#but what i forgot to include in that is the OTHER modern use of guest star

[annakie]

From Broken Bow to Calypso, Check-in #4

Star Trek by Stardate posts

Decided to stop doing rando chunks of episodes and start doing seasons instead. Might go back and edit past posts to do it this way. So let's finish Enterprise Season 3!

1/25/25 - 61 - Carpenter Street - The requisite "Team goes back to Modern Era" episode. This jaunt was quick, Archer and T'Pol were there just a few hours. A few fun fish out of water bits like finding a car, and ordering at the drive through. I guess they do watch a lot of movies so Archer wasn't THAT fish out of water lol. Genuinely creepy concept, guest stars were good, including an unrecognizable Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who hated being in all that lizard makeup, and I don't blame him), and the brief return of Daniels. Nobody but the main 3 and a few voice lines from Malcolm here.

1/25/25 - 62 - Chosen Realm - I watched this episode and a few hours later when I came to write this summary I forgot what happened in it haha. Religious zealots take the ship over. Cool concept, OK execution. Maybe a bit too on the nose for my tastes right now. The minor doctrine quibble causing an all-out war was also relatable as someone who grew up Southern Baptist. :p Loved Archer's transporter fakeout as an escape. Overall, an OK episode.

1/25/25 - 63 - Proving Ground - SHRAN. EPISODE. Hell yeah. In the middle of it I said out loud "Shran is just one of the best characters in all of Star Trek." Every time we see him I lament what could have been in Enterprise S5 if Shran would have joined the crew as was planned. But he has a pretty good storyline in The Good That Men Do, which I should put a review of in here. Anyway, good story. LOVE the "Andorian Mining Consortium" scene, perfection. Yeah he betrayed Archer but was commanded to, and in the end even with a more broken relationship with Archer he STILL helped him out best he could. And I loved Malcolm's story line with the Andorian tactical officer. Great job not getting fooled though, Malcolm! Also I spotted that Shran's command chair was Janeway's (or possibly Chakotay's) chair from Voyager, I rarely recognize prop reuse but I caught that one, confirmed by Memory Alpha.

1/26/25 - 64 - Stratagem - Really liked this one, even though it was kind of ethically unsound haha. Good continuity, really establishes Degra as his own character, and the fakeout was really fun with the background of it coming to light. I mean, several other shows I can think of have used this kind of ruse (including like, the first Captain America movie at the end there, and Scandal) but it was still effective.

1/26/25 - 65 - Harbinger - I totally forgot about the main plot line in this one with the rescued alien because I was way more interested in the Slice of Life side stories. Loved the training scenes, seeing several people, including Travis(!!) get to do some hand to hand combat, felt like Montgomery knew what he was doing (before being force to take a fall), WHY COULDN'T WE SEE MORE OF THAT, SHOW!? Anyway, Malcolm's feud (and his ego) with the MACO commander has been a lowkey thing for awhile and I liked them uh, working it out. But also I loved T'Pol and Trip working out THEIR tension a lot more, haha. Their flirty banter and accusations before the kiss were fantastic. And I guess the A story was important too, with the Sphere Alien.

1/26/25 - 66 - Doctor's Orders - Loved this one, though it has obvious parallels with Voyager's "One", it was different enough. Phlox and T'Pol (sorta!) heavy episode. I decided that I don't mind the "Phlox/T'Pol's different physiology saves the day" when it's used as the basis of the plot, I hate it when it's used as a get out of jail free card. And this is the former. The fake-out with T'Pol is pretty well done, but I either figured it out or remembered pretty early. Billingsly is SO good here. Lots of Porthos, too! Phlox's "Nude scene" is also so funny and well shot. Honestly, lots of great shots in this one, big applause to job Roxann Dawson. Light work for everyone else outside of the two alien crew members, but it's so well done, so creepy, the two in it are SO good in it, I didn't mind at all. They even threw Travis a little compliment.

1/27/25 - 67 - Hatchery - Archer Goes Nuts and the Enterprise Crew are the actual first mutineers in Starfleet. Honestly liked this episode, it's an interesting story. The writers and Bakula did a great job showing that for quite awhile Archer's arguments are a little unusual but rational. It takes a good amount of time to build to "OK, mutiny time." And shows the difference between the MACO military training/discipline and Starfleet's. Daniel Dae Kim gets a nice little scene. Also, T'Pol looks GREAT in the Starfleet uniform, just like Deanna did when they finally started letting her wear it. Wish they'd kept that up. She does in the books!

1/27/25 - 68 - Azati Prime - Good ep, real suspenseful. Kind of think Archer is a bit dumb for not believing Daniels AGAIN but it was necessary for the story. T'Pol's degrading emotional state over the next couple of eps is well acted. Don't love a teary goodbye when it's obvious Archer isn't gonna die but it was Story Reasons. The ending with the Enterprise getting pummeled is thrilling, and it felt like the stakes were HIGH. The ending could have been a season finale. Travis gets some screentime here, and he got to punch a MACO and fight a little last ep.

1/27/25 - 69 - Damage - Ohhh a controversial episode. Disappointing that they take that ending to the previous episode and then it just kinda stops, but the continuity with the ship being absolutely beaten down is great. And Archer is really in a damned if you do/don't situation. I absolutely hope that Starfleet went back and helped those people later, though I don't think we hear from them again. Maybe the novels address it. I'll update if I see that they do.

1/28/25 - 70 - The Forgotten - It's getting SO GOOD now. The season's arc is coming together. Things are so desperate, all the threads are being pulled. I just kept thinking every scene he's in how great Connor Trineer is here and how he deserved so much more after this show. Jolene Blalock, too. The scene of Trip finally breaking down and T'Pol comforting him brought out real tears, and Connor was just absolutely killing it. How could anyone NOT love these two? And T'Pol putting a hand on Trip's shoulder, Trip knew what a big gesture that was, and grabbed onto her hand with both of his. SUCH a good scene. Great episode. Oh hey, also Seth McFarlane guest stars in… one scene? I used to be very "Ugh" about it but I've watched The Orville since then and welp, I'm now much more of a fan.

1/28/25 - 71 - E² - I had again forgotten how good THIS episode was. Such a great story (even though it's similar to a DS9 episode) and great ending. I hate that we'll never know what happened to Lorian and his crew OFFICIALLY. Crossing my fingers they'll get addressed in the books. Another banger of a T'Pol/Trip scene in this one, too. I do wish Trip would have seen alternate T'Pol but I understand why she wouldn't want to, that would hurt a lot. And oh no, Malcolm might end up alone, that was a good scene with him, Hoshi and Travis.

1/28/25 - 72 - The Council - Plot, Plot and more plot! I thought Hayes died, but nope that was some other MACO, oops. Goodbye, Degra, you were a pretty good character and will be missed. And Hoshi gets kidnapped! I mean, nice that she was given something to do this episode, it's been awhile.

1/28/25 - 73 - Countdown - And even more plot, there's basically no break between this ep and the last one, it could be just one long episode. Great battle & effects in this one. And Goodbye Major Hayes in THIS episode. So many causalities lately, which is a big switch from the last couple of seasons. Some great stuff from Malcolm in this one, too. But also Hayes: "Malcolm, have (female MACO) lead the team!" the rest of the episode… only male MACOs shown.

1/28/25 - 74 - Zero Hour - Yeeeeah the PLOT. Honestly, it's great. It works. Archer nearly kills Hoshi from exhaustion. T'Pol, Trip, Phlox and Travis keep things going on the Enterprise (and Phlox takes a station on the bridge!) Malcolm is a badass (and some more rando MACOs, but no Chang). AND THEN SHRAN UNEXPECTEDLY SHOWS UP. Oh, and Daniels is there a bit, too. Most of the gang's all here. Exciting, tense, so much going on. Also, I love that all these episodes give a small moment to Trip/T'Pol. They're so much fun, so much more natural than all the stuff with Archer. Oh and T'Pol pets Porthos I think for the first time. …ANNNND then there's the Nazis.

Okay, that's the end of Season 3. Just going to do either full or half season chunks from here on out.

In the middle of book #2 of the Romulan War series, it's very good. I AM VERY WORRIED ABOUT THE HORIZON!

[sshbpodcast]

Four Score and Seven Lightyears Ago: Historic Figures in Star Trek

By Ames

Between escapades on the holodeck, visits to the past, and general sci-fi shenanigans, Star Trek has been able to present many historic figures to its crews, to varying effects. They’ve been doing it from the very beginning, though newer Trek series somehow haven’t seemed to have picked up on the game yet. Perhaps mentioning Elon Musk in an episode of Discovery soured them on the idea of bringing real people out into the universe: they’ll only find a way to let you down.

So what do the great minds of history have to offer to the weird and advanced worlds of the future? How frequently is the episode awkward, uncomfortable, or just plain annoying? Whose portrayal doesn’t stand up to the test of time? Check out all the ones we here at A Star to Steer Her By could think of below and listen to our chatter on this week’s podcast episode (discussion starts at 1:11:33). Watch out for falling apples!

[Images © CBS / Paramount]

Jack the Ripper - “Wolf in the Fold”

We forgot to bring this one up on the podcast, but here we remembered to include the alien lifeform that inhabited people throughout history to harvest fear from its victims, at one point using the body of Jack the Ripper. This is absolutely nothing new. The list of Jack the Ripper appearances in modern media is longer than my arm and it’s so overdone that I just gloss over this episode entirely. Redjac is an alien now? Meh. Add it to the Ripper fanfic list.

Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday - “Spectre of the Gun”

By season 3 The Original Series writers had a history book constantly open to look up a whole bunch of figures from the past, starting with an incredibly erroneous telling of the gunfight at the OK Corral. The whole ordeal is through the lens of an alien reading Kirk’s inaccurate memories, so perhaps any falsehoods are to be forgiven. Given the budget for season three, the sets were pretty much plywood, but the actors playing the Earps and Doc Holliday actually looked pretty good!

Flint - “Requiem for Methuselah”

This one’s kind of a strange one, since the character Flint purportedly lived long enough to live out the lives of many famous figures, some actual and some fictional for some reason. The list he gives includes Methuselah, King Solomon, Alexander the Great, Lazarus, Merlin, Leonardo da Vinci, and Johannes Brahms. You’re a strange dude, Flint. I really don’t know what to make of this guy since it’s almost an interesting idea to have such a long-lived character, but once you start throwing wizards into the mix, I’m taken entirely out of it.

Abraham Lincoln - “The Savage Curtain”

When Abe Lincoln appears floating in space, it’s laugh-out-loud funny. The Original Series could get away with campy hijinks the way no other Trek series can anymore, even including Lower Decks. The rest of “The Savage Curtain” is convoluted and pointless as hell (there’s a reason it’s on some of our Bottom Five lists from the whole series), but the parts featuring playing gladiator with Lincoln were a harmless enough romp.

Genghis Khan - “The Savage Curtain”

Also featured alongside Lincoln was Genghis Khan, and let’s just say it was a good thing the character had absolutely no lines or it might have gotten cringey. His inclusion in the first place was borderline as it was, but it wasn’t a good episode in the first place, so what were we really hoping for out of season three of TOS? Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure did all of this better, I’ll leave it at that.

Albert Einstein - “The Nth Degree”

Jump to TNG and a lot of our guest figures from the slate of history appear to us on the holodeck, which is probably a decent venue for them. Better than most, when you think about it, since our Starfleet friends are usually visiting them for a purpose that is substantive to the episode, and also everyone accepts that hologram depictions are going to be fairly superficial. So it goes that Barclay seeking out the program of Albert Einstein makes perfect sense in the episode. This isn’t the last we’ll see of the Einstein holo either, as we’ll see…

Jack London - “Time’s Arrow”

Oh boy, this is one of my least favorite TNG episodes and it’s mostly down to our two guest figures being so caricaturey and plot convenient. The first we come across in our time travel adventure is the young valet Jack, who just seems like a miscreant throughout the two-parter and who rubs your SSHB hosts particularly the wrong way immediately. Then the very very buttony “Remember the name Jack London” happens and everyone watching rolls their eyes so hard that we all topple over from the sheer inanity of it. Ugh!

Samuel Clemens - “Time’s Arrow”

In these two episodes, is Jack London better or worse than Sam Clemens? That may be a matter of how well you can stand the intense overacting and obnoxiousness of the portrayal. In my write up for season 6 of TNG, I screamed “What the hell is Mark Twain doing here” into the void for what felt like days because his character had no motivation for doing any of the things the writers needed him to do in order to stick around. And boy did he ever stick around! He stuck around so much while not contributing anything except someone to deliver exposition at, which could have been some fictional person! So what the hell was Mark Twain doing here!?!?

Stephen Hawking - “Descent”

As we move through TNG episodes, we go from one of my least favorite portrayals to one of my favorites. The late Stephen Hawking remains the only actual person to play themself on Star Trek, and if that ever changes, I’ll feel disappointed because I can’t think of anyone else who is anywhere as deserving. The little joke that Hawking added himself is quite cute, and it just sounds like it was a delightful day to have Einstein, Newton (whom we’ll see again in a second), and Hawking playing poker on the holodeck with Data.

Sigmund Freud - “Phantasms”

Having Data go to a recreation of Freud’s couch when he’s looking for someone to interpret his dreams is a bit of a goofy premise, but it seems in character enough. When holo-Freud starts spewing all the normal Oedipal psychosexual claptrap at him, it’s a bit humorous, if a bit on the nose, but we accept this one because Data’s innocence and naivete are such a good counterbalance. The scene plays a little on the obvious side, but what can you do? The cigar is a penis.

Amelia Earhart - “The 37s”

If you’ve been following along with our watch through Voyager, you’ll know this one struck a rather bad chord with us. Earhart is the only female figure on this list, which is saying enough in and of itself, but for the whole of “The 37s” it felt like her name was getting dragged around through history. It’s not as bad as the Jack the Ripper fanfic parade, but it just strikes me as bad taste to use Earhart’s legacy for a pretty cheap alien abduction gag and to have her navigator Fred Noonan canonically be in love with her. Vom.

Isaac Newton - “Death Wish”

Quinn claims that he’s the one that shook the apple tree that brought about Newton’s gravity epiphany. It’s another bit of an eye-rolling joke, made all the more groanworthy since it was already made clear in Newton’s appearance in “Descent” that the apple story was entirely apocryphal. Sigh. Other than that, Newton’s testimony is part of a very fascinating discussion of what will become of Quinn if he leaves the Q Continuum by killing himself, and who ever knows when the Qs are overembellishing stories for dramatic effect anyway (hint: it’s all the time)?

Socrates, Lord Byron, and Gandhi - “Darkling”

We had pretty mixed feelings of the Doctor going all Mr. Hyde during “Darking” but it does stand to reason that he’d look to various historic figures for personality traits to give himself. Byron and Gandhi’s shallow conversation about men cavorting with women was on the silly side, but this is the holodeck after all, where all the people are pretty much one-note.

The pièce de résistance of the holodeck scenes in this episode is when the characters are all glitching out randomly, Gandhi’s head is spinning, Byron is getting experimented upon, and Socrates is left a hollow hologram. Now that’s a new philosophy.

Leonardo da Vinci - “Concerning Flight” et al

We come to the end of our list with one of the most established minds in history… mostly taking up space. The most his character really gets to do on his number of appearances is allow Janeway to talk exposition at someone other than Seven for a change, and then make a lot of jokes about how the hologram doesn’t understand the real world. I was frankly tired by it. Later on, Lower Decks makes some references to the da Vinci hologram, because of course it does.

—

Computer, end program! Did you spot any other historical figures from our Trek watch? Well, put them in cryo and send them our way because we’re moving on to more blogtivities next week. Keep watching this spot for more, keep up with our voyage through Voyager on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts, say hi on Facebook and Twitter, and in the words of Honest Abe: be excellent to each other.

[mrdrhenwardhykle]

So, I had this thought process

I've been thinking a lot about that Adam Sandler movie "Pixels", and I think I just wrote a summarized alternate plot for it in my head and I need to write it down.

Okay;

Let's start by brainstorming on writing better and more relatable protagonists. For many, this movie is very hard to watch because it almost feels like a bunch of middle-aged guy's writing in nice-guy self inserts of themselves to feel better about whatever mid-life crisis they're having. And maybe this wouldn't be too bad if their characters were just a bit more than "middle aged creep who lives in his mom's basement is secretly a romantic warrior when put in the right scenario".

At least for me, it's very hard to relate to that kind of protagonist; given how that character is usually the most developed out of all the characters in this type movie. I often find that it's hard to relate to nerdy nice guy characters who often get away with the lack of likeable qualities just because "life should have treated them better". It comes off more as a pity-party more than anything, and their unmotivated dynamic with the "out of their league" love interest, who always comes off as nothing more than a trophy and\or act as an excuse to get the climax rolling in the last 20 minutes after getting captured by the big bad.

So then, how would I write an 80's nostalgia themed adventure movie? What, say, would you think would be a practical way to write the main cast in a way that audiences new and old can relate? Easy; If your intention is to give your entire audience a wave of nostalgia, but to still keep it relatable, then why not make your main cast kids? (credit to Black Nerd Comedy for that idea) I would probably suggest between the age of 12 and 16, and maybe with the occasional big brother\sister type characters and some of their friends . Kids often have a ton of freedom, a large imagination, basic priorities, and a lot less worries than adults. Just about anyone should be able to relate to that, since everybody either was or is a kid at some point of time. And I'm not saying that you can't write for\relate to older protagonists, but you don't want to alienate your audience, especially when making something that might catch the eye of a younger crowd.

Not to mention that ever since the 80's, kids have always been a major player by the impact of technology. For some reason though, the plot of Pixels doesn't really have to do with technology. There's guns and contraptions that are specifically made to destroy the pixels, but it doesn't really go much father than that with the tech. The plot more focuses on going on the "alien invasion" route (which I would think would be more 60's sci-fi based than 80's, which was more experimental in cosmic horror with its alien media)(not including Space Invaders. Shush. That does not count). Honestly, I think 80's nostalgia can be replaced with just about anything when it comes to a "shape-shifting aliens who mimic earthly cultures" plot. It's very basic, yet it doesn't really fit in with the theme of arcade games. It just comes off as a poor excuse for pandering to 80's kids, instead of using that element to bring up interesting concepts and world-exploring in this universe.

So I have two solutions for this, either;

A. Do not do a time jump, and keep the story in the 80's. Make it an alternate universe where different forms of consoles and computers are being developed. Maybe the adult characters are very unfamiliar with these changes, but allowing for the kid characters to have more of an advantage because that stuff would be more relevant to them. Because this was before a time where kids often thought about becoming programmers, it will also work as a disadvantage to the kids because they won't have an excuse to suddenly know how the opposing side works.

Or B. It takes place in a modern era, with Virtual reality, game consoles, and laptops, but it doesn't overly modernize itself with teens on phones, saying outdated things like "lemmie just take a selfie" saying "hashtag" out loud, or any junk like that (Because guess what? Teens and kids don't usually act like that). Maybe make the environment time neutral by making it a mix between the 2010's, 2000's, 1990's, and 1980's. I don't really think it's relevant enough to work in a present setting.

And lastly, let's talk about the big bad of the movie.

Really in Pixels, it's more of a self-struggle either projected upon others, or manifested into it's own being for the protagonist to succeed. There's not really a lot of leg space for anyone else to develop other than the main character (and perhaps something happens occasionally to the comedic reliefs\mascot characters). I imagine maybe this version doesn't have just one central character\plot, kind of like Stranger Things. However, unlike Stranger Things, I would also like a compelling and intriguing villain. Sadly, Pixels doesn't really have that; i has Donkey Kong, but he's nothing more than an alien catering to the protagonist's inner struggles (and nostalgia). There's nothing really more to DK other than that, so there's not a lot of difference between him and any of his previous minions.

And there's nothing really compelling about DK; because at least in canon, he's just a scared circus animal. There's not a lot of reasoning behind his actions other than to just invade. It's basic alien stuff like I said before, it can basically be replaced with some other theme than arcade games.

So what would be a compelling antagonist? Foils to the main group of characters (such as an older school bully, or maybe twisted programmers), create conflict, but if we're keeping the theme of attack of the machines and videogame characters, there has to be a bigger bad than that.

Oh! If only there was an already established villain-coded, tech-based, 80's icon with the ability to control almost all technology!

....

