly..."

"u mean liek a clown??"

"Er..."

...Well, she's got a point there. I suppose if you think of it that way, they are kind of the same thing. Anyway, back to answering said clown/jester/whatever's question. We glance to the side, unable to bring ourselves to make eye contact with him.

"i was, uh... i was g-gonna hav a hapy fun rave party... a-and i-i needa get some stuff..."

"Glowsticks." I remind her mentally.

"o-oh ya!1! glowsticks!!" We say, looking at Jevil briefly before averting our gaze once more, "i needa glowsticks for my friends at da party... i came hear to buy sum befor but dere werent none..."

[Jevil] "Glowsticks, glowsticks..." He echoes in thought, mentally running through his stock, trying to determine if he would have them. For a while he didn't think so until he recalled their wide colour variety and knew where he would have stored them. Her perks up with excitement and giggles.

"Yes, yes I think I have a set in the back, I wouldn't think glowsticks would be something we would lack, lack! Wait here a second and I'll return with the items, I reckon!" With that, the leapt down from his chair, landing with a small thud and symphony of bell jingles. He remained in a crouching position for a second, showing just how small the once-court jester was, before he bounded into the back, passing through the fabric flaps that had matched seamlessly into the wall. A series of bells and other noises emitted from the back room as Jevil scurried about to find the glowsticks he was increasingly certain he had. He remembered having some in his old shop and had brought along many of his unsold wares from there when he moved his base of operations to the island. Where, oh where, though?

Jevil leaned backwards, holding himself up with his tail as he looked through the massive selection of colorful items, a few dozen pinwheels, plastic flowers, ball-pit balls, glow- There they were! He grabbed the glass jar filled with the unused tubes of chemicals and bounced out from the back.

"I return, return with the items you yearn! I have about twenty four glowsticks as you can see here, here now, lean in close, lend an ear: 2 of whatever you have for money each, it's a rather fine deal I preach!"

[Rave Witch Temmie] Once he goes to the back room and out of our sight, Temmie whispers to me, "whys he so scaryyyy...??"

"uh, cuz of his creepy face an' his creepy voice an' his, uh, "chaos chaos" thing, or sumthin?" I whisper back.

"wats dat???" She asks.

"i dunno, youd have to ask him!" I reply.

...Wait, I shouldn't have said that. I don't want us to ask him- oh no, he's back. Wait, are those... Hey, look at that, he does have glowsticks! Who would have thought?

"...Lean in close and lend an ear? ...Really?" I think, "Hardee har har. Just because we have four ears doesn't mean we're lending that creep any of 'em!"

"uh... o-okay, y-ya, ill buy em all..." We nervously approach the counter and pay 24 credits.

[Jevil] He giggled slightly, eyeing the 24 credits.

"I believe you miscounted, miscounted! 24 credits is only enough for half of the glowsticks, not all of them, them!" He seemed rather amused by the situation though, holding onto the product a little while longer as he waited to see if they will accept only half or seek out the remaining 24 credits to pay. He thankfully seemed to be rather patient, his tail wagging slightly as he hoped up onto his chair, putting the jar of glowsticks on the counter.

"Now now, would you like to pay the full price for all of them, them, or pay what you've already paid and take only half of them, them?"

"awawawa!!1 oh nooo!1 im sorry!11! heres da rest!1!"

We quickly put 24 more credits on the counter and then take a few steps back. Geez Louise, what is with us tonight? We already embarrassed ourselves in front of this guy once; we just had to go and do it again, didn't we! Sheesh...

[Rave Witch Temmie] ...Oh, wait- the glowsticks. We can't pick them up from over here. We'll need to walk back toward him to get them- actually, no, we won't! That's right! We're a Temmie! We stick our arms out in front of us and stretch them towards the jar of glowsticks.

[Jevil] He gave an amused laugh, happily accepting the payment and pushing the jar forwards towards them, blinking as they backed away. Frankly Jevil really wasn't sure what to make of this person, he was completely unfamiliar with Temmies after all.

"It's alright, alright! You can take the glowsticks whenever you'd li-" He was taken aback by the way the customer's arms seemed to just burst forward towards him. He looked absolutely horrified for a moment, recoiling as far back as he could, taking in these rapid, quick breaths. He had his eyes squeezed shut, not opening them up again until he thought it was safe. He pressed a gloved hand into his chest. Nothing happened. He was ok. He was ok. Seam didn't come back for revenge. It's ok. He's fine. Jevil took in a deep, shaky breath.

"Sorry I... I wasn't expecting that, that..."

[Rave Witch Temmie] Whoa, hold on... we scared HIM? Are we seeing this right? Did he just dart back behind the curtains again when we reached for the jar? You've got to be kidding... He's the creepy one, not us! What's so scary about us stretching our arms out, we wonder? Maybe being in this body for so long has made me forget that Temmies can be off-putting to those who aren't used to being around them...

We grasp the jar between our paws and then retract them towards us.

"uh... y-yu ok??" We call out.

[Jevil] "Y-yes, yes! I'm ok! Just- just shaken is all, all..." He emerged still looking very much unnerved. He fidgeted with his thumbs almost as if trying to distract himself from something, yellow eye-dots tiny in residual fear. He glanced off, making sure not to look at the creature's arms, part of him terrified they'll come after him again if he looks.

"Just shaken..." He repeats, taking in a deep breath. He tries to shake himself out of the fear, forcing a small smile until it became genuine. "But don't worry about that now, now, if there anything else you want or shall we say ciao?"

[Rave Witch Temmie] "is dere, uh..." Temmie remembers something she wanted to ask him. The thing I didn't want her to ask him.

"Temmie, no! Don't-"

"w-wats ur "chaos, chaos" thing?? human dint want me to- mmf!"

Since both our paws are full, I press the jar against our mouth to silence her.

[Jevil] "My chaos, chaos thing?" He seems confused for a moment, wondering what they could be referring to. Perhaps a combination of his repetition and his shop's title perhaps?

"Well if you're asking about the shop's name, that's easy, easy! It's important, so important not to fall into routine or it could suck up all your glee, glee! So I made a little shop back home just like this one, one where people can come and buy the things they need while also having a little fun, fun!" He giggles happily, tail wagging, mind seemingly off whatever had him so terrified before.

"As for saying things twice, twice, well I'm just following my own advice! Keep things fun, keep things nice, and life is sure to entice, entice!"

[Rave Witch Temmie] Sigh... why'd she have to ask him that...? Thanks to her, we had to listen to him yap at us in that spooky voice again! Though, on the other hand, I'm now very confused by his answer. We were not talking about this store, or his quirky speech patterns, at all. I had wanted to leave as soon as we'd bought our glowsticks, but now, I'm curious as to why he didn't seem to know what we were really referring to.

I decide to take control of our mouth from Temmie for a moment, and ask, "yu had anothr store? wat yu mean?? what happend to da cat guy??"

[Jevil] His mood shifted to discomfort at the mention of "da cat guy". Well, there was another question in there so he could ignore that part for longer.

"Yes, yes, I had another store, store. I opened it myself after the King decided he didn't want a court jester anymore, anymore. I could have done anything, anything indeed, but I thought that a shop of fun is what the kingdom would need. Then, then just recently, I got a letter in the mail, mail asking if I would be interested in coming here to do sale! I took it, took it I did, and that's why the island I now work amid!"

[Rave Witch Temmie] We shiver a little again as we listen to his creepy, singsong rhyming.

"yea, but, wat about dat cat guy, da one wit da button eye?"

Oh geez, now he's got us rhyming, too! Curses!

"i thot he was suppost to hav a store!1"

[Jevil] Oh god they really were talking about him. Jevil's pupils started to shrink again, seeming to grow panicked again. He seemed to grab onto his tail for comfort.

"I know who you're talking about but not what. Seam went mad years, years ago, it was very unfortunate... I just hope that now that his life in done, he isn't insane in heaven." He seems to be shaking a bit, really not wanting to recall those memories. That battle. That grin. By god, that grin. He tried squeezing it out of his mind, pressing his eyes shut and holding his head. That grin. That grin. It persisted even as Jevil had watched Seam rip his arm half-off to use as a weapon. He let loose a whine, shivering.

[Rave Witch Temmie] Our face goes blank. "...hes ded??"

[Jevil] Jevil nodded, trying to return to reality the best he could. Trying to pry himself away from the memories. Away from that battle. Jevil had technically won, but that did nothing to help his conscious. He held onto his tail tightly.

"Yes... Yes the once magician is gone, gone like the rain, only I, the once jester, remain."

[Rave Witch Temmie] Our jar of glowsticks in hand, we take several more steps back, uneasy at the thought of Seam being dead. Or at least I am. Temmie doesn't know who he is. While Jevil laments his loss, we back out the door with our purchase.

[universal-kitty]

1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 23, 25, 28, 29, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40, 46, 48, 50 and 51 for any of your Platonic f/O's!! Maybe multiple because I asked so many whoops ajsndnfjf (@hardcoresshippingmyself)

Another Platonic Self Ship Ask Meme@hardcoresshippingmyself1. Do you have a secret greeting/handshake?2. What’s your favorite inside joke?

   THAT…. REALLY IS A LOT…….but I did burn through a BUNCH of the new BnHA eps, so maybe tis a good time to talk about my good son….

   Izuku Midoriya!!!! So I’ll answer all these questions with him!! To start… We do not have a secret greeting! Mostly cause neither of us have…considered that. (Now I’m feeling we should.) I mostly give him hugs! I may also teach at U.A., but……. I am also prone to favoritism, just like the rest of the staff, HAH.

