#but it’s less funny when you are trapped with a bunch of monsters hiding around every corner

[lemondropletters]

y’all DO NOT trick LD Curtain into playing a horror video game because he WILL get his revenge by trapping you into a VR headset of said horror game while you’re sleeping…

[i-watch-too-many-movies]

5 Favorite First Viewings of July 2021

Quick note: Hi everyone, I'm back, things have honestly been getting better for me, and I'm glad to be on this site full of cinephiles, people that are too horny, and cinephiles that are too horny. I'll be more active on here. But anyway, let's talk about some movies.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) (dir. Russ Meyer)

CW: Abortion mention

What a picture. What a gorgeous, sexy, horrifying slice of what Hollywood and star life can do to a bunch of bright-eyed young people looking for success. Also is a critique of how macho nature can ruin friendships and romantic relationships with total ease. I was obsessed with the scene transitions, like Pet pouring pancake mix onto a plate after the abortion scene, or Kelly singing after someone screams before their murder in the opening scene.

Great, campy flick with exceptional music too.

Deep Cover (1992) (dir. Bill Duke)

Laurence Fishburne plays Russell Stevens, a Cincinnati police officer who hopes to do well by the community, to make a difference. He’s traumatized by the death of his substance-abusing father, and wants to make sure that he can help the people of his own town. He goes undercover on assignment as a drug dealer, where his boss orders him to take down the kingpin. Stevens realizes the police’s own failings while on assignment. The racist abuse he takes from Agent Carver, and the realization that the police department is protecting drug kingpins like Gallegos and Barbossa. Giving drugs to Black kids and Latinx kids so there will be less of them. The cops are no different than the drug kingpins looking to make filthy amounts of money.

Fishburne’s performance is excellent, as Stevens feels he has to maintain a stone face so he doesn’t get caught by Jason or Barbossa or any of his cronies, but also he maintains a stone face to try and hide his emotion, his trauma. But when he gets pissed, Fishburne acts it beautifully, as is when he has to deliver a funny quip to counter Jason’s douchebaggery. And the production design, holy fuck, the sets and the lighting.

A perfect neo-noir for the HW Bush years, arguably one of the most timeless commentaries on the era, as well as the police as a whole.

Fast Five (2011) (dir. Justin Lin)

I was torn between including this or Furious 7, but I ultimately went with Fast Five because it felt like an important turning point in the series, it's a great heist film, and it reached the same chaotic highs and genuinely excellent filmmaking that I had been waiting for since 2 Fast and Tokyo Drift.

Fast Five opens where Fast & 4ious left off. Dom is hauled away to prison on a bus. Mia and Brian drive in their high-tech cars and knock the bus over, helping Dom escape. The title drops. Fast Five. It’s such an intense yet short action scene, and dropping the title immediately after it lets the viewer know that this movie is not fucking around. It’s arguably gonna be more intense and insane than the previous one.

And it is. The filmmakers made the decision to use a lot more practical stunt work for the film, and as a result, it leads to, so far, the best action in the entire series, since 2 Fast and Tokyo Drift. It’s not just how it’s shot or edited, it’s the geography of the locations, the rooftop chase echoes the rooftop chase of Jackie Chan’s masterwork Police Story, particularly the way each character bounces from top to top.

And of course, there’s the silliest moment in the movie, the one that matches the intensity and kineticism of a film like 2 Fast, which is driving the Reyes’ bank vault throughout the street, getting chased by corrupt cops.

I know we make fun of Vin Diesel for saying “family” all the time in these films, but there’s a reason we remember him saying all of these impassioned monologues. Because he’s unbelievably sincere, and has so much love in his heart for every single person in the room. Anytime he delivers a speech to any of them, it’s genuinely heartwarming.

This is the film that finally shows La Familia in their best environment, which is working together, in a movie genre that allows them to work together, which is a heist film. And a great one at that.

Last Days (2005) (dir. Gus Van Sant)

CW: Mention of suicide

Several films have been made about legendary rock artist Kurt Cobain, and for good reason. He is one of the most tragic figures in rock and roll. A tortured genius who has written and performed classic song after classic song with his band Nirvana. He was called the voice of a generation, and helped change the face of mainstream alternative rock music as we know it. But with that fame, and all of those expectations came a worsening depression and further drug abuse, and his eventual death. But most of the films about Kurt Cobain ask one question which gets under my skin way too much:

“Who REEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLY killed Kurt Cobain?”

It was him. He did. And it’s okay, I’m sad too. Thinking that Kurt Cobain was murdered is completely ignoring the depression that he faced. And despite Last Days being more inspired by the death of Cobain rather than actually about it, it feels much more honest than the conspiracy documentaries on his death, wanting to leech off of his dead body.

This is the last installment of Gus Van Sant’s “Death Trilogy”, the previous two installments being Gerry (2001), and Elephant (2003). While I have not seen Gerry, I have seen Elephant though, and love that film for its minimalist, raw nature, and its boldness for not romanticizing the school shooter or the lives they had taken. Last Days falls into that trap once, as I don’t agree with the shot of Blake’s soul climbing up a ladder, that always struck me as cheesy in a film that is anything but.

Last Days is similar to Elephant in terms of the way it is filmed. Its usage of long takes, and still shots of characters doing various things, such as Blake playing his guitar behind a drum set. The way these moments are shot is similar to a Chantal Akerman film, particularly Jeanne Dielman. Where the acts of the mundane are the stars of the film. Blake wanders around an empty house, and the viewer can feel the pain, not just through Michael Pitt’s acting, but from the house itself. Its decay, its paint peeling from the walls, from the soft glow of the lamp that lights his face.

I say this is the most honest film about Kurt Cobain, because, despite the characters technically being fictional (the main character who looks, walks, and acts like Cobain is named Blake), this film focuses on the mental state of a person before they eventually take their own life. They’re still working, still making music, still trying to talk to friends and bandmates, but the depression lingers on. Not once does this film try to make you believe that someone else killed him, because you can see the signs of his own suicide taking place just through the film’s excellent cinematography by Harris Savides, showing his mental state only growing worse through the production design.

And it’s empathetic with him. There’s no judgement for leaving rehab, there’s no finger-wagging at him or the people he was with, there’s just a silent prayer at the end of the film, hoping that he is in a better place than he was.

Sometimes you don’t need to show every event that led you to where you are, all you can show is the moment, which also makes this better than most biopics as well, as it never feels messy or muddled, just showing one moment of Blake/Kurt’s life.

I really loved this film, and I’ll be writing about it in full soon.

The Village (2004) (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

The Cracked.com/Channel Awesome audience stuck in 2012 will tell you that this was the beginning of the end for Shyamalan. That this was when people stopped taking him seriously, that this was when he became more of a punchline because of his twist endings.

But why?

The Village was released in 2004, deep in the Bush administration, during the early stages of the Iraq War. The leaders of the time were talking about imaginary boogeymen, terrorists that would attack the civilians if they could. Because of 9/11, politicians could get away with these false ideas with the majority of Americans fully believing them. The boogeymen in The Village are “The People We Don’t Speak Of”, monsters attracted by the color red. Yet we find out that they are all costumes made by the Elders of the land, designed to prevent people from going outside the land. They rule by fear disguised as love. They’ve gone through their own traumas through the deaths of their family members, but they’ve decided to completely abandon the lives that they’ve had and have their children living lies.

9/11 impacted American life by teaching citizens to live primarily by fear, to not trust anyone but their own people. And yet, post-9/11, all that increased was not “coming together”, but hate crimes against South Asian people. The rage white Americans had felt led to conservative politicians pushing fear-mongering agendas, and said white Americans blindly accepted. The outside world was progressing, but too many people were fine with living with further conservative politics only regressing American life further and further back, all for the illusion of safety. Meanwhile, the only threats to them were not the brown citizens outside of America they were so afraid of, but the white elders, the white politicians.

The Village explores these fears so eloquently, all while having a terrifying atmosphere, an enchanting score, and brilliant sound design. I enjoyed this movie very much.

Other viewings I enjoyed:

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) (dir. Mike Judge) (re-watch)

Blow Out (1981) (dir. Brian de Palma) (re-watch)

Clueless (1995) (dir. Amy Heckerling) (re-watch)

Furious 7 (2015) (dir. James Wan)

The Long Goodbye (1973) (dir. Robert Altman)

Lupin III: The First (2019) (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)

Unbreakable (2000) (dir. M. Night Shyamalan) (re-watch)

Velvet Goldmine (1998) (dir. Todd Haynes)

The Visit (2015) (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

[theradioghost]

So I’ve realized recently that I actually really really like podcasts when my audio processing isn’t acting up (thanks tma!) and was wondering what recs you have for completed podcasts. I’m cool with basically any genre and theme, though I would appreciate a warning for tragedy. Thanks for your time!

Of course! I’ll put this one under a cut just so the length is a bit less ridiculous.

Some of my favorite completed shows are

Wolf 359 – a scifi comedy about four squabbling coworkers on a malfunctioning, isolated space station which then takes a hard right into a spectacular, heartwrenching drama. Not a tragedy, but many tears are shed when listening. Probably one of the best podcasts out there tbqh.

Ars Paradoxica – a modern physicist accidentally invents time travel, landing her back at the start of the Cold War and changing the course of history forever. The creators literally described it as “a tragedy” and they weren’t lying, although the finale is sort of hopefully bittersweet.

The Hidden Almanac – a grouchy professor in a plague doctor mask offers bite-sized pieces of history and hagiography from his fantastical world as well as gardening advice, occasionally interrupted and/or dragged off on unwilling shenanigans by his tequila-loving accidental necromancer best friend coworker. Fantasy writer/artist Ursula Vernon and her husband put this 4-minute show out three times a week for SEVEN YEARS, and it’s funny and cozy and poetic and can be found in full here, as there are too many episodes for most podcatchers to display.

Alice Isn’t Dead – lesbian Americana road-trip horror. A cross-country trucker searches for her missing wife while monsters and conspiracies pursue her across the vast empty and abandoned spaces of America. Actually also exists in novel form.

The Bright Sessions – records from the office of Dr. Bright, a therapist who specializes in people with strange and secret abilities. However, her patients aren’t the only ones with secrets. Personally this show never completely absorbed me like some others did, but the character writing is genuinely amazing. The story obviously also deals a lot with mental illness and some other difficult topics and content.

Our Fair City – the eight-season saga of the inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic underground city ruled over by the remnants of an insurance company, featuring mole people, lightning-harvesting sky sailors, giant ants, and a found family of mad scientists among others. Part comedy, part drama, all anticapitalist satire. You kind of have to give it a couple of seasons to find its stride (this was one of the very first shows in the podcast-based audio drama revival) but it is absolutely worth it. Disclaimer that while I am on the final season of the show I have not quite finished it yet.

Jarnsaxa Rising – a unique scifi-fantasy hybrid, in which a vengeful Norse giantess escapes imprisonment with the goal of destroying the gods and bringing about Ragnarok, only to find herself in a post-climate-change dystopian future.

Glasgow Ghost Stories – a Scottish woman begins noticing the many ghosts inhabiting the streets of her city; but the ghosts have begun to notice her too, and not all of them are friendly. Pigeons are involved.

Big Data – an odd little heist comedy about a rogue journalist investigating a spectacular crime in which the “seven keys to the internet” are stolen, leading to a story about hacking in which no actual hacking is involved. There are two fun side notes to it: one, everything that happens in it could technically happen in real life. Two, it involves an absurd amount of cameos from other well-known podcasts (and also Taika Waititi?), which you don’t need to get to follow the story but which make it kind of hilarious on a whole other level when you listen to those shows.

I Am In Eskew – a surreal, intense, disturbingly poetic horror about a man trapped in a shifting, malevolent, impossible city, and a woman on the outside trying to find him. Extremely good but I do recommend thoroughly checking the trigger warnings on this one. (Surprisingly non-tragic finale, although not a typical “happy ending.”)

The Alexandria Archives – half comedy and half horror, in the form of a late-night radio show at Alexandria University, on the edge of North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp. Half of each episode is a standalone cosmic horror story set in and around the town of Alexandria. The other half features the antics of the university’s students, including the host MW and her friends who are definitely Canadian exchange students, and not a vampire hiding from his ex and a bunch of stranded space pirates. (A little goofy? Yes, but I love it a ton for all its faults anyway. Also, some of the short stories are genuinely terrifying.)

and also, some completed miniseries!!

The Tower – a gorgeous experimental audio drama in which a young woman decides to climb the mysterious Tower, from which no one ever returns.

Time:Bombs – a comedy by the folks who made Wolf 359 about a bomb disposal squad on New Year’s Eve, trying to survive their leader’s obsession with breaking a record.

They Say a Lot of Things – upon discovering that she can interact with a dropped tape recorder, the ghost of a young girl tells her story, interwoven with the stories of those who have passed through the abandoned house that she cannot leave over the years that she’s haunted it.

Podcaster A. R. Olivieri specializes in microfiction miniseries, ranging from scifi to experimental to fantasy. (Side note, a lot of his work crosses over with the still-running scifi podcast Girl In Space, but you don’t need to have listened to GIS to understand what’s going on in his shows.)

Nym’s Nebulous Notions – a self-declared investigative journalist decides to check out a mysterious SOS signal and finds herself on a mysteriously abandoned ship – or so she thinks. Arguably a tragedy, although not necessarily in the way you might think.

Palimpsest – technically not finished, but each season of this anthology makes up a complete 10-part story, and seasons 1 and 2 are complete. Season 1 is a ghost story about a woman who is suspicious about strange happenings in her new home and her odd new neighbors. Season 2 is a turn-of-the-century dark urban fantasy about a girl who escapes her career criminal mother’s house, taking a job as the companion to what her new employer claims is an imprisoned faerie princess. (Season 3 is ongoing and is about a codebreaker who begins seeing ghosts on London’s streets during the Blitz.) It’s a heartbreaking sort of show, albeit in a very beautiful and moving way.

The Details is a short piece about an office worker who goes in to negotiate for a promotion and finds himself negotiating with the devil himself instead. The number of genuinely surprising and excellent twists it packs into just 45 minutes is really fun.

The London Necropolis Railway – a really underappreciated little fantasy-mystery about a recently-dead detective who refuses to board the train scheduled to take her to the afterlife until one of its hapless employees helps her solve her supernatural murder.

Janus Descending – a scifi horror told in two intertwining perspectives, one in reverse order and one in chronological order, about two scientists who land on a remote planet to investigate the ruins of its lost civilization, only to encounter the thing that killed the former inhabitants. A fantastic story told in a really clever and unique way, but stamp a big old tragedy warning all OVER this one, although because of the structure you technically know how it’s going to end right from the start – what makes this show so good is how you get there. It will make you cry, though.

… and also my show, Midnight Radio, which is about lesbian romance, small towns, old radio shows, the good and bad sides of nostalgia, and ghost stories.

[thiswasinevitableid]

47 for OT4, SFW or NSFW I love your writing! :))

Thank you! I went SFW for this one.

47: you overhear me complaining to my coworker about your ridiculous daily coffee order, whoops

“Oh christ, here he comes.” Duck mutters to Indrid as he pumps hazelnut syrup into a cup, “the one I was tellin you about.”

Indrid, stationed at the counter, tilts his head as he watches the windows, “would he be the one that looks like a lumberjack or the one who looks like a secret agent?”

“The second one. I dunno what it is, but his order drives me fuckin nuts. It’s super specific; dark roast, single origin only, heavy cream until it turns about that color” he points to the wall, “with a half pump of caramel and a half pump of vanilla. You’re gonna be that specific, just make it at home.” He’s busy putting a lid on  the drink and therefore misses Indrid’s hand waving. 

“I do, and it’s not that hard.” A deep voice makes him turn; the lumberjack, looking more amused than annoyed.

“And since you know my order so well already” the other man, smile, tight lipped, at him before turning to Indrid, “one of those and one large, black coffee.”

Duck starts the drink, making it as fast as he can so he can slink off into the back room. Shit, if the guy rats on him he could get in trouble, he’s already on thin ice after throwing out some rich kid for harassing the staff. 

Indrid takes the drinks, mouths, “go” and heads around the counter while Duck makes a bee-line for the supply closet. 

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

Indrid sets the cups down in front of the two men, then slides a plate with a large, hot monster cookie on it between them. 

“On the house, as they say.”

“This an apology cookie or a ‘don’t give us a bad review’ cookie?” The lumberjack smirks.

“Both.” Indrid says mildly, smiling and returning to his post.

 As he walks away he hears the deep voice whisper, “wouldn’t kick that one outta bed for eating crackers.”

A soft laugh, “Agreed. Pity his friend is an ass.”

When Jake and Hollis arrive a few minutes later to take over for him and Duck, he finds his boyfriend clonking his head into the wall by the break room. 

“Don’t worry, love, I smoothed things over.”

“Thanks. Just feel like a dipshit. Both for gettin overheard and complainin in the first place.”