Trust me, I'm onto something!

Max Headroom was always presented as an egotistical talking head. He had multiple shows in the 1980's, as well as guest starred on multiple shows. Perhaps Max survives off of his viewers, and constantly strives to expand his audience. Max does not tend to care about other's well beings, and just wishes to use them as a way to gain publicity for his shows. Max also has a tendency to step over whoever he needs to to gain popularity, including his own film crew.

Max also has multiple canon abilities such as:

Being able to transfer to any screen (including arcade games)

See and interact with the people watching him

Control more than one screen

Interact with himself from one screen to another (multitask)

Turn on and off lights (and likely other outlets as well)

Manipulate the visuals of the screen that he's controlling

All of these abilities can be expanded and explored enough to set him up as a powerful and unpredictable villain.

I've also came up with a couple motives as well;

A. If this is in a modern era, Max could be suffering from a long hiatus since he hasn't been that active since the 80's; causing Max to seek as much attention to thrive off of as possible. To do this, Max hijacks as many outlets as possible to air his show. He might also use this as a way to repel audiences away from all other media; making it easier to turn to him for entertainment.

B. This takes place in an alternate universe where Max Headroom became more popular than it originally was. He starts taking over half of ads and television shows on air, getting more power hungry with each channel he takes. However, in his media take-over, ratings take a slight drop due to uninterested children who have turned to other outlets like toys, videogames, and arcades. This inspires Max to take a full takeover over everything electrical, causing a full invasion of all things electrical.

(I also forgot to mention that Max very likely hates children, and has canonly protested the execution of all of them)

Bam! And there you have it. A slightly more efficient plot for Pixels.

This was rotting in my head for a while and I wanted to let it out. Sorry for the ramble.

[fromthedeskofelizabeththird]

Habanero

You're a good girl, well behaved.

Absolutely not the type to rail random guys in nightclubs.

Until you are.

Fandom: BNHA

Pairing: Aizawa x Reader, eventual polyamorous Erasermic x Reader

Rating: This chapter is Gen, no smut at all. 

Trigger Warnings: None in this chapter.

AO3: Here | Want to support me? I have a Kofi

Chapter: 3/16 (all chapters)

“Good evening, Listeners! It’s 7PM on this fine Wednesday night and I hope you all are doing a-o-kay!”

Hizashi leaned back from his mic and pressed the cheer button on his soundboard.

“Tonight it is my absolute pleasure to announce a brand new segment to our show! I have a guest in my studio tonight. Please raise your hands, paws, flippers and/or wings for (Name), my lovely colleague from UA!”

He waved to you and you leaned forwards towards your own microphone.

“Pleased to meet you everyone,” you said, Hizashi clapping boisterously in the background. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”

“Cute, so cute!”

His excitement was contagious and you couldn’t help but laugh.

“(Name) is a very special guest,” he said, pushing the ‘ooooo’ button on his soundboard. “She’s the guidance counsellor at UA. (Name), why don’t you tell the listeners a little about what you do?”

“Well, the welfare and wellbeing of our students is of course our top priority at UA,” you said, “and so my role is to ensure these needs are being met. If they’re feeling pressured or struggling to find agency opportunities or simply unsure of their futures…”

“Of course,” said Hizashi. “Now, Listeners, (Name) has kindly offered up her time for this new weekly segment, which I’m going to call ‘Support Mic’. If you, my wonderful listeners, or anyone you know have a problem and require a sympathetic ear, please send them anonymously through my website or texting service and (Name) and I will advise to the best of our ability. Sound good, (Name)?”

“Yes!”

“Alright then, we’re going to take a short break and after that we’ll go through your submissions,” said Hizashi, bringing up the next song on his playlist. “If you can’t join us, please enjoy your evening, PLUS ULTRA!”

“PLUS ULTRA!” you echoed and Hizashi laughed out loud.

“So CUTE,” he cried out, before muting your microphones and playing music. He pulled off his earphones and you did the same, reaching for a glass of water.

You were now two months into your job at UA and the time had flown by. You had transformed your office into a space that felt more like your own and familiarised yourself with the names and faces of just about every student at the school. The previous guidance counsellor had been a woman in her eighties, retiring as opposed to taking on a new role and as a consequence your resources and day to day activities needed updating to reflect the modern climate.

None of it would have been possible without the help of your colleagues. Even Shouta, who had said at most half a dozen words to you since leaving your house, had sent the rather more vulnerable students in your direction.

The agony aunt segment was your idea and Hizashi only too happy to include it in his regular radio show, with the caveat that you bought him a beer the next time you went to the izakaya.

Truthfully, you didn’t expect very many requests to come in, so it came as a complete shock when you refreshed the website and found thirty had already arrived in the first two minutes.

“P...Plus Ultra,” you murmured.

━

Support Mic was only a half hour segment, but you could easily have gone on for so much longer. Hizashi had done nothing but coo over you since you left the studio.

“Waaah, (Name), you were a natural!”

You had been so very nervous before the broadcast. You’d expected to stumble over your words or get no questions at all. In the end you answered so many questions and talked so much that it felt like you had swallowed a bucketful of gravel.

“Thank you,” you said, packing up your purse, “for having me, I mean. That was a lot of fun.”

“Did you want me to drive you home? It’s getting late.”

“No, it’s fine, I don’t live far.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” said Hizashi, “see you to-morr-ow, sweet listener!”

You waved goodbye and continued up the street, reaching into your purse for your train pass, only for your blood to run cold when you realised it wasn’t there.

Shit

You rummaged through packs of tissues, chewing gum, pepper spray and more to no avail.

“Where is it,” you mumbled, grabbing your miniature torch and shining it on the contents.

You thought back to the last time you had seen it, when you arrived at work that morning. You had dropped your purse down on your desk when you saw Hizashi arriving and hurried after him to verify your studio appointment. It must have fallen out then and you sighed, turning the other way to go back to UA.

━

As a kid you had always been afraid of the dark. You were the one who squealed at ghost stories during sleepovers and had to hide your face during scary movies.

You liked to think that you had gotten braver as you got older, but that was far from true. You still didn’t like taking late night trains or watching horror movies with your friends. You definitely didn’t enjoy walking the empty corridors of UA.

Pull yourself together, (Name)...

It’s just the school. No one’s here. No one can-

Somewhere in the distance, you heard a door slam.

“Ofuckofuckofuckofuck,” you stammered, picking up your pace and rushing off in the direction of your office. Your shoes clattered against the hard floor and you were sure you heard a second set in pursuit.

You threw yourself into your office and closed the door behind you, immediately rushing to crouch under your desk. Someone, or something, hovered outside. You could practically see the newspaper headlines: Guidance Counsellor Found Dead in Violent Attack .

Every cloud had a silver lining, you supposed. You could see your train pass on the cabinet.

Whoever was outside your office rattled the handle and then stepped inside and you clapped your hands over your mouth to stifle any sound.

What could you do? None of the teachers were around and your quirk wasn’t suitable for fighting. Suddenly, you wished you had agreed to Hizashi walking you home. You took a deep breath, willing yourself to do something. You weren’t a teacher or even a pro hero, but you couldn’t sit by and do nothing.

But what could you do?

The intruder’s footsteps grew closer and you reached for your purse, frantically digging through it for pepper spray. Even if you couldn’t fight off this assailant, you could disable them just enough to get away and raise the alarm.

You tightened your grip on the can and released the cap with your thumbnail.

It was now or never.

You bolted out from underneath the desk with a screech and sprayed the intruder with a faceful of pepper spray, causing them to cry out in pain. You covered your face and ran for the door, only to fall flat on your face, arms and legs bound. You struggled against the bindings, rolling over onto your back to get a good look at your attacker.

H..hUH?

You didn’t know what you had expected, but you definitely couldn’t have predicted the sight before you. It wasn’t an intruder...it was Shouta and he was desperately rubbing his eyes and cursing. The material binding you was his scarf.

“Sh...Shouta?”

He paused, lifting an arm from his face and squinting down at you. He took in the sight of you, frozen on the floor with your arms and legs bound in place and sighed, returning it to its regular state.

“I’m so sorry,” you said, getting back to your feet, “I thought-”

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” he snarled.

“I thought you were a villain!”

“That’s really not the problem here,” he said. “What are you even doing here?”

“I...I forgot my train pass,” you said, wringing your hands. “I’m sorry. I should have just bought a new one.”

Shouta continued to rub his eyes with a groan and you reached out for his arm.

“Come with me,” you said, “that’ll just make it worse.”

You weren’t a hero, but there was something you could do.

━

You guided him to the empty staff room and murmured yet more apologies as you turned on the lights. Shouta curled up on the couch, rubbing his eyes and cursing under his breath.

You stole glances as you ran a cloth under the tap, chewing your bottom lip and feeling more than a little bit guilty.

“Here,” you said, squeezing excess water from the cloth and walking back to the couch. “This should help.”

You knelt down beside him and dabbed the cloth over his eyes as gently as humanly possible, wincing at the sight of how red and puffy they had become. You’d never used pepper spray before and almost certainly used far too much.

Shouta groaned in discomfort the moment the cloth touched him, but remained perfectly still.

This was the first time you had been alone since the reset and you found yourself tongue-tied.

You had slept together twice now, yet you still found it difficult to read him. He was the human embodiment of still waters and you had no doubts that his innermost thoughts were as much of a tangled mess as your own. He was just better at hiding them.

The morning of the reset, you had given up on sleeping. You were unable to stop thinking about the man in your bed; the man you thought you would never see again but would have to see almost every day.

You hadn’t been able to sleep after that, instead putting in a load of laundry and getting an incredibly early start on breakfast. When Shouta rolled out of bed at 6am, you had washed and dried his discarded clothes and folded them on your bedside table, as well as putting together an enormous breakfast and fresh pot of coffee.

“So,” you had said as he rubbed his eyes. “The reset.”

“Yes,” he said, dragging on his shirt and giving it a confused sniff. “Tomorrow is day one.”

That was the last he said on the matter and the longest conversation you had had in months.

Until now, of course.

“Does it still hurt?”

You sat back on your heels and lowered the cloth onto your lap, watching as Shouta squeezed his eyes shut and then, very slowly, attempted to open them. He immediately seemed to regret it, for he flinched and began to squint.

“I’ll get more water, just a-”

You moved to stand up, only for him to take hold of your arm.

“Why would you try and confront a villain without help? You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“I wasn’t going to fight,” you said. “I was going to raise the alarm.”

“Oh, and then what? You’ve exposed yourself to the villain without knowing what their quirk is. They could have set you on fire or gassed you or something.”

“I…”

You weren’t a student, he wasn’t your teacher, yet somehow it felt like being in detention.

“I don’t know,” you said.

“You need to be more rational in these things,” said Shouta, closing his eyes again. “Running head on into danger gets people killed.”

You were quite glad he’d closed his eyes. You couldn’t stifle the smile breaking out across your face.

He wasn’t angry at you at all. Stern, yes, though only out of concern for your safety.

“Good job I had a big, strong Eraserhead around to protect me,” you said, booping his nose with the cloth before getting to your feet. You expected him to protest, but he stayed silent, barely moving even as you ran the cloth under the cold tap.

“You’re not a pro hero,” he said.

“No, I’m not.”

“Then why are you here...in a school for pro heroes?”

You switched off the tap and squeezed excess water from the cloth.

“Are you questioning my credentials, Professor Aizawa?”

“Not particularly,” he said. “It’s important to know the strengths and weaknesses of your team.”

“You could have looked at my file, you know.”

“Too much hassle. I wanted to ask you in person.”

You returned to the couch, cloth in hand. You got the impression that this was a test. Perhaps he already had looked at your file and was suspicious of you as a result. You wouldn’t blame him in his position, given the nature of your quirk and role in the school. He cared about the students far more than he would ever let on.

“Well,” you said, dabbing his eyes. “It’s true I’m not a pro, but I do have a quirk. It’s not… a particularly conventional one, though.”

Shouta stayed silent, waiting for you to continue.

“My quirk is a lie detector,” you said. “I can force people to tell the truth.”

“How do you activate it?”

“I say a little phrase.”

“Show me.”

He squinted at you, watching your body language. You were familiar with this dance; people learning what your quirk was and immediately wondering if you had used it on them without them realising. You got the feeling it ran deeper with Shouta. He wasn’t as interested in seeing your quirk as how comfortable you were using it on other people. Were you the type to proudly abuse your power? Did you take it lightly?

In truth, you weren’t comfortable using your quirk. Not at all.

“Tell me,” you said, goosebumps breaking out across your skin at the activation. “What’s your happiest memory?”

“There was a roof,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation. “My friends were there-”

You chose that question as you had believed it would be harmless. The horror in his eyes as he realised what he was saying, though, made you wonder if you had made a terrible mistake.

He clamped his mouth shut, eyes shining red.

You realised your skin no longer tingled. He’d erased your quirk.

“I…I’m so sorry,” you said, immediately overwhelmed by guilt. “I didn’t-”

“It’s fine,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’ve given it back now.”

It wasn’t fine, though. You had seen enough to know that. You clenched your hands in your lap, all too aware of the water soaking your skirt.

“I’m sorry,” you said again, unable to think of anything more coherent.

“Answer my question,” he said, far more gently than the first time. “Why did you come to a school for pro heroes?”

You thought about the scars on his body; the flash of horror at what should have been his happiest memory.

“Because,” you said, “heroes are more likely to get lost.”

Shouta glanced at you out of the corner of his eye and you blushed, worried you had said something embarrassing. He reached down into your lap for the cloth and placed it on his face.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “You should go home.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said, “I still have some stuff to do.”

“Can I at least make you some coffee?”

“Nah.”

You reached for your purse, albeit reluctantly, making sure to check and double check that you had your train pass. You couldn’t believe how much chaos it had caused.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything? I can get you some candy from the vending machine.”

Shouta had rolled over onto his side with his back to you and waved you away.

“Don’t think too much about it, just go.”

The school corridors didn’t seem so scary on your way out. The shadows didn’t seem quite so dark, nor your footsteps so loud. You were too distracted to truly pay attention, racking your brains for some way to make it up to Shouta. Perhaps you’d bring him lunch one day or make him his favourite snacks. Hizashi would know the kinds of things he liked to eat. You decided to ask him in the morning.

The lights were still on in the 1-A homeroom and you peered inside as you passed. From the looks of things, Shouta had been in the middle of marking. That wasn’t what drew your attention, though.

In his haste to leave the room and investigate the commotion, he hadn’t bothered to switch off the radio on his desk, instead leaving it to play to itself. Hizashi’s voice was more than a little distinctive and you knew within seconds that it was his show.

“ Now then, listeners, it’s time for our nightly poll! Tonight is a really difficult one, submitted by user rokstar88. When reborn into your next life, would you rather have no hair on your body at all or be completely hairy, like a yeti? Results are in after this short break.”

[dangerousconnoisseurdonut]

Gotham Monster!Verse AU’s?

Alright, but now, you all know that I am obsessed with Gotham AU’s but what I haven’t talked about is my LOVE of the Classic Universal Monsters, and I want to get your opinions on some of these crazy ideas of mine!

Dracula/Vampires: I already have two AU’s lined up with vampires, my Underworld AU/re-write and my Master Vampire Jervis idea so, let’s just move on.

Frankenstein: Victor (do I really have to specify at this point? You all know which one I’m obsessed with) and Bridgit are Strange’s modern day Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein creations and he wants them to mate, but the two can’t seem to stand each other so he hopes co-habitation will force them to get along. One day, however, Bruce comes to get answers about his parents death (or he’s an investigative journalist that gets caught, whichever sounds better) and, instead of outright killing him, they throw him to ‘The Ice Freak and Fire Bride’. Everyone expects to see Bruce get ripped to shreds, frozen and smashed, or just burnt to a crisp, but instead, the pair are most curious about him and attack any who try to take him away from them.

The Mummy: This is one I’m not sure on, just because we’ve had numerous interpretations of the Mummy story (yes, the one with Tom Cruise was trash, but the story idea was still unique). So, let’s try this route; villain of your choice (I’m leaning towards Jerome, Jeremiah, or Jonathan myself) is an ancient Egyptian Prince/Princess who tries to invoke Kek, the Egyptian God of Darkness and Chaos, but is caught before the ritual can be completed and mummified alive. Transport to modern day and the Wayne’s are funding an excavation for the fabled Prince/Princess who Courted Chaos. When they find the tomb, Bruce accidentally gets blood on the sarcophagus and awakens the sleeping prince/princess who is very grateful and wants to make Bruce their consort to rule over the chaos Kek will bring when they successfully bring him about this time.

The Invisible Man: Jonathan (or Jerome just because I can see the crazy little shit enjoying this) invents a concoction that turns him invisible for a few hours which he uses to scare the daylights out of people. Then, one night, Bruce comes upon the scene where a young couple are being mugged and saves them, unaware of his invisible audience. Jonathan tails him to try and understand why he wasn’t afraid of getting hurt and why he would put himself in danger for strangers and tries to psyche him out, but Bruce is quick to realize he’s got an unwanted guest. He fights Jonathan, almost getting the upper hand but he forgot about Jonathan’s chemicals and is sadly knocked out. When he comes too, he is strapped to a bed and Jonathan wants to see just how brave Bruce can be in the face of the unknown.

The Wolfman: Poor, weak, little Jonathan is constantly picked on in high school, and often finds himself being protected from the bullies by his crush, Bruce Wayne. Sick of always needing to be rescued, he wants Bruce to see him as someone strong enough to stand beside him, not behind him. While asking his dad for advice, Gerald has to leave suddenly and leaves an untested serum out where it shouldn’t be. It’s meant to make people better by giving them certain attributes of wolves; their speed, strength, sense of smell and hearing, lightness of feet, everything Jonathan needs for Bruce to really see him. After he takes the serum, people are shocked by how different Jonathan becomes, including less fearful and more aggressive. Soon, however, there are news reports of the bullies of the school being attacked by some rabid dogs, alive but almost torn to pieces. Not to mention Jonathan has started asking Bruce on dates and can be a little... aggressive when kissing. After all, all wolves need a mate.

The Phantom of the Opera: Jervis is the Phantom who loves a stagehand, Jonathan Crane, who loves Theodora Galavan's (Galavan as a woman, *shudders*; I think I just gave myself a case of the heebie jeebies) understudy, Bryce Wayne, a beautiful singer and dancer who sadly has not had the chance to shine yet. Jervis strikes a deal with Jonathan; if he helps Bryce become the star, Jonathan will allow Jervis to have sex with him. Jonathan is so in love with Bryce, and more than a little intrigued by what the Phantom has in store to make Theodora (who’s a real bitch to everyone) leave, that he agrees. As Bryce rises, and Jonathan actually does start to fall in love with Jervis, Jervis himself falls for Bryce's charm and beauty too and decides, why not have his cake and eat it too? Jervis proposes the idea to Jonathan who loves it as he too would get the best of both worlds and wouldn’t have to worry about Bryce being chewed up and spat out by a fickle audience. Jonathan gives her a sleeping draft and they manage to transfer her to 'Underland' where Jervis and Jonathan set about convincing the young Opera Star she'll only get hurt up there, so why not stay with them? 

Creature from the Black Lagoon: My personal favourite of the Classic Monsters, so who better than my favourite Rogue for this one? Bryce is part of an expedition to find remains of a fossil that could prove some sort of link between marine life and land life in the arctic region. While there, she is spotted by a creature that is half man/half octopus (our own Mr. Freeze), who decides she would make a very pretty mate and kidnaps her, taking her to his underground spot that has a dry spot where she can rest. Unable to hold her breath long enough to escape on her own, and knowing the search parties probably think she drowned, Bryce is very limited in options, particularly when Victor offers her a potion that will let her breathe under water where she won’t feel the cold as strongly. Bryce agrees to take it, hoping to get back to her party, but Victor was ready for any kind of tricks and manages to freeze her arms and legs, where he then proceeds to show her how... talented, his tentacles are.

I also have one or two for nature spirit Ivy and one featuring a plot similar to a movie from the early 2000s called Mermaid Chronicles: She Creature, but this is long enough.

[sadpotatoondrugs]

Time For a Change Ch.4

<< – First

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Marinette is embarrassed and I’m ashamed of myself

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“I… think that’s everything?” Marinette questioned quietly after checking that she had all the items on her ‘bring with me’ list… For the third time. After she got back from her meetup with Kagami the day before, she made the list of all the things she would need to pack. She wasn’t stressed about bringing clothing or something like that, but rather about an emergency sewing kit and such.