   Our favorite inside joke… I suppose it’s chanting “banana, banana…” Why? How this became a thing?!? …….That’s why it’s an inside joke. ;> It’s very silly, I’ll admit to that much.

3. What is your favourite sleepover activity?

   Well, teachers don’t usually have sleepovers with the students….but what Aizawa doesn’t know I do won’t kill him! I usually regale him and the other 1-A kids about my heroic exploits. I even opened up a little on what it’s like to grow up with a villain parent, so I try to be a bit of an eye-opener that way.

   The stories are the better part of the night, though. I get super into reenacting them!!

6. What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve done together?

   ….Tried to prank Aizawa together and getting caught. Scolded, too. It’s one thing when it’s rowdy kids, but for a teacher to get into the spirit of pranks….. Sorry, Midoriya…

8. Who is more likely to get into a fight defending the other?

   We both are defensive of the other, but it depends on the topic. Izuku gets more angry when he overhears people talking down of me due to my father, a villain. (Distrust of my background, as you do.) I get angry and worked up when it’s someone talking shit about him. (I’ve learned restraint with Bakugo, the mouthy kid…but anyone else? These paws are rated E FOR EVERYONE!)

   I try to be the level-headed adult, but that’s not always guaranteed… [siiiiiighhh]

11. What do your texts/letters to each other usually consist of?

   Something like this.

13. What’s your best memory together?

   Heh, aside from meeting that kid? (He’s a little treasure HONESTLY, just ask Toshi next Takeover; I’ve cried over Izuku before.) I guess it would be when Toshinori and I invited him and his mother out for a picnic! I thought it’d be a nice way to all hang out together, meet up with her again, and just…have a nice day with good food.

   It was wonderful.

15. How do you help each other cope with your trauma?

   I’m there for him as much as possible, to make sure these things aren’t effecting him too badly. Being in such…early situations of danger can really mess with a person. I’d know; it’s not like dad’s villainy was a secret after I was born. He was never really a danger, but I felt it on him.

   And being a pro hero? Taxing, emotionally. People can not realize that…. So I check up on him sometimes to make sure he’s okay and knows that he can tell me anything. In return, that bright smile cheers me up. I’ve told him as much; I may have depression, but it always feels better when he smiles. He really is like Toshi in that way…….

16. Do either of you have an item of clothing you wear that used to belong to the other? (Eg. You stole their jacket and they let you keep it)

   Ahh, no! He’s too smol for me and it’d be weird. Though…. Not a wear item, but he did ask what happened to some of my older stuff from my younger hero days… I let him keep an old collar from my school days, since it collects dust and I thought he’s appreciate a trinket like that.

   I hear it’s stationed around a figure of All Might, these days…..

18. What do you both do that annoys each other?

   For Deku… Well, early on I got annoyed by how much he got hurt. Less anger, more a sort of panic and concern that bubbled into other emotions, you know? It’s reckless behavior and…I just didn’t want him to be lethally hurt, but he always tempted fate….. Now that he’s getting better at controlling One for All, I’m relaxing a bit more, but…yeesh. Otherwise, I love the kid.

   Ditto with him to me. Once the news leaked my dad was a villain, things…blew up for awhile. They’re still not perfect. Yet when things started calming down, I took it upon myself to still get involved in issues, saving people left and right to prove to them (and even myself, in a way) that I’m still a hero. Deku got fussy with me for the same reasons and overexerting myself when I didn’t need to.

   …He’s a good kid.

23. If you have a romantic f/o how do they react to them? Do they know them? Do they get along?

   HAHA, OH BOY. GLAD YOU ASKED…. Fanboy to the highest degree. Me being related to a villain? Whatever. Learning that I was dating his hero, however…? Izuku went over the moon. We’d never made our relationship public and had no intention to, but that kid was one of the first to know.

   ….And the first major fanboy we were ever going to get, let’s be real. I wouldn’t be surprised if he became an avid shipper on some forum to talk about it… Ehehehe~

25. If one of you gets injured how does the other react? (And during the healing process do they hover or only occasionally check in?)

   I freak out over Izuku on the daily, so you know I’m hovering wherever I’m allowed to be until he’s awake again. Y’know, considering most of his injuries end up being LIFE THREATENING….. Eugh. If it’s a smaller thing, I make sure it’s not too bad, deal with it, we’re good… With only minor hovering to make sure it’s not bothering him too much.

   On the reverse, he tries to hover, but school keeps him busy. He visits when he can, I appreciate the company, and he usually goes right back to melting when Toshi stops in, too.

28. Have you ever accidentally referred to them as your sibling/parent? What was their reaction?

   I have most assuredly called him my son before. At this point, he has two moms and Toshi is his dad. I am absolutely okay with this. (Inko got a laugh out of it when I told it to her later, too!)

29. Who gives who piggybacks when they’re tired? Who carries the other in general?

   I’m the big, strong adult here! I carry the boy! ….Though he’s really getting harder to carry with all that muscle he’s been gaining… Yeesh, kid! They really grow up too fast, huh?

32. If they see you getting uncomfortable in a conversation will they intervene and give you a chance to get out of said conversation or will they let you deal with it yourself?

   He rushes over, immediately. Unless it seems like not a good idea. Then he quickly gets Toshinori, instead. OR texts him to get over there, immediately, and proceeds to stall for time.

   Either way, I’m about to be protected and…..I kinda need it. People are too much for me, sometimes…!

35. Have you ever built something together?

   Mostly Lego stuff! It’s a struggle, but a nice way to relax with a friend and hang out with hilarious frustrations over pieces. Iida tries to help on occasion and we’ve learned he’s much better at getting that sort of thing done than we are.

36. If you were stranded on an island together what would happen?

   We’d be the best fuckin’ survivors of all time! Cat quirk and One for All….. We’d dominate and surely get home in no time.

38. Do you quote vines/memes/musical lyrics to each other and laugh as everyone else has no idea what you’re both saying? What’s your favorite thing to quote together?

   OH, I quote Vines and memes ALL THE TIME with the class!!! I enjoy it because Aizawa largely disapproves (and understands nothing; he’s a cat video man) and Toshi is thrice as baffled.

   “Road work ahead? Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does!” is our favorite. Right next to “I’m just cooking pizza.”

40. What’s the most embarrassing photo they have of you and vice versa?

   His is a picture he caught of Toshi and I hugging in the breakroom. I mean, he got a good shot and it’s sweet, in a way, but also….!! DEKU, PLEASE– (To my knowledge, he still has that to this day.)

   My personal favorite is when he slipped on a banana peel and all you see in the picture is wide eyes of fright and a blue of green and grey. I was laughing so hard that day!!! Still my favorite to look back on.

46. When you’re both bored and have nothing to do what do you do to cure your boredom? (Eg. Play pranks, annoy each other, pillow fight, etc.)

   Pillow fights or pranks on the others, for sure! I especially adore ruining Mineta, as he’s a little goblin and deserves all that happens to him.

48. Would ‘Platonic Soulmates’ be an accurate description of your bond?

   Ehhhh, after thinking about it…. Not really. It’s more mentor-student or parental than something dramatic like soulmates. It’s just not that deep for us, yanno?

50. What are a couple of words that sum up your friendship?

   Bright, laughter, joy, free, and forever.

51. Not a question, give a random fact/headcanon about you and your f/o!

   Later confirmed, he did start a movement for shipping “All Might x Mani-Neko”. Where there was nothing before, there are fans and rather silly fanfictions. A few art, too. It’s all…weirdly adorable.

   The better part was overhearing Deku and Toshi talking about where to find more content and what they thought of this-and-that…. Its great, in its own way, it really is.

[mycasandstarrs]

SPN 5x09: “The Real Ghostbusters”

The Pineview Hotel.

Sam and Dean racing like hell to get there.

The multiple Impalas.

Chuckster! 

Oh damn it, I have to deal with Becky.

Goddamn it, I’m really trying to keep my patience with Becky.

AGAIN, the publisher probably would’ve kept them out of this...then a bunch of people would’ve died, so I guess it’s actually worth having Becky around.

I haven’t been to a Supernatural Convention yet (god willing I can go to one when I plan to) but I kinda hope it’s like this.

“The Homoerotic Subtext of Supernatural” lmaoo. We should be having panels like this tho.

There’s so many men in the audience.

lmaooo Chuck.

Y’know, the bungee cord idea is kinda good, but it’d probably backfire in some way.

“Why can't Sam and Dean be telling that Ruby is evil? I mean she is clearly manipulating Sam into some kind of moral lapse.”

But I totally agree with him on the Ruby thing. Well, Dean knew she was evil.

Becky being the defensive Sam!girl she is. Admittedly, that’s very reminiscent of me/other fans.

Oh, what joy! That’s usually our reaction to Supernatural getting another season.

Poor Chuck. He’s mad cute.

“Why are you publishing more books, Chuck?”

“Umm...for food and shelter?”

lmaoo.

“I'm not some hero who can just hit the road and fight monsters, ok?” Oh, but you a r e. At least, you can be.

Ok, but a murder mystery at a Supernatural Convention sounds like fun.

“Well yes, Agents Lennon and McCartney--” The ONLY time I’ll ever hear Beatles aliases. (Unless they sneak in a “Harrison/Starkey” alias sometime...)

It’ll only get weirder boys.

Where was this Sam’s Dean?

Oh dear.

“This is part of the game right?” NO it’s not dude, you should run!!

Oh thank god, I thought he was gonna die.

Oh, but you’re talking to the real deal, lady.

Oh, there’s his Dean.