“I assumed it was stress from waiting on interview results.”

“Yeah.” Duck pulls on his jacket, “still feel shitty though.”

“Come, let’s go home. I have some ideas for relaxation.” He purrs, kissing Duck’s cheek. 

“How may of ‘em are fuckin’-based?”

“Half.”

“Good, gives us some variety just in case.”

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

“We’ve paired you with another duo, if that’s okay?”

“Sure” Duck smiles at the Escape Room employee, takes Indrid’s hand as they follow him down the hall, “Aubrey says these are more fun in a group.”

“I look forward to--oh dear.” 

Duck turns to see the pair from the coffee shop last week. The lumberjack looks about the same, but the secret agent is dressed more casually than usual. His black hair is loose rather than slicked back, and he’s in jeans and shirt that reads, “Champ” with a dark outline of sea monster on the front. He almost looks cute.

“You’ve been  trapped in the lair of hostile, highly intelligent space aliens. You have an hour to escape. Good luck” The employee shuts the door, leaving the pairs to stare at each other. 

“Uh, hi. Again.” Duck waves awkwardly

“Hey.” The lumberjack waves back, “so, uh, this is hella awkward, right?”

“Yes.” The other three respond.

“Cool. Look, I dunno about you but I don’t wanna get dissected by aliens. So, bygones?”

The others nods and he smiles, “I’m Barclay, this is Joseph. My, uh, my boyfriend.” It’s distinctly odd watching such a large man blush like a schoolgirl. Joseph smiles, kisses his cheek, then looks around the room.

“Alright, we need to find the four symbol code to enter onto that pad. Spread out and look for places symbols might be hidden.”

They find the first one easily. Indrid’s eye for color and patterns helps them locate the second, and when a clue points to the third being high up, instead of having to construct a makeshift ladder or step-stool, Barclay simply reaches up and grabs it. It does not escape Duck’s notice that both Indrid and Joseph get appreciative looks on their faces when Barclay then moves a “cloning pod” out of the way all by himself. 

“I suspect the last symbol is hidden one something that is in...that hole.” Joseph points to the newly revealed wall lined with several cubbies, one of which has danger signs written all around it.

“Not it. Too close to a garbage disposal, and I have nightmares about putting my hand down that at the wrong time.” Barclay shudders.

“I would also prefer not to be the one to reach in; such elements often have a loud noise gimmick and I do not enjoy that.”

Joseph glances at Duck, blue eyes glinting with a not-entirely-friendly challenge.

“Fuck it, I’ll do it.” Duck steps forward and cautiously slides his hand in. Indrid’s instinct was right, as the whole starts vibrating with a loud, grinding sound. Indrid yelps, grabbing the other two men, who in turn jump and scream  in surprise. Duck grits his teeth, fights the urge to pull back, and finds a smooth tile waiting for him. When he removes his hand the noise stops, and he grins, triumphant, as he shows off the last symbol. 

“WHOO!” Barclay cheers and high-fives Duck  as Joseph punches in the symbols, stopping the timer on the wall, “shit, that was wild man, scared the living hell outta me and I wasn’t even  the one doing it.”

“Mmmm, my brave hero.” Indrid drapes his arms over his shoulder, kissing him.

“Sap.” Duck teases, kissing him back.

“You know, we make a pretty good team.” Joseph brushes stray hair off his face.

“Yeah. Would, um, would you guys like to go grab coffee or something?” Barclay looks genuinely hopeful, which is why, ten minutes later, Duck is sitting across from Joseph in a dark-wood coffee shop. Indrid has excused himself to wash his hands and Barclay is outside taking a phone call from someone named Mama.

Duck sips his coffee (black) as he watches Joseph measure cream into his mug.

“That explains it; guys who drink black coffee are always weird about guys who don’t.”

“Don’t Barclay drink his black?”

“Only when we’re out, when we’re at home he’s always making fancy coffee. Trying out new recipes. It works well. Or, um, mostly well. There was a green tea cherry espresso that was not his finest.”

“Eech. Heh, that reminds me of the time ‘Drid was so groggy he poured strawberry syrup into his coffee instead of caramel. Didn’t phase him one bit, but I felt like I was kissin a berry patch the whole day. Swear the man’s half moth or some shit from how much sugar he drinks.”

Joseph snickers, “sorry, imagining Indrid as a mothman is a funny image.”

Duck pictures it and giggles, which makes Joseph laugh harder. When they recover, he scratches the back of his neck, “Look, I’m sorry I was a dick about your coffee order. Just havin one of those weeks where everythin got on my nerves.”

“It’s alright. I’m not all that bothered by it. Not intellectually, anyway. Being particular or precise is something people have been, um, less than kind to me about in the past.”

“Nothin wrong with knowin what you like.”

Joseph glances out the window at Barclay, “No, no there’s not.”

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

It becomes a weekly arrangement; the four of them meet for some kind of activity, then go to lunch or dinner. Duck learns many things over those weeks; that Barclay can figure out how to reverse engineer Indrid’s favorite cupcakes from a local bakery, that Joseph has a worryingly deep yet very endearing knowledge of bad horror movies. That while Joseph is terrifying during a trivia match, Duck can still wipe the floor with everyone when it comes to the science categories. He learns that Joseph is trans, like him, and that Barclay and Indrid actually went to the same high school but were two years apart and thus didn’t know each other. 

Right now, he’s learning that he’s not as good at laser tag as he thought he was. 

They went during the cheaper hours, mid-afternoon on a Sunday, and while all four of them are on the same team they’ve gotten separated in the neon-tinted darkness. 

He can tell the enemy team has spotted him, and is moving as fast as he can out of range, when a hand reaches out of a darkened turret and pulls him in.

“GAHoh, phew, scared the hell outta me Joe.”

“Sorry, it was safer than calling out.” The space is small, built for kids rather than two twenty-six year olds, and so Joe is pressed right up against him as he watches the door. He might be the only guy Duck knows who wears honest to god cologne, clean and minty smelling, and the scent wraps around him when Joe pulls him back against his chest to hide them from passing opponents. 

“Fuck, that was close.” He whispers.

“Don’t worry” Joe murmurs in his ear, voice huskier than normal, “you’ve got me to look out for you.” He breaks away as if nothing happened, pulls Duck’s body out into the glowing chaos, while his mind stays in the little room, wondering what the fuck that was.

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

 “Can’t believe we got our asses handed to us by a bunch of eleven year olds.” Duck groans as they sit, licking their wounds along with soft-serve from a tiny shack that Barclay swears by.

“That one blonde girl is gonna grow up to be a sniper.” Barclay offers his cone (chocolate and sour cherry) to Joseph, who takes a prim bite.

“It may run in the family; I think her dad was the one with the ‘Go Army’ shirt.” 

“Oh, were we not supposed to be going easy on them?” Indrid cocks his head. The others stare at him in mute shock. 

“I’m kidding; I was utterly outmatched in there.” He grins before dragging his tongue up his cone (pineapple and marshmallow). When he reaches the tip he opens his mouth wider, taking it all in with a satisfied moan. He pulls off, stray ice cream dribbling down his chin until Joe hands him a napkin. Indrid thanks him, then proceeds to do the exact same thing, over and over, and Duck realizes neither of the other men have looked away from his boyfriend. Barclay’s legs are now crossed, and Joe’s cheeks are pink. Duck can’t really blame them--he knows exactly what Indrid can do with that mouth--but what’s stranger is he doesn’t feel jealous or annoyed. He knows Indrid sometimes struggles with looking, in his own words, “offputting.” It’s nice to see two other people catch on to just how hot he is. 

Then again, he kind of wishes Joe would stop staring and eat his own cone; he wants to see what his tongue can do, too.

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

“Watcha drawin’?” Duck slides onto the couch next to Indrid.

“Just random images.”

“That us with Joe and Barclay?”

“I, ah, yes it is.”

“Like it a lot. Christ you’re talented, it’s like how much you like us is comin’ right off the page.”

“Is, ah, is that so? I hadn’t noticed, ah, oh dear, I just remembered I need to go call Jake about covering my shift.”

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

Duck: That new barcade is finally open, wanna come with us on Saturday?

Barclay: Wish we could, but we got a friends birthday that night.

Duck: No big, let us know if you want to catch a flick on Sunday

Barclay sets the phone down, not remembering it’s a group text until Joe pokes his head out of the bedroom.

“Shit, whose birthday is on Saturday? We need to get a gift.”

“Oh, uh, no, no one. Just, uh, didn’t feel like going out but didn’t want them to think I was, like, angry or something. Sorry, shoulda asked if you wanted to go without me, shit, that was rude.”

“It’s alright, I don’t mind time that’s just for us.” He crosses the living room, fiddles with Barclays hair, “but let me know if you want to see a movie Sunday, I’m happy either way.”

“Uhuh, will do.” Barclay nods, not really paying attention, as he imagines silvery hair in the dark theater and holding slender, cool fingers in his own.

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

“Why do I get the feeling you don’t actually have that DVD to loan me?”

“I do” Duck shuts the apartment door behind Joe, “but we got some things to discuss first.” He waits until Joe is sitting next to Barclay (lured here by the promise of cookies) and across from Indrid (lives here, not that hard to lure).

“Look, I don’t think I really gotta point out how weird it is that we went from hangin out every week to not seein’ each other for near a month. But what I do gotta point out is why it’s happenin’.”

“We’ve all been busy?” Joe hazards.

“Yeah, but we all were busy before and we made time for each other. Now we, myself included, are cancelin shit.” He takes a deep breath, “Barclay, Joe, you both got a thing for ‘Drid, don’t you?”

Joe nods while Barclay blushes and mutters, “yeah.”

“And ‘Drid, you got a thing for both of them?”

His boyfriend shifts nervously in his seat, but nods all the same. Barclay looks genuinely surprised. 

“Well, you three ain’t the only ones realizin’ you want more than you got. Joe, I, uh, I really like you. As in wanna date you. So, uh, that’s where we’re at.” He sits down next to Indrid, who instantly takes his hand. 

“That’s...wait, don’t we all want the same thing?” Joe looks between them, puzzled. 

“You’d really be okay with me dating Indrid?” Barclay asks softly. 

“We’d both be dating him. And I’d be dating Duck as well as you two. Assuming that was alright with Indrid?”

“....You know, I think it is.” Indrid squeezes Duck’s hand, “I was afraid to admit how I felt; I didn’t want to come between you and Barclay, because you clearly love each other, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing Duck. But I’ve also seen how happy he is around you, Joseph; there is no reason we could not all work things out to be happy as a, ah, polycule? Is that the term?”

“Think so.” Barclay relaxes, “fuck, I felt so bad thinking that wanting Indrid would fuck everything up, don’t know what to do with my self now that I’m not stressing about it.”

“I propose we order dinner and just...talk.” Indrid rests his head on Duck’s shoulder, “I think that will help us sort out where to go from here.”

Duck orders takeout from the Chinese place down the block as Indrid and Joe arrange the living room into a place where they can all sit together comfortably and Barclay grab drinks. Soon they’re gathered on the floor, working out logistics and boundaries and hopes and fears between bites of fried rice and chow mein. Joe keeps notes, curling closer to Duck as the evening goes on. 

There’s a part of him that wants to jump straight to sex, to pin Joe to floor and fuck him while his other boyfriends do what they want to him, to Duck, to each other. But this thing between them is a new leaf in spring, vulnerable and just beginning to grow. 

So, after dinner, they cuddle up on the couch and floor to watch the midnight movie on local T.V, hands tentatively finding each other and bodies gradually resting closer together in new configurations. 

He falls asleep on the floor, Indrid spooning him and Joe resting his head on his belly. Wakes up with Joe curled around him and Barclay cuddled up to Indrid, snoring softly. 

Duck slips out of the configuration, pads into the kitchen to start coffee. When Joe sneaks up behind him he gasps, snickers as the taller man kisses him good morning. Then he grabs two mugs, smiling to himself at his luck as he opens the fridge. After all, he already knows just how his new boyfriend likes his coffee. 

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Child’s Play (2019)

Well it’s Friday, so that means another classic horror franchise is getting rebooted. This time it’s Child’s Play - you know, the one about the spirit of a serial killer that gets trapped inside a talking doll and terrorizes the neighborhood? Well, serial killer spirits are SO 1991, so the 2019 version has updated it to a “smart” doll capable of operating all your wireless devices and there’s no supernatural mumbo jumbo going on here - just a disgruntled factory worker pushing back at unjust labor laws by removing all the safety protocols in ONE doll and shipping it off far away. You know, as most labor disputes get resolved. So Chucky (voice of Mark Hamill) comes to be best friends with Andy (Gabriel Bateman) and soon starts disposing of anyone he believes might be compromising their friendship. I think we all remember how upsetting it was when our Teddy Ruxpins started to do the same thing. So is this AI bringing in a new wave of “smart” horror reboots? Well...

God I hope not. It’s a mess. There’s some ok stuff in here, but wow I have a lot of questions for the director, the screenwriter, and the design team.

This is the worst character design I’ve ever seen. His eyes are both too big to be like a standard doll, but too small to be in the Bratz or anime-type range. Also, he suffers from the Jack Nicholson problem. For as brilliant as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is, its casting is truly epically terrible. Jack Nicholson looks crazier than a shithouse rat at the very beginning of the film, making his descent into madness feel a little less like a descent and more like a very level straight line that you could use to hang a picture frame. Same thing with ol Chucky blue eyes here. He looks so uncanny valley creepy right from the get go that when he goes full murder spree it’s like “oh no he’s...doing exactly what his face indicated he would be doing this whole time who could have possibly predicted.” I’m all for the use of animatronic puppetry over CGI but...I just feel like the design here really missed the mark. 

I’m sorry, I’m just so pissed at the inciting incident for this whole thing. Why would your revenge against your shitty boss be to remove all the safety protocols from a microchip going into a device that is shipping halfway across the world from you? What’s the endgame here? Seriously. THE most plausible line of reasoning is “This doll will malfunction and cost this company I hate working for $39.95.” Well, that doesn’t impact your shitty boss. The only OTHER plausible line of reasoning is “This is going to make a murder doll that will malfunction and kill people on the other side of the globe.” That STILL doesn’t impact your shitty boss AND it means this guy is a total sociopath with a diabolical scheme on a level Chucky can’t even dream of. Why isn’t the movie actually about him???

It’s weird to see Aubrey Plaza playing a mom but I kind of love her snark being melded with maternal instinct here. Although, honestly, she does feel more like Andy’s big sister than his mom. 

As for Andy (Gabriel Bateman), he’s actually a really solid leading man in this. Even when he has to break down into hysterics over Chucky’s bad behavior, his performance never veers into whiny or shrill. He’s got a lot of charisma and plays Andy as a fundamentally sweet kid who maybe just doesn’t have many friends because he hangs out with his mom and sucked into the vortex of his phone too much. I was impressed, because he has to carry 80% of the movie by himself talking to an animatronic Annabelle.

I will say, Chucky’s horrible design aside, Mark Hamill does a phenomenal job as the voice of Chucky. Even when he’s repeating the same phrases over and over again, he injects a level of pathos and humanity into Chucky that’s really impressive. I know this isn’t a controversial opinion, but he really is maybe the best living voice actor of our time.

Full disclosure, there is some violence done to a cat that is very distressing, not once but TWICE. The cat dies :( And it’s particularly egregious because not only do you get faked out once thinking “oh this cat is gonna be ok” but THEN after the gruesome part, Chucky uses the sounds of the cat to emotionally torture Andy and the audience. That shit is fucked up.

Um, I’m not sure what lack of googling this screenwriter, Tyler Burton Smith, did but these literal children are not millenials, they are generation Z, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.

The tone is wildly uneven. It’s not funny enough to be a horror comedy, and it’s not really scary, just jump scares and being creeped out by Chucky’s fucking face. Also, the film can’t decide if we’re meant to feel bad for Chucky being a victim of his programming and his shitty preteen masters showing him a bunch of campy slasher movies OR if we’re meant to be scared of him because he’s a murderous monster doing things of his own free will. 

Why are there watermelons in this man’s yard? And the line “a white guy dead in a watermelon patch - poetic” ... what fucking poetry are you reading? Listen, I have two degrees in English literature, and I don’t remember Samuel Taylor Coleridge ever writing anything about any fucking watermelons.

Another weird choice - the movie is pretty gory but not in a fun or campy way. I think sometime around 2010, movies lost the ability to do buckets of blood in a fun way? I know that sounds fucked up, but this isn’t campy or silly, it’s just kind of gross - both trying to be gleeful and also taken way too seriously. At first, when it’s only super pervy or abusive dudes that are getting whacked, it’s like, ok, there’s a comeuppance factor here, this is gross but fine. But then it starts extending to characters that have done nothing wrong and that we’ve been pushed to love and empathize with. So then it feels a lot less fine but still very gross. 