But wait, wasn’t the wedding supposed to be two days from the meetup? Marinette said so herself!

Yes, indeed she did. But she forgot about one thing.

You see, since her parents were asked to cater for the buffet of the wedding, they had to arrive earlier than all of the guests, including the groom and the bride. While the wedding itself was going to be on December 14th, it was going to start early in the morning – which meant a ton of things to prepare the day prior. Along with being asked to cater, the Dupain-Chengs also held the positions of a bridesmaid and a maid of honor, so they were going to oversee the preparations and make sure everything goes according to plan.

“Marinette! We’re leaving in 15 minutes! Make sure you have everything!”

“Yes, maman!” Closing the suitcase, she sighed in relief. Looking over at the bridesmaid dress, currently laid on her chaise in a garment bag, she started bringing her luggage downstairs. She struggled a little bit, more because of the maneuvering than the weight; She had been working out, after all.

She brought her luggage to the van they borrowed and placed it in the appropriate place and went around to the back to potentially help her parents with loading the cake into the van.

Why ‘Borrowed’, you ask? No? Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway.

The bakery they bought a long time ago wasn’t originally a bakery. Her parents built the bakery from scratch and were happy with the results. At the time, it didn’t even matter to them if the place was small; they were just starting out and were barely known. Even as they became well-known, their customers commented that the bakery was warm and welcoming. The downside was that the building had no garage, which was becoming a problem with their rising number of orders. Thankfully, her parents were grateful for a friend of theirs that provided delivery services. They cooperated on big deliveries and often shared a part of the income. Thus, their problem was solved.

After helping her parents move the cake and many, many pastries, desserts and many more heavenly sweets for the buffet, the family got into the van and begun their two hours long way to the wedding venue.

When they arrived, it was already 10 AM and the workers there were already hard at work. Even though they were present for probably about 3 hours, the venue was barely decorated – but that was acceptable, given the space they were working with. Nadja, being a successful reporter, had met a lot of people in her life and made a lot of friends along the way. It was to be expected that the wedding was going to be big. And by big, we mean Castle of Esclimont big.

From what Marinette saw, chairs and tables outside were already set up randomly with people moving them to find the perfect placement and there were boxes of decorations waiting to be opened. The place was already being decorated with fake and cold-withstanding flowers to give in to the theme of the wedding. The family made their way into the castle, where the rooms for the guests of the wedding were supposed to be.

“Alright, Marinette. If you need us, we will be helping out with the decorations.” Her mother smiled gently, walking out of the room with her husband in tow.

Marinette looked around the room, taking in the details of it. The design of the walls, floor and furniture reflected the style of the building. It held the feeling of being in a royal bedroom. The furniture, while new and modern, was styled in a way that basically screamed ‘history’. But as traditional, antique, old-fashioned, however you may call it, as it was, the hand of modern technology did not just pass by the area without leaving something behind. There was a safe in the corner of the closet, a TV opposite of the bed and the bathroom the room was adjacent to was fully modern.

Which was completely understandable. As much as the old-time look of it all made Marinette admire the building, she (and, probably, everybody else) would certainly not want to pee in a bucket.

Checking the hallway in case her parents forgot something, she closed the door into the room and approached her bed, where she opened her suitcase.

“You can come out, Tikki.”

Tikki immediately flew out of her chosen’s pocket and looked around, darting to every corner of the room. Marinette let her kwami search for a hiding spot while she upacked a few of her things. She didn’t know how long they were going to stay, but if things all went according to plan, they would leave the day after the wedding. She didn’t want to unpack all of her things in case she wouldn’t even use them. She unpacked her hygiene products, her pajamas and casual clothes, putting them into the built-in closet next to the bridesmaid dress.

Last, she brought out her sewing kit and laid it next to the door, where it was easy to find and reach in case of a fashion emergency. Nothing could ruin such a special day. And nothing would.

Marinette could only hope that Hawkmoth wouldn’t decide to send out an akuma while the ceremony was held.

Tikki returned soon after Marinette finished unpacking her stuff and they both made their way outside to see the decorations and help out with the preparations.

When she got there, she saw a glimpse of her father helping carry two tables into the garden. Instead of calling out to him, she searched for her mom.

She found her by the entrance of the castle, carrying various sweats and pastries out of the van.

“Tom already brought the cake in, so all we have to do is take the other desserts over to the kitchen fridge.” Silently, Marinette started picking up boxes of treats from the van and followed her mother into the kitchens. She was pleasantly surprised that the kitchens were well maintained, unlike those in certain restaurants. The place looked properly cleaned, with small exceptions that could be pardoned in such a big kitchen.

After about half an hour later, the van was completely emptied and Marinette and her mother went over to help with the decorations. Being close to the bride, Sabine went over to the woman organizing the furniture and the two discussed the arrangements together. Marinette, not wanting to butt in on their conversation, helped various people with moving the furniture to the appropriate place and, occasionally, suggesting a change of the placement or décor.

They took a small break around lunch, to eat and relax for a bit, before going back and managing the details and making sure the staff at the hotel all knew about the wedding and had instructions on what to do. There was still quite a few things to décor, but that would all be finished in time for the wedding the next day.

At 7pm, they took another break to eat dinner and, again, relax. By that time, the majority of the venue was ready for the wedding ceremony. Sabine even sent Marinette away, saying that they’ve got it handled and she could do what she wanted. She helped out for a little while after that with table decorations, before she decided that she really was tired and went into her room.

She passed by a glass door and, with her curiosity taking over, peeked through the glass. She saw a garden; different to the one where the wedding was to be taking place, which was behind the castle. This one was on it’s side, so it seemed. There was a pretty big pool with folded chairs next to it. Since it was so late, she didn’t see anybody else in the pool garden, so she buttoned-up her coat and stepped outside. As she approached the pool, she noticed an archway on the side of it, connected to a stone wall that wrapped around the area of the garden. It was a pathway into another building that belonged to the castle grounds, trees were planted on one side of the sand path, the other being protected by the castle’s wall. She didn’t want to venture further, though. As guests, they had restrictions and she didn’t want to accidentally enter a place where she wasn’t allowed. She turned around, about to head back into her room, when she heard a rustle in the bushes nearby. Startled, she quickly turned around to get inside as quickly as she could – it was already hard to see outside, after all, when she bumped into somebody.

The impact wasn’t strong enough for her to fall over, but it did make her stumble. She began apologizing straight away.

“Oh my go- I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going- I-“ Looking up, she froze in place.

Her first thought was Adrien Agreste.

Why?

Because in front of her stood a boy strangely too similar to her blond classmate.

She would assume it was Adrien further, had she not noticed the distinct differences between the two. For instance, while the boy in front of her had the same shade of golden blond hair as Adrien, they seemed to be a bit longer and combed to the side. His face strangely resembled Adrien’s in the structure, but upon closer look, Marinette could see that he had sharper cheekbones and a more defined jawline. Lastly, the most distinctive feature, his eyes. Instead of green, Marinette stared into a pair of silvery grey eyes.

There was a pause, before Marinette realized the situation they were in and stepped away from him.

“Sorry, I- ” There was another pause, as Marinette took in his appearance. He had a coat on, unbuttoned, and she noticed he wore a formalwear. It was similar to what she saw some of the castle staff wear. Her eyes widened. “-I’m so sorry, I didn’t see any sign that this area was prohibited to guests. Please don’t tell the security, or call your boss, or anything, I was just curious and-”

“Miss, I assure you that you are not in any trouble. This area is indeed available to guests so you do not need to worry.” She sighed out in relief, “Also, I am not an employee.” She stiffened up again, her eyes widening slightly. Great, now she unknowingly insulted him.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I just saw your clothes and assumed- I’m so sorry.” He nodded, a sign that he took her apology. The conversation seemed to end there, which Marinette didn’t mind. The situation was embarrassing enough and she was glad to head back.

The bush moved again, though, which cause both their heads to turn into it’s direction. She saw the stranger move towards it and reach out to it. A moment later, out of the bush emerged a black kitty. It was more of a cat, but still held the resemblance of a kitten, hinting on it’s young age.

“So that’s what was hiding in there. You really startled me, little guy.” Marinette whispered softly, making the kitty wince slightly before cautiously stepping fully out of the bush. Only after the stranger crouched down did Marinette notice a bag in his hand.

She watched as the stranger pulled the contents of the bag out and handed them to the kitty, who was obviously hungry. She smiled subconsciously, admiring the care he showed. Not in a romantic way, though, but Marinette always admired kind and good-hearted people. There weren’t many of them in the world, after all.

She turned around and left the two alone, walking into her own room.

Tikki scolded her only a little bit for wandering off somewhere this dark and alone. She knew that Marinette would hold her own against many people, but it didn’t ease her worry for the young heroine. If something were to happen to her physically after what she had to endure emotionally in school… Well, let’s just say we wouldn’t want another ‘Plagg accidentally uses cataslysm’ event.

She was simply worried.

Marinette returned to her room a little after 8pm, changing into her pajamas and turning on the TV, she grabbed the sketchbook and filled it with the many ideas for designs inspired by the old-fashioned style of the castle.

Her parents came back a little after 10pm, wishing her a good night before heading into their own room to rest. She followed suit and, after setting up a few alarm clocks to wake up in time to prepare for the wedding, she went to sleep.

The morning was hectic. Marinette couldn’t imagine what Nadja must be going through at the time, because she was nervous as hell, and she wasn’t even the bride. Her morning started normally, with her daily morning routine.

The wedding starts at 10, or at least, that’s when the vendors arrive to prepare for ceremony setup.

Nadja was already in the castle, having arrived in the middle of the night due to personal reasons, and will probably start getting ready for the wedding soon. Marinette wanted to stop by in case she needed help with the dress or to announce that if something were to happen at any time, she is prepared and to find her.

Stepping out of her room, she noticed that the halls were already busy with people running to prepare for the ceremony. She kept her guard up, evaded any possible collisions with others and made it all the way into Nadja’s dressing room.

Knocking on the door, she heard the voice of her mom yell out “Come in! But if you’re the groom, you’re gonna feel my foot on your back as I kick you out!” Giggling quietly, she entered the room and greeted the women. There was only her mom and Nadja that she recognized, then three other young women, who she assumed were friends of Nadja and probably the other bridesmaids.

Nadja was still out of her dress, and it seemed that the preparations were only starting, as the women were only spreading out hordes of make-up and bottles of nail polish on the table now.

“Good morning, mom. Good morning, Nadja. I hope you’re well rested.” Nadja gave her a sheepish and a little nervous smile.

“I mean, as well as a bride on her wedding day can be.” She smiled at the woman, before her attention was switched to her mom, who faced her suddenly.

“Good morning, sweetie, could you please inform your father that I’ll meet with him at the ceremony? I don’t think I will have enough time to tell him myself, so I would need you to give him this.” She handed her a notebook that she grabbed from a nearby table, “And, please, help him out with setting up the buffet.” Marinette nodded and headed for the door, before pausing.

“Oh, Nadja? If there is any problem, I brought an emergency kit. If anything happens, find me immediately.” Nadja bid her thanks and smiled at her appreciatingly. Marinette nodded again and made her way into the kitchens. She found her father and gave him the notebook, which she found out was filled with notes about certain foods and directions on where to put them.

She helped him out with setting up the buffet table and putting up final decorations on the tables. By then, it was already 11am and the vendors were hard at work with their own preparations. The first guests would arrive around 12 o’clock, so by then, she would have to be ready.

She released her hair from her pigtails and put on her bridesmaid’s dress. With a little bit of Tikki’s help, she managed to zip it up and move on to the hairstyle. She looked herself over in the mirror, deciding on what to do with her hair since the bridesmaid’s weren’t instructed on a specific type of hairstyle to use. She decided to leave it simple and put her hair into a bun, similar to the one she did when she was younger, only slightly different thanks to the difference in her hair length from then and now. Last, she let out a few streaks of hair on the sides of her head to better frame her face.

She felt satisfied with the results, the last thing to decide was whether or not she was going to put makeup on. She wasn’t very skilled with it, since she normally didn’t use it, hence her hesitation to do so. In the end, she used a red lipstick and a little bit of blush. At the very least, her red lipstick would match her red earrings.

When she was finally all done, it was almost 12 o’clock. She was surprised by how long it took her to get ready. She grabbed a small red purse (she silently celebrated that she brought it along just in case), where she put her phone and where Tikki would be hiding for the rest of the day – she didn’t need to bring any more of her stuff, since if she needed anything, it was like a five minute walk to her room. Putting the purse around her shoulder, she went over to her dresser where her bodice and flower crown were, put it on and swiftly left her room.

She arrived around the same time as the first guests did, for she saw a pair dressed in formalwear talking to one of the staff who was pointing towards where the ceremony would be held. She went out of the palace and into the garden, pulling the furry bodice closer to her form once she realized how cold it really was.

She waved at her father, who’s eyes widened when his attention switched to her. As she approached, he warmly greeted her with a hug.

“You look beautiful, darling.” Giggling, she did a 360 before walking over behind the buffet table.

“Thank you, same goes to you.” Her father wasn’t one for formalwear, he claimed that it was stretchy and uncomfortable, so he chose not to wear it unless he really had to. But Marinette had to admit, it did look good on him.

Looking over the notebook her mother provided earlier, she began arranging various items on the list into their stated places. She had no idea why the food had an order in which to be placed, but she didn’t question it. She just did as she was instructed. While she did that, her father kept bringing more and more of the pastries. At one point, Marinette worried that it wouldn’t all fit on the table.

She later found out that there was a secret fridge/freezer under the table, out of the eyes of the guests and easily available for the stuff to resupply the table.

They finished quite fast, not even half an hour later, they were finished and left the table for the staff to resupply when needed. She talked with her dad for a while before he was called by a group of people she didn’t know. By the way he greeted them, though, he seemed to know them quite well. She looked around, searching for a familiar face. Spotting none, she turned towards one of the people struggling with the cables for the lightning and sound. She approached them and offered a helping hand.

Halfway through the work, the guests were invited to head over to where the ceremony was being held, so Marinette bid goodbye to the workers (who thanked her for the help), and headed over to the ceremony stand. The ceremony itself wasn’t going to start right away, Marinette guessed it would take another thirty minutes, but she wanted to be able to relax before the main moment of the day starts. That, and in case she had to quickly run away.

She stood of slightly to the side, by the table where the drinks were served – there was literally a punch bowl like in those high school proms on tv. She opened her purse, checking subtly on Tikki while grabbing her phone and opening the news channel.

While Nadja might be absent for a while and a bunch of her coworkers were attending the wedding, there was plenty of reporters still working and being on call if there was an akuma present. She was glad that she didn’t see any alert for one and would had to hope that it would stay that way for the rest of the day. Putting her phone back, she turned around and decided to drink a little before the ceremony.

She went to pour herself a cup of punch, subtly even asking Tikki if she wanted to try it since she never had any and didn’t know how it tasted.

Meow.

She looked around, quite startled by the sound. Was that a cat she just heard?

Her eyes fell to the ground behind the drink table, where the same black kitty from the day before was hiding. Her eyes softened as it meowed again, it’s voice a bit strained.

“You, again? What are you doing here, little guy? You cannot be here.” A meow was the response she got. Her eyes fell on one of the bottles of water on the table. She grabbed one and approached the kitty. She filled the cap with it and offered it to the kitty. It seemed cautious for a bit, sniffling the cap before drinking the water inside.

After refilling the cup five times, the kitty no longer wanted to drink and only kept looking at Marinette and meowing.

“Perhaps it’s hungry?” She heard a familiar voice behind her, and only then realized that the kitty wasn’t looking at her anymore but at something behind her. Turning around, her eyes widened slightly before going back to normal once she relaxed.

“The buffet table won’t do, the items there seem to all contain chocolate. We might need to ask one of the cooks for a roll.” Marinette nodded while the blond approached the kitty slowly. She watched him interact with it, gently reaching out his hand for the kitty to sniff, before gently picking it up. Marinette wondered if she should let him take care of the kitty alone, but she replayed his sentence in her mind and realized that it held an invitation to come along. And, seeing as the ceremony room was still only half full of people, she came along.

It was a silent walk, something that Marinette found slightly uncomfortable for some reason.

“Sooo,” She started, seeing him slightly turn his head towards her as an indication that she had his attention gave her enough confidence to continue, “you’re a guest of the wedding, too, then.” He turned his head back into it’s original position.

“Yes, it would seem that way.” He responded quite blatantly. It would sound a little on the harsher side, but Marinette didn’t see any emotions of annoyance or anger on the boy’s face, so she assumed he was simply being polite. “Perhaps it was cold, it’s not meowing anymore.”

The two paused to look at the kitty. It seemed comfortable in the man’s arms. As soon as it noticed their eyes on it, it meowed again.

“Or not.” Marinette stated, before pausing. “Are cats even allowed in the castle?”

“Even if they’re not, we are just taking it into the reception before taking it right back outside. It shouldn’t cause any trouble.”

She nodded. The two made their way into the reception, where the man dealt with the receptionist who immediately ran over to inform them about the no pet policy.

Marinette left him alone with the kitty and the receptionist while she went into the kitchen. She asked one of the cooks who she met the day before for some rolls, if they had any. They offered her a baguette on the house and she happily accepted.

When she walked outside, she saw the man patiently waiting by the door outside, with the kitty secured in his arms. She walked over to him and the two walked back outside.

“I wonder what’s going to happen to it.” She wondered out loud. The boy looked at her questioningly. She continued, “I mean.. It’s still just a kitty. And it’s about to be winter and this little thing is clearly homeless.” The boy seemed to ponder over her words for a while.

“Well, you could take it in yourself.” She shook her head at the idea, already knowing too many reasons as to why that was a bad idea.

“I live in a bakery and we cannot have pets inside. The possibility of a cat hair being in one of the products is way too high.” She informed him, which he seemed to nod at.

“Perhaps we can ask around if anybody wants a kitty. One of the guests here might be looking for one.”

“Yeah…”

The two reached the garden with the pool, now occupied with a few of the guests. They walked over to the tree they found the kitty the day before and sat it down. Marinette crushed the baguette and picked out the soft inside of it for the kitty. They sat there for a while, just watching the kitty eat.

“Sorry again about yesterday.” The boy looked her way again, silently. He was not much of a talker, Marinette noticed. Or perhaps he just didn’t feel like making big talk with a stranger. “About bumping into you, I mean.” Suddenly, he made an expression different to the neutral one he wore up until now.

She cursed silently, she probably just made him uncomfortable now or something.

“Oh, that was you?”

Marinette blanched.

He didn’t remember her!

She suddenly felt embarrassed again.

What’s with this place always making me feel like a fool?

“Heh… Yeah…” The conversation went quiet after that, and Marinette actually thought about just turning around, saying her goodbye and bolting out of there.

“I apologize. I didn’t quite pay much attention to you yesterday. My focus was mainly on the kitten.” She sighed out, at least he was making an effort to lessen the tension.

“Well, let’s drop the topic. I’d rather not relieve that moment again.” The kitty sneezed and their attention was immediately on it.

“We should leave the little guy here for now. We’ll see if it remains here until after the ceremony is over.”

“Yeah.”

The two stood up and walked back into the gardens. The place seemed to be full with guests, most of them were already sitting in their assigned chairs. Marinette paused, unsure if she should stay and converse with the boy or head over to meet up with the other bridesmaids for the walk down the aisle. But, seeing as he didn’t seem to move either, she stayed.

“In what relation are you to Nadja?” She asked, actually curious.

“I am merely an acquaintance. It’s my mother that actually knows Madame Chamack.” He then looked at her in a way that suggested he was asking the same question.

“My mother and her are long-time friends and our families are actually really close.”

“I see.”

Right in that moment, it was announced that the ceremony was about to start. As the rest of the guests started to walk over into their assigned seats, she turned to the boy for the last time.

“I must say, even though our first encounter wasn’t the best, Mademoiselle…”

“Marinette. Marinette Dupain-Cheng.” She smiled kindly.

“Very well, it was very nice meeting you, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng.”

“The pleasure was mine, Monsieur…”

The boy reached out his hand, which Marinette shook gently.

“Felix. Felix Graham de Vanily.”

