#but none of them are boring or lacking something creative and worth seeing

[the-bees-patella]

ok, well now what.

My fellow Americans: hello from your local pissed-the-fuck-off former community organizer.

You're probably seeing a lot of calls to support each other right now, and that's all well and good in principle. Where we tend to stumble is largely practical: we're not sure where, how, or when. The same way it works to make a plan to vote, make a plan to help. A few key points:

Please do not get impatient if the organization's response to you is late or generic at first, or if what you're asked to do isn't what you offered. A lot of local organizations—where your impact will be the greatest—are very small and 100% volunteer-run. You're here to help. Don't be one more thing they have to manage.

Be honest with yourself and the organization about your capacity. If that's a couple hours on a weekend from time to time, that's great. If that's driving people places once a month, if it's a small, regular donation—whatever it is, it's one more person helping who wasn't before. The point of doing it all together is that none of us can do everything, and it isn't on any one of us to do it all. It's much easier to scale up your participation than it is to take on a big responsibility and back out.

Stick with it. Everybody's fired up right now, and many organizations won't be lacking for personnel or funds...for now. They'll need you when it gets boring, when people get tired and busy. Whether it's recurring donations or one shift a week, stick with it for as long as you can, which is why see point 2 above. The need will not stop. The help can't either.

My aim with this brief list of organizations/funds is not to be comprehensive, it's more a starting point of both actual orgs and the types of opportunities there are out there. I highly encourage you to look around in your local community. There are people out there working on creative solutions in innovative ways to problems you didn't even know existed.

I know it might sound small or facile, but I promise, going out there and talking to real people will help. Just go to one meeting, on Zoom, in person, anything. Start there. Everything you're able to do is more than there was before.

Fascists thrive on despair and isolation, on mistrust and fear. But there is good in this world, it's worth fighting for, and you're part of it. The time is now. Let's fuck them up. (List below the cut).

If you're on bluesky, here is a much more specific list of organizations. If you're not, reply to this post or send me an ask with your region and I'll respond if I can. Everyone else, please feel free to add your local organizations in the reblogs. Make sure you do your vetting first; please link to a direct source/person/means of contact if you add something to the list.

Trainings and support for leaders to run for public school boards

And library boards

Black and brown youth organizing

Labor organizing in the South/Southwest

Mutual Aid in NYC/Donate to keep that mutual aid active

Mutual aid/volunteer orgs in DC

Supporting and training young progressives to run for office

Collective action against medical debt

Climate action

[waugh-bao]

Do you think in the "Out of Tears" video the cameras just happened to be rolling when Charlie went in the telephone booth to call Shirley and ask her to come pick him up from this bloody music video set and then captured his disappointment when he realized it was just a prop? I do.

[williamswifey]

hiii i love all of your fics! could i request a bella ramsey x reader where the reader is part of a well known film like stranger things or a marvel movie and everytime bella and them are in an interview they gush about the reader’s character in the other film, which fans notice and think is adorable😭

𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐘𝐎𝐔 - 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐀 𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐒𝐄𝐘

pairing ; bella ramsey x fem!reader

summary ; bella thinks you’re a fantastic actor and rants about it 🤷‍♀️

content warnings ; none, intense fluff

a/n ; sorry for the filler posts lately, i’ve been lacking in the creativity department for actual plots, so plz send in asks to get my creative juices flowing

masterlist

stranger things season four recently came out, and being one of the main characters, you had been extremely busy with interviews and premieres.

it was all so exciting, you loved seeing fans reactions to the show. you loved being tagged in fan edits, and you loved replying to dm’s and tweets.

just when the buzz from the recent dropping of the season began to die down, you and bella had been invited for an interview by vogue, to give a tour of your shared apartment while answering questions.

you had gotten the email from your manager while you had been finishing up a load of laundry, and you we’re static. you and bella’s relationship had gone public about a year ago, even though the two of you had been dating for longer.

there wasn’t much content out from the two of you, aside from social media posts. now that you thought about it, you and bella had never actually been in an official interview together.

sure, the two of you had been interviewed during premieres together, and the paparazzi took photos of you two together all the time—you had never actually sat down with them for an interview.

you excitedly walked downstairs, seeing bella curled up on the couch with a book in their hand. their head peeled upwards when you came into their line of vision, a small smile tugging at their lips.

“hi, darling,” they said in a soft voice, patting the spot next to them.

you grinned and laid besides bella, your head resting on their lap. bella began to play with your hair, successfully beginning to lull you into a gentle sleep.

just before you allowed yourself to slip into unconsciousness, your brain reminded you of why you went to find bella in the first place.

you opened your eyes, and rolled over to face bella. you gently pried the book out of their hands, placing their bookmark you bought for them on the page they left off at.

you yawned before you began to talk, causing bella to chuckle at you, poking your cheek.

“i thought you were a sleepy girl,” they said, tilting their head to the side.

“i am,” you said, rubbing at your eyes, before sitting up straight, “but i had something to ask you first.”

“oh?” bella said, their interest suddenly peaking as they leaned forward slightly.

“nothing bad,” you assured, taking their hand as you fiddled with their rings, “but i got an email from my manager, asking about a vogue interview with us. we’d have to answer a few questions about each other while showing them our apartment. i think it’s an awesome idea, but if you don’t want to it’s totally fine and—”

bella noticed you beginning to ramble as they placed their free hand under your chin, your eyes meeting theirs.

“i’d love to.”

you smiled, and made a mental reminder to email your manager back. in the meantime, you resumed your previous spot on bella’s lap, feeling their gentle hands against your hair as you fell asleep.

***

two weeks and days worth of cleaning later, you and bella were sitting on your couch, waiting for the camera crew and interviewer to arrive to your apartment.

your apartment was in the heart of los angeles, so traffic was always pretty intense, especially in the late afternoon. you were attempting to mentally prepare yourself to answer questions while bella scrolled aimlessly on their phone.

eventually, you grew bored of staring into space and looked over bella’s shoulder to see whatever they were doing on their phone. you giggled when you saw bella staring at a photo of you from your most recent press event.

“…bella my love, what are you doing?”

bella grew startled as their phone nearly flew out of their hands, face pink. however, bella wasn’t embarrassed about the fact they were looking at photos of you—in fact, they were proud.

“just looking at photos of you, reminding myself how lucky i am.” bella replied, and your face now turned the shade of pink bella’s was moments ago.

bella was such a sap sometimes.

“you’re cute, you know that?” you said, pressing a few kisses to bella’s face.

you two began to play fight, and a few seconds later, bella had pinned you to the couch, and was kissing your neck playfully while you giggled.

your fun was cut short by the doorbell. you groaned, sliding out from underneath bella as you made your way to the door, quickly fixing your hair and lipgloss.

the interviewer arrived with a camera crew, and you and bella began the tour.

***

after a brief tour of your apartment, the camera crew and interviewer got settled on your couch as they began to prepare you both for the interview.

they promised nothing too invasive or intense—but you weren’t worried. your manager promised your assistant had reviewed and approved every question on the list.

bella seemed to be a bit more jittery, and the obnoxious interviewer clearly took advantage of that—as they decided they’d ask bella a few questions first.

“so, bella,” the interviewer began, turning her attention towards bella, “have you gotten the chance to see stranger things season four yet?”

bella shifted in their seat. you honestly had no idea if they watched it or not, and their reply was a complete surprise.

“i have!” bella replied enthusiastically, beginning to fiddle with their rings the way they did when excited, “y/n was absolutely fabulous, as always. and her character? my god. i’ve never rooted for a protagonist more. y/n’s acting is incredible. sometimes i’d be watching the show in our bedroom while y/n was in the living room reading…and i’d just be like—holy fuck. i live with this person.”

bella’s response to you and your character had you blushing manically. your cheeks were bright pink as you fought back a smile, intertwining your hand with bella’s.

their eyes met yours.

“do you really mean that, bels?” you asked softly, heart fluttering as bella nodded.

“more than anything. but i have to admit, your character is way cooler than you,” bella joked, ruining the moment as you gently shoved their shoulder and playfully stuck their tongue out at them.

bella giggled, the both of you completely forgetting that the interviewer was still there, and the camera was still recording.

the two of you were quick to pull it together again, professional as can be.

“but, yeah,” bella said after a moment, “i saw stranger things and it’s probably my favorite tv show at the moment—but i might also be biased.”

this made a chuckle slip past your lips.

you rested your head on bella’s shoulder as the interviewer glanced at the pair of you.

“now y/n,” the interviewer began, “now i guess it’s your turn. i assume you’ve seen the last of us, so what did you think of it?”

your grinned was so large you felt your cheeks widen. as you opened your mouth to speak, you knew your words would rival bella’s previous in an instant.

[falcor-thee-luck-dragon]

Drink Up - Geralt of Rivia x reader

Summary: Traveling for hours on end can become exceptionally loathsome, but with a bottle of something strong to pass the time, things get very interesting indeed.

Warning: reader and Jaskier talking about sexy times, reader getting drunk and things get entertaining, the trio being goofs tbh

-reader is part of my Geralt series (Of Monsters And Men)

Masterlist

With not a whole lot of entertainment sprouting forth from the nearby scenery of the continent most days, or by the unfortunate lack of abundant random wanderers to cross your path. You’ve become accustomed to imploring very creative ways in amusing yourself while wayfaring the roads with your two favorite traveling buddies.

A Witcher, to handsome for his own good, and a lovely yet mildly annoying bard.

You’ve been currently hiking on this forest trail for half the day without much to pass the time. Sure Jaskier has delved into giving you all a show with his ballots and fantastic lute playing skills. But there’s only so much of that angelic voice you can take before it turns into the most goddamn irritating thing you’ve ever heard.

Also you’re pretty damn certain that Geralt could have been one more strum away from knocking the bard out cold, thus pleading for you to leave him there for the next unlucky fellow who decides to wander by.

The sun on the other hand keeps her great golden colors beaming across the landscape, warming the earth to a comfortable temperature on this calm spring afternoon. It’s been a good hour since anything interesting has happened and this stick you keep flipping around in your hand is not cutting it.

Pressing onward, your mind suddenly sparks with an idea, surly an idea that will stir up some much needed conversation on this rather dull trip though the peaceful woodland. Smirking to yourself, you glance to your right where Jaskier is walking with lute in hand, oblivious to your growing mischievousness.

Then your crimson gaze trails a small distance ahead where Geralt sits atop of Roach, his snowy head faced forward as he relishes in the quiet of the green woodland. Gods he looks like a proper knight, with that dark armor, sword on his back, and all that manliness seated atop his grand stead. Hmm, delicious.

Casually twirling your stick here and there, you turn your attention over to Jaskier who’s looking away from you, “Psst...Jaskier.” You whisper, making sure Geralt can’t hear.

The bards head snaps over to you in an instant, a new intrigued curiosity overtaking him, “Yes?” He whispers back just as quietly, blues darting over to Geralt who’s none the wiser.

You casually shrug, using your normal speaking voice now, “Just wanted to make sure you haven’t forgotten your name.”

His face falls, “Y/N.” He whines disappointedly, “Come on I’m bored as shit.” Complains Jaskier like a whiny little toddler before he huffs and pauses for a moment to think. Suddenly he taps the side of your bicep with the back of his hand, you raise a curious brow as he shrugs, “You got any good stories?”

Searching your extensive past of palpable events for a moment, your face quickly lights up, “Ohhh better then a story. Get a load of this shit.” You muse while pulling out a bottle of wine from your traveling pack, “Stole this from some pricy vendor. Figured it’d have some purpose sooner or later and right now I need it sooner.” You chuckle while popping off the spongy cork and taking a hearty swig.

Jaskier lets out a breathy laugh as he watches you fully enjoy your stolen beverage, “Not sure if I should be impressed or concerned.”

“Don’t worry I’ll share but only if you indulge me.” You quip before taking another gulp before bringing the bottle to your side, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand before speaking, “I have a question for you my dear lover boy.” You inquire with a wiggle of your brows.

Jaskier smirks, ready for the challenge and some wine, “Ask away.”

Whipping your stick around, you point it at the bard, “Okay. And be honest, I can tell if you’re not.....what’s the best part of a woman?”

Jaskier nods, his face shifting into one of legitimate deep thought as he takes a considerable amount of time to contemplate the possibilities, “Well, I guess I’d say I’m decently fond of a good smile,” Admits the bard before he lets out a small chuckle, “cause if they don’t have one it’s regretfully difficult to watch them enjoy themselves if you understand my meaning.” Adds Jaskier, nudging your arm with his elbow as you roll your ruby irises.

“Hmm alright well you’re a fucking snooze.” You deadpan as he suddenly lets out a burst of laughter.

“Oh I didn’t realize you wanted all my inner most personal tastes, is that it then?” He wonders as you chuckle at his little half offended outburst.

“Tell me what gets you all hot and bothered and I’ll indulge you in my own appetites.” You add slyly, giving him a mischievous wink while continuing to twirl your stick and sip more of your strong liquor. Damn this stuff is strong.

He nods in understanding, a cheeky smile pulling at the corners of his lips as he decides to indulge you, “Well the lady asks, where to start?” Questions Jaskier.

“Oh I don’t know. Let’s say, personality aside cause we’re not here for that shit right now..” You swat the air theatrically before taking another sip of your drink, “...what do you think? Firm or soft, maybe even a little saggy?” You suggest, making a squeezing motion with your one hand while your stick is tucked underneath that arm.

“I’d say both. A breast is a breast.” He confirms Jaskier with a laugh.

“A man of all dishes served I see. I respect the inclusion of diverse variety.” You add with an honest nod of approval. “Alright. Are scars a turn off if severe?”

“Taverns are dark for a reason Y/N.” Muses Jaskier with a knowing look causing you to snort with laughter.

“Fair point.” You wheeze.

“Okay Y/N/N, my turn.” Inquires Jaskier as you hand him the liquor.

“Lets hear it.”

He gives you back your bottle, “So....what’s so intriguing about that old grumpy wolf up there?” Questions Jaskier as he nods towards Geralt who’s minding his sweet business from his perch on Roach. No doubt probably listening.

Biting your lip, your eyes linger on the broad leathered back of your silver haired lover, “Are we talking physically or personality wise?” You wonder while turning your attention back to the bard, your voice lowering a couple octaves, “cause let me tell you he’s not much for words most times...” You lean in closer to Jaskier before whispering, “but I can get him moaning so goddamn fast.”

“Oh gods. Please tell me everything.” Presses Jaskier with a laugh as you take another sip from the bottle. Shit, you’re already feeling buzzed, guess it is much stronger then once previously thought.

Giving Jaskier a fangy smirk, you point the stick in Geralt’s general direction, “You asked so you’ve been warned. This man can come absolutely undone within minutes, literally all I gotta do is call him some cute names and lick his cheek...you know, feel him up a bit. Get him feeling all loved and appreciated you know?”

“Really?” Inquires Jaskier, enjoying your progressively drunken shpeel of personal info regarding yours and Geralt’s sex lives.

“Oh fuck yeah, but what really gets him off, is if I undress in front of him and then get all dominant and rough you know. He loves that shit.” You explain with a smile as Jaskier stares at you in awe. “He’s a moaning mess after I put on the charm, practically cumming at my command. The fucking power I have.” You mumble proudly with a shake of your bottle, though you try and keep your voice down.

“Y/N, you are, quit the woman.” Points Jaskier like a proud father watching his daughter marry to a prestigious lord of great wealth.

“I know.” You add with a shrug, clearly self confident and half drunk by now, “I’m a seductress what can I say?” Taking a moment to drink some more wine as Jaskier holds in his laughter.

He watches you trip on nothing before regaining your bearings a second later, “So uh, how you feeling?”

You give him a fangy grin, raising your bottle in salute, “Fantastic.”

“That’s good.” He muses, clearly not believing you, “How’s the wine?”

“Delectable and worth every coin!” You whisper yell, raising your bottle once more, the dwindling contents swirl around, some drops falling out as you bring the glass back down to your side.

“I thought you stole it?”

You snort, “I did.”

“Hmm alright, maybe uh....maybe slow it down on the intake Y/N?” Says Jaskier, taking notice of your new inebriated state and knowing all to well what you’re like when fully drunk of your ass.

“Fuck off bard I’m fine.” You mutter with an elated snicker before starting to giggle like a drunken jester in a kings court, causing Geralt to turn his head to the side in interest before shrugging and looking down the trail once again.

“You sure?” Half worries Jaskier, though in truth he’s absolutely living for the situation unfolding in front of him, “I’d rather not have you puking later.”

Scoffing you take another sip, “I’m not getting sick Jaskrr, I’m just horny.”

Brows raised in surprise, he coughs, “Oh, that’s um...good....I think?”

Almost tripping over a jutted out root, you bite your lip while eyeing up Geralt hungrily, “Now that....is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen and you know what?”

“What should I know?” Wonders Jaskier with interest, making no faults to decrease how he’s clearly egging you on.

Grinning with a face full of mischief, you snicker, “Well....I can say I’ve seen his dick.” The bards eyes widen in amusement as you continue, “Which is...by the way....very lovely and large, he knows how to please a woman if you know what I mean.” You mumble quickly with a wink as Jaskier snorts.

“Oh, that’s good to know. What else is nice about him?” He agrees while successfully baiting you on further.

“Hmm mhmmm. Big muscles, Jask, big muscles.” You emphasize while leaning into the bards side and squeezing his less then impressive biceps, “Oh and he’s so good at hugging and cuddles.” You squeak with joy, shaking Jaskier as you swoon over Geralt, “Ugh, I love it when he’s shirtless and he looks at me and I just....ugh I’ll take my pants off so goddamn fast.”

Shoving his face into the crook of his arm to keep from laughing, Jaskier does all in his power to refrain from losing it while you lean away, stumbling around on the trail, oblivious to how hilarious he’s taking everything you just confessed to him. The biggest lovestruck grin dancing across your features as you stare longingly at Geralt’s leather clad back. A flash of lust rising in your smiling expression as you eye him up.

“I want.” You mutter, throwing your stick to the side as you make a childlike grabby motion with your hand.

“Y/N he’s on a horse.” Explains Jaskier as you make a face.

You scoff, sending Jaskier another dirty look, “You don’t understand.”

“Y/N it’s the middle of the day and we’re in an unknown forest.” Warns the bard, “Not exactly the time or place for whatever is brewing in your head.”

“Nuthin’s brwing in me head Jask.” You slur, tripping once again before just barely catching yourself.

Jaskier gives you a less then convinced expression, seeing straight though your terrible lying, “I don’t believe you.” He says while you frown.

“But he looks so delicious.” You whine with a dramatic pout, “And I’m so fecking horns right noww ‘cause of....wull, I just’am!” You grumble, turning your head to face Jaskier with an angry little frown before a mischievous smile begins to form upon your lips.

Jaskier blinks, knowing all to well what drunk you is capable of, “Y/N. Don’t you dare.” He warns.

“Waterr you gonna do bart?” You challenge, pushing him though its a weak assault that does nothing significant, “Fight me? I’ll kick your little pixie ass.”

Shaking his head, Jaskier takes a cautious step away from you, “Definitely not. Actually you know what? He’s all yours, go get him Y/N.” Urges Jaskier, really anticipating the possible beautiful disaster that may just soon enough present itself.

Raising your brows in pleasant surprise, you down the rest of your bottle, “Ha! Yu’r not as stupi’s ass’he says yur. I knews it. All along, nev’r a doubt in my mind really.....I sw’r it........promise.” You slur, the alcohols affects really starting to delve into your system.

Jaskier’s brows furrow in confusion, not one hundred percent sure how he should take that, “Well, that’s good I suppose.”

“Yes.........it is....... isn’t it.” You agree with a couple quick nods that look like a small child who’s trying desperately to get their parent to agree with them, “Okay, I’m go’in ta get h’em ov’tha house now.” You pause a moment, brows furrowing in thought as you grab Jaskier by the shoulder, “Horse. That’s uh, what I mean.....yeah.”

Jaskier opens his mouth to say something but you’re already stumbling quickly down the beaten trail much faster then he’d anticipated. You zero in on Geralt’s fine leather armored back, your vision slightly blurred and your legs a bit wobbly from the strong alcohol you’ve managed to make empty in less then ten minutes.

Shaking the fuzziness from your head, you drop the empty bottle in the dirt before hustling to Geralt’s side. Stopping quickly, halting a moment to gather yourself before walking onward, continuing side by side next to his feet and Roach’s middle.

Geralt hums before casually turning his head to find your beaming face with the dark of your eyes as big as a ceramic plate. Raising a brow, the Witcher throws Jaskier an odd look before shifting his attention back down to you.

“Y/N?” He mutters, not sure if you’ve eaten something you shouldn’t have or were recently hexed by some random fairy nearby. 

Letting out a little burp, you hold your hands close to your chest all the while giving him the biggest smile, “I’m....in’loe....v..uh, love....with’u.”

Geralt let’s out a humored snort at your intoxicated self while you await his answer to your grand declaration of love that he was indeed able to understand, “Sorry, I’m taken.” He quips, obviously teasing you though you’re to drunk to realize this.

Frowning you look at the ground in disappointment, “oh.” You whisper sadly causing Geralt to legitimately feel bad until your whole demeanor shifts to heated aggression, “That fucking bitch!” You shout coherently through a small slurred wavering in your angered voice, scaring some perched crows from their keep as well as a couple of innocent rabbits.

Geralt listens to the muffled laughter of Jaskier as you throw your hands up in aspiration before letting out a colorful stream of curses, “No good dirty whore faced dog shit horse shit bitch who’s clamed h’em ferr the’own!”

“Do’snt mak’any sense! I have a sw’urd! I can run....really fast! I’m half vampurrr goddammit!” You shout into the woods, struggling to keep your words together, “I’m pre-destinated...pre-dun.....pre-dragons....destiny, de-destined to be seductive! I am sexy!” You shout dramatically.

“Okay, Y/N let’s not wake something or someone with ill intentions.” Interrupts Geralt as you make two frustrated fists, your face appearing rather angered, crimson eyes dancing with hellfire.