One major highlight - I will watch Brian Tyree Henry in anything. He’s just so so good at everything, and this is no exception.

Also - BTH plays a detective and Andy is literally trying to hide evidence made of human remains in the detective’s apartment. For dayyyyys. Let that sink in. Do you think that shit doesn’t smell?? And he keeps disposing of evidence and things he doesn’t want to deal with in the trash chute of his own building. Where the detective also hangs out. There are other dumpsters, my dude!

If you’re making a murderous doll movie and a guy who looks like Jack Black (Trent Redekop) perving around in a basement is the creepiest thing that happens, that’s probably not a good sign.

Speaking of Not Jack Black, everything in his death sequence makes no sense. Why would you stand on a table saw to get away from literally anything? Why would your table saw have a “smart” functionality? Take this as a warning kids, if Google starts making smart table saws, that’s when we draw the line.

There is one (1) cute dog, and Chucky is uninterested in him. He escapes the movie unscathed and appears to be a Very Good Boy.

Did I Cry? Fucking no, oh my god, not at all. 

This is just a real uneven mess. Some performances shine amidst the terrible material (BTH, Mark Hamill, Gabriel Bateman) but overall, I had a lot more fun with the playfully wicked marketing campaign (coming out the same day as Toy Story 4, the film leaned into the gag by creating a series of posters depicting some gruesome ends to our favorite Toy Story characters, with Chucky being responsible). If this had been more comedy, less uneven revenge porn, this might have had a fighting chance at being something really interesting. As in most things, though, I have to advise you stick to the original.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

[aros001]

First time read through light novel vol. 10. Random thoughts.

Okay...I wasn't expecting that.

I fully admit I nearly cried when Emilia asked Subaru to tell her about Rem on the ride back to the mansion. It was sad, it was sweet, it was touching. It hit a lot of spots for me.

The Sleeping Beauty illness is a pretty interesting sickness. Rem won't age or need to eat while she's trapped in her coma. She is basically kind of immortal and it's a very subtly cruel fate. No one remembers the victim and not even a natural death can free them of their fate, as they just simply exist without even their loved ones to acknowledge them.

“The contents of the letter of goodwill were written by Rem. I’m the one who asked it to be sent, so if Crusch handed it to the messenger...only the fact that it was handed over stayed the same, and only the contents were erased.”

That was the sloppy adjustment to the erasure of the memory of Rem from the world.

I love stuff like this. A clue hidden in plain sight that was always there and brought up repeatedly, kind of like the small dog in the village being the shaman. Subaru didn't make a stupid mistake and there was no sabotage to try and get the two camps to be against each other. The letter was blank because Rem wrote it and all traces of her existence, save for her body, have been erased. Also really drives home the tragedy that, even if Subaru's save point hadn't been updated to Rem's bedside, there was no way to save her after defeating the White Whale. It was too late to catch up with her. Though now I'm curious, because I don't remember if it was ever stated how far before Subaru had arrived that Ram received the letter, so there is a chance she had read Rem's actual message before it was erased from her mind. I wonder if she was in the middle of making any preparations when it was replaced in her mind as a blank letter?

Obviously it's always been a thing in the story but I think it finally fully hit me with the art

of Subaru and Petra watching the comatose Rem that, yeah, Subaru's eyes really do look pretty villainous.

I know it's an easy typo to make but I can't help but notice the number of times this volume and last keep mixing up Rem and Ram's names, saying that Rem is at sanctuary when they really mean Ram.

“Now, what do you wish to ask about? Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony, creator of beasts in defiance of the will of Heaven to save the world from starvation? Camilla, the Witch of Lust, filled with love for the world, granter of emotions to they that are inhuman? Minerva, the Witch of Wrath, who, lamenting a world filled with conflict, sets people straight through her fists? Sekhmet, the Witch of Sloth, who, wanting a moment’s peace, drove the dragons beyond the Great Waterfalls for that reason alone? Or Typhon, the Witch of Pride, the young, innocent, merciless one who continued to render judgment onto sinners?”

F**k yeah, lore drop! It also again opens up the question of whether Satella and the other witches were really evil or if misunderstandings had history turn them into monsters? Because honestly even this has it feel like it could go either way. We already met the White Whale, which is associated with gluttony. If Daphne created the creature to "save the world from starvation", then it is accurate in a very twisted way. Yeah, people won't starve when they're dead and forgotten or trapped in a stasis coma. Unless Echidna means the beast were created to provide more food, which I don't think works out either given how strong they are. Given Satella's warped way of showing her "love" for Subaru, the implication could be that all the witches desire pure and noble things but are also bat-sh*t f**king crazy and have really messed up ways of going about that.

“...It bears mentioning that I’m a pauper up there with the best of ’em. A Witch’s compensation is not paid in coin. What I seek from you is a pact. My terms are that you are forbidden from speaking to others about what took place at this tea party. You are bound by a similar pact, so it is a simple matter for you, is it not?”

So RBD may be a pact? Would that imply is was something Subaru agreed to? In the story we've seen, I think the pact might have been formed upon his first death, with Emilia dying beside him, and him doing whatever it'd take to save her. I can see an opening for Satella there.

“I succeeded in forming an alliance with Crusch. Satisfied with the results of leaving me there now?”

“Ahh, I am most saaatisfied. Truly, truly, you have acquired something difficult and long yearned for.”

“...That so.”

Subaru: "Oh, by the way, you owe a bunch of money I promised to people in Anastasia's group. Have fun with that."

“The reason is simple. This land has been under the care of the Mathers family, passed down from generation to generation. It began under the lord of this house at the time...the Roswaal from which I inherit this name. In other words, it is from this Roswaal in history that this Sanctuary has been passed down.”

When Subaru broached the issue of his relationship to the Witch, Roswaal followed suit, filling in the blanks. The explanation left Emilia touching her own lips, knitting her refined eyebrows.

“‘In history’... Then the Mathers family has been involved with the Witch of Greed since long...”

So Roswaal and his family have a personal connection to Echidna, one of the six witches Satella absorbed and the enemies of the dragon, whom Roswaal talked about in his goal relating to when the dragon dies. Though it's still up in the air how nefarious his goals are or even what specifically he wants.

“Setting that aside, what are you gonna do about this plate of green peas? I tried to pass it to Daddy, Daddy passed it to Mom, and Mom passed it to me, and we’ve been going around in circles...”

“But Mom hates green peas. I hate even looking at them.”

“And you were trying to overcome me being picky?!”

“Ah, don’t misunderstand me, it’s not just green peas that Mom hates, it’s all food that’s little and round like that. It feels icky to put them in my mouth.”

“That’s not a misunderstanding, then—if anything it just sounds even fishier than before!”

Deflated by his mother’s impactful statement, Subaru grudgingly pushed the plate of green peas Kenichi’s way.

“Well, it’s the husband’s place to take responsibility for the wife, so I’ll leave it to Daddy to reap the fruits of defeat.”

“Hey, don’t make me feel all lonely here, Subaru. We’re family getting along like few do these days, right? In other words, if Mom hates it, Daddy hates it, too.”

“Man, I really feel for this forest of green, nobody’s happy with it!”

What the f**k am I reading?

In all seriousness, this whole section of the book is pretty good. In regards to light novels, I've only read three other Isekai series: Overlord, Konosuba, and Rising of the Shield Hero. And in all three series the MC's parents aren't really a factor that get brought up in many significant ways. Ainz's parents sadly died when he was a kid. Kazuma died and was reborn into a fantasy world, with everyone including his parent having trouble not laughing over the really pathetic way he died, so he doesn't like thinking about them too much. And while Naofumi sometimes thinks about his parents, it's far more often his brother comes up because of the pressure that was placed on him because of their parents. I never would have thought Subaru's relationship with his parents would be such a major thing the story would explore.

This whole part feels a little like a self-help book, in a good way. Subaru reflects a lot on his faults and why he retreated into himself for so long. He's grown, but his also still growing, which I think is really important for a character like him. I know there are people who've seen Re:Zero who have a problem with how sad and pathetic Subaru can be, but given that it serves a purpose and it consistently has had payoff, I don't see why it's a bad thing. Subaru as his is now is not the same man as he was when he first entered the story and, if the quality stays consistent, he won't be the same later in the story as he is now.

“I mean, if you want me to abandon you, you’ve gotta be more proactive about it. Who abandons his own kid just because he crawls into his own shell? If you want me to hate you, you should commit genocide on half of humanity for no particular reason. Then I’ll hate you.”

“That’s a crazy thing to ask for!! You don’t see many villains like that even in shonen manga!!”

Funny enough I feel like a version of Subaru who'd do that would be more like comic Thanos than movie Thanos. Less about trying to save humanity from itself and more just trying to impress a girl. I wonder which AU sin version that would be?

He’d been so convinced he’d kept his inner feelings hidden, but in truth, it had all been in vain. This in spite of the fact that he’d thought himself lonely and miserable with not a single person the wiser.

I love how this can relate back to Emilia and Rem's relationships with Subaru. During the mansion arc and White Whale arc Subaru was cracking under the stress and despair RBD had given him, trying to hide it best as he could but the two still saw through him anyway. Emilia is the one who I think most directly commented on it, offering him the lap pillow when he was overworking himself out of fear and even when he said a lot of terrible things to her on his last loop before they took down the whale, she talked about how sad he looked and how much pain he was in.

It was his bad habit to suddenly lose it in the middle of a conversation. Just how much had he run in circles at the royal capital because of that short temper? He focused on deep breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. He did this a second time, and then a third.

“...Let’s...talk about everything in order, starting with this coconspirator business.”

Character growth. Always welcome. Obviously it might be a little too early to say this but I'm glad Subaru isn't just repeating the same problems and conflicts he did in the first three arcs. He's not over his faults but he's not being tripped up by the same personal flaws that tripped him up before. He's actually learned from his experiences and grew as a person.

Even before Rem was erased, Ram's loyalty to Roswaal was greater than anything else. But I'm really curious what effect we'll see going forward. Is Ram even more devoted to Roswaal than before or has the loss of someone she loved so much detached something within her? Rem was clearly important to Ram too, as we saw fully in the mansion arc loop when she died. Is her relationship with her master going to change now that a significant part of her life is just gone, like it never existed?

“For three days I’ve been watchin’ Lady Emilia challenge the trial, same as you. It’s breakin’ her. Seein’ her come out all messed up like that—I can’t stand to watch.”

Crinkling the skin of his nose, Garfiel brought up the heartbreaking sight of Emilia right after emerging from the tomb.

The number of times Emilia had failed to overcome the trial were adding up. But it wasn’t just that—it was the sight of her turning back: broken, panicked, calling for Puck, then finally sleeping as if her strength was exhausted.

I wonder if the story is trying to put Emilia through basically a similar experience as Subaru's? Being broken by repeated failures in a past she can't overcome. The one advantage she has over him is that everyone knows she's going through a terrible ordeal, even if they don't know what specifically, while Subaru's curse keeps him from letting anyone know he's been going through anything.

“—I told you to take care of your bowels until the next time we meet.”

Oy, this bitch.

This book gave me two things I'm glad about. The first is that it made the loss of Rem a lot easier to deal with by simple virtue of everyone believing Subaru that they knew Rem and she was erased from their memories, in no small part in that the characters aren't stupid and can see the similarities between her and Ram. She hasn't been abandoned and Subaru doesn't have to carry the burden of trying to bring her back by himself. The other is something I've wanted to see for a while and it's Subaru and Emilia on the same page and working together. They're trusting and relying on each other, even if neither knows the other's full story. They're not pushing each other away or keeping the other at arms length. Their relationship can actually DEVELOP because they're actually moving forward together.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Re_Zero/comments/hb6g4v/novels_first_time_read_through_light_novel_vol_10/

[curious-minx]

A simple man accidentally joins Qanon.

I am looking for the trunklike opening of a cavern that is  promising a hermitage of monks. Instead, I accidentally got recruited by Qanon. 

I only ended up with them because I thought the rough looking recruiter woman with desperate destruction in her eyes said “Qui-Gon Jinn.” He is a real big influence on my overall look. The recruiter grabbed me by the pip of my ponytail and gave me a fierce rub down. She did not manage to extract anything from me because she wasn’t looking for anything special for me, I was basically cornmeal to her. A necessary means to an end. I try to quickly terminate my contract with the Qanoners, I’m a goner.

There is no mesh bag thrown over your head. I watch myself get dragged and kidnapped. I stand outside of myself and spit on myself. I hope I rot in Qanon mud club basement for all I care. Alas, I am very much chained to my corporeal form and rejoin back inside my raging crunching bones being dragged across an empty gymnasium. Old prom decorations are adorning the rafters; the apparent theme is Trapped In The Closet. This dates the decorations as a typical early 00’s macro-aggression. What do these people want with me? I try to remember all of the rest of the who’s, why’s, what and how I should be trying to grasp at as I continue to be dragged onwards and onwards. How large can the expanse of this gym be? Every time it looks like I am approaching a halfway full court circle the room seems to grow further in distance. A very roomy and interactive treadmill.

My assailant snaps her head around and with a tension in her throat, she croaks, “Aren’t you going to put up a fight?”

“I’ve been dragged longer.” I respond. I am not trying to be cheeky. I am stating a clear fact, but she begins dragging me faster and faster. The gymnasium becomes a bleak parking lot full of abandoned cars full of bloody empty car seats and cabbage patch doll sitting on top of smashed dash boards. The texture of the ground changes from glossy and buffed gymnasium wood flooring into typical pavement. I am starting to bleed more than I am comfortable with.

“Alright I give. Please stop. Enough.”

“Look we’ve reached our hide-out. You’ve passed, you’re a real Qtie.”

“You don’t call yourselves that.”

“Fake news to you too.” This woman with her exacting haircut sounds really tired. Maybe a tad attention starved as well. I don’t feel any sexual pleasure being dragged and humiliated by her, I just feel like she really needs a win. This is certainly not the forested idyllic hermitage haven where I could be with men who made soap and floral craft beer. I had to get out of here. The only way down is up.

“I could use a doctor. Are there any any Qute doctors.”

“No one reveals their civilian lives here. Cut that shit out. Throw those lives away when you commune with Q.”

Quetzalcoatl have mercy on my soul. I am starting to remember a vague idea of what these Qanon people about. I have been taking sketch comedy writing classes and people would occasionally mention these group. I don’t see how these people are funny anymore. These people are monsters. I hate being surrounded by only white people. And as my captor cum guide peels back the security layers of bricks and mortar sealing away their underground den I try to appreciate the outside as much as possible. I am not sure if the sky is still a simulation, but the sky is disappointing tonight. There are some parts of the country that are like this. Rarely if ever a nice night sky to look up. Clearly these safety sign orange skies add up to a lot of restless white supremacists, apparently. These people always want so many excuses for their behavior.

What kind of people are Qanon? They are not hicks. They carry glints of rolodex watches and sweaty pit stained polos. I know which way the khaki blows and it’s directly into my stake. I’m aiming for where it really hurts. I have no stake, I only have my torn and bloodied office attire and swelling inner violence. The sex cult accusations robbed me of my trust of Tom Hanks and for that they must pay. A man inside of a muscular blow up suit in the shape of a gimplike strongman is wheeled out onto stage. The woman who was dragging me tenderly injects his arm with a substance in the manner of heroin. That is if heroin is a slightly glowing gooey substance. A wet and warbling voice sputters out from inside of the man inside of the man.

“War! All out full blown war. There is no other option.”

“Yes Q!” mummers and sputters out the rest of the room. No one is saying the letter with bravado, everyone is saying it like a dirty secret for them and them alone.

A large man with the odor of bleach wearing nothing but overalls is carrying a steel suitcase and has come up to stand next to Q. Q begins to sputter and groan. The woman has begun strapping him to a chair, wrapping him so tightly that his arms immediately bruise and purple. The man opens the suitcase and begins rapidly assembling a preteen girl. The sort of tomboyish puckish preteen girl with a slight gap and whistle between her teeth, she is adorable or at least she becomes adorable once the the man snaps her head into place.

“Sp-sp-sp-spppppeak!” Q burbles he sounds like he is swallowing his own tongue back into his pinpoint shaped head.

“This man touched me! This man raped me! This woman tried to abort me! This woman helped child predators. This woman is a child predator. This man fucked me every which way. I no longer know what’s real anymore. What am I? This is so fucked up man! I’m losing my mind!” The preteen girl begins to scream and sob. With every accusation thrown out Q’s two main  assistants have thrown out portraits of Bill Clinton, Bill Gates,  AOC, Judy Blume, Oprah, and Paul Rudd. The rest of the room begins whispering the letter Q all over again, this time more confident.