[masterlist]

Okay so I fucked up and forgot to add a taglist, sorry guys, please forgive my dumbass self <3

@miraculous-ninja @moongoddesskiana @flufflepuffle296 @wannajointhecrabcult @meme991001 @ladybug-182 Really sorry guys. Also, if any of you wanna be added to the taglist, just msg me directly or comment on this post 

[meirmakesstuff]

Hello! My group of Wayfarers has now built themselves a building which serves as a general meeting place, as a prayer space, and a last resort retreat in case of monster attacks. Which, if wikipedia didn't lie to me, is not unlike a Synagogue. So I was wondering if men would wear a kipah/other hat inside even if they're just gathering to eat. There're also strangers regularly entering the same space to eat. Would that make a difference?

Oh, spectacular. I love this question because it has so many different layers to it. Once again you’ve asked a deceptively simple question that’s going to take me several paragraphs of background to address, and I’m going to expand it to include Jewish head covering practices other than men wearing kippot while we’re at it, as well as touching on the nature of Jewish sacred spaces. 

First of all, congratulations on naming your Jewish-coded culture! Wayfarers is a fascinating name and opens interesting implications about your world. I remain incredibly curious about the story you’re telling.

Second of all, my usual 2J3O (Two Jews, three opinions) disclaimer applies, especially this time, because I’m going to be talking about a lot of different Jewish practices with regard to head coverings, and while I’ve spent some time in a wide variety of different Jewish spaces and movements, I’m not deeply immersed in all of them, so for Jewish readers, if I make an incorrect generalization about practices in your movement I’d love to read your corrections. I’d also like to point anyone reading this toward Kermab’s previous ask for context on this conversation. 

As it happens, two years ago I conducted a series of interviews across denominations about head covering practices and feelings for a book I used in my fourth through sixth grade classroom. While I don’t have legal permissions to share those interviews for any purpose other than classroom teaching, I’ll be referencing them as we go along here. 

The first and most basic question is who covers their heads, and when. Your ask shows some basic and reasonable assumptions: men cover their heads in the synagogue. That’s not untrue, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

You might remember from the other ask that rabbinic Judaism, which most of us practice today, didn’t develop until the sacrificial system was becoming unfeasible and eventually impossible to maintain. At that point, it seems that a cultural convention was for men and women to cover their heads at all times, with the similar explanation of modesty. Modesty seems to take on a different connotation when we’re discussing men or women--avoiding self-aggrandizement for men, sexual rectitude for women--but in essence covering one’s head was universal. I haven’t made a particular study of the shifts in this custom over time, but I can note that many examples of historic Jewish women’s costume from different regions includes one or another type of head covering--as did the non-Jewish women’s fashions of many of those places. At some point it became accepted that only married women needed to cover their hair, that since a woman’s hair was to be understood as a symbol of her sexuality, an unmarried woman’s visible hair was a way of communicating her availability. Men’s headwear meanwhile shifted as well, as did other religious wear such as tzitzit and tefillin. Tefillin settled into a tradition of being only worn during weekday morning prayer. Tzitzit developed into two garments: a tallit katan worn under a boy’s or man’s clothing at all times, and a tallit gadol worn over the clothing only during the morning prayer service. In communities where it was becoming uncommon for non-Jewish men to cover their heads, especially in places where the Christian convention was to remove one’s hat upon entering their houses of worship, it became expected in a synagogue that men might need to be told that the convention was to cover their heads, and kippot began to be provided to them there. 

However, the convention isn’t actually to cover one’s head out of respect for the building. As you learned in your research, a synagogue building isn’t a locus of holiness but a location where holy activities take place. The expectation that developed was that men should cover their heads when engaging in religious activities. What are religious activities? Prayer, certainly, but also any activity that includes prayer, such as lifecycle occasions, home rituals, and eating. 

There’s a memorable scene in George Eliot’s famously well-researched novel Daniel Deronda in which Daniel sits down to a Shabbat meal with a Jewish family. Eliot describes the family and their guests pausing before they ate, the men putting on their hats, and a benediction Eliot and her character do not understand taking place before the meal is eaten. From my perspective as a modern American, it was notable to me that they didn’t put on kippot but resumed the hats any Victorian man would take off upon entering their home, which these men had apparently also taken off, but put back on for the brachot before eating (Eliot doesn’t specify, as far as I can remember, whether they kept them on through the meal). 

Daniel Deronda makes passing reference to the split that was already underway at the time in European Jewry, the development of the Reform movement. Early Reform practice developed out of a desire to be as little distinguished from the surrounding Christian culture as possible without actually worshipping a tripartite deity. Changes included, among others, abandoning all unique cultural garments, including tefillin, tzitzit, and any indoor covering of heads. At the time Eliot was writing, “Reformed” and “Rabbinic”--now Reform and Orthodox--were the only two distinct movements of European Judaism, though Hasidic groups, under the heading of Rabbinic Judaism but each having developed unique traditions, were many. My knowledge of what non-European Jews were doing, sartorially, at the time is very slight and I would welcome knowledgeable input. 

The development of the Conservative movement is generally credited to the 1880s, when a disagreement within the Reform movement about how far to assimilate and which traditions to abandon culminated in the famed “Trefa Banquet” at which those who wanted to conserve practices such as keeping kosher are said to have walked out due to the flagrantly non-kosher menu. The symbolic incident speaks to the differences in practice between the movements: Reform Judaism in the 19th and early 20th centuries might have been indistinguishable from Christianity in all but theology, while Conservative Judaism would have been indistinguishable from Orthodox Judaism in all but a few liturgical and practical leniencies. Today, Conservative Judaism is dwindling due to a lack of clear leadership or identity, while the Reform movement rediscovers practices they had once abandoned, and certain Orthodox communities make motions of various kinds toward the center as well; nothing is simple in the story of Jewish life, and nothing is ever finished developing.

Here’s where the gender thing complicates, because in the mid to late 20th century Jewish practice began to egalitarianize in Reform and Conservative Judaism. I won’t go into the step-by-step development of women’s prayer attire and the path to women’s ordination and full inclusion from a historical perspective, but my own experiences are pretty illustrative about the development of practices from the 1990s until today:

I grew up in an Orthodox congregation, a university Hillel, a Conservative congregation, and a Conservative parochial school. The Conservative congregation was the only one of these that owned its own building; the school rented the top floor of the JCC and both the Hillel and the Orthodox congregation met on Saturdays and holidays in all-purpose rooms on the university campus, and when those were unavailable in whatever spaces they could secure. In all of these communities, boys were required to be wearing kippot at all times; in the Orthodox congregation men sometimes wore hats, while in the school there was a clear distinction between hats, which were impolite to wear indoors as a function of 20th century American culture, and kippot, which boys were required to be wearing at all times on school property; a boy who forgot to bring his own kipa had to walk to the office, deposit 25 cents in the tzedakah box, and take a plasticky black kipa to wear for the rest of the day. In the conservative synagogue, men were required to wear kipot, and women who were taking an active role in the service of any kind were required to cover their heads as well, with a kipa, a hat, or a provided lace doily. Women in the pews were permitted to make that choice themselves. 

As a girl*, I was and remain uncomfortable with that dichotomy, in a way that is separate from the fact that I turned out not to be a girl after all. An Orthodox adult offered the paltry reasoning that women were simply closer to God than men, and that being thus not required to take part equally they were therefore barred from doing so, which at eleven already read to me as Victorian essentialist nonsense.  As an adult I know women for whom that reasoning or a softened version of it is spiritually meaningful but I have also known many, so many women for whom that logic was a source of frustration and hurt. 2J3O. 

I began wearing a kipa at the age of eleven, at first only as a form of protest against the principal’s daily “We will begin; all boys put on your kippot,” and later because wearing it became meaningful to me in ways I still struggle to put into words. I began to wear my kippot at all times that a boy was expected to do so: at all times on and around the JCC where the school was, on school field trips, at the synagogue (we had by that time tapered off participation as a family in the Orthodox congregation and were splitting our attendance between the Hillel and the Conservative synagogue: I later learned that this was because my mother was concerned that my brother would adopt the sexist attitudes she had overheard from men in the campus Orthodox group; all I knew at the time was that the communities I was in were struggling with how much and in what contexts to adopt egalitarian practice. 

I was not the only girl* who formed our small brigade of kipa-wearing heritors of our mothers’ feminist battles, but we were not many. At school, the principal still opened the prayer service with a reminder that all boys were required to put on their kipa--and as we moved up into middle school, tallit and tefillin--and every day I stood up with the crowd of grumbling boys and wrapped myself in the tallit I had sewed and tied with my mother’s assistance and the tefillin my parents had bought me at my request. Once or twice I forgot my bag at home and went without, and the principal said nothing, though boys would have copped a lunch detention. Once I lost my kipa somehow on the bus to school and marched myself to the office to put my quarter in the tzedaka box and take my shameful plasticky kipa; the office manager watched me and said nothing. Boys struggling to put on their tefillin began to ask me for help rather than other boys or the principal; I was the only one in my grade clearly doing this by choice; I got an early taste of what it is like to teach and began to learn to lead without judgement or blame. 

My bat* mitzvah celebration took place on a Sunday rather than a Saturday. I wore my tefillin with a fluffy floral, crinolined Easter dress and a kipa my mother decorated with fabric flowers. I spoke in my sermon about feminism, about equality, about arguments for a gender essentialist practice that I had heard and rejected already as I took the traditional first steps into Jewish adulthood. Besides me, men and women participated equally in the service: the Hillel rabbi shopped around among the Jewish professors in my parents’ social circle and created a breakdown that satisfied us all. A few of my father’s cousins declined their invitations, but no one I was actually acquainted with. 

I went to public high school and for the first time was spending my every day in a context where boys’ heads--and therefore mine--were uncovered and Jewish topics rarely came up in conversation. I made close friends, I dated Jewish boys my friends recommended, that I should have instead made friends with, and I wondered who I was. The summer before Sophomore year I came back from a week at Jewish teen camp and did not take my kipa off. I have worn it every day since then, for more than twenty years. 

My mother, who had been my model and cheerleader in exploring my Jewish, feminist development was initially uncomfortable. I remember a morning when her discomfort escaped in the form of snark: “[Meir] thinks she’s* going to a religious occasion.” I snarked back, adopting a theatrically pious tone for my “Life is a religious occasion,” but snark aside that’s actually the way I experience it. Wearing the kipa every day, whether I’m teaching Hebrew or taking out the trash, is a way of expressing that my religious life is not compartmentalized in certain actions and locations: I am the same Jewish, trans, complicated me, wherever I am and whatever I do. 

In graduate school I worked in a Reconstructionist synagogue, and I do again now, and the practice in the school I taught in then was to require all students to wear kippot at all times in the synagogue: that’s been the case when I’ve taught in Reform congregations as well. When I taught in a Conservative congregation I was permitted to encourage but not to require girls to wear kipot, but I was asked to require the boys to do so. Since that wasn’t a community where I felt I could be transparent about my trans identity, I wasn’t able to bring my personal experiences to use there, and that’s what set me on the road to creating my book of interviews with as many different kinds of Jews as I could gather. 

My interviews with other Jews about their head covering choices revealed a wide diversity of feelings. I had a cis male Conservative rabbi/professor tell me he only covers his head when he is specifically teaching on religious subjects (he also teaches history, I believe), and that when he was a child in an Orthodox parochial school his rabbi advised the boys to wear baseball caps to cover their heads on the subway so that if they misbehaved it wouldn’t reflect badly on the Jewish community. I had the son of the same rabbi tell me he wore his kipa at all times as a matter of habit, but his fiancee had asked him to pocket it or wear a hat if they were going to a restaurant on Shabbat, because that was contrary to the practice of both of their youth (traditional Shabbat practice forbids using money and cooking or instructing someone to cook for you). I had a cis male Reform rabbi tell me that he wore a kipa at all times because, although he didn’t keep kosher and didn’t refrain from going out to restaurants on Shabbat, he wanted to make the point that those too were legitimate practices of legitimate Jews. I had a cis male Conservative rabbi tell me that he preferred to wear a bandana rather than a kipa unless the occasion was too formal to allow it. I had a Lubavicher woman talk to me about the deep and the practical meanings she found in different methods of covering her hair and why she had shifted those practices throughout her lifetime; I had a non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox woman say almost identical things, and I had a third Orthodox woman tell me she had worn hats that covered most of her hair when her children were young so that they would be able to fit in, but now that they were adults she wore the smallest hats she could find without actually being a kipa, to the mild agitation of her community. I had a hospital chaplain, not a rabbi, tell me that he used his kipa with a team logo on it to connect with patients, but that he rarely wore it outside of work situations. I had a gender-fluid person talk to me about different ways she has covered her head, or her hair, at various times in her shifting personal identity, to fit in with various different communities. I had so many women clergy and lay people tell me about harassment they had experienced from ultra-Orthodox men and non-Jews for wearing a kipa in public that I couldn’t use all of them. Some of the women talked about having given up covering their heads except in the synagogue or Jewish holiday meals. Some talked about wearing hats to look more like Orthodox women, or wearing beaded kippot that could pass as hair accessories. Some talked about defiantly wearing their kippot despite the aggression of Orthodox men demanding that they conform to Orthodox proscribed gender performance or non-Jews demanding that they engage in discussions of Israel politics while grocery shopping, or using public transportation. I had a Black Lubavicher woman tell me that when she wore a tichel (headwrap) she was frequently mistaken for Muslim, but that when she wore a shaitel (wig) she was frequently mistaken for Christian. In particular my students were moved by that tension: for so many of the interviewees in the book, the benefit and the drawback of their head covering choices was being identifiable as Jews, and here was someone covering in extremely mainstream ways and going unrecognized even within her own community. 

Every single person I interviewed who was in any way a parent, teacher, or community leader talked about the hope that, whatever their practice was, it would inspire children who look to them to do the same. 

Among interviewees who wore a kipa as part of their practice but not all the time, there was a general agreement along the lines of “I wear it when I engage in prayer, learn or teach Jewish subjects, or eat with a Jewish group.” The practice isn’t tied to the location but the activity. However, there are some locations that are so strongly associated with those activities that one might be expected to cover one’s head there regardless of the specific activity. 

Looking specifically at the Wayfarers’ gathering-house (a literal translation both of the English term “Synagogue” and the Hebrew “Beit Knesset”), I would certainly say yes that they would cover their heads in one way or another when sitting down to eat; you can make a call about whether they would do so to engage in community politics or conduct diplomacy, and I would imagine there might be other priorities on their mind in the event of a monster attack. I will say that the border between religious practice and cultural practice, when it comes to Judaism, is not really meaningful, so if the community comes together for, say, a wedding or a holiday party, modern Jews who wear kipot would almost universally put on a kipa for such an occasion. It’s your call as to whether the gender divide is a meaningful factor in your imaginary culture; I will say that from Rashi’s daughters wearing tefillin to Rabbi Regina Jonas tending to her community in Nazi Germany to the ordinations or admissions into rabbinical school in the past few years of openly nonbinary clergy or prospective clergy in the Reform and Conservative movements, it has never been truly black and white. The choices you make in that regard will tell a story about who the Wayfarers are and how they fit into the larger history of your world. 

*A note on gender: like Jews, trans people have a wide diversity of opinions and attitudes, including toward their childhood selves. What is comfortable for me is not necessarily comfortable for other trans people. Referring to myself as having been a girl is honest with regard to the way I experienced things then; referring to me as a woman now would be an aggressive act of rudeness. Referring to someone as their assigned gender when speaking about their childhood is not and should not be the norm unless the person has specified that it’s their preference: I only do it in certain contexts and do not prefer that others talk about me as having been a girl. I chose to do it in this context because I was discussing choices I made at a time when I would have described myself as a girl. Today my pronouns are exclusively He/Him and it is not my practice to reveal my previous name. 

[cynthiaandsamus]

Custom Toonami Block Week 79 Rundown

Code Geass: Lelouch is establishing the official United States of Fuck Imperialism which is like the UN but actually does stuff, plus he has to deal with the fact that CC’s lost her memory and is acting like a demure slave girl harem choice from a VN. Charles is still trapped in the Human Instrumentality Shadow Realm so everyone figures this is a great time to unify everyone against Britannia. Kallen beats the shit out of Suzaku for being a dick to her all this time and the Knight of Ten is making his rounds because they realize they forgot to give him any buildup and he’s going to be a miniboss later so they have to cram all his being a dick personality into like five minutes while all the Knights of the Round assemble to prepare for an attack on Japan once the National Federation is formed. Llyod and Cecile for some reason enhanced the Guren for Suzaku even though he’s clearly more used to the Lancelot but apparently they enhanced it too much and made it a death machine like the Talgeese in Gundam Wing so Suzaku has to stick with the Lancelot. Looks like the Guren will have to sit and collect dust unless a certain pilot is rescued and then immediately has a convenient upgrade. Amazingly all the countries go along with everything Zero says and give up their militaries and have the Black Knights be the official military of the Federation. I don’t know how that works given that the Black Knights have been struggling to fight off one nation’s military idk how it’s supposed to substitute for a dozen nations’ military but I guess they conscript support and troops from the other nations or something. Charles comes back on the tv after the Federation is formed and is all “Awww what a cute little UN you have, fuck off bro.” which you’d think this’d be the perfect time for him to just out Lelouch as Zero and wreck the Black Knights’ morale but he doesn’t for some reason and they’re just gonna fight. Lelouch is freaking out and knows that having everyone want to murder the Britannian royal family includes Nunally so he calls Suzaku who just straight up goes “Bro cut the crap are you Zero or not?” and after so much plotting and scheming Lelouch just comes right out with it. Suzaki agrees to protect Nunally as long as Lelouch meets him alone at the Kururugi Shrine where this all began.

Inuyasha: This is another one of those Modern Day filler episodes which are always fun. There’s just something about Inuyasha running around in modern Japan being Spider-Man and saving people and catching bank robbers on the way to deliver Kagome’s lunch that’s so thoroughly entertaining. Basically Inuyasha spends this whole episode jittery that everyone’s so chill and ready to relax after Naraku just got away and is probably an inch from death but after a big adventure in the modern era where Kagome is as usual unprepared for her test, he ends up passing out on the bed after insisting a little battle with Naraku wouldn’t exhaust him. It’s a really cute little episode to let everyone bide some time and reflect on the past arc now that we’re starting a new wave of filler before we get to the Band of Seven and Mt. Hakurei stuff.

Yu Yu Hakusho: The first match of the tournament is about to begin and Botan, Shizuru, and Keiko come in with Koenma who is sick of baby jokes and puts on his bishonen disguise to impress everyone. There’s some neat lore about how they gave Koenma the guest team every year to bribe him into not shutting down the tournament without giving him anything of value and how the bloody show of the Dark Tournament pacifies the demons so they kill fewer humans, so that’s cool. Since Yusuke is still passed out, Kuwabara is de facto Captain and decides on simple one on one matches while the other team Captain just kinda roasts an eight of the crowd to see if it’ll wake Yusuke up. Kuwabara’s in the first match versus Prototype Killua, complete with afterimages and yo-yo tricks. They size each other up for a while and Kuwabara shrugs off getting his fucking neck broken surprisingly well while they go back and forth with “Well I can track YOU better” for a while. Togashi really loves his yo-yos of death so those have Kuwabara on the ropes and turn him into a fucking kite ready to slam back down into the arena, so yeah, Kuwabara’s having a rough time of it.

Fate Zero: Waver’s been having strange dreams about Iskandar, and not the ones people usually have about him. So he goes to get a basic history lesson on the historical figure that’s been chilling on his couch for a few weeks and spending all his money on xbox live arcade. They also go through all the ridiculously obvious historical inaccuracies and Iskandar’s just like “idk bro, I’m here so the book must be wrong” which is hilarious because Fate also does this with more modern historical figures that we have pictures of and shit so they basically sit there saying all historians have no idea what they’re talking about and gaslighting the field of history as a whole. On the way back Waver’s upset that Iskandar’s so awesome that it basically takes any effort on his part to win and it won’t be an actual achievement despite the fact that they’ve taken out like… one servant, MAYBE, and most of the other historical figures are equally over the top. But still Iskandar says that if your aspirations are big enough it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, everyone’s tiny in the grand scheme of things and clawing at greatness you can’t truly perceive is what matters. Also Caster and his boy have found the wreck they made of their workshop of dead bodies and are kinda fucked up about it but also ready to fuck up more people because God sucks or some shit. So Caster summons a Bloodborne monster which you think more people would notice and mention during Shirou’s time, like nobody in UBW ever said “Hey remember like seven years ago when a giant Bloodborne monster appeared in the river?” so I’m guessing there’s some kind of perception blocking going on. But yeah everyone’s gonna jump on the Bloodborne Monster next time for the season premiere.  