“No!” You snap before turning an accusing dagger up at him, where you got that he’s not sure, “Tell me..who’s this-this donkey wumunnn! So I can...grrr....so I can uh, so I can...” Quickly looking down, you struggle to put away your dagger back into it’s designated sheath, you frown once again before shifting your face into a fake, yet rather convincing smile, “I just’uv sum’thins to say to’er. Thas’all. Promise.” You add sweetly, grin as shiny as a barrel of shimmering pearls and honestly a bit sadistic if he didn’t know any better.

Chuckling at your adorable drunken antics, Geralt shrugs, “She’s from a far away land. About a couple leagues from here northwest.”

“Wha’else.” You demand urgently, tone authoritative and hostile.

“She’s pretty tough, and very beautiful.” Teases Geralt as you scowl in irritation for this unidentifiable cunt who’s taken your man.

“Disgustin.” You scoff, flicking a hand upward as you mutter, “Go’un.”

“She’s got the most lovely body I’ve ever seen, and her laugh is more angelic then all the greatest singers in the entire continent.” He confirms with a handsome smile that would have you swooning like a fair maiden if not for how filled with hatred you are right now. 

“Blah.” You dismiss while sticking out your tongue in disgust, “Com’un giv’m a name. Then I’ll handle the’rst.”

“I don’t want you to hurt her.” He mutters with a shrug, holding back laughter at your amusing facial features.

“I won’t.” You sass, making a face before mumbling, “Jus’wanna talk....re’memr.”

“I don’t think I believe you Y/N.” Affirms the handsome Witcher much to your frustration.

“I jus’wanna fucking talk!” You growl as Jaskier cackles in the background, clearly enjoying this conversation though you can’t understand what’s so funny.

Snapping your head in his direction, you squint your eyes at him menacingly before yanking off a hanging thin branch and launching your new makeshift weapon full force in his general direction. He yelps in surprise before ducking, the wooden assault just missing his face by mere inches.

“Dear gods Y/N!” Gasps the bard with wide eyes as you snicker at his dramatic reaction.

“Fuck’ov h’was gonna tell me!”

“No he wasn’t!” Argues Jaskier while fearfully clutching his lute to his chest, afraid you might start swinging.

“H’was and I’m gonna fuck’n kill that bitch!” You snap angrily as Roach snorts, having not a single iota what the hell you’re saying. Only that you sound like some wounded beast on their last hour.

Rolling his baby blues in annoyance, Jaskier shouts back, “There is no other woman or man or any fucking forest nymph that Geralt has any sort of eyes for! You-you crazy woman!”

“How’u know? He doesn’t tell you shit!” You yell back, emphasizing the last word with some heat.

“He does! For your humbled information.” Protests Jaskier sassily while Geralt silently listens to you two idiots scream at one another in the middle of some large lumbering forest. His drunken lover and his, perhaps he could say it, friend who happens to be a bard.

“Oh really?!” You challenge, “Wel’in who’s this fuck’in cunt who’h said he’s with’en? Huh?!” You shout back.

Jaskier let’s out a stream of incomprehensible mumbles before throwing his hands into the air in frustration, “That’s because this woman is you, you drunken bat!”

“I’mnut drunk! Nor’m I a bat!” You yell, ignoring the fact that he confirmed you’re indeed Geralt’s lover, “I didn’evn drink tha’mush!”

“You drank the whole bloody bottle!” Claims Jaskier, much to your great shock and bewilderment, that Geralt struggles to keep himself from losing it atop of Roach.

 You scoff, clearly not believing a single thing out of this bards mouth, “I dunt see’a bottle!”

“That’s because you threw it somewhere!”

“Wel’wy woulda’ do’tha?” You snap, hands fanned out to each side in puzzlement like an angry castle pigeon standing up to a hulking statue.

“Oh I don’t know...let me think for a brief moment here...oh right! Because you’ve drank more then a king on his wedding night!” Shouts Jaskier as Geralt rolls his golden eyes, moving to jump off of Roach.

Standing oblivious to your Witcher who’s no more then five feet away from you now at ground level, your eyes start to grow darker as your frustration grows in this hazy state you’re in. “Mayb’if I knuck you’ot wit’a lute then’ull shut up!” You slur, taking a threatening step forward.

The bards eyes widen in fear for a moment as he sends Geralt a desperate glance, “Geralt!”

“Y/N.” Mutters Geralt gently in that grumbly voice of his, causing you to immediately turn in his direction.

Eyes softening, you instantly break out into a joyful fangy grin, “Yes.” You mumble happily, eyes shifting from his boots to his face as you shamelessly check him out.

“Come here.” Beckons your beautiful Witcher with a pleasant smile upon his plush lips, his arms soon reach out for yours and quickly enough they intertwine.

You blink back your slightly blurred vision to witness as Geralt’s lips flicker from your mouth to your shimmering irises of ruby red, a second later he pulls you flush against him for a heated embrace. Just want you wanted. 

Your lips move passionately against his own, a delighted smile forming as you enjoy the feeling of his tongue inside your mouth. Then all to soon he pulls away and your lips are left empty and wanting so much more.

Pouting you make an adorably angered face, “Wul’that wasn’t nearly s’long as it coulda been.” You grumble bluntly, suddenly yawning as you try desperately to keep focused on his face. His beautiful face. So pretty, so kissable, so lovely.

Dark spots skip and flare through your fading vision until without warning your legs feel like they’ve turned to pudding, giving out from underneath you in an instant and all you’re able to witness is Geralt’s lovely face before....

Darkness.

——

Waking up from a deep sleep, your eyes open to the sound of a fire crackling nearby, the sweet smell of grilled leaks wafting into your nostrils that aids in fully awakening your senses. You let out a sleepy yawn, sitting yourself up from your once previous positioning on your rolled out travel sack underneath you.

Sitting criss crossed, you wipe the bleariness from your scarlet irises before sucking in a deep breath and blinking, your sights now set on the campfire in front of you, a beautiful glow of bright oranges and gold. Geralt and Jaskier on either side, both quietly talking to one another before turning to face you. A knowing smile on either of their faces. Oh, Gods what did you do? And how did you even get here?

Shifting your confused gaze from Jaskier to Geralt and back again, you raise a puzzled brow, “Would any of you be kind enough to tell me how the fuck it’s already dark out?”

“What do you mean Y/N? It’s sunny as a summers day.” Confirms Jaskier with an honest smile, blue eyes looking into the fire as he strums a cord on his lute.

Shaking your head, you sniff, “Okay fuck you.”

Jaskier laughs as Geralt lets slip a couple chuckles before explaining, “You drank all of that wine bottle you stole.”

“Shit.” You mutter while rubbing your temples, “Who let me do that?”

“You did.” Adds the bard.

“Did I threaten you? I feel like drunk me was yelling for some reason, my throat kinda feels weird.”

“You were trying to get me to tell you the name of my lover.” Affirms Geralt with a laugh, “Which is obliviously you. Though drunk Y/N thought otherwise.”

“Fantastic.” You deadpan before turning on your side and laying on your back, deciding to relax once again, “So, how’d I get here? I forget after I was telling Jask about...uh, well...doesn’t matter.”

Smiling to himself from the explicit information you slipped to him about yourself and Geralt in the bedroom, Jaskier chuckles at that while Geralt moves to lay down as well, his head close to yours as you both make an L on the ground. “I put a drop of sleeping potion on my tongue and when I kissed you...”

“You gave me tongue and drugged me?” You confirm with a breathy laugh, honestly quit impressed he managed to pull that off so smoothly. Well, then again you were drunk off your ass.

Geralt hums, “It was either that or let you kill Jaskier. It was a tough decision really.”

“What?” Gasps Jaskier, “You had to think about it?”

“And he chose to slip me some enchanted sleeping juice instead. You’re welcome.”

Jaskier scoffs, “Yeah well you wanted to fuck him in the woods so....shut it.”

“We still can,” Mutters Geralt with a smile, face turned a bit so he has a better view of your face, “if you want.”

Smirking back at him, Jaskier almost chokes on his own spit, “I am right here. Right here Geralt. Right here.”

You laugh at the bards dramatics, “We never said you had to watch.”

“Wha-thats besides the point! And just, ugh please don’t....” Whines Jaskier, making a face of disgust before frowning, “or at least just wait for me to fall asleep.”

Laughing, you give the bard an agreeable nod, “Don’t worry we will.”

[futurequeenofravka]

Good Enough - Sirius x Reader

Summary:

After a spat with a Slytherin girl in your year, you’ve start to doubt your relationship with Sirius Black. While you are wildly in love with him, you start to question why he chose you, a “mudblood.”

Warnings: None, I don’t think? Just a little angsty!

A/N: this is my first piece! it’s a lil test of a fic I’d like to write eventually, and it was prompted by mmfd so I decided to tweak the dialogue from the show a little to make it wizarding world esque hahah. But I hope you enjoy! thank you so much for reading, this is the first time I’ve ever shared my creative writing online so please let me know what you think (also please send requests)! Also sorry if the formatting looks a lil weird, posting this from my phone made it kinda wonky.

Word count: 2.2k-ish words.

—

Pst. Psssst.

Sirius’s whisper grew louder until I looked over my shoulder to where he and James were sitting a few desks back from Lily and I. He tried to silently mouth a question as Professor Binns droned on about last night’s reading. James and Lily quietly laughed as they watched Sirius try to repeat himself a number of times before ultimately giving up. I shot him an apologetic look for my lip reading skills, or I guess lack thereof, as I watched him rip up a piece of parchment and scribble down a message. He waited for a spare moment in which Binns had his back turned to the class to write something on the chalkboard and then tossed the crumpled up piece of paper at me.

“What’s it say?” Lily asked as I unfolded the piece of parchment that Sirius had thrown my way.

“Blimey is he fucking annoying.” I said letting out a small laugh as I read the note.

“Well?” She leaned in closer trying to read the note from over my shoulder.

I slid the parchment across our shared desk so that she could read the message as well. Hi. I just wanted to say you look beautiful today. Meet me at the Astronomy Tower at 7? Lily sarcastically groaned as she slid the note back over to me and we pretended to go back to our class work. I turned back around to see Sirius intently waiting for my answer, I rolled my eyes at the silly gesture but smiled as I gave him a small nod to confirm our meeting later.

“You two are so sickly sweet sometimes, honestly I think I might have a toothache.” She said loud enough to provoke a laugh from James who eyed her from a few desks over.

“Beats the headache I get from watching you and Potter dodge your feelings for each other.” I retorted, quietly laughing as I tried to refocus my attention back to my textbook.

After class had ended I said bye to Lily as I made my way to the library to study for my potions exam. Sirius had already promised James that he’d come watch the Gryffindors practice for the upcoming Quidditch match so I’d have to study alone today, which I didn’t particularly mind because usually with Sirius around I hardly got any studying done. He pressed a kiss on my temple before we parted ways. When I got to the library I took a seat in the corner as usual and began to sprawl my textbooks across the table.

In the midst of studying I heard giggles from a herd of girls a few tables over. Looking over I met eyes with Ianthe, a Slytherin also in sixth year, who was sitting alongside Sirius’s cousins Bellatrix and Narcissa. Though I had never spoken more than a few words to either of them, I knew I was not favored in the Black household. If anything, they probably hated me; although Sirius would never burden me with that confirmation, I knew how his family felt about me and “my kind.”

Being muggle born was still a rarity at Hogwarts, and one that pureblood families often had strong feelings against. Lily and I became fast friends because of this. Being two of the only Muggle born students at Hogwarts made fitting in quite hard sometimes. There were often things that we didn’t understand or we lost on. We relied on Marlene, Alice, and Dorcas a lot for explanations and now as of recently on the “Marauders,” as they called themselves, as well. But it was comforting to have Lily around, to have someone who understood experiences unique to us. Someone who understood what it felt like to miss basic muggle things while away at school, like televisions or even just pens.

I rolled my eyes at the giggling girls and went back to reading the next chapter in my textbook. Several minutes passed before my studying was interrupted again, this time I looked up to see the three slender girls approaching my table, a wicked grin plastered across each of their faces as they surrounded my table.

“Can I help you?” I breathed looking up from my book.

“Yes actually. Would you mind backing off of Sirius?” Ianthe mused as she flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder.

“Excuse me?” I asked, Bellatrix laughed at my response, a cackle echoing across the room.

“I thought dating you would just be his latest phase but it’s been almost 6 months. I expected that he’d come crawling back to me by now but you seem to be standing in my way.” Ianthe ran her fingers over my notes and shuffled my things around as she spoke.

“In your way of what? Stealing my boyfriend?”

“Precisely.” Narcissa chimed in from behind the blonde haired girl.

“Honestly, Y/N. It’s kind of pathetic how you constantly follow Sirius around like a puppy dog. One day I’m sure he’ll bore of having a little pet mudblood and finally come back to his senses.” Bellatrix said, her tone was cold and cruel as she knocked over a few of my things and proceeded with a sarcastic oops.

“I mean our families have been practically planning our wedding since before we were even born.” Ianthe said trying to refocus my attention back on her.

“Shove off, the lot of you.” I said trying to ignore anymore of their remarks.

“Feisty today aren’t we, Y/N. I would’ve never expected such boldness from a filthy little mud blood.” Bellatrix said cackling again.

“Just leave me alone please.” My voice strained this time.

“You really do ruin all the fun, don’t you, Y/L/N? But before we go, I just have to ask, dear. Does our darling Padfoot still like to have his neck kissed? You know, just above that mole.” Ianthe tapped her finger to the side of her neck.

“You’re all sick.”

“Maybe but at least we don’t have dirty blood.”

My heart beat fast as I picked up my belongings from off the ground, desperately trying to get out of the library as quickly as possible. I ran through the corridors back toward Gryffindor tower, tears welling up in my eyes and slowly beginning to fall despite my best efforts to hold them back. I ran past the other students and back to my dormitory praying that it would actually be empty for once. It was not. Lily was sat on her bed reading a book when she looked up to see me tears running down my face while I tried to keep a cool demeanor. Her face cloaked in worry as she asked if I was okay, her words triggered a visceral reaction as I finally let myself break down in tears. She came over to me and brought me back to her bed and hugged me for a moment, stroking my back waiting until I was ready to speak.

After my sobs and sniffles had mostly come to a stop I recounted the entirety of what had happened in the library. Sharing the words exchanged between me and the three Slytherin girls and the doubt that now seeped into my mind. Lily fumed, her anger rising as she listened to me talk about what had happened.

“Y/N, you don’t actually believe that do you?” She asked, her face still cloaked with worry.

“I mean why shouldn’t I? She’s right, I’ve seen the way people look at us.”

“What does it matter what they think?”

“It’s not what they think, it’s the fact that they’re right. You know exactly how Sirius’ family is, I’m probably just another conquest to him. Girls like Ianthe were bred to marry boys like him, to protect their bloodlines. They’ve basically been betrothed since birth, Lily!”

“Sirius is his own person. He is not his family. You should know better than anyone that that boy lives to break rules. And I seriously doubt it but if he doesn’t appreciate how absolutely brilliant you are just because you were muggle born then he’s not worth your time.”

I knew Lily was right, it was rare that she wasn’t. But my mind still wandered to a dark place that echoed with Ianthe’s comments. She stayed with me for another hour or so before she got ready to go over to the Great Hall for dinner. I didn’t realize how long we had been sitting in the dorm. I looked over at the clock surprised to see it was almost 7. I promised Sirius I’d meet him in the astronomy tower soon. Surely I couldn’t face him after what had just happened but my heart hurt thinking about standing him up.

“You going to be alright?” Lily asked before heading out the door.

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll see you later.” I reassured her.

“Alright, if you need anything just give a shout.”

I sighed as she closed the door and headed off. I looked down at my mascara stained sleeves and quickly changed into a clean shirt and wiped away the smeared makeup from beneath my eyes. Regardless of how I felt, I had to face Sirius.

I walked through the empty halls over to the Astronomy tower. Springtime at Hogwarts had an underrated charm to it. The weather was ideal, chill but not too cold. Tonight was no different, the air tonight was crisp, the wind blew gently through my hair as I made my way up the winding staircase. When I made it to the very top I saw Sirius gazing across the school grounds. His face looking intently over the beautifully crafted buildings and through the lush forests around us. I stayed silent for a minute just to admire him. The handsome playboy that I always thought I loathed but whom had somehow not only stolen my heart but had also become my best friend.

When he finally sensed my presence he turned around, my heart fluttered just looking at the kind, dopey smile wiped across his face as he held out his hand for me. When I grabbed it, he pulled me in close. My face buried into his chest as he held me for a minute. I looked behind him to see a blanket laid across the ground a small picnic set up for us.

“Remus helped me bribe the house elves into sneaking me some food so we could have dinner up here.” He excitedly motioned over to the set up.

“It looks lovely, Sirius.” I spoke softly as if my words could be broken with just a tap.

“What’s wrong? Oh Merlin, you hate it, don’t you?” He asked worriedly.

“No it’s not that, it really is lovely. I just, I just don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why you’re doing this for me. You’re a pureblood and I’m...I’m a mudblood.” I took a step away from him, letting go on my grasp on his hand.

“What does that have to do with anything? You know I’ve never cared about any of that.”

“You should be going out with someone like Ianthe, not someone like me. Most people when they see us must be thinking, ‘oh he must be mad going out with that.’”

“That what” he said before raising his voice to echo the question, “that what?”

“You know exactly what, Sirius. Everyone does.”

“What the fuck are you on about? What does everyone have to do with how I feel about you? You don’t get to tell me who I can and can’t fancy. That’s mine and mine alone. Now are you going to stop being a git or what?”

“Stop calling me a git, you’re the git.” I said trying to shove him away but his hands grasped my wrists before I could make my move.

Before I could say another word he crashed his lips into mine. His hands now releasing his grip on my wrists and instead caressing my face. Sirius had kissed me many times before but never with such urgency, like his life depended on it. Like if he didn’t kiss me in this exact moment that he’d never get to again. My hands now pressed up against his chest pulling him in closer to me as I savored the taste of him until we were breathless.

“You’re the git.” I whispered as we pressed our foreheads together, he let out a small laugh at my comment before he spoke again.

“Those twats, they aren’t my family. You are.” His thumb caressing my cheek softly.

“Sirius, I just—“

“You are my family.” He said firmly cutting me off before I could finish my sentence.

“Okay, you say that now but I just hate the idea that you’re choosing me over them. I don’t want you to wake up one day and regret your choice and start to resent me forever. I mean they’re your family, Sirius.” I rambled as doubt still riddled my brain.

“Y/N, listen to me, I will always choose you. I choose you today, tomorrow, and I’ll choose you forever for the rest of our lives. You are the only thing in this entire world I care about.”

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Yes, just maybe not to James, Remus, and Peter. I think they might burst into tears.” He let out loud laugh as he responded to my question.

“I won’t lie, I’d like to see that.”

“I bet you would. Now can we please eat dinner, I paid off the house elves 10 galleons each just so that they would make your favorite!”



[writtenonreceipts]

Here’s a Harry Potter fic, it’s just an old Jily fic I found in my files, enjoy. It’s a Canon ifc right around 5.4k words

fine my main masterlist here

The Name of the Game

Year 6- September 2

The one thing that Lily Evans appreciated most about Hogwarts was the fact that escape was possible. Escape from friends, escape from the world, escape even from herself.  

It was only the second day of the term and Lily was already feeling smothered by everything.  After disentangling herself from Severus Snape at the end of last year, her friends (wonderful as they were) tried too hard in getting Lily to be social and have girl’s night.  

Mary, Marlene, Alice, and even Dorcas were her closest confidents while at school.  Especially now that she hadn’t been able to reconcile with her sister.  Really, she should have been willing to open up and talk to them.

Maybe in a few weeks she would be up to it, but for now she just wanted to mourn.  

Running a hand through her hair, Lily shook the thoughts from her head and left the castle.  The autumn air was still warm enough that Lily only needed a cardigan to keep warm, her hair hung in a thick sort of mess just past her chin.  Thankfully it had begun growing out from the terrible cut she had gotten at the start of the summer.  Maybe she could see if Marlene would help her find a spell to lengthen it.

“Hey, Red!”

Lily cringed at the loud and robust call that hailed her from entry way of the Castle.  Trying to keep a muted expression, Lily glanced over her shoulder to see none other than James Potter bounding down the steps of the Castle toward her.  She was surprised that he wasn’t sliding down the banisters. In First Year, he and Sirius had gotten a month’s worth of detention and a frenzied chase around the castle by Filch.  Although, she was sure the boys still found ways to slide down the banisters without getting noticed.

“What did you call me Potter?” she demanded as she continued her walk across the grounds.  He, much to her annoyance, kept pace with his freakishly long legs.  

They walked down the well-worn path that lead down by the Forbidden Forrest on that late Thursday afternoon.  Lily had no real destination in mind, she just desperately needed to walk around after escaping Alice’s pleads for another hour of discussing herbology theory.

Although now that Potter had found her and seemed to be bored, Lily realized she needed to come up with someplace to go quick or else she may be stuck with his presence the rest of the day.  Or else she could return to Alice’s side and have another in-depth discussion on mandrake breeding processes.  

Given how they’d left things the previous year, Lily wasn’t sure how she felt about being around him anymore than necessary.  

“Called you Red,” he replied lightly, his deep hazel eyes catching hers with a near maniac gleam to them. She had a sudden flashback to running about the castle with him in third year trying to get away from Mrs. Norris. “You know, with the fiery red hair, the fiery red attitude.”

She could slap him. Twice.  Maybe add an effectively aimed kick.  “See, Potter, this is the reason that I choose to ignore you.”

“Ignore me, eh?” he grinned easily his lopsided smile was a force to be reckoned with and Lily had to fight not to crack a smile.  “You’ve never been very good at that.”

“Only because you are too starved for attention.” Lily rolled her eyes and waved to Professor Sprout who was maneuvering some rather stubborn looking plants about the First Year Greenhouses.  Their conversation flowed easy, too easily, and Lily found herself troubled by it. She should be mad at him.  She should be yelling and threatening.  And yet, she couldn’t find the energy.  Or the desire.  The notion of hating him didn’t settle well with her now.  