Q’s two assistance look like they are going to come in for a group hug with the girl and they do, but when the man and woman meet together the girl immediately collapses into a pile of limbs. The suitcase closes and the man scurries off like a child during a panty raid. The woman begins scanning the room while she smashes chapstick across her trembling lips. Despite knowing exactly where I am standing because I have been firmly planted and transfixed in rictus horror as I try processing this spectacle she makes a big showcase with her eyes when gaze bores into me. I try to do the look side to side, “Who, me?” routine but two sausage fingered women with ballcaps pulled over their faces push me from behind and up onto the stage with Q.

“How do you do Qties and of course you too Q?”

“You don’t speak to Q!” Says the woman who is now starting to blend and blur together with the rest of these agitated pale faces. As I decent white person I can only handle being in the approximate of so many white people, the saturation point has been completely shattered.

I swear I see a greasy wide, chode tongue lick the rubber lips in the depths of Q’s costume. The suit begins squeaking and falls deflated onto the ground. There is no trace of the man called Q. I appreciate a good vanishing act by trying to throw up. The woman acts like she’s mad at me like I am some sort of noble house cat regurgitating on her Pendleton, she’s crowding up at me and getting in my face. She speaks, her breath smells like fuel.

“Your lucky he likes you fella. We don’t do this for all the boys.” Of course, the bleach man comes back this time reeking of chlorine as well. He’s riding a rolling dentist chair using his leg to push him along like a scooter. He reaches the lip of the stage and without any effort sweeps the dental operatory chair onto the stage as well. I am not liking where this is going and try to make a break for what I believe to be the exit.

The man scoops me in his wretched hairless and freckled arms.“Hold up. Q likes you.”

“There is no doubt that he likes him. Q accepts everyone who looks a little bit like Jesus.” The once tired woman now suddenly seems completely rejuvenated. The puffy bags under her eyes are glistening. The joys of dentistry. She pulls out a completely golden drill. A satin sheen gold that looks like no spray can job. My head is held back and my tooth is extracted and held up under the expectation. The rest of the crowd of Qties have more or less dispersed and are murmuring to one another over hunched over rings of phone lights. The jukebox plays Ted Nugent with pitched and slow down vocals to fit the anonymous motif.

Bleach and chlorine man takes my tooth and skips off in the manner of a fairy tale character but returns quickly this time. He is still carrying something but his hand is cupped and I cannot see if it’s my tooth.

“You’ve grown awfully quiet. Are you taking it all in? Do you see what this is truly all about?”

“Yeah you guys have a real serious project going on. This seems like an immense job. I want to help out in any way I can.”

“You won’t. You’ll forget you ever saw this place. You’re lucky to make it out alive, luckier still to not end up on a sex offender registry. Q has different plans for you. Now go follow the trail of innocent blood and open your mouth.”

“Again?” As I say this the woman sprays me with a slightly acidic and fizzy tasting spritz that makes the roof of my mouth feel dense. The feeling gradually dissipates as I stumble down through the gallery of wretches and human refuse that is populating the joint. Sure some of these people probably have legitimate struggles and a hard working background, but there’s a lot of corrupted doughiness to go around. Not chubby. Chubby people are full of joy and adventure, this was more of a kind of excessive candle wax flesh coating these people, mostly the men. The women were of more stripes. Some look like innocuous librarians or Sunday School cheerleaders or Boss bitches. The whole gambit.

I reach the exit. The bleach chlorine man is already waiting for me. He wrings out a blindfold that was bunched up uncomfortably close to his groin. I am not a homophobic man. I appreciate the smell of a musk, there is a refined strain of dick cheese out there, and a man this overwhelming chemical should have a sterile blindfold. Except he is wringing this blindfold out. Some kind of liquid is dropping on the floor, but before I can make out what drips have dropped my eyes have been folded into the blinds. There is no graceful exit.

After much leaves are rustled. Drivers negotiating with the bald patches of darkness dotting the byways and leeways of my swampy homeland. I purposely made a trip out of joining the monks. I didn’t want to join a local enclave so I made sure to cross several state lines. Once I can smell the odor of burning leaves do I realize I have actually been driven all the way to my backwoods home. The home I tried so hard to leave behind. A light has come on and my parents, older sister and the gentleman trying to pretend to be our maid all come out all wearing various robes and sleepwear, arms crossed in unison. I finally take off my blind fold.

“Christ almighty I didn’t think you were alive. I thought I was doing another corpse drop off. Get the fuck outta here. Cant afford any bad luck, fuck!” He drives his miserable reliable fiat as fast as it will go and when my family discerns that I am more or less in one piece they march single file back inside. I  sit outside on the perpetually damp cushioned porch swing and sway myself into a woozy and necessary sleep.

///

My tooth, my back right molar is sprouting sinister veins of terrible pain throughout my jaw. I cannot speak. I am rendered a strong, silent handsome type. I refuse to accept these parameters. People love my reedy and oaty mellifluous voice. Remember how much I look up to Qui-Gon Jinn? Good, it should give you idea of what I’m dealing with. I am in my basement bathroom. Always the basement dweller never the chic chateau bachelor. I take a bottle of vodka, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a bottle of mineral water. I slosh them together in a plastic watering can that I use to sustain my miserable array of jungle flowers.

My older sister, Cottontail, has arrived with my mail and more. She says this unlabeled package was delivered by a woman that could only be described as a real Karen. My sister then reminds me how much she hates using that sexist phrase but she calls them like she sees them. Cottontail gives me an overly long slab of sustained eye contact, and then she asks about the violence across my face. I wave her away, I begin tearing into the envelope. The jutting dental pain makes the process of opening the envelope feel like a real superhero pal adventure, an overly long and painful slog. After several bouts of muffled screams of agony and several miles of drool streaks of blood I get into the envelope. How do I have so much blood in my body? Inside the envelope’s interior flap is bold and American flag covered Q. There’s a sugar and carmel dusted pretzel shaped as a Q inside of the envelope and a note that says, “Take a bite out of this.”

Merely reading the word bite causes a castanet snap of bile in my throat, but I hold the pretzel up to my mouth. I realize that it is not a pretzel and that the brown coloring is made from the dark brown crystal sugars. The entire Q is made out of  sugar. Maybe one bite will give me the quick and lethal kind of diabetes? I chomp down and am met with a surge of relief as soon as the sugar crystals sing and fizzle in my mouth pooling around the suspect molar. All pain has been wiped clear as long as I keep the sugar flowing.

I must have all the candy under God’s gaseous and toxic land. I run up to the candy striper and shake her by the shoulders and tell her I need my sugar rush! Q has sent me! My face and a negative circle of the banned lines nearly every location sugary confections are sold.

[foreverstiming]

Just a story don’t mind me!

( this was requested by

@princeasimdiya12

​ Hope you like it!)

                            At Last The Day Has Came    

It was a dark rainy day the clouds were think in the skyline above the CHS. Nothing really event full had been happening to Danny other than the normal teasing and getting smashed into lockers as well as a few late night Ghost Zone travels. Well, scratch the normal thing, Dash actually has been pretty rough lately. He seemed to be giving out more wedgies and other thing like forcing Danny to shove things down his pants to make him “leave him alone” for the week. Luckily today he was sent home sick because he must of been feeling funny with how pale he looked. Unless did something else after yesterday during the cleaning punishment they had after school from fighting during class. That still didn’t stop him from shoving Danny in a locker though. In fact he just does it more, he even did it today before going to the nurse’s office.   Danny sighed softly to himself as he walked down the hall way to class with his bag. That was when it happened, his arm became like it was in ghost form and his bag slipped off his shoulder making things fall all over the ground. It must have been from lack of sleep due to all the late night fighting Danny had been doing that week. Yawning Danny knelt down to pick the things up muttering to himself about all Dash has been doing lately when suddenly he heard foot steps behind him.

 Jumping a bit Danny whirled around thinking it was Dash coming back at him for more touting or maybe to throw up on him instead of going to the nurse. If he ran into him here he wouldn’t really be able to explain how he got out of the locker so fast.  It was less than 5 minuets ago and the locker was on the other side of the building. Also he had to think of away to get that. That was when he noticed it was just Tucker, his best friend. He was the one that he heard walking down the hall. Luckily he had already put everything back in his bag other wise he might of made Tucker late.

 “Danny everything okay you seem kinda jumpy.” Tucker asked this question as Danny shifted his bag to cover up a bit of a gash he got from being shoved in the locker.  “Yeah everything’s fine,” Danny turned his head a bit to look at tucker, “why do you ask?”  “Well, Dash seems to be pretty pissed off lately and I was wondering if you were getting more butt kicking than normal.”  Danny sighed a bit looking away a bit his normal slight smirk on his his face vanished turning to a slight frown as they turned into the class room. Taking their normal seats Danny flopped on the desk saying,”yeah, things have been a bit rougher than usual...” “Can tell you look beat, have you been doing alright?” Tucker asked this right as the bell was about to ring Danny noticed Dash entering the front of the class room. Crouching down and bit Danny tried to hide a bit but, it was too late.  “Hey didn’t I just shove you in a locker less than 5 minuets ago? How the heck did you get out Fenton!” That was when the bell rang making the teacher turn to Dash and state,“take your seat Dash we aren’t here to stair at your enormous mouth.”   Danny knew that this wasn’t over though, there was a look in Dash’s eyes that said other wise.

  ------ Time skippy -----  

 It was lunch time now, the clouds had only gotten worse and all the kid were at lunch eating as normal. Though a lot of the foot ball players seemed to be whispering about Danny. Danny could tell that they were going to have Dash confront him for sure so, Danny waited. It was almost at the end of lunch only  10 minuets remained before it happened. A sleep deprived Danny was pretty much falling asleep at this point when suddenly, Dash grabbed him by the shirt and picked then got all up in his face saying,” You really need to explain now or else you’ll get it.”    Danny groaned a bit rubbing his face from being utterly tiered before stating,” No, I don’t really.. Please just leave me alone. If you knew half the things I did for you and everyone here you wouldn’t be doing half the things you do to me.”    Dash seemed to smirk at this taking this as a threat rather than a request just to stop,” Oh really, what have you do for me? Huh, tell me Fenton!” This made kids around then laugh a bit before suddenly Danny noticed the area go cold. “Dash you need to let go out of me just listen please!”    Dash laughed, “Oh look who making demands when I have them by their under wear!” He teased a bit before suddenly there was a big bang and the area started shaking. This moment Danny had been trying to avoid all week there was imbalance in the Ghost Zone and Dash was the one who caused it.  “Dash I need you to answer me now, did you touch that thing that looked like your one of your football trophies or not?!” 

 Dash looked scared and confused for a moment before nodding,” yeah, in fact I know it’s mine.” He stated this as he suddenly pulled out the object from his pocket and huffed a bit. “I took it from you after shoving you in that locker this morning.”  Danny knew what he had to do,” Dash, you have to give that to me now.” The floor began to shake a bit before there were screams and ghosts came flying out of the large glowing cracks. A girl in the back of the room screamed as a monster tried to grab her. 

  Dash pulled it away saying, “No, no it’s mine!” Danny then groaned a bit, he didn’t have time for fighting right then. He knew what he had to do, in order to save school he would have to act fast and grab the darn thing from Dash in his Ghost form. He would have to explain to everyone later but, he knew he’d have to live with it. 

  Danny swung himself forward kicking Dash in the nose making the object that looked like a metal fall from Dash’s hands as he fell back. With a quick flash Danny turned to his ghost form diving forward and grabbed the medal. As a large beast like roar came from the gym area and monsters came spilling in through the windows, “Tucker you get everyone out of here with Sam I have to go to the Ghost Zone to put this back!”   In utter shock the students watched in horror and ran screaming from the room. Danny didn’t have much time to watch longer so he just went to the Ghost Zone before things were too late.  ****Time skip****   Danny carefully made his way through the floating ruble of the area that he was going. He was looking for a lone Castle on a floating island. Nothing really that new for the Ghost Zone. What was new was the huge beam of light that was shooting out of the top of it. Ghosts and Monsters of all sizes and shapes flew to the beam to the Human world making screeches and weird gurgling sounds as they did so.    Danny knew he had to stop this or else the Human world would be taken over in a blink of an eye. He carefully used some of the floating rubble to hide behind as he made his way closer to the lone castle. Danny was just about to make he way over to the beam when he realized he couldn’t just do that. He’d be noticed in and instant, almost everyone knew his name in the Ghost Realm or at least what he was. Danny bit his lip slightly as he began to think out the options. The front of the castle and the back was heavily guarded and it seemed that there was no way that he could fight all them and still have time to close the portal.  “I can always faze through but, it would take a lot of time, plus who knows what type of traps might be hidden there.” The male muttered to himself as he held the medal to his chest slightly. That was when his eyes landed on a bunch of round trashcans? “Okay I’m not sure why those are there but, oh well I guess that will work.”  Giving a shrug the male carefully made his way to the trashcans and fazed through one that was on its side and empty. From there the male carefully shuffled his way to the Castle listening to the Guard speak to one another as he scooted over to the main door. He used the lid as a cover and whenever someone would glance over he’s duck down to look like a normal trash can of sorts.  “Did you hear about the half-a?” A guard asked as the other one next to him nodded.They were the guards closest to the door. The one speaking was tall and covered in black armor that gave a off a neon green glow at the joints. The other one next to him held a spear as well. Though this one was a bit shorter and gave off a purple-ish glow at the joints.    “Yeah I did, I heard that the half human, half ghost could be shoved in a box and drained of his powers.”  That comment made Danny full on stop moving and start to sweat a bit. Maybe this was going to be harder than he thought. He took a sharp shaky breath as he felt himself tensing up at the thought of them finding out his weakness only to breath out and loose all fear when he heard the taller night laugh.  “Catch a half-a and put it in a box? Haha that’s rich!” The knight then started laughing a bit as the crowd started to laugh Danny knew this was his chance, he floated up in the trash can and made his way to the door and quickly tried to open it behind them when all of a sudden there was a loud thud.  Jumping Danny retracted his hand into the safety of his trashcan armor and laughed nervously as the guard glared at him a bit from the crack. “Who are you and what do you want?” The tallest guard said as the one with the purple glow asked.  “Yeah what do you want, don’t you know it’s a list only thing? Not everyone is going to be going to the Human place!”  “What’s your name kid?”  Danny felt his heart rate sky rocketing, he couldn’t give up. Not when he was this close to getting into the place so, Danny just sheepishly laughed. He had to think of a lie quick or else all will be lost.  “Uh.. umm..err.. I’m.. The Trash Ghost, haunter of all things trashy.. uh, I want to go to The Human Place.” Danny murmured this quietly as he felt his face getting really hot from what just came out of his mouth.’nice going moron, everyone you know and care about is about to die and you just called yourself a trash ghost.’ Danny thought dryly before the guards looked to one another in a serous fashion. They both nodded once to one another and turned to him. Danny got ready to attack and fight for dear life when suddenly... One of the Knights started snickering and trying to hold back laughter while the taller knight hit their college's shoulder.  “Pfft HAHA, did you hear him? He said that he was THE TRASH GHOST!” The shortest of the two shouted as he laughed and nearly fell over and the tallest knight just cracked a slight chuckle. “Kid there’s no list, you can go in.” he then opened the door as the shortest of the knights whipped under the eye of his armor and murmured,” Haunter of all things trashy.... that’s a good one.. I’m going to tell that one to my wife.” and sniffed a bit.  The tallest of the two was still a bit hunched over from laughing as he stated,” The portal is on the roof but, you can beam up from the ground floor if you want.” He then shut the door behind him after whipping his eye a bit. For two knights in spiky armor the two were rather warm and had a great sense of humor for some reason.  Once inside Danny glanced around, the ground floor which was pretty much empty since every other ghost or monster was on the roof and going through the portal at the top since it would be less of a weight. Danny carefully crawled out of the trash can knocking it over and kicked it off his foot saying,”Yuck, note to self, next time when heading to big evil place of doom find a better hiding place..” He the ran his hand through his hair a bit and walked over to the base of the portal ready to throw the “metal” down into it so the portal will close. That was when he felt the area go cold. There was a huge looming shadow over Danny as he was about the throw it in the portal.  “Do you really think it was going to be that easy?” A deep, dark, but oddly smooth voice from behind him asked.    Danny bit his lip a bit and then got into a fighting stance saying,”If I have to fight you to save humans from death or enslavement then I will.” He then narrowed his eyes a bit and right as the tall male floated over or was about to there was a huge crash and then the sound of a groan.    All the sound from before seemed to leave and be replaced by screeches. It wasn’t human screams or the normal ghost screams, no it was a bunch of...Shooting? Confused Danny looked to the person that landed on the foe he was about to face only to see, Tucker? He also had ghost hunter equipment and a ghost blaster in his hands. He shoot the guy before getting up and dusting up. Danny just watched in utter shock before he just asked, “What the heck are you doing here?”   “I thought you needed a hand, I didn’t want to leave my best friend hanging.” Tucker stated and then he held up the blaster. “Your parents gave me the stuff because I said that you were in trouble and now the whole school is here to help you.” He then tossed Danny an blaster knowing things were just about to get real.   Danny was utterly shocked before he gave his friend a smirk and then watched as a bunch of ghosts came spilling in as a female shouted, “It’s the half a and he has the amulet that will close the portal!”    Danny and Tucker both started shooting whatever came at them as students started pouring in and shoot as well. As Danny flew through the air he noticed the form of a crying Dash curled up on the floor whining and whimpering like a wounded dog in a puddle of his own tears. A few times Dash even used the girls as shields. Danny made his way to the portal and looked through the hole that was now in the ceiling and then said, “Okay Tucker I’m going to throw it in the portal get everyone back to school now unless you want to be stuck in the Ghost Zone forever.”    Right as Danny shouted that Dash shoved a girl that he was cowering behind and then dove into the portal shouting,” Out of my way!”  The students then nodded and then everyone began to retreat back to the school. Once everyone left Danny flew high knowing that speed was going to be key to getting this puppy back where it needed to go and have it say there. With a might sound of effort Danny threw the “Metal” into the portal and then flew through it as there was a huge bright blast of light and all the ghosts got sucked back into the Ghost Zone.  -----   Danny landed on the other side of the portal hard with a thud and groaned  a bit as he turned back human. “That hurt...” Danny muttered to himself as he rolled over before getting up and looking around the room, “Everyone okay?” He asked as he took a deep breath. He knew everyone was likely going to hate him now that they knew the truth about what he was. That was when Danny noticed Dash curled up on the ground near him crying.    Danny felt bad even though Dash beat him up a lot he didn’t like seeing anyone cry like that so, he did the nice thing and offered a hand to the blond. Only to wince when Dash slapped his hand away shouting,” Get away from me you freak!”    Danny winced and backed up a bit and then looked down to his feet and then began to walk out of the room feeling like it was best to leave.    “You know, Danny didn’t have to save you!” someone shouted suddenly which made Danny pause and turn to look for who that was only to hear a rumble of agreement as kids made their way out from their hiding spots.   “Danny what you did back there was awesome. I wish I had the guts to do that.” A Jock said, while another nodded in agreement and then walked over to him and patted him on the shoulder.    “Do you always have to fight Mosters and Ghosts like that?” A popular girl asked while titling her head. She was one of the girls Dash used as a human shield. Danny nodded rubbing the back of his neck a bit sheepishly.    “Yeah but, it’s nothing really... it’s worth it if everyone is safe...” Danny responded as suddenly a Jock from the football team hugged him.   “I’m sorry for making you shove fries up your nose last week...” Softly before suddenly lifting him up on his shoulders.    Everyone then began saying their apologies but then Dash suddenly stood up and asked,” Why is everyone being so nice to a freak like him?! He’s the one who caused all of this, if he wasn’t here in the first place I bet non of this would have happened!” In a shout that was when the crowd turned to him.    The room fell silent for a moment before Danny responded with,” Actually you did this, if you would have never touched the metal in the first place this would never have happened. But no you had to take it because you were so sure it was yours.”    There was a rumble of agreement as a few girls shouted, “yeah and you didn’t even defend us! You just used us as shields you wimp you should say sorry!”    Dash shook his head and then crossed his arms stating,”no, never, I’m never going to say sorry to that freak!”    “Suite yourself then Dash...” Danny murmured softly before saying, “I’m not going to fight with you anymore...”    Right after he said that the Jock that was holding him up on his shoulders shouted,” Party at my place in honor of being alive thanks to our boy Danny!”  The cafeteria then was filled with Cheers. Danny for once felt like he actually fully fit in now and for once, he wasn’t afraid of being himself, half ghost and all.    Dash on the other hand left the Football team and had to face fines for all the bullying he did. Overall this story has a lesson and that is, don’t be afraid to do what’s right. Be yourself no matter what or who you are. With this the story comes to an end. (AN: I hope you enjoyed it, feel free to like, follow, and comment. I take requests you can hit me up here or on my other account for more spooky stuff! Stay creepy my friends!) 

