#by which i mean i got smacked in the face with an original novel idea and am 2k words in

[cygnusposts]

not to rant about AI again but it's just genuinely sort of exhausting sometimes. I struggle with writing a lot, and an AI could do it in, like, five seconds. But it wouldn't even be good. I genuinely don't understand the point sometimes. Ignoring the ethics of it, if I have to put in just as much work getting it to write something coherent as I would just writing the thing myself, why would I not just write it myself?

[fangirlinglikeabus]

every target novelisation....2!

planet of giants by terrance dicks ok so i think that the reason that this is...good, and an unearthly child was...not good, is because this was written 9 years later when like. other, non-terrance dicks people were also novelising stories and he wasn’t just grinding them out on an industrial level. planet of giants isn’t one of the greats of doctor who but this is a competent adaptation - it doesn’t add much but it does flesh out what’s already there, giving us some backstory elements and making the appearance of giant insects and bodies seem a bit more dramatic than they could manage in 1964. unfortunately it also alters my favourite line from the story (‘i don't know how you know, you're supposed to know!’) and the doctor is weirdly hostile at the beginning (he’s looking forward to ditching ian and barbara, he responds to barbara’s observation ‘drily’ like he’s being a bit sarcastic over her, um, *checks notes* noticing important details). also, dicks describes this in the opening as ‘the doctor’s most grotesque and terrifying adventure’ and i’m like...planet of giants? really??

doctor who and the dalek invasion of earth by terrance dicks ok this one legitimately doesn’t change much at all. it cuts down on some things (including the doctor’s end speech being shorter - i’m assuming that’s a space thing), fleshes out on pov bits as you can in prose, gets rid of the smacked bottom line. bizarrely there are a few times that susan calls her grandfather the doctor which...i’m pretty sure wasn’t there originally. aside from all those small details, yeah it’s basically the same, but it’s well adapted for prose (i genuinely think it stands as a novel in its own right), and depending on your reading speed it might actually be a nice, shorter alternative to the television version - it was around 45 minutes less time for me. some general things i wanted to comment on: the resistance is explicitly shown as kinda gender segregated (exclusively women are preparing food when we first see it) which irritated me; the description of parliament as a symbol of ‘human progress and tradition’ reminded me of blood harvest having the lords/commons system as the Ideal Form Of Government, in terms of how terrance dicks thinks (this may only interest me? idk i very probably spend too much time thinking about the political views of this particular dead dr who script editor); there’s a use of holocaust here that’s technically accurate to what the word literally means but it felt weird to me to use it.

the rescue by ian marter oh man i’ve been busy and this took me aages to read. it kinda...diverges increasingly from the original story as it goes on. we’ve got some scenes with the seeker crew (incidentally one of them says ‘ass’ and i was like???hello???you’re allowed to do that in a dr who book from 1987???), and then most of the expanded stuff is in the climax. dr who and bennett have a full on brawl! ian, barbara and vicki visit a destroyed didoi city on their way back to the tardis! mysterious silver figures! a giant worm encounter! incidentally, this does have way more of a downer ending than the original because it’s strongly implied that the last two of the didoi were killed by seeker crewmembers who fired in a panic, after which the report that forms the epilogue ends with “goodwill to all persons” to give us a taste of bitter irony. so that’s kinda grim. um...there’s actually a lot of little changes and minor expansions to this one as well so off the top of my head: we learn more about why vicki left earth (global warming :/), sandy is a lot more threatening-looking than on screen, the crashed ship gets its name changed to astra-nine, ian and barbara hold hands briefly, barbara’s fall really leaves her beaten up. i like the seeker crew comparing the tardis briefly passing them to various non-police box objects from the future (although the link to china is a bit eastern world=alien association for my tastes), dr who telling vicki ‘give that pretty face a wipe’ is clearly him attempting to cheer her up and it’s not meant to be weird but i found it weird. finally, i’ve gotta say i appreciate ian marter’s commitment to ‘mildly unsettling’ in his descriptions of tardis materialisations. this was the last novelisation he wrote before his death (the book’s dedicated to him) and mild criticisms aside, i do think he’s a good writer and he brings an interestingly different angle to the series. 

the romans by donald cotton oh my god. how do i even start this. i’m not even going to try cataloguing all the changes because this isn’t even close to a straight adaptation. it’s told in the form of various documents collected by tacitus - the doctor’s diary, ian’s journal that he keeps to prove to the headmaster at coal hill that he and barbara haven’t just eloped (i’m not joking, this is the textual reason for it), an assassin’s letters home to his mum, nero’s scribblings, and various other little details. vicki and barbara get less attention than on screen because we don’t see much from their perspective (vicki unfortunately doesn’t even get to chase the assassin out, she just screams in this), and the nero assassination plot is exclusively confined to being mentioned in the epilogue. it’s also a lot broader, or at least consistently broader, which means that ian’s side of things is treated a lot more lightly (which i was personally fine with) but also that we still get nero’s predatory behaviour being played for laughs. there’s also a few comments about women early on that i was unhappy with, and use of fat as an insult. generally, though, i thought this was great! there were a lot of things that i don’t have space or time to include here but i really liked. i guess i’d consider this as a companion piece to the tv version rather than a replacement, which some of these do basically serve as. they tell the same basic story, but they’re so different in a lot of ways that i think it’s worth looking at both. i just checked my notes and remembered this so content warning: poppea sabina’s first section references suicide.

doctor who and the zarbi by bill strutton ok so i think the web planet is boring. i don’t know completely why, i don’t think it’s any one thing, it has some interesting ideas, but it is! it’s fucking boring! anyway, we have a bit more casual sexism in the novel, we’re missing that fun convo about aspirin between vicki and barbara, but really i don’t think it adds or changes much - like even the chapters correspond pretty much exactly to the tv cliffhangers. i guess it’s competently written prose-wise, but i genuinely can’t get over my conviction that this story is boring. am i being unfair? maybe! i like some of the early atmosphere, though, and i appreciate a book which refers to ‘the ship tardis’ (lowercase) and ‘doctor who’ throughout the entire thing. oh yeah, and i encourage you all to look up the illustrations for this. i don’t know who that woman is but she’s definitely not vicki.

doctor who and the crusaders by david whitaker ah yes, the infamous ‘susan married david cameron’ novelisation. tbh i don’t like the crusades and this has the same problems - i don’t care about the english, el akir is every orientalist stereotype whitaker could possibly cram into one man, and That’s Not How A Harem Works. do i think it’s the most egregiously racist doctor who story of all time? probably not! it certainly has sympathetic arabic characters too. but i prefer most other historicals, at least. however, if that isn’t you, i’m sure you’ll get something out of this. there aren’t any particularly extreme changes to the plot structure, although it’s missing some later scenes at the english court, but it’s well written and probably if you like the original you’ll enjoy it more than i did. there’s some dated language surrounding black characters, though, i’m not a fan of the whole ‘we aren’t so different’ speech ian has (because it rests on ‘we all believe in a higher power’ which uh. i don’t. guess that means i’m not ‘civilised’. also generally i don’t like the argument that we should respect each other because of what we have in common - you should respect other people whatever!), and the prologue at the beginning where they muse on history and destiny assumes that the english invaders and the arabs are both equally right in their own ways (the doctor outright says this!)

the space museum by glyn jones so, i really like the space museum. mainly for vicki’s revolutionary fervour, but there are other reasons too. however, i don’t think that this really adds enough to be of interest - although we do get some information about the two alien species’ biology, and a bonus explanation of why everyone speaks english (the moroks briefly considered invading earth so programmed some earth languages into their translation system). there’s a bit more wandering around the museum, some minor tweaks and expansions in other areas, an underground tunnel scene where we learn a bit of the planet’s backstory...ian and the doctor are very snippy to each other in this, which i find funny. oh yeah, and there’s a bizarrely meta bit where ian comments on poor dialogue? basically, this is a book i enjoyed, but really it just makes me want to watch the space museum instead of reading it. just a heads up, there’s a character who briefly considers suicide to get out of his bosses being angry with him. 

the chase by john peel ok before i get started i need to establish that the cover for this one slaps. anyway, i don’t respect john peel at all but this was...alright? doesn’t expand much plotwise (although i suspect both the sand monsters at the beginning and the plants at the end have slightly more to do) but we get a fair bit of pov stuff. unfortunately lacking ian’s dad dancing and hi-fi the panda, the marie celeste bit is no longer played for comedy (barbara angsts over it) and even though the two paragraphs dragging morton dill are kinda funny i’m not sure how i feel about him being committed for claiming he saw daleks. ian and barbara’s departure plays out a little differently. steven is blond for some reason. we learn as well that daleks are charged by solar panels (at least they’re pro-green energy??)

the time meddler by nigel robinson pretty competent, straight down the middle novelisation, although that is tempered by inserting some weird sexist bits for steven and also lowkey being nostalgic for 11th century england at a few points? it’s also a bit more violent than we see on tv, and if anything the rape is more loudly implied, so heads up. other than that, there are a few minor embellishments (we’re explicitly told the dr and monk recognise each other, vicki tells steven that the tardis is important to her because it’s her home, a few differences between the monk’s tardis and the doctor’s are described, vicki views steven following her as a triumphant victory in their power struggle which i personally find funny), and there’s a prologue (recapping steven’s arrival in the tardis) and an epilogue (which delays the monk’s discovery of the broken tardis because he walks to hastings first to try and get involved there). i had fun, but it’s not a must read. 

[athingthatwantsvirginia]

EAT ME

PART NINE OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: mentions of death, underage drinking, mentions of vomit (just two remarks in passing), plentiful pop culture references

Word Count: 5.1K

Summary: After returning from her summer babysitting job, Ella has a rough night. With friends busy and out of town, she eventually ends up on the doorstep of the diner.

With a toddler asleep on her chest and a five-year-old dozing in a makeshift fort on the floor below her, Ella finally got a moment of peace. The Iron Giant hummed at a low volume on the TV, a naptime movie to celebrate her last day babysitting. She loved her aunt’s house, a hippie-dippie pad adorned with tapestries, iscense, and other random items. Ella herself wasn’t into the holistic lifestyle, but she appreciated how much joy her aunt derived from it. The children, two little girls with red hair and big brown eyes, were gentle and silly. Alongside her new husband, Ella’s aunt Julie filled the family household with joy and games. It made Ella nostalgic for a period of her childhood she almost couldn’t remember. Sprawled across the floral print couch, Ella almost fell asleep herself but decided not to screw up her schedule when she was going to have to go back to early morning shifts at Luke’s very soon. Instead, she stretched her arm over, careful not to wake Annie and grabbed the house phone.

After two rings, Luke’s grumbly voice came through the line: “Luke’s Diner.”

“Hey, boss, is Jess there?” Ella spoke in a hushed tone, eyes on the baby as she tucked the afghan which covered the two of them tighter.

He sighed. “With his petri dish of a girlfriend. Hold on one second.”

Ella smirked and waited, listening to the early afternoon commotion of the diner. She’d only called a few times since she’d been gone, and almost every time Luke had to pull Jess away from the mysterious new girl. But Jess always came to the phone, and she made a careful effort to avoid the topic of his girlfriend. Mostly, they discussed the merits of the Chuck Palanuik novel Jess had been reading. It was one of Ella’s favorites.

“Jess Mariano, may I ask who’s calling?” he began.

Ella rolled her eyes at his theatrics. “You’re hilarious.”

“It’s been said,” he replied, the usual amount of cocky. “Why are you whispering?”

“The kids are sleeping. The baby is literally lying on top of me.”

“And when I’m asleep in the middle of the day, suddenly I’m a world-class slacker,” he said.

“Well, the last time I remembered, you’re not two years old.”