Even after what transpired after the O.W.L.S examination last year, Lily really couldn’t ignore him. She never had been able to.  James Potter was an enigma that she couldn’t rightly wrap her mind around.  

“And yet, you still chose to satiate my childish need of said attention,” James replied.  He stuffed his hands in his pockets, not before Lily noticed, nearly running them through his hair.  Lily’s stomach twisted.  He remembered the way they left things.  Of course he did.  Oh, she needed to find an escape route.  “What are you up to today, Emerald?”

“Really Potter? Emerald?” She scoffed shaking her head. “I thought you were more creative than that.”

“Well, I was going to call you “love,” but I’d really like to be able to play Quidditch for the rest of the year, y’know?”

“Yes, I agree,” Lily mused, “you really should not call me love.”

James chuckled and Lily noticed (dammit) that he seemed to favor a lower tone, the kind that reminded her of a nicely stoked fire.  “So, does Lily Evans have nothing better to do with her day than wander around the Castle Grounds?”

Oh, Lily thought as she finally paid attention to their surroundings.  She’d begun to walk in a lackadaisical zigzag pattern, nearing a bit too close to the edge of the Forrest.  Potter didn’t seem to be annoyed, just amused.  Blast it.  

“Well, I’m just clearing my head.  We’ve got that Transfiguration essay to write and all.”

“Right,” he agreed, and ran a hand through his hair.  Did he really feel that uncomfortable around her?  Yes.  Yes, he did. And she couldn’t blame him.  “I didn’t expect McGonagall to be so intense with us this early.  But, she never ceases to surprise me.”

Lily hummed in agreement. “Yeah.”

In truth, while the essay was bedraggling a great part of her mind, Lily was also caught up with thoughts of Severus, her sister, and now the stiff awkwardness she was feeling toward James.  Over the summer, while Severus had tried to remain in contact with Lily, she’d finally decided that enough was enough and she wasn’t going to respond.  Marlene, Mary, Dorcas, and Alice had all supported her enthusiastically with the decision.

The Petunia Issue was a great deal more complicated.  And much to Lily’s horror to the fact, she was slowly realizing that she may need to let her sister go.  That thought alone was enough to cause her to want to crawl into bed and never get up.

“Firecracker?” James asked, though it sounded much more like he was searching approval of the name than calling for her attention.  

Sweet Merlin, what is this?  Lily looked at him incredulously to find that he was failing miserably at fighting back a smile.  “Are you serious?”

“No, actually, but I know—”

He was cut off by Lily’s fist trying to connect with his shoulder.  Laughing madly, James dashed out of the way and nearly into the line of trees of the Forrest.  

“I’m going to tell Black that you tried to make that joke again,” she threatened, but the fear she tried to evoke was lost to her giggles.  “I thought you all’d made an oath never to use that on anyone again?”

James suddenly looked very somber. “Yes, I would actually appreciate it if you didn’t tell the boys about that.  I already owe them each three galleons.”

“Oh?” Lily was still shaking with laughter as they rounded another corner.  “Already?  I thought you reset your betting game at the start of the year after you all settled up.”

“Yeah,” James mumbled, a distinct blush flushed his cheeks.  “There was a thing, and then this other—I failed again on that front.”

Eyeing him curiously, Lily corralled them away from the trees.  While she wasn’t afraid of what was in the Forrest, she still felt a bit uneasy about what lay inside.  “Right.”

He kept quiet as they weaved around a patch of boulders and nearer to the Lake.  It was curious; James Potter actually seemed embarrassed by something.  What he had anything to be embarrassed about, Lily had no idea.  Potter was always the calm, savvy type.  Albeit a goofball and prankster as well, but this sudden sputtering and blushing caught Lily off guard.  

“Why have the boys started calling you Prongs?” she asked suddenly, hoping that would change the mood between them.  

His eyes widened, only briefly before his usual easy grin flashed across his face.  “Oh, just a bit of a joke between us from the start of last year.  Moony couldn’t be the only one with a nickname.”

“Right,” Lily said, though she wasn’t convinced.  One of James’ hands seemed to flex at his side.  Probably trying to keep from roughing up his hair—again.  Lily bit her lip to keep from grinning.  “Do I want know where Padfoot and Wormtail came from?”

“Actually, those are funny stories,” James’ eyes brightened and Lily could feel the energy radiating off of him.

“Funny or disturbing,” Lily asked, miming that she was weighing a scale, “because I just don’t know with you.”

“Evans, Evans, Evans,” James chuckled as they came to the edge of the Lake.  “Just imagine for me, Peter growing out his hair and deciding to cut it all off except for this long braided strand.  He tried to put beads in it.”

Lily let out a laugh and clamped her hands over her mouth.  Encouraged by her reaction, James laughed to, continuing the image.

“Evans, I wish I had gotten a picture, for a while there it was a mullet.  A mullet that we did not tell him to do.  I think he was trying to be a bit more like Sirius honestly,” James glanced out over the glassy water thoughtfully.  “We thought he’d grown out of that phase in Fourth Year.  We were terribly mistaken.”

Lily sputtered another laugh and had to bit her lip to keep quiet.  “Please tell me you cut it off.”

“We got all but that tail,” James mourned.  “And he took extra precaution to keep it safe after that.  Now, Sirius on the other hand, was much more scandalous.  He decided to sneak down into the Kitchen in nothing but his boxers to grab a box of cookies.  And then my Mum caught him like that stuffing as many cookies in his mouth as he could.”

They stopped walking now, just at the edge of the Lake.  To Lily’s horror, they were near the old tree from last year where most of their issues had boiled over, painfully.  Though James didn’t seem too worried about it, so neither would she.  Instead, Lily rolled her eyes at the image of Sirius and his lack of modesty.  “So, Sirius lives with your family?”

“Yeah,” James’ face brightened at the fact and he looked as though he could talk about it all day. “He does.”

Lily almost asked him what had spurred that, but caught herself.  There was no reason why Potter should confide in her like this.  There was no reason why they should spend this much time talking to one another either.  

After the incident by the Lake, near this exact spot, Lily had been certain she wouldn’t have anything to do with him.  She was sure that would be it, that they’d finally go their own ways.  Yet here they were.

“Are you just going to follow me around?” Lily finally asked.  “I would assume you have better things to be doing with your day.”

His mouth quirks in a smile, he begins to say something before he shakes his head.  Biting his lip, James stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Nah.  The boys are all in detention.  Well, Peter and Sirius are.  Remus is…well he’s around.  And, I wanted, er, needed to talk to you.”

“About what?”  Nice Lily. Hmm, I wonder what you two could possibly need to talk about.  It was Lily’s turn to flush and she ran a hand through her hair.

He didn’t look at her as shuffled his feet, hands stuffed in his pockets.  James exhaled stiffly and looked out over the glassy surface of the lake, the water reflected sharply in the sun.  “I wanted to apologize.”

Lily blinked.

Apologize? As in try to make amends?  Wanted? As in he desired to do this and admit he was in the wrong?

“Oh.”  Brilliant.  That was just a beautiful thing to say to that.  Congratulations Lily, keynote speaker right there.  

“I mean,” James said quickly.  “I’ll be honest that he deserved it.  But I should have handled it better than I did.  I know he’s your friend and—”

“Was.” She watched a ripple expand over the surface of the water as a tentacle of the Giant Squid skimmed the water.

“Was?”

“Was.”

“Oh.”  He frowned deeply and finally turned toward her.  “I didn’t know.”

Lily scraped her teeth against her lower lip.  She would not start crying.  “I couldn’t make excuses anymore.”

“I’m sorry Evans,” he even sounded sincere, Lily realized.  They stared at each other for a moment and Lily almost felt a swell of gratitude for him, almost.

“Thanks for apologizing Potter,” she finally said.  He pursed his lips and nodded, the fact that she didn’t actually accept the apology wasn’t lost on him.  

“No one should ever lose their best friend,” he told he firmly.  Something caught his attention as he turned, a broad grin stretching on his features.  Lily glanced over her shoulder to see Peter Pettigrew looping awkwardly across the grounds waving madly.

“Prongs!  Prongs!” The boy wasn’t as tall as James, nor as slender and lean, but he had a solid quality to him, even as he nearly went tumbling down after tripping over a rock.

“Wormtail,” James called exasperated.  He shook his head, but Lily could see the affection he had toward his friend. “You’re going to break your ankle, again!”

“Moony’s here,” replied Peter.  He stopped trying to run, opting instead to try and catch his breath, hands on his knees.

“Excellent.”  James clapped his hands and tipped an imaginary hat to Lily and smiled. “Thank’s for not hexing me.”

“You didn’t give me a reason to,” Lily replied quietly.  She wasn’t sure he heard her as he ran to his friend.  The two began talking animatedly as they hurried back to the castle. “Bye.”

Shaking her head, Lily looked back over the Lake.  It used to be one of her favorite places to come to and think.  It was always one of the quieter places around Hogwarts. Quiet, but with just enough noise to keep her sane.  

She stood there for a while longer until she noticed someone come stand next to her.  Mary McDonald said nothing as she leaned her head on Lily’s shoulder and breathed deeply.

“Alice is talking about getting another toad,” Mary finally said.  “We need an intervention.”

Snorting Lily began laughing and she couldn’t bring herself to stop as she and Mary slowly began to head back to the castle.

.*.*.*

After nearly two weeks, Lily almost forgot about the interaction she had with Potter that day by the Lake.  The second interaction.  Not the first.  That was a lie.  They were both still the center of attention to her.  But, she couldn’t let them consume her completely.  Not when she had to be at the top of her game in her classes and not slack off as a Prefect.  Not when the possibility of becoming Head Girl was so close and so possible.

Lily almost forgot about it though.  Almost forgot about the nickname game that Potter seemed to be playing.  

Almost.

“If it isn’t the Tempestuous Redhead herself.”  Sirius Black called cheerfully across the Common Room late one evening.  Lily, upon returning from a particularly terrible night of rounds, only wanted to go up to bed and be dead to the world for the rest of her life.  Black wasn’t helping matters.

Under different circumstances she might have smiled.  But the way Black lounged in his chair twirling his wand nonchalantly, Lily had no qualms about setting him straight with a bat-boogey hex.

“Padfoot,” Potter stage whispered.  He sat cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table and could see the murderous expression on Lily’s face.  Genuinely concerned for his friend’s safety, he tried to smack Sirius.  But, the other young man seemed unconcerned with the looming threat.

The other Marauders seemed at an impasse, be worried or be amused?  The general consensus was amused as Pettigrew’s head snapped between Lily and Sirius and terribly hidden smile on his lips.  Lupin smirked resting an elbow on the back of the couch, his eyes gleamed with approval in Lily’s direction.

“Care to repeat that Black?” Lily finally asked slowly walking fulling into the Common Room. Black didn’t baulk or shift as Lily glared at him.  If anything, he was much more confident.  This is why he and Potter are friends, Lily realized suddenly.

“The Tempestuous Redhead,” Black shrugged.  His shaggy hair fell across his face casting shadows sharply against his skin.  He was actually decently fit.  Lily realized she would need to concede in her argument with Marlene over the more attractive boys of Gryffindor.  

“Hmm,” Lily raised an eyebrow. “I was going to give you an opportunity to spare your life.”

Sirius propped his feet up on the table, giving more access for James to slap him.  Shaking off his mate, Sirius’ grin broadened.  “C’mon, Evans, it’s a good nickname.  I guarantee you if you have people call you that, those third years will give you less flak.”

“And I can guarantee you that if you continue calling me that, I will murder you,” Lily responded.  She held his gaze for a moment before looking between the other Marauders.  Pettigrew was giddily bouncing in his seat, Lupin now blatantly smiled as he shook with silent laughter.  Potter too seemed to be laughing, but was doing his best to control it.  Though, his eyes never left Lily.

“But you could be a pirate with that name,” Peter suddenly burst out.  A look of pure terror came across his face, but the damage was done.

“What?” Absolutely flabbergasted at what the blond boy had said, Lily stared at him.

Black, Lupin, and Potter couldn’t fight it anymore and they began laughing outright now.  Potter fell back on his elbows, the light of the fire falling on his features and Lily could see dark shadows beneath his eyes.

“Y-you could be a pirate,” Peter whispered horrified that he was still allowing his traitorous tongue to speak.

This sent the boys into another fit of giggles that Lily couldn’t seem to understand.  Maybe if she weren’t so tired, if they weren’t all such insufferable gits, she would be laughing with them.

“I-I don’t want to be a pirate Peter,” Lily finally said.  She closed her eyes as there was even more giggling and hisses to “shut-up ya fool” and “she really will kill us.”  Lily opened her eyes to see Peter had slunk down into the couch so only his eyes and the tip of his forehead peeked over the back.  Potter sat up wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.  “I’m just going to go to bed.  When I get up in the morning, I will not be the Tempestuous Redhead, nor will I be a pirate.”

“Agreed,” Peter squeaked as his eyes disappeared into the couch.

“G’night Evans!” Black called as Lily stomped up to the girl’s dormitory’s.

“Sorry!” Potter called not long after.

Lily spent the rest of that evening falling over in fits of giggles as she recounted the encounter with her friends.

.*.*.*

“Lilykins!” It was James who dared to try the naming game again.  Nearly a month after the pirate incident Lily had taken hope that it would be just the two times.  Hoped in the relative sense.  She would only admit to herself, that yes, it was amusing to see what the boys could come up with as nicknames.  And if she was being honest with herself, it nice to have the interaction.  Despite how ridiculous it always seemed to be.

This time, Lily and Marlene were headed down to Hogsmead, after Marlene had finally settled on a scarf to wear with her outfit.  Apparently the first five scarf attempts made Marlene look like she had five chins. Something Lily didn’t see, but there was no persuading Marlene otherwise.  James and Remus walked, a bit to quickly about the halls.  Stuffing a spare bit of parchment in his pocket Remus waved kindly at the two witches.

“I think I would prefer to be a pirate,” Lily responded mildly as she carefully observed the two boys. They were trying too hard to appear innocent for Lily’s liking.

“I’ll be sure to let Peter know,” James with a wink as they continued.

“We should probably get out of the castle as soon as possible,” Lily decided.  There was the distinctive sound of running footsteps and she was convinced that Potter and Lupin were the source.

“Probably,” Marlene agreed. “Although, the pixie invasion of Halloween was rather enjoyable.”

Lily rolled her eyes as Marlene bumped into her with a hip.

.*.*.*

The chill of the dungeons made Lily wish she’d worn a scarf that morning.  Even for late November, it was cold.  Pulling her robes tighter around her, Lily hurried from Professor Slughorns office.  After an incident with a few fourth years the previous night, Lily hadn’t been able to finish an assigned essay, but gratefully, Slughorn now extended the due date for her.  Even if it was just one extra day, it still relieved the pressure that had been building in Lily’s chest throughout the week.

Mary had offered to stay back with her, but Lily declined.  They had a free period now, and Mary needed to get caught up on her Charms work.  A fact the brunette firmly denied, but Lily had seen the small look of relief in her eyes.  That and Mary had begun talking in her sleep.  It was bad enough that Alice wasn’t a good sleeper, having two in the dorm who would talk or walk unconsciously could only end in disaster.

Lily smirked at the thought. She wondered if there would be a way to get Mary to admit anything in particular in her sleep.

Someone shouted along the way ahead, Lily almost thought it could be Mary coming back, but the voice was too deep.  Frowning, Lily glanced over her shoulder, but it didn’t seem Slughorn was emerging from his office, and she knew he had no other classes that afternoon.

“C’mon Rooky,” the voice continued.  Lily felt her stomach sink, Avery.  Not that she should be afraid of him.  Or Rookwood.

“Relax,” Avery responded as he rounded the corner of the corridor.

To her chagrin, Lily’s breath caught and she automatically felt her muscles constrict, forcing her body to become smaller.  This was ridiculous.  Inhaling sharply, Lily threw her shoulders

Their voices stilled as they caught sight of her, and the only sound in the dungeons was shuffling feet and swishing robes.

“Well look who it is,” Rookwood mused.  They were too far down the hall to actually do anything, but the way the torches unevenly lit the way and the small space of the hall made them feel closer.  

“The Gryffindor.” Avery’s low voice seemed to slide across the old stone of the dungeons to Lily.  Straightening, she did her best to look neutral to their goads.

“The mudblood,” Rookwood corrected with a disapproving click of his tongue.

“Something I can help you boys with?” Lily asked as they drew nearer.  They couldn’t be stupid enough to actually try anything.  Could they?  Slughorn’s office wasn’t too far down, he would hear if anything escalated.  But it wouldn’t.  There was nothing Lily needed to be worried about.

“Why would anyone want to be defended by a mudblood?” Ignoring Lily, the two Slytherin’s continued their conversation, drawing closer.

No one would blame her if she cast a sticking charm to keep them in place if she ran, would they? But she wasn’t going to run because there was nothing to run from.  It was just like Severus said, Avery especially talked a lot, he never actually did anything.  Rookwood, Severus never said anything about him.

So now you’re trusting his word again? Lily thought to herself.  She pursed her lips as she neared the boys.  Neither moved aside to let her pass, if anything they seemed to be moving toward her like a net.  A net of stupid and stupider.  She needed to stop listening to Alice and her “insults.”

“If you don’t have a purpose in the dungeons, I can give you detentions,” Lily said, rather proud of the firm authority in her voice.

“Meeting with our head of house, mudblood,” Rookwood said.  He was the taller of the two, long limbs that were too spindly, his blonde hair too stringy, lips too thin.  A slow smile crossed his features.  “We could ask you the same question.”

“Besides,” Avery added. He had attractive features, with dark eyes and splashes of freckles beneath his eyes.  “It’s a free period.”

Before Lily could say anything Rookwood smoothly continued. “We are free to do what we want.  A mudblood like you however, you shouldn’t even be in Hogwarts.”

“Interesting,” Lily deadpanned.  “I’ll be sure to tell that to Dumbledore when I see him next: Blood status is more important than talent.  I’m sure he’ll agree.”

Rookwood took a step closer to Lily, forcing her to lean against the wall. “Finally, the mudblood understands.”

“About time,” Avery scoffed. “Maybe she’ll see now this can’t be stopped.  That there’s no place for dirty blood here.”

“So, you see,” Rookwood took liberty to make another slur, one that tempted Lily to curse his tongue off. “You see, your time’s limited.”

Swallowing stiffly, Lily kept her gaze locked with Rookwood.  “I’ll keep that under advisement.”

“We’ll see that you do,” Rookwood’s hot breath on Lily’s cheek made her long for the chill she’d felt earlier.

And just as suddenly as the boys chose to stop and target her, they were gone.  After a moment, Lily heard Slughorn’s booming voice welcome to the two boys and a door slam shut.  Closing her eyes, Lily felt tears prick and begin to form.

“Bloody fool,” she whispered bracing herself on the wall.  Coving her face, Lily took several deep breaths.  She was fine.  It was fine. They didn’t actually do anything, just like she’d originally thought.  Even if their words still echoed in her mind.

The chill returned, a welcome change in the atmosphere.  Tucking her hair over her shoulder, Lily straightened and ran.  Stumbling into the main hall of the castle, she was grateful to see that it wasn’t busy.  In fact, there wasn’t another soul in sight.

Sighing in relief, Lily straightened her clothes, glancing at her watch.  She had about a half hour until Ancient Runes; a delightfully difficult class that would require her full attention.

“Everything alright, Evans?” Squawking in surprise, Lily glanced around to see James Potter emerging from a hall that Lily was sure led to the kitchens.

“Fine,” Lily said, though she knew her voice was an octave too high and she could feel her own eyes bugging out of her head.  She usually wasn’t this horrid of a liar.

James, unconvinced, nodded. “You sure��?”

“Yes!” She snapped. The word settled between them heavily and Lily instantly regretted losing her temper, but James didn’t seem hurt or offended.  Instead, he merely watched her; lips pursed, arms crossed over his chest.

“I am utterly convinced,” he said dropping his hands to stuff in his pockets. They stood in silence like that for several moments longer.  Lily began to feel increasingly uncomfortable while James seemed more and more at ease.

“I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” Lily finally said and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear.

James merely shrugged. “Thanks, but that’s not why I stuck around.”

Quirking an eyebrow, Lily watched as he walked over to her, and not in that lazy saunter he usually favored.

“What did you want Potter?” she asked.

“Just making sure,” he paused and leaned against the wall.  His glasses gleamed in the light making as he glanced in the direction the Slytherin’s left.  “Just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”

“I’m fine,” Lily said with a little more authority than she’d had previously.  But, she was distinctly aware that his eyes flashed to the dungeons like hers had and one of his hands dove into his pocket where she was sure she heard the crinkle of parchment.  “I would ask if you are alright Potter.”

James snorted, shaking his head. “Please Evans.  I’m more than alright.”

“Sweet Merlin.”  While it was classic Potter and she really didn’t want to egg him on, Lily couldn’t help but chuckled.  “You are insufferable.”

“I do try.”  He grinned and followed after she left the dungeons.

Lily rolled her eyes over her shoulder at him.  “What were you doing down in the dungeons anyways Potter?”

“Um,” he stumbled up the stairs after her, working over his words. “I don’t want you to hex me.”

“Then don’t give me a reason to.”

James gave a soft laugh as he walked beside her. “Of course not Evans, of course not.  It’s just that I know you. And you tend to like hexing me.”

“No more than you antagonize me,” she replied.  Though, she really couldn’t help but smile.

James cleared his throat before speaking. “I knew you had a meeting with Slughorn.  And then I saw Avery and Rookwood head down there too. And while I know you can take care of your self—I’d really hate to see you get expelled.”

They came to a stop in the middle of the Great Hall as students moved between their classes. Lily turned to look at him, still a bit confused that she and James Potter were having a somewhat decent conversation.

 Raking a hand through his hair, James shrugged again.  “Well, Evans, once again, thank-you for not hexing me.”