Konosuba: So we pick up where we left off and Kazuma is working off his debt by… killing more toads. Wow this world really is like a video game, we get the same five enemies over and over again. However they’re fucked without Darkness throwing herself into monster orifices looking for a good time so Yunyun has to save them. We already met Yunyun in the OVA so it’s kinda weird to be re-introduced to her here in basically the same way but their relationship is basically like Gai and Kakashi if they only did the lame dorky challenges Kakashi suggested when he’s too lazy to think of a good one. Also there’s a cat now, I don’t think that really comes to anything, just a scene of Megumin going “we have a cat now” and everyone’s like “kay”. Kazuma and Megumin play Naked Chicken to see who can get more naked before the other backs down and end up taking a bath together because they’re both stubborn assholes. Also we get a quick snippet of Yunyun and Megumin’s backstories which you can basically make Yunyun’s the swing scene from Naruto (idk why Yunyun is bring out the Naruto references in me today) and Megumin is stealing bread like Les Miserables in increasingly bizarre and disgusting ways because she’s ridiculously poor or some shit.

Sailor Moon Crystal: So turns out that Usagi and Mamoru BOTH had their shots with the ‘fucks everything up’ sword with a pocketwatch and… the discarded gems of the four knights? Idk how that works given they were humans and also dead but what baffles me more is that both Usagi and Mamoru very obviously did not get hit by the sword but decided to fall down dead and not move for a couple minutes despite their shots very much being blocked and there being no blood. Anyway Queen Metalia has the crystal, bullshit is happening, 1000 years of darkness, you’ve seen Xiaolin Showdown, you know the drill. The remaining four Guardians get a cute little flashback of Usagi saying what she likes about them and then they give up their lives to revive her inside the dark energy blob of Queen Metalia and crystals and lights and shit happens and swords and wands are pulled out of nowhere and you know how a final boss goes, they beat it with the power of believing in themselves and shit like that. Also apparently the only difference between sealing Metalia away and killing her is hitting the giant bullseye on her forehead so yeah, hopefully she’s down for good this time. I don’t want to complain because this show was genre-defining but it’s hard to find things to say about something so generic and milktoast, it’s the Seinfeld problem where there’s been so many more interesting iterations that it’s just kinda “get on with it already” at this point. The only real markedly noticeable thing about it is how plainly and unashamedly it is about being a power fantasy for teen girls, and there’s something to that, harmless power fantasies can be fun but it just feels like the physical mechanics of this kind of progression being “She feels this shit REALLY HARD” is less exciting than some of the alternatives

Durarara!!: It’s the big Masaomi backstory episode and we get the whole deal of how he formed the Yellow Scarves and got into a relationship with Saki because Izaya wanted to orechestrate a gang war because that’s what Izaya does all day is orchestrate gang wars. It’s kind of amazing how many kids in this show are like “I don’t know how it happened but one thing led to another and suddenly I was at the head of one of the largest gangs in the city” like they kinda really yadda yadda over how that actually happens. But anyway Saki gets hurt in the gang war and Kadota’s gang has to save her because Masaomi’s adrenaline wears off at the last second and he can’t try and rush in and save her. I mean Dota’s van got there first anyway so how much he’d have been able to help would be doubtful but he feels bad about not even being able to try and Izaya says that fear and failure of his past will dominate his future actions which is exactly what he’s doing by letting his paranoia and frustration lead him to a war on the Saika army. Dota-chin tells him to face up to it and stop running or live with the shame of lying to Saki but Masomi can’t do that and his shame and determination to reverse the situation leads everyone into chaos as Anri discovers his secret.

[marireadshellblazer]

Hellblazer Issue #7

There are a couple of big gut punches in this issue. Forgot how hard the one with Ray hit, though.

Okay they need to stop with how amazing the cover art is. My heart cannot take it!

Whooo boy, ok, the guest art there at the beginning caught me a bit off guard. Good way to separate his dream from reality. Also, pretty hot. It really let’s us see into John’s mind; how he subconsciously views people and where is passions are. Where his curiosity overlaps with sexuality. Got some flashbacks to The Horrorist.

Also, I’mma have to agree with John here; public transport does suck. It was amazingly convenient in Japan, and it was nice to have around the college campus, but it isn’t exactly a pleasure experience wise. Worst I had was the subway in New York City. It was the single most disgusting place I have ever been.

So, another friend of John’s brought in here; Ritchie. Now, the computers he works with make this particular issue stand out as really dated. It also had me thinking about some stuff.

In my horror film history class, we talked a lot about what makes something scary. A lot of the time, the “monsters” in film represent the anxieties and fears that are present among the masses at the time. Movies about zombie outbreaks and viruses got more popular in the wake of COVID 19. Movies with people based on real-life serial killers prey on the fears people have about those in the community and their fear of being victimized. Movies with demonic possessions can be metaphors for all kinds of things, and werewolf films are often the most easy to decipher as parallels for everything from puberty to mental illness. Horror films are, in short, often scary because the thing to fear in them is often grounded in things that are real, thus the popularity of found footage and “based on a true story” horror films.

In our modern world technology is still a great source of anxiety. People watching you through your webcam, Google knowing your location, Alexa becoming one of those things from The Terminator, etc. While it might seem lame or dated now, movies like Ringu (or the American version called The Ring) play on these fears as well; our dependence on and the prevalence of technology and how it can victimize us. For instance, at the beginning of The Ring there are two girls talking about how they heard TV waves cause brain damage or something to that effect. This stuck with me since, when I was a kid, there were rumors that cell phones could cause cancer and that you shouldn’t sleep near them or have them on for too long (something about radiation, I think). Even now you hear about people thinking 5G will either kill us or be used for mind control.

What I’m saying is, even though it’s dated, it makes sense to me that technology and it’s use as a portal for the mind is brought into Hellblazer. Computers becoming more accessible and the rapid upgrades that came with them, I imagine, caused a lot of anxiety. What can they be used for? Are they dangerous? Can the Russians use it to take over??!!! (I assume that’s what people from the 80’s were like IDK). The idea of using it in order to access the spiritual plane, although farfetched, falls into the question of “well, what can’t a computer do?” which is something that people still ask themselves today.

Poor Ritchie. Another victim of the curse that is being near John Constantine. Making me think back to what happened during the séance during the American Gothic arc of Swamp Thing; another magician dead after being pulled into something dangerous by John.

My God…I mean since I read his before I knew it was coming, but Ray…breaks my freaking heart every time. It’s no surprise that Delano includes his feelings about the treatment of gays and those with AIDS. I imagine, at the time, it might have been an unpopular opinion. Showing Ray speaking of his illness bravely and being open about who he loves…it gets me every time. He was murdered by brainwashed cowards for ultimately no reason. He stood his ground bravely for a friend. This is some real horror, here. What’s more horrifying than the murder of an innocent old man via hate crime? This was the first time (but not the last) I felt my stomach drop when reading this series. Delano made him a martyr for the message. It could be argued that this fits into the bury your gays trope, but it does get the point across. His death is haunting. The reader may not know him well, but they know very well Ray did nothing to deserve that.

Something I didn’t notice before: John being on a train bookends the issue, as does the subject of sex. At the beginning he’s sleeping, so at least somewhat relaxed, on his way to see a hommie, dreaming about banging a friend. Pretty standard stuff. At the end of the issue, he is stressed and dealing with the reality that the aforementioned hommie is now dead more or less because of him. The ghost of his ex then chastises him for having sex as a partial motivation, which does appear to be the case. Sex goes from something good (as good as unzipping flesh can be, anyway) to something shameful and is being something thrown at him as a problem. Nice touch there.

Ok so the journal entries at the end from when John was in Ravenscar were a bit of a surprise. The one about his sister…I have heard of people having experiences like that with siblings or other family. Is that normal?

Words I had to look up:

Duck- dear, term of endearment. (aight, I have heard this one in this context before, and I could kinda guess at the meaning, but this time I knew I needed to be sure. Also, not gunna lie, it’s kinda weird).

kia ora- Maori word, used here I think to mean lively or cheerful.

Cosh- big-ass stick, used as a weapon.

[where-s-all-blue]

More University Headcanons!

Straw Hat Pirates Edition

Luffy

He's studying to become a photographer because he looked up to Roger, who himself was a professional photographer during the time he was alive.

Another reason for this is the fact that photographers get to see a lot of things their life, sometimes even danger, it's like an adventure.

Like most of his friends, he resides in Gold dorm and has done his fair share of stealing furniture for it.

He keeps a diary which he decorates with cute stickers and Polaroids.

He has a good eye, which helps him with setting the camera in just right way to get the perfect shot.

He's one of the louder residents which often makes people who need the silence to concentrate, like Law, go absolutely bonkers.

He's banned from the kitchen.

He keeps dragging people into the dorm.

Somehow? You just can't hate him.

Zoro

Decided to study social work when he realised how unfair the world could be.

Is also in the kendo club which he joined upon learning that the person who is seen as the best is its captain, he intends to best him.

Currently he supports one hundred and fifty-one wins and one loss.

The only loss was against Mihawk.

He's naturally good when it comes to dealing with people, but he truly shines when he's around kids.

He's often helping around the dorm by moving large objects in/out.

He was the one to clear the large area which later on came to support the workout area and the garden.

He often takes strolls on the woods located behind the dorm, he's easily the scariest being there.

His sense of direction is so bad that he was given his own device which tells him his location and how to get to the place he wants to go to. This device was made by Eustass and Usopp with Law telling them to turn it into a wrist watch which also measures Zoro's vitals so he can monitor his own health and sport related achievements. The data of his vital signs is transferred into his phone.

Usopp

He majors in engineering and thrives when it comes to inventions, his secondary is English literature.

He writes plays and stories on his spare time, some of them are pitched to the theatre club and art majors.

He's good at crafting and thus is often seen working on something for the dorm like name signs that all match the personalities of the residents.

He was the one who thought of turning the street sign poles into a fence around the dorm's garden.

He's also in charge of modifying the stolen property to ensure that nobody realises where they originally came from.

He was the one who turned that one car into a bed after he moved it inside in pieces. The car bed is in a room called "Silence Room" which was made to have no sounds get in or out of it. He and Killer designed the interior of it to help those who have hyper senses and are more proun to headaches (or just can't stand being around people too long). It's also used as a guest room from time to time.

He works the best with people who are smart like Sanji, Law and Eustass, he also gets very well along Chopper, the therapy dog that goes around the campus.

He's free spirited goof ball with very wide interests who gets along with almost everybody.

Being the jokester of the lot is his attempt to have people think of him as a good guy to be around with and to see that he's not just brain.

He struggles with seeing his own self worth and is very proun to feeling melancholic due to his high Intel making him realise things that he'd rather not know of. He has a low self-esteem because of being dismissed as a child due to his dreams and goals being too ahead of his time.

Sanji

Culinary arts and management major.

He was raised in a foster home, more specifically by the owner of the Baratier restaurant Zeff who he considers to be his dad more than his biological father.

He was kicked out of the Vinsmoke estate by his father Judge due to his wish to be a chef instead of becoming a lawyer or a doctor or a politician.

Technically he's still eligible of inheriting the throne of Germa Kingdom even if he was exiled.

He's still expected to marry a high class member of the society and thus Judge keeps messaging him about his choices, fully believing that Sanji will one day see his way and abandon his dream of being a chef in favour of the kingdom.

He even has a fiancé, Charlotte Pudding, though he never agreed to the scheme that was orchestrated by Vinsmoke Judge and Charlotte Linlin. Pudding also isn't too happy about the situation.

His foster father is the actual lecturer in charge of the culinary studies, but as he was in an accident and thus hospitalised, Charlotte Linlin is subbing him much to Sanji's demise.

He's one of the few people who who can cook in the dorm and he takes notice of other people's likes, dislikes and allergies.

Sanji's kindness is often noticed by others.

Nami

She's a architecture major, her second interest being banking.

When she moved into the dorm, she quickly noticed that the students who renovated it had no idea how things worked, so she had them redo few things. The dorm is now a lot easier to keep warm during the winter.

She was the one to pitch the idea of the Silent Room upon noticing how Law was struggling because of how loud the dorm had become as a result of the new first years moving in.

She works part time as a waitress at Baratier and she is known for her ability to negotiate the costs a lot lower that they usually would be.

She's a bit of a kleptomaniac, result of her growing up on a poor and unsafe area dictated by gangs.

She's also a honours student, who's part of the special program which basically ensures that she has enough money to buy her school items and food.

She often chats with the local witch coven to obtain more information, she also likes to hangout with Killer and Usopp.

Her best friend Vivi Nefertari is currently in an exchange program.

Chopper

A golden retriever akita mix.

He was originally Sabo's therapy dog, nowadays he's more or less the therapy dog of anyone who needs him. He still sticks by Sabo for the most of the time.

He's broken into the classrooms during lectures to deliver forgotten items to Sabo so often that he has his own attendance record and he's almost considered to be a student at this point.

His job includes going to the local pharmacy every Friday to pick up a specifically constructed herbal infusion packet and bring it to the Lair.

He's highly intelligent dog who was capable of deducing which herbs were part of the herbal infusion treatment and then retrieve the plants based on their scent.

He picked these herbs and spices from the garden of Gold Dorm.

His bestfriend is Bepo, a samoyed owned by Law, who also happens to be the only other dog on the campus.

Robin

Social Work major, secondary studies in history.

She chose her line of studies due to wanting to prevent other kids being forced to go through the same kind of neglect and abuse as she did.

She's fluent in multiple languages and writes her notes in one of the dead languages, which she self taught herself to read.

She prefers to keep her information confidential and she enjoys the confusion some of her antics cause.

She takes part in the weekly movie night and enjoys them greatly.

Franky

Robotics major.

The only member of the group who doesn't live in a dorm. Nobody knows if he even sleeps or eats, but if you need him, you can always find him form the workshop.

You need to drag him out forcibly to have him even leave the room.

Thanks to Luffy, he now visits the Gold dorm few times a week to hangout, but the second he sees something that gives him an idea, he bolts out back to the workshop.

100% workaholic, 0% sleep, 120% Cola.

Brook

Actual university cryptid.

Is literally dead and walking around.

Formerly a music major.

Nobody knows how long he's been there and frankly nobody cares, his flamboyant style is a mood and his cravings for food and drinks is something we all relate to.

He knows every nook and cranny of the campus.

He's been there so long that nobody even questions it and he even gets invited to university parties and to hang out.

The only time someone freaked out was when the group went to a fast food restaurant and forgot that the outside world isn't aware of him. He tipped the waiter generously with something that looked like an old coin. It was probably worth more than the whole restaurant.

If you talk to him, there's 80% chance of you triggering his natural response to anything which is singing and dancing.

He's literally a walking musical.

He's one of the few who has heard Katakuri's doughnut song and lived to tell the tale. Except that he's dead already yohohoho.

He's very likely to console you if you're not feeling okay.

When it comes to the modern technology and stuff, he's a bit confused, but has the right spirit.

Jinbe

The current captain of the karate club.

Nobody knows what he majors in nor from which dorm he's from.

When Shirahoshi from Atlantis (=Fishman Island) started her studies in the University, he was quick to form a protection team to her and her brothers from the members of the karate club.

He might be the instructor of the club? Apparently he's one of the strongest.

I woke up one morning and he was eating soba noodles in the kitchen, why and how is he in our dorm. Is he even a student here?!

Oh my god he's now fighting against Ace, I swear to god sport majors are so dramatic.

It was a tie. How am I supposed to feel about this.

They both are now emptying our fridge, someone please get them out.

[biwenqing]

slumber party!

Little Yuan has his friends come to his home for a sleep over. Modern AU.

for fytheuntamed on tumblr's untamed spring fest day eight prompt: spring

Gen | Words: 1888 | ao3

Yuan was very excited about today. Not only was it the first day of spring, and warm enough to play for hours outside after school, but he was having his first sleepover at his home.

Okay, Jin Ling had stayed over before, but because he was a cousin it didn’t totally count. Tonight Zizhen and Jingyi were going to be there as well as Jin Ling. It was more than a sleepover! It was a slumber party! Or so his dad had excitedly insisted over breakfast (though Papa explained that there really wasn’t a difference, to which Dad insisted there was because one was a party).

After school, they all waited for Dad as he finished setting his classroom to rights before the weekend. “It wouldn’t be good if someone left a tuna sandwich somewhere!” he called, as he wiped down the desks.

They were leaning against the wall, backpacks in front of them. “Look what I brought,” Jin Ling said, and pulled a book out of his. “It’s a bunch of ghost stories.”

���Are they really scary?” Zizhen asked, eyes wide.

“You can’t scare my guests,” Yuan reminded his cousin, though he wasn’t particularly worried.

Jin Ling rolled his eyes. “They aren’t scary because ghosts aren’t real. Besides, I haven’t read them, so we can find out together.”

Jingyi looked excited. “I know some ghost stories too! I also brought my flashlight. It can turn different colors.”

“I feel like we should have a campfire and s’mores if we’re telling ghost stories,” Zizchen mused, tapping his chin with one finger.

“Dad!” Yuan called. Dad looked up from where he was putting up some art. “Can we make microwave s’mores?”

Dad grinned. “Yes! We should see how big we can get the marshmallow to expand.”

“We can’t let it light on fire though,” Yuan giggled. Experimenting with how long a marshmallow could be microwaved had been fun until they set the fire alarm off. Papa still bought them more marshmallows though.

“Of course, of course,” Dad shook his head and walked over to his desk. “I’m about done here, you ready to move out?”

Jin Ling shoved his book away and put on his backpack. “Yes, Uncle Wuxian.”

“You have your scary little dog?” Dad asked, crossing his arms. “Because if not, we can stop by your house to get it.”

The last time Jin Ling had stayed over, he had forgotten Fairy. He hadn’t been able to sleep until Auntie Yanli brought it over. Luckily, they were pretty much neighbors so it was an easy walk to get Fairy, but Yuan didn’t like how upset Jin Ling had gotten.

Apparently Jin Ling didn’t want to repeat the experience either because he plunked his bag back down and dug through it. He pulled Fairy out triumphantly and Dad pretended to be scared.

“Good thing you have such a fierce protector,” Dad said, as they all stood now to follow. “Especially from ghosts.”

“But ghosts aren’t real!” Jin Ling rolled his eyes, which Yuan knew was very rude to do. He must have picked it up from Uncle Cheng.

“How can you know that? You can’t even do long division,” Dad said back, as he locked the door and then led them down the school hallway. It was always a little weird for it to be so empty after a day of classes.

“Can you do long division?” Jingyi challenged, walking beside Dad.

“That is not the question at hand!” Dad said, then winked at Jingyi. “But of course I can.” Yuan knew what his dad was going to say next. “I am bi and I can do math.”

“What’s bi mean?” Jingyi shot back.

“It means I get crushes on girls, and boys and people who aren’t boys or girls,” Dad explained. Yuan had also heard this before. “But now I just have the biggest crush on my husband.”

“Mr. Lan is so cool!” Jingyi agreed. Jingyi had come over to play several times and once Papa had helped them build a pillow fort and sat in it with them to watch a movie. “You’re lucky he’s your husband.”

“I am very lucky and I love him very much,” Dad said. Yuan knew some kids said it was gross when their parents got all lovey-dovey. But it made Yuan very happy to know how much his dads loved each other and how much they loved him.

...

When they got home, Papa was already there. He had set up the living room so that they could all sleep there, as well as watch a movie if they wanted. Yuan ran over and gave him a hug before leading everyone out to the backyard to play.

To Zizhen, who had never been to his home before, Yuan showed him the garden (which was not for playing in, though it was fine to snack on some of the peas and tomatoes), and the big tree that had a treehouse and swing. Jin Ling had already settled on the swing, Fairy set safely nearby to watch.

“This is so cool!” Zizhen said and climbed out to the treehouse. Yuan was glad his friend liked it, because maybe then Zizhen would like to come over more!