Jess scoffed, disinterested. “Semantics.”

“Whatever gets you through the night,” she retorted.

“How’s it been otherwise? Annie still crawling into the bed and kicking you in her sleep?” Jess asked, having caught her in a middle of a sleep-deprived haze the last time they spoke.

She laughed fondly. “Only a little. There was also one projectile vomiting incident, but, hey, at least I got to watch an Exorcist reenactment in real time.”

“What a glamorous summer gig you scored.”

“It’s true.”

“But you’ll be back tomorrow, right?”

“Bright and early. You’re gonna have to fill me in on everything I missed,” she said, noticing how Erin had begun to snore from her place wrapped up in various throw blankets on the floor.

Jess hummed. “Well, let’s see...I think Taylor might have shifted the stand outside the market about an inch. It was on the front page of the Gazette for a week straight.”

“Riveting.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“Oh! I finally finished The Lovely Bones. You’ve got to borrow it when I get b-”

“Hey, sorry, honey,” he interjected, and she heard him mutter some irritated words to someone she couldn’t see. Jury was out on whether it was Luke or some other unlucky Stars Hollow civilian. After a pause, his rushed voice came over the line again: “Look, my new...I gotta go. But tomorrow I’m gonna need a full review.”

“Only if you finish the Palahnuik by the time I clock in,” she wagered.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and she could practically hear the smirk on his lips.

.   .   .

Ready to close up and anxious for what awaited her at home, Ella sketched in the notebook her aunt Julie had given her after arriving home from the honeymoon. Since returning to work, spending sweltering days in the AC of the diner, Ella tried to ignore the strange feeling which pulsed through her. Every time Jess’s new girlfriend Shane sauntered in, she had to avert her eyes as they made out, Jess’s hands roaming her body. And not only because of the grotesque amount of PDA they engaged in. But as soon as the uneasy feeling rose in her throat, she began to sketch her feelings away, ignoring the thumping of her heart against her ribs. Jess always insisted on finishing his conversations with her, or saying goodbye to her, before going gallivanting with Shane. And where did she get off feeling jealous? Jess was her jackass coworker, who only bordered on a friend. It was easier to pretend nothing was bothering her, lest her cheeks burn with shame each time the bleach blonde girl walked through the diner doors.

The sky was overcast, but the night was supposed to clear up. With Luke out on some date, she and Jess were the ones charged with boarding up the shop for the night. Caesar had gone home early, since the Friday had been unusually slow and he was pretty much useless when closing anyway. When the last customer departed, though it was ten minutes until official closing time, Ella decided to use her authority to call it quits for the day. However, she first had to wrangle Jess off Shane while they made out on the sidewalk, up against the diner window. Shutting her sketchbook, she grimaced at the task at hand, but strode out confidently with her hands on the hips of her blue jeans.

Clearing her throat, she watched them disentangle themselves from each other, their lips parting with a smack! in the warm night air. Ella rolled her eyes. “Jess, we’re closing. You’ll have to take a rain check on the next round of tonsil tennis.”

Jess only smirked, planting one final kiss on Shane’s cheek before making for the door.

Shane rolled her eyes. “Jess.”

“Relax,” Jess grumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets as he walked away. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Shane shot a look at Ella. “That stick up your ass must hurt like hell.”

Ella only sighed, a unamused smile on her face. “Charming as always, Shane. Come again any time.”

With the situation diffused, Ella rushed back into the diner before Jess, who was chuckling behind her. Ella didn’t utter a word before she began closing, ducking behind the counter to grab the disinfectant spray and a clean rag. If it was possible, Jess thought she looked even more stressed than usual. She had her hair in a messy updo, cheeks flushed red. Her eyes darted around anxiously, her hands fiddling with the silvery chain of her necklace. Luke had almost sent her back home to change when she showed up for her shift, wearing a black t-shirt with the words EAT ME written across the chest in big white letters. Instead of changing though, she argued her way out of it. It was simply an endorsement of the diner’s products, she’d said. Luke’s eyes had rolled nearly up into the back of his head, but, nonetheless, he’d dropped the subject.

“Nice to see you and Shane bonding,” Jess quipped as he began gathering up the salt and pepper shakers to store for the night.

She scoffed. “Yeah, quite a winner you’ve got there.”

Jess raised his brows at her tone. “Are you upset about something?”

“No,” she shot back flatly. “It’s really just such a pleasure to have to watch you tongue-fuck her while I’m at work.”

He straightened up and stopped working, brows furrowed. “Says the girl who’s read Bad Behavior, at that very counter where you now stand, three times.”

Still, she didn’t look up as she sighed heavily. Her voice was tired. “I read it. I didn’t have to be subjected to a visual. Would you just wait to suck face until you’re not in view of the customers who’ve come to eat here?”

“Fine. Sorry,” he snapped angrily, going back to the shakers. “Didn’t mean to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

“Apology accepted,” she shot back.

“Great.”

“Good.”

.   .   .

Tense silence had stood between them for the remainder of the evening. Later, Jess laid on his twin bed fuming, the night darkening to an inky black. Stars glowed brightly, the moon new and invisible. The apartment over the diner had its familiar pine smell and was lit low by Jess’s desk lamp. He had no idea what time it was, but found it odd Luke still wasn’t back hours after closing. But the solitude meant he could blast his Shags through the speakers he’d brought back from his old room in New York. They were pretty much the most valuable items he owned, and he didn’t get to use them nearly often enough. Jess was nearly done with The Lovely Bones, trying to decipher Ella’s cursive annotations. Of all the books she had traded him, it was perhaps the saddest one yet.

The music was louder than he’d anticipated, as it took nearly four rings of the phone before Jess heard it under the lyrics. He rolled his eyes, but saved his place in the book, turned down the volume, and went to answer.

“Hello?”

“Jess?” came Ella’s voice through the receiver.

He furrowed his brows. “Eleanor?”

“No, it’s Virginia Woolf, back from the dead,” she said, slurring her words.

Jess let a chuckle escape his mouth. “Are you drunk?”

“I guess so. My dad was soooo pissed. He kicked me out, said not to come back until I had my head on straight. I don’t think my head’s been on straight my entire life,” she rambled, her voice husky and sleepy.

“Where are you?” Jess asked, his voice earnest.

“The phone booth on Main Street. Why do they still have this here? It’s such antiquated tech-”

“Just stay right there. I’ll come down,” he said shortly, then hung up before she could respond.

Jess rushed down the stairs and weaved through the dark diner, tables stacked on chairs, leaving the door open as he exited onto the sidewalk. He caught sight of her petite form almost immediately. Out on the deserted street, trudging towards the diner with her hands in her back pockets, watching the sky as she walked. The night was humid. Sighing heavily, Jess came over and touched her arm gently.

Ella flinched, but relaxed when she saw it was him. “Jesus, Mariano. Give a girl some warning.”

Shaking his head slightly, he brought a hand to the small of her back to steady her as they walked. He could smell the alcohol wafting off her, mixed with her normal aroma of lavender and rosemary. “What the hell did you drink?”

“A lot,” she drawled back instantly. They neared the steps of the diner and she blew out a shaky breath. “Can we sit down?”

Before he could even answer, she sat down heavily on the concrete steps. He took the seat beside her, leaving a safe distance between the two of them.

Ella brought her hand to her mouth and started biting at her nails. A warm breeze blew past them. Ella huffed in frustration and took the elastic from her hair clumsily. She ran her hands through her brassy waves and sniffed. Jess glanced over at her and could tell she had been crying. Her hazel eyes were red-rimmed and her mascara was running slightly. Even drunk, she flushed when she saw him looking at her, and wiped her hands over her cheeks self-consciously.

“My dad got engaged,” she said suddenly, frankly.

“Huh.”

“Yep.” There was a pause before she spoke again, crickets singing around them. “We had a fight about it this morning. I got home tonight, and he wouldn’t talk to me. So, I stole a bottle of his tequila to piss him off, get a rise out of him, but then I thought: ‘Fuck it. Just drink it. The day can’t get much worse anyway.’”

Jess nodded, listening.

“But then he kicked me out for the night. So, yeah, it could get worse. Lorelai’s not home, and Rory’s still in Washington. I sure as hell can’t knock on Lane’s door like this. I just wanted to call and say sorry for being such a jackass earlier.”

“I thought I was the jackass here?” he teased offhandedly.

She giggled drunkenly, though her eyes were hazy. “Usually. But, just this once, it was me. Just...a bad day.”

“It’s alright,” he assured her, standing up and holding a hand out to her. “You can crash upstairs. Luke’s out but I’m sure it’s fine.”

Ella shook her head and sighed. “Jess, you don’t have to be nice-”

“Fine, I won’t be nice then. Shut up and take my hand,” he said flatly.

After a long moment, she nodded, grabbing his hand and straightening up. Upon standing, she got dizzy and staggered back.

“Careful, Stevens,” Jess grumbled, hands hovering over her arms for a moment in the event she fell over.

“Shut up,” she snapped, retreating back into the diner.

The way up the stairs was iffy, and by the top Ella was practically holding onto Jess for balance. Jess’s mouth was set in a thin, stern line, though slight worry touched his heart. She sang along quietly with the lyrics of the song which still hummed lowly from the stereo as they entered. It almost made Jess want to smirk, if she hadn’t been so completely smashed. He steered her to his bed, where she immediately flopped onto her back.

“Is this your bed?” she asked, eyes closed and hands behind her head.

“Yes. But tonight it’s yours,” he sighed, shutting both the music and his desk lamp off. In the bluish glow of the room, he saw her sloppily tug off her shoes. Then, she sat forward with her elbows on her knees, head in her hands.

“I can just sleep on the couch or the floor or a park bench. Y’know, a couple years ago Taylor went on this asinine crusade to make the benches more comfortable-”

“Just go to sleep, Eleanor,” he scolded.

“You go to sleep,” she retorted lamely, but nonetheless, she flopped onto her back again and scooted up until her head laid on the pillow. But, her glassy eyes remained open and she stared at the ceiling.

Jess had been fetching her a glass of water, cold from the tap. He was surprised to find her still conscious considering how strong the smell of tequila was when entering her general vicinity. Instead of forcing her to drink the water, a fight which he knew would be fruitless, he just left it on the nightstand.

“Jess?”

“Yes?”

“Do you believe in fate?”

He scoffed, hands in his pockets as he stood by the bed. “Is now really the best time to solve the mysteries of the universe?”

Giggling, Ella let her eyes flutter shut. “No time like the present.” When she spoke again, her voice had a wistful, far-off quality. “I just...my dad told me he proposed to Fiona because it was fate which brought them together and they were immediately in love and all that shit. But he thought he was in love with my mom and looked how that turned out. I just...most of the time I can’t bring myself to believe in fate or love. Not after everything that happened.”

“Hm,” Jess hummed, brows furrowed. He waited for her to continue, as he knew she would.  

“Fiona’s not a horrible person. But she acts like she’s my mom,” she said, defeated. “And she wouldn’t shut up this morning about me being disrespectful and just...and I can’t talk to Rory and Lane’s busy with her drums and...you with your girlfriend or whatever she is…”

Jess raised his eyebrows at her last comment, but at just the moment he hoped she would continue, she began to doze off. Her breathing deepened, and Jess sighed again. Before she could completely slip into unconsciousness, he went over and rolled her onto her side. Ella stirred, but did not fully wake. He threw the orangey afghan from the end of the bed over her form.

Creeping over to retrieve the book from his bedside table, Jess was reassured when she curled up into a ball on her side. Before he made it over to the couch where he planned to spend the night, Ella hummed drowsily.

“Jess?” she croaked, peeking through heavy-lidded eyes.

“Yeah, honey?” he asked, grouchy but not angry.