“Thank-you for not giving me a reason to,” she replied, his impish grin and sparkling eyes only made her smile more.

With a wink, James made for the stairs, Lily was quite certain she could hear Sirius bellowing at the top of his lungs for his friend.

“You know Potter, you could just call me Lily,” she burst out as she walked to the base of stairs. Her cheeks flushed immediately as she said it.  Sweet Merlin her face was probably the same color as her hair.  Crap.  Despite that fact, she did her best to meet his gaze as boldly as she could.

Surprise burst across his feature, but only for a moment before his grin returned. “Then do one thing for me in return Red.”

Lily quirked an eyebrow. If he dared ask her out, she would deliver that kick she’d thought of since third year. “Oh?”

“You could,” he stepped up the three steps separating with such quick grace that Lily didn’t have time to stumble back or flinch.  James was too close to her now.  So close, she realized, that she could smell his cologne and feel the heat radiating off his body.  Or was it her own body heat?  There was a blush already stretching across her cheeks despite how hard she did to fight it.  “You could call me James.”

And with that, he bounded back up the steps towards Sirius’ magnified voice (with a bit of McGonagall mingled there as well).  

It was only after he’d disappeared up a few more flights that Lily released the breath she had been holding.  Running a hand through her hair, Lily watched the way James went and felt a slow smile slip over her lips.

“Alright James,” she whispered.

.*.*.

thanks for reading!

[whenisitenoughtrees]

a slow voice on a wave of phase

Logan has a voice like a galaxy, shot through with silver and streaked with stars, and today, Roman has realized that he is in love.

Roman has seen colors in sounds for as long as he can remember, and Logan's voice paints the night sky across his vision. It's no wonder that he falls in love with him, though it is surprising that he took this long to realize it.

(Wherein Roman pines, Remus' input is surprisingly helpful, and Logan has a lot more feelings than anyone is giving him credit for.)

Content Warnings: Remus-typical inappropriateness, mild Roman-typical insecurity

Word Count: 5,629

Pairings: Logince, platonic Creativitwins, brief mention of Dukeceit

(masterpost w/ ao3 links)

The idea comes to him suddenly, and by ‘suddenly,’ he means ‘with the force of a giant shark crashing through the wall of his bedroom at ninety miles per hour,’ because that is how Remus makes his entrance: half-naked, dripping wet, and straddling the back of a two-and-a-half ton great white.

“Tada!” Remus crows, sliding onto the floor. “You bet I couldn’t do it!” The shark, presumably irritated either by the lack of water dooming it to slow asphyxiation or by the loud, annoying man yelling in its face, flops around on the floor helplessly. Roman watches it through half-lidded eyes, and briefly considers getting up to deal with it before it starts knocking things over.

“But the proof’s in the pudding!” his brother continues, slapping the shark with a wink. Who the wink is directed at, Roman has no idea. Hopefully not the shark, though he wouldn’t put it past him. “Or in the big-ass shark! It only ate me three times before I got to ride it!” At this, he makes a disgusting motion with his hips, calling attention to the fact that his swimming trunks really do not cover enough, and Roman wonders just what, exactly, he did to deserve this treatment.

“What are you doing in my room?” he demands. Or at least, he means to demand; it comes out sounding more like an exhausted sigh, and he supposes that he shouldn’t have expected anything different. Lying in bed in pajamas is not a position from which one can demand much of anything, even if that one happens to be a prince with an incredible amount of creative power at his fingertips.

Not that he’s feeling much creative power at the moment.

Remus finally seems to register his tone and position. He stalks forward, his nose wrinkling, and Roman is greeted with a close-up view of his brother’s bare chest, which is just about par the course. It could be worse, he supposes. At least he’s shirtless and not pantsless. Mostly.

“What crawled up your ass and died there?” Remus asks. “Ooh, was it a spider, like, the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout, except the waterspout’s your--”

“Oh my god,” he says, and finally works up the willpower to sit up and shove his brother away. “Can you stop?”

“Can’t stop won’t stop!” Remus trills gleefully, but Roman ignores him in favor of standing to inspect the shark in the middle of his bedroom floor. It is, he has to admit, a bit impressive, and all those teeth are equal parts cool and terrifying. He would likely be more impressed if it wasn’t expiring on his carpet, or if there wasn’t a shark-sized hole in his wall leading to parts unknown. He frowns, focusing and waving a hand, and both the shark and the damage disappear. Unfortunately, the water all over the floor does not.

“Wow,” Remus says. “You are no fun.”

“If you think I’m leaving an open path to your side of the Imagination in my room, you’re…” Remus grins at him, propping his head up in his hands and waggling his eyebrows expectantly. “... nevermind.”

“I never do mind,” Remus agrees, and takes the initiative to flop down onto his bed, thus getting water all over his bedsheets, because he’s an inconsiderate jerk. “So, what’s got you all down in the dumps? Usually, I crash a shark through your wall and you get all pissy about it, but you’re being boring. What gives?”

Roman glares, and seriously considers trying to remove him too. There was a time when he would have been able to do so easily, a time when he knew for a fact that he belonged in the light and Remus belonged in the dark, with all of the other things that ooze and crawl. But things aren’t so black and white these days, and now that Thomas has begun to tentatively ask for Remus’ input every now and again, it’s harder than ever to make him leave when he gets it in his head that he wants to be somewhere. He is, in that way, a bit like a pimple, or a particularly persistent mold. Neither of which he can actually call him to his face, because he’ll just take it as a compliment, but the fact remains that once he grows on, it is incredibly difficult to scrape him off.

“What gives is that I want you out of my room,” he tries, crossing his arms, but Remus makes a tsking sound.

“Oh, sure,” he says. “That’s why you were lying there all sad and shit? You looked like someone that decided that their idea of fun is to lie down in the middle of the street and see what happens.” He pauses. “Actually, do you think Thomas would--”

“Don’t finish that sentence.”

He pouts. “Boo,” he says. “You never let me do anything. But I mean, really Ro Ro, it can’t be a creative block. I’ve seen you in one of those, and you get all whiny and sick and then you start acting like you’re a poet in the 18oos and you’ve got consumption.” He lays a hand across his brow. “Oh me oh my, if only I could write one last poem before I cough my whole lungs out of my body. Ooh, could you imagine what that would look like? Your lungs, just sliding out of your mouth like big grey sacks?”

“First of all, no, gross,” Roman says. “Also, I didn’t know poets dying of consumption sounded like congested Southern belles.”

Remus waves a hand. “Eh, not the point,” he says. “And maybe the poets didn’t, but you sure do.”

“Hey--”

“But my point,” he continues, “is that it can’t be that, ‘cause Thomas has got a backlog of weeks’ worth of ideas to peruse if he actually wants to do something, which means that’s not your issue.” He rolls over on his side, so as better to make eye contact. “So what is your deal?”

Roman opens his mouth and promptly closes it again. Honestly, if this were about anything else, he might consider telling him. As annoying as he is, he feels closer to Remus now than he has in years, perhaps to the point where he could feel comfortable sharing something personal. Sure, Remus will probably laugh or make fun, or twist it into something weird or a horrible innuendo, but at least it would be out there, in the open, and someone else would know of it. At least there would be proof of its existence outside of his own mind. 

But this? Can he share this?

Because the deal isn’t a messed up audition or a troublesome idea. It isn’t even one of his usual personal issues, like the self-doubt that creeps into his mind in the small hours of the morning, the whispered thought that none of his ideas are worthy of use, that he himself is failing in his purpose, a mere facsimile of the prince that he is supposed to be.

No. For once, it’s not that, and he refuses to fall down that rabbit hole.

The deal is that Logan has a voice like a galaxy, shot through with silver and streaked with stars, and today, Roman has realized that he is in love.

-----

It took a while for either of them to notice that none of the others experience the world the way they do. They never thought to question it; Roman saw colors in sound, and Remus heard music in images, and that was just the way it was. It wasn’t until they were a bit older that they figured out that the weird looks they garnered when they brought it up, when Roman mentioned a teacher with a corn-yellow drawl or when Remus talked about a picture in 3/4 time, weren’t just disapproval directed at the way the Creativities saw the world, but instead a genuine lack of understanding.

They stopped talking about it, eventually. Or rather, Roman stopped talking about it, and Remus accepted that nobody would pay attention to his eccentricities as long as he presented them in a certain way.

So really, it’s not that Roman is hiding it. It’s just never come up.

Remus’ voice is like an oil spill, black and thick and oozing, but with flashes of lime green running through it, the color of slime and radioactive waste. Patton’s is pink, yellow, and blue all swirled together, like a field of flowers, or every flavor of cotton candy all at once. Virgil’s voice is more difficult to pin down; once, he thought it was a black, swirling smoke, but as the years have passed, Roman has realized that the smoke is not black, but dark purple, only showing its true color when light is shined through it. Janus’ is similarly difficult to interpret, but lately, he has likened it to a still, quiet forest, all dark green and brown, secrets lurking just under the surface.

But Logan’s has always been his favorite. Because Logan’s voice sounds like space itself, a backdrop of black peppered with millions of shining, twinkling lights, mixed with bright galaxies and spinning nebulae, vast and beautiful and incomprehensible. At his calmest, it is a void, the light of the stars distant and cold, but when he gets excited, when he begins to ramble about a topic, the stars increase in number and illuminate his whole face, swirling in his eyes and hair, and Roman could listen to him for days.

He’s always known that he has a bit of a crush. But he’s always thought that a crush was all it was, and if it was a bit longer-lasting than crushes are meant to be, well, it’s not as if there are a lot of other options. The mindscape proper only has seven inhabitants, and it would feel wrong to try to date someone from the Imagination, considering that he controls the place. So, he’s been content to linger on his feelings for Logan, never pushing for anything more than he would be willing to give, because another thing that he’s always known is that never in a million years would his feelings be returned.

Logan, as he has said himself so many times, does not do feelings. And even though Roman knows very well that Logan is not nearly as unfeeling as he would like to pretend to be, that does not mean that he would be comfortable with, or even open to the idea of a relationship. And even if he were, he would not choose to be with him, would not choose the embodiment of dreams and fantasies, everything that logic attempts to deny. So it’s a hopeless crush, a one-sided romance for the ages, the type of story that Roman would be captivated with if he weren’t at the center of it, if thinking about it didn’t make his chest tight and his eyes sting.

But this morning--

Oh, gods of Olympus, this morning--

He has no idea what prompted the epiphany. By all rights, this morning was like any other morning: Patton at the pancake griddle, Virgil slumped and half-awake at the table, Logan sipping at his coffee. Roman made his usual stunning and gorgeous entrance, ready to tackle the day’s challenges like a true knight would, and traded his usual morning barbs with Virgil. But before he could even sit down, Logan looked up at him, smiled slightly, and said, “Good morning, Roman,” a galaxy glittering around him, and Roman took a brief moment to think about how much he loves him.

And then stopped up short. Because, what? Love? No?

Except, yes.

These feelings have been bursting in his chest for so long, fireworks setting off whenever Logan speaks, whenever Logan so much as looks his way. And he thought they were a crush, no more than that, if not ignorable then at least possible to work around. But that’s not right, has never been right, and in this instant, years’ worth of suppositions came crashing down around his ears.

So, his mind racing, the silence stretching too long, he did the only thing he could think to do.

“I, uh, forgot a thing,” he stammered, and beat a hasty retreat back to his room, ignoring the way Patton called after him. Upon closing the door behind him, he changed back into his pajamas and collapsed back on his bed, his mind whirling, intent on not facing anybody else until he has to.

Because he loves Logan. Is in love with Logan. Has been in love with Logan for years and years now, has been pining away without even understanding that that was what he was doing.

Frankly, he’s not sure he can think of a worse position to be in.

-----

Which brings him here: his floor wet, his arms crossed, and Remus staring expectantly at him, waiting for an explanation. And Remus isn’t one to back down easily, which leaves Roman in a predicament.

He could try lying. But he’s not sure he could lie well enough about this, and frankly, he doesn’t want to risk Janus getting himself involved. But the only other option is the truth, and he’s not sure he wants Remus to know the truth, not sure he trusts Remus not to hold it over his head, to mock him or to stick his fingers in an open wound that he himself has only just discovered.

Because Remus would definitely do that. Both literally and figuratively.

“Bro,” Remus says, looking amused, “whatever it is, I’m almost positive it’s not that deep. You know what is deep?”

“What?” Roman replies, hoping beyond hope for a change of topic.

“My butt!” Remus says, and then cackles.

Roman buries his face in his hands, and Remus’ laughter stretches on and on and on, filling the room with slick oil, painting the walls with slime and noxious fumes, and green squiggles worm their way onto the backs of his eyelids, and he absolutely cannot do this right now.

“I’m in love with Logan,” he mumbles into his hands, and the laughter cuts off abruptly.

“You’re what?” Remus asks, and Roman looks up from his hands. Remus has sat up in his bed, and is staring at him with a peculiarly intent expression.

“I’m in love with Logan,” he repeats, firmer this time. He holds Remus’ gaze, daring him to say something, so of course, Remus does, erupting into laughter once again.

“You can’t be serious,” he says in between giggles. “Really? Logan? He’s such a stick in the mud. A stick in the mud with a stick up his butt. It’s like a flag, except, instead of a flag it’s Logan, because the stick is both in the mud and up his butt.” He pauses, and Roman’s face must be doing something, because Remus sobers just a bit, raising an eyebrow. “Huh. You’re actually serious.”

He groans, plopping down in the middle of the floor, ignoring the way the dampness of the carpet seeps into his pants. “I don’t know what to do,” he moans, more to air his grievance than to accomplish anything else. It’s not as if he’s expecting Remus to have any useful suggestions for him.

But Remus shifts on the bed so he can face him completely. “Okay, you’re gonna have to explain this one to me, because I don’t get it,” he says. “Whenever I look at Logan, I get robot noises and video game music on full blast.” He breaks off, humming a few bars, and Roman has to admit that it’s not an unpleasant tune, though not one he would think to associate with Logan. “Plus,” Remus continues, “he’s so boring. Sure, he’s fun to wind up, but he’s all about the rules and being logical and no, Thomas can’t do that, he’ll get acid burns, so why don’t we watch a documentary instead?” He says the last in an almost perfect imitation of Logan’s voice, his face darkening. Oddly, when Remus does it, Roman doesn’t connect the sound with space at all, hearing only the same oily splatters that his brother’s voice usually consists of. “I don’t want to watch documentaries. I want to do shit.”

Roman shakes his head. “You don’t hear what his voice actually sounds like,” he insists. “It’s… gods above, he talks, and it’s like he brings all the stars down to earth. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve heard in my life.” He scrubs a hand across his face. “And sometimes he smiles and says something smart, and I’m just, wow, I would die for you. Do you know how pretty his smile is? And he’s so frickin’ smart.”

Remus’ expression has frozen halfway between awe and disgust. “You’ve got it bad,” he says, and Roman groans.

“You think I don’t know that?” he says. “I just don’t know what to do about it!” He sighs. “Theoretically, I know all about romance and wooing. I’m the romance guy! But when I think about wooing Logan, my stomach gets all twisted up in knots. Like a sad pretzel. I mean, grand gestures and gifts are the way to go, right? But what even could I give him that he would like? He hates things that are ‘frivolous and unrealistic,’ but that’s my whole thing!”

Remus cocks his head. “Bones,” he says sagely.

He blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Give him some bones,” Remus says, nodding, like this makes perfect sense. “Like, two, maybe three bones. Boys like bones.”

“... Where am I getting these bones?”

Remus’ face brightens. “I’ve got a few extra!” he proclaims. “Wanna see?”

“I-- no,” he says. “Stop. I’m not giving him bones. Why do you--” No, best not to question. “Nevermind. Is that how you got Janus to date you?”

Remus grins. “Nah,” he says. “I mean, maybe that helped. I think what really did it was that I wrote him our song.”

“You wrote him a song?”

“No, stupid, our song,” he says. “Like, how I look at him and I hear a song. And then I’ve got a song, too. So I figured out a way to mash them together. And then I gave it to him.” He sighs, almost dreamily, if Remus has a dreamy setting. Roman would like to never hear that again, thank you, because frankly, he doesn’t much want to hear about whatever weird relationship his brother has with Deceit, and he sort of regrets bringing it up in the first place. “He really, really liked it. Said it was the best thing he’d ever heard.” Remus pauses, an odd light entering his eyes. “He said something about it being from the heart. I tried giving him my actual heart, but then he said that wasn’t what he meant.”

“From the heart,” he mutters, considering. So, something heartfelt, personal. Remus literally gave Deceit something that showed how he perceived him, everything that he felt. But how can he do the same and make sure that it’s something Logan likes? Logan likes science, likes math and numbers, likes facts, and Roman doesn’t know anything about any of those things. All he knows is how Logan makes him feel and the way his voice shines like starlight in his mind’s eye, and he’s not sure how to translate that into something Logan would appreciate, or even understand.

And then it comes: the idea.

“Holy shit,” he says, spine straightening, the burst of inspiration setting his mind to whirring. For an instant, he sees it dancing before him, an image of perfection, within his reach if only he can replicate exactly what he envisions. “Remus, you’re a genius!”

Remus gawks. “I am?” he asks, and his face brightens. “I already knew that, but fuck yeah!”

Roman laughs, bright and free, clambering to his feet. “Okay, okay, I know what I’m doing,” he says. “So I need you to get out, but god, thank you so much.”

Remus hops off the bed without protest. “Anytime, bro bro,” he says, sauntering toward the door. “Remember to put in a good word with Tommy-boy for me. And if you end up fucking, put a sock on the door.”

“You’re gross,” Roman says, pushing him out. The words carry no bite, and the last thing he sees before closing the door in his face is Remus grinning at him, an expression of pure delight.

-----

In the end, it takes him a week. A week holed up in his room, only occasionally emerging to grab food, and he knows he’s making everyone else worry, but he can’t stop himself, doesn’t dare stop until what he sees in his mind has been set to paper, exactly how he wants it. It has been so long since an idea has gripped him like this, since he has been so inspired to create, since he has been so sure in his ability to make something beautiful, and he feels as though he could subsist on his exhilaration alone.

When it is done, he steps back, admires his handiwork, and proceeds to sleep for twenty-two hours straight.

On the eighth day, he steps out into the hallway, canvas tucked securely under his arm, and makes his way down the hall to Logan’s room.

He takes a deep breath before knocking, hoping to steady his nerves. He hasn’t had much time, these past few days, to worry about whether or not Logan would like it, but now, he’s wondering if this was a mistake, if this is something that would be better kept to himself. He can wave off the others’ concern by pretending he was working on hypothetical ideas, or that a quest in the Imagination ran over-long. He doesn’t actually have to give this to Logan at all, doesn’t have to bare himself like this, doesn’t have to risk his scorn and judgement.

But what else is love, in the end, if not a risk worth taking?

He knocks, and moments later, hears footsteps from inside. He barely has time to check that there is a smile on his face before Logan opens the door, eyebrows lifting in surprise.

“Roman,” he greets, and though nothing outwardly changes, Roman’s brain insists that a shooting star streaks across his vision. “We haven’t seen much of you these past few days.”

“Ah,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, “right, sorry. I just got caught up in the creative process, you know how it is.”

“I do not,” Logan says. “Nevertheless, I am glad to see you well.” He pauses. “I was… somewhat concerned after your hasty exit the last time I saw you. I wanted to ensure that I did not do something to offend you.”

Oh, shit. He’s been so busy that he hadn’t bothered to think about how that moment might have been interpreted. And there is an odd note in Logan’s tone that implies that this is actually something that’s been troubling him, and Roman feels like kicking himself for letting him worry about it.

“No, no, not at all!” he says, gesturing with his free hand. “I just got struck with inspiration in that very moment, so of course, I needed to retreat before the idea was lost.” He winces internally as the words leave his mouth. It is a lie, but only just; it certainly wasn’t inspiration that he was struck with. That came later.

“I see,” Logan says, and Roman hopes that he isn’t imagining the way his shoulders relax, if only slightly. “That is good to hear. In that case, was there something you needed from me?”

“I--” He breaks off, swallowing hard. This is the moment of truth, the last second in which he could turn back. He is, essentially, offering up all of his emotions on a silver platter, even if Logan likely won’t recognize that fact. Still, rejection at this point would hurt worse than any failed audition, worse than any mistake he has ever made, and he has made so many.

But he has spent so long on this. He wants it to be seen by its object.

“This is for you,” he blurts out, and shoves the canvas out in front of him like a shield. Logan takes it, startled, and Roman watches as his eyes flicker across the painting, widening ever so slightly. 

After a week’s worth of work, he knows exactly what Logan is seeing. A painting of blacks and dark blues and purples, pinpricks of whites and yellows and reds, a display of the cosmos swirling on a backdrop of the void. Everything that Roman sees when Logan speaks is here: the inky darkness of his calm, the supernova of his anger, the stars that glitter and twirl in his excitement. It is like no view of space that mankind has ever seen, because this universe is Logan, completely and utterly, is comprised of the galaxies that drip from his tongue when he speaks.

This is how Roman sees him. This is how Roman loves him.

The silence stretches on for a long time, so long that Roman is tempted to declare the whole thing a bust, to laugh and play it off like it’s no big deal, like his heart won’t be completely and utterly crushed if Logan hates it.

“You painted this?” Logan finally asks. His voice sounds choked, a star collapsing in on itself. Roman shuffles his feet.

“Uh, yeah,” he says. “I just thought, um, you like space? So I, uh. Do you like it?”

He tries not to sound needy, tries not to sound like his happiness is contingent on the answer he receives. He’s not sure how much he succeeds.

“It’s… adequate,” Logan replies, and Roman could dance, could sing his relief to any and all who would listen, because he knows Logan well enough to know what that means. And if that’s the best he’ll get, he’ll take it and go and be glad, because Logan likes it, and that is more than enough for him. He feels like he’s on top of the world, like he’s floating in space himself, orbiting the moon and staring into the sun and being blinded and loving every minute of it.