“Agents Jagger and Richards.”

It’s a shame they didn’t just...go outside and grab their laptop to research this while they still had the chance to leave.

Demain and Barnes had the smarts eavesdrop tho.

“We got a real ghost, and we got a bunch of dudes pretending to be us poking at it.”

“No way this ends well.”

“Yeah, well, serves them right.”

Dean pls, people could die.

I love this “Sam” (aka Barnes). What a sweetheart.

Gotta admire their commitment to the gruff voices.

OOHHHH NO, THE SCALPED KID.

Eugh god, you couldn’t just blow him a kiss, could you???

Were they the only ones to call the coroners?

“Where’d you get that.”

“It’s called a game pal. It ain’t called charity.”

“Yeah right. Gimme the map, Chuckles.”

“Yeah well, you’re the Chuckles...Chuckles.”

Demain really nails being Dean. 

Their first time being referred to as “Bobby and Rufus”.

Demain and Barnes even have the exact lines memorized.

Dean, pls.

I’m almost embarrassed on behalf of Dean. Like, I know he’s got a right to be upset about people trivializing his life and traumas, but I also know how this outburst looks like to the other guys. 

Did they really think bones are just...lying around?

0 to 100, real quick for those two.

Poor guys, omg.

Well, at least Sam and Dean bought them drinks.

15 minutes left in the episode and the case is “solved”....

“Hey, Chuck. Good luck with the Supernatural books and screw you very much.” lmao.

And now they can’t leave.

“Why did you send my mommy away?”

“Ah, maybe because of the high and tight she gave you, huh? How bout some thanks.”

lmaoo, Dean don’t be mean to the kid.

Welp, they got it wrong.

“Gott im Himmel!” (Translation: “God in Heaven!”) Fritz’s last words.

RIP Fritz. Killed by the ghost children.

Chuck pls, keep it under control.

Chuck’s gotta talk out of his ass now.

“Just give her the puppy dog thing, ok?” lmao, even Dean knows about it and its effects.

“If all these people are seriously in trouble, we gotta do something.”

“Why?”

“Because...that’s what Sam and Dean would do.”

Barnes and Demain are the best.

(Would’ve like to hear Sam’s conversation with the actress tho.)

WHO would ask about their STD at a convention for a book series??

THe Leticia Gore actress could be a bit more convincing...

Barnes got through...

NOT THE CELLPHONE. This is why I put my phone on vibrate.

At least Demian got through.

Get in there, Dean!

lmaaoo, come on, Barnes. 

“Oh my god. Supernatural makes digging graves seem so easy. It’s not though. I’m gonna throw up.”

“No, you’re not.”

Supportive boyfriend Demain tho!

Time to fight off ghost children until they manage to burn the bones.

“Let's see, what else? I fell in love for the first time at 16. Lost my virginity, actually. But then she went around telling everybody it didn't count.” LMAO. 

Take control Chuck!

Holy shit, that kid would’ve murdered the whole room of people if Chuck hadn’t interfered.

Becky’s right tho, that was hot.

“How come DEAN can always light the stupid thing on the first freaking try?” If it makes you feel better, he really can’t.

They did it!

Even Sam’s considering the bungee idea, lol. 

The official introduction of Barnes and Demain.

Dean p l s. I always feel second hand embarrassment when Dean (and Sam) finally feel comfortable with telling fans that it’s really them, and it backfires on them. 

(But, you think Demain and Barnes this discuss that night a lot? And one night, they think...”maybe that was Sam and Dean.”)

“In real life, he sells stereo equipment. I fix copiers. Our lives suck. But to be Sam and Dean, to wake up every morning and save the world. To have a brother who would die for you. Well, who wouldn't want that?”

:’)

“friends”  Suuurrreee.

AAYYY BOYFRIENDS!! They’re so cute together. I hope they stayed together.

“Howdy partners.”

“Howdy.”

“Like a monkey on the sun, it was too hot to live.” lmaoo. I gotta start saying that.

Sam’s a champion for playing along.

“Oh hey, Chuck? If you really wanna publish more books, I guess that’s ok with us.”

“Wow. Really?”

“No, not really. We have guns and we will find you.”

LMAO.

Becky revealing the truth about the Colt’s location.

Our first mention of Crowley. ‘)

Aayy, ride off into the sunset boys. 

The improv bit at the very end is comedy gold.

“The way I look at it, it's really not jumping the shark if you never come back down, ya know?”

[bosstoaster]

Shatt- A4 quickly followed by B4. Something like.... they're on some kind of space mission, and maybe Shiro told Matt not to come because it's "dangerous" and Matt is like 'f you takashi i literally fought with the rebels' and sneaks out with them anyways. and it starts with them fighting ridiculously (a4) but then something Scary happens and Matt is immediately ducking behind Shiro because he got startled, and now Shiro will never let him live that down.

“We need a distraction,” Pidge’s voice said.  Her voice was a harsh whisper over the comms.  “They’re getting way too close to me and Hunk.  We’ll get caught before we’re done.”

Shiro took a deep breath, considering.  “Alright.  I’ll start making noise over here.  Lance, I’m going to need your blaster fire.”

Next to Shiro, Matt nudged his side.  “Hold up there, Rambo.  I’ve got an idea that doesn’t involve anyone getting shot at.”

Perking, Shiro looked over at Matt.  “Yeah?  I’m okay with that.  What are you going to do?”

“Not us.  We.  You hold tight, Lance.  Keith too.  I only need Shiro.”

“What are you guys doing?” Keith asked, his brow furrowed and lips pursing.  “Why only Shiro?”

Matt snorted.  “Because neither of you two can lie worth shit.  C’mon, Starshine, hop to.”

Okay, Shiro was officially curious.  

(Read More Below)

He stood and followed Matt as he snuck closer to the bounty hunter’s camp.  They continued to mill around, eating and relaxing, unaware that Pidge and Hunk were just a dozen feet behind them, sabotaging all their tech.

Matt took Shiro’s shoulders, turning him to face him.  Then he put his hands on his hips.  “I can’t believe you did it again!” He called, voice loud and annoyed.

Immediately, the noise from the camp died, startled by Matt’s shouts.  Hidden in the shadows, Keith and Lance shared a confused look.

“Did what?” Shiro asked, honestly baffled.  All he’d done was follow Matt.

“Oh, it’s not what you did do.  It’s what you don’t do!”  Matt’s voice raised dramatically, his nose in the air.  “We go out for the whole night and you don’t listen to a word I say.  It’s all ‘oh, sure, that’s fine’.  ‘Whatever you want’.  ‘Uh-huh.’  You’re not paying any attention at all!”

Shiro’s mouth fell open, even as he started to catch on to Matt’s plan. “I listen.  Coming here was your idea!  You didn’t even tell me what it was about, you just said we were going!”

“I wanted it to be a surprise!” Matt insisted back, eyes narrowed at Shiro’s half-truth. “I expect you to, I don’t know. Catch on.  Have a good time for once.  Have a productive evening.”

“I’d have a much more productive evening if you ever just said what you were thinking,” Shiro shot back, lowering his voice to a growl.  It still cared well in the clearing. “Where even are we?  We’ve been wandering around for ages now and you still haven’t told me anything.”

Matt crossed his arms, skillfully ignoring the bounty hunters as they started to stand up.  “Have you ever considered trusting me, for once?”

“Have you ever tried being trustworthy?”

Gasping, Matt shoved Shiro’s chest, making him stumble back a half-step.  “I’m very trustworthy.”

“You blab every thought the second it comes into your head,” Shrio replied, leaning in closer and using every inch of his extra height to his advantage.

Matt bared his teeth, not intimidated in the least.  “And you’re a brute who thinks he knows everything.  No, don’t worry, I’ll make all the decisions for our lives, and I’ll mope about it forever.”

Even knowing that Matt was just drawing on old frustrations for something to yell about, Shiro still bristled.  “I don’t mope.  You’re the one who can never just say something.  I’m sorry for having an ounce of sincerity once in awhile.  That must be so hard on you.”

Over their comms, Pidge snorted.  “Well, that certainly worked.  They’re about done.  Don’t get killed.”

“You two,” someone called.  “What the hell are you doing here?”

Shiro looked over at the bounty hunter and drew himself up.  In the same moment, he ducked his right hand into his pocket to hide the metallic gleam.  “I don’t know, ask my boyfriend. Maybe he’ll tell you.”

“Maybe he’ll actually listen!” Matt snarled back.  He actually stamped his foot in frustration, then whirled on the hunter.  “None of your business, buddy.  Go bother someone else.”

Oh, boy.

The hunter stepped forward another step.  “You’re the one on our property.  So I do think it’s my business.”

Matt bit his bottom lip and started to pull back.  It was hard to tell if the reaction was honest nerves from having a very murderous looking alien glaring at him, or if it was part of the persona.

Even so, Shiro stepped in front of him.  “No, I don’t think it is,” he told the hunter, his voice lowering dangerously.

“Okay, okay, we’ve got it,” Hunk said, words blending together from the speed he was speaking.  “Please don’t get killed.”

The alien raised his weapon, eyes narrowed.  “You’re about to make yourself my problem.”

“What my boyfriend means is that we’ll be going now,” Matt said, tugging on Shiro’s vest.  “C’mon, hun, we’ll talk about this later.”

Shiro bared his teeth at the alien, but allowed himself to be backed up.  The hunter eyed them both, then shook his head and backed away.  Apparently they weren’t worth it.

More fool them.

Wrapping an arm around Matt’s shoulders, Shiro turned and disappeared into the woods with him.  “Well, alright, that worked.”  He eyed Matt.  “We’re finishing that argument later.”