“Thank you,” she slurred, grabbing a handful of the blanket in her fist sleepily.

Jess sighed, and grimaced when a wave of fondness washed over him. “You’re welcome.”

As he flipped through to his marked page, flicking on the floor lamp near the couch and settling in for the night, she began to snore softly. Jess tried to concentrate on the final twenty pages of the book, but knew he would definitely have to reread them.

.   .   .

Around half past midnight, Luke’s booted footfalls sounded softly up the stairs to the apartment. He was surprised to find the door unlocked, considering how late Jess had been out with Shane the last few Friday nights. Soft, yellowish light illuminated Luke’s side of the apartment. He thought Jess had fallen asleep with a lamp on, and jumped when he found his nephew with his nose in a book on the old brown leather couch.

“Jeez!” he exclaimed as he shut the door behind him.

“Keep it down!” Jess hissed back, saving his place in the book again. Five more pages. “You’ll wake her up.”

“Excuse me?” Luke asked, accusatory, eyebrows raised as he followed Jess’s gaze to the left. He could make out Ella’s face in the dimness, and his confusion only grew. Instantly, he knew Jess had done something. He had to have done something. “What the hell is she doin’ here?”

Jess rolled his eyes as his uncle pointed a finger at him. He hopped up to grab a blanket from the top shelf of the nearby closet. “She called me. She got kicked out for the night and needed a place to crash. I figured it’d be okay.”

“Kicked out?” Luke echoed softly. In all his time knowing Ella, she’d never been one to piss her parents off so severely. The girl worked doubles every weekend and had a four-point-oh GPA. “Why?”

“She was wasted. Stole her dad’s tequila,” Jess explained shortly, shutting off the floor lamp and returning to the couch to get some sleep. It had been a long night to say the least. The twinkly lights of the town square still made for relative visibility in the apartment.

Luke sighed heavily at Jess’s nonchalance and loomed over the couch, not done with the conversation. “Did you get her drunk?”

“No,” Jess answered immediately, angrily. “She managed it all on her own. She’s a big girl, y’know.”

“Shut up,” Luke snapped. “You’re telling me Ella Stevens got drunk on her dad’s tequila and called you for help?”

Jess nodded and looked up at his uncle in aggravation. “Someone give the man a prize.”

“Why would she call you?”

“First, I’m absolutely flattered by your tone,” Jess droned. “Lorelai wasn’t home, she couldn’t go to Lane’s, and Rory’s still in Washington. So, I was choice number four. Quite an honor. She probably figured you’d be the one at home, anyway.”

Luke groaned quietly at his nephew’s attitude, his hands on his hips. After a particularly terrible date, he hadn’t expected to have to solve another problem at home.

Satisfied the game of twenty questions was over, Jess crossed his arms over his chest, turned on his side and closed his eyes.

“I gotta call Jake,” Luke thought aloud, starting towards the phone.

Jess’s eyes flew open and he jumped up to stop Luke. “No!” he blurted out, a hand on his uncle’s arm, and waited a long moment to make sure Ella hadn’t woken.

“Jess, she’s a kid. I have to tell her dad where she is,” Luke explained tiredly, rolling his eyes.

“Really? Her dad who just kicked her out in the middle of the night?” Jess asked doubtfully, eyebrows raised.

Luke sighed again, and seemed to actually ponder Jess’s words.

“Look, just let her sleep it off. I’m sure she’ll still have an earful waiting for her tomorrow morning,” Jess said urgently, his eyes flicking over to his bed.

Taking a long moment to stare thoughtfully at his shoes, Luke finally conceded. “Fine.”

Jess blew out a short breath in relief. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Luke snapped back.

As he retreated back to the couch, Jess caught one last glance at Ella’s sleeping form. Bathed in the starlight, she looked almost ethereal, despite the snoring. “She’ll be fine. I put her on her side so she won’t choke if she throws up or anything. And she’s got water by the bed.”

Furrowing his brows, Luke let a suspicious gaze linger on his nephew. “How’d you know to do that?”

Jess uttered a bitter chuckle. “Liz Danes is my mother. I’m sure you can fill the rest in yourself.”

“Right,” Luke sighed, nodding. He regained his harsh exterior after a moment, pointing a final, warning finger at Jess. “But call me before letting people stay here next time. And, just so we’re clear, there will not be a next time.”

Scoffing, Jess turned on his side away from Luke and gave only a noncommittal grunt as an answer.

.   .   .

Throwing up in the shower had actually been the high point of her morning. Sneaking out of the apartment at nearly five o’clock, Ella had left nothing more than an empty water glass and a folded afghan on Jess’s bed as traces of her being there. Though the morning was cloudy, her splitting headache still got worse trudging down Main Street back towards her house during sunrise. She’d never been on a walk of shame, and was glad there was no one yet awake to witness it. After unlocking her window with a bobby pin, she’d managed a few more hours of sleep before facing the music of her father’s rage.

However, stealing his alcohol had proved to have at least one silver lining. Ella was the one with the hangover, so Jake had opted just for disappointed yelling instead of screaming and breaking whatever furniture he could get his hands on. Instead, Ella had to sit through two hours of Jake and Fiona standing with arms crossed, looming over her while she sat hunched at the kitchen table. It wasn’t easy with her stomach swirling and her heartbeat throbbing painfully behind her eyes, but it certainly wasn’t the most brutal dressing down she’d ever received. A two-week grounding with the exception of work and school was in order, and Ella made the compulsory show of accepting the punishment. She knew they would likely forget to enforce it anyway, caught up in their own dramas.

A shower and a change of clothes had her looking slightly more human by the time she returned to the diner at noon for her eight-hour shift. At least she wasn’t on the books to close. She tried multiple times to apologize to Luke, but he was disinterested at best. Ella could tell he was disappointed, but she would have to wait it out before he would actually talk it out with her. By her break around four in the afternoon, it had already been a long day of the cold shoulder and demanding Saturday afternoon orders. Rather than staying in the diner for some lunch, she opted for a walk around town to keep the churning in her stomach at bay.

The summer haze cast long shadows on the cracked asphalt. As she passed the town square, she breathed in the clean air and decided the headache might finally be passing. The breeze was picking up, and the sound of the vibrant green leaves rustling in the wind washed over her like ocean waves. The smell of exhaust filled the air as she passed the bus stop, the city bus coming to a screeching halt by the bench next to her. She would have ignored it completely, but Jess caught her eye, deboarding the bus with his hands shoved in his pockets. Ella picked up her pace, but Jess had already seen her. He raced up beside her with a wicked smirk on his lips.

“Wait up, Speed Racer,” he quipped, panting slightly.

She chuckled halfheartedly. “I’ll give you a second to catch your breath.”

“Ah, I think I’m alright,” he assured her with a shrug. “You on break?”

“Yep,” she said shortly, avoiding his eyes. “Where are you coming from?”

“Shangri-la,” he answered instantly. They were circling back around to the square, and Jess tilted his head to the gazebo. “You wanna sit down? You look a little pale.”

“Sure,” she nodded. “I think the tequila’s had a bit of an effect on my complexion.”

Jess laughed. “Yeah, maybe if you hadn’t downed that last liter it wouldn’t be quite as pronounced.”

“Shut up,” she smiled, seeming to relax just a touch. She tucked some rogue wisps of hair behind her ears as they sat down on the bench in the gazebo, the town buzzing with tourist groups and regulars.

Before Jess could make some wiseass remark, Ella cleared her throat and cut to the chase. Her cheeks grew rosy but she powered through the nervous fluttering of her heart. “Look, I’m really sorry about last night.”

“It’s okay,” Jess said, shaking his head dismissively. “I’ve had a few nights like that.”

“But I don’t drink. Ever,” she said, speaking with her hands.

Jess snorted. “I’ll say.”

She scoffed self-consciously. “And I don’t steal my dad’s booze, and get black-out drunk, and steal my friend’s bed and piss off my boss-”

“Luke’ll come around. Compared to the shit I’ve done? You’re living out amateur hour,” he interjected with a smirk. Though he wished it hadn’t, his heart skipped a beat at her so casually calling him a friend. Even in New York, he’d only a few of those, and none of them had kept in contact with him since coming to Stars Hollow. It occurred to him in the moment how he may have never had a friend like her before, someone who wasn’t disappointed in him, who was excited to talk about books, who called even when they were many miles apart.

“Just let me finish,” she said earnestly, raising a hand to him.

Jess bit his lip to keep from chuckling at her stubbornness. “Go on.”

“I’m just so embarrassed and I don’t remember most of what I said but I’m just... I’m sorry,” she said, biting at her nails. Her ears were tinged with red, flesh hot with shame. “And thank you for letting me crash. You really didn’t have to do that and...thank you.”

Sighing through his nose, Jess nodded with more sincerity than she expected.

“And the last time Lane and I went to a party, I tried to recite all the lyrics from the whole Rumors album, so I’m also really sorry if I did that,” she added, a return of some levity.

Jess laughed. “Don’t worry. You’re in the clear.”

She sighed in relief. “Thank God.”

“Seriously, Stevens, don’t be embarrassed. If it makes you feel any better, I once ate a pumpkin raw when I was drunk,” he admitted, his voice low and conspiratory.

A confused grin crossed her face. “What?”

“Yep,” he confirmed, nodding. “I’ve sworn off both forties and Halloween parties since then.”

Ella laughed.

“Does that make you feel better?” he asked.

“A little.” After a moment, the serious air came back. “Thank you, Jess.”

He nodded again. “You’re welcome.”

And, just then, they locked eyes. A charged silence passed between them, and Jess thought he saw something flash behind Ella’s eyes. She had to avert her gaze to hide her blush.

Jess’s stomach did an involuntary flip. But Ella seemed to regain her composure quickly. Had he imagined the look on her face or the redness on her cheeks? When she spoke again, the weight of the moment was gone.

“So, really, where’d you come from? A drug deal? A prostitution ring?” she prodded in curiosity. “A date with Shane?”

Jess shook his head, clearing his throat. “No. Shane and I don’t exactly go on dates,” he joked suggestively.

Something between a grimace and a smirk crossed her lips at his implication. “Gross. But I suppose every relationship is different,” she teased.

“I think ‘relationship’ might be a bit of an overstatement,” he said, shrugging. His face was guarded, but Ella could see the corners of his mouth threatening to tick upwards. “She thinks Oscar Wilde is a type of cocktail.”

“No,” she said in disbelief, giggling a little. Eventually, Jess began to chuckle and both of them laughed together. People passing by raised brows at the two of them. Most of them had never seen Jess smile.

“And we don’t know each other's last names,” Jess continued, biting his lip to fend off another smirk.

She shook her head, but kept giggling. “How romantic.”

“That it is,” he quipped.

Ella smirked and glanced down at her watch.

“My break’s almost over. You coming back to the diner?” she asked, ignoring the still air sitting in the small distance from her face to his own.

He shook his head. “Not yet. I have some things to do.”

“Specific.”

“I know. I am famous for my candor,” he said. “But I’ll be by later to help with dinner. You’ll get your book back with some brand new notes in the margins.”

“Lucky me,” she smiled. “Next on your list….” she paused, racking her brain for one of the many suggestions she’d thought of giving him. “Joan Didion.”

“Is that the lady from LA?” he asked.

“That’s the one. She makes it sound even better than New York.”

“Well, I’ll be the judge of that,” Jess said, watching her rise from her seat. Her black skirt came to her mid-thigh, and he saw some yellowed bruises on her knees. “And you’re in for another classic. Bukowski himself.”

She leaned on the white railing, readying herself to descend the steps and return to the diner. Her eyebrows were raised doubtfully. “We’ll just have to see about that ‘classic’ business.”