Jingyi was climbing up next. “Let’s play pirates!”

“With magic,” Jin Ling called out, continuing to swing.

“Pirates don’t have magic!”

“Cool pirates do!”

Yuan looked behind to see his dads were watching from the back door. He waved and scampered up to join those in the treehouse, Jin Ling following quickly after.

...

At dinner, Jingyi told Papa all about his project for the science fair. Zizhen was quiet at first until Dad started to tell him jokes. Yuan had told Dad how much Zizhen liked to make jokes so this opened up Zizhen’s whole collection. With the adults distracted, Jin Ling tried to put his vegetables onto Yuan’s plate.

Papa caught that right away. “Do you want something else?”

“We know we can’t cook as good as your mom, but give us some slack!” Dad added and Jin Ling stuck his tongue out at him. Dad just made a face back, causing Jingyi and Zizhen to both burst out laughing.

Jin Ling grumbled and began to eat his peas. Yuan was pretty sure he even liked them but he just wanted to get attention.

“Now that is settled,” Papa said. “What are your plans for the evening?”

“S'mores for dessert,” Yuan listed. “Then popcorn and a movie. And ghost stories.”

“Can we make a fort?” Jingyi asked. He was happily eating all his dinner, including the vegetables.

“Yes!” Zizhen exclaimed. “I want to make a fort.”

“It will protect you from the ghosts,” Dad said, nodding slowly.

“Ghosts aren’t real!” Jin Ling reminded, looking over at Papa. “Right?”

“There is no scientific evidence to support the existence of such a being,” Papa confirmed.

“Which means no,” Jin Ling scowled at both Zizhen and Jingyi.

“We can still have s’mores even if there are no ghosts,” Yuan said, and that got everyone’s attention.

“No dessert until dinner is finished,” his dads reminded them at almost the same time.

Making s’mores after dinner was a lot of fun, though everyone got very sticky. Even Papa, who had decided to be in charge of the actual warming of the marshmallows in the microwave. It didn’t matter though, because Yuan could see how happy his friends were.

The fort they built, once they had washed their hands and his dads checked every one to make sure there was no leftover sticky marshmallow, was big enough to fit all four of their sleeping bags. They were able to manage this by asking for sheets from the closet and the pillows from the guest room. They pulled over some of the dining room chairs to hold the sheets up.

As they were all gathered in the center, some flashlights standing on end to make a campfire overseen by Fairy, Dad called, “Fort inspection!”

“It is a pirate ship now!” Jin Ling called back, crawling on his hands toward the “door.”

“Permission to come aboard then!” Dad poked his head in. “This looks like it is very well constructed.”

“Thanks!” Yuan smiled. He has been careful to balance everything so that it wouldn’t fall down in the night.

“Your papa and I are going to be making our own way to bed, but we’ll come out and say goodnight when it is time for you to sleep,” Dad said, meeting each other of their eyes. “This is a special Friday slumber party treat to stay up late, but I will need you little pirates to go brush your teeth and change into pajamas.”

“Oh no!” Jingyi looked sadly in his backpack. “I forgot my toothbrush.”

“We have some new extras, why don’t you come and choose one,” Dad said and vanished with Jingyi following behind him.

Zizhen frowned, looking at Jingyi’s fallen backpack. “He doesn’t have pajamas either,” he whispered and Yuan could see he was right.

“I’ll go get mine and another set for him,” Yuan whispered back. He didn’t want his friend to be embarrassed or sad.

It was easy enough to find a spare pair of pajamas after he changed into his own. He slipped back into the fort and put them in Jingy’s back, sticking out so he would notice them. Zizhen and Jin Ling both nodded and went about finding everything they needed to get ready for bed.

Such a crisis averted, they all went to the bathroom and managed to brush their teeth, Dad watching over them and scolding Jin Ling when he tried to splash water from the sink. Hurrying back, they crawled one by one back into the fort.

Jin Ling then brought out the book, passing it to Yuan. “You’re better at reading,” he grumbled, picking up a flashlight to hold it and illuminate the pages.

Yuan leaned against a pillow, his friends crowding around. Opening the book, he found the first story. “This one is called Coffin Town,” Yuan said, looking around. Everyone’s faces were deep in shadow from the flashlights.

“Oooh that’s a very dramatic title,” Jingyi said with a grin.

Yuan nodded and took a deep breath. “Once there was a town with more coffins than beds, with more dead than living...”

~.~

“They tuckered themselves out,” Wei Ying whispered as he crawled back into bed. “It’s so cute, I got a picture. They’re in a little puppy pile.”

“They scared themselves with the ghost stories,” Lan Zhan said, glancing up from his book.

“Probably, but no harm done,” Wei Ying slipped closer, resting his head on Lan Zhan’s shoulder. “They’ll protect each other.”

Lan Zhan’s mouth quirked in a smile. “Cute indeed.”

“They’re a good bunch, I’m glad a-Yuan has such great friends,” Wei Ying said, grabbing his own book where he had placed it, spine cracked. “Our baby is the sweetest though.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agreed. “He gets that from you.”

“Aha!” Wei Ying tipped his head to press a kiss to his husband’s jaw. “I can’t get all the credit. You should see his other dad...”

Lan Zhan kissed the top of Wei Ying’s head. The silence of the evening hour fell back over them and the kids slept on, dreaming of ghost fighting pirates and warm spring days.

[shannygoatgruff]

My Brother’s Keeper - Chapter VI

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Characters: Modern Ivar X Modern Hvitserk

Rating: MA 18+

Overall Warning:  Dark story told from an emotionally distributed person’s POV with graphic and sadistic material including rape, terror, torture, kidnapping, drug use, slash, implied incest, necrophilia, and insecurity. Heavy trigger warnings.  

Chapter Warning: Implications of incest

Summary: Mama always said to be their brothers’ keeper. Now there is absolutely nothing these two won’t do for each other.  Boys will be boys…

Chapter VI

Today is one of those days where the weather forgot that it's supposed to be Fall.  It’s so humid in here it’s making the air feel like there’s a blanket over my nose.  I’m sure all the dust and mold in this place isn’t helping, either.  

There's a window in the far corner, but I can't really get to it.  Not without moving a ton of shit out of the way, first.  Lord knows I’m going to work up a sweat just trying to get to it, but it's too damn hot in here not to try.

I need to make sure I step carefully across the room due to the number of weak floorboards.  I wonder what's underneath of this place.  There’s probably an old crawl space or something.  I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough, but right now, I'm not really willing to break my leg to find out. If I don’t watch my step though, I might just end up going right the floor and into whatever is under here without meaning to.

Ivar is standing close to the old mantel bouncing on his toes. "Here's a weak spot," he says turning to face me.  Shifting his weight onto different parts of the plank, he discovers yet another flaw with the floor. That’s good.  This is something we need to know. 

He steps cautiously to the iron grates in front of the fireplace and starts to pull on them. "These are sturdy, though," he gives me a big smile as he continues pulling until his face is red. The grates are bolted into the stone structure and have probably rusted into place. That's awesome.

Placing one foot directly in front of the other, I count the number of steps it takes me to get from the front door to this space near the window. I know when it gets dark I won't be able to see my hand in front of my face and I need to know how to navigate my way around this room. Exactly twenty-five steps. Not bad for a guy that wears a size twelve shoe. If our guest is a woman, it will take her more steps because her feet are going to be smaller.  That gives me an advantage. "Twenty-five," I look over at Ivar and he nods, before pulling out his phone to make the note about the distance.  We need to know everything about any possible escape routes.

There are a bunch of chairs, if they can even be considered that, piled up on one side of the room.  They aren’t in the best of shape, either.  Most of these are gonna have to go, or maybe we can repurpose them or something.  That is, if they would even hold together long enough to be used again.  Each time I pick one up it seems to break apart in my hands and kicks up more dirt and shit when the wood hits the floor. 

I think all the dust flying around is upsetting all the maggots that were enjoying that dead raccoon under this pile of shit because they're starting to squirm around the more, now.  I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by them.  If we didn’t need to really scope this place out, I would be perfectly happy sitting on this floor and watching them completely devour this animal.  

I got shit to do, now.  I’ll check on their progress later.  

Finally, I clear enough of a pathway that I can make it to the window.  Of course, it’s just my fucking luck the goddamn window is painted shut.  I don’t care how much I strain, this thing ain’t budging.  God, it’s so fucking hot in here. 

Ivar's hand on my shoulder makes me turn around and before I can fully face him, I see him hurl a chair leg at a pane of glass.  He turns around with a boyish smile and shrugs his shoulders, “Better?”  Almost immediately I feel the breeze from the trees outside breathe life into the room and carry out some of the moldy smell. 

Nodding my head, I can't help but smile at him.  He always knows what I need without me having to tell him.

I close my eyes at the feeling of his lips on my forehead, "Where'd you find this place?" We're out in the middle of nowhere. This cabin was built deep in the woods for a reason. Whoever lived here before, did not want to be disturbed.

"Remember the one from a few weeks ago…the personal trainer?”  Ivar snaps his finger as he tries to recall the occupation of our former guest.  He casually starts to walk into another room to explore, “ I buried that one not far from here. I found this place on my way back.” 

“You did good, little brother.”  I’m so proud of him.  This place is a rare find.  I look out the hole in the window and can hear a creek running not far from where we are.  Not only have we found our next venue, but it has a wonderful ambiance.  "It's gorgeous." I want to spend more time looking out of this broken window, I probably would, but I know that there is much more to discover.

Walking the twenty-five paces back to the front door of the cabin, I decide to count off how many paces it takes to get to the stairs.  Counting aloud, I count off 14 paces from the entrance to the first of the broken, stone stairs leading up to the second level. If I'm not careful, these stairs may crumble under my weight. I am going to have to carefully mark my footing if I am going to navigate them successfully. 

It's dangerous, I know, but we don't take chances. We need to know everything about our surroundings, just in case our company decides they want to leave early.  We need to know where we might possibly find them, and more importantly what kind of condition they might be in when we get to them.  

The third step is extremely wobbly and probably won't support me. Instead of chancing it, I skip that one and place my foot on the step above it. From here, I can see the open floor plan of the upper level.  There's little to nothing up here; mainly bird shit, a few dead animals, and a big ass hole in the roof. The floor is completely rotted through to the point where I can see the exposed joists that were used to create the downstairs ceiling. Apparently, the termites haven't eaten through to the ceiling yet because I didn't notice this hole while I was downstairs.

There's nothing we can use up here as much as I can tell. I mean, I really can’t do too much exploring up here because I can’t walk around.  I can't even step on the floor because just pushing my hand on one spot sends a board straight through to the lower level. I flinch at the crash it makes on the floor below. "Sorry!" I don't think Ivar even hears me because he doesn't answer. 

Taking one final look at this room, I notice a small door hidden in a corner just below a huge spider web. Now my curiosity has got the better of me. It’s not like the door is on the other side of the room.  I just have to make it over to the corner.  I have to check it out, even if it means that I actually go through the ceiling myself.

You get used to crawling around in dark, dirty places after a while. Not the dirt covering my knees nor the blood on my palms, from the where the jagged pieces of bare wood of the ceiling beams cutting into them, bother me. My only concern is getting to that door. Who knows what treasures might await inside.

I make sure to keep my weight steady. Sliding one leg and one hand across the beams in even strokes, I listen intently to the wood creaking under me. On all fours, it takes me less than thirty seconds to make it across to my destination. I make sure to keep a mental note of the amount of time it takes to reach this door.  Who knows, that information might come in handy.

The door opens without protest, but I can't see anything inside. I use my cellphone flashlight to illuminate the crawlspace enough for me to see what I want to. The area is barely bigger than a closet and there are all kinds of hooks, chains, and tackle stored within. "Fishermen." It makes sense. There's a creek right down the way. This secluded cabin was probably some fisherman's home away from home at one point in time.  Gathering as much of the stuff from as inside as I can, I slide it along the floor back toward the stairs. 

Peering down from the landing, I see Ivar standing in the front room tapping his finger against his bottom lip. He's got a vision, that look on his face is a dead giveaway. "Catch."

He looks up with happy eyes and moves toward the stairs to see what it is that I've found. His smile gets wider with each item I throw down to him. "All this shit was upstairs? This place is fucking amazing!"

"Watch the third step..." I hadn't had a chance to tell him about it before he starts climbing up to catch the bait box that lands just short of his grasp. He wobbles on it and manages to jump down before the step completely slides off of the platform it was resting on.

Picking himself up from off the floor, he dusts off his pants and claps his hands together to get the wet leaves off of them. "That it?" When I nod, he gathers the items and carries them over to the fireplace.

Carefully, I make my way down the stairs, jumping from the fourth step to the floor. I see that Ivar's found more shit from the other room that he has now placed in front of the fireplace. A hatchet, sheets, and something that resembles a bed frame. "What's all this?"

"I haven't really figured out what it's all for yet, but give me a few hours. There's a bunch of other shit in there, too." With a shrug, he turns to me and gives a sheepish smile. "There's a mattress in there for you, if you want it."

A mattress? This place is like the fucking North Pole and Ivar is Santa Claus. I don't remember the last time I was able to do it on a mattress, excluding being with Thora. Usually, I get a chair, table, or the floor. Not that I mind, but with the condition of our accommodations being what they are, I usually end up with cuts and scrapes on me because of it. But a mattress? The possibilities are endless.

"So what do you think? You like it?" Ivar looks so hopeful when he turns to face me and takes both of my hands in his.

I'm so impressed with his find, words can't even describe it. "You’ve outdone yourself this time, Ivy. It’s perfect!" I squeeze his hands before turning toward the other room. "What's that room like?"

Running a hand through his dark hair, he shrugs. "A bunch of junk, mostly. But I figure, if we pull out everything we need into this room and pile all of the other shit in front of that door, we can just entertain in here." I follow behind him and take a look at all of the things left behind from the previous owner including the piles of nude magazines scattered around the room. 

People and their porn. I'll never understand perverts.

It only takes a minute to drag out the mattress and we toss it in the front room along with everything else. Ivar returns with a few lanterns and oil and they go on top of the mantle. Right now, this place looks like shit, but over the next few days, we'll set it up how we want it. After Ivar gets an idea of where he wants everything placed and what exactly he wants to do, this place will be a palace.

We walk in silence around the back of the cabin and push past the bushes to see the creek. “Hey, Serk?”  Ivar picks up a large branch from the ground as we walk, “Doesn’t this place remind you of the cabin we had when we were kids?”  There is happiness in his voice when he asks me.  

I nod, remembering how we used to fish and stick our bare feet in the water. “I remember me and Ubbe were always sword fighting.  And, you used to cry all the time because you never came home with any fish.”

“That was because of Sigurd,” Ivar says laughing.  “Fucker.  Remember that Fall at the cabin when we found out that we were best brothers and soul mates?”  I feel warm all over, as Ivar takes my hand in his and we swing our arms as we continue to walk.     

I nod my head and suddenly I’m stunned silent.  “It’s so beautiful here.” This creek is gorgeous. "Hey, Ivar? Do you think we would ever be able to have a place like this one day?  Like a place just for us?" I feel like a child with my request, but my memories of our childhood cabin are foggy at best.  I would love to have a home away from home, just those fishermen had. Sure, Ivar and I have a house together that's beautifully decorated and is warm and inviting, but we don't have a place to play together. 

Ivar's always complaining that with the amount of time we spend scoping out locations, we're seriously cutting in on the number of parties we could have. And I have to agree. If we had one place, we could party all the time. "With our own play place, we could entertain whenever we wanted to. And if he had a place like this one, we could do some work on it, like rig the floors or build little hidey holes to keep them in, or something.  Maybe you could use the fireplace or a creek if you wanted to get rid of them?  We would make sure it’s secluded in the woods, and it would have to be near a body of water somewhere." I probably sound desperate and pathetic, but this is something that I want so badly. "I don't know. It just seems like it'd be pretty cool."

“Do you really like it here?”  Ivar asks me with interest?  He takes my hand still intertwined in his and brings it to his lips.  "If you want this place Serk, it's ours. You know I would give you anything you wanted." The serenity in his voice makes my cheeks flush. 

Just standing at the mouth of the creek looking at the murky water flowing happily downstream, and knowing that we now have a place to call ours makes me feel so completely at peace. I know that I wouldn't want to share what I'm feeling with anyone but Ivar. He's the only one that can understand why I'm so happy. 

"Happy birthday, big brother.”  His soft lips capture mine and I immediately close my eyes and lose myself in the feeling of his hands in my hair. My arms snake around his waist to pull him closer to me as I try to feel more of the hardening in his pants against me.  “I love you, Hvitserk.”  He traces my lips with this index finger as if to permanently seal in his kiss.

“I love you, too,” I whisper back looking into his intense blue eyes.

Suddenly, Ivar looks at his watch and our private moment is broken, “It’s almost 7 o’clock, you’ve got to get going.  I’m going to stay around here and try to get some stuff done.” He turns and starts to walk back toward the cabin and I follow him in silence. 

By the time we reach our respective cars, he stops in front of me and gives me a quick peck on my lips, “Have fun tonight.”

As much as I'd love to stay and help him prepare the house, I know he's right. I have to get home and showered before I pick up Thora. She's going home for a week and I want to spend some time with her before she leaves. I don’t know how long Ivar is going to be working here, but he promised to give Thora and I uninterrupted time together. 

We found a fully stocked play place, I'm going to spend some time with my girl, and I have the best little brother in the world. What more can a man ask for?  

This has been the best birthday I have ever had.

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[elejahfanfic]

Hello Love/3

Fanfiction

Part 3

Pairing: Miguel Galindo x Elena Gilbert

a tvd crossover AU story

ft. Klaroline

a/n: well, here is another fluffy fanfiction crossover story. This time all human. Since I am a huge fan of the vampire diaries - kind of always do crossovers with them.

As of recent I really started to like the character of Nick Amaro from Law&Order_svu, played by Danny Pino. I also love him as Miguel Galindo in Mayans MC… and so, in this story - paired with Elena Gilbert, of course, my favourite female character.

I hope you like it. Thanks for reading. xoxo

tag_ @miguelsbrat​

✯⸜(*❛‿❛)⸝✯

Miguel and Klaus were whisked away by their mother to greet some of their old friends.

Elena was now left with Caroline taking another cocktail.

"This is not a bad party at all!" Caroline stated. "It looks like you are rebounding fast?!"

"What do you mean?" Elena looked at her friend now.

"Oh, I saw the way you looked at Miguel - he is tall, dark and handsome! Maybe a bit stuffy, but not bad at all!!"

"Caroline, stop it. I am not interested. He is a nice guy - and we just had a polite talk."

"All right. I am not going to push it. Rebekah said that he wrapped himslef up in an untouchable cacoon. He has not dated anyone since his wife died.”

“Oh” Elena exclaimed softly looking in the direction of Miguel. But as Stefan joined them, she now turned to the man.

"You guys seen Yemaya?!" Stefan asked.

"Yeah," Elena said, "I think she went into the garden.Stefan thanked them and went to look for her.

"What shall we do?" Caroline said to her friend,"help them, not help them?"

"I think that we shouldn't meddle. I think Yemaya will realize that it would be stupid to let someone like Stefan walk." Elena replied.

"Oh, no. Damon is coming this way."

Caroline saw that he was now approaching them.

Sooner or later, Elena knew that they would have to face one another and as he came to them she kind of went the way to the garden and he followed her.

Caroline now looked for Rebekah.

"Elena, will you stop?!" Damon said grabbing her by the arm.

"What is it?" Elena’s chocolate eyes blazed at her ex.

"I want to talk to you."

"What about?"

"I made a mistake-but I love you!"

Elena inhaled deeply, annoyed."You don't love me- if you loved me you would never had slept with Krystal! And to tell you the truth - I think that you did me a favour. And - actually it made me realize that there was no real love between us anyway - it was just this toxic"

Before she managed to finish the sentence, he pulled her to him and kissed her.

Elena pulled away, sifting angrily at him,"Don''t ever do this again! Leave me alone!"

“Come on - she doesn’t mean anything to me - you know that - it was just - a stupid glitch.”

“We are over. And I don’t want to talk to you, see you or know anything about you!” Elena ripped away from Damon’s arms, trying to fight her tears, running out of the garden into the house.

“Are you all right?” Miguel asked as he nearly crashed with the brunette coming from the side room.