“Can it end with make-up sex?”

“Eugh!” Pidge cried.  “I’m still on the line.”

“Oops,” Matt said, grinning up at Shiro.  “My bad.”

Rolling his eyes, Shrio bent down to give him a peck.

Mission first.  Then argument.

Then, yeah, maybe make-up sex.

Alright, probably.

[667-darkavenue]

cake by the ocean - ficlet

Fandom: The Adventure Zone

Pairing: Lup/Lucretia

Summary: Pirate AU. Takes place during The Stolen Century. The Starblaster crashes into the sea and gets taken hostage by mermaids. To meet their demands and get the spaceship back from the depths of the ocean, the gang have to take down the mermaids’ enemies above the water. Lup decides some changes are in order.

Co-written with @moonlit-trash | on ao3.

Taako wakes up with his face in the beach. Sand flutters away from his mouth as he groans into it. “Ugh… Lup?”

She’s shaking sand out of her hair as she watches him sit up.

“Taako…” His twin reaches down to peel a piece of seaweed off her brother’s chest. “What the fuck?”

The last thing she remembers is the Starblaster crashing real bad, the ship flooding—At least they cast breathing spells on everyone in time. Taako’s looking around the long stretch of beach they washed up in, not another person in sight.

“Guess we got separated in the water,” he mumbles to himself.

He blinks up at Lup, pale white sand still clinging to the half of of his face that was crushed into the shore. She tells him, “You look like a half-moon cookie.”

The corner of his lip twitches upward. “Mm. At least that.”

He holds both hands up, wiggling his fingers in the air, and she catches them.

“Well, we gotta find ‘em. Even with water breathing, I don’t trust that half of them will make it,” she says as she tugs him up, their feet splashing the water where it spreads across the sand each time a wave sweeps ashore. “I mean, c’mon. You’ve seen Merle.”

“They’re hella drowned if they didn’t wash up somewhere around here.”

Lup gave him a Look™. “Nah. We're the ones who casted shit on them to make sure they hella wouldn't drown. And we're… us. No way they fucked up that badly. The Starblaster's probably Starbusted, though.” She kicks some sand into the ocean, sadly. “Pour one out for our pimp ass spaceship.”

“Moment of silence.” Taako plucks a brown string of kelp out of his hair and plops it into the water. After a pause, he adds, “But we should go find it anyway. Fixing it's the only way to get out of here, and—more importantly—all my clothes are on it.”

“You're right. How am I supposed to borrow them if they're at the bottom of the ocean?” She smiles at him, before getting real. “Okay, yeah, but I am super not into the idea of going back into the water after it almost goddamn drowned us. Do you remember that scroll we saw—Jaws, Taako?”

He’s already talking over her—“Because it wants to keep my closet, shit, I'd kill for it too.”

“All right. I'll let you do the honors, since your bag is transmutation.” She stares down into the water, waiting for Taako to cast the spell. The water is clear enough that she can see their reflections. “Can I just say that we are definitely pulling off this beached look?”

“Fucking nailing it. All this sand on my face? Exfoliating the hell out of it.”

Finding the Starblaster was…

Well, they found it.

They also found that there’s mermaids in this world. And they talk. And they’re kind of mean.

“I want to go on record now—Where's Lucretia when you need her? I want this written down in both her journals,” Lup ranted. “Swimming fucking sucks. I move to demote Cap'nport for crashing our ship and almost killing us all permanently.”

Weighed down by soaked clothes, they trudged back out to the same beach they started on.

“Yeah, I can't believe they wouldn't let you at least take the clothes out of the ship.”

She gave him a Look™ again. “I sort of meant the destroying ten ships to get our ship back deal.”

“Ohhh. Yeah. Unfortunate,” he said, very unconvincingly. “But they're the bad guys harpooning cute whales, so who cares, right?”

That was the deal they had to strike with the mermaids, who wouldn’t let them go near the Starblaster.

“Yeah, you're right.”

Then she’s quiet for a bit. After walking long enough down the uneven shoreline, a town and some docks starts coming into sight.

“You think the others will be cool with it?” Lup asks. “If we find them?”

Taako laughs to himself. “Considering most of them were down to end a civilization before you slapped us with that wisdom... I don't think it's gonna be a big deal. Not if you’re in.”

“Yeah, remind me never to let you guys do missions on your own, all right?”

“Lup!”

Lup’s head jerks up at the sound of her name, coming from somewhere within the bustle of the town market they stumbled across.

“Taako!” the same voice shouts.

And they see a familiar face bobbing through the crowd, rushing toward them.

“You’re alright!” Lucretia says. Then her brows knit together when she gets a good look at them. “And... you're... still wet?”

It had been an entire day since the crash. Lucretia looked cleaned up, prim and proper as always. As if she found this town and got situated right away. That’s probably what the rest of the crew were up to while Lup and Taako’s first move was diving right back into the ocean that spat them out.

“Yeah,” Lup answers flatly. “We found the ship.”

“Oh.” Lucretia’s eyes pop open and her mouth forms a perfect tiny ‘o’ the way it always does when she says Oh. “That, that's great. We've been negotiating getting a different ship here, to use it to, to dig the Starblaster out.”

Lup elbows her gently and smiles. “I'm glad you're okay, too, you know.”

“I am! I am glad. I was looking for you before I found this place.”

“Mhm. Did you manage to salvage your journals? I need you to write something down for me…”

Lucretia visibly deflates at the question. Lup is taken aback, as that is the complete opposite reaction she normally had to being asked to jot something down.

“No, I couldn't bring my journals with me,” Lucretia says, “The ocean would destroy them so I, just, thought it safer to leave them. It sucked.”

“Oh, dear,” Taako chimed in. “Do you need a hug? Hug her, Lup.”

He wasn’t a hugger.

She wonders if Lucretia is a hugger.

“Well, I wanted to look for you guys, too,” Lup says, opting to test the waters by placing a consoling hand on Lucretia’s shoulder, “But Taako wanted to find the ship. Which... We did. But some mermaids are holding it hostage until we kill some whalers. It's a long story.”

Lucretia’s eyes dart up to meet hers, startlingly intent. “Did you say mermaids?”

“Yeeeeeeah,” Lup’s face scrunches into a grimace at the thought of them. She hears Taako make a little “eugh” sound over her shoulder and assumes he’s making a similar face. “They were pretty though,” Lup adds.

“Wow.” Lucretia sighs the word more than she says it.

Then she’s reaching into her satchel and whipping out a new journal and quill that she has already bought somehow. She’s an expert at writing while standing with a book in the crook of her elbow. Lup cranes over the page to see what she’s scrawling: Mermaids are real and they are pretty.

“Oh—This is important,” Lup tells her. “Probably deserves its own page.”

Lucretia actually instantly flips to a new page and holds her quill over it excitedly.

Lup smiles. “Swimming fucking sucks.”

The quill doesn’t touch the page. Lucretia looks up and meets her eyes. “Pardon?”

Once more, with conviction, Lup says, “Swimming. Fucking. Sucks.”

She doesn’t break eye contact. Lucretia blinks at her.

“You know how hard it was to find our ship in the entirety of the bullshit ocean? Swimming sucks. Jot that the fuck down.” Lup’s fingertip creeps over the top of Lucretia’s journal to tap the blank page. “Also,” she adds, quickly and as if it's not important, “They said there's some asshole whaling ships killing their friends and we can have the Starblaster back if we take ten of them out.”

“Oh, wow. I. Okay.” Lucretia’s eyes dart down and she writes ‘swimming sucks’ in tiny letters on its own page, then flips back to write the other stuff. “We can't actually do that, though. That would get us in, uh, deep trouble. With the human people here.” (By the way, Lucretia is talking at the same time that she’s writing down what Lup just told her, and it is mindblowing. Lup can’t even prepare spells and listen to music with lyrics at the same time. Lucretia keeps talking without looking up, unaware of how gone with the wind Lup’s dome is right now.) “We would basically be... I think we'd be pirates.”

Taako leans in and whispers, "That's so fucking sexy."

Yep.

“It's either that or murder a bunch of mermaids who just wanna protect their friends,” Lup says. “Which isn't something I'm willing to do.”

Lucretia is quiet for a minute, reading over what she wrote, thinking it over. Eventually, she concedes, “Yeah, that's worse.” She tucks her fresh journal under her arm and asks, “Do you... You wanna see the new ship?”

“Hell yeah, I wanna see the ship,” Taako says. “What'd you cook up for us, Lucretia?”

With a jerk of her head in the direction of the docks, she spins around and starts leading them to it. Along the way she explains how they got it. “Well, we found an ad for someone who wanted to commission a crew, and I... kind of told him the opening act of Treasure Island. He bought it and gave us a ship in return for following a treasure map I drew twenty minutes beforehand, and supposedly bringing back the treasure.”

Lup high fives her first, because that’s definitely worthy of it, then shoots a look at Taako and mouths, Did you read Treasure Island?

No!, he mouths back, looking incredulous that she even asked.

She turns back to Lucretia. “Nice job. Were you able to find the others?”

“Uh, most of them. I washed up with Merle, we found Magnus and Davenport nearby. Still no Barry. Merle and Magnus are combing the beaches for him.”

“Fuck. I knew he couldn't swim,” Lup mutters darkly.

She doesn’t have much time to linger on that worry, since they approach a super badass-looking pirate ship that Taako flips over.

“Is that our ride? Is that it? Hell yes, fuckin dope.” He rushes up the gangway and poses on the ship. From up there, he calls out, “Tell me how cool I look!”