“Prepare to eat your words!” he called after her as she rushed away. He could tell she was anxious to be back on time, for fear of even more passive aggression from Luke.

“Ditto!” she returned.

Jess watched her go, disappearing back into Luke’s with her nails chewed. And found himself oddly content in the July afternoon heat.

[alittleoptimistic]

Psychic For Hire

A Buzzfeed Unsolved Fanfic

Summary: Shane is a psychic for hire working in LA, and sure, he’s a fake, but at least he’s telling people what they need to hear! That is, he thought he was fake. But after a strange accident, he has the oddest dreams… Meanwhile his old friend Ryan is researching his next greatest supernatural horror novel in the underbelly of the LA psychic scene and wondering how on earth you convince someone they might be psychic for real?

Trigger warning: violence, car accidents, cussing, dead people.

________________________________________________________________

Chapter 2

Sometimes you’ve got to just be like, ‘well, okay, this is how today is gonna be.’ Ryan dropped his fifth quarter into the vending machine and blinked, long and slow at the options. He got lost for a second, his eyes focused on the reflection of ceiling lights and the waverly look of his own face in the glass. He had a bruise just beneath his left cheek, (coffee cup, he was pretty sure), and a cut on his upper arm. Pick a snack, he ordered. His arm lifted up and tapped in the numbers.

Chips, a slim jim. They clunked at the bottom and Ryan wandered toward room 247 A, where Shane lay sleeping. Ryan felt an odd calm. He should freak out, but he’d gone beyond that and now he floated in this haze while he waited for Shane to wake up.

The hospital room had vertical fabric blinds that let in a dirty evening light. When Ryan entered, Shane was sitting up in bed, gingerly poking at the small bandage over his left eyebrow. He’d been smacked pretty hard. Scary, hard. Ryan had never seen someone that pale before. They were lucky. His chest shuttered.

“Hey, big guy, you’re awake.”

Shane blinked at him, no trace of confusion in his eyes. He knew exactly where he was. Which was very typical of him, to be honest? He relaxed into a smile, apparently unperturbed by the whole situation. “You totaled my car. It’s like college all over again.”

“Fuck you,” Ryan threw the slim jim at him. “Don’t stick your head out the window like a dog.”

“I was throwing up. Christ, my head hurts. Am I okay? I feel okay?”

Ryan nodded.  “You flew out the window, so everyone is super shocked that you are. They think you probably have a concussion, though, which sucks. You’re supposed to rest or whatever. They’ll probably be in here in a few minutes.”

And they were. A few more hours of pandering around, being poked, asking and answering questions, and getting prescriptions, and then, remarkably, they were on their way out. It was… wild. He’d been so scared, and now here they were, catching an Uber.

“I wonder what happened to the people who hit us.” Ryan mused as they watched the animated Uber car on his phone get closer and then miss them entirely.

Shane huffed. “He’s fine. Won't try to change his shirt while driving again, I’m guessing. Don’t worry about it.”

Ryan glanced up. “You don’t even-”

“Is that our guy? I think I see it. Purple Toyota? Purple Toyota, baby!”

The night slipped into a darker, deeper purple as they arrived at Shane’s suburban fever dream of a house. The brightest light by far was Shane’s neon PSYCHIC sign on the front window. Ryan found himself staring at it as they climbed out of the Uber, saying their goodbyes.

He wasn’t sure this was such a good idea anymore.

He had four months to come up with the first draft of a novel about the LA psychics, according to his publishers. Ryan was thinking about some kind of mix of Dead Zone and the celebrity lifestyle… if that was possible. It made sense to stay with Shane, do research the way he always did. Part of his angle was always the real-life research he did before writing anything. He wanted to give people as much truth as he possibly could. Shane was his best friend (or was , ten years ago) and Shane was a professional psychic. It would be stupid to pass up an opportunity like it. This was a strange thing for Shane to be, of course. Ryan remembered first hearing about Shane’s job through a mutual friend and he’d laughed and told them they were confused. Shane, a psychic? Shane was goddamn Doubting Thomas reincarnate.

It made sense, now that Ryan was here, talking to him. Shane wanted to be a therapist in school, but he had to quit midway through after… something. Ryan couldn’t remember what had happened exactly. Shane had told him they couldn’t room together next semester, and just like that, he disappeared off the face of the earth. Ryan got the impression any questions about this were very off-limits, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious. The point was, the way he explained it, Shane managed to find a way to be a therapist without technically having a license.

It didn’t make him any less of a con artist, obviously, and it put an honest horrible taste in Ryan’s mouth. He’d rather not know about any of it than have to recalibrate who he thought his friend was. He couldn’t tell any of this to Shane. And he needed the room. Not to mention, it was going to be great for his book. What better insight to this side of LA then through the eyes of someone who knew all the tricks. Then, Ryan could find the real ones, couldn’t he? Or, he could try.

Shane unlocked the front door. He was talking casually about nothing in particular and Ryan laughed in response without really hearing the words. Shane’s house was simply ordered, a single hallway down the center with a living room and open kitchen to the left, and the closed-off office to the right. Two bedrooms further down the hall, and a bathroom at the end. Apparently, Shane used the other bedroom to do video work? Editing had always been a hobby of his, something he and Ryan bonded over originally. “I’ve got a foldout couch in there you can use, ” he told him.

They met around the breakfast counter and Shane poured him a glass of something. Ryan frowned. “I don’t think you should drink if you have a concussion.”

“I’m going to have a headache tomorrow either way,” Shane answered.

“Wh- no, Shane, Jesus-”

Shane took a sip and gave him a put on look. “It’s fine. I’m fine. You drink. You’re all shaky still.”

Ryan wanted to tell him he was not shaky, thank you very much. Instead, he picked up the glass and did so. Surprised, he took another sip. “This is… really good.”

“Gift from a friend,” Shane hummed, sitting down on the tall chairs. His feet still touched the ground, and Ryan realized a moment later, his own did not.

“You have friends?”

Shane rolled his eyes, amused, and then winced. He could brush it off all he liked, but his head was definitely hurting him. “Got me there. A client, then. Lilly Keller.”

Ryan choked on the wine.

“Wait. Like, the Lilly Keller?” Lilly Keller, the famous actress, winner of multiple oscars at the young age of twenty-three. Lilly Keller, America’s newest heartthrob. Ryan’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t just- Frick, dude, you’re Lilly Keller’s psychic?” Shane gave him a cheeky grin. “She’s a sweet girl. You can come with me to a session if you like.”

“ If I like? Who else do you know? Do you know Leonardo Dicaprio? Please say you-”

“She’s the only celebrity, don’t get too excited!”

Ryan was about to reply when headlights shot through the room from the front window. They were inordinately bright, especially since he and Shane hadn’t turned on more lights than the small one over the stove. The car faced them, unmoving. The headlights flipped on and off and on again with deliberation.

Ryan held up a hand to squint at it. “What the hell?”

Shane didn’t say anything.

“Shane?”

Ryan looked at him. Shane was stiff, his face blank. He set the glass down with a clink on the counter. “...shit…”

Ryan’s breath caught. “Is something wrong?”

Shane raised his eyebrows, meeting his eyes suddenly. “Naw. Just something I’ve gotta do. You wait in here.” Without another word, Shane crossed the kitchen and opened the door of his office. Ryan stayed at the counter, too shocked to do anything but obey.

Maybe this really was a bad idea.

Shane cursed in the dark of his office as he pushed aside a few books on his bookshelf to reveal the safe hidden behind. He opened the dial quickly. Inside lay a pile of jewelry, some watches, other important documents, and piles of cash. It wasn’t all his technically. He got rent from several other psychics around the area and then delivered a portion of his and theirs to the person above him.

Shane counted the bills, fumbling. His head pounded like it was shrinking around his brain. There was no way he was going to get around avoiding explaining this to Ryan. With a sigh, he straightened, closed the safe, and walked to the front door. Ryan met his gaze and his eyes widened when he saw the money in Shane’s hand. Shane didn’t have anything to put it in or else he would have. Shane didn’t respond. He already knew Ryan was scared. It was bleeding off him like sweet sick. Fear and disappointment.

Shane had a knife in his back pocket just in case as he walked down his sidewalk. It was wet from the sprinklers. Just at the end of the driveway sat a black, shiny car, windows thick.

The moment he saw it, his headache pulsed worse. But he relaxed. His shoulders dropped and he picked up his pace. Thank God…

The window rolled down as he got closer.

“Good evening, Jack.”

Jack, a black-haired kid with a pointy nose and bruised eyes, leaned into the streetlight so he was visible. “How’d you know it was me?”

Shane handed him the cash. “The way you park? I dunno. Wasn’t expecting you tonight. I thought you guys weren’t coming till the twentieth? Where’s Hera?”

“She’s at a party. Apparently she has some big meeting in the twentieth. She told me to come collect early.”

“Well, you’re lucky I had extra meetings this week.”

“ You’re lucky.”

Shane wasn’t scared of Jack. He wasn’t a bad kid, all things considered. It wasn’t his fault his family was batshit crazy. Shane smiled and drummed his fingers on the top of the car. “Well, tell Hera I said hello.”

“Will do.” Jack turned the car back on, putting the money on the passenger seat. He nodded toward Shane’s head. “Someone get ya?”

“Hmm? Oh, no. Car accident earlier today.”

“Aw, that sucks. They give you morphine?” Shane blinked at him. “A little. Gave me crazy dreams.”

The kid grinned a wide, toothy smile. One of his teeth was gold. “Nice. Thanks, bitch. See ya. Hera said she wants you to start taking in the money yourself or she’ll kick your ass.”

Shane opened his mouth to protest. Then he shut it. He managed something like a smile. “Fine. Stay safe, Jack.”

“Whatever, voodoo man.” With that, Jack rolled up the window and slunk the car down the street.

Shane hesitated in his front yard. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was... so tired.

And Ryan was peeking through the blinds. Of course, he was.

Shane turned around and met Ryan’s eyes immediately, startling the man into dropping the blinds and disappearing. It would be funny in other circumstances. Suddenly, he didn’t want to stay up and drink with his friend anymore. His headache was only getting worse and Ryan was worry pacing in his living room like an anxious cat.

Shane made it back to the kitchen. He rubbed the back of his neck. His body ached. The pain medication must have been wearing off. “Well, you wanted to know what it's like being a psychic in LA...” He laughed.

Ryan stood stiff, his hands trembling. “Who was that?” Shane ignored the question. “My head is killing me. Can we… I'm sorry, can we talk about this tomorrow?”

Ryan wavered. “Are you in danger?”

Shane waved the question away in dismissal. “Naw, calm down. My boss likes me.” He knew Ryan was brimming with questions, but they had a whole two months at least to get answers to them, and Shane was having a hard time focusing now. He walked out, down the hallway. “I set out the blankets and pillows on the bed in there.”

Ryan didn’t have a choice really, but he relented and followed. “... Okay. We’ll talk tomorrow?”

Shane turned at his door. “Duh? Night, Ryan.”

“... night.”

Shane put the door between them as quickly as he could. He was being totally unfair, but he really didn’t have the energy to explain. He sat down on his bed, took his shoes off, and then lay flat on the covers for a minute, thinking he’d get up and change any second. His body was heavy, and he was very aware for no reason in particular that he was a creature inside it.

Shane sat in the passenger seat as the car whizzed the highway. The radio played Miley Cyrus’s ‘The Climb’. Shane turned his head. He recognized the feeling, the thickness of the air like moving through dough. In the driver seat, Jack sang not-so-well, but earnestly, as he drummed his hands on the wheel. The sight made Shane smile. Jack wouldn’t be caught dead listening to something like this.