“Yes. Where is the bathroom, please?”

“Upstairs. Let me show you. This is a big house” Miguel led the way.

“Thank you.” Elena said, feeling much calmer already.

“There” Miguel gestured to the guest bathroom.

Elena entered and now washed her hands, and sat down on the rim of the tub.

“Are you all right?” Miguel knocked at the door. “I don’t want to bother you, but you were not looking well...and I’m a doctor - so”

Elena now opened the door. “I’m fine - I just forgot to eat today - and had the champagne and just felt a bit queasy.”

“You are a little bit pale. Let me get you a sandwich - the hors d’oeuvres are not sufficient.” Miguel offered.

“Thank you. But I think that I am going to go home. I got up at 5 as I had an order to finish and I’m really tired.” Elena said.

“All right. Shall I call you a cab?”

“Yes, please.”

***

A few days later

Mikaelson Mansion

"I saw you having a good time talking to Elena!?" Rebekah remarked teasing Miguel slightly.

"She is a nice person" Miguel replied.

"Ah,Elena?! Really?!" Kol said. "Isn’t she with Damon Salvatore."

"As usual you don't know anything Kol," Rebekah said, "didn't Bonnie tell you that they broke up!"

Miguel listened attentively, but kept quiet.

“I think she mentioned something. Yeah - the other night she spent hours on the phone with her.”

“It was a bad break up. Damon cheated - nothing new. She kicked him to the curb. She is the sweetest soul and deserves a good guy. Like you Miguel.”

“Here you are - blantanly matchmaking” Kol said.

“And so what? I don’t see you complaining - and Miguel also deserve a happy ever after.”

“I’m here” Miguel now said.

“Yeah - sorry. I don’t want to be insensitive - but, seriously. You seem to like her. Ask her out. Have dinner. Maybe things will happen. Maybe they don’t, but there is no harm in trying.” Rebekah said.

“You’re right,” Miguel said, “but it has been a long time since I’ve done  anything like that. And she has just broken up with her boyfriend, so I don’t think it is really appropriate to ask her out.”

Before Rebekah could continue, Esther entered the room, pulling him away.

“I would like to do something special for Cristobal’s birthday” the woman said to Miguel as they walked into the drawing room.

"Thank you, mother. That would be wonderful."

“You have both adjusted well. I am really happy that you decided to return living here.”

“Cristobal needs to have a sense of family - I should have came back years ago.” Miguel said.

“Henrik and him are getting along so well - you have done a great job with him.”

“Not without the great help of Senora Vega - she did most of the work.” Miguel pointed out.

“She is a marvelous woman. I don’t know why she declined the invitation to the party.”

“She doesn’t like big gatherings like these.”Miguel replied.

“I will invited her for tea some time. Right. I will cooridinate the birhtday party with Cristobal then - I’ve learned from Henrik, that it is not wise to take things in one’s own hands.” Esther said.

“He is very particular about what he likes and dislikes.”

“Weren’t you all?” Esther cocked an eyebrow, referring to all of her children, him included. They all were a handful, each with an ego, and very demanding personalities.

“We were” Miguel curled a smile remembering the chaos that reigned in the house when they were kids.

“Ah, I miss those days,” Esther said, “the house is too quiet now. It’s just us and Henrik. You all have moved out and - I truly wish I had more grandchildren.”

“It will come.”

“I don’t know. Same as you, Kol is too immersed in his work at the hospital, even though he is been with Bonnie for a while now. And don’t start me on Rebekah - she is like her father, dedicated to the magazine, and Klaus - you know - “

“Yes - no stabile relationship at all.”

“Exactly. But I am greateful that all of you are fine. And I hope sincerely that you will find someone, too.”

“I don’t know - no one is “

“like Emily, I know. Come on, dinner is about to be served.”

***

The next few days everyone was busy with their work and they mostly talking to one another over the phone.

Elena had locked herself in the bakery working from morning till evening. She was preparing herself for a cookie fair and so she concentrate on it only.The only person she would see was Caroline, who would come to the shop.They had dicussed Damon only once, and Elena didn't want to hear his name or anything about him.

"He can disappear into another dimension as far as I am cocerned!," was the last thing on that subject matter, "I got my work...and I mean it... I want to open another shop... And it will be cupcakes... I have a whole load of new recipes and designs and I want you to draw up a contract, and I want you to go with me and see some potential shops." Elena said to her friend.

"Yes. I will. I know that men are off subject-but- I am going out for dinner with Klaus!" Caroline then said.

"You really work fast!"

"It's a dinner. I just want to get to know him,"Caroline stated,"Now you kept quiet about meeting Miguel before the cocktail party?!"

"It was nothing. I guy who bought me a cup of coffee,and then it  happens to be Rebekah's brother. He is nice."

"He is nice?!" Caroline repeated,"Right- and?"

"Nothing. He is nice. I have told you. I don't want to date. And why would he asked me out- according to Rebekah, he is only about work!"

"Says she who is at work all the time," Caroline referred now to Elena, "you liked him, didn't you?!"

Elena knew that her friend was relentless.

"He is good looking. Different- but didn't you say that he is a widower."

"So what? Why does that matter?!"

"It doesn't."

"Well, he must have loved her very much cos, Rebekah said that he didn't have anyone since"

"Really?" Elena was surprised.

"It's kind of romantic," Caroline then said,"To find that one love."

"Yeah, the one that is always and forever!" Elena said dreamily and then snapped out of it, "I have a great idea for a cup cake range with that name, actually two. One can be always  and the other one forever- two of a kind!"

"Make it really tasty!" Caroline said. "I will see you later!"

The door swung open and both women now made a half sigh looking at the man that was approching them.

Miguel. Elena bit a gulp back and tried hard not to keep her calm.

Caroline looked at Elena and Miguel exchanging a small non verbal gaze. There was a spark, she could swear. “Right. I have to go. Nice seeing you again, Miguel.”

Miguel nodded a little at the blonde, who turned on her heel, nudging a smile at Elena. Girl, he is not here for the cookies. Waving a little at her friend she exited the bakery.

“This is a charming place.” Miguel complimented the place that was a cross of a modern and old, very cozy and welcoming.

“Thank you.” Elena smiled pleased.

“I would like a box of mixed cookies - a bit of everything. It is for my housekeeper.” Miguel said.

“All right. I will put something together.”

“Can I have a Latte?”

“Yes, of course. Would you like to try these new cookies?”

“Yes, I’d love to.” Miguel said and as Elena took the plate, he read the name, "Aztec fire - is there chilli inside?"

“Yes. It’s a new recipe. I always try to bring out something new. I’ve got cookies from all over the world. We alternate it. My great grandmother was from Bulgaria and I got her recipe book when I was ten. Here are some of her favourites, called Medenki. They are made with honey.”

“I’d like to try those, too.” Miguel said.

“Ok. If you’d like to sit down. I’ll bring the coffee and the cookies over to you.”

Miguel nodded and now found a table by the window.

As she served him the hot drink and the cookies, they both turned their attention to the door.

“Ah, great mind think alike.” Rebekah said as she now came up to them. “Latte for me, too. And can I have the triple chocolate cookie and Nutella to dip. I had one of those days - “

“Of course. Coming right up” Elena said, leaving them to for a moment. As she returned, Rebekah asked her to sit with them for a little while, laying out all that had happened at work and their rival magazine stealing one of the stylist and a writer.

Both Miguel and Elena tried their best to calm the fiery blonde down. But they both knew that it was the hardest job, especially when she clearly was on the warpath.

“I’m sorry, I totally ruined this -”

“No, you didn’t.” Elena reassued her friend.

“Can you pack me a few more of these cookies. I think that I will need this tonight.”

“Sure” Elena said and now went to the counter to finish Miguel’s order as well.

"Ok-tomorrow lunch and I am not taking a no for an answer!" Rebekah said  paying for the cookies and the coffees, as she felt guilty for taking up their time talking about a problem at work. Giving her friend  one of those air kisses on the cheek and was out of the door. Miguel nodded a little bye to Elena and followed his sister.

"Damon, who?!" Elena muttered looking at Miguel and Rebekah discussing something before they each went their separate ways.

***

Elsewhere

Caroline wanted to dress to impress, and so she tried out tones of dresses and she wasn't happy with any of them. Then she finally chose an unusual green little number.

"It's only a dinner" the blonde muttered to herself as if it wasn't of any particular significance.

The door bell rang and she looked at the clock. It was seven and he was on time.

When she opened it, he charmingly smiled at her presenting her with an extravagant mixed ranunculus flower bouqet.

"Thank you" she took the bouquet trying not blush as he said that he wasn't really sure what her favourite flowers were but he was convinced that these were the most romantic ones.

"I -never really thought about flowers"

"Law and words are more interesting, I suppose!" Klaus said.

"I do girly stuff, too."

"Oh- I have heard of your gatherings"

"Rebekah!" Caroline exclaimed softly.

"I admit I used my sister to get a few pointers- for this evening-your favourite restaurant is Danielle's-and they serve french and creole food."

"So I guess we have a table reservations there?!" Caroline said her eyes sparkling at him.

"Indeed we have. Please" he stretched his arm out to her. She closed the door behind them and they went out into the night.

***

Meanwhile

Miguel presented the box with the cookies to Senora Vega.

“What is this?”

“This is a little thank you - for everyhing you are doing for us.”

“You have just given me another raise - it is more than enough.” the housekeeper said.

“It is never enough. You gave your life to us, and I cannot repay this with anything.”

“You know that I do not care about the money. You have also given me a home and shelter and it is an absolute honor to work for you, Dr Galindo.”

Miguel patted the woman’s hands, now asking her about Cristobal.

“In his room. He said that he has to practice for the drama group.”

Miguel’s pager buzzed and he now excused himself and went to his study to reply to the call.

As he got into his study, he put the computer on.   he took now the photograph of his late wife in his hands.

"You told me not to stay alone- but -I couldn't. I never thought I would be able to feel something for someone again,” Miguel inhaled deeply, “but I do." His thought swayed to Elena. Like Rebekah had said. She was a sweet, dear person, and his heart went double beat.

[clansayeed]

Bound by Destiny ― Chapter 10: The Cellar

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Destiny ⥽

Nadya Al Jamil (MC) has been struggling from the day she moved to Manhattan, but her new job as assistant to the mysterious CEO of Raines Corp was supposed to turn her luck around. Until she finds herself caught in the middle of a war involving the Council of Vampires who secretly run the city. An evil from the birth of Vampire-kind stirs beneath, feeding on the conflict, and finds Nadya bound to a destiny she never asked for.

Bound by Destiny and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series and spin-off, Nightbound. Find out more [HERE].

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

Nadya, Adrian, and Kamilah head to the Awakening Ball: the most exclusive event in American vampire society. For the first time Nadya finds herself in the company of others like herself – others who know.

[READ IT ON AO3]

“Adrian. Stop.”

“You remembered your second glasses just in case?”

“Yes.”

“Adrian. I mean it.”

“And this time I know better. No chocolate fountain.”

“Please — Kamilah, make him stop.”

“What? I’m just —”

Having had enough, Kamilah reaches out and cuffs Adrian around the ear without so much as a twitch in her eye. “You’re just acting like a bloody hen. No more. Nadya’s a grown woman fully capable of taking care of herself. She doesn’t need you hovering over her this entire weekend.”

Nadya flushes scarlet but mouths a ‘Thanks’ that Kamilah doesn’t acknowledge. Adrian steps back and clears his throat.

“I’m sorry. I simply…” While he struggles to find the words Nadya can’t help but feel bad for him. He really was only being a friend… right?

“Lily always had to do this kind of stuff, too.” She reminds him with a half-smile. He flinches slightly and looks into her eyes — there’s a pain there she hadn’t noticed before.

“I know.”

Oh. He feels responsible in some way — she understands, now. And god if it doesn’t make her a little weepy. But at the risk of Kamilah bringing up her lunch she just tucks her arm in with Adrian’s and squeezes against the cold like his presence is enough to warm her.

“Thanks. But I got it. Okay?”

He pauses before smiling back. “Okay.”

Whether or not he intended it to be that way his fussing has helped in one respect; it’s taken Nadya’s mind off of the rest of the gathering travelers on the station platform. The humans are easy to pick out: they’re the ones wearing coats and frocks and other things to keep them warm against the way winter lingers on spring nights. The vampires are otherwise unaffected by the cold and chat among themselves while their breaths send fog up into the air.

There are far more people — undead and otherwise — waiting for the train to Upstate New York than Nadya would have believed. She looks around and tries to place some of the faces; wondering if she’s passed any of them on the subway or at a bodega or just on the street. People living normal days and normal lives except they’re actually a part of this dark, hidden world she’s brought herself into.

“Wait a sec — I thought the only vampires in New York were part of your Clans.”

Kamilah nods. “Yes, that is true. However the Awakening Ball has attracted many different guests over the decades. Those who used to live here now spread across the world, not to mention friends of Marcel’s through the centuries.”

“Are any here members of your Clans?”

Kamilah inclines her head towards a small group standing in close quarters. All young and dressed in clothes that could pay a year of Nadya’s old rent; each face more beautiful than the last. “Lacroix will no doubt be making a fashionably late entrance, but the same is not to be said for her Clan.”

“A few of mine are over there.” Adrian gestures to three young men smartly dressed. Upon closer inspection Nadya can’t tell the difference between them.

“Seriously, you’ve Turned triplets?”

“Vietnam was a hard time for many,” is the only answer he gives — opens up a whole world of questions Nadya doesn’t feel comfortable asking.

Finally the station announcer comes on the speaker overhead; announces the train’s arrival and the usual safety measures. Nadya’s dreams of sleek modernity are quickly dashed as an old steam-powered locomotive chugs and chokes its way along the track. It’s a beautiful piece of machinery to be sure but she had been hoping for something along the lines of Amtrak luxury and not… well.

As the train pulls to an ear-splitting stop the groups on the platform begin to divide. Coats and their owners heading towards the dark, oil-black cars with rust along the edges at the back and the pretty vampires to the painted and well-maintained front cars.

She looks up to Adrian to find his face fallen. “Damn. I forgot about the cars.”

“How could you not? You’ve never brought a mortal before.” Kamilah gestures to the humans at the back. “Tradition dictates the human guests be seated separately from us.”

It makes Nadya grimace. “Why?” But the shrug she gets in response doesn’t really answer a thing. “Well, I mean, do I have to?” She hates how whiny, petulant she sounds. But the surprise of it sort of catches her on the bad end.

Adrian picks up their suitcases by the handles. “I’ll join you in coach.”

“Adrian —” Kamilah starts, a protest on her lips, but he’s having none of it.

“We can’t leave her on her own!”

“If we don’t get going we’re gonna be the ones left,” Nadya takes her bag herself and ushers them forward, “it’s whatever, let it go.”

Before Adrian can protest further she urges Kamilah to push him towards the classier cars where the line of vampires boarding dwindles. A shadow passes over the woman’s face, something Nadya wants to ask about when she meets up with them later, then she feels the chill of Kamilah’s hand in hers.

“Good luck.” She whispers, and nudges Nadya onward.

There’s no tickets for the conductor to check; he simply lets her board. The seats may not be luxury but they aren’t assigned so Nadya, the last to step on, awkwardly tucks her suitcase between her legs and shuffles to an aisle seat. The man she sits beside huffs at the intrusion and turns away from her bodily.

Didn’t matter the destination; train passengers would be train passengers.

The whistle’s cry carries on the wind and the train lurches forward. Too bad it forgets Nadya’s stomach back on the platform.

Half an hour in she settles in properly; moves to grab her phone and earbuds to settle in with her playlist, when she notices a weight around her wrist that hadn’t been there before. Nadya holds her arm up to the dim overhead light to see a sterling silver bracelet hanging loosely on her wrist. Links polished; it’s a thing of beauty down to the compass-like charm swaying with the motion of the locomotive.

Then there’s a tap on her shoulder that startles Nadya to the present — to the same conductor from before who looks between her and her bracelet with grim confusion.

“I’ll have to ask you to come with me, madam.”

His voice rings clear over the soft conversation of the rest of the car. Heads turn their way and some even stand in their seats to watch them. Nadya wants to sink into the ugly upholstery and die.

“Uh… w-why?”

“Please, if you will? And bring your things.”

She’s never worked harder to avoid eye contact in her life — wishes she knew someone, anyone who would speak up for her. “I — I don’t understand. I belong here, I promise.”

The conductor just isn’t having it. “I think you’ll find that isn’t the case. Now. Madam.” He’s not asking anymore. With embarrassment and shame burning in her cheeks Nadya stands and grabs her bag. Her seatmate doesn’t hide his grin of victory and quickly sticks up his boots on the emptied seat.

Nadya follows the conductor as he hastily leads her forward from car to car. Trips over her bag a few times and tries not to catch herself on any protruding limbs as they keep going and going and going. “Uhm, please — if you’ll just let me explain — or tell me where we’re going!” But the conductor might as well be a mime for all he says.

They stop in a bay between cars; different than the last few by a long shot. Though a glass pane she sees velvet booth-style seats and lush carpeting instead of plain walkways. A woman in a server’s uniform expertly balances a tray and three bottles of champagne against the train’s motion.

Before Nadya can ask the conductor slides open the door with a gold latch and gestures for her to enter.

“Oh — but that’s vampires only.” She pushes up her glasses.

“I’m aware, madam,” he gestures again, practically pushes her inside, “vampires and guests of importance. Claimed humans included.”

The door shuts behind her. The car residents either don’t notice or don’t care about her arrival, and she flounders in panic before catching sight of a familiar pantsuit standing at a bar.

“K-Kamilah!” She rushes forward, ducks wildly to avoid being decapitated by a tray full of what look like wine glasses of blood, where Kamilah awaits her with a satisfied smile. “I—I was sitting and then… then I don’t know! The man, he —”

A slender finger presses against her lips; silences Nadya’s breathless attempts at explaining herself. The chill of their entwined fingers sends shivers down her spine and Kamilah holds up her wrist and the bracelet with a coy smile.

“He was doing his job, Nadya. Now stop fretting.” She nods mutely. In return Kamilah brushes her hair out of her eyes.

“You, erm, that bracelet…”

The vampire lets it go, lets her keep the charm. “Adrian, bless his soul, has never been one to plan ahead. I imagine it’s why he needed an assistant in the first place. Come, grab the bottle.” Kamilah requests one more empty glass from the bartender and takes the three in her hand. Nadya grabs the bottle and hurries to follow. “Claimed mortals — that is to say ones with a Clan brand or some affiliate sigil — are allowed to sit where they please.”

“So that’s your Clan symbol?”

“Yes.”

“And you carry that bracelet around everywhere?”

She stops abruptly in front of the entrance to the next car up. Keeps her back turned to Nadya and she has to strain to hear her response over the conversations around them.

“No. I don’t.”

When Adrian looks up to see them both his face lights up. He helps Nadya put her case in an overhead bin and all together they toast to the trip with the wine Kamilah pours. Nadya braces herself but the sweet taste catches her by surprise. Judging by the twinkle in the brown eyes across from her… it’s not a coincidence.

How is this my life? Seriously and truly, with the utmost sincerity, how. is. this. my. life? Probably not the smartest or more eloquent reaction to the sight of the large castle estate but Nadya’s not taking it back for anything in the entire world.

“What do you think?” Adrian leans in and matches her smile tooth for tooth.

“I can’t believe he freakin’ brought it here from France.”

“There was a lot about the Old World they wanted to bring with them. Everyone kept telling Marcel he couldn’t, so naturally…”

“He did?”

Together they laugh through the front gardens and into the castle itself. Stewards and maids all dressed in the same era-appropriate fashion take bags, direct queries, and bring all the guests into a queue where they receive their apartment numbers and key cards to go with them.

Nadya turns hers over with interest. “Is it weird I was expecting old antique keys or something?” But Adrian is equally puzzled.

“Seeing as I was, too, not at all.”

Kamilah rejoins them soon after — having taken off to catch up with some monk or priest or other at the station — and Nadya’s momentarily left speechless by the flushed smile she’s pretty sure she’s only ever dreamed of.

Adrian hands her key card off. “He wasn’t at the last Ball, was he?”

“No,” Kamilah laughs — Nadya’s pretty sure she’s landed in heaven, “I haven’t seen Kusumi in centuries. It was happenstance that he was on the West Coast at this time of year. We have quite a bit to catch up on but there’s always tonight for that.”