“You look like a nerd!” Lup shouts back while flashing him a grin and two enthusiastic thumbs up. She turns to Lucretia to ask, “What’s her name?”

“Who?”

“The ship. Obviously. It needs a name.”

“Oh,” her eyes and mouth do that little perfect round ‘o’ thing again, “Right. Hm. What's a good ship name?”

“LUPCRETIA,” Taako shouts from the deck.

Lup waves her hand and the letters Lupcretia appear on the side of the ship. On her face right now would be the world’s largest shit-eating grin. The current world record holder for most shits eaten in a minute. Lucretia is gaping, either horrified or delighted.

“You like it? I think you ought to Captain the fuck outta this thing.”

Lup thinks she sees a blush creeping over Lucretia’s face before she covers her face with her book. “Ohh my god, no.”

“Why not?” Lup prods, eyes glittering with mischief. “You're smart and good with both your hands, Captain.”

“I—Thank—?” Lucretia stammers, words muffled by the book over her face.

Lup is persistent. “Besides, there's no way the rest of us wouldn't steer this shit directly into an iceberg or something, like in that scroll, Titanic.”

Lucretia’s book comes down, and her face looks surprisingly composed. “No, I'm pretty sure Captain Davenport should handle it. We’re in the tropics, anyway.”

“Come on, he literally just crashed our other ship. You're gonna trust him with another one?” Lup’s eyes veer skyward in exasperation.

“You—You can't just make me captain, the spot's been taken.”

“MUTINY,” Taako yells down at them, leaning over the ship’s railing.

“Yeah, Taako and I already decided, and you think anyone's gonna argue with us? We're pretty insufferable as a team.”

As if on cue, Lup hears two familiar voices shout her name simultaneously behind her back. Her friends came back at just the right time.

“Merle! Magnus!” She greets them with relieved high fives. “We're going to be pirates now and Lucretia's gonna captain our ship, you down with that?”

“Hell yeah,” Merle says, without taking any time to think about it.

“Super down,” Magnus agrees before bounding up the gangway to reunite with Taako.

Lucretia’s careful composure melts into an expression of utter disbelief.

Lup slides a smug look over to her. “You've been overruled. We need to get you a cool hat. Merle, let her borrow your eye patch, she's gotta get the look right.”

Merle doesn’t hesitate to pull it off his head.

“No! Put, Put that back on, I don't want it. That's gross.” Lucretia scrambles to swat away his offering.

“God, fine,” he scoffs, deeply offended, before storming off into the ship.

Lucretia’s eyes flit from the ship, to Lup, to her own feet. After a moment of consideration, her good old composure comes back.

She gives in. “I'll take a cool hat.”

Lup’s grin is nothing short of beaming as she conjures the single dopest captain’s hat of all time. She hears Taako make an inarticulate noise of intense jealousy in the distance.

“I want to do the honors,” Lup insists.

Like a real chill coronation, she lifts the hat over Lucretia and places it on her head. She spends a few seconds carefully shifting the hat to the coolest possible position. Lucretia is looking at her the entire time, only giving a hesitant smile. Lup conjures up an eyepatch too, just for shits and gigs. She dangles it in front of Lucretia.

“Look, this patch is, it's cool, but, I kind of need both eyes. I use them a lot.”

Lup sighs theatrically. But she’s not actually all that disappointed. This is still a win. “As long as you recognize that it is, indeed, cool as hell—” She slips the patch over her own eye for aesthetic.

Lucretia’s eyes widen and her lips part in the shape of a neat little circle, but she doesn’t say anything. Lup is 100% sure that she is very visibly thinking Oh shit, that’s so hot. Lup is definitely like, I know, and tries to wink, but her winking eye is covered behind the eyepatch. It still kinda works out though. She’s pretty sure she’s just that fuckin’ cute.

Lucretia doesn't know how to handle this. She just sort of walks away, quietly screaming with her mouth closed. Lup follows behind her new captain, smiling to herself.

[alucywarner]

~♥ PRIVACY PLEASE ♥~

[Okay, here we go. Here’s the thing. I’ve watched Moulin Rogue twice in less than twelve hours in preparation for this. I hope you’re not expecting gifs, because the myriad of emotions a certain someone will be feeling is not conducive for gifs. Okay.

So, when Lucy showed up to the Stove/Maddox place, we had a bright and shining Maddox, all excited until Lucy held out her copy of Moulin Rouge, and then we got a groan, and a ‘I really hoped you were gonna forget about that.’, to which Lucy replies ‘Nope, I’d never forget about Moulin Rouge’. So, she wasted no time in setting the thing up, and meanwhile Maddox was grumbling to himself on the couch.

As soon as the thing was beginning, and Nature Boy was being sung, she sat down beside him, she gave his shoulder a little shove.]

You’re gonna like it. Shut up.

Says you. [Is what he says with a lip up-turned in disgust, though he wraps an arm around her and pulls her close to his side through it.]

[Christian was now giving his introductory monologue, and, given how many times Lucy had seen this movie in the past, she was quietly quoting the thing under her breath, bUT, the words ‘The woman I loved is dead’ came from Christian’s mouth, and there was a scoff from Maddox.]

Oh, she dies. Great. Not only is it a musical, it’s a sob story musical. That’s awesome. [Sarcasm af, probably an eye roll.]

It’s a good story. Stop your judging.

~The love interest dies~~~ It’s a great story, Maddox~~~~. 

Watch the movie before I make you sit on the floor.

[A ‘hmph’ from Maddox as he settles further into the couch as if to say ‘Make me get on the floor. Just try it.’ But he does stop the talking (for the time being.) And off the movie goes into the introductions of the Argentinean and Toulouse, and the arguments of lyric changes, and job offers, and ‘Above all things, I believe in love’, all without a word from Maddox. 

But, as soon as the Green Fairy made her appearance, she could hear just the quietest ‘.. thefuck’ from Maddox, which made her giggle. 

Still, he watched silently, though tiny glances up to his face showed that his expression all throughout the introduction of the Moulin Rogue itself was one of pure confusion. Like, he didn’t know what to make of the guy with the crazy facial hair and ladies singing Patti Labelle songs. Which, no, he probably didn’t know what to make of it. 

Then the men started singing alongside the ladies, and she could feel him perk up.]

Is that... Nirvana? Are they singing Nirvana in this thing? [Another upturning of the lip.]

Yes, Maddox. It’s Nirvana.

This is sacrilege. 

It’s fine. Don’t be so musically pretentious. [Eye roll.]

[More dancing, and more dancing, and some can-can-ing, and some Christian moving around the place, and some Toulouse beckoning him, and then we have the Sparkling Diamond herself appearing on screen, singing about girls’ best friends, and all that. aND THEN, Narrator!Christian mentions the less savory character in this movie. There went his face. Maddox has something to say about this.]

Who’s that asshole, Lucy? He looks like a mole rat with a mustache. He looks stupid.

Christian’ll tell you if you stop talking~.

[’The Duke’ comes from Narrator!Christian’s mouth just as soon as Lucy says that.] ‘The Duke’. Sounds like a douche. I don’t like him.

[Lucy snorts, because boy does he have good judgment. Off goes more singing, and off goes ~Harold telling Satine about said Duke man, and there goes the mix-up with Christian and the Duke, and the dance time with the Christian man, all the sex-mix up talk, and the rest of the song, and doWN SHE GOES OFF THAT TRAPEZE, MY DUDE.]

Oh, cool. So, she’s, like, sick. Right. Got it. Great story so far, Luce.

I’m gonna kick your ass if you keep judging it before you’ve seen the whole thing, sweetie~.

[This shuts him up for a few more minutes, at least. Now we’re with the lovely couple up in the elephant, and Christian is being himself, and talking about poetry while Satine is talking about sex. Nervous af Christian, rolling on the floor Satine. ‘It’s a lil bit funny’ ya know.]

Elton John too. This movie has it all, doesn’t it?

It’s g r e a t.

[Now, Lucy loves this part of the movie (or any part where it’s overtly romantic, actually. Funny how she loves this romantic stuff so much when just three months ago she was scoffing about love to her brother. hm.), so she’s focusing real hard on it, probably with some doofy grin on, and looking all sparkly-eyed at the beautiful Ewan Mcgregor’s voice, and sighing at how BEAUTIFUL this scene is in general.

Maddox must have glanced down at her love-struck expression, because she heard an ‘eugh’, and then looked away from the screen to look at him.]

What? 

You like this? Enough to look like that?

It’s ~romantic, Maddox.

Romantic? [A scoff-laugh as he turns back to the screen.] Yeah. 

[She doesn’t respond because this little asshole wasn’t gonna ruin her favorite movie. So, it’s out that Christian’s not the Duke, and now the real Duke has come to chill, and it’s all fun and games trying to get Christian out of the room, but OOp, there’s the bodyguard, and you know the movie, Jerica, I can’t keep writing synopses. You know how it goes. The Duke leaves and comes back, and ohboy now we’re ~rehearsING~. And it’s that repetitive stuff, you know the deal, it’ll run for fifty years, and all that good stuff. And boy do I mean they say that a lot, because it’s effecting our pretentious snot on the couch.]

I think my brain is melting.

They have to sell the idea. 

Doesn’t stop my brain from melting. And you know what? This Duke guy is a giant creep. I don’t like him.

You’re not supposed to like him.

Well, I don’t. 

Shhhh.