[curewhimsy]

Dream Palace Summary

Dream Palace is an upcoming story about what I dream about at night. Dreams are surreal, magical, funny, and often scary, just like this story. My OC, Pastell Rain, will be playing the role of me!

Each chapter or so, Pastell gets a new crush on an adult woman who’s way out of her league. It always ends when Pastell realizes they already have someone!

Pastell is only 14 in this story, and in 10th grade. Usually in my dreams, I’m a kid who goes to school or summer camp.

Pastell may also switch to her 20-year-old form as well, if she does end up with one of her 18+ adult crushes. This is to make it less creepy and awkward.

But given the nature of the story, Pastell may not end up with any of her crushes anyway.

This story takes place in an alternate version of Whimsica that exists in the Realm of Dreams.

Kimi, nicknamed “Missouri”, is an imaginary friend I dreamed of as a child. Why her name is Missouri, nobody knows.

The story starts on a dark, rainy morning. Pastell is on the school bus with Missouri. The school bus is old and beat up.

Along with Pastell, two obnoxious boys are on the bus. Their names are Inky and Marker. They might be dating, who knows.

Then all of a sudden, the bus goes through a roller coaster. Roller coasters are recurring subjects in my dreams and often they take me to school. They’re never fun in the dreams, they’re only scary and make me nauseous.

Pastell talks to a girl named Bess, but doesn’t make friends with her because Pastell is awkward. Bess as a character is a homage to my grandmother who passed away during my childhood.

Pastell has to go to gym class. For some reason we’re running laps at the mall. Except the mall is scary and filled with booby traps. And suddenly Pastell starts running very slowly, because in dreams you just can’t seem to run fast.

Pastell pops into a peculiar shop and she finds a pretty scepter that catches her eye. She gets it for free because she shop couldn’t seem to sell it, and it was bringing them bad luck.

Little did she know, the scepter was magic.

At lunch time, there was no more mac and cheese, so Pastell had to get the icky pizza that was greasy and looked like it had pimples (and tasted like it too.)

The lunch lady always yelled and cooked her food in a giant volcano. As dessert, Pastell got lava cookies. She sits next to Missouri, Bess, Camille, Inky, Marker, and... Claudia! Her love!

Claudia had beautiful coral-colored hair that elegantly cascaded down her neck and back and... gee. Maybe I said too much.

Then, Pastell has boring economy class with boring Mr. Oguchi. He was so boring that after listening to him for 2 seconds, he’d sound like an adult from “Peanuts”.

Oguchi meant “small mouth” in Japanese, but Ooguchi, with an elongated “o” sound, meant big mouth. Everyone called him Mr. Bigmouth, along with his obnoxious son, Renta Oguchi.

Next, Pastell has math class. She can’t find the room in her school, because in dreams, you’re always lost and have anxiety. Or is that just me? At least Pastell had the class with Claudia, which is strange because Claudia is 24 and Pastell is 14...

Pastell runs into the strict teacher Ms. Dolce (Aria) who leads her back to class. Pastell befriends Bess.

Marker runs out of the room gagging because he ate pizza from the gym floor and got sick. Newsflash, he’s going to do this a lot. That’s called a “running gag”. But this time, it’s literal.

Now Inky is sad because Marker had is sick and isn’t there anymore. Those guys are always together. He starts howling at the moon.

Then, Ms. Scherzando (Octavia), the fun teacher, walks in the room and tells the class they were having a pop field trip, which was kind of like a pop quiz except it was a field trip.

It turns out that the field trip was a cruise to the islands near Whimsica’s equator. And it’s required.

Pastell’s overprotective parents go with her.

As the bus goes to the cruise port, it goes through another roller coaster. Marker comes back because his stomach ache is gone, and Inky hugs him and have a very touching moment. Ms. Dolce rolls her eyes, to hide the fact she was crying.

Also, I took my cat Scout with me on the cruise.

A wave crashes through the window on our cruise room so Pastell goes for an outing.

Missouri and Pastell go to the book store.

That evening, Pastell is on the pool deck again. Claudia sits down next to Pastell and says hello. Pastell suddenly can’t talk right, because sometimes in dreams I can’t talk.

Suddenly Claudia suggests she and Pastell play hide-and-seek. Pastell agrees, but wishes Claudia suggested a game where they can spend time together.

Claudia hides, but then Pastell can’t find her. She suddenly dons an explorer’s hat and an epic adventure soundtrack, and decides to search the whole 27-floor ship through. Too bad Pastell is afraid of everything.

On one floor, floor 22, there’s no electricity and Pastell sees a ghost. She runs and curls into a ball, accepting her fate, when suddenly Bianca shows up and Pastell feels like she’s saved.

There’s a flashback of how Pastell and Bianca meet.

During dodgeball, Bianca protected Pastell from a ball to the face by running in front of her and blocking the ball. Afterwards, Bianca shyly goes up to Pastell asking to be friends. Before she can let it out, a dodgeball hits her in the back and she starts crying. Pastell takes her to the nurse’s office.

It turns out Bianca went to floor 22 whenever she could, to feed the ghosts. Pastell asks if they eat souls. Bianca says no, it turns out that the ghosts eat candy! The ghosts are glowing and squishy-looking and had no legs. Pastell realizes they’re kind of cute.

Pastell realizes that Missouri’s ballet recital is coming up, and she has to find Claudia quick.

They go to a number of other weird floors.

On floor 20, there’s a place that looked like a dream land. There’s a rainbow bridge, a floating pink cookie to ride on, and a swimming pool filled with clear soda.

Pastell and Bianca meet Joy on this floor, which she said was her secret floor.

Pastell and the others decide to just go to Missouri’s dance recital.

In Pastell’s room, her mom starts showing Bianca and Joy her embarrassing baby pictures and telling the, her embarrassing secrets.

During the ballet recital, there was a Cinderella play. Cinderella was played by Reina and the prince was... Claudia!?

Then at the end, Reina and Claudia kiss, and Pastell feels her chance to be with Claudia slip away.

Afterwards, Pastell, Missouri, Joy, Bianca, Bess, Camille, Claudia, and Reina hang out at a restaurant on the cruise ship. They go outside and night and see a gigantic moon in the night sky with a huge terrifying face. (Which is kind of like the moon from Zelda: Majora’s Mask.)

Though scared, they decide to ignore the strange object in the sky and have a big sleepover in a Pastell’s room!

Going to her room, there are two kids in the hallway. One kid says “Put it in the elegant cup.” The other kid says “You mean the elephant cup?”

The next day, there’s swim lessons at the resort. The moon in the sky is a little bit bigger, hinting in on impending doom...

There’s a huge pool that’s around 20 feet deep. Pastell tries to improve her swimming, when she comes across a girl who can swim and dive very well. Her name is Lucille White and she becomes Pastell’s new crush! Now Pastell wants to improve her swimming to impress her senpai.

Then there’s locker room antics with Lucille and her girlfriend (unknown to Pastell), Iris. I guess you can call it ecchi but with adult characters only. Things get a little PG-13. Hey, I sometimes dream about this stuff. Gotta keep it true to my dreams.)

Next day, the ship stops at an island. We take a long walk down an island path, and then take a boat ride. During the boat ride, Bianca’s friend Pepper’s head gets knocked off. She’s still alive, only headless. We now have to look for her head.

Eventually Pastell catches Lucille and Iris kissing, thus ending her second love.

That night, they stay at a sea hotel that rises out of the ocean. There’s purple dolphins, and that scary moon in the sky is even bigger.

Also staying at the hotel, is our favorite monster-fighting marine biologist, Rhona Aequor. Pastell wakes up in the middle of the night and takes a walk since she can’t sleep. She sees Rhona fight a monster outside and falls in love. When she realizes how much she knows about marine life, she falls in love even more!

The next day, the terrifying moon is EVEN BIGGER in the sky. Everyone plays video games together to distract themselves, but then the video game gives us a prophecy that the moon the end the world. It then tells us that we can save it with a scepter and some courage. Remember the scepter Pastell got at the beginning of the story?

Then, with a goal of somehow saving the world, Pastell and friends end up at a tall tower on the top of a mountain where we can somehow combat the moon if it falls any closer. A bunch of strong wizards have gathered around and even their spells can’t affect it.

Pastell feels like she can’t do it, but then Camille starts giving a speech about believing in oneself. It gets so dramatic, that she starts playing the electric guitar in the middle of the speech. Camille says that she just believed she could play the guitar, and now suddenly she could.

You can do anything if you try. Too bad the moon is going to fall in about 30 seconds.

Then suddenly, by believing in herself, Bianca stops the moon right in her tracks, just by believing in herself!

Pastell starts chanting randomness and gains the ability to fly over the moon, and with her magic scepter, she shatters it. The moon is like a giant piñata and it rains stuffed animals as Pastell falls with them back to the ground.

Camille, who was playing the electric guitar, provides the climatic music for the scene.

Then, to celebrate, the next day everyone hangs out at a huge water park. They party until night, by then, someone dumped hot dogs in the main pool (probably either Inky or Marker), so Pastell goes to the hot tub. Then, she sees Rhona! Pastell tells Rhona that she admires her bravery, and she was part of the inspiration Pastell had to become strong and to shatter the moon. Rhona praises Pastell and they bond. But suddenly, Rhona’s girlfriend, Nagisa comes in, and start making out in front of Pastell.

Oh no! Pastell’s third love is also unattainable.

The next day, we go to the island’s airport in order to fly back home. The airport is huge and everyone gets lost. There’s a lot of stores and gift shops there, however, and everyone has a shopping spree.

Pastell as to say goodbye to Rhona and Nagisa, and go back to daily school life.

Instead of a plane taking us home, there’s actually a big hot air balloon. And how do we get to it? Through another roller-coaster.

After we return home, we learn that a Dissonance is opening up near our home. A Dissonance is like a Mystery Dungeon from PMD. It’s like a cursed labyrinth that doesn’t have a fixed interior. It’s maze always changes, and once you find yourself in one, it’s possible to be lost for days.

The Dissonance already claimed lives. It’s named Tragic Woods.

It turns out that Pastell didn’t go to one of her classes for a month, and she fails that class. She has overdue books from the school library. Then she fails a test, gets last place on an art contest, and missed an assignment. Pastell gets sad because of her bad day and goes to the school’s counselor to talk. Except now the school is huge and 69 stories high for some reason. Yes, 69.

That night Pastell watches magical girl anime with her friends and sleeps over.

The next day is fairly normal, but still wacky, because this IS based on my dreams. Pastell and her family go shopping and see a bunch of giant stuffed animals at the store. Then Pastell accidentally flies in someone’s big pot of lasagna. It took them three days to make that lasagna.

Pastell runs away and discovers a secret room behind the grocery store where there’s a lot of video games, and if you win, you get stuffed animal prizes.

That night, we get introduced to Sumi. She and Reina end up getting stuck at the bottom of a strangely placed slope in the grocery store. They argue a lot at first, but then Reina ends up seeing that Sumi has a dream in life. Reina sacrifices herself so that Sumi can get out, because only one person was able to get out. Reina wants Sumi to be able to fulfill her dreams, because Reina is a pessimist with no dreams and thinks Sumi deserves to live more than she does. Reina has to stay at the bottom of the slope, possibly until her death. This is a tearful parting and sacrifice.

Then, Reina just anticlimactically gets found by a worker the next morning and gets saved.

The next night, there’s a chorus recital. Since when was Pastell in chorus, anyway? Well, for now, she’s stuck in a storage room while the performance is going to start. Pastell is only able to get out by pretending she is Mario and jumping out of the small exit.

Then, Pastell gets to become a school idol. She forms a group of nine. The group is Pastell, Bianca, Joy, Camille, Missouri, Bess, Ruby, Emi, and Connie.

While they’re practicing in a parking lot at night, one of the cars goes haywire. It starts spinning around erratically and bumping into everything. Everyone runs away, because the car could potentially run them over. It becomes known as the “Killer Car of Tragic Woods”, even though it never is physically inside the Dissonance, but rather in the surrounding town of Mushroom Forest. Now, there’s an erratic killer car that could potentially be anywhere in town and could run you over if you’re not paying attention. Everyone now has to avoid being alone, and has to keep a lookout for the car before it kills them.

Eventually, the car gets in the school library while Pastell is there. Pastell panics and climbs the bookshelf to stay safe. Then, she goes to the Chinese restaurant (possibly the Meng family’s restaurant from the other story), and the car follows her there.

Pastell runs away from the car and ends up in the expanding Tragic Woods. Pastell is now lost all alone in a Dissonance. She’s terrified and this is her first time being in one. There’s monsters in there.

Suddenly, she is saved by a monster-hunting princess named Celestine, who’s going to be Pastell’s fourth love...

Celestine then gives Pastell an Escape Orb. Basically it lets her escape from the Dissonance by going high in the air. Pastell ends up going over all the trees, to high altitude. By then, it’s night. She then falls all the way to Earth, being so high up she can see the sun rising from the other side of the world.