“Actually,” Logan says, and for a second, Roman’s heart drops into his shoes, before he continues with, “it’s… it’s far more than adequate. I don’t know much about art, but I know a piece of expert craftsmanship when I see one.” He looks up at Roman, his eyes shining. “You made this for me?”

There is an emotion in his voice that Roman cannot name, but it is speckled with so many stars, more than he thinks he’s ever seen at once. More stars than void, at least, shining and shimmering with light.

And Roman wasn’t planning to do this. Was planning to take this slowly, was planning to give Logan his offering and leave, using his reaction as a gauge for the next step, if he dared to take a next step at all, if he came away with the conclusion that Logan would not hate him for attempting a romance. But the way Logan is staring at him, wide-eyed and open, as if he has been gifted something incredibly precious, makes him want Logan to understand just how much this means, just how much it says. Just how much of his heart and soul he is putting on the line.

Dear sweet Beyonce, he’s actually going to do it, isn’t he?

“I did,” he says. “Um, okay, I’ve never actually explained this to anyone, so bear with me.” Logan tilts his head, confused, but is otherwise silent. “Uh, have you ever heard of the thing where people’s senses get crossed? Like, say, you associate a color with a particular number or letter?”

Logan’s eyebrows furrow. “Are you referring to synesthesia?” he asks.

He can’t stop his smile. Logan’s heard of it. Maybe that will make this easier. “Yeah, that,” he says. “So, uh, Remus and I have that. He hears music when he looks at things, and I, uh. Well. I’ve sort of got the opposite.”

Logan stares at him. “You’re telling me,” he says, “that all these years, you’ve both perceived the world in an entirely different way from the rest of us, and you’ve never said a word about it?”

He winces. “I suppose?” he says. “Are you angry?” 

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Logan is angry. He didn’t intend for Logan to be angry. He’s going to be angry if Logan is angry, angry with himself for spoiling this moment, for daring to reach for more than he could have. He should have left it alone, should have taken Logan’s enjoyment of the painting for what it was and not pushed for anything more. God, his heart feels as though it’s trying to claw its way out of his throat.

But Logan shakes his head. “No, just… surprised,” he says. “When you say you have the opposite of what Remus does, do you mean that you see images when you listen to music?”

“Sort of?” he says. “Not really images, more just arrangements of colors, if that makes sense. And I don’t actually see it with my eyes, just in my head, even though it feels like I’m seeing it with my eyes, sometimes. Even though I know I’m not really.” He pauses for a breath. He doesn’t think he’s explaining himself very well, but Logan is sill listening, so he has no choice but to push on. “And, um, not just music. Any sound, really.”

Logan nods, seeming to take it in stride. “I think I understand,” he says. “It truly is fascinating how so many of us exhibit traits and quirks that Thomas himself does not.” A measure of excitement bleeds into his voice, flaring up like the sun, and Roman resists the urge to blurt out something incredibly sappy and highly inappropriate for the moment. “So, this painting--” He glances back down at the painting, still gripped in both hands, and then abruptly stops talking.

“It’s, uh, it’s you,” Roman says, attempting to fill up the sudden quiet. “It’s your voice. I mean, it’s what I see when I hear your voice.”

“It’s… me?”

“Yes,” he says. 

“You… you see this when I talk?”

“Uh huh,” he says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Logan’s head is lowered, his voice too soft to read well, and Roman’s nerves begin to return in full force. “Was this weird? I’m sorry if this was weird. I just, your voice is so gorgeous, and I really wanted to paint it, and I’m probably making this worse, aren’t I? If you don’t like it anymore you don’t have to keep it.”

At last, Logan raises his head. His face is burning bright red, and Roman really, really hopes it’s not in fury, hopes that he hasn’t just ruined everything. Slowly, Logan sets the painting down to rest against the wall and steps forward. Roman, for his part, is rooted in place, tracking every movement, every breath.

“Roman,” Logan says. “Don’t be idiotic.”

And then, he backs Roman against the wall and kisses him.

He doesn’t kiss like Roman would have expected. There is nothing cold about it, nothing clinical; instead, he is hard and demanding, insistent and passionate, and as soon as Roman’s brain reboots, he returns it just as eagerly, deepening it, placing his hands on the sides of Logan’s face to hold him there, hold him where he can taste him, because he has fantasized about this moment but never, ever thought that this dream could come true. And when Logan pulls back, he doesn’t go far, his face lingering bare inches from his own. His breaths puff across his skin, and behind his glasses, his pupils are dilated.

“So I take it you like it,” Roman says. His voice is hoarse.

“I do,” Logan says. His face is flushed, twisted in what is probably embarrassment, but he doesn’t look away. “And lately, I have found myself rather liking you, too. I, ah, didn’t think you returned the sentiment.”

Roman blinks, and then, throws back his head and laughs. “Are you serious?” he asks. “We could have been doing this already?” He tugs Logan’s face closer to his, resting their foreheads together. Logan turns an even more brilliant shade of scarlet. “Just in case I didn’t make it clear,” he says, “I really, really like you, Logan.” He strokes a thumb across his cheek. “My galaxy,” he breathes. “My starlight.”

Logan makes a noise deep in the back of his throat. “Yes,” he says, and it’s almost a squeak. “That is satisfactory.”

And with that, with starlight gleaming behind his eyes and his heart tapping out double-time, Roman laughs, and pulls Logan back in.

-----

A few nights later, he finds a collection of questionably-shaped bones sitting on his dresser. He is less than enthusiastic, but Logan seems interested, so he kisses his boyfriend-- his boyfriend!-- on the top of his head and leaves him to his scientific study. Of bones. Because Logan is a weird nerd, but that’s alright, because he loves him both in spite of it and because of it. 

He just. Loves Logan. All of him. So much. And Logan likes him back, and now they’re together, and really, nothing could be better than this.

He briefly considers the merits of getting Remus a gift basket, but ultimately decides against it. They’ve never needed that sort of thing between them, and if the next time Remus intrudes on his space, he doesn’t protest as much as he usually would? Well, they both understand, and that’s more than enough.

Writing Taglist: @just-perhaps @the-real-comically-insane @jerrysicle-tree @glitchybina 

[rosesmith18]

(PnF) Headcanon #1 The Boys Popularity

Hey, so random explanation, but I’m going to start posting random headcanons pertaining to the PnF Universe. I’ve always wanted to do something like this as well as writing fanfics or posting art, but I’m a terrible procrastinator and I hate letting people down, so I decided against it for years. But, I’ve been really inspired to tried harder lately as well as take leaps of faith, so I’m using this as a sort of micro-level experiment.

Anyway, my first headcanon is that Phineas and Ferb are not that well liked by their fellow kids(or people their age at any point). I see a lot of people post art and stuff of them being beloved, and I can defiantly see where those people are coming from, but I personally don’t think it makes sense. I mean yes, WE love Phineas and Ferb for their creativity, uniqueness, etc, but none of us actually have to interact with these two. I just think that if people-everyday people-had to interact with Phineas and Ferb it would be a lot more frustrating then we think it would be. I mean look at the boys main friend group in the show;

Baljeet: A school obsessed ‘nerd’ who has a difficult time enjoying what is normally seen as fun. He’s quite closeminded, has a hard time cooperating with other/accepting that he may be wrong, and doesn’t really respect people who aren't as intelligent as him in a school sense.

Buford: An actual bully who is a coward, with weird tendency's such as having molds of all his ‘friends’, who only acts like a friend to Phineas and Ferb when it benefits him.

Isabella: A fireside girl with violent tendencies-as displayed by her elbowing Buford for using her catchphrase. She isn’t as nice as she pretends to be if her easily annoyed faces when being ignored by Phineas are anything to go by. It honestly seems like she’s ONLY nice to or when around Phineas and Ferb.

Then their are the boys themselves;

Phineas: An erratic boy whose oblivious to a fault and never stops talking about some of the most random things. He’s easily bored by the people around him on most occasions, and will go to any lengths to free himself from being bored. This boy would commit a bank heist off a whim just to forgo boredom.

Ferbs: A quiet, thoughtful boy who only speaks about the most random things. He usually finds anyone outside of Phineas to be unbearably frustrating and not worth his time. He doesn’t care about the approval of others and doesn’t mind doing things that may land him in trouble. He also can not stand boredom and would commit a bank heist just to gain an ounce of adrenaline.

Yes, these characters improve and change with time as any person would/should to some degree. Baljeet becomes more open to the concept of fun, and starts accepting that even he makes mistakes. Buford tones down his bullying habits, and truly starts to see Phineas and Ferb as his friends. Isabella gains more composure as well as understanding for both her friends and people in general. Phineas becomes more self-aware, and Ferb opens up to more people on an emotional level. But, that doesn’t change the fact that they start out with flaws that could make them difficult to befriend. Besides, the flaws that do stick are a big part of what makes them the relatable characters we love. 

(Prime Example: Dr.Doofenshmirtz. I mean we all love him despite his many-and I mean many-faults, but that doesn’t mean the people in PnF/MML do. They get exasperated by him even if he doesn’t mean to exasperate them. Very few such as Perry & Vanessa can handle Doof to the extent Baljeet, Buford, or Isabella can handle the boys, only proving more just how close this friend group really is.)

In summary, I personally can not imagine a world where these people are genuinely liked by their classmates for themselves. Yes, I think their classmates would think the boys are fun to watch and curiosity peaking for their unique inventions. But, I can’t imagine a typical kid wanting to befriend Phineas and Ferb for any reason besides personal gain unless they were oddballs such as; Baljeet, Buford, and Isabella.

P.S Yes, these are my personal opinions on the characters and what I see as their flaws. This is a base level explanation aka not very detailed and lacking explicit evidence. I just wanted to get this thought out there to see what others would have to say. I love these characters as well as this show, and have millions of headcanons and story ideas for them.

[oscopelabs]

Christopher Nolan: The Man Who Wasn’t There by Daniel Carlson

1.

So, we’ll start with the fact that all movies are make-believe. It’s a bunch of actors on a set, wearing costumes and standing with props picked out by hordes of people you’ll never see, under the guidance of a director, saying things that have been written down for them while doing their best to say these things so that it sounds like they’re just now thinking of them. We all know this—saying it feels incredibly stupid, like pointing out that water is wet—but it’s still worth noting. There is, for example, no such person as Luke Skywalker. Never has been, never will be. He was invented by a baby boomer from Modesto. He is not real.

And we know this, and that’s part of the fun. We know that Luke Skywalker isn’t real but is being portrayed by an actor (another boomer from the Bay Area, come to think of it), and that none of the things we’re seeing are real. But we give ourselves over to the collective fiction for the greater experience of becoming involved in a story. This is one of the most amazing things that we do as humans. We know—deep down, in our bones, without-a-doubt know—that the thing we’re watching is fiction, but we enter a state of suspended reality where we imagine the story to be real, and we allow ourselves to be moved by it. We’ve been doing this since we developed language. The people telling these stories know this and bring the same level of commitment and imagination and assurance that we do as viewers, too. The storyteller knows that the story isn’t real, but for lack of a better way to get a handle on it, it feels real. So, to continue with the example, we’re excited when Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star because he helped the good guys win. For us viewers, in this state of mutually reinforced agreement, that “happened.” It’s not real, but it’s “real”—that is, it’s real within the established boundaries of the invented world that we’ve all agreed to sit and look at for a couple of hours. Every viewer knows this, and every filmmaker acts on it, too. Except:

Christopher Nolan does not do this.

2.

There’s no one single owner or maker of any movie, and anyone who tells you different has their hand in your pocket. But there’s an argument to be made that when somebody both writes and directs the movie, it’s a bit easier to locate a sense of personhood in the final product. (This is all really rough math, too, and should not be used in court.) Christopher Nolan has directed 11 films to date, and while his style can be found in all of them, his self is more present in the ones where he had a hand in the shaping of the story—and crucially, not just that, but in the construction of the fictional world. Take away the superhero trilogy, the remake of a Norwegian thriller, the adaptation of a novel, and the historical drama, and Nolan’s directed five films that can reasonably be attributed to his own creative universe: Following (1998), Memento (2000), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and Tenet (2020). These movies all involve themes that Nolan seems to enjoy working with no matter the source material, including identity, memory, and how easily reality can be called into question when two people refuse to concede that they had very different experiences of the same event. Basically, he makes movies about how perception shapes existence. How he does this, though, is unlike pretty much everybody else.

Take Inception. After a decade spent going from hotshot new talent to household name (thanks to directing the two highest-grossing Batman movies ever made, as well as the first superhero movie to earn an Oscar for acting), he had the credit line to make something big and flashy that was also weird and personal. So we got an action movie that, when first announced in the Hollywood trades, was described as being set within “the architecture of the mind.” Although this at first seemed to be a phrase that only a publicist could love, it turned out to be the best way to describe the film. This is a film, after all, about a group of elite agents who use special technology to enter someone’s subconscious dream-state and then manipulate that person’s memories and emotions. The second half of the film sees team leader Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the rest of the squad actually descend through multiple nested subconsciouses to achieve their goal, even as they’re chased every step of the way by representations of Mal (Marion Cotillard), Dom’s late wife, who committed suicide after spending too much time in another’s subconscious and lost the ability to discern whether she was really alive or still in the dream-world.

I say “representations” because that’s what they are: Mal is long dead, but Dom still feels enormous guilt over his complicity in her actions, and that guilt shows up looking like Mal, whose villainous actions (the representation’s actions, that is) are just more signs of Dom not being able to come to grips with his own past. It’s his own brain making these things up and attacking itself, and it chases his entire crew down three successive layers of dream worlds. You get caught up in the movie’s world as a viewer, and you go along because Nolan is pretty good at making exciting movies that feel like theme-park rides. You accept that Dom and everybody else refer to Mal as Mal and not, say, Dom. Dom even addresses her (“her”) when her projection shows up, speaking to her as if she’s a separate being with her own will and desires and not a puppet that he’s pretending not to know he’s controlling. It’s only later that you realize that the movie is in some ways just a big-budget rendition of what it would look like to really, really want to avoid therapy.

Which is what makes Nolan different from other filmmakers:

None of this is actually happening.

Again, yes, it’s happening in the sense that we see things on screen—explosions, chases, a fight scene in a rotating hallway that’s still some of the best practical-effects work in modern action movies—but within the universe of the film, none of what’s going on is taking place in the real world. It’s all unfolding in the subconsciouses of Dom’s teammates. In the movie’s real world, they’re all asleep on a luxury jet. They’re “doing” things that have an outcome on the plot, but Nolan sets more than half the movie inside dreams. It’s a movie about reality where we spend less time in reality than in fantasy. Half the movie is pretend.

For Nolan, filmmaking is about using a dazzling array of techniques to create a visual spectacle that distracts the viewer from the fact that the real and true story is happening somewhere else: in the fringes we can’t quite see, in the things we forget to remember, or even in the realm of pure speculation.

3.

Memento arrived like (and with) a gunshot. It seemed to come out of nowhere and leave people struggling to describe it, and they usually wound up saying something like “it goes backward, but also forward at the same time, except some parts are actually really backward, like in reverse, so it’s maybe a circle?” Written by Christopher Nolan from an idea originally shared with him by his brother, Jonathan (who eventually turned it into a very different short story titled “Memento Mori”), the film follows a man named Leonard (Guy Pearce) who has anterograde amnesia and can’t form new memories, so every few minutes he sort of just resets and has to figure out where he is, what he’s doing there, and so on. He’s on the hunt for the man who attacked him and his wife, leaving his wife dead and Leonard in his present condition, which you can imagine does not make the gathering and synthesis of clues easy.

What’s more, Nolan puts the viewer in Leonard’s shoes by breaking the film’s linear timeline into two halves—call them A and B—and then alternating between them, with the added disorientation coming from the fact that one of those timeline halves plays out backward, with each successive scene showing what happened before the one you previously saw. So, if you numbered all the scenes in each timeline in chronological order, they’d look something like this when arranged in the final film: Scene A1, Scene B22, Scene A2, Scene B21, Scene A3, Scene B20, etc. You get why it messed with people’s heads.

As a result, we spend most of the movie pretty confused, just like Leonard, whose suppositions about what might or might not take place next begin to substitute for our own understanding of the film. It’s not until the end that we find out the shoe already dropped, and that Leonard killed the original attacker some time ago and has since been led on a series of goose chases by his cop friend, Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), who’s planting fake clues to get Leonard to take out other criminals. In other words, we realize that the story we thought was happening was pretend, and the real story was happening all around us, in the margins, memories, and imaginations of the characters. The most honest moment in the movie is the scene where Leonard hires a sex worker to wait several minutes in the bathroom while he gets in bed, then make a noise with the door to wake him, at which point his amnesia has kicked in again and he briefly thinks that the noise is being made by his wife. He’s wrong, of course, but this is the only time in the movie that we actually know he’s wrong. It’s the only time we truly know what’s real and what isn’t.

Yet you can’t talk about Memento without talking about Following, Nolan’s first feature. Although the film’s production was so extremely low-budget you’d think they were lying—the cast and crew all had day jobs and could only film on the weekends, so the thing took a year to make—Nolan’s willingness to dwell completely in a make-believe world that the viewer never knows about is already evident. It’s about a bored young writer who starts following strangers through the city for kicks, only for one of those strangers to catch him in the act and confront him. The stranger introduces himself as Cobb—I kindly submit here that it is not a coincidence that this is also Leonardo DiCaprio’s character’s name in Inception, but you already knew that—and reveals himself to be a burglar, spooked by the tail but willing to take on an apprentice. Cobb trains the writer to be a burglar, only for the situation to ultimately wind up implicating the writer himself in a complex blackmail plot. You see, the writer didn’t latch onto Cobb in a crowd; Cobb lured him in. The whole movie has been Cobb’s story all along, with the writer as a patsy who doesn’t understand the truth until the final frame. None of what we saw mattered, and everything that actually happened happened off-screen just before or just after we came in on a given scene. It’s like realizing the movie you’re watching turned out to be just deleted scenes from something else. You can’t say Nolan didn’t show his hand from the start.

4.

That same general concept—that the movie we’re watching is actually the knock-on effect of a movie we’ll only glimpse, or maybe never even see—underpins Nolan’s latest movies, Interstellar and Tenet, too. Interstellar has some concepts that are iffy even for Nolan (it makes total sense for someone to do something for another out of love, but somewhat less sense that that love somehow reshapes the physical universe), but it’s still a big, bold approach to exploring how time and perception shape our actions. As the film follows its core group of astronauts while they search for potentially habitable new worlds, they encounter strange visions and experiences that turn out to be their handiwork from the future reflected back at them. Sure, it raises the paradoxical question of whether they had a first mission before this that failed, so now their future selves are intervening to make the second one (which feels like the first one to the astronauts the whole time) successful, and all sorts of other stuff that your sophomore-year roommate would like to talk with you about in great detail. But so much of what we see isn’t the stuff that happens, or that winds up being important. There’s the great scene where the astronauts land on a planet near a black hole, which is wreaking havoc on how time passes on the planet. A minor disaster delays their departure for the main ship still in orbit, but when the landing team returns, they find that more than 20 years have “passed” since they left, with the one remaining team member on the ship having spent more than two decades waiting for them to return. It’s a moment of genuine horror, and it underscores the fact that what we thought was the one true reality was just the perspective of a handful of characters we happened to follow for a few minutes. There were whole things happening that changed the plot and story and direction of everything that would follow, and we never saw them; we didn’t even know we’d missed them.

Tenet is, of course, the latest and most recursive exploration yet of Nolan’s obsession with showing us a story that turns out to be mostly fake. It is almost perversely hard to even begin to explain the film (Google “Tenet timeline infographic” and have fun). One way to think about it is to imagine if the two timeline halves from Memento somehow existed at the same time, with people moving both forward and backward through time while inhabiting the same location. Basically, some scientists figured out how to “invert” the basic entropy of objects, so that they exist backward: you hold out your hand and the ball on the ground leaps up into it, because you’ve dropped it in the future, so now you can pick it up, etc. … Look, it doesn’t get easier to understand.

The upshot is, though, that we spend the film following the Protagonist (that’s his name), a CIA agent played by John David Washington, as he’s tasked with tracking down the source of the inverted stuff to figure out what’s unfolding in the future and why it’s suddenly started to make itself known in the present. He gets marginally closer to understanding the truth by the end of the film, but because this is a Nolan film that is maybe more expressly about the nature of reality than anything he’s ever done, his journey doesn’t so much take him forward as it does in a large circle. Because, and stop me if you’ve heard this, the true story of Tenet is taking place outside the Protagonist’s actions and knowledge, alongside him but invisible, often steered by people who themselves are moving “backward” through time and thus have already met the Protagonist in the future and are old friends with him by the time he meets them in his youth. Even more brain-liquefying, some of these people have been working under the orders of the Protagonist himself—the future version, that is—because his past self has already achieved the victories that allowed him to send the future people backward through time to meet his younger self so they’d achieve the victories that allow him to etc., etc., etc.

With Tenet, Nolan didn’t just make a movie that challenged perception, like Memento, or that dwelt in fiction, like Inception. He made a movie that can only be understood (to whatever degree true understanding is possible) by rewatching the movie itself, over and over, as the multiple timelines and harrowingly complex bits of cause and effect come into some kind of focus. The whole movie itself isn’t happening, in a sense, but is just the ramifications of something else, the echoes of a shout whose origin we’re straining to pinpoint. It both is and isn’t.

5.

Christopher Nolan is a talented director of action-driven suspense thrillers. He’s canny at controlling the audience’s emotions, and he knows how to put on a dazzling show. Plus he’s fantastic at picking when to deploy non-computer-generated effects for maximum impact. But you could say that about a lot of other directors, too. What sets Nolan apart from the rest, and what makes him a director to keep watching and returning to, is the teasing way his movies wind up being just deceptive enough to fool you into thinking that you know what’s going on, then just harsh enough to disabuse you of that notion. Looking at what seems to drive him, I don’t think Tenet is his best movie-movie, but it’s his most-Nolan movie. It’s almost a culmination of his continuing efforts to tell stories where what you see and what actually happens are two different things. It’s not that he makes puzzles to solve. There is no solving these movies. Rather, it’s that he sculpts these delicate artifacts that only let you see two dimensions at a time, never all three, no matter how you twist your head. Craning back and forth, you can almost see the whole thing, but not quite. Some part of it will always have to exist in your memory. And that’s where Christopher Nolan likes to be.