[So, One Day I’ll Fly Away, and all of that. Then we’re onto Elephant Love Medley (AKA, fuck me up. Lucy too. Like I said, any romantic song gets her.) Lucy’s fully immersed, and maybe even leaning in a little bit, and then ‘you crazy fool. I won’t give into you.’. Guess who has something to add?]

Wow, it’s like a conversation with you. I can’t believe you’re in this movie.

Don’t mess up this part. I like this part.

[He doesn’t like this lack of attention on himself, tbh, but he’s gonna stay quiet, and watch the seen, and perhaps get a little immersed into it himself. Lucy’s leaned far forward now, and as soon as the fireworks are going off behind Christian and Satine, she’s crying real tears. It’s just too much, every time. (I sympathize.) This doesn’t escape Maddox’s notice, even though she’s leaning forward now.]

Are you... crying? Are you crying over that?

IT’S SWEET, ASSHOLE.

[Hands up.] Right. Sorry. [He starts pulling her back into his arms.] Come cry over here though, you wimp.

I hate you. [But she goes willingly.]

No ya don’t~.

[Elephant Love Medley has left us, and by this point, Maddox is maybe possibly just a little bit invested in the Satine and Christian relationship. Just a little bit, though. So, here, when we are with Zidler and The Duke, the air of ‘da fuck’ is rolling off of Maddox strong.]

BIND SATINE TO HIM? OH, REALLY? [The Duke’s rant goes on, and Lucy is amused that Maddox has reacted that way, considering he keeps trashing the movie.] Oh, he doesn’t like other people touching HIS things? HIS? Nope. Fuck this guy. He’s gross. I don’t like him.

You already said that~.

I’m just driving home the point. He’s a piece of shit. I don’t like him.

[Lucy just grins and rolls her eyes, because the strong reaction meant he was actually interested in the story. So, she was being proven right, and it was great. So, off the movie goes into the ~montage~ of sorts to show off all the gr8 make out opportunities, and just how blinD af The Duke is.

And onto the 8 o’ clock plans, and the supper oh boy, but she can’t make it to the supper, Duke. She’s got to reHEARSE~.]

That’s right. Ghost his ass.

Would you stop? [But she’s smiling and laughing, because she’s super-amused by all of this, if I didn’t say so before.]

Bye, asshole.

[Lucy decided to let him express himself however he wanted. Like, oh boy. So, there’s more making out, and there’s a Harry, and a Harry’s telling a Satine she’s being cray, and all that. Here comes Maddox again.]

Don’t be a little bitCH, HAROLD. [Lucy snorts a laugh as good ol’ Harry is telling Satine to end the things.] She’s not actually gonna, like, break it off, is she? Luce, that’s bullshit.

I think you should just watch the movie. 

uGH.

[Satine is singing and coughing, and our good friend Narrator!Christian has come back, talking about ‘last, fatal days’, and as soon as those words are heard, Maddox’s head drops into his hands, with an even louder ‘uGGGGH’ sound coming from him. Lucy pats his back and then pulls him back up.]

It’ll be alright, hon~.

This movie is fucking dumb.

Mhmmm.

[Now here comes the second worst scene in this whole movie, and you know what it is. Zidler and all his brilliant lies, my dude. Lucy can feel Maddox tensing up beside her, and when she looks up at him, there is nothing but disgust on that face. (Same, Maddox.) It only worsened the further the number goes on.]

I’m gonna vomit. Tell me when it’s over. [He puts a pillow in front of his face. Not joking. Lucy takes the pillow away.]

Don’t be a baby. It’s almost over now.

I can’t even look at this guy’s face.

[And then it’s over, and Maddox is breathing a sigh of relief until the doctor is on the screen saying the bad things. He’s up in arms again.]

He’s nOT EVEN gonna tell her she’s dyING? Selfish asshole, I SWEAR. Dumb ass movie characters in a dumb ass movie. [Irritated sigh af.]

[Next scene af, cold stabs of jealousy, Satine, ‘we have to end it’.]

She is actually doing it are you kidding me. [’i have to sleep with the duke’] You do not have to sleep with the fuCKING DUKE.

Maddox, shhh. Listen to the movie.

You want me to listen to this buLL?

Pay attention~.

[So, he does, though huffy, and now it’s the other scene to make me and Lucy rip hearts out of our chests, and Christian is singing, and now there are loving glances exchanged across rehearsal.]

I’m getting whiplash. Oh my God.

I told you to pay attention~.

[The song is being sung, and Lucy’s giving it her full attention, and Maddox seems to be doing the same thing. He actually looks... interested now? Like, he’s fully enraptured in these lyrics, and what’s going on on the screen, and like he’s deep in thought, and his eyes are SET ON THE SCREEN.

Then Nini has to come in and RUIN THE WHOLE THING. ‘penniless writer, OH I MEAN SITAR PLAYER HUHUHUH’. Maddox sits up.]

THAT. BITCH.

[Full-on laugh from Lucy now as the number ends,  and The Duke starts in on his whole bit, and then Christian says the thing. ‘shE DOESN’T LOVE U’.]

FUCKING RIGHT. TELL HIS ASS. [the duke is going onnnn.] This guy is a dick head. Why do you  liKE THIS MOVIE, LUCY?

I told you. It’s a great movie, Maddox.

It’s a fucking infuriating movie is what it is. I swear to Christ, if the mole rat so much as gets to touch her...

[He trails off, shaking his head. Again, Lucy smiles, because she knows that this all means he’s feeling something about the story. (Even if he does keep interrupting her favorite movie.) So guess what scene it’s time for now??? You know the one. 

IT BEGINS, and for a second time, Lucy can feel Maddox tense up beside her. So, she looks up as the Argentinean begins to sing ‘rOOOOXANNE’, and she had never seen him look that MAD in all the time she’d known him. Like, teeth and fists clenched, and all that good stuff. She’s full-on worried about whether or not he’s gonna burst a blood vessel, or something. Because, I’m telling you. The boy is pissed. 

And as Christian starts to sing, and there are flashes to Satine and the Duke, a cushion is thrown at the TV.]

FUCK THIS STUPID FUCKING MOVIE. 

Maddox, it’s fine. I promise. [She pats his shoulder.]

It’s not even. [And he pulls her back closer into his side.]

It is. [Maybe she realizes he’s projecting onto this a little bit. Just maybe.]

[So, you know what goes on here, and Maddox is wincing, and he doesn’t want to look as it kEEPS GOING, and internally he probably looks a lot like Christian does towards the end of this number.]

OH MY GOD. IS IT EVER GONNA END?? I CAN’T LOOK AT IT ANYMORE.

It’s almost over.

[SO THANKS, IT’S OVER. Maddox slumps, because he’s been tense that whole time.] Oh thank Christ, he knocked him out. [Breath of relief, and Lucy leans on his shoulder, because yup that totally wasn’t taxing on his emotions at all.] Have I mentioned how fucking stupid this movie is?

A couple of times, yeah.

Just checking.

[Next scene, there is a Maddox looking probably more invested than he has through the whole movie, and Lucy is also able to pay attention for the first time in a few minutes, but she could hear him mumbling things like ‘oh what the fuck even is gonna happen now?’ and ‘yeah, running away. bet that’s gonna work’. And once the Duke has given the threat about Christian, there is an outburst of ‘THIS ASSHOLE’, but he immediately settles back down.

Off to Harry telling Satine all of the good stuff, like ‘someone gon get killed’ and ‘oh boy you’re dying’, and then ‘hurt him to save him’, and all that.]

Hurt him to save him? This is buLLSHIT. Let him make his owN FUCKING CHOICE? Harold is a fucKING SHIT.

[Lucy can’t find it in her to answer, because, well, yeah-- he’s not wrong, but oh WELL, just let the poor boy do his ranting and raving.]

Lucy. She’s not doing this shit. She’s not-- this is fucking dumb. 

I know. She just doesn’t think she has another choice.

She should’ve just let it be his choice.

She loves him. She doesn’t want him to get hurt.

Hmph.

[He turns back to the movie, and Christian makes his plans to go on back to the good ol’ MR.]

GET HER, YOU IDIOT. FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

[Fun show time, and all that, and more grumbles and grimaces from Maddox. Another cushion is thrown at the screen when the Duke, from the audience, insists ‘she’s mine’, and Lucy moves any other thing around Maddox away from him so he can’t throw anything else. 

Christian is with Satine now, ‘pay his bill’, and all that, and Maddox throws his hands up.]

Jesus, what a fucking MORON. [All that fun continues.] I’m gonna scream. I’m gonna.

Shhhh.

[So Christian and Satine are revealed on the stage, and there’s the ‘paid my whore’ bit.]

This is. so. stupid. 

[And on goes Christian, and the show must go on, eh? Satine starts singing~.]

It’s the fucking song. [His head goes into his hands again.]

[So that beauty happens, and we have an enraptured Maddox and Lucy again, but then the gun is getting flung everywhere, and Maddox is on edge again.]

Oh, no they’re not. That’s not gonna happen. Lucy. [He looks at her, she avoids looking at him, since she knOWS what happens.] Nope. It’s not. [The duke now has the gun, stalking up upon the the stage.] I’m gonna throw something again. [And then Zidler punches him, yup.]

Harry is gOOD FOR SOMETHING. FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

[The curtain falls, and Maddox is in a false sense of security here. And then the bad thing happens.]

Hold on SHIT.

[Lucy has already started crying, since she knows what’s coming, so she’s not talking to Maddox, and it’s like she’s almost forgotten she was with anyone else. She’s just sobbing to herself, because DAMN THIS MOVIE, i’m crying just writing about it. I hate. 