Shane stood in a bookshop, looking up at the reflection of a book on the inside of a display. ǝɿiH ɿoꟻ ɔiʜ��γƨꟼ. A dark-haired man passed by.

Rapid images passed his eyes. A girl cried in her bathroom, a man and a woman fought in a kitchen. A plate broke. The images passed faster and faster until he couldn’t distinguish them. Everything was too quick, too much information all at once. His stomach began to ache.

Then he was laying on cold marble tiles. Heels clicked past his ear. Above him, marble arches stretched into a dome centered by a massive chandelier that shone like the damn sun. He tried to sit up and managed to turn his head instead. Gravity was too heavy. A familiar woman opened the front door. She wore a mink fur shawl over a nightgown, clearly heading toward the bed. “Jack. you look like shite, honey, why doesn’t your mama dress you properly.”

“Got the money, auntie.”

A pause. “Excuse me?”

Jack stepped back. Shane could see his sneakers. “I have the money, auntie Hera, Ma’am.”

He gave it to her and she hummed. “You told him to come here?”

Jack nodded.

“It’s about time we initiated that dry ass fucker… I’ve never seen a more well-behaved pet.” She leaned forward and pulled Jack down so she could kiss him on the cheek.

“Aw, ugk, auntie- auntie, he’s paying fine, I don't see why you’ve gotta-”

She grabbed his cheek, a little rougher than she ought to have. “How about you run along and let the adults do the thinking, Jackie dear. Have a goodnight, tell your mama she’s a whore.”

“Okay, auntie.”

Shane was listening so closely, he almost didn’t notice until it was too late. The stone crept around his legs and up to his body. He screamed as he fell into the marble.

Concrete surrounded him. He couldn’t breathe. Coldwater rushed at his back. Suddenly he dropped into water, tumbling, slamming into walls. It was so cold. He gasped and flailed and-

Jumped up out of sweat-soaked sheets.

Shane choked on nothing, shivering, breathing rapidly. His whole body hurt. He was battered and bleeding and-

No, no he wasn’t. What kind of nightmare…

Shane scrubbed his face and hissed in pain at the cut over his eye. Sunlight streamed in from the window. A few moments passed, and his heartbeat slowed.

The door rattled. Ryan poked his head in, hair tousled. “Yo, you want eggs?”

Yes, he did.

Man, concussions sure were weird.

________________________________________________________________

previous            to be continued....

[sweets-fanfics]

Homecoming 19

Title: Time to abandon ship

Word count: 3676

Warnings: bit a violence, some gross as fluff, the usual

Tag: @rollyjogerjones

AN: Remeber you can read Homecoming and more on my AO3:

AO3

And read my Original Novel, Sky Titans, on Wattpad:

wattpad

______________

You and Arthur stayed silent for a while. Mainly because you had just got Bea to sleep and none of you wanted to wake her again. You sighed and took Arthur’s hand. “I thought you died…” You admit to him and yourself.

“You know I’m hard to kill.” He said, trying to lighten the mood. 

“And I don’t want you to blame yourself for missing Bea… She was a surprise to us all.” You smiled at him, “I’m actually relieved you weren’t here. I was sick all the time and emotional.” You look at your shoes embarrassed. “I was sure the camp wanted me gone for a bit. After she was born I realized I may have been a bit of a bitch.”

You both chuckle. “Well you were makin’ one good lookin’ baby girl, so I think they forgave you.”

“I did, didn’t I.” You brush some hair from her face. “She has your beautiful eyes.”

“I don’t know about my eyes bein’ beautiful.”

You give him a look and he smiles, “Arthur Morgan, do you realize how good looking you are?” He rolled his eyes. “I’m serious. The first time I saw you I’m pretty sure I got feelings for you right away.”

Arthur’s face started turning red. “Oh… come on now Y/N don’t play with me.”

“I ain’t playing with ya. Have I ever lied to you?”

He pretended to think about it for a moment. “Well… I ain’t too sure.” You smacked his arm as he chuckled and pulled you into a kiss. “You know you’re beautiful right? You’re the most beautiful being I’ve ever seen.”

You began to tell him he was now messing with you when you both heard noises. 

“Mr. Van Der Linde, I’ll give you the count of three before we begin firing.” You pick up Bea as Arthur peaks out the curtain.

“They are facin’ the house where everyone is. I don’t think they know we are in here.” He whispers to you. 

“My guns, they are by the door.” You point to them as a Gatling gun begins firing. You drop to the ground with Bea even though the shooting isn’t coming for you. 

A moment later the hatch under the house opens and Sadie hops in. “You two okay?” 

“They don’t know we’re in here.” You say hugging Bea to you tightly. You glance under your bed and see Bear shaking. “I want to help..”

“No. Stay with Bea. Sadie and I got this.” Arthur says before kicking the door open and instantly taking out six men.

You crawled under the bed while Bea began to cry. “Shhh…” You tried to calm her. “It’s okay baby. It’s going to be okay.”

The firing on the Gatling gun stopped but you could still hear shooting nearby. You crawled out still keeping low to the ground. Bea tried to crawl out too but you pushed her back under. “No, no baby. I’m just grabbing my gun just in case. Stay with Bear.” Bea gave you sad eyes that almost broke your heart but she listened and crawled back under. 

When you were sure she was far enough under you ran to your pistol, almost tripping over Bea’s doll. You yanked the gun out of the holster that was hanging off of an old dresser and checked to make sure there were bullets. You peeked out the window to see an agent stalking towards the house. You gasped and hurried to a dark corner where he wouldn’t see you right away. 

“Beatrice Morgan you stay under that bed, you hear me?” You whisper to her.

You watched her put her hands over her eyes and hide her face into Bear’s fur just as the man opened the door. He walked in with his gun ready as he searched around.

“If anyone’s hiding in here, you are under arrest.” He gruffed. 

You held your breath hoping he wouldn’t see you or Bea and just leave but as you watched him glance and head towards the bed you knew it wasn’t happening. 

You cocked back the hammer and fired hitting him in the back of the head before he could even glance underneath. The body fell on to the bed with a thump. 

“Bea, come here baby. But don’t look.” She crawled out and ran to you. You picked her up and held her face into your neck so she wouldn’t see. “Bear let’s go.” 

Bear crawled out and got into protection mode. He followed you as you glanced outside still clutching Bea tightly. You had been so distracted in the short amount of time you hadn’t noticed the shooting ended.

Arthur ran up and pulled both of you into his arms. “You both okay?” He mumbled before looking you both over. He spotted a bit of the man’s blood on Bea’s shoe and began to panic.

“There’s a body on my bed. I was hidden in the corner and she was under the bed with Bear when I shot him.” Arthur let out a sigh of relief and kissed your head and the back of Bea’s head.

“Charles and I will take care of it.” He says as Dutch hurries up.

“How did they find us?” he asks, angry. Bea’s grip on you tightens at the sound of his angry voice.

“I have an idea.” You glare at Micah from across the camp who smirks.

“Will you drop that preposterous idea already, Y/N.” Dutch rubs his chin and sighs, “Is Bea okay?”

“She’s just really scared at the moment.” You don’t stop petting her hair and trying to calm her down. “I think we gotta move. It was an almost peaceful two years but we have to move before the Pinkertons come back.” Susan and Pearson nod and begin getting stuff ready to go. Dutch looked at them a bit angry that they listened to you and didn’t wait for his orders. “I believe Charles and I had found a potential new camp near Annesburg.” You explain to him.

“Then we’ll go there. But it’ll just be a stepping stone. All we need is a bit of cash and then we can get out of here.” You hold an eye roll at him going back to his plan.

“Father, it’s been two years. Maybe we should give up the entire Tahiti idea and just try to get everyone somewhere safe.”  You try to explain as Henry and Micah walk up and cut you off.

“Father, Micah and I can go make sure we got everyone while the others get ready to go.” You glare at your brother who ignores you.

“Perfect idea, son. You two go do that.” Dutch agreed immediately.

“They are just tryin’ to get out of packing.” You groan.

“Not now Y/N. Not now.” Dutch walks away leaving you fuming next to Arthur.

 Abigail walks up to the three of you. “You and Bea can sleep with Jack and me tonight if you want.” She says softly.

“Thank you, Abigail. Can you take Bea in, I gotta talk to Arthur.”

She nods, takes Bea from you and heads inside. “Arthur we gotta go.” You say as soon as you both are alone.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we gotta leave the gang. Luca and his wife still say they’d help us get a small place. We could build a ranch and get away from all this. John and Abigail have been talkin’ about doin’ that as well.” 

Arthur rubs his chin and thinks, “We can’t just abandon Dutch and the gang.”

“He’s already abandoned us, Arthur. It’s Micah, he has my father and my brother wrapped around his finger. It would be better to abandon ship now.” You grab his hand so he’d look at you. “Please think about it. I’ll take Bea into the city tomorrow, visit Luca and see if they can help.”

“Why are you taking Bea?” He asks. His eyebrows move together in frustration.

“Luca and his wife Jill had a son. I can say it’s a play date.” You explain.

Arthur thought a bit longer but sighed, “Alright, I’ll talk to John and see if he and Abigail still want out as well. Maybe if Dutch sees how much of us want to stop he’ll snap out of it.”

You kissed Arthur’s cheek and smiled, “Thank you. I’m sorry your day back has been so… much.”

Your husband shrugs as if it’s a normal day. “You go try to sleep, I’m gonna help clean up and maybe go say hi to Athena.”

“Goodnight, cowboy.” You say as you began to head for the cabin.

“Goodnight, my love.” Your face heats up since you had fully expected him to call you ‘princess’ as he always did. You turn and give him another smile before heading inside. 

Bea is still awake and runs up to you. “You should be asleep, missy.” You sigh and pick her up.

“She just kept saying your name.” Karen groaned. You glance at her and see the sitting against the wall with a bottle in hand.

“Why are you drinkin’? You said you’d give it up.” 

Karen rolls her eyes and takes another swig, “Shut up. Your father is back so you are no longer in charge.”

You decide to ignore her and walk towards Abigail who’s getting comfortable next to an already sleeping Jack. “Don’t mind her.” Abigail sighs as you sit next to her slowly rocking Bea.

“I won’t… I’ve just had a bad feeling in my gut since I spoke to my father before everything happened just now.” Abigail rubs your shoulder in a comforting way. “He accused me and John of workin’ for the Pinkertons.” 

“He’s insane. That Micah has probably been getting in his head the entire time they were gone.” 

“He even yelled at Arthur saying that if he hadn’t married me the bank job in Saint Denise would have gone ok.” You run your hand through your hair in frustration. “I’m not sure I wanna be near him anymore.” You say in a lower voice so only she hears. 

“Get some sleep and we can talk tomorrow.” She glances at Bill who is getting ready to sleep. 

“Alright. Thank you, Abigail.”

___________________

When you wake up in the morning you feel around for Bea. You shoot up fast when you realize she isn’t there. You glance around the small cabin that everyone was now sharing out of fear of the Pinkertons coming back. Karen is still asleep. Mary-beth and Tilly are both talking softly to each other. But it’s just you four inside. 

“Mary-beth, Tilly, do you know where Bea is?” You ask softly to not wake Karen.

“Arthur took her outside about an hour or so ago.” Tilly smiles, “He said he wanted you to sleep a little more.” 

You let out a sigh of relief which makes both girls giggle. “You were sleepin’ so soundly, none of us had the heart to wake ya,” Mary-beth adds.

“Thank you, girls. I’ll go check on them.” 

You head outside and are blinded by the sudden late morning sunlight hitting you. The muggy-ness of the swamp doesn’t annoy you as much anymore, but you still don’t like it. You glance around at the place you had called home for two years, it was now riddled with bullet holes and everyone looked on edge. Javier is pouring a cup of coffee near where Pearson cooks. 