[le-chevalier-au-lion]

Doriath’s treaties on shapeshifting

My @officialtolkiensecretsanta gift for @batshape who asked for something with Lúthien and Thuringwethil.

Word count: 2400 words.

Lúthien discovers someone (something?) who might teach her what Melian the Maia will not.

The problem with a half-Maia child –

There are no guards, doors or locks when Lúthien decides to leave – to run, her hollow-boned thrumming to a strange melody she alone hears. Her mother teaches only tricks a girl would benefit from. Sing and dance to dazzle, tie a knot that never will fail for a life that will prevail, coax flowers from hard earth. The rest, she figures out by herself. How to send souls with iron spines to sleep and how to tear through the dark, sleeping forest. Lúthien burns and runs like a shooting star invariably plummeting.

It’s no surprise she walks through the Ered Gorgoroth with her breath held, eyes on the stars that are twice as dim here. Beneath her feet, the soil is cold and lifeless, and Lúthien thinks of flowers but knows none that would daringly bloom here.

(She comes, but not as the nightingale.)

“The Maia Queen’s daughter cometh to me,” the thing in the dark says, voice stretching strangely, vowels damp and odd. Far too gleeful and twisting and else. “Why dost thee walk alone? There would be handsome reward for thy life returned.”

Lúthien scowls, digs her feet in the rocks. “Show yourself.”

One day, this voice might send the King of the World to sleep. It hasn’t yet, it might not, but there is a world where Morgoth will spend the rest of his days wondering and furious at a simple song, a simpler dance. The thing in the dark hisses, a long, slithery sound that makes her ears ring and her skull drum, but it slides from all around her.

It has no shape but three hearts relentlessly beating, cores of molten iron and fire. There are shapes and shadows wrapped around it. Lúthien knows it – her people do not venture here, but they tell tales nonetheless from passing glimpses.

The thing that has no name beats and coils, its lack of a body wrapping up until it passes for a woman, a creature pale like the underbelly of a fish. Grown in the dark, Lúthien thinks, stumbling a step back. White and red-eyed, an albino bat and an elf at once with a snout and a sneer. It laughs, the sound brittle and sharp, a glass shard.

“What is thy name?”

“Maybe,” Lúthien says, languid and deliberate – her mother has taught her how to deal with her kin, if mother even has kin. “Maybe I could give you a name few know, one that was whispered at cradle, for a promise. And you might even give me yours.”

“Thy secrets art not worth my own,” it argues, advancing with joints that move strangely. An unshapely creature who doesn’t understand what it is mimicking.

“Are you even called something?” She challenges.

“Not in any tongue your mouth may form words in without burning.”

(Lie.

Truth: the thing in the dark has no name and didn’t bother to give itself one. It was born with Morgoth’s song deafening and molten in its half-formed core, and the only thing it could mutter was chaos like one mutters for their distant mother. It had a shape that remembered many concepts, many thoughts, but Valarin doesn’t translate well. Once, a Vanya was driven insane trying to make grammar out of feelings.)

Lúthien breaths in the stale, foul air and breaths out. If she ever spins this tale, she’ll remove the fear and focus the eyes on defiance. “I need to call you something.”

It snaps malleable joints, testing its new body. “Call me Horror if thou must.”

Her father has a talent for plucking it out meaning and titles from nothing but speeches and a certain natural creativity. He could weave a name that would echo for centuries, if only because of raw significance and no echoing power of its own. Lúthien has to make do. She will not call anything Horror, not even shapeless creatures digging gnarled roots into land that hates and twists and agonizes. Her idea is uninspired.

“Thuringwethil will have to do.”

From: the women who stalk the halls with blind eyes and soft, amorphous mouths, reaching out for the forests with fingers like poisoned spider-silk. There is already a Thuringwethil, countless of them in her beloved Doriath, a society of its own, but their namesake is going to be more famous – or infamous and terrifying, truly.

“Must I be a woman? Must I be anything at all?” Thuringwethil cocks it head.

Lúthien shrugs. “I had to begin with something.”

“Very well, gray daughter, I suppose I shall hear more.”

It sits, she sits, and they talk.

 Or rather, they don’t talk, and Lúthien tries to pry meaning from antiquated language and limbs that twitch like reality bears down too heavily to stand without scratching at the cage. But she is curious, and Thuringwethil even more. There has never been another of mother’s kin, her kin. Not a single another to teach her what Melian will not, thinking it’d be better for her daughter to be a glimmering girl with gentle touch.

Lúthien dreams of waves and seagulls and children that do not fit her arms comfortably, both dark-haired and gray-eyed and lost. She dreams of kissing a statue on the lips, mistaken for a man she loves and is now given to the land. She dreams of falling on the halls of a palace still building itself anew, a sword stuck in her gut. She dreams of light, mostly – a light that calls to her and shifts beneath her skin, alive alive alive.

Thuringwethil laughs, shrill. It has not remade the bat snout and the fluid spine as it leans into her and twists her face from one side to another. Displeasure does not shine in her expression but leaks into the air. “Thou hast been made too solid.”

Solid?

“What does that even mean?” Lúthien scowls, a whip on herself.

“Once, thou changed at will. Not anymore.”

“Teach me.”

“No,” it says, smiling too wide.

(Too many teeth.)

 “Teach me,” Lúthien insists, not for the first – nor for the second or third or fourth. Everywhere in Doriath, her father’s hunters hound her steps, but she comes still.

They wound deeper and deeper into the Ered Gorgoroth. There are no stars, but a fog that’s cold and clammy and hateful. She has learned how to fend off spiders that have poison dripping from their fangs with fire and begged her mother for a cloak of twilight to thread the path as a shade – Melian must know, because Melian knows everything, but she keeps the secret and Lúthien keeps coming. If she discovers a peculiar trick or two by herself, the Queen certainly can’t be blamed for her strangeness.

Tonight, Thuringwethil has a thick, sneering mouth and no bat snout, though its eyes shine golden and still as death. It has skin brown as damp earth and hands that blur, perhaps three or four of them if Lúthien squints. And it is not prone to kindness.

“No, for mine time is a precious gift, and thy self is hard as stone.”

She twists her hands. “Teach me,” Lúthien commands, Compels, beseeches.

Thuringwethil throws its head back, neck almost snapped, and laughs without a single sound. “Clever, clever tricks, though empty as air here. Unveil your eyes.”

Its hands, its many or few hands, snap as spiders, bones popping and remaking themselves – Lúthien watches, watches, watches until there is a buzz in her ears and tears in her eyes. Her palms sweat but do not imitate, can’t imitate. Thuringwethil has needles now, sharp as polished steel and twice as wicked. They pluck from fabric from the rotten, stale air and twist one, two, three times as they measure the length. A cloak, black as Night itself. The buzz is loud, a living creature festering inside her skull.

Lúthien watches.

“The world is Song, Maia daughter,” Thuringwethil intones. “Song is not stone, is not unchanging. The melody shifts, and there’s creation. The melody shifts, and there’s destruction. Thou art not born from earth. Remember this, and maybe I shall teach you.”

“Why must you be so difficult?” She huffs, kicks a pebble in its direction.

“Why must thee think as some pitiful fool that will wilt in a summer?”

It cuts the final thread and slips the cloak over its full, naked shoulders. A mantle like no other, a mantle like a miracle. Lúthien reins herself back in, the buzz subsiding to a hum. Not black as Night but the proper Night, darkness given a solid body where once was nothing but shapeless ideas. Her fingers twitch. Is it soft to the touch? Cold? Could she… Thuringwethil slips on the hood and stares at her golden, unblinking eyes.

Lúthien stands very, very still as its needle-wicked hand brushes her hair back from her eyes. Its touch is icy, too light. “Nightingale, thine eyes are blind.”

“Then I will make them see.”

Thuringwethil smiles, wide and pleased and sharp. “Aye, you shall.”

 One day, tales of Lúthien’s stubbornness might rewrite fate itself – fall down towers, challenge the King of the World, work a twist around the Doomsman.

Might.

As for now, she sits down where no other light shines and talks with a being pulled in so many directions her eyes sting if she looks too closely. It reeks of old smoke and cold and laughs strangely and doesn’t even try to be an elf most times.

There are indeed worse people to talk to.

And many more boring.

“Gray daughter,” it says, close enough its talons brush against Lúthien’s back, wickedly sharp. “Why dost thou come to me? Dost thou not fear thy death?”

“Fear my death? Will you kill me?”

“Ah, ‘tis but a way of speaking.”

Lúthien does not believe it’s only a way of speaking, just as she doesn’t believe she’ll be killed. Thuringwethil could’ve killed her already or simply let wander around in the Ered Gorgoroth to her untimely doom. As she yet lives, she hums out a laugh and doesn’t turn back to face it. It has its beauty, those lands forsaken by all goodness.

And well, she does favor testing out Thuringwethil’s strange temper.

“Why did you not kill me?” She challenges, imperial.

Thuringwethil hesitates for a suspended moment before her clawed hands rise to rest at the base of Lúthien throat. “I do not desire the Maia Queen’s wrath.”

“Is that all?”

“No.” And nothing else.

Orcs’ flaming shit. Lúthien turns around sharply and goes up, up, up to kiss Thuringwethil on its almost-mouth (not-mouth?). She’s kissed people for less.

It is not bad, but its mouth is spongy and too still, a pale imitation of her own.

She doubts it has ever done so and takes an odd pride at that.

“What hast thou done?” It asks, vexed, lying still as a pray animal caught in the sharp gaze of a hunter. Lúthien smiles – beams up, disproportionately satisfied.

“Kissed you.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Thuringwethil doesn’t even blink, a statue save in the way her flesh seems to move out of her control. Lúthien refuses to her smile waver. “Teach me.”

“No,” it answers, but it is unmoored, curious, lingering.

Lúthien’s mouth tingles.

It’d not be so terrible, she thinks, unbidden, to kiss once more.

 The second time Lúthien kisses Thuringwethil, she’s fluid as water under her wandering hands. She takes a disproportionate pride in making it forget a body entirely, even if she comes back drenched and miserably cold through a forest which shades grow both sharper and darker as the things outside push and hiss and sing in odd tunes.

It becomes a game.

“Close thine eyes,” Thuringwethil says, eyes wide and still and fever bright. She deems it a victory, that twisting madness. “Oh, gray girl, close thine eyes.”

They only kiss when she can’t see it.

A precaution.

Thuringwethil turns from too thin flesh to hard, boiling scales that send Lúthien scrambling back, her hands and her mouth searing with pain and bubbling. I’m not afraid, she tells herself, as the skin peels. I’m not afraid, she swears, oath-solemn in her determination even as there are soft, fine feathers poking at her face and a wiry, sharp fur that reminds her the countless spiders weaving their webs in this dubious peace. It becomes a game to herself, a trick she alone can uncover – how many times more may she kiss it to learn how to trade this elf for something else? She’s is half Maia.

(Underneath it all: how many times more may they kiss without feeling?)

“Dost thou know fear at all?” Thuringwethil asks, curious like an owl, all bizarrely exaggerated expression and gestures. Too thick, too ached eyebrows and mechanic, histrionic confusion. Lúthien wonders from who it is learning its tricks and shows.

“None,” she lies. But does it count as fear if not a single soul can tell?

It laughs, thick and treacherous as the chilly wind blowing through her hair, freezing her skin. “Then close thine eyes, and for I have something else to show thee.”

 In Doriath, whispers run with the wind, as they are prone to do when an uneasy peace lingers – the princess has gone mad, has gone savage, has gone strange.

(Truth be told, only madness may be a recent development.)

Elu Thingol’s hunters return empty-handed, as do his spies.

As for Queen Malia, she remains tight-lipped.

Lúthien lingers where the shadows are too thick and undisturbed, quiet as the tombs. She lies down under starless sky, hard rock on her back and the screech of things unnamable in her eyes. She keeps kissing Thuringwethil – for the hell of it, because it is a surprisingly good kisser with a bit of practice, to discover how to change.

Underneath her hands, there is metal, cold and unfeeling, but the mouth remains warm as embers. Sometimes, there is barely anything, and Lúthien reaches out for air and little else. She doesn’t mind it terribly, even if the scars of the second kiss remain.

And Lúthien is clever.

Thuringwethil, equally.

“Thou knowest how to change thy shape, and yet thou linger and dost not make an escape,” it says, habitual and grotesque confusion twisting its expression into what might pass as those clay masks actors wear. “Thou art a fool, gray daughter.”

“Ah, but do I?” Lúthien grins.

Thuringwethil’s soundless laughter echoes in her chest, warm.

[mst3kproject]

Bog

Imagine Creature from the Black Lagoon but made by the creative (for lack of a better word) team behind The Giant Spider Invasion.  That’s Bog.

Bog Lake is the type of little nowhere town that looks as if it ought to have a local cryptid, like the Flatwoods Monster or Mothman… and sure enough, tourists who come to fish in the lake are getting drained of blood by some creature with a chitinous proboscis!  The police are baffled, the locals are buying guns, and the coroner straightfacedly suggests it might be Count Dracula.  The only person who seems to really know what’s going on is The Old Hag of the Woods, and she claims that the swamp monster is some kind of ancient god.  Once awakened, it must feed on blood before it can return to the slime at the bottom of the lake and sleep for centuries more.  At this point, the viewer is probably expecting something like the Giant Leeches crossed with Cthulhu, but the truth manages to be even cheaper than a Corman film and, unfortunately, infinitely rape-ier.

Why does this movie remind me so much of the works of Bill Rebane?  The main reason is probably the 70s soft focus and the midwestern accents, but there are quite a few points that spark specific memories of The Giant Spider Invasion.  The movie’s heroes are two people in at least their forties, in which the woman is a more qualified scientist than the man.  The married couples we see are totally dysfunctional and dissolving in booze. A shotgun-wielding mob forms and chases the monster towards the instruments of its demise.  There’s even a middle school chemistry classroom that stands in for a laboratory (I particularly enjoyed the fact that this, which presumably represents a room in the town morgue, has a map of the moon on one wall) and science that starts out grounded in reality but then dives headfirst into bullshit while hollering “cowabunga!”

On the other pedipalp, there are also ways in which Bog is notably better than The Giant Spider Invasion, most of which have to do with the characters.  Admittedly, these do not get off to a good start.  The first people we can really be said to meet are two assholes who have come for the camping and fishing, and their wives who have come to complain.  The couples clearly hate each other and we can’t imagine why they ever got together in the first place, and each individual is kind of an idiot.  I won’t complain too much, though, because the crabby wives get eaten almost right away and the asshole husbands fulfill their plot function by bringing it to the attention of the authorities and then follow their spouses out of the movie.  Good riddance.

The real characters are the Sheriff, Ginny the Coroner, and Brad the Doctor.  None of them are exactly likable but they come across as the sort of very ordinary people you’d probably meet in your day-to-day life and while they’re not your close friends, you don’t dislike them.  Ginny is of an appropriate age for her position of authority, and her colleagues treat her with the respect she is due.  Her romance with Brad is clearly something that’s been going on for a while now and doesn’t suddenly develop over the course of a weekend, and the two of them are close in age.  All three of these characters behave in a professional manner and seem to have good working relationships, which is a breath of fresh air.  Far too many movies try to insert unnecessary drama by having characters who hate each other for no reason.

The best of the three is actually the Sheriff, who is one of a very few small-town movie sheriffs who actually seems to take his job seriously.  Aldo Ray used to be a real actor, and you can tell – he plays the Sheriff a with nice everyman quality and a great deal of integrity.  This unfortunately makes it all the more puzzling when the character suddenly runs off to fight the monster with fisticuffs and gets killed for it. Brad says it was in the Sheriff’s nature to do this but it doesn’t seem to match the sensible and down-to-earth characters we’ve seen so far.

I got the impression, actually, that the Sheriff was what was keeping the movie sane because after he dies it starts getting weird.  Ginny does some scientific tests that consist mostly of pouring coloured liquids into Erlenmeyer flasks, and determines that the monster is made of cancer and molybdenum. If either of these facts have any effect on the plot I missed it, although I did imagine Crow deciding the monster was his long-lost relative.  Then we get into how it reproduces and things go right off the deep end.

You see, there’s only one of these monsters, and it’s a boy.  Fauxilla got around this through hermaphroditism, but the monster from Bog prefers the Humanoids from the Deep route.  If you’re lucky enough not to have seen Humanoids from the Deep, its fish monsters have decided they need human genes to speed up their evolution.  The monster in Bog does kind of the opposite, devolving humans to make them compatible with itself.  It does this by injecting a dose of its own blood into the victim and the result is a huge clutch of transparent spawn that Ginny describes as ‘not really a seed, not really an egg’, whatever that means.

This, we later learn, is how the Swamp Hag knows so much about the creature – she’s apparently been its mate for hundreds of years! She dies attempting to warn the monster that it’s walking into a trap, which leads Brad and an ichthyologist to conclude that one effect of this infusion of monster hormones is that ‘the victim becomes willing’.  That is icky and I hope it doesn’t reflect the writers’ feelings about real-life situations of sexual assault.  The idea is intended to add urgency to the need to rescue Ginny from the creature.

Creature from the Black Lagoon never did give a reason why the titular monster was interested in kidnapping human women.  It was obvious enough that the Creature was supposed to be a sexual threat, but its quest was clearly doomed and it was not apparent why the women were attractive to it.  Humanoids from the Deep appears to have arisen from the brain of somebody who spent way too much time thinking about these questions and trying to come up with answers to them.  Bog decided its monster simply didn’t have any choice – there aren’t any other bipedal things around for it to mate with.  What neither of these movies realize is that the questions didn’t need answers to begin with.

There are things movies need to be explicit about, and slimy swamp creatures raping women is not one of those.  A lot of times, horror works better when the details are left to the viewer’s imagination, and the fact that Creature from the Black Lagoon doesn’t understand that it cannot get what it wants from its captives actually makes it worse. The writers of Saturn 3 did something similar with Hector the robot’s crush on Alex and while Saturn 3 was not a good movie overall, that aspect worked fine.  Going into the details just gives the audience an opportunity to think about how stupid it is.

It is worth noting that neither Creature from the Black Lagoon nor Saturn 3 felt a need to use the words the victim becomes willing, either.

The monster’s silhouette resembles a man in a fish costume he probably bought on Amazon, and it sounds like it doesn’t want to get up in the morning. I suspect that hidden in the poor lighting is something that would be a shitty movie monster classic on the order of The Giant Claw or the spidermobile from The Giant Spider Invasion, if only we could see it.  There are very few things I enjoy more than movies that are loud and proud of their abysmally cheap monsters, but sadly Bog doesn’t want to show off.

This is doubly a shame because a lot of this movie just drags. The bit with the scuba divers takes way too long for the payoff it gets.  Brad and Ginny’s makeout scene lasts way after we’ve gotten the point, whether or not it bothers you that the people doing the kissing are middle-aged. And anything with the two fishermen and their wives is not only slow, but annoying.  The movie is at its Giant-Spider-Invasion-est here, when everybody on screen is a repulsive caricature of a human being and you can’t wait for them to die.

There may be a slight 70’s Nature’s Revenge angle to this film, in that the monster is apparently awakened by some idiot fishing with dynamite, but Black Lagoon is evidently the primary inspiration.  Unfortunately, all the things that made that movie enjoyable are missing here.  The monster doesn’t look particularly realistic or well-adapted to its environment. Attempts at suspense are just boring and the movie is unnecessarily explicit about things that should remain implied. Bog is not a complete write-off as bad monster movies go, but it’s not all that great either.

[moons-and-stars-and-shit]

Congrats on 300! Could I get a stars match up if you're still doing them? I'ma virgo sun, moon sagittarius and gemini rising. I ship myself with Bokuto

𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕣 𝕄𝕒𝕥𝕔𝕙𝕦𝕡 𝕎𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝔹𝕠𝕜𝕦𝕥𝕠

𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑡𝑠 🪐

Virgo is ruled by the Planet Mercury.

This Planet represents communication, and indeed this is Virgo’s shtick. As a romantic couple, both are tuned in to one another’s frequencies.

Virgo is often able to read the nuances of words and gestures and take in an analytical meaning.

One of the strongest points of the relationship is open and honest communication.

Also, the reasoning and logical abilities of two Virgos together can quite possibly solve all the world’s problems.

They are a versatile and brilliant team.

𝐸𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 🔥💧🍃🌬

Virgo is an Earth Sign, thus indicating a practical nature.

Also, they are a couple who likes to be surrounded by and own elegant things, and who won’t settle for second best.

It is worth it to hold out for something perfect, rather than to allow for anything less.

Virgo exercises caution before moving forward, and they are the first to determine the best action for everyone to — even if it involves sacrifice.

Pickiness makes the Virgo-Virgo team a wonderful romantic couple.

𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑠𝑡 🤞

When these partners come together, they stand face to face to their own issues with trust awaken by the sign of Pisces in their seventh house.

Since they share the same set of convictions on trust that needs to be built, usually quite traditional, they often end up resolving these issues together.

Still, they both need to remember that as soon as one partner questions the other, the favor will be returned, and the circle of mistrust can suddenly escalate to the point where they both start feeling the need to hide

𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 🤝

If there is something Virgo is capable for, it is communication. Similar to the sign of Gemini, Virgo can be quite eloquent and smart, both of them ruled by Mercury, the master of communication.

Since the sign of Virgo is related to the written word, much more than to the spoken one, these partners will probably want to text each other all the time, for as long as their chats don’t become dull and boring.

They are both highly intellectual, but also very quick to dismiss someone else’s intellectual strengths if they differ from their own.

When it comes to evaluating someone’s words, Virgo can be extremely critical and focused on details that most other signs wouldn’t see as important at all.

The beauty of the relationship of two Virgos is in their shared understanding for the importance of details.