So, there it ends with ‘the grEEEatest thing u’ll eeeeever learn is jUST to love and be loOOVed in reee turrnnnn. And Lucy’s a heap, but brought back to earth by the credits rolling, and by sniffing sounds beside her. She looks over to her boy, and does she see a tear being wiped. You betcha.]

Are you... Maddox, are you crying?

[Like he’s guilty, because he is. He reaches up to get any trace of dumb tears off his face.] NO. No, that was-- I’m not crying. It was just stupid. It was so stupid. I hated it. 

No, you are crying. Ohhhh. [She’s teasing him, tbh.]

Fuck. OFF. That was the worst thing I’ve ever fucking seen.

It’s alright, sweetie~.

It’s fucking not. That was-- traumatizing. I never want to see that again.

It’s just a movie, Maddox~. 

Give me just, like, five fucking minutes to process what I just saw, okay? [His head is in his hands AGAIN.]

Ooookay~.

[projectsoleil]

Bit the Apple | Papillon | Trial 6.9 (AYYY) | Re: Everyone Is Here Now! But Rev's Evil! | Attn: Rev, Nate

Despondent.

That’s the word to best describe Papillon in the beginning. They feel a million miles away from the trial room as the story continues to unfold. They hear Abe and Shougo tell them off for giving up so easily, they see Fergus struggling to break free of his cage, they feel the sorrow in the air as Red and Leo realize they regret their decisions.

And they’re not alone.

Papillon’s regretting their decisions too — all of the ones leading up to this moment. They never should’ve left their house the day they met Nate, never should’ve Uploaded to hunt him down after they couldn’t get him out of their head, never should’ve agreed to come with him to this battle royale tournament.

Because if they never left their house that day, they would’ve never learned what it felt like to have a home…

…And to lose him.

They know they should pull themselves together (god, why do Abe and Shougo have to be the ones who are right?), but they can’t figure out how. They’re too far from the room, too lost in their haze of grief to find their way back—

But returning to their body has never been a graceful process for Papillon.

So much to no one’s surprise, this time isn’t any different.

(One of the downsides of Upload is how jarring it feels to wake up.

One moment they’re virtual, the next they’re jolting awake. Although they no longer shriek from the mental shock, the intensity has never dulled. Every time they return, their chest still heaves like they’ve just run a marathon. All their senses are uncomfortably sharp for the first minute or so too, a byproduct of the fight-or-flight type reaction their body has to becoming conscious again.

They have yet to get used to the sensation. Because even though they’re merely waking up, Papillon has wondered more than once if this what it feels like to come back to life.)

When all hell breaks loose as help arrives, Papillon feels a shock all too similar to the one they experience when returning to their body. It takes their breath away, then returns it the next moment. It looks and sounds and feels like everything is happening all at once, but they don’t mind the intensity.

After all, it’s just a sign they’re alive.

…And thankfully, so is Nate.

They don’t have the opportunity to call out to him though, because the moment there’s a lull in the action, they’re swept off their feet— literally. And soon after they notice everyone else is in a similar gravitational predicament, the Boss arrives.

Celestial Revolution’s entrance is impressive, objectively speaking, but Papillon isn’t any mood to let her know as much. Surely it’d just make her ego even bigger (which, now that they see her like this, is probably massive enough to have a gravitational pull of its own). So they instead take a moment to spite Rev by calling out to Nate first… and also because making of her somehow (which is their preferred method of spite) could very well lead to Papillon getting tossed into the electrical currents of their gay baby jail enclosure.

“Hey, Nate! You can’t take a fucking second from kicking ass to say hi to us? I thought you ate shit, you guys took so long to get here. Eugh, I’m never letting you fuck up evil robots without me again.”

There’s more they want to say — so much more, actually — but they focus their attention on Rev for now. They’re not sure whether they prefer having to reason with someone as eerily composed as her or emotional live wires like Red and Leo. Neither have been easy to deal with. But since she seems willing (and almost eager) to discuss the true nature of this project, they decide to ask questions while they can.

“So uh, not to burst your egotistical, Elon Musk-esque space freak bubble, but how are you so sure the Ultimate Life Form will listen to you? If you say some cliche bullshit like, ‘They’ll listen to me because I created them,’ I swear to god I’ll lose my fucking chill.

“I know we didn’t talk one-one-one a lot — and honestly, thank god we didn’t — but you must’ve heard from someone that we found out people’s souls or consciousnesses or whatever the fuck you choose to call them are in the creatures here, yeah? The things we fought in the gauntlet had actual memories and shit of people who were here. I’d Uploaded into them, and instead of a normal mainframe, I’d end up in like someone’s mind palace.”

Papillon, please don’t use the phrase ‘mind palace’ when talking to an evil genius mastermind about something actually worrisome.

They scowl at Celestial Revolution, looking more disgusted than angry.

“And the same goes for the fucked up ULF prototype Leo let escape. I decided to try Uploading into it and didn’t last long because there was so much going on. There were so many fucked up memories and voices and— and just a ton of remnants of, like, actual people. And that was the goddamn prototype.

“Did you know some part of people’s souls or whatever get put in those things when their powers and DNA get inserted too? Was that accounted for? If so, I’d love to hear all about your evil little failsafe for your little evil project to get the alien-senpais to notice you. ‘Cause not gonna lie, I bet the ULF won’t even listen to a fucking word the aliens have to say, let alone anything that comes from your mouth.”

Papillon huffs in annoyance as they finish their rant. Their heart might be racing from how terrifying this situation is and how much more terrifying the outcome may be, but now that Nate and the others are here, they feel they’ve found their footing again.

…Metaphorically speaking, of course.

[kjwongsbrain]

I didn't know I wanted 'eugh'.

I find myself writing a lot about technology these days. I think I've aged considerably in the past couple of years. Technologically, I mean. I mean, technologically representative-ly. I mean, technologically metaphorically representative-ly.

Okay. Wait.

You know how there's always a stigmatic depiction of the age difference in people based upon our reaction to technology? As an how young people take new technology and immerse themselves in it and the old people are outside looking in and criticizing them and the new technology in their hands and how it will bring about the end of the world?

Yes. I'm now that old person. And I think I've grown into it way quicker than I'd thought.

But I still like to maintain that I have techno-apathy. I'm 'whatever' about it, and that allows me to still keep using it, but with a skeptical eye. But as technology continues to grow, I find myself being more and more guarded in respect to its involvement in my life. I recently refused to use my social media account to sign into Dominoes Pizza's website to place an order. It might sound ludicrous to some, but I don't want that information given to a pizza place. If you call up the pizza place and order a pizza they don't ask you what your Facebook profile is and go scrolling through it to see what pages you've liked. So why should I just give it to them on the account of the convenience of ordering a pizza online?

Honestly I would've never bothered with online ordering the moment they requested I login with my social media page. The problem was that the phone lines were busy when I called, and I was hungry. But I do get the distinct feeling that they're not putting as many resources into picking up phone orders as they did maybe five years ago. Safe to say I expect no more phoning in pizzas in the next couple of years. Just like how AirAsia doesn't have a number you can call anymore, so too will the pizza place be unreachable by cable.

Cloud pizza. That's what I'll call it.

Another case of my techno-apathy slowly turning into techno-fear (if I don't keep it in check) was a reaction to recent VR related news. As a side note, I do think VR is going to find its place very soon and it isn't going to be the homes of the masses. Nope. VR theme parks are becoming a thing and I really think that's where they belong. Just the same way how 4D cinemas are not a major way in which you expect to consume your entertainment, VR will thrive as a single serving experience.

Coming back to my point, the reaction in question was someone questioning why some people, me included, looked at a picture of a room full of heads strapped into VR goggles - all looking in a single direction and completely oblivious to the physical world around them - and felt shivers down our spines. Some were even poking fun at the 'old people' who were once again shaking their fists at technology.

Well I'm now one of those old people.

Some time ago, when Facebook first introduced it's 'Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening (YourNameHere)' messages right at the top of the feed, I jokingly wrote a response telling Facebook to piss off because I've seen those movies and I know how it ends. And that got me thinking a bit about this entire technological debacle and how science fiction has kind of shaped my techno-apafear. You see, science fiction to me has always been a genre for the thinking man. It's why I didn't care for it when I was a lot younger. But more than just being intellectually stimulating, science fiction also forces its viewers and readers to ask questions. Sometimes these questions help distance us from the shackles of 'what is' and help us continue to live in the 'what will be', pushing our minds to chase after the possibilities of the future. Sometimes these questions serve as examinations of ourselves, bringing us closer to our humanity. And sometimes they even serve as precautionary tales of the pitfalls of the exponential growth of technological advances.

And I feel that the more you educate yourself with science and science fiction, the faster you become an 'old person'. My willingness to embrace new technology has waned significantly and my caution in using what I already have is at alert level 'orange'.

All of this started me on a journey of processing a collection of thoughts on the role of social media in the world of today. I've been struggling with this train of thought for a while because it's never quite come out as one coherent idea, but rather bits and pieces that seem to all fit together in some way. It's like I'm at the stage in a detective movie when Mr Ace Detective has got all the clues already on his desk but has yet to piece it all together to reveal Mr Bad Man.

I've sat down to write this thing thrice already and I've never been satisfied with the way its turned out. So I'm having another go at it and if you are actually reading this, lucky number four then.

When Twitter was first introduced, it was met with some rather harsh criticism. Naturally 'old people' were in an uproar about how communication was being reduced down to 140 characters. Even now with Facebook's stupid large font concept there seems to be this idea that shorter messages are somehow more important. The shorter thought is the one that ought to get more attention, and the shorter thought is all anyone outside of yourself cares about. Naturally some resistance to the concept of short-thought-Twitter was founded. Heck, someone even started a service called 'twitlonger' which allowed people to type 'long tweets' and instantly link them into a twitter post.