Pastell hits the water, causes a tsunami of a splash, and goes down under at least 300 feet. She “dies” and somehow wakes up in the nurse’s office and got told she had surgery.

Pastell doesn’t know how much of that scenario was a dream, or if it even was a dream at all. And if it was a dream, then when exactly did it start?

This causes a mystery. Is Celestine even real? Pastell’s fourth love could just be a figment of her imagination...

That night Pastell is in her backyard and she drops her iPad and it rolls away into the woods. (How an iPad can roll, I don’t know.)

She runs after it in the woods until it falls in a giant drain pipe. Pastell goes in the drain pipe as well to retrieve her precious iPad. But the drain pipe leads to some sort of dark maze and the only quick way out is through a roller coaster. A dark, scary, creaky, old, one-person roller-coaster.

Pastell is terrified but rides it anyway. She comes out in the middle of the polluted, industrial city. Great, now she’s lost again. Then she meets an elf named Alvarina who is also lost. They have an adventure together to get out of the industrial city, that involves riding a giant chicken. There’s still the danger of The Car, however, which could be anywhere. Pastell falls in love with Alvarina, who is a beautiful singer and very pretty.

Eventually, Pastell finds out that Celestine is real. But get this, she’s dating Alvarina!

Her fourth AND fifth loves are now over too!

And, that’s all I have for now.

[ghostmartyr]

Fic: untitled prologue of a thing

Usually I post fic segments with what amounts to a list of ingredients up top, but I don’t want too much formality getting in the way of the first post of this project (which is why that title for the post is allowed to exist).

This story is a long time coming, and I’m really excited about it. It’s a For Want of a Nail AU doubling as a Bodyguard AU, featuring Queen Ymir and Historia as the captain of her royal guard. Shippiness ensues. ...Eventually.

For the prologue, only one part of that description comes close to mattering, but hopefully it’s still its own kind of fun.

Ymir’s not really the complaining type.

On the streets, the louder you whined about how much life sucked for you, the louder the screams when a bunch of helpful people got to making it suck a lot more. That was before they started asking about your blood. If uniforms were involved, there wasn’t much of an after.

With the old man, it was even simpler. There was no way in hell she was going to complain about having a decent pair of shoes instead of counting on last week’s layer of mud to keep her feet from getting scraped up.

A few months ago, she wasn’t awake enough to consider the option.

Now is a bit different from any of those times. Locked up under a few tons of rock and dirt, hidden away from everything she never cared about, and passing the hours counting the same cracks in the stone under her feet, she’s starting to think a bit on the value of telling people where to shove it. Goddesses can’t say things like that, but maybe whatever she is now can. Maybe whatever she now wants to, even if that doesn’t make a lick of good sense. She’s had worse. Been worse, too. All it takes is closing her eyes the wrong second and the rampaging monster comes back, hunger and heaving breaths bearing down on anything stupid enough to get near her.

A real prison isn’t so bad after all that. The only people down here she has to worry about killing are the tools outside her cell who look at her like those days never really ended. She gets a fresh blanket every once in a while, and they’re good about keeping her fed. Back in her first life, the cuffs around her hands would have slipped right off by now.

Maybe that’s the point, but she’s definitely not getting on their case over that. Add a few windows, and it’s about as cozy as any home she dreamt up as a kid. Especially now that no one cares what’s inside her head. Interrogators haven’t bothered with her in a while. The weirdos who kept dragging her off for experiments haven’t, either, and it’s a bit pathetic that she’s disappointed over that. The air outside her cage isn’t any fresher, and the cuffs are even tighter.

She needed a break. She’s too young to have sixty years of problems, and every second people talk to her down here, she can feel more years piling on. Hiding away from everything isn’t the worst thing for her. Even if it means no more stars.

Or grass.

Trees.

Anything interesting at all.

The point is, complaining isn’t going to change any of it. She doesn’t know what will, and maybe she doesn’t want to care about that right now, but mouthing off could get her into a place where she doesn’t ever get a new blanket.

But it’s been months. A few weeks now with no guards. Once a day someone runs down and skids her food under the bars, then runs back to whatever more important things they’ve got going with a look like the old Ymir’s chasing down their tail.

Months and weeks and years, and now there’s this.

She can smell it, wafting down the spooky corridor. Smoked and heavy, the stench curls through the air, teasing the chance for each breath to catch the heavenly scent. Meat. Hunger has her mouth watering, and each swallow wrestles with the bile fighting its way up. Her hands are damp and limp, and her chains jangle loudly when she tries to wipe them off on her shirt.

They’re still normal hands, which is cool. Small enough that cracking a few heads open would take some work. She’s probably a bad person for thinking of which few heads she’d go for first, but they did throw her in prison.

Not that she’d usually complain about that.

Ymir rips herself up off her cot and marches the few steps she can walk over to the bars.

“Hey!” she shouts down the creepy hall with its creepy mood smells. “You want to deal with something your size, get on over here before I go for the raw food instead!”

Her teeth clack together in the echo. Because she’s pissed and gritting them. That’s rage her tiny hands are shaking with, too. She’s graduated from goddess to unholy terror, and if someone wants to mess with her, they should think twice and take their stupid cooking out of her hole.

She counts her heartbeats waiting for some sign of life outside her cell. The flicker of torchlight doesn’t count today. She gets to about twenty before her ears catch something new.

Footsteps. The same tromping kind that show up whenever the guards are around to check on her instead of sort of looking nearby the cell and running back the way they came before she gets so much as a hello. Goody.

Smoke’s following them. Ymir used up all her luck not dying when she was killed, so that’s not really a surprise. Her inconsolable rage tightens her jaw a bit more. The shadow of a person hits the bit of wall leading up to her cell. Definitely carrying something.

When color enters the scene, Ymir allows that some of the gnawing in her stomach might have something to do with dread. If the tall blond soldier notices anything, and he does, because she’s been down here long enough to know things like that about these people, he doesn’t make a noise. The platter he’s carrying hisses a little, tiny pops crackling invitingly right outside her bars. Ymir goes with ignoring it until her teeth ache.

The tromping footsteps stop in front of her cell, and the stalwart soldier spares her a brief nod before placing the stupidly shiny dish on the floor and skidding it into arm’s reach. It’s a little funny, watching him crouch down in the dirt. He almost reaches undignified, but that’s ruined when he stands back up.

Ymir doesn’t move.

He does that thing with his eyes where he’s pretending to smile without any of the muscle effort. “I thought you could use some food.”

His hands stay clasped behind his back. Ymir keeps her eyes off the plate while her nose itches. “I get food every day. You were pretty clear about that. Sir,” she adds. Because she can. The old man wouldn’t call the tone anything to do with manners, but the guy in front of her is so full of soldierly righteousness that he demands some kind of title.

Erwin Smith. He who thought up throwing her in a dungeon instead of killing her. The man who now brings secret prisoners freshly cooked food.

Once upon a time, she knew someone like that. He held out a hand to a starving street urchin, and the brat became a goddess. All because he fed her, and he asked.

Ymir can’t say she likes where this is going.

Erwin’s got a shiny new wing symbol tied around his neck, and something about him has always been a little crazy when he looks at her, but the manic light in his eyes has a power behind it that even his nutso scientist doesn’t have. He’s always walked taller than her, being about twice her size, but right now Ymir finds herself believing that he makes his living out of killing giants.

It doesn’t feel right. Not when everyone she’s seen down here for the last few weeks has looked like they’re going to hurl any second.

Ymir knows the feeling. She glances down at the plate. Her eyes skitter over the steak to the buttered bread. Hunger that belongs to her, not some shadow, drags her down to the floor, and she stuffs a roll in her mouth before bad daydreams talk her out of it.

It’s one of the best things she’s ever tasted, and if she could run, she’d be sprinting out the nearest door. Seeing as she can’t, might as well make the most of it. Warmth soothes the building nausea, and the bread is so soft that her teeth tear it apart with a gentle nudge. Despite herself, her roving eyes go back to the plate instead of watching the silent soldier.

“Aren’t you people having some kind of food crisis?” she says around the next roll. “You must really want something out of me to set yourself back like this.”

Erwin smiles with his mouth this time. “I’m glad you’re keeping some consideration of our circumstances in mind. It cost less than you might think, though.”

Ymir licks a drop of butter off her finger. “Wow. You really know how to sell a bribe.”

Erwin continues talking like he doesn’t hear her. Forget that they could probably save some time if he just went about this honestly. She’s a kid, not stupid. “You see, twenty percent of our population is now dead,” he says calmly. “Leaving the survivors to celebrate the spoils of war.”

Ymir stops in the middle of reaching for one of the berries littering the bribery spread. She looks up and stares. “Twenty—sorry, what?”

“Twenty percent of our population,” he repeats. Like he’s reciting a school lecture. “We sit here reaping the benefits of their… sacrifice.” He nods at her stilled hands. “Eat up. It would be remiss of us not to appreciate what they’ve left for us.”

Ymir rolls her eyes and takes a sip from the waterskin. There’s a hole opening up in her stomach, and that’s a feeling that’s dropped her straight into a living hell several times now.

She didn’t spend that much time inside the walls before hitting underground. She can remember enough, though. People crying. Monsters chewing off heads. Children tinier than her screaming for their parents.

She saw enough of the walls to know she didn’t even see one percent of the people trapped in them.

“You still haven’t said what you want out of me. And don’t say nothing.” Ymir plops a berry in her mouth. “People don’t share sob stories with prisoners unless they’re after something.”

“It’s hardly a sob story. Simply the facts.” Erwin takes a step closer to the cell. “Our leadership chose to send out thousands of untrained citizens to their deaths so that the rest of the population might live. That was all that was in their power to do in the current situation: encouraging the catastrophic loss of life to happen in an environment where no one would have to care.”

The dark enemy Ymir recognizes as her conscience twists into knots in her chest. She puts her next roll down. “Still nothing to do with me.”

“You said,” Erwin says, “that when our people retreated to this island, it was the king’s power that protected them.”

“I said a lot of things.” She did. Interrogations brought that out of her, apparently. Along with the absurd fun of watching the world these people thought they knew falling to pieces in a few short minutes. Fun is the last thing on her mind right now. Hitting herself for her big mouth is a frontrunner, but she’s in enough psychic torment to give herself a pass on that.

“That for generations, that power has stood between us and destruction.”

“Yeah, looks like it’s really helped you guys out.”

“No. It hasn’t,” Erwin says.

Ymir examines one of the cracks in her cell wall. “Does this place not have sarcasm, or…”

“It hasn’t,” Erwin continues, dropping the bland school teacher tone for something entirely more frightening, “because it’s missing. Our true King, as well as his Titan.” Not good. Not good at all. The whole corridor is silent, but Ymir’s own heartbeat is too deafening to care. “It is a vacancy that has cost thousands of lives.”

The crack on the wall actually starts in the floor, right next to one of the cot’s legs. Someone did a crappy job installing the thing. They’re probably dead now. Luck isn’t really a thing she sees following around someone who designs underground prisons.

Berry juice is still dripping off her teeth. With the smell right there, it doesn’t take much to imagine something thicker, with a little more tang, and the sound of crunching bones is too loud to be a real memory, but she knows it happened. Her second chance didn’t come free. It picked up with as much violence as the first left off with.

Swallowing takes a sickening effort, and she grins at Erwin.

“So what, this where you string me up for massacring the royal family?”

Erwin smiles back, and going with the rest of the terror is the sure knowledge that whatever the hell he’s selling, he believes in it. He believes in it like no one should believe in anything. That’s how you get stoned to death and turned into monsters.

“Anything you did or didn’t do is past the point, Ymir.” She never should have told them her name. “Our world is missing its key player. We need a replacement.”

Ymir closes her eyes.

She never got this conversation before.

“What do I care about your problems?”

She never got a balcony seat to how stupid she’s capable of being. She even felt smart. Food and a warm bed. You’d have to be crazy to turn all that down.

This time, she already has that.

Erwin’s voice comes at her like the last bell toll before the public gets to pick their ammunition up from the ground. “I don’t know,” he says softly. “What I do know is that you came into our custody because your refusal to take our lives left you at a disadvantage.”

She has a blanket. Food and water.

She’s not a rampaging monster.

Things have been worse.

Better, too.

“Twenty percent of our population is gone, Ymir. What I am offering you is a chance to save the other eighty.”

For that one moment, staring up at the starry sky and breathing free air, she was the happiest she’d ever been. There was a joy that nothing could touch bursting to life in her soul, and everything that had gone on, as bad as it was, had felt worth it for that perfect set of seconds.

Then she threw it all away trying to save some dumb kids from botching their exit plan.

Ymir opens her eyes.

“You’ll get me out of here?”

She sucks at second chances.

[velvetroom--imagines]

I love these types of blogs so much!!! Could you maybe do vampire Yusuke? Like general and with a s/o? That be super great, thx so much!!

I really liked this AU. I might’ve wrote it darker and slightly angsty than intended. It was a bit rushed towards the end, but I hope this pleases you!

Vampire!Yusuke HCs

General HCs

Many people would think that Yusuke’s choice ofwords was strange. No one in the 21st Century would use words like‘Indubitably’ or ‘Alas’. His vocabulary is higher and classier than the averagestudent, and it was hard for people to understand him. People often ask him ifhe was born in the 18th Century in a joking manner.

If only they knew he was much more olderthan that.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Yusukewas born, or turned into one of the undead. Early traces of him could be foundaround the 14th Century. Yusuke was fond of the arts back then, andno one would believe him if he explained that he saw the Mona Lisa when it wasfirst displayed.  More or less, he wouldsneak into artists’ houses just to look at their unfinished work.

Yusuke spend most of his past life in Euro-AsianContinents, especially Italy. He has seen almost all of the future landmarks,like the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, The Starry Night and many more. His adventuresceased when war and disease was starting to become a common thing.

He also couldn’t find the time to fall in love.Everyone he was attracted to either died too early, or was already in love withanother. He was especially popular during the Victorian Era, and swooned acouple of ladies with his elegant speech.

His final location was Japan, where he hidhimself underground and fell into a deep sleep around the early 19thcentury. The problem was that he didn’t wake up until the 21stCentury.

When he woke up, he was too disoriented with thecurrent world. Smartphones were aliens to him, and what’s a hashtag?

It took him a while to steal some clothes andhide amongst the living, but he was safe. Yusuke Kitagawa was now a student atKosei High, supposedly one of the only vampires in Tokyo. It was only harder tofeed or eat, especially since cops were around.

It was rather funny when Yusuke tried to tradein pure gold for items. Store Owners began to freak out when he pulled outsmall pieces of gold to buy a shirt. Luckily, someone directed him to apawnshop where he actually received money.

He manages to withstand the light, but it onlyleaves him weak. He is often seen wearing hats or hoodies, and sometimes, hewould bring an umbrella with him. People who brush hands with his would oftenfeel a sudden chill; it was no secret that his body was just as cold as acorpse.

One thing he truly hates the most is that hecannot see his own reflection. Vampires cannot see themselves in a mirror, andcameras would only leave a blurry picture. He has always wanted to see what helooked like now, having forgotten the last time he ever saw his own face.

 Rather than the Phantom Thieves that stolehearts, the team was a bunch of vampires that struggled to survive in Tokyo.Instead of entering the Metaverse and changing cognitions, they fought evilvampires that tried to kill out of fun, rather than survival.

RomanticHCs

Yusuke met you, his future S/O at school. Atfirst, your friendship consisted of being classmates until an art class where youwere paired up together. It was a project about historical art, to find a pieceand try to decipher the meaning behind the art.

In the midst of trying to find a piece, Yusukewould often try to guide you to find a piece to work on together. During the project,he would always correct you and tell you facts before you can even google it. Soon,your project was successfully finished with a high grade.

Yusuke had other plans however. At first, heonly saw you as a meal. Of course, Vampires needed to feed and he was noexception. You were supposedly his next target, and there were no feelingstowards you. His first step was to invite you out on a little ‘date’, and takecare of you from there.

It didn’t go exactly as planned, however. He hadtaken you to a vast forest, and purposely gotten lost with you. Just as he wasabout to take you by the next and drain the red from your body, you expressedyou sudden feelings towards Yusuke. “Can I just say that I really like your artwork?”By then, he had frozen in surprise. “There’s just something about them thatmakes them so unique, and I keep trying to search meaning in them.” Perhaps, hewill kill you next time.

Yusuke doesn’t follow through his future plans,however. One date turns into two, then two turns into four. Eventually, it hadbeen months since that first date. By the seventh, he made a fatal mistake. Theseventh date took place under a bridge, and he was certain that he was going toget rid of you. However, you didn’t fail to surprise him yet again. “Is it abad thing to say that I might’ve fallen for you?”

Initially, Yusuke was supposed to clamp a handover your mouth and start feeding. He wanted to decline and get rid of you forgood, but his dead heart said otherwise. “Are you requesting me to court you? Iwouldn’t decline such a delightful offer.”  