Unfortunately, this can be the thing that will distance them from the bigger picture and make them preoccupied with things that really aren’t important.

𝐸𝑚𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 😠😔😊

The love between two Virgo partners can be strangely rational.

They are often a couple that meets at the perfect time – when they are both ready or old enough to start a family, or when they both ended relationships they were exhausted by for years.

The biggest challenge for them is to keep the love burning after their brains interfered with the process their hearts should have kept to themselves.

As two representatives of a mutable sign, these partners change quickly and they often end up in a situation where love at first sight brings them together, but they stay together even when emotions between them are long gone.

In order for them to keep the flame going, or break up, at least one of them has to have enough faith to believe they will make the right decision whatever they do.

If both of them start questioning everything, they will both probably get nowhere at all.

𝑉𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑠 🤲

We could say that their values match perfectly, but nothing with Virgo matches perfectly.

If there was a sign to show us how different similar people can be, it is the sign of Virgo.

These partners have their own opinions and thoughts on everything. It will be very hard for them to find a partner, even if it is another Virgo, to coincide fully with their system of value. In most general issues of life, they will agree, and they will both value intelligence, capability and one’s focus on details.

Still, they might have a hard time adapting to each other’s emotional or professional values, especially if their choices of profession are too far off.

𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦𝑠 💪

Two Virgos can really do anything together.

When it comes to everyday things and the routine they both care about, they will find excitement and joy in most of their activities.

Their choices make them feel proud and happy they have found someone who shares their appreciation for certain “smart” activities, but the challenge in their choices is hidden in the fact that none of them likes Venus very much.

This fact could lead them to a point of apathy, where none of them lives their life in color, to the fullest, threatening their creative energy. They need to remain in love, creative and romantic, or it will be very hard for them to truly enjoy the time they spend with one another.

𝑆𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑦 💕

When Virgo decides to be with another Virgo, we can assume that their relationship is a product of one of two possible things, the first one being the need for stability and their rational decision to be with one another, and the second one being the unexplainable force of love at first sight.

Whatever the case, both partners are quite rational and belong to the sign of mutable quality, so their emotions can change very fast.

Because of their shared tendency for sacrifice, the lack of faith they have in themselves, and the tendency to rationalize everything with value, they might easily end up in a relationship where none of the partners is actually in love, or satisfied.

It is imperative for them to act according to their hearts if they want their love to last.

[hwangso-ddong]

Love Yourself trilogy vs. Every era that came after it. Spoiler: current BTS kinda sucks.

TW: PERSONAL OPINION

Today, in my void of complete lack of productivity, I was thinking about Love Yourself as an era, as a whole, all 3 main releases... and I just find it so much better than whatever BTS is releasing now or even right after LY.

Like, Love Yourself: Her is unprecedented like the assortment of tracks on it is unsurpassable. The title track is still the #1 most viewed BTS song on YouTube. The skit is a skip, yes, it’s a non-track, but whatever. Otherwise, LY:Her is a no skip album, every single track on it is a hit. Not to mention it is the EP that skyrocketed BTS’s popularity outside of the K-pop fandom sphere.

Immediately after, Love Yourself: Tear gave us Fake Love, and such B-side gems as 134340 and Paradise, which I still never skip when they show up on shuffle, along with tracks like The Truth Untold and Airplane Pt. 2 which went viral. Once again, every single track on this album (except for maybe Love Maze because I don’t remember it for the life of me) is a no-skip. I will not tolerate Magic Shop slander, either.

Love Yourself: Answer was arguably not as strong as the other two as a follow-up to them, since it is a compilation album (or repackage) with some (great) additions. It feels like a great way to top off the era, giving every single member a solo track like in You Never Walk Alone. Don’t forget the cultural reset that was IDOL came from this album, as well as I’m Fine which is the track that got me thinking about this whole thing in the first place.

Now, the next era is where BTS started to lose me just a little bit. BTS came back with Map of the Soul: Persona, ushering in a brand new era for the group. And, you know, it’s a pretty solid EP! I like all the songs on it, even Jamais Vu which seems to get a lot of flak for being “uninspired.” However, the title track especially, and the number of tracks on this album, left me wanting juuuuust a little bit more. Did not complain, though! It was great. With the overuse of some production techniques like autotune and the introduction of this more rock-inspired sound of Dionysus, I could tell BTS was heading in a certain direction with their next releases, which I was very skeptical about. And then, after BTS took a well-deserved long break...

Map of the Soul: 7 dropped. With a weeks-long teaser period and the release of Black Swan prior to the release of the album, it seemed like it’d be another hard-hitter. But... Black Swan is actually all this album had in terms of hard-hitters. The overuse of autotune as an artistic choice was back, and it was here to stay, allowing room for critics and fans alike to criticize BTS’s vocal production, as well as the further exploration of the rock-inspired sound that was introduced in the previous EP.

I really do not like MotS:7. I know, I know. The fandom has shunned me once and will do it again. But there’s just no memorable tracks on this thing! ON is a very underwhelming title track on which BTS’s vocals are completely and utterly oversaturated with autotune, the new tracks are just kinda good at best and awful at worst, and there is nothing here for me to hold onto. The only song I can clearly remember from this album is Filter. That’s it. And that’s a Jimin solo song. It feels like it’s hard to find a song on this album where all the members of BTS are participating together in one track... and that’s because there are only two new B-side tracks with all the members! Tracks which, I’m sorry to say, kinda suck! Louder Than Bombs is ironically kinda sleep-inducing, and We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal lasts awfully too long and is so uninspired that if any other group released it, it would flop. The rest of the tracks on this album are either old-school-hip-hop-inspired rap tracks, or slow rock ballads, both of which have absolutely nothing to do with BTS’s previous sounds, and alienate fans like me who expect certain things from a BTS album and just got... the complete opposite.

Now, I know an artist can (and should) release whatever makes them happy, and whatever they feel like they want to create. But when it comes to BTS, I expect something that I can appreciate the artistry of, something that I can listen to and admire the painstakingly shaped production, something that will grab my attention. I tried to listen to Map of the Soul: 7... twice. And I fell asleep both times. I have managed to listen to every song on it, and I don’t remember any single one of them. Nothing stuck out to me, and it still doesn’t. And you know what, as much as y’all don’t want to admit it, it’s not just me. None of the songs on MotS: 7 get any hype anymore, whereas songs like Go Go and Tear have almost cult-like fan favorite status. But wait, I’m not done!

At this point, BTS had lost me with MotS: 7. Bear in mind that I was, and still am, a big fan of BTS, and I got into them for their music first and foremost. And in 2020, Be dropped. Saying I was underwhelmed would be an understatement. I was full-on disappointed. The only worth-while tracks on this album are Telepathy and Dynamite, in my opinion, both of which get by easy because they ride on the disco revival trend of 2020. Even counting the title track, this entire album is a straight up disappointment for me. What infuriated me further was that track 4 is a 3-minute long iPhone recording of the members just talking and joking around, as if to slap the people that actually came for the music in the face. I am not going to worship BTS as a group just because of who they are. I do not care to listen to a 3-minute iPhone recording of 7 Korean boys just existing because I’m a fan of theirs. Most BTS fans do not speak Korean, so there go BTS again, alienating their fans... It’s not fanservice at this point, it’s just laziness!

I get that the point of Be specifically was to be a “homely” and “raw” album from BTS, to help their fans feel more at home with them and get to know them more during the pandemic. It would be a bit disingenuous for BTS to be releasing songs meant for a stadium during the year that nothing was ever open and no concerts were happening. But I don’t think Be was very intentionally put together that way, at least at first - this trend of lazy and underwhelming production from BigHit had been going since the previous album. I don’t think BTS have vocals that can convey the feelings Life Goes On or any other one of their ballads is supposed to convey, and they all end up just sounding bland and boring. They’ve done ballads right before! The Truth Untold is a great example, not even counting the EDM-inspired parts of Steve Aoki’s production. House of Cards is another great waltz ballad from BTS, and it is not boring in the slightest.

I think BTS and BigHit by extension are tired. The production is getting worse, the creativity is getting stale and uninspired, they’re outsourcing more and more... None of these are problems on their own. It’s just that BTS, right now, are not what they used to be. Their music, which should be the main attraction in a music artist, is not that interesting anymore. A lot of fans like to defend it because it’s coming from their favorite group, but if it came from anyone else they wouldn’t have even given it a second listen.

I’m mentioning BigHit as a whole because this laziness in production and overuse of autotune is prevalent in other BigHit groups as well now, namely TXT and ENHYPEN. I love TXT. I really do. But Blue Hour is plagued by the same boring uninspired rock-ballad type tracks as the latest BTS albums... and I really don’t want to see an entire company’s discography shift away from quality pop production towards trend-following and cash-ins.

[diary-of-deadweight]

deciet, roman, and virgil (not poly tho) with their s/o in a musical, performing the song "male me happy" from 35mm. please. i beg you. i need this.

I got you fam.

(I had to listen to the song since I’ve never heard of it but I’m glad I did now.plus I broke the song up into three chunks as it’s not a very lenghthy song but a good one none the less.)

Roman:

Scenario: it’s his birthday and you decide to surprise him with a hidden talent of yours.

- you were having troubles finding something that your prince of creativity would love but you were coming up fruitless.

- Patton coincidentally walked into your room with some freshly baked animal shaped cookies and noticed your predicament as he took in the amount of scrunched up pieces of papers that littered your bedroom floor.

- he suggested that you sing him that one song he would always hear whenever he passed across his bedroom door on his way to cheek up on Virgil like the parental friend he is. He was the only side who heard you sing; a hidden talent of yours, while you were listening to ‘show yourself’ from Frozen 2 within the living room thinking no one was around.

- since you had nothing better of your own you ultimately agreeed and began rehearsing the lyrics of ‘you make me happy’ with the determination of giving Roman the best birthday present he could ever ask for as he was the best thing that has ever happened to you in a long while that you wished for the best and only the best for him in whatever he does later in life.

When the day finally came you were standing beside Patton, who was introducing you to your friends upon the makeshift stage and the song you were going to perform for them had you feeling confident yet feeling so neverous at the same time as thoughts raced through your head of how Roman was going to react, how everyone was going to react to your singing before you saw the reassuring smiles Patton and Logan sent you from ‘backstage’ eases your worries slightly as you sat down on the stool, strumming the first cords of the song, seeing how wide and bright Roman’s eyes were when a look of realisation washed over him as if he got a bucket of water poured over him made you more confident in your performance as you belted out the first verse of the song with a proud voice.

“Woah-oh-oh, ya make me happy all the time

And you know I'm a total dick

Butcha make me happy all the time

Aw Baby, you just do the trick

Like when ya know I need my "alone time"

And you keep out of my goddamned way

An' it makes me happy-happa-happa-happy

Baby, never go away

Cause you

Make me happy. Oh, you

Make me happy. Oh, you

Make me happy. Oh, you

Make me happy happy”

By the time you finished the song you had a standing ovation as they threw fake roses and other random crap on the stage and a encore but this time with the birthday boy who was dying to belt out alongside you the whole time and it sounded ten times better, later that night within his room just lazing on his insanely comfortable bed snuggling close with one another as you felt him press a kiss to the crown of your head whispering against it “thank you for the best present ever my darling, we should do more duets together in the future.” Just before you drifted away to sleep within his strong, warm arms.

Virgil:

Scenario: Virgil has been cooped up in his room for a bit and he’s in need of a shoulder to lean on.

- vigil hasn’t come out of his room for a while and it started to worry you a little.

- Logan and Patton tried to put your worries to rest before your worry turn to anger when Roman admitted that he is a major factor of why Virgil won’t come out of his room.

- the two had a spat and Roman had to make a cheap dig at him by saying that you could do better then a male who has yet to out of his emo phase and how it was a desperate cry for help.

- this earned him a bruised cheek from you and a snarky comment from Logan who said that he deserved it for being insecure to Virgil’s emotions.

- you saw him upon his bed, knees to his chest, his hood pulled over his head, tears trickling against his porcelain cheeks as soothing jazz music played in the background at low volume made your heart clench tightly at the sight only to tighten when you heard the soft sobs that should never leave his lips.

-you lunched towards him which made him jump at the additional weight upon the mattress as you brought him closer to you letting him wrap his arms around your waist tightly, head within the crook of your neck as you began to -and in his words- angelically sing a little tune.

“Woah-oh-oh, ya make me happy all the time

And that is really fucking tough

Still, ya make me happy all the time

Aw, baby, I can't get enough

Like how ya know I'm fond of venting

And you let me have my fucking say

Which makes me happy, oh, so happy

Oh, baby, never go away

Cause you

Make me happy. Oh, you

Make me happy. Oh, you

Make me happy. Oh you

Make me happy happy.”

- when you finished he was no longer crying but he was fast asleep with a small smile upon his face which in turn made you smile softly at how peaceful he looked when fast asleep, unknownst to the Thomas and Patton’s smiling faces as they watched you slumber peacefully before closing the door softly, telling everyone to avoid going into Virgil’s room for the time being.

Deceit:

Scenario: he walks in on you belting the lyrics within the kitchen.

- it’s no secret that Deciet isn’t the most affectionate whether it be pyshical or verbal but he tries his best and that’s all you can ask for.

- it was relatively peaceful within the Sanders household as Logan was reading within his room, Virgil was most likely watching Coraline and nightmare before Christmas for the 100th time, Roman was on a quest to save a prince who is under a spell, Patton was probably in his room watching cute animal videos and Remus was doing his own thing.

- Deciet in the meanwhile was resolving some conflicts between the dark sides such as anger, envy, narcissism and paranoia which isn’t an easy task.

- your relationship with the two faced fiend was absolutely secret because if push came to shove and they knew your relationship who’s to say they wouldn’t take you hostage just to get something out of him?

- you gotten bored at the lack of chaos that you decided to do some of the washing up Patton tasked Roman to do before his quest but he said it “peasant work isn’t for a prince of his caliber” you’d smack that smugness right off him if you could but decided to be the better person and not retaliate to his comment.

- so you put on some yellow washing gloves, grabbed a wash cloth, filled the sink with lukewarm soapy water and put on some tunes per your enjoyment before getting to work on the metallic cutlery and ceramic bowls and plates.

- halfway through the pile and ‘make me happy’ came on and you couldn’t resist the temptation of singing along as you had that song on repeat after Patton showed you it one day, which surprised you as it had several swear words within it.

- even though this was coming from the side who threw the word adultry around so freely in mid-conversations, thinking it had something to do with being an adult and doing adult things when that wasn’t the case at all.

- Deciet had emerged from the Dark mindspace after resolving a conflict quicker then he thought he would to be greeted by the sounds of clanging cutlery, the sloshing of water that would sometimes spill over to the counter or the floor and the sound of an angel singing the last few verses of the song of your choice aloud and without a care put a smile on his face, which he was glad no one was around to see.

“Make me happy all the time

And you know I'm a twisted bitch

Still to make me happy all the time

It's whatcha call a kind of switch.

And I know I don't deserve you

But please, have faith in me;

I'm working to be worthy

And soon, you're gonna see, you'll see

I'm gonna make you happy. I will try

'Cause what I lack in follow-through

Is a life so happy, happa-happa-happy

In love with-

Make me happy, oh you

Make me happy, happy

-you (Baby, I'm in love with you)”

He clapped his gloved hands sarcastically which resulted in you jumping almost a feet in the air and almost slipping on the soapy water puddle on the left of you at the sound, turning around you saw the two faced fiend of a boyfriend smirking at your little stumble, rolling his eyes before saying in a unamused drawl.

“ that was absolutely horrific, darling.”

Translation: “that was absolutely amazing, darling”

You rolled your eyes at his misleading statement as you knew early on within your relationship that Deciet couldn’t say anything without making it sound like he was lying so even though the stuff he told the sides was genuine but with you it was a different story.

“How long have you been standing there Deciet?”

“not too long, just enough to witness your “performance.”

“Glad to know you enjoyed it now make yourself useful and help me dry and put these away before you get caught being domestic with me by Thomas.” You ordered as you tossed him a cloth as he caught it with ease, rolling his eyes once more before complying with your demands, secretly enjoying the every bit of it as long as he had you by his side to make it worth while.

He may not be the most affectionate but he tries and that’s all you could ask for.

[zafaria]

Mythopoeia

She told them her school.

They had said “That’s fine, we guess, but be careful what you do there.”

They had said “We really trusted you would be a thaumaturge. We’d have even been okay if you were a pyromancer, like your uncle; or maybe a diviner... you have creative energy.”

They had said “Is it too late to change?”

Was it too late to change?

Was there an expiry date on learning? No, maybe not. She’d stick with it though, the test was adamant to her, it almost seemed to threaten what would happen (or, worse, what wouldn’t) if she didn’t submit to being a conjurer.

A tricky thing. 

It was all fine and well those first few years at the school. Kind of boring, actually. Cyrus was a very mean professor, and she was a meek and restless child. So, maybe her disposition wasn’t great for Myth. She was flighty and subdued, not grand, not like a legend. She did daydream a lot, in a lost, wistful way, but the haze of it all made her think maybe she would’ve been better off curled behind the desk in the back of the Storm classroom. At least, maybe, Balestrom wouldn’t yell at her for it. Maybe he wouldn’t even say anything.

She did like her preliminary classes in the Fire school. She liked the flame and the heat, but she was absolutely miserable at casting, at focusing her attention and getting things to stay and materialize with enough magnitude to be meaningful. She’d have switched over to Fire, but she dreaded the idea of starting all the way from the bottom of the ladder, years and years and years behind, trying to overcome what appeared to be just an innate lack of a knack for it.

So, in the Myth class, she found her spot. Not quite at the bottom of the ladder, but low enough on it. Good enough in ability to pass, bad enough in her behavior to warrant lots of public ridicule in front of her classmates. Cyrus seemed to think that by calling on students, bad students, in front of everyone, he had embarrassed them or taught them a lesson or something, but the reality was that none of the other students really cared. There was no bullying or rumors or harassment for being called on, just a glance of well-meaning but undesirable pity after class. They all got it. They had all been the kids sitting disengaged at the back of the classroom once.

Her parents would write her once every week or so. 

“How are you doing?” “Fine.” Occasionally, she’d add in one episode of her trip to the Shopping District and what she bought.

“What are you learning now?” “I’ve been stuck in the Library for three days writing essays.”

“Have you made any friends yet?” “I have a lot of friends, but they are all in different schools so I don’t get to see them during the school days because our schedules are different.” Signed. Stuffed in an envelope. Wax dripped over the fold. Stamped. Sent. 

Her signature took on a different look every time. The top loop of the “J” got larger and wider, more grand, the little loop at the bottom got finer, more dagger-thin. In a few days, the return letter would arrive.

“Be smart with your money. Do you have a part-time job where you’re earning?” and,

“Work hard.” and,

“Do you think you would like to switch schools so you can be with your friends?”.

She would sit on the letter and let it expire, waiting instead for her parents to send another one that reverted back to the usual questions.

And it went on, for a couple of years. And then, it changed. And then there was the noise, the loud rumbling from all around the City during one of the afternoons she had detention.

She wanted things to change so badly, and everyone was distracted, and she was just finally fed up with wasting her afternoons continuing to be forcefully immersed in a subject she couldn’t bring herself to care for. She ran down Unicorn Way towards the sound to see what was amuck; when the guards asked her to show her badge, like a pass, to show she wasn’t a novice and would be safe, dutiful, thoughtful, she palmed her sister’s old adept’s badge from her pocket. The guards looked at it quickly and waved her along, not noticing the mismatch of the Ice symbol on the badge and the yellows and blues of her robes.

So it spiralled from there. The dead were undead, and then they were dead again. Had she really done that? With Myth magic? 

The cards and spells were so different in battle than the practice duels that Cyrus would take them to in the Arena and the few seconds of spellcasting she and her classmates would do in the classroom before Cyrus entered in the morning and told them all to hurry to their seats, sit straight, and prepare for lecture. They rarely got to attempt magic, and then they'd have practicals where their nerves got to them and the spells came out wonky.

But there, in the streets she had once only been able to try and stare down, it was all so real, so vibrant. The magic pulsated through her, like a second heartbeat.

She had that same kind of enamor with it all the way through the worlds. In Krokotopia, her magic never made her feel bad. In fact, it was the fire that made her feel bad; when she burned the Ahnic mummies. That left her feeling like her hands were always covered in soot, grimy, guilty. The soot stains on her soul never faded.

Then in Marleybone, there was just a hint of a shudder running around her bones, a shiver within the marrow, when she beheld the faces--or lack thereof--of the agony wraiths in Big Ben. Where had they come from? Did they miss those places, those tombs or graves or mausoleums? Were they even of Marleybone, or were they far from the grounds of their homes?

She didn’t try to think much of it when she went for the duel. She was too busy thinking of giants dislodging the bones with a club, long hollow femurs clattering to the wooden floor; an earthquake following and swallowing up the center of the clocktower. When she left, her lungs felt blackened from spending too long in the city breathing in the smog.

In Mooshu, it sank in the most. She would summon earthquakes in spirit realms and feel the little chunk of earth she was on rattle, the chasm opening up from nowhere. The friction between the worlds and shifting dirt underneath would normally propel the earthquakes, but in those disconnected little places, where the grounds were thin and hammered out flat like saucer-plates, she wondered where they stemmed from. The chasm and the shadows within it seemed to plunge deeper than the earth actually was. 

The onis that stared into her seemed to be looking deeper than they actually were. Her mind sweltered. The whole of the place was confusing and demented. And she thought that maybe it rubbed off on her too. Everything felt out of reach.

Her parents wrote a letter.

“How are you?” “I am tired. I have been travelling a lot. I am doing an externship as a part of my schoolwork, for Headmaster Ambrose. It is very busy.”

“What are you studying?” “High-level Myth magic. I have learned some new spells, but they required that I go collect some things from different worlds, that’s why I’ve been visiting so many places.” She’d include one of her sketches she did of the yellow windows of Marleybone or the endless fields of Mooshu in the envelope. Her parents would’ve liked her to travel, as long as they knew it was purposeful and being done in structured way, a safe way.