The vampires walk around like they have this place memorized down to the cellar. Nadya follows hastily; tries to both take in everything around her and not get left behind. “Wait — the Ball’s tonight?”

“No — but La Soirée is.”

She doesn’t know if either vampire had to pull any strings to get her roomed with them or if it was one of those things that came with the perks of Kamilah’s bracelet; and while her good old-fashioned lower-middle class upbringing guilts her into wishing she could foot some of the cost she knows that’s just not possible.

There’s two bedrooms joined by a small communal living space in their guest apartment. Before anyone even says a word Kamilah grabs both her and Adrian’s cases and places them in one room; leaving Nadya to take the other. She’s not exactly bothered by it but the idea of sharing a bedroom with Kamilah — however temporary — does make her heart race.

While Kamilah busies herself with the careful removal of her dress from its box Adrian hunts down a glass decanter and two tumblers. Based on the dark red and viscous contents Nadya does not want to try some. Instead makes herself comfortable with her shoes kicked off and legs folded crossed on Adrian’s bed.

“So… what’s La Soirée?”

“It’s the party before the party.” Adrian hands Kamilah her glass and they both take grateful drinks. “It’s not an official thing; Marcel doesn’t host it. But a couple decades back someone decided to gather up everyone who was already at the estate and mingle.”

The word makes Kamilah snort. She wipes a drop of blood from the corner of her lips. “Such a tame description.”

“I’m just trying to explain it.”

“Not well.”

Nadya clears her throat and makes them both remember her presence. “Don’t give me the PG version. Out with it.”

With her hands on her hips Kamilah rounds to face her. “La Soirée is, for all intents and purposes, an orgy for the vampire guests. For many of us it’s a time to rekindle old friendships and business partnerships with those we haven’t seen in many years. That, and the excitement of the newly Turned tends to go to their heads and they need a place to release tensions in order to keep calm at the following Ball.”

“But,” cuts in Adrian, “there’s also a party for the mortal guests. Marcel’s cellar was decorated for it specifically.”

Only Nadya’s not really listening to him. She’s still trying to process vampire orgy because it’s not something one hears every day. And there’s a lot to unpack in a statement like that — especially when you know the vampires who would be at said vampire orgy quite well.

The mental image that flashes through her mind makes Nadya shiver bodily.

“What was that about?”

Nadya looks to Adrian with utter terror in her eyes. “You’re going to this thing… isn’t the Baron gonna be there? Or—eugh—Lester?”

She’s pretty sure she watches Adrian’s entire immortal life flash before his eyes.

“No,” Kamilah answers for him, “or rather I should say their presence is likely but their participation is less so. Signing up for such an affair doesn’t automatically mean you have to participate… or be participated with.”

So that explains why she’s pulling lingerie out of her bag. Nadya didn’t really take her as someone who would get into that kind of thing but maybe she’s only refusing to process the thought of her crush in an orgy. A vampire orgy.

God, if Lily were here she’d be losing it.

Finally, once the initial shock wears off, Nadya reaches across the bed and pats Adrian on the shoulder. “Well I think this’ll be good for you, at least.”

“Try telling him that…” mutters Kamilah under her breath. Adrian, meanwhile, blanches.

“And that’s supposed to mean what exactly?”

“You’re going, right? Kamilah, tell him he’s going.”

“I’m inclined to agree with Nadya on this one. It would be good for you to… loosen up.”

Adrian stands. Makes like he’s just going for another drink but he’s starting to do his business-pacing and Nadya can practically see the different emotions he’s trying to respond with. “Firstly — none of your business. None. Neither of you! Secondly — no, I don’t even know what to say secondly.”

He leaves the room before either of them can say anything else. Surely he doesn’t mean to slam the door but combined with his vampire speed that’s definitely how it comes across. Kamilah just chuckles to herself. Nadya, however; well she does feel a little bad.

She finds him sitting in one of the ornate high-backed living room chairs. Sipping another tumbler-full, his fingers drumming against his leg. Maybe even the hint of a blush. He looks up when the door opens but doesn’t stop Nadya from taking the seat across.

“I don’t want to discuss it. I wasn’t planning on attending La Soirée.”

She shrugs. “Okay.”

“Frankly I’m surprised you’re so—so accepting of this.”

“What,” she pretends to be offended, “because I’m a mere mortal?”

The look Adrian gives her is at the very least amused. “More like because you’re surprisingly okay with Kamilah going.”

Nadya freezes in place. Her quip; gone. Any laughter; poof. She’s pretty sure she had a good line about Adrian being ‘wound tight’ but that’s nothing more than a fleeting dream because — “Why would I have a problem with that?”

There’s a lot to say in the way he stares at her. No words; Adrian doesn’t need words. Unfortunately one of the downsides of getting to know someone almost intimately well is that they tend to get similarly close with you.

But he’s not wrong. That’s the worst part. He’s not wrong at all. And when she really thinks about Kamilah being involved in all that there’s nothing but unease in her stomach. It only took five seconds of being in Kamilah’s presence to know she was practically a goddess walking the earth. Living with her? Seeing her fresh from sleep or just after a swim in the moonlight? She’s more than her beauty and Nadya’s seen it.

Seen it. Never said anything about it.

When she comes back to herself Adrian’s carding his hand through her hair. The one secret thing she missed about Lily that she only half regrets telling him. He means well but it just makes her miss her best friend more.

“For what it’s worth I’ve known Kamilah for a long time — so I know how hard it is for her to open up to people. And… why she’s the way she is.” Whatever that is he doesn’t say. Nadya knows better than to ask by now. Maybe one day she’ll know them both well enough to not have to ask. To simply be a confidante regardless. “And she’s taken a liking to you in her own special way.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Don’t give up hope, that’s what he won’t say. Don’t stop trying. It’s nice having the blessing of someone who knows Kamilah as well as Adrian but doesn’t help her much in the long run.

As she’d packed without a nighttime party in mind — the more they tell her, too, the more she’s pretty sure it’s more a rave than a casual chit-chat over drinks — it takes Nadya longer to scramble up something to wear. But as with all things Lily’s voice echoes right in the back of her mind that a little bit of eyeliner makes a world of difference.

“Nadya? Are you almost ready?” Adrian’s knuckles tap on her closed door and the knob turns.

“Yup! Coming!” He enters just as she blinks in her last contact. For a moment he’s silent; it makes the internal panic grow inside her until she’s got both hands on her cheeks. I’m wearing a bra, right? Right.

“W-What? Why’re you looking at me like that?”

Then he smiles. “I think the last time I saw you without your glasses was your first day. Someone you’re trying to impress?”

She rolls her eyes and pushes past him. Doesn’t know what Kamilah must have said to convince Adrian to join her at La Soirée but he’s obviously going; all of his suits are made to fit but she’s never seen the sleek black number he’s constantly adjusting at the moment. Without a tie the collar of his silk shirt is open two buttons down and damn, son would be Lily’s phrase and she would be very very right.

Nadya looks around for Kamilah but the vampire is nowhere to be found. She untucks her hair from behind her ears with a huff.

“She went down without us. She said you were taking too long.” Adrian teases. She gives a quick pat to check for her room key as they leave the apartment towards the stairs. “Since you don’t know your way around I was going to show you the way to the cellars before meeting up with her.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

The feeling of being escorted to a party by a chaperon aside, Nadya tries not to psych herself out as they descend further into the castle’s depths. Adrian nods his head at fellow vampires — all dressed in some form of seductive, sultry clothes — and points out the humans they’re following. She doesn’t feel so out of place at some but the way everyone chats and talks together makes her feel very out of the loop.

He stops in front of a closed door, the final stairwell on the other side. The distant thud of bass music can be heard beyond. “This is your stop.”

She swallows. “Are you sure I should go to this thing? I’m totally fine with Netflix and room service upstairs.”

But Adrian’s having none of it and gently pushes her forward with a hand on her lower back. “Go make friends. It’ll make tomorrow easier on you, I promise. Or, when in doubt, just get smashed and use the hangover as an excuse to not remember anyone’s name.”

“Adrian Rai —”

When she turns, however, he’s gone. Vanished in a blur of motion.

A couple descends down the stairs together in sync and out of sheer habit Nadya steps aside to let them enter first.

“You comin’, gorgeous?” asks one in a thick Scottish brogue. His arm is wrapped around his partner’s hip and their cheekbones shimmer with rainbow highlight. Beyond that they look like they could be going out for a night at the opera.

Nadya swallows and nods; follows as they hold out the door for her.

The Scot’s partner flashes her a wink and a grin. “First Awakening Ball, pet?”

“How could you tell?”

“I’ve a knack for it. Trust me — this is the most fun you’ll have all weekend.”

“Aye,” the Scot nods enthusiastically — the music starts to grow louder around them, “the Ball itself is fun and all but Marcel’s a stickler for tradition. Can’t grind up against a fellow in a hoop skirt.”

“Trust me; he speaks from experience.”

They introduce themselves as Brandon and his Scottish partner Greer just before they enter the Cellar; tell her to stick with them since they were fresh meat at “the Y2K party that henceforth shall not be spoken of” and they know what it’s like to not fit in with the rest.

The music floods Nadya’s senses but she can’t pinpoint an exact source or DJ amid the flashing lights and various noises of revelry. It’s definitely a rave; they had that on-point. But the temporary nature of it all shows in the bottles on the walls gathering dust and the old-world feel of the concrete floor. It looks less like something planned and more like someone just happened to have a killer playlist and party supplies and wanted to try something out.

Brandon pulls one of the bottles from the wall and suddenly Greer has three wine glasses in hand. They coax her to drink cheerfully — “this thing isn’t nearly half as fun sober” says Greer — but meet her glass for glass. And they’re not wrong. The party gets significantly more enjoyable once the wine sets in and she feels more fluid.

They dance a little — mostly the boys up on one another exchanging sloppy kisses that make Nadya wonder what stage the vampire orgy is at right then — and when the most human of human songs comes on Nadya can’t help but get into the groove.

“Two hops this time! Right foot let’s stomp YEAH! Left foot let’s stomp YEAH! Cha-cha real smooth.”

Red-faced with delight, Nadya is pulled down beside Brandon with a laugh while Greer magically appears at his partner’s side with a silver tray full of canapes. He feeds Brandon from hand to mouth; Nadya watching shamelessly as he sucks the seasoning from the man’s fingers with erotic delight. When he offers her one as well she throws caution to the wind and takes it between her teeth — strictly platonically.

“So how’d a little sugarplum like you end up on the invite list? Who holds your pretty pink leash?” Brandon asks; makes Nadya choke on her next sip of sweet wine.

“P-Pardon?”

Greer rolls his eyes. “Who’re you here with; is what he’s asking. Fucking slut.” It’s an insult he says with the same affection as one might compliment a spouse.

“Oh, right. I’m here with my boss.”

“Your kinky boss?”

“No, just my boss.” But that does make her wonder; make her look around at the other party-goers enjoying themselves. “Is that, uh, the sex thing; is that the whole theme of this? Everyone here is a… sex pet?”

She’s not judging them in the slightest but it does make things a little more complicated. Not that she’s sure Adrian wouldn’t keep her at his side even if it was a thing they had to pretend. But it wasn’t exactly what she signed up for.

Brandon pats her leg, practically falls over on the couch to do so. “No no, sweetheart. Ignore him — he took a few pills before we came downstairs. Some are for sure but there are a thousand and one reasons and lifestyles people have that give them cause to be here. If you say you’re just here as a work thing then hey — enjoy the amenities.”

“What about, uhm…” She gestures between them with her glass.

“We’re here with Bran’s sister.”

“She’s my twin, though it’s a bit harder to tell these days since she was Turned when we were nineteen.”

Does she look surprised? She’s trying her best not to look surprised. “Huh. That’s, well, erm…”

“Weird, yeah, but I’m not really into the immortality thing so she brings us along to fun stuff like this and I’m covered for forgetting anniversaries.” They laugh and exchange a sweeter kiss than the others. Greer mumbles something that sounds an awful lot like “no you’re not” but she pretends not to hear.

The night seems endless. They drink, they laugh, they get up and dance and find more drinks in hand once they recover. She tries her best not to think of a world outside of the cellar walls; not of what Kamilah and Adrian might be getting up to, not of how Lily might be doing, and not of the dark things that haunt the streets.

Her new friends make it easier — every time they see Nadya’s eyes go distant they pull her towards some new thing or person that she simply must learn about.

It feels late in her bones but when she manages to ask the time over her clumsy tongue to someone with a watch the fact takes her by surprise: 15:37 isn’t an acceptable time to be this drunk at all.

The woman seems bemused at Nadya’s panic and pats her shoulder, offers her a glass of water that soothes the needles of wine left in her throat. “We’re running on the midnight hours here, remember?”

But the spell has been broken and it’s all Nadya’s fault. Or that’s how she thinks — how she struggles any thoughts at all. The cellar’s next hour is spent emptying in packs of threes and fours; of people kissing cheeks (and lips if they miss) with promises to see one another that night.

A Frenchly-dressed maid at the bottom of the stairwell hands out aspirins and bottles of water like after-party favors.

Greer’s not made any effort to return to sobriety but Brandon doesn’t mind. Gets aspirin onto his partner’s tongue through kisses and wipes the sweat from his brow with a shimmery hand.

“You take these—” he makes sure to close Nadya’s fist around five little miracle pills, “—and make sure you get your pert little arse upstairs and straight to bed. I won’t abide not seeing your lovely smile at the Ball. Am I clear?”

Nadya pockets the tablets and takes a long drink from her water. “Crystal.”

“Sure you don’t want us to take you back up to your room?”

“Na-dy-a’s ro—om!” Greer giggles like it’s the best joke he’s ever heard.

“I appreciate it but I’m good. He doesn’t look like he’ll make it much farther anyway.” She kisses their cheeks and steals another bottle for the trip without shame.

What must have once been a beautiful and sun-lit hall now hangs shaded and in gloom. The heavy drapes are secured with golden clasps; steadfast soldiers in the vampire’s war against the daylight. She debates peeking through one but doubts the headache brewing in her temples would appreciate it very much.

Nadya’s not lost. Can’t be lost if you don’t know where you’re going. But when will she get the chance to explore a place like this again? She won’t go anywhere closed off — and there’s nothing wrong with taking the long way back.

Most of the ornamental double doors are closed. Some are roped off with velvet the same color as the drapes. But it’s enough to look at the splendor. Every third hallway she comes across Nadya remembers to take an aspirin.

Upon closer inspection she notices some rooms have plaques beside them. Gold plating on wood dark and shiny with lacquer. She doesn’t recognize any of the names; the Dupont Conservatory, the Augustine Chapel.

Up a flight of stairs there’s only one door without a velvet barricade. Briefly Nadya catches her reflection in the golden tint of the Banner Westbrook Memorial Library plaque and hastily rubs away a smear of something purple and shimmery from the corner of her lips.

“Take that as a sign,” she tells her reflection, and when she nods it agrees that it’s time for her to get on to bed.

A turn of her heel and three steps back towards the stairwell later she hears a voice.

“My queen…”

Since her life became a horror movie Nadya promised herself one thing: should anything remotely horror movie-like occur she would refuse to play into it and bolt for safety. That’s what the damsels in those kinds of movies never do. And that’s how they end up dead, gotten, or whatever terrible fate awaited them.

So she knows she should run.

She knows there’s safety just beyond; up the stairs and behind the apartment door. She’s certainly freaked out enough to keep it all in mind.

“It isn’t like you to meddle in the affairs of mortals.”

“Think not of it as meddling; but rather securing an investment for the long-term.”

Again the voice comes from nowhere and this time it’s got a friend. A friend that sounds an awful lot like Kamilah — which means she really needs to book it. But something stops the logic and reason from willing her body to move; to act. Keeps her there like a statue.

When the voice speaks this time Nadya swears it’s coming from two places at once. Both behind the closed library door and deep inside her mind.

“I have been forced to act on the notions of unfit monarchs before. What makes a King; power, subjects? I’ll tell you…”

With a shaky breath and a hot tear rolling down her cheek Nadya turns to look at the doors. Hears the voice as if the speaker stands right there, invisible but real. She wants to scream, to run, to lunge forward and rip the doors open. She just doesn’t know why.

“Only one thing makes a King: his conviction. The rest will follow. As you, my Queen, my Soldier, my subjects — will follow.”

Then a bang. A gunshot without the bullet, the smell of burning powder in the air. Nadya’s feet carry her away from the doors, away from the ringing in her ears, away from the voice that echoes a hollow laughter through the shadowy halls.

[angelholme]

May, Myself and I

Day 24 & Day 25 - Luck & Apologies

So yesterday  I learned that the people at...... whoever wrote Civilisation finally got round to issuing a patch to Civilisation 6 so that the entire play area fits on the screen. 

You would think they would have done this when they released the game originally, but apparently not. However now that they have I ended up spending most of last night playing Civ VI and starting my attempt to conquer the world.

Which meant that I forgot to write about “LUCK” so apologies for that. 

Around once a week or so the entire world - or quite a part of it - gets together to watch Doctor Who. A very enterprising woman named Emily Cook had the idea of staging a “global rewatch” of various episodes, and inviting people who were involved in them to tweet about them. So far it has involved such luminaries as Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, David Tennant, Katherine Tate, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darville, Sophia Myles, Noel Clarke and a host of others (who I admit I have forgotten because I am kind of hungry and need food). It is actually a lot of fun and you learn a lot. 

There are other things going on as well - my little brother has been taking part in a multitude of quizzes and someone at work has been taking part in virtual horse race meetings (or his daughter has at least). 

Zoom is taking over the world - people who can’t see each other in person are using it for virtual meetings. It’s being used for news reports, for virtual gameshows, for D&D meet ups and a myriad of other reasons. 

Businesses are using all sorts of other interfaces, but in the world of lock down Zoom seems to be master. 

To the point where a few weeks ago the Wales Comic-con was cancelled - because forcing several thousand people into a small enclosed area was considered a very bad idea at the time (gods knows why!) - and it was replaced by an entirely virtual Comic-con. 

Guests from all over the world joined in on zoom to talk for half an hour to an hour in aid of the NHS, interviewed by another person on zoom. It was pretty astounding to see how well it was organised and how well it was handled, given how quickly is must have been organised.

There was Buffy, Supernatural, Gotham and Harry Potter - and including a woman I first saw playing Lady White Adder several decades ago.

Because not only do you need skill and organisation to run a virtual Comic-con you also need something else - something that was almost her last word on Blackadder

Because her appearance on Blackdder ended with a truly fantastic phrase.

“Luck? Woohoo! Get it?”

“No?”

“Oh come on! Luck - sounds almost exactly like F------”

But anyway........

Nearly swearing loudly brings me on to the topic of saying sorry.

Because over the past two days the UK has been awash with people not saying sorry - not saying sorry for their behaviour or expressing regrets about someone else’s behaviour or just making excuses for some truly appalling behaviour. 

Not once have we heard the word “sorry” for any of the behaviour we have heard about. 

You know how grown up’s behave?

When grown up’s make a mistake - when they do something wrong, whether it is a huge stonking mistake or a tiny little mistake - they say sorry. 

A few months ago a presenter named Evan Davies totally misgendered someone on the air on Radio 4′s PM programme. And instead of ranting about how political correctness is ruining the modern world, he admitted his mistake, apologised, said sorry, corrected his mistake and moved on. 

Because that’s how grown ups behave. 

When I deleted a table in a development database that I really should not have deleted (because it kind of screwed up the work someone else was doing) then I said sorry and tidied up after my mistake.

Because that’s how grown ups behave.

If you screw something up - you apologise. You say sorry. You admit to your mistake and you try to make it better. And if you can’t you just accept the consequences. 

Because that’s how grown ups behave.

What we haven’t seen in the past two days is anyone admitting to their mistakes. What we haven’t seen is anyone apologising. What we haven’t seen is anyone saying sorry.

What we have seen is people lying. What we have seen is people gas lighting an entire nation. What we have seen is people telling us we don’t know what we know. What we have seen is people treating us like we are beneath contempt.

What we haven’t seen is anyone behaving like grown ups.

Just once I would like to see someone in government take responsibility for their mistakes. 

Just once I would like to see someone in government say sorry. 

Just once - from government - I would like to see some apologies.