He didn’t expect to get so attached to a meal,and it was the first time he was hesitating on feeding. Dating was one of themost fulfilling memories of his long life, but it was at the cost of his life.Ever since you entered his life, he began to feed less and less. It suddenlycame to a point where he couldn’t bring himself to eat, because he thoughteating would be betraying his S/O.

Eventually, he comes to his breaking point. Afterbeing badly hurt by an enemy, he finds himself wounded and weak. Since he hasrestricted himself from feeding, he can only hope the wound heals on its own. Helocks himself up in his dorm, and refuses to leave. You, on the other hand, istold that he is ‘sick’. He tells you not to come, and even sounded angry whenyou insisted to visit. Soon, you had come to realize that people don’t staysick for two weeks.

Yusuke’s condition had worsened. Hunger had begunto affect his mentality, turning him into depraved monster unlike his composedself. The blood bags he would steal from the hospital weren’t enough, onlycoming in limited packaging. He couldn’t eat or sleep, and all he wanted to dowas feed. Deep down, he was truly afraid that the next human he sees may be hisnext meal. He wasn’t in the right mind when he heard the front door open.

“Who’s there?” He asked, trying to keep himselfcalm as possible. Fingers twitching and itching to eat, he waited patiently forhis prey. The voice calling out to him didn’t get through his head, and suddenly,the door to his bedroom opened. Without even checking who it was, he lunges forwardand pins them on the floor. Hungrily, he drooled on the figure.

Blinded by his urge to eat, he didn’t seem tocare that his supposed meal was no other than his S/O. “From this angle, you looklike such a delicious meal.” He had begun to sniff you out, getting drunk withyour scent. And then it all starts to flash back, all the memories of himtrying to trap you, all his attempts of trying to kill you. Before he couldsink his teeth into your delicate flesh, he stops for a moment.

“S/O… I-“ He chokes for a moment, trying to holdhimself back.

“Please, l-leave me be… Your scent is sooverwhelming. I’ll be willing to die to take a bite. However, once I do, Imight not be able to stop…” Yusuke pleaded, shuddering with each breath. Hetries to move back, knowing that once you leave, it might be all over for him.He only prays that you would get up and run, away from his sight and power.

And yet, your scent doesn’t leave the room.Instead, he hears the sound of shuffling cloth. “Yusuke, don’t hold back.”Looking up, the first thing he sees is your exposed shoulder. It was thebreaking point for him. Without a moment to spare, he moves at an inhuman paceand pierces through your shoulder with no mercy. It was so sweet, a rare andunique taste. Feeling your hands run up his purple hair, he relaxed.

“I love you, Yusuke. Eat as much as you can. Idon’t mind if you take too much, you are everything to me.” How could he do this to someone who wouldsay such words to him?

At those words, you might’ve felt a prick oftears on your back. Even so, he continues to drink from you. It was a warbetween his needs and his heart, his hunger or your life. After moments ofsticking to your flesh, he finally pulls away. Before you could tell him tokeep going, he shakes his head. “No, it’s enough.” Once you look at him, youimmediately see a regretful expression on his face.

A relationship with a Vampire was hard. It wasnothing like the fairytales shown on TV. Even when Yusuke warned you what kindof trouble you would be involved in. No matter how many times he tried to breakit off, you always stayed.

Every now and then, Yusuke would question your humanity.There was no way of avoiding age, and you were a step close to dying eachsecond. He would think about turning you into a Vampire himself, but it mightnot be what you want. He knows that living forever means to leave behind yourlife, and would leave it up to you to decide.

Dating Vampire!Yusuke was a challenge. His S/Owould always have to hide him and risk their own lives of getting caughthelping the undead. They would also have to be understand of his diet, and mayhave to help him gather blood bags to sustain his health. Loving this man meantpromising him your eternity, and to promise your heart to him for as long asyou live.

It may not be the happiest love story, and itmay not end with a happy ending, but this love was one that would’ve lasteduntil the end of time. As long as you trusted your heart to Yusuke, expect himto protect you from all the dangers in the world.

[skysplinter]

Fanfic: Buried Deep (pt1)

There was nothing anyone could do. When the lightning struck, it spread too fast to be stopped. The old tower was no match for the forces of nature. The city folk could only escape while they still could and watch as the building burned. Even the guardian of the tower could not hope to stop the flames - as the wood smoldered and collapsed around it, it spread its wings and fled far to the west where the fire would not spread.

The blaze proved to be unquenchable, and the people of the city feared that it would take the next tower, and the city itself if it continued to grow. In a panic, they sent word of their plight to the south, begging their neighbors and friends in the hopes that others could save them.

But while their pleas for help spread from person to person, another message was being sent. The birds and beasts of the wild passed a message of a great tragedy, as yet unknown to the people of the city. In the old burning tower, three poor creatures had been trapped by the debris.

The birds and the beasts gathered together and sang out for their three lost children. Their song reached the heavens and brought a great downpour of rain, finally putting out the flames that had destroyed the tower. The people of the city rejoiced. They were saved!

However, it was too late for the three little creatures that had been trapped inside the burned out building, for they had already perished. The birds and the beasts cried in mourning for their lost little ones.

This time, their voices were heard by another - the brethren of the burned tower's guardian, who lived in a tower made of tin. The second guardian took pity upon them for their loss, and granted the three little creatures life once more.

One was born again in a blinding flash of light as a memory of the storm.

The second returned in a blaze of fury, an echo of the flames that had consumed them.

And the third was formed from the tears of the birds and the beasts in a great deluge, as a reminder of the rain which had quenched the fire.

Then, with its gift bestowed upon them, the guardian of the tin tower disappeared into the clouds. It left a glittering rainbow in its wake as it departed, never to be seen again until the time was right and the world needed it once more.

Meanwhile, the three reborn beasts remained in the ruins of the old burned tower. Imbued with new powers given to them by the guardian, they served as a reminder for the tragedy that had taken place, and as a symbol of nature's wild power. It is said they lie beneath the tower even now, sleeping and waiting for their time to rise again.

***

'This is Reed signing off,' said the radio host. 'And remember, all you beautiful listeners out there - keep yourself tuned into the Lucky Channel.'

His voice trailed off and was replaced by one of the cheesiest jingles Ryo had ever heard. In a temper, she leaned over to the front of the car and turned the radio off. Anything was better than listening to that garbage.

Unfortunately, turning off the radio only left her more thoughts to contend with. With no sound to distract her, she could only dwell on what was probably going on inside Professor Elm's lab. Her mom had driven her here and asked her to wait in the car while she discussed something "really important" with her dad.

Knowing her luck, she was probably in trouble again. Ryo couldn't remember a time where she hadn't been in trouble. For the past year or so, she'd had her parents breathing down her neck almost constantly for one reason or another.

First, it had been her run-in with the neighbour's kid, Lyra. The girl had been so smug about the Pokémon her parents had gotten her and paraded the stupid blue mouse ball all over the place for weeks - Marill or Mareep or whatever it was, Ryo didn't care. Her parents hadn't found it funny when she'd taken Lyra's stupid pet and offered to show off her soccer skills with the thing, whatever it was called. Clearly no one in New Bark Town could take a joke.

Then after that, there had been the incident with another one of their more gullible neighbours. Her mom in particular hadn't been impressed when she'd found out that Ryo had convinced the guy to stand out all night in the pouring rain just to find a Pokémon that would only come out of hiding in the daytime. It was his own fault for actually going along with her, but apparently that didn't matter.

When that had all blown over, Ryo had accidentally broken the Pokégear her parents had bought her for her birthday. A Pokégear was an expensive gift, she knew, and her dad had apparently worked extra hours in the lab for Professor Elm just to afford it. Obviously she hadn't meant to break it, but one peaceful walk in the fields just on the town outskirts had turned into a nightmare when a bunch of what she had _thought_ were rocks turned out to be a family of very grumpy Pokémon who didn't enjoy being sat on. She'd come home covered in bumps and bruises after the little rock monsters had finished pelting her with pebbles, and her brand new Pokégear had been all but smashed to bits.

It never stopped. When her parents had finally forgotten about one problem, they'd find another reason to get mad and punish her. She was beginning to forget what a life without being grounded was like, and her TV probably didn't even know how to turn on anymore, but worst of all - worse than anything else that her parents had thrown at her these long eighteen months...

They'd forbidden her from getting her first Pokémon and becoming a fully fledged trainer. While all the other kids her age had been given a Pokémon by Professor Elm and sent off to explore and battle one another, Ryo could only sit and watch from the sidelines.

It wasn't fair. Okay, she had to admit - she might not have been the perfect kid all the time, but it was cruel to keep her hanging back for so long. She was already a teenager now, easily old enough to start her Pokémon journey - and yet here she was, stuck in a stuffy old car while her mom and dad cooked up new ways to make her life miserable. Meanwhile, kids much younger than her were probably setting fire to gym leaders and punching the Indigo League champion, Lance, in his stupid pretty face.

But what could she do about it? She didn't have the money to go out and buy Pokéballs, so catching her own Pokémon was out - and she couldn't just steal a Pokémon from someone else.

She slumped back in her seat. In time, maybe she'd meet other losers who never became a Pokémon trainer. Maybe she'd train to become an accountant or a bus driver or something else that didn't involve Pokémon, and she could be happy watching other people have fun while she begrudged her parents for forbidding her to get her first Pokémon until she was old enough to retire.

'Ugh.' She punched the seat in front of her and took a deep breath.

She was being stupid, she knew that. She just hated this. She hated waiting, she hated feeling useless - and she hated being held back like this. Maybe it was her own fault, or maybe it wasn't. It didn't really matter. She just couldn't stand feeling like all that was waiting for her was a great big nothing. If her parents were going to punish her, they could have made her do any chore they wanted - but this? This was pure torture.

Ryo was shaken from her misery by a knock on the door. Her mom was glaring at her through the window, tight lipped and stiff-limbed like she always was when her daughter got herself in trouble. Ryo opened the door and climbed out of the car.

'Come with me,' her mom said sharply. She was a very severe looking woman even at the best of times, with her sharp haircut and thin, angular build - about as far away from Ryo's dumpy, grumpy look as it was possible to be - but when she was in a mood like this, she looked even spikier than usual. 'You're needed in the lab.'

'Oh boy,' said Ryo. 'Is that where the electric chair is? I didn't think they did public executions any more.'

'Don't be smart, young lady. Come on, we shouldn't keep them waiting.'

_Them?_ She was beginning to like the sound of this less and less, but she didn't have time to dwell on it. Her mother grabbed her arm and guided her through the lab's double doors, past a cloud of glasses-wearing nerds in lab coats, and finally - worryingly - to the entrance to Professor Elm's private office.

'What's the professor got to do with this?' asked Ryo. 'I just thought you and dad were going to ground me again...'

Her mom didn't answer her. She swung the door open, still frowning. 'In,' she said.

Inside the office, she was greeted by her dad and Professor Elm standing by a large machine on the far side of the room. It was a little difficult to tell the two men apart, if she was honest - they were both tall, thin, prematurely balding geeks, and right now, they were both staring at her like she had grown another head. One of them tried something that looked almost like a smile. Her mom closed the door and stood beside the pair, her arms folded firmly against her chest.

'Oh, Ryo! There you are!' One of the men greeted her cheerily. By his tone of voice, she presumed she was talking to the professor; he sounded a little less disapproving than her dad when he sPoké to her. 'Now, I suppose you're wondering why I asked you here.'

'Uhhh...' Ryo shrugged. 'I figure I've done something wrong?'

Elm laughed. Her dad followed nervously. Her mom was still deathly silent.

'No, no. In fact, quite the opposite,' said the professor. 'I need to ask you a favour. I've been trying to ask for your assistance for the past... the past... I'm not quite sure how long, but it's no doubt been several months at least. Unfortunately, with one thing or another, I just haven't had the opportunity to ask. With recent developments, however, I simply can't put off asking you any longer, which is why I've gathered both you and your parents here.'

Ryo was already baffled. A favour? Something her dad's boss had been meaning to ask her for months on end? But that meant... No, they couldn't have...

'Now,' Elm continued. 'I have an acquaintance who goes by the, uh... the intriguing moniker of "Mr. Pokémon". He is, uh, quite fanatical about his research, you see, and he continually raves to me about his strange discoveries. There have been numerous accounts he has regaled me with that, despite their preposterous nature, have intrigued me... but just this morning I received a message from him that was too remarkable for me to ignore. It really is an intriguing case, and I would love to go and visit him myself, but we're so busy with our research here, and I simply can't spare any of my assistants at the moment. And obviously, I have considered asking others to go and visit him, but given his... um, peculiar living arrangements, I daren't send anyone without a Pokémon to visit him - someone trustworthy and reliable. And I was wondering -'

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. 'You want me to visit this Mr. Pokémon guy?'

The professor nodded. 'I've already asked your parents' permission, and they've agreed,' he said. By the looks of her mom, asking for her permission would have been no easy feat: she was practically quivering in the corner, her face pulled into a furious scowl. 'I understand you haven't yet been given your first Pokémon, so I would be happy to give you one of the rare creatures we've recently discovered to help you start your journey...'

'Yeah,' Ryo interrupted, glaring at her mother. 'Yeah, that sounds great, doc. Sign me up. I'd love to have my first Pokémon. I've waited for so, so long,' she said, labouring the words, 'I never thought I'd ever get one. But yeah, I'd be happy to visit your friend for you. After all, you said yourself - I'm pretty trustworthy and reliable, aren't I? Kind of a perfect candidate for this kind of job, really. And if mommy and daddy dearest have said it's finally, _finally_ okay for their trustworthy, reliable daughter to start something that everyone else started months ago, then I guess I have no complaints.'

Thankfully, all of her snide remarks sailed over Professor Elm's head. 'So enthusiastic! Well, let's not delay any longer. Let's get you a new Pokémon, shall we?' He smiled and pressed a button on the machine next to him. A panel opened, revealing three Pokéballs. 'I thought I'd give you a selection, so you can choose one that suits you.'

She'd been waiting for this for so long. If it had been any other situation, she would have taken her time, too overwhelmed by the prospect of finally getting her first Pokémon to know which one to choose.

But her parents had done this on purpose. They didn't want her to get a Pokémon. They didn't want her to become a trainer. They wanted her stuck at home with them, miserable and left out. She stalked over to the machine, swiped the first ball her hand came to, and turned for the door. 'Thanks doc,' she said. 'I guess I'll go and see this Mr. Pokémon guy then. See ya.'

'Aren't you going to check your Pokémon first?'

Ryo's hand was already on the door. 'Nah,' she said through gritted teeth. 'This one will do. Thanks again, doc.'

She threw the door open and slammed it behind her. She could hear her mother erupt in the room as she left, and she broke into a run, bursting out of the laboratory and onto the street.

[karama9]

A Core Belief Crushed

Reblogging for the morning people, and added convenience: you can now read it right here under the break.

A Core Belief Crushed

A Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir fanfic.

Two birds with one stone with this story: it is essentially a possible start of a redemption for Chloe, and more importantly to me, it allowed me to to put a head canon that is very dear to me out there: Nat being transgender.

Summary: Everyone adores Chloe Bourgeois… or so she sincerely believes. When she finally discovers otherwise, Cat Noir and Ladybug attempt to nudge her towards being a better person. No shipping, but no anti shipping either… just no romance depicted.

Read under the break or if you prefer, on fanfiction.net or a03. Username karama9 and story title A Core Belief Crushed.

Notes:

I wanted to get this our for pride month, because although there is a fair amount of fan work, for Ladybug and other shows, featuring same sex pairing, you don't often see much more representation in fan work than in canon for transgender people.

So this story features my head canon that one of the secondary characters in Ladybug is in fact transgender. I'll explain what gives me the impression in the end notes.

The story also features another head canon of mine, although this one will only be hinted at. See if you can spot it! Probably not. I might tell you about it in the end notes too.

Just the same, this is a story about Chloe. I don't like her much, but I do like redemption stories, so I'm opened to the idea of her becoming a better person. This is one potential first step towards that.

A Core Belief Crushed

Chloe Bourgeois checked the time on her phone for what must have been the hundredth time in twenty minutes and scowled. They had been trapped in this classroom so long, prevented from leaving by Kaepora Gaebora, the giant human-owl hybrid their principal had turned into, that she would end up missing her mani-pedi appointment.

Even with Adrikins by her side and Marinette Dupain-Cheng on the other side of the room, pacing and pulling at her ears like some kind of maniac but blissfully quiet, the whole situation was unacceptable. Being trapped by an akuma was bad enough; the fact that her father would refuse to punish the akumatized person because he was protected by the Akuma Victim Forgiveness Act was bad enough; but the worst part, the insulting part, was that the Parisian duo of super heroes were not coming. She, the Mayor's own daughter and Ladybug's most prestigious fan, was being held as bait and the heroine was nowhere to be found.