“Good morning Javier. How are you feeling?” You ask him.

“Fine.” He says flatly and walks away leaving you confused. 

“Are you looking for Arthur?” Charles asks walking up to you.

“Yes.”

“He and Bea are looking at the horses. Be ready to go later. Arthur and I were able to clear out the campsite last night.”

“Was it difficult?”

“Just had to clear out some cannibals.” He says as if it’s normal.

“Thank you for your hard work Charles.” You say before walking towards the horses.

You can hear Bea giggling as Arthur softly talks to her. “Were you takin’ care of Athena for me while I was gone?”

“No, Momma.” Bea mumbles.

“Momma, huh? Guess we’ll have to say thank you to her.” You put a hand on his shoulder making him turn and smile. “Here she is.” He kissed your cheek as Bea reached for you.

“Hi, Momma.”

“Hi, baby. Were you helpin’ daddy?” She nods and also kisses your cheek. “You wanna go visit Uncle Luca with momma?” Bea smiles and nods. 

“Will you two be okay?” Arthur asks.

“Yeah, She loves going for rides on Suzie.”

“I think we are gonna move the camp to the new place today.” He explains.

“I heard it was not a very pleasant place.” 

“Yeah, they had a girl in there they were torturing, I made sure she got home okay.” 

You put your free hand on his cheek which he leans his face into and kisses your palm. “You are a good man.”

“I’m not, but I’m tryin’ to get better for you and Bea.” He leans in and kisses your lips softly which makes Bea giggle. 

“You are a good man, and one day I hope you see it.” You both walk up to Suzie with Arthur’s hand softly placed on the small of your back. 

He takes Bea as you climb up and then places her in front of you. “Now, Little Bea, you gotta watch momma’s back today okay?”

Bea gave a firm nod. “Love you.” She says to him softly making him completely turn into putty. 

“I love you too.” He kisses her nose. You can see the look in his eyes of how in love he is with his daughter.  “I’ll come get ya once I have them all moved in.”

“Thank you, honey.” He kisses your hand once more before stepping back and letting you and Bea take off.

__________

You hitch Suzie at the Bronte mansion. Luca had moved in once his father… ‘mysteriously’ disappeared. He took over all of his father's work and actually turned it around for good and not mob work.

Luca and Jill were already outside with their son, Nick, as you grabbed Bea off of Suzie. You let Bea run to Nick and the two instantly forgot that anyone was around and they went to play.

“Mrs. Morgan!” Jill called to you with a smile. “I was hoping you’d come today.” 

“Y/N, what’s wrong?” Luca notices immediately.

“I need to speak to you both if it’s okay.” 

Luca nods and asks one of the maids to watch the kids while we went into the study. Luca and Jill both watched as you looked out the window at Bea. “What’s the matter?”

“Arthur came home.”

The couple smiles, “This great news!” Jill cheers, “We must have you both over for supper one night.” 

As Jill continues getting excited Luca notices you don’t smile and puts a hand on his wife’s to calm her, “What else happened?” He asks.

“My father, he’s different. He yelled at me, accusing me of being a rat.”

“If it’s about our friendship you know we’d never say anything.”

“I don’t even think it’s that. He’s just so much more paranoid, and then the Pinkertons showed up last night.”

Luca sits up alarmed, “What? Are you hurt?”

“No, and we didn’t lose anyone… But I think Micah told them. I thought maybe two years away he’d die or Dutch would find out. But no, it’s like he got to land and went straight to them.” You run your fingers through your hair. “Maybe I should have just shot him those years ago.”

Jill, forgetting you run with a dangerous gang is taken aback before letting her self catch up to what you said. You knew she was always too sweet for her own good.

“Well… if you need an out. We can hide you three here.” Luca suggests and Jill agrees, nodding.

“Thank you. But we have people we can’t abandon… And I’m not sure you all could fit us here…” You glance at their home. “On second thought..”

Luca smiles at your attempt of humor. “Well how about what I offered that night years ago?”

“That’s why I’m here.” You sit in the chair across from them. “I’m hopin’ you both can still help us. I know for most certain it would be my family and another family of three. I’m not quite sure about others. If you have any farmland so we can try to earn our keep and pay you both back…”

Luca put his hand up to stop you, “Y/N, I’d never ask you to pay us back,”

“But I know for certain my husband will want to. And that I will want to,” You take a deep breath and wipe a few tears that are slipping out. “I want Beatrice to have a life that isn’t revolved around her crazy grandfather. I used to dream about running with him and his gang as a young girl… but after bein’ apart of it, it’s done nothin’ but make me want out. Arthur and Bea are the only ones I’m fighting for, along with helping Abigail and John get out too.”

Luca nods and stands going to his desk and writing something, “I’ll start looking at our properties If I find one where can I find you?”

“Near Annesburg.”

Jill gasps, “Annesburg? It’s not safe for travelers in those areas.” 

“I know, but we gotta hide from the law up there.” You can tell she was still worried, “You know I’m a tough girl who can shoot down a few rednecks.” She sighs and smiles. You can still see the fear.

_____________

You end up letting Bea play until late into the afternoon. Bea and Nick are playing with some of Nick’s toys on the floor with you and Jill watching over them while enjoying tea. That’s when you hear a knock at the door. You glance at the door worried as a servant walks up and opens it. You let out a sigh of relief when you see Arthur's broad shoulders behind the tiny servant.

He awkwardly follows the servant into the room, taking his hat off and pushing his hair away from his face. “A Mr. Morgan here Ma’am.” The servant hums.

“Thank you, Robert.” Jill smiles. The servant bows and walks away as Arthur stands next to the couch your on. Jill giggles, “Mr. Morgan, please have a seat.”

“Your seat looks very clean, Mrs. Bronte,” Arthur says glancing at his dusty pants.

“Oh I have a son, Arthur, nothing is clean. Please have a seat and relax. Y/N was telling me about your adventure to Guarma.” Arthur nods and sits next to you taking your hand. “Would you like some tea? Setting slaves free must be tiring.”

Arthur chuckles and nods. “Thank you very much, Mrs.”

“Oh please call my Jill. Your wife has been so kind to us in the past years. Helped us clean out all of the mob in this dreaded… family business.” She rolled her eyes.

Bea at the point had noticed Arthur and her smile got wide as she pulled Nick’s sleeve. “Daddy!�� She exclaimed. 

“Oh, she learns ‘daddy’ in one day.” You sigh sarcastically as Arthur gives you a look.  

“Don’t three-year-olds usually talk a bit more?” He asks you and Jill making you both laugh.

“Oh yeah, Bea talks all the time. She acts like she doesn’t but she didn’t stop talking the entire ride here. And she and Nick talk.” You smile as Bea gives you a smug smile before running back to Nick.

“Soon she’ll talk your ear off too Mr. Morgan.” Jill smiles sweetly.

“Arthur!” Luca says walking in and shaking his hand. “I’m glad you're okay. You had us all worried. I even sent a boat out to look for you. I sadly admit I feared the worst when they came back empty-handed.”

“Thank you for helping Y/N and Bea while I was away.” 

“All Jill and I did was be a friend, your wife is too tough to truly ever need help.” He sits next to Jill and hands you a stack of papers. “Y/N, look these properties over.”

“Properties?” Arthur asks glancing. 

“You own all of these?” You ask looking at the stack of at least five different places.

“Well, My father did. I’m sure your family will put better use to whatever my father had wanted to do.” He puts an arm around his wife and kisses her cheek. “I love this whole vigilante work.”

You sigh and shake your head, “Hardly vigilante work, Luca.” You fold the papers and slip them in Arthurs satchel, “We’ll look them over later. For now… we should probably go help unpack.”

Arthur can see how much you don’t want to do that. “Your right, I guess.”

“I hope you two stay safe. I’ll come to see you if I think of anything else that will help.”

_________________

You hop on to Suzie and begin to reach for Bea in Arthur’s arms. “Wanna ride with Daddy,” Bea announces as she latches on to Arthur’s shirt.

“You sure? You’re gonna break Suzie’s heart.” 

Bea smiles and hugs her small arms around his neck. “Daddy.” She says as firmly as a three-year-old can be.

“Fine, then how about a race.” You smirk. Arthur smiles knowing he can never turn down a challenge.

“You sure about that, princess?” He says coyly. 

“Me and Suzie versus you, Bea and Athena.”

Arthur hops onto Athena balancing Bea in one hand. “You are on.”

“You ready, set, go.” 

Arthur and Bea take off and you act like you are having trouble getting Suzie to go until they are out of sight. You quickly pull your pistol out and turn to aim it behind you. “What do you want?”

Micah comes out with hands up and smirking. “We gotta have a talk. Heard you ratted me out to your old man, Princess.”

[the-light-followed]

WYRD SISTERS (1988) [DISC. #6; WITCHES #2]

“‘No one would come up here this time of night.’  Magrat peered around timidly.  Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered.  ‘What’s to be afraid of?’ she managed.  ‘Us,’ said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.”

Rating: 6/10

Standalone Okay: Yes

Read First: Yeah!

Discworld Books Masterpost: [x]

* * * * * * * * * *

I’m just going to jump right in with this one: the best part about the Witches sub-series of the Discworld is that they are all, in their own way, stories about stories.  They’re stories that follow other stories, the tropes and archetypes and established narrative structure, but they’re also stories that subvert that structure at just the right moment to make something that feels much more truthful, and often, much more real.

Stories about stories.

This is sometimes very literal: Wyrd Sisters, for example, has very obvious Shakespearean roots, notably from Hamlet and Macbeth, and seems to gleefully delight in throwing around references—three witches meeting to cast spells, blood on the murderer’s hands that won’t wash away, the ghost of a murdered father begging his son to seek revenge, a theater called The Dysk that mimics Shakespeare’s Globe, etc., etc., etc.—that then get turned over on their heads.  We’ll see it done again with the fairy tale elements of Witches Abroad, and the Phantom of the Opera parody that is Maskerade. These books are, in a very real sense, skipping the setup and instead using cultural touchstones as framework. The books starring the witches are literally new stories being told about stories we, the audience, already know and recognize.

But sometimes it isn’t literal at all: witches, after all, work magic most often through psychology and metaphor.  “Headology,” as the witches call it, is the basis of witchcraft, and it’s all about the stories being told.  It’s in the things the witches do for respect, like their hats and black outfits and their out-of-the-way cottages they pass down from one witch to the next, or the way they bow instead of curtsey.  It’s in the things they call magic even when it isn’t, like using real herbs and medicines to cure illnesses, or waving their hands over a pot of tea and chanting nonsense before ‘reading the future’ in the leaves, all of it only for the look of the thing from the outside.

And it’s also in the things they tell themselves. For example, when Magrat’s broomstick stops working in Wyrd Sisters, she does what she calls a Change spell—which simply means that the rest of the world remains the same, but she changes the way she sees herself.  Before, she was a young woman on a broom rapidly falling out of the sky, and now she’s a confident young witch who can deal with any disaster that comes her way, so she’s therefore a lot less worried about it.  

And it works.  That’s the thing: Magrat is just fine.  Witches do magic in and on themselves, it’s all nothing more than a thought, and yet it works.

None of the Witches books are particularly subtle about the point they’re trying to make with the whole deal, either.  In Wyrd Sisters, it seems like everyone is talking about the power of words and stories, the way that the things we tell ourselves and each other can shape the reality of the world we inhabit.  There are some negatives you can pull out of that message—history is malleable and written by the victors, propaganda triumphs over the truth, etc., etc.  But there are a lot of more interesting, thought-provoking ideas to consider, instead. For example: just because narrative structure has already delivered us the broad strokes of the plot (anyone who’s studied any Shakespeare, which can reasonably be assumed to be any native English speaker older than about sixteen, can probably guess the general course of Wyrd Sisters by about page twenty), it doesn’t mean there can’t be originality and meaning in the specifics.