“How are your friends?” She didn’t address the question, and instead sent her parents a pressed flower. Sealed. Stamped. Sent.

Then, before Dragonspyre, Cyrus pulled her aside after class. He said “Malistaire is my brother,” like she wouldn’t have maybe guessed from appearances. And then that he wanted to duel her, to see if she was competent enough to handle the war-ravaged world alone. 

She desperately wanted to prove she had attained something, she had learned, she was good at this. She desperately wanted to come close in the duel, to be on the precipice of winning, but just barely lose, and to sob, put her head down, beg for help. She wanted to prove she could, and also that she couldn’t do it alone.

But the flow of battle, the rhythm of that second heartbeat in her dictated in a way all its own. It was powerful in that duel in a way it never had been. It was totally engulfing, pounding in her ears and vibrating against the veins in her wrists, and she won and she had to. If she didn’t, maybe her skin would crawl and split from the overbeat of the magic that was left unfulfilled.

Oh, and that feeling rose up once more when she faced Malistaire, when she could smell a metallic and humble aura of death and lava all across the top of the volcano in Dragonspyre. The same feeling, rushing over her, her hands floating in the air like she was only watching the spectacle and not acting in it, like her hands weren’t even hers. She was acutely aware of all she was doing, how fast her mind was moving, though. Her actions were all her own. At least, she thought, these few things I own wholly, no matter what, and they were not left to fate, nor the headmaster or the Book of Secrets, or ancient warring tribes, or an old tree’s prophecy, or her professor or her parents.

She wondered if she became overzealous at the thought. If it made her too fierce. Cyrus sat back somewhere, afraid to intervene, maybe knowing he couldn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to have his brother meet an unfortunate end at his hands, so he made his student do it for him.

Or maybe she wanted to show Cyrus her unflinching worth, and that training and practicing across the worlds and in the streets taught her something he never could, that he never thought would emerge in her: a dauntless courage to face cruelty, sometimes with cruelty in turn.

But, deep down, both knew that the most important factor of why Malistaire died, why he lost the duel and didn’t manage to stand to his feet again after, was because he was an incredibly ambitious man with a gravely weakened soul. His magic truly had split out of his skin, creating the aura that permeated around them, and infusing with the rituals to raise the Dragon Titan. And the human, non-magic parts of his soul were broken all across too. His wife was gone, truly gone. And his brother couldn’t face him, and he was beating on…a child. A hopeful, brave child who had the whole world in their eyes. And he just had nothing left in him at all.

Returning home after that was difficult for her. She walked out of the volcano and into a portal, with Cyrus’s hand pressed against her shoulder. He was guiding her toward the foggy vision of the Headmaster’s office, urging her forward but also holding her down to the ground. Under his palm, she wasn’t going to float away in a confused mire, and she also knew she couldn’t slink from under his palm into a ball on the ground and cry. She could only move forward. She knew he was telling her she had done well, she had done the right thing.

How was she going to explain to her parents that this is what her “externship” was about? That she wasn’t being a student, not at all; she was being a hero. And though a hero seemed much grander and fancier, it was very, very different from what she had prepared for. It was thoroughly taxing in the most unpredictable, inexplicable, extraordinary ways. There was no training for how to be a hero.

And after she was emotionally spent and wasted away in her room for a few days, she packed her things and went home. 

“Sabbatical, dear.” That’s what Greyrose said to her. “When you’re old and wizened like me, you take one every so often to remember to slow down.”

“You need one,” said Balestrom. “Very badly, you do need one. You look tired.” She was tired, and confused, and no longer hungry when all her life she had loved food, and she felt dirty and greasy.

She turned in a letter to Cyrus, who just stared down his nose at her, then nodded. His mouth stayed pressed shut through the entire process. She almost cried. She could feel her teeth pressing into each other, and they were so tightened in her jaw they felt soft, like little marshmellows. She thought she could maybe tell that Cyrus’s jaw was also more levelled out, more squared, like he was also clenching his teeth.

She walked out very quickly.

She walked into her home very quickly. Her parents hugged her, her father gave her a kind of firm pat on the back that made her shake a little. Like he was welcoming someone he didn’t particularly like into his home. Maybe she overthought, but her mother’s laughter was all wrong too. It used to fill the room, like a joyous thing, but now it filled the room in a suffocating way.

“We laugh to show our teeth, to show they’re still there,” she remembered from the readings for one of her essays, where she spent her time in the library for a day. 

They sat together at the dinner table, a plate of mashed potatoes with a loaf of bread and turkey casserole before each one of them. She picked at some of the things, then had her elbows on the table as she tore the bread into tiny pieces and began to chew them slowly, one-by-one, like a mouse.

“Are you okay, honey?” they asked. “Do you want to talk with us about something?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Oh. Okay. How are classes, by the way? Have you been doing well?”

“Yes. I actually, uh, I did some directed independent studies with Cyrus.”

“OH! Advancing so fast, are we? Are you the teacher’s pet, and that’s why you get to do higher-level work?”

“Uhm, kind of. I also just needed to do something different. For my learning. Sitting in the classroom all day wasn’t really working for me.”

“Oh, like a practical? You’ve been safe, haven’t you? Are you missing any classes?”

“No, I’m actually on a short break right now,” she said. The questions were sweltering.

“Listen, we received some post from Headmaster Ambrose, that you’d maybe have something you want to share with us? Maybe about the kinds of schoolwork you’ve been doing? That you’d have something to tell us?” The curtain was up. She stared blankly, with her mouth open, blinking a little.

“Well, yeah, I... uh, Ambrose had a special assignment for me, I guess. There was...Listen, it sounds mad, but you must’ve felt it, the disruptions, and all of the ash and stuff. Anyways, there was an unhinged necromancer trying to destroy the Spiral? So, Ambrose had me and a few other strong students help him out with getting rid of undead monsters on the streets.” Calling Malistaire “unhinged” felt wrong, like a spike was being driven across her mouth, through her cheeks. She added the bit about there being friends, thinking that maybe if other students had been a part of the picture, her parents would find it less dangerous.

“So he had students acting like dogs for him,” they said, sitting back in their chairs. Her mother crossed her arms. She could barely look to them, unable to balance one disapproving face and the other. “And Cyrus approved of this all and had this count as your study versus the schoolwork you should’ve been doing on-campus?”

“It wasn’t as bad as it seems.”

“You’ve went all over the Spiral, you could’ve been killed. And we are aware about the changes recently, from that necromancer. And we’re also aware that he was a Professor at Ravenwood once, a Professor Drake. Cyrus is a Drake too, yes?”

They sounded like they were accusing her, but she wasn’t sure of what. It wasn’t like it was up to her that Cyrus and Malistaire were brothers. 

“So your professor had you meddling in his family affairs. Ambrose and Professor Drake had you engaging in some blood feud with Drake’s old family. That isn’t appropriate for a student,” her mother said, like she was going to try and create a case against the school and Ambrose. “You know, we didn’t like the idea of you being a conjurer,” she continued.

They all got into a yelling match over the schools, whether she was a disappointment, if she was cut out to continue on there. They blamed conjurery, endlessly. Always. Always, it was the fault of the Myth school and Myth magic.

Out of one of their mouths came “you killed someone,” or perhaps it was “I killed someone,” from her own mouth, owning it. Whoever said it, it greatly upset everyone at the table. Her parents talked to her, level again, and said “you can’t go back.” They would consider getting her an apprenticeship in something like bookkeeping or art.

“You could’ve listened to us. This wouldn’t have all happened if you had just studied under Professor Greyrose, like Katarin.”

Sitting at the table, she now could look her father in the eyes as he said those words. She was frowning, and crying furiously, a silent crying, and untempered one that showed no weakness, but instead infinite and defiant strength. 

She had learned some things in Cyrus’s classes. Not magic, nor imagination. She had been ridiculed in front of her peers, she had known that her professor saw her as low and untrying. She learned an unending patience, and the grace to know when the fight was over.

“That’s fine,” she barely murmured. “That’s fine.” A tear dripped off her chin with the movement of her jaw as she spoke. She grabbed her plate off the table with both hands and walked it over to the sink, scraping the contents off in one motion, then walking to her old room.

She spent the night there, passed out after dinner with the door locked in a stupor that reminded her of what her past few years should’ve been like. And then, in the morning, she packed everything she cared for from that room, swiping things off the dressers and desk and putting them into every corner of her backpack until it was nearly splitting its seams and lumpy all around.

And then she left, waving goodbye to the silent dark house behind her as she opened the door. She knew that her parents were people so different from her and that, despite their words, they had sent letters every week, cared about whether she was lonely or not, invited her back home often though she didn’t visit every time she possibly could’ve. They didn’t understand. They might never have understood. And because they didn’t understand, they seemed to want to wash their hands of her, their restless, second, failed child. At least for the immediate future.

So she would let them. They acted like she might be a student of some promise, like her studies and advancements were making them proud. They let her throw out their follow-up letters and pretended like they never existed. She would let them pretend like she didn’t either.

But she understood. She would find them later, if they wanted to be found by her. They didn’t think she was doing things that a mere student should have been resigned to. She was a conjurer, roped into an unfortunate, yes, feud. And she had done one thing that was horrible, and many things that were wrong, and she would never rid herself of those things. She resolved to do the only thing that she could’ve done, and pressed onwards as a hero.

[kittenfemme27]

Magrunner: Dark Pulse

"That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die." 

That’s the often misquoted line written by H.P. Lovecraft and spoken by his fictional “mad poet” Abdul Ahazred in “The Call of Cthulhu”, a short story written by the very same author. It’s meant to symbolize the same thing that almost all of Lovecraft’s work was meant to symbolize: That there are things that view us the same way we’d view a simple speck of dust, or an ant. As so tiny and insignificant that we’re practically unnoticed in the eyes of this massive and overwhelming force. Lovecraft had an intense fear and at the same time an intense fascination with the idea of being insignificant, of being forgotten and unworthy, of being completely and utterly impotent in the face of power that was greater than himself. Every “Old God” that he wrote about is so far reaching above humanity and so incomprehensible that even the act of knowing of their existence was incomprehensible for the human mind, and would oft drive those with that forbidden knowledge to complete and utter insanity. This isn’t really a disputed interpretation of Lovecraft's work, it's barely an interpretation at all. It’s considered a simple set of facts of the universe that he created.

So imagine my surprise when I started playing “Magrunner: Dark Pulse”, a fairly mundane and simple futuristic sci-fi puzzle game marketed to have a “Lovecraftian Twist” and the final nine levels have good ol’ Cthulhu himself checking in on me from the skies above, literally one hundred thousand times my size, and simply observing me like I’m his personal favourite little human. As he communicates with me and makes it clear that I am in-fact, his personal favourite little human and he just can’t wait for me to ascend to his level. As far as a piece of lovecraftian work goes, this game was a doozy. But we’ll get back to that. Before we even get there, I’d first like to talk about the game itself.

Gameplay:

Magrunner is a first person physics based puzzle game featuring magnetism as its element in which you interact with the puzzles in each room. Your goal in each puzzle room is to use various platforms, blocks, and other bits of very clearly marked tech in each room that may be magnetized with either a positive polarity or a negative polarity, and combine that with the physics of the Unreal 3 engine to solve challenges and make it to the next room. To be blunt, the game is squarely a Portal rip-off from its design ideals. Your makeshift magnet glove-gun hybrid can fire 2 colors, one being a negative polarity and one being a positive. Like-colors are attracted to themselves, whereas opposite colors reflect each other. The idea of using magnets in a physics based first person puzzler isn’t an awful one, and neither is the fact it clearly wants to ape Portal’s ideas. Where it fails, unfortunately, is execution. The physics aren’t up to snuff with what you do most of the time and it leads a lot of the puzzles to be confusing or simply frustrating, as even when you know what you’re doing you still have to rely on the physics system of the engine to cooperate with you. Early on, you are tasked with getting 4 small magnetizable cubes together to form into a large one. What this actually has you end up doing is fighting with the cubes and the level as they fling themselves wildly off of each other and into unreachable parts of the level itself. The entire game functions this way and it really removes any sense of challenge or control you have over each puzzle, often feeling like you lucked your way into a solution rather than figured out the puzzle yourself in any meaningful way.

Buggy physics in the Unreal engine are not the developers fault entirely though, the game is an indie project that was kickstarted and for that alone i’m willing to give them a pass on engine problems that they likely did not have the programmers to fix. But, unfortunately, I can’t give a pass on the game failing to iteratively teach you how the mechanics work level by level. Whenever you magnetize an object, it creates a field, and you can see this field thankfully by pressing a key. Anything in that field will automatically interact with anything else that is magnetized in it. In general, these fields are wildly inconsistent in how they operate. Usually, they’re spheres centered around the magnetized object and cause objects within the sphere to either attract or repel. On occasion though you’ll find pads that create a cone of magnetism going the direction that it faces, up to what is an arbitrary height. Later on, you’re given the ability to place your own fields on any flat surface, allowing the levels to become more bare-bones as you have to create the magnetism points yourself. All of this combined means that  If you learn that something works in a previous level, there is no guarantee that it will work in the next level the exact same way. Experimentation in this game is often fraught with a frustrating sigh of not knowing if the game intended for something to work that way, or if you just broke the physics again. Don’t even get me started on the fact there are multiple combat sections inside a puzzle game, ugh.

Art & Sound:

Magrunners similarities to Portal do not end with the gameplay and design, however. Aesthetically, the first and second half of the three act game are ripped directly from Portal and Portal 2. The first half of the game features sleek interiors inside of a testing facility for yourself and other “Magrunners” where everything is cleanly lit, sparse on color and detail, as space-age and sci-fi as you could imagine. These first set of aperture inspired levels lack any sort of hard edge or detail, with every single element in the room being curved and well lit and as minimalist as possible. The second half of the game takes places in facilities “underneath” the one you were in prior and are dilapidated grey and brown ruins of previous testing facilities, complete with all the same tools and magnetizable pads and tech that you had seen previously but this time a much older and “70’s” style of sci-fi aesthetic, but covered in grime and dirt and dust from the years of abandonment and rot. I cannot understate how unsubtle this is. The first third of the game is Aperture Science bonafide and part right after is Old Aperture from Portal 2. Magrunner’s aesthetic inspirations are worn very clearly on their sleeve, and it makes the game feel very boring and bland by comparison. It’s impossible to play Magrunner: Dark Pulse and not feel as though it was simply a junior developer exclaiming: “What if Portal/Portal 2, but Magnets?!” while the rest of the developers collectively lose their minds from excitement.

The music of the game was provided, as far as i can tell by the credits, by Incomptech AKA Kevin Macleod. A musician known for releasing thousands of free songs for use in any creative project. This isn’t, by default, a bad thing. Most of the music was not things I had heard from his library before and thus I didn’t immediately twig that it was his library, but unfortunately the music selection isn’t enough. As in, there are not enough tracks to fit the game. There are 39 levels in total and each level features a music track, but often and especially in the later parts, the music tracks are entirely re-used. This is most apparent when one of the tracks is a rising piercing noise, like the type you’d hear in a horror movie right before the slasher stabs into someone, but it never ends or pays off. It just loops upon itself and becomes this droning nightmare of a track for however long the physics force you to stay in a level. I counted 6 times this happened and each time it was so loud and obnoxious and frustrating that I had to simply turn off the game audio to be able to bare the level at all. 

None of the other sound effects are worth writing home about, either, unfortunately. In something like Portal, there are pretty iconic sounds within its soundscape. The sound of the portal gun firing and portals being created, the soft and child-like speech of the turrets, the chiding and derogatory AI voice of GLaDOS, yet Dark Pulse lacks anything even half as memorable. Aside from the repetitive music, you are only given small bits of dialogue between each level and that’s really it. There’s a lot of character they could have created here, for example: When you gain the ability to create your own magnetic fields at will, the center of them is a dog-robot that your player character created in his spare time as a child. Creating one of these points could’ve been met with an adorable puppy squeak or bark, anything like that. Your character or the various ones that speak to you could’ve chimed in at any point in levels outside of the beginning or end of them, and yet they do not. It’s a big missed opportunity.

Story:

Speaking of characters, whew boy, are there a lot of them

Magrunner takes place in the distant future where a corporation that is effectively Facebook has taken over the planet by connecting every single person to its service essentially from birth and making it as essential to daily life as possible. Because of this, this corporation has become the de-facto richest company in the world. Its founder, Xander Gruckzeber, whose last name is literally an anagram of Zuckerberg, has started a contest in which 7 contestants can compete to become “Magrunners” and take a trip to outer space in a ship that is being powered on experimental magnetic based technology. The contest involves each contestant going through a series of puzzles that prove their aptitude with the magnetic tech that Xander’s company has developed. 

Your character, an orphan named Dax C. Ward, is the only one of the 7 contestants that does not have a corporate sponsor. Instead, he’s a boy genius who built his own robotic puppy at age 10 and at age 21 built his own magnetic glove that interacts with the magnetic technology and allows him to compete. Ever the underdog, you’re helped along by your adoptive uncle Gamaji who himself is a six-armed mutant and an outcast among humanity for it.

Sound a little on the nose? Like it may be lacking subtlety in any form? Yeah, the entire game is like that. From Xander’s last name anagram to the fact that your own character’s name is itself a reference to “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” which was a short horror novel written by Lovecraft, the game never really had a chance at subtlety in the first place. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but in between the re-hashed artstyle and the immediate and obvious references, and the fact that It tries to throw a very by the numbers cyber punk aesthetic ripped straight out of Blade Runner at you in an opening cutscene that it immediately abandons afterwards. It all just feels tired from the moment you hit New Game and incredibly confused about its own direction. It can’t decide if it’s a Lovecraftian setting, a Sci-fi setting, if it’s trying to say something about Facebook or if it's just going to be Portal: The Magnetic Spin-off.

As the game progresses and Act 1 ends, you find the corpse of another Magrunner being eaten by an anthropomorphic fish person. You are then told by Gamaji that he’s going to help you escape the facility, but this will require you to go through the older parts of the facility as he slowly hacks into the mainframe and tries to get you out via service elevators. Inside these older puzzle rooms are repeated writings on the wall, ravings of someone gone mad with the knowledge of the Old Ones, and giant sculptures depicting various Cthulhu-esque monsters. This would be bad and scary enough on its own, but Gamaji is quick to let you know that portals to some unknown dimension and fish monsters are being spotted in cities all over the world causing havoc and terror. 

About halfway through Act 2, Gamaji drops the bombshell on Dax that his parents didn’t actually die in a car crash like he’s told him all his life, but that they were Old God worshipping cultists and that Dax’s birth in and of itself may somehow be related to that cult and its actions. This tracks, then, because Dax continually receives strange visions in the form of uncovered memories of “The Seven” attempting some ritual to seal off some force from beyond. Act 2 ends with the revelation that Xanders assistant, Kram, is actually behind all the ritual sacrifice and is attempting to summon Cthulhu himself to our world from the Great Beyond. So far, Act 1 and 2 have been rather cliche but haven’t been anything i’d call unremarkable or strange in a Lovecraftian inspired story.

And then Act 3 happens.

Act 3 sees you flung into the far reaches of Actually Literally Space, with various bits of the test chambers around that you must use to get to portals that are marked by a cute little icon of Cthulhu himself that transport you further into space and to the next level. You can quite literally see our pale blue dot to your side if you look, including a gigantic eldritch device that seems to be either siphoning souls to it, or depositing monsters onto the planet. The fact you can breathe in space is just handwaved as “Something Kram must be doing.” and is never brought up again. What really struck me more than anything in these levels, though, is that Cthulhu himself literally appears before you every 2 minutes in each level and simply watches you while repeating “Cthulhu... Fhtagn... R'lyeh...” over and over and over. This was the moment the game honestly lost any credibility from me. Simply seeing a statue in Act 2 caused Dax to go into a screaming panic as he was able to perceive how a human may be turned into a fish person. But seeing the literal Old God himself doesn’t bother him? And why is Cthulhu so interested in you in the first place? Unfortunately, we get an answer to both of those questions and it might be the most insane thing i’ve ever seen in a piece of Lovecraft inspired media.

Dax, somehow through the work of the cult that his parents were part of, is the chosen one. Cthulhu not only cares about him and wants to see him succeed, but even helps him to literally ascend and become an Old God himself. But not, of course, before letting Dax have a heart to heart with Gamaji wherein he tells him that he has seen through Cthulhu’s eyes himself and must now ascend, as he has no other option. Because Cthulhu is a big softie on adoptive relationships, I guess. The game’s final level has you face off against Kram in a boss battle where you fling explosive cubes at each other and attempt to destroy the esoteric relay connected to Earth. During their fight, Dax taunts Kram who tells him that what he is doing is the will of his Master, Cthulhu, and Dax knowingly retorts that what Kram is doing is “Not what He wants.” As if he has a direct line into the Old Gods mind itself. 

I cannot overstate how much of an absolute failure of the mythos itself that this entire story arc is. The Lovecraft mythos was not, and never has been, made for “Chosen One” stories. If you survive an encounter in the first place, you’re often left with horrible scars that never truly leave you because Cthulhu and the Old Gods are in some ways meant to be representative of trauma and a fear of your own trauma. Making Dax suddenly an Old One and a special Chosen One is a complete and utter failure on a scale I've never, ever seen before. It’s been days and I'm honestly still reeling from the fact that was a design decision someone agreed on.

Conclusion:

Magrunner: Dark Pulse is a confusing and often frustrating game with a story that utterly fails its mythos and setting in just about every way possible. But I don’t want to pretend that I didn’t have any fun playing it. I did, and it’s not the worst game I've ever played. It’s not even so much a “so bad it’s good” game, but it’s more of an indie game that clearly tried its hardest and for that I can’t fault it. It’s developers clearly love the Cthulhu and Lovecraftian mythos and really, really, really loved the Portal series and wanted to combine those things into their own spin on it and in that respect, it’s competent enough that I could recommend it to someone who really enjoys those sort of puzzle platformer based games. But... man. That ending. Yikes.