The thought of that today is rather ridiculous because it's simply defeating the purpose of Twitter altogether. The idea of Twitter was to convey a genuine message in its most condensed form. It wasn't that short thoughts were more important, it was that deeper thoughts could be condensed. Remove the rambling. Remove the unnecessary flirtation with unimportant details. Get to the heart of the matter or say nothing at all. That was Twitter's power.

But still, to this day, Twitter is filled with whimsy. In fact it started with mostly whimsy. 140 characters tended to attract the whimsy more than it attracted the poetic. But somewhere along the way Twitter also became a platform for the real and necessary. Somewhere along the way, and regrettably in my opinion, Twitter became a legitimate source of information.

I don't know specifically where it started and how it snowballed into what it is today, but I think it had something to do with unsavory events around the world and unsavory news that fewer and fewer wanted to broadcast on national television. What resulted was Twitter becoming a legitimate platform for news. The speed at which a breaking news story could reach trending worldwide was phenomenal and far quicker than any ordinary news portal could achieve. This allowed news to bypass censors, bypass ordinary restrictions that filtered unsavory news before handing it out to the consumer. In a way, Twitter news was more 'real'. And that made it more powerful.

Actual news portals eventually turned to Twitter. Government offices turned to Twitter. World leaders turned to Twitter.

And all the rest of social media followed. Social platforms became the main news portals for a large number of people. I'd worryingly say for most people. People now get news from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and any other heavily populated social media platform.

There's two large problems with this.

One is that the whimsy never went away. With the growth of social media as a legitimate information portal, the odd slurry of widely varying stories only became stranger and more kaleidoscopic. You would be reading one article about the appointment of a new member of cabinet and then scroll down to see a picture of a baby-shaped cake. One moment a story about Syrian refugees, the next a story about how coconuts cure cancer.

The violent mix of whimsy and serious makes the two almost indistinguishable in its presentation - a fact that some even capitalize on. And if whimsy and serious are treated the same because they share the same platform, then one of two things will happen - the whimsy is taken seriously, or the serious is taken whimsically. Both of those things are a problem.

The second problem is the fundamental way in which social media works. In an ordinary news portal, news is curated by people. While this has the unfortunate problem of bias in reporting, it does mean that there is proper care and thought that goes into what news stories get printed, what goes up front, what goes further back, what gets special mention, and what doesn't. There is an active process of weighing information for its importance to the general populace. I've addressed the bias already so let's leave that aside for a second. Journalism is a responsibility.

What happens with social media platforms is news becomes subject to the automatic algorithmic that makes each social media site turn. All news is subjected to popularity rather than factual importance. Worse now is how each and every thing you view on the internet is curated to your personal tastes and history. All of this is done automatically. No human being weighed in and decided what news stories Twitter and Facebook should circulate as its 'top story' for that day or week.

When you combine these two problems, you have a rather catastrophic picture of people and news. And this also explains the new phenomenon known as 'echo chambers' where news gets shared on social media only to the people who already agree with it. That piece of news gets shared over and over and over among the people who agree with it, inflating its importance and significance no matter what the rest of the people think. And so when a story becomes shared sixty million times, no matter what it's about, it's instantly the most important piece of news on social media.

The amalgamation of all these things can be seen in Buzzfeed.

Let's not go two ways about this - Buzzfeed is full of shit. A 'news' site that has a history of targeted advertising, native advertising, and just generally flooding your social media pages with stupid idiotic lists of shit nobody should really care about. Nobody in their right mind should ever care what Buzzfeed has to say, not when they're publishing a quiz to tell what kind of a potato you are. But because Buzzfeed has a tendency to be one of the most shared things on the internet, people get confused about its prominance versus its importance.

And then Buzzfeed started reporting legitimate news. Or rather, articles that it claimed to be news. Once all the circumstances were in place, it was only natural that people were now treating a Buzzfeed article about the corruption of the political sector as a legitimate piece of journalism. This, from the news site that also published an article on a cat with eyebrows.

This is the problem I'm talking about. The impossible mix of whimsy and serious that is now our social media. And as more and more people neglect actual news reporting in their daily lives and consume news and information solely from social media, this problem is only going to get worse.

This is why I'm so guarded about my social media platforms. This is why I don't like any pages, I don't connect my social media account to any other site, I don't bother clicking on any news article on social media unless it's from a news portal that I know that I can trust (btw, if you aren't at least reading the Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, The Guardian, then you're wasting your time), and I don't treat social media as a platform for sharing news stories.

All that being said, here's my real solution. I think we should bring the whimsy back to social media. Let's all return to a time and place when news was found on news sites and you went to social media to see pictures of your friends' cats and that was it. That way, when a Buzzfeed article shows up on there, you'll laugh at it, even it if pretends to be reporting about impending war from North Korea.

All in all I think there has to be newfound vigilance in identifying and segregating what we choose to consume on social media platforms. While Facebook and Twitter can be powerful tools for getting the word out there faster and more efficiently than ever before, I feel that those are roles that must continue to be fulfilled by different avenues. The whimsy and serious are at a far too dangerous mix and the shared consumption of the two is not going to be healthy for a generation moving forward in the technological age.

It's like eating milk and fish at the same time. They shouldn't go together at all, but it's all you've been eating. At some point, you're going to have a big shit.

Maybe part of this is my techno-apafear speaking. Maybe my caution towards social media is unfounded. If you riffle through my posts about technology you might consider that I'm getting more and more paranoid as time goes by. But as I said, sometimes science fiction serves as precautionary tales warning us about the damages that our love affair with technology can bring about.

This is one of the reasons why I love the TV show Black Mirror.

(Oh yes, this entire post is really just a Black Mirror review. Now you know why I said that the train of thought was so difficult to put together.)

The name Black Mirror is one of the best titles I've seen in a while. In just two words, it's set the tone for the terrifying and satirical nature of the program. The black mirror of our technological devices reflect our humanity more than anything and each and every story that Black Mirror creates is ultimately a story on human nature more than it is about technology. That's how science fiction has always thrived - not as a technological display, but as a medium for pursuing our deeper humanity.

I was chuffed to bits when I learned that Black Mirror was returning for 12 more episodes thanks to the new gods of television, Netflix. The first seven episodes of Black Mirror have served as some of the best television I've ever seen in my lifetime and so I was more than eager for more.

And with that as a comparison, the new season of Black Mirror fell a lot more than a bit short. Their stories were still structured in the same way - here is a new technology that's somehow become ubiquitous in this world and here's how it's going to ruin the lives of our characters. In a way, I feel that Black Mirror encompasses my techno-apathy more than most other pieces of science fiction. The stories mostly end in a rather unappetizing manner, depicting the dangers and woes of technology, but in order for it to get there, the people must've embraced it at some point.

Take the first episode of the new season for example. In Nosedive, everything and everyone the people are connected with are linked in this social network, giving each other stars. It's painfully obvious where the story ultimately goes, and it's terrifying to think that entire lives are governed by this social rating technology. But in order for that technology to have taken over every aspect of the world, for it to govern the way infrastructure operates, surely the people there had to have accepted the technology and enjoyed it for a period of time before it unraveled. If the technology was evil from the very get go, it would not have pervaded the world as much as it did.

So while most of the storytelling in the new Black Mirror takes the shape of the old episodes, I can't help but feel rather let down by the new six episodes. I struggled for a while to figure out why I didn't like them as much as I did the first and it really came down to this idea of 'eugh'. The first seven episodes of Black Mirror were masters of 'eugh'. The new six are unsatisfyingly satisfying. Allow me to explain.

There's been a word I've used to describe Black Mirror when recommending to friends. While it is truly terrifying from a science fiction perspective and honestly one of the best made television shows of recent years, the word I sell it on is 'insidious'. Black Mirror episodes don't end on any catharsis whatsoever. They don't see it necessary in resolving an issue with a happy or even tragic ending. The endings leave you feeling gross and, well, 'eugh'. That's the insidious nature of Black Mirror. It lulls you into thinking that the story can end either with conflict resolution or tragic acceptance, but then it swings hard into a middle ground where you don't know what to think anymore and you don't know who the bad guys and good guys are and you don't know who you were rooting for anymore.

That's 'eugh'. And that's brilliant. And that's missing from the new episodes. I didn't know that's what I wanted from a TV series, but now that it's missing, I want it back. The new episodes tend to 'finish'. They have conclusive ends that don't really open up for interpretation or questioning the way good science fiction often does. And it's left me feeling that Black Mirror has lost its mojo. It's been unable to give me an 'eugh' punch in the gut for the entire season.

A prime example of 'eugh' was Fifteen Million Credits. The end of that episode was perhaps the most 'eugh' I've ever seen. Compare that with Nosedive and the latter is almost like a fairy tale with a happy ending. That's not what I watch Black Mirror for. I watch Black Mirror to be ruined. I watch it to be challenged. I watch it to question myself.

And so while it remains as good TV, New Black Mirror doesn't quite hold the candle to Old Black Mirror. And as such, I will refer to them as two separate things. NBM which will stand for New Black Mirror or Netflix Black Mirror, and then Black Mirror.

So there you go. If you've reached the end, might I congratulate you on reading something this long and this incoherent. You're more than three thousand words in and if you've somehow managed to get through it without whining, congrats! You're now officially, according to the Dale-Chall readability index, a college graduate reader.

Cheers.