And that originality and meaning is what makes all the Discworld books work so well.  Pratchett is parodying, sure, but he’s also creating something very new and earnest and sincere, and that just doesn’t work if the story is an exact beat-for-beat retelling of an already-told tale.

Wyrd Sisters agrees with that idea. Destiny is all well and good—it’s nice to think that what’s to come is pre-planned, easy to predict, and impossible to subvert—but the world just doesn’t work like that.  The story isn’t plotted out in advance.

As Pratchett says later in the book: “Destiny was funny stuff…You couldn’t trust it.  Often you couldn’t even see it.  Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else—coincidence, maybe, or providence.  You barred the door against it, and it was standing behind you.  Then just when you thought you had it nailed down it walked away with the hammer.”

The witches certainly don’t truck with destiny.  Or, well, it may be a tool in their storytelling arsenal, but they don’t see it as a concrete thing.  Destiny is what you make of it, and Granny and Nanny are movers and shakers.  That makes it especially ironic that the book is called Wyrd Sisters—the word “wyrd” is an old Anglo-Saxon concept referring to fate or personal destiny, so the “wyrd sisters” themselves typically would be the three Fates, a la Greek mythology, rather than three women who tend to grab Fate and Destiny by the ears and twist until they decide to agree that the witches have the right of it.

Honestly, though, if Granny Weatherwax looked at me like that, I’d do whatever she wanted, too.

I just want to bring up something I really like about Pratchett’s writing style: despite the fantastical setting, despite how far from reality he can get, he’s not afraid to switch to Roundworld concepts or just flat-out break the fourth wall in exchange for better, more impactful descriptions.  I like to call this cinematic writing, and sometimes that’s actually very literal. There are quite a few passages in various Discworld books where he starts to write in an almost movie-script style.  After Moving Pictures, which is still a good four books away at this point, I think that becomes less notable.  Here, and in the previous few Discworld books (Mort, Sourcery, Equal Rites), when Discworld does not have any parallel equivalent to Roundworld’s Hollywood, it’s pretty damn unusual for an author to just outright throw aside their own fantasy setting to make a description in real-world terms.

My favorite example of this from Wyrd Sisters:

“It is almost impossible to convey the sudden passage of fifteen years and two months in words.  It’s a lot easier in pictures, when you just use a calendar with lots of pages blowing off, or a clock with hands moving faster and faster until they blur, or trees bursting into blossom and fruiting in a matter of seconds… Well, you know.  Or the sun becomes a fiery streak across the sky, and days and nights flicker past jerkily like a bad zoetrope, and the fashions visible in the clothes shop across the road whip on and off faster than a lunchtime stripper with five pubs to do. There are any amount of ways, but they won’t be required because, in fact, none of this happened.”

You can practically imagine the way that scene would look in a blockbuster movie, and it’s wonderful that Pratchett describes it crystal clear just to let us know that it is not, in fact, how it looked at all.

There’s a lot more to like about Wyrd Sisters, too, for all that it isn’t one of my favorite Discworld books.  It’s a far better introduction to the witches—specifically Granny Weatherwax—than Equal Rites is, even though Equal Rites is technically the first book in the Witches sub-series.  It introduces some characters we’ll see a lot more of later, like King Verence and the greater Ogg family, but also characters that will go on to become staples of the Discworld, like Nanny Ogg and Magrat.  We also have some lovely cameos from already established characters: notably Death and his interactions during the play at the castle, but there are some good Ankh-Morpork moments, like the Librarian’s appearance at a barfight.

And we get to see the good old Discworld humor really click—it’s all about that balance between absurdism and realism, or between established tropes and self-awareness.  One of my favorite examples of this comes right at the beginning of the book:

“As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’  There was a pause.  Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.’”

Pratchett’s really got a sense for it by this point, and he can deliver zinger after unexpectedly delightful zinger.  Discworld books are always beautifully funny, of course, even though after a while you really get a feel for when a good joke is coming.  Some people might think that knowing the punchline is coming might make it less funny: it absolutely does not.  All it does is make the unexpected, sneaky moments—when the humor Pratchett has been secretly setting up for ages finally creeps up to smack you in the face—hit harder.  Maybe others disagree, but I can read Discworld novels again and again, and they always get me just as much as they did the first time through.  In my opinion, that’s real comedic talent.

Up next in the series we have Pyramids, our first unconnected one-off story, which is wonderfully weird even for a Discworld book!  Stay tuned!

* * * * * * * * * *

Side Notes:

Every time that oh-so popular Ankh-Morporkian dive bar, the Drum, pops up, it’s fun to note where it’s at these days: Mended Drum, Broken Drum, etc.  In Wyrd Sisters, Tomjon and Hwel go drinking in the Mended Drum.

There are several adaptations of Wyrd Sisters, including a 4-part BBC radio show, an animated film, and a stageplay.

As I go over my highlighted quotes and annotations from each book, putting these posts together, I learn more and more about myself.  What I like, what I find funny, what I care to notice.  For example, Vetinari shows up exactly ONCE in this book, and just in a footnote, and yet I still highlighted it and wrote a note next to it that contained mostly exclamation points.  There’s no real point to this; I just want everyone to know how much I love Vetinari.

Favorite Quotes:

“As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’ There was a pause.  Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.’”

“Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders.  Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have.”

“Now, just when a body would have been useful, it had let him down.  Or out.”

“‘No one would come up here this time of night.’ Magrat peered around timidly.  Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own.  She shivered.  ‘What’s to be afraid of?’ she managed.  ‘Us,’ said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.”

“‘How many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean and then, when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot for your tea, there it is?’ They considered this in silence. ‘Never,’ said Granny irritably. ‘And nor have you.’”

“His body was standing to attention.  Despite all his efforts his stomach stood at ease.”

“Back down on the plains, when you kicked people they kicked back.  Up here, when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off.”

“The Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood.”

“She gave the guards a nod as she went through.  It didn’t occur to either of them to stop her because witches, like beekeepers and big gorillas, went where they liked.  In any case, an elderly lady banging a bowl with a spoon was probably not the spearhead of an invasion force.”

“‘You’re wondering whether I really would cut your throat,’ panted Magrat.  ‘I don’t know either.  Think of the fun we could have together, finding out.’”

“Wizards assassinated each other in drafty corridors, witches just cut one another dead in the street.  And they were all as self-centered as a spinning top.  Even when they help other people, she thought, they’re secretly doing it for themselves.  Honestly, they’re just like big children.  Except for me, she thought smugly.”

“‘Man just went past with a cat on his head,’ one of them remarked, after a minute or two’s reflection.  ‘See who it was?’  ‘The Fool, I think.’  There was a thoughtful pause.  The second guard shifted his grip on his halberd.  ‘It’s a rotten job,’ he said.  ‘But I suppose someone’s got to do it.’”

“Granny’s implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and, on occasion, mountains.”

“Only in our dreams are we free.  The rest of the time we need wages.”

“Words were indeed insubstantial.  They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.”

“‘Witches just aren’t like that,’ said Magrat.  ‘We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked of them to say we don’t.  We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.’”

“‘I shall haunt their corridors,’ he said, ‘and whisper under the doors on still nights.’ His voice grew fainter, almost lost in the ceaseless roar of the river.  ‘I shall make basket chairs creak most alarmingly, just you wait and see.’ Death grinned at him.  NOW YOU’RE TALKING.”

[stars-and-rose]

Now that we've met one another (I think deserve each other)

[izzy-b-hands]

20-30!

Thank you so much for asking!!!!

20. Favorite character to write?

Already answered, but I don’t mind re-answering cuz I thought maybe I’d narrow my three way tie, but alas, no lol. Still a tie between Ahkmenrah, Snafu, and Skwisgaar.

21. Least favorite character to write? 

Ooh-tbh, Larry from NATM just because I feel like I always make him an asshole? Like, I haven’t published all my fic ideas for NATM because I keep making him really mean? And in some it works but in others I’m like ‘jesus chill Lee he’s just a Dude trying his best’ but also at the same time I feel the way Stiller played him and his character arc means he’s got some major ego to him as the films go on? Idk that isn’t a hot take or anything just me being frustrated with Ben Stiller lol

22. Favorite story you’ve ever written? 

Hard choice, because I love all my kids, but I cried after writing this one lol: https://aboutthatmelancholystorm.tumblr.com/post/186781309036/you-know-that-i-love-you

It hit some personal stuff for me, so to be able to have it work organically in a fic so I could also like, mini therapy session myself? Cool af. Also, ppl seemed to like this a lot too, and while that validation isn’t the only reason I write, it’s always cool when my writing makes ppl happy. 

23. Least favorite story you’ve ever written? 

I don’t really have a least favorite, but I do have some I’m more frustrated with, due to how long they took me to write, etc. Currently? The answer to this is my Mark the Date series because A. it is taking me a day and an age to finish it and B. I feel like it kinda flopped, so it’s hard to pull up any energy to finish it, but like...I may as well now lol. I’ll get it done eventually.

24. Favorite scene you’ve written? 

Oh god tbh I have too many I love just cuz like

I can go back to how I felt writing them and yeah

But as of most recent fics, I really this bit: 

-Snafu patted the blanket near his head, and waited for Eugene to put out his pipe and lay back beside him before snuggling close to him. “You could be right. Could be God. Could just be love.” “How’s that?” “I think love has its own way. Even before you meet someone, even before you know you’re fallin’ for ‘em. Love’s just…out there, like the air or somethin’. Finds you when the time is right, and finds who you click with. You gotta do the rest, the stayin’ in love part, but that bringing together, that first spark…that’s love just existing, and doin’ what it needs to so the world keeps spinnin’, so people make it through tough shit,” Snafu replied. “I like that,” Eugene said. “Think love did a good job with us. Makin’ sure we found each other.” Snafu pressed a kiss softly to the corner of Eugene’s mouth. “Sure did. Wouldn’t ever want to be with anyone else. I don’t even know what that looks like, and I don’t want to.” “Same here,” Eugene’s mouth was warm as he kissed him back. “Here’s to love for making sure you found me.” -

from this fic: https://aboutthatmelancholystorm.tumblr.com/post/186926226531/absolution-is-the-taste-of-your-lips

Because I’m sappy af more than I let on, and also this was a chance to like, write out my own feelings via Snafu. And that was a pretty cool and fulfilling thing for me, ya know? 

25. Favorite line you’ve ever written? 

oh god this is another hard one to narrow down but

I always come back to this line and go ‘oh shit did I really write that. Nah, someone better than me at this had to have. They briefly possessed me or something”:  

-Music and talking and shouting and footsteps collide kaleidoscopic in his ears, but none bearing the one sound that he’d run to if he heard it.-

from this fic, mentioned twice now in this post lol: https://aboutthatmelancholystorm.tumblr.com/post/186781309036/you-know-that-i-love-you

I really love alliteration, and for me this line just sums up how it feels to walk thru a city when you aren’t just wandering really, but are looking or waiting for someone, and have that awful yet sometimes good feeling of expecting to hear or see them but it feels like you’re waiting or searching forever and in the meantime the city just lives on around you, a stopped platelet stuck in a vein full of vitality. Like, idk if it hit any of my readers that way, but that’s what I was trying to get across lol, so the line always hits me hard in a good way when I scroll thru my writing tag and see it. 

26. Story you’re most proud of? 

Gosh

I gotta choose just one kid for this aldsfkja I’m bad at choosing I love my gaggle of ragtag goofballs. I have an original piece I’d choose for this, but I’ve never posted it on here, so I’m gonna choose out of my fanfic on here instead.