She groaned in frustration. "Where are those useless Ladybug and Cat Noir?" She demanded out loud, glaring at nobody in particular.

Adrien inexplicably winced before putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure Ladybug is on the way," he said with his trademarked gentle smile.

It nearly mollified her.

"He's right, Chloe," Sabrina stammered encouragingly. "She'd never abandon us. Especially you!"

"She better not!" Chloe snapped. She turned her glare towards the window, through which Ladybug was still failing to come crashing through, and spotted a downright miraculous distraction: Nathanael was sitting by the window and doodling.

She smirked and sauntered over. This was perfect: she'd grab whatever version of Marinette the poor lovestruck idiot was drawing this time, make a joke, and not only would it be fun but everyone would thank her for lightening up the mood.

Their resident artist was so absorbed that he never noticed her until her hand slapped down on his page. Chloe grinned as his eyes widened in horror, and she yanked the sheet away from him. It was another comic, so more likely than not, Nat had drawn himself as some super hero again, rescuing damsel in distress Dupain-Cheng. She skimmed the page to confirm, ready to deliver her witty remark about how rescuing that girl was a waste of super powers even when those powers didn't actually exist.

The clever joke died in her throat as her eyes widened. Both Nathanael and Marinette were drawn as heroes this time, and they were fighting a blond supervillain that was unmistakably her self. She dropped the sheet as though it burnt her hands and looked at Nathan in shock.

"You drew ME as the villain?" she asked angrily.

Nathan's face was nearly as red as his hair. He shook his head without meeting her eyes.

Chloe barked a laugh and willed her frown away. Anger was an acceptable reaction when faced with an insult, but amusement was better: it established that the insult and whoever was guilty of it were beneath her. "That's just stupid; I'm the opposite of a villain! And besides, everyone adores me."

Adrien, who had materialized next to her, put his hand on her shoulder again, but this time, there was an ever so slight pull to the gesture. "Forget it Chloe," he said. "Come on…"

She shook him off. "Almost done, Adrikins," she said in as pleasant a voice as she could manage. She shouldn't be angry. She should be amused. This was FUNNY because it was SO ridiculous.

Adrien sighed and slumped. She ignored him and focused on Nathanael, who seemed to have recovered a little and had stowed the offending comic away. He was avoiding her eyes.

"I'm NOT a villain," she repeated, her voice far less composed than she would have liked it. Amused. Be amused at the inconsequential people and their nonsensical little jokes. Nat's opinion didn't even matter. "Why would you draw that? Ivan threw me from the top of the Eiffel tower," she added, gesticulating at all their classmates. Forget amusement: anger was still acceptable. "Max and Alix zapped a bunch of people for energy, including ME, Alya wanted to reveal her precious Ladybug's identity live, Juleka forced me, and everyone else, to wear that horrible outfit and makeup, Rose made me stink in front of Prince Ali, and I'm the villain?" She was aware that her voice had risen as she talked and that she was now nearly yelling, but she was past the point of caring. "You just don't like me because I'm the Mayor's daughter and you're jealous! That's it, isn't it?"

"Let it go, Chloe," Marinette called out from the other side of the room. "We don't need this right now!"

"You kiddin'?" Alya asked with a laugh. "Let her humiliate herself if she wants to, it could be fun to watch. We're with you Nat!" she added louder, cupping her hand around her mouth in a makeshift amplifier and raising her fist in the air.

Chloe dismissed the two of them from her mind and focused her attention on Nathan again. "You of all people," she said venomously. "And here I am ALWAYS being nice and acting like you're a boy!"

There were a few audible gasps. Thanks in no small part to Alya, everyone was watching them by now, even Kaepora Gaebora, so everyone had heard. It's not that it was news to anyone – Nathanael had been Amélie until halfway through the fifth grade and so, pretty much the whole school knew he had been assigned female at birth. The gasps, Chloe knew, were because it wasn't too often that anyone bothered to remind him that he owed them at least a bit of gratitude.

Nathanael, for his part, was staring at his desk. He opened his mouth, but another voice cut in from behind Chloe.

"Logically, Chloe, pointing out that you act as though a particular statement is true actually means that you believe that same statement to be false."

Chloe turned to stare Max down. She had no idea whatever he had just said actually meant, but she was pretty sure she wouldn't like it if she did.

"Forget it Max," came Nathanael's voice. "It's okay."

Chloe dismissed Max and his undecipherable babbling from her mind and turned back to Nat. After all, she knew for sure that he had definitely insulted her, and badly. Chances were her words had knocked some sense back into him and he was ready to apologize.

Nathan was looking straight back at her, and, astonishingly, FROWNING. It wasn't particularly fierce, but it was most certainly not apologetic.

"You don't get to be angry right now, Nathanael Kurtzberg," she said with a snarl. "YOU just called ME a bad person through your art! You owe me an…"

"I drew you as the villain because you're always mean to everyone," he cut her off. He took a deep breath. "You're the reason I got akumatized. Apparently, I FORCED Marinette to go on a date with me, because of YOU. It's got nothing to do with my gender."

"You got Rose akumatized too," Juleka muttered from a few steps away.

"And Juleka," Rose added. "You and Sabrina."

"And me," Alya pointed out.

"Mylene, too," Ivan rumbled.

"And Kim," Max joined in.

Mylene nodded timidly. Kim fidgeted.

"Even him," Nino said, pointing his thumb at Kaepora Gaebora, who had actually given up watching the door to make sure nobody escaped in favour of watching the scene. "And seriously Chloe, you think Nat owes you? Like… you figure people owe you whenever you're not the absolute worst or something? And that it also makes you a nice person?"

"Yeah," Alix piped in. "There's kind of a lot of room between total monster and decent human being, ya know?"

Chloe was shaking her head in disbelief. She was about to come up with a comeback to simultaneously prove them all wrong and humiliate them – really, she was - when Ladybug and Cat Noir FINALLY kicked the door in, irritatingly not even giving her the satisfaction of coming in through the window like she had envisioned.

Ladybug and Cat Noir did come through Chloe's bedroom window later that evening. Chloe glared at them, obviously still angry over the day's events. Marinette felt the tension lift from her shoulders, replaced with the familiar annoyance Chloe never failed to elicit: the blond brat was still looking like herself and was not on an actual rampage.

"Hawkmoth one, Francoise-Dupont two," Cat Noir joked.

The light tone failed to hide that he was just as relieved as Ladybug. They had just checked on Nat, and although saying he was fine might have been pushing it a little bit considering he had been drawing a comic where bee themed villains with blond ponytails were getting fumigated, the artistic vengeance had obviously served its purpose: he had been in fairly good spirits and in no danger of getting akumatized.

Chloe being fine as well was icing on the cake. To Marinette, it felt like a victory of her class over Hawkmoth… just like Cat had said. It almost made up for the fact she was having to be in Chloe's presence again.

"Yep!" she said cheerfully in answer to Cat Noir. She winked at him. "Fuming a bit, but no akuma."

He snorted, but any reply he might have come up with was interrupted by Chloe.

"What do YOU want?" she asked. "Look, I don't know WHY Mr. Damocles got all mad like that. Everyone automatically blames me whenever someone gets akumatized anywhere near me! Seriously, like it's my fault Kim had a crush on me? What was I supposed to do, go with it even if I didn't want to?"

Ladybug blinked, thrown off track. As surprising as it was, Chloe kind of had a point on that one. But then, Kim might not have reacted as badly had he not been publicly humiliated and that was one, possibly maybe unavoidable akumatized victim out of Chloe's record setting tally.

Cat Noir cleared his throat. "We heard about what happened today," he said. "We thought we should check on you."

Chloe tackled Ladybug in a hug, her frown evaporating. "I'm so glad SOMEONE understands!" she sobbed. "They treated me like… like…"

"They were being honest, Chloe," Ladybug cut her off, disengaging herself from the hug. She sighed, her forehead in her hand. "Look, here's what I heard. You were about to make fun of one your classmates, the one that turned into Evillustrator. Nathan, right?"

"I was just going to tease him to break the tension," Chloe corrected. "He's always drawing Marinette Dupain-Cheng, he's madly in love with her, and I was going to rib him a bit. Nothing mean. Sheesh."

"Right. Okay, let's go with that, it's not the issue anyway," Ladybug said.

"You got upset because he drew you as a villain. Right?" Cat Noir asked.

"Wouldn't you?" Chloe asked, rolling her eyes at Ladybug's partner. She turned to the heroine again. "Can you believe him? I'm NICE to him. See? He was actually a girl first, but I say him! I'm SUPER accepting. And he draws me as a villain for him and Marinette Dupain-Cheng to beat up!"

Ladybug groaned and palmed her forehead again.

Cat Noir sidestepped her and put his hand on Chloe's shoulder. She brushed him off with a pointed frown.

"Sorry," the super hero stammered, stepping back with an apologetic grin, his hand on the back of his neck. "No touch. Got it. Anyway... err…"

"Okay, first," Ladybug cut in, one finger up. "If you make a big deal out of how accepting you are, it's kind of obvious that you're actually not, because you're making it sound like it's an effort you're making, like you should get a medal or something. It's like bragging that you're modest."

"Why should I have to be modest?" Chloe asked with a sneer.

"Think of it this way," Cat Noir piped in. "How would you feel if someone pointed out to you that they always act like you're important?"

Chloe immediately flustered. "What kind of comparison is that?" She pointed at herself. "I'm the Mayor's daughter! I AM important! Nat is…"

"Nat's a boy just like you're important," Ladybug cut her off. The words left a bitter taste in her mouth but she soldiered on. Everyone was important, that's all she was saying. She wasn't calling Chloe a VIP, even if that was precisely what the blond believed. "If you say you ACT like he's a boy," she continued, "it sounds the exact same way as someone saying they ACT like you're important."

Chloe paused for a moment, then rolled her eyes. "FINE," she said. "Okay, that was poorly worded."

Ladybug kept her face as neutral as she could: that was as close to an admission of being wrong they were going to get out of the Mayor's junior politician of a daughter. She didn't reply, expecting Chloe to start talking again, and was not disappointed.

"That's no reason for all of them to gang up against me!" Chloe said, lifting her nose. "They basically called me a monster!" She let out an exaggerated sob and threw herself in Ladybug's arms again, sniffling.

Ladybug felt her eye twitch but, as agreed with Cat Noir on the way here, did her best to remain friendly and merely slipped away from Chloe rather than push her away.

"Chloe, we're here because they told us you were upset," Cat Noir said. His arm lifted slightly as he walked towards the blond girl, but he put it back down again.

Chloe scoffed, crossing her arms. "So you were only worried I'd get akumatized and cause trouble."

"We'd have left by now if that was the case," Ladybug pointed out.

It was true: checking that Chloe had not fallen for Hawkmoth's promises again had been one of the reasons for coming here, and arguably the most pressing one, but Cat Noir had insisted on a secondary objective. By staying here, Marinette was fighting against her own desires to leave Chloe's company, but if Cat Noir was right, it could be more than worth it.

Cat Noir was nodding at her statement. "We also wanted to talk to you, because you wouldn't be upset at everyone saying those things if you didn't care at all."

Ladybug was not as convinced of that as Cat Noir was but she couldn't exactly correct him without revealing she knew Chloe well, and even she had to admit there was a small chance he was right.

Chloe was glaring daggers at the floor. "I'm fine. So some people in my class don't like me. Who cares? I don't."

Ladybug swallowed back a loud grunt and almost managed not to roll her eyes. Chloe had just switched from dramatically heart broken and begging for sympathy to uncaring and blasée, and was obviously under the impression her audience would just buy it.

Cat Noir leaned on the wall, arms crossed and head tilted as though he were puzzled. "Weren't you saying they ALL ganged up on you?"

Chloe turned her glare on him. "So? I. Don't. CARE!"

"You know I don't like lies, Chloe," Ladybug said. She was just about out of patience. If Chloe was going to be like this, there was no point in their staying here.

"I'M NOT…"

"Okay, fine, you don't care and you're not lying," Cat Noir interrupted, standing up straight from his leaning position and crossing his arms. He was obviously just about done with the Mayor's daughter as well. "Just be quiet and listen, ok? There's something I want to say to you, and then we'll be out of your hair. Okay?"

Chloe huffed. "If it means an end to this conversation, fine."

"You spent most of your life so far completely confident that everyone loved you. You're pretty, you can be funny, you can be generous and YOU certainly feel like you're loveable."

He raised his hand in a surprisingly authoritative stop gesture: Chloe had opened her mouth. She shut it back and contented herself with narrowing her eyes at him.

"And today," Cat Noir continued, "you found out that most of your classmates don't actually like you much. They think you're mean. They blame you for their getting akumatized. And you're trying not to care, you're trying to just dismiss it as their being stupid for not loving someone as perfect as you, but you can't because you know that a lot of what they're saying is true. You DID cause several of them to be akumatized. You can say it wasn't your fault, you can say they overreacted, but you're not stupid: you know you had a part. And that means they have actual reasons to dislike you. It means they're NOT just being stupid and they're NOT going to wake up tomorrow feeling silly for it all and adoring you again."

Chloe was clearly not appreciating the amateur psychoanalysis. She had turned her back to the both of them, arms crossed again and staring out of the window as though the same view she'd had for years was suddenly completely engrossing.

Cat Noir continued undeterred. Ladybug had to admire his dedication: he was really doing his absolute best to help a girl who was after all a stranger to him become a better person.

"You keep hurting people, Chloe. If that's not what you're trying to do, you need to start being more careful. And if it IS what you want, get used to people not liking you." He sighed and uncrossed his arms, holding out his hands palms forward in a surrendering gesture. "Okay, I'm done," he said, shaking his head slightly. "We can go, my Lady."

Marinette nodded, looking at Chloe. The blond had not moved, still standing straight as a board, arms crossed and looking out the window. Ladybug threw her yoyo out of the same opened window Cat Noir and herself had gotten in through and when it caught on something outside, she swung away.

Cat Noir followed his lady into the night. She kept going for a short while, using her yoyo to swing from building to building. When she stopped, stowing her yoyo away after landing on a convenient flat roof, he landed next to her.

"Do you think I got through?" he asked. It was technically a bit of a risk to show he cared for the bratty blond, but he couldn't bring himself to worry too much about that risk. Despite Ladybug's and Plagg's warnings, he just didn't see the point in keeping their identities secret from each other. He only did it out of respect for his partner's wishes.

She smirked briefly, and he could tell she was thinking of teasing him, but her face grew serious again. "I don't know," she admitted. "Time will tell. You did your best."

He nodded and sighed. "Thanks for going along with this. I know it's a long shot."

"A long shot? Hoping Chloe Bourgeois, after being told nobody likes her, would be more receptive to criticism of her general behaviour and would turn a corner and start becoming a good person?"

"…yeah."

"I think "long shot" might be a little bit of an understatement there, kitty."

Chat Noir shrugged. He knew that even better than Ladybug herself. "I think it was worth a try."

Ladybug shrugged back. "Oh, definitely. Just think," she added with a wink, "if it works, we're probably going to see a 50% drop in akuma attacks."

He chuckled in spite of himself. Chloe had been his first friend and he wanted to think she was redeemable. She hadn't always been this bad, had she? But then, how would he have known either way? He had only ever seen how she was around him until he had started going to her school. He had already known she was no saint, but he'd still been unpleasantly surprised that day. And things had not exactly improved since.

Ladybug excused herself and he bid her goodbye with as much of his usual good humour as he could fake.

He sighed and started back home himself, resisting the urge to go check on Chloe again, either as Cat Noir or Adrien. It was no good torturing himself: his lady had been right. Time would tell, and he had done his best.

The rest was up to Chloe.

End

Author's Notes

Thanks for reading! Please comment/review/let me know what you think.

So, the headcanons…

First: Nat is transgender. I want it to be true for representation, but I honestly think it is possible because of a few in-show details. His body shape, particularly visible when he's the Evillustrator, is kind of hourglass like in that his chest his wider than his waist. The only other male student with that kind of shape is Kim and in his case, it's because he's very athletic and muscled. I think we can safely assume that's not the case with Nat. To me, he looks like he's got a female body shape and compresses. He is also one of only two boys wearing an open layer. I think that Adrien has one because his design needs to look more stylish than average, and that Nat has one because it is a fairly well known trick to camouflage your chest for trans boys and men. Finally, he reacts very strongly to the idea of people looking in his bag, much like Marinette. I theorize body dysphoria causes him to be uncomfortable with the thought of anyone seeing feminine hygiene products. That one is admittedly a stretch – he could just not like the idea of all of his drawings being looked at, but hey, it just solidifies it for me.

So, you heard it here first, people, and I hope some of you will like the idea enough to spread it because representation matters: NAT IS TRANSGENDER.

Second, the subtle one. I said I might tell you but I think I won't… or at least not outright. Just a hint then… it's about Alya and how she behaves. And it's a major plot point in my next story.