One I am really proud of is this one: https://aboutthatmelancholystorm.tumblr.com/post/186781309036/you-know-that-i-love-you

and I know it’s the third time it’s been part of an answer on here but

I really love this one idk. Thinking back to how I felt while writing it, how it all flowed in a certain way. The whole experience was just something else, and I’m proud of this one in a certain way I find myself, funnily enough, unable to describe. 

27. Best review you ever got? 

Okay this sounds cheesy but like

I really do love and appreciate every review or review-like thing I’ve ever gotten so I can’t choose just one for this

Like, y’all gotta understand, I’ve deleted some of it and erased traces of it from my blog, but I’ve written for years on here, I have some stuff on my ao3, and for the longest time I got nothing back, or very nearly nothing. Maybe a few likes, but no comments and not much else. I always just rolled with it and assumed I just wasn’t writing anything good enough to inspire reviews. Idk if that’s true or not, but in any case it means I cherish every comment, like, reblog, and anything review-like in nature because I’m so grateful to have it now, and I know it could well be pure luck that I stumbled up on a really supportive bunch of fandoms with great readers. 

In other words, thank y’all for every kind word and like and reblog and also I may be an immortal feeding off of validation of my art, but we’ll see on that last bit, because I haven’t tested it. 

28. Worst review you ever got?

One from middle school. I’d just finished my very first novel, gave it to a friend to read, and he said it ‘smacked of being too fanciful and childish, something only kids and women would read’ (it was a YA fantasy novel so I mean... what exactly he expected, idk cuz he knew what it was before I gave it to him, like it’s supposed to have those elements as a lot of these sorts of novels/stories do, and that isn’t a bad thing about them at all, so like...what his damage was idek.)

Also this is the same dude who texts me randomly and is really weird abt his friendship with me and happens to be an English teacher now (RIP to his students.) 

Anyway, after he said that I tossed a review right back, because well, middle school and also I was very upset with him because I’d not asked for anything other than a general ‘if you picked this up randomly and started it, would it suck you in enough to keep reading or would you put it down’ like that was literally all I needed him to answer for me. So I told him his latest novel (his second at that point) was essentially just him masturbating to his own opinions (because he’s an arguer, who loves to tell ppl they’re always wrong, and that’s by his own admission) for one hundred pages, and not in a way that anyone else would care to read. He was pissed, but so was I. We didn’t talk for a good week, and we had almost all our classes together lol. 

Like, getting nothing back in review sucks too, but this one has stuck with me forever. Best part? I mentioned it to him a few years back, and he only vaguely remembered it, and followed it with “but I’ve said a lot of rough stuff about your work. I mean, it deserved it at the time, but you might be good at this someday!” 

I didn’t smack him, but I really, really wanted to. 

29. Favorite story/poem of another author

This doesn’t specify on Tumblr or not, so I’ve got two: one from outside tumblr, and one from on here.

A. When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be   Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,   Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,And think that I may never live to trace   Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,   That I shall never look upon thee more,Never have relish in the faery power   Of unreflecting love—then on the shoreOf the wide world I stand alone, and thinkTill love and fame to nothingness do sink.

B. Again, this Tumblr one could be a huge ass list because y’all on here are amazing, but one I’ve been rereading over and over again recently is @xmxisxforxmaybe ‘s Remnants series, which can be found here: https://xmxisxforxmaybe.tumblr.com/post/186702235396/remnants-complete-work

Like, Ahk as a character is captured so well, and I love the way the plot twines and also when the smut comes up? Very good A+ smut, something I value pretty highly on and off Tumblr because man, sometimes smut is just work to write, so I appreciate it when it’s really good. All around, this series has captured my heart and I legit have a link to it saved on multiple devices so if I need something to read, I can just pull it up right away. 

30. Hardest part of writing? 

Self-doubt. It’s the biggest hurdle for any artist, regardless of the art in question I think, but with writing it seems to double down a lot. Like, you have to really get out of your own head, even as you spend all your time there with your writing ideas. Shit gets weird and twisted, man. 

For the longest time, I really let self-doubt defeat me too, and I regret the time I lost to that. I still get hit with it randomly, cause I don’t think it every really goes away for any writer, not even the big names like Stephen King or Neil Gaiman (who I’m half tempted to @ on here purely because I wanna know his feelings on this stuff because I respect and admire him as an artist and his thoughts very much, but also he’s a very busy man so I’m not gonna bug him by doing that lol.) 

All there is to do is to work with it, push past it, and most importantly keep writing. I have days where that feels like the hardest thing, but each day I manage to get past it and get the words down? I let myself feel proud of that, and mark it as an achievement in my Big Book of Stuff I’ve Done in This Life. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

SO LATE SO SOON: fun, genre-celebrating SF for young readers (of all ages!)

[Harry Tynan posts on our forums as Moose Malloy. Earlier this week, he messaged me about his fun, self-published kid's book, written as a series of bedtime stories for his kid (a tradition I'm very fond of -- it's the origin story of The Borribles!). The book is so much fun that I invited him to write a short introduction and choose a excerpt for your edification. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did! -Cory]

The great Umberto Eco once wrote, in a marvellous essay about Casablanca, that "Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion."

And hey, who doesn't love Casablanca?

I'm no Umberto Eco, but a while back I wrote a science fiction novel out of love for my son and out of love for the SF genre itself. Freed by love, I poured my heart into this short tale of a boy and his dad (plus his two accidental, argumentative clones, plus his dad's childhood dog accidentally yanked forward from the 1970s for their own, very tail-waggy reunion).

For my son's amusement, I unselfconsciously stuffed each of my quick, cliff-hanging chapters with my favourite SF clichés from a lifetime of fandom. I smushed in some 'gritty history' and some light moral lessons and some Shakespeare and some counterfactual frolics. I had huge fun bashing out 500 words nightly on an old laptop after everyone else hit the hay.

I was pretty careful with editing and general quality control. But I let the tale itself go where it wanted. When I read it over I smiled to find influences from stuff I adored -- not only Sheckley and Dick and Zelazny and Silverberg and Doctorow, but also Beverly Cleary, and Treasure Island, and Calvin and Hobbes, and 2000AD and Red Dwarf and arcade games and pop music and every other good thing we turn to for hope and light. I called it SO LATE SO SOON, after the wistful absurdism of the Dr. Seuss verse. Then I printed some copies and gifted them around. Did that a few times. Kinda forgot about it then, to be honest.

Now, I've never made any big claims for this book. For me it is, as Eco says, 'the clichés having a ball.' But it's had a joyful little half-life. Some schoolteacher here in Ireland read it in class. Kids I don't know, cousins of neighbours of my nieces or something, petitioned for a sequel. Well-meaning friends kept nagging me to publish it -- as if it were that easy!

But of course, it IS that easy to self-publish these days. And this week I finally did, on Amazon KDP. It feels great! Right now it's free, so if interested, please snag it

here

(US) or

here

(UK) or in your local Amazon region. I'll run more free days asap (KDP limits these, though).

I hope some of you like it. You could start with the extract below, wherein our protagonists use a time-freezing whistle to escape from a medieval court which alleges they're demons.

Finally... I cannot thank Cory and Boing Boing sufficiently for this -- it's a wish come true, realising a childhood dream (to write and share an entertaining story) with my dream audience (the awesome happy mutant community). Buíochas!

FORTY-FIVE

One minute later I was outside again, panting heavily, frightened and excited at the same time. The streets were filled with people stuck in fixed poses; even the horses who'd pulled us here in our cage were poised without twitching, like statues. And around everything, that strange ring of the whistle pulsed like some alien music.

No time to hang about, I told myself. We need to leave. But how? I went back inside the courthouse to assess the situation.

First, I removed the whistle from Marlowe's collar and stuck it in my pocket. No telling when I'd need that again.

Second, I took a good look at Dad, where he was suspended in time, leaning against the side of his dock. No way would I be able to carry him. But I might be able to drag him.

The sound of the whistle, still echoing, rang pure and clear in my ears as I worked.

I pushed experimentally on Ezquerra, who was blocking the steps up to Dad. He tumbled over like a skittle and landed flat on his back with a crash. Terrified someone would hear me, I looked around in a panic for somewhere to hide. But then I controlled myself. Who cared if anyone heard me? They were all frozen. And that gave me an idea. I looked around for the largest people in the room, to lie down beside Ezquerra.

Two soldiers and a judge later, I'd made a pretty soft-looking landing pad just outside Dad's dock. "Sorry, Dad," I whispered as I opened the gate at the top of the steps. He tumbled straight out and landed smack-bang across the judge's belly and a soldier's fleshy forearms. It seemed to me that the sound of the whistle was beginning to fade at this stage, and from the corner of my eye I could see hints of very slow movement amongst the crowd, so it looked like the freeze was wearing off.

That was fine. I was nearly ready anyway. But I needed to talk to Dad. I dragged him, with great difficulty, outside the courtroom door, around a corner, and down a quiet hallway with polished wooden panels and huge pictures of great battles hanging everywhere.

Then I waited.

All around me I could hear the sounds of reality restarting, like one of Dad's old records rotating at the wrong speed. Around the corner somewhere, I heard a footstep. As I watched Dad's face, he blinked. The ring of the whistle was almost completely gone now. And suddenly, time was back to normal -- moving forward at one second per second.

"Dad," I said quickly, "don't talk, let me explain. I froze time using this Silverberg whistle. Lukes B and C and Marlowe are still in the courtroom, which I imagine is going bananas right now, because you and I have just disappeared into thin air... and also, some people have been, uh, rearranged."

Dad's eyes bulged in confusion as I continued, but I put up a hand to silence him. "There's no time to lose. They'll really think we're devils now, with this kind of black magic. We need to escape. But I'm too small to carry everyone."

He nodded to show he understood. "This time, I want YOU to blow the whistle, go back in there, and carry all of us to somewhere safe. It wears off after about ten minutes, so keep blowing it till you're done. Got it?"

There were sounds of shouting and alarm all through the building now. A group of soldiers came tearing around the corner, spotted us, and charged with an almighty roar.

"Got it," said Dad. He grabbed the whistle from me, raised it to his face, and --

FORTY-SIX

Dad got us out of Lisbon. He got all of us out, all on his own.

It must have taken him hours. I woke up a couple of times, emerging woozily from the freeze-sleep, becoming aware of reality crowding in on me once more. The first time it happened, I was bent forward over a low wall, presumably where he'd left me while he went to get one of the other Lukes. There was a slow, low, grinding noise: GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG... It started to get faster and higher: GRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGR... and then it suddenly disappeared as normal time resumed with a POP!

I lifted my head. I felt fine. I was near a busy marketplace. Sounds of life were audible all around me; I wasn't the only person waking up.

"Dad," I croaked. "The whistle."

I was still lying draped over that wall and couldn't even see Dad, but he must have heard me, because next thing I knew I was coming around again on the side of a dusty pathway just outside of the city.

GGGGGGGGGGGGG

GRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGRGR

POP

Luke B was lying beside me and I could see Dad, with Luke C in his arms, staggering tiredly toward us. He saw me watching him, and winked. "You okay Dad?" I asked. "I'll be fine," he answered. "The old dog for the hard road, as my mother used to say."

He'd even rescued one of the backpacks somehow. It lay on the ground beside me. Seeing me looking at it, Dad winked. "Took it from the hands of the boss bishop himself," he said. "He'll be one surprised padre when he wakes up!"

I heard a sneeze behind me and looked over to see a soldier staring in amazement. That was only to be expected. After all, as far as he knew, there'd just been some weird noises and then we had appeared out of nowhere.

"No problem," said Dad, as the soldier started shouting. He lowered Luke C gently to the ground and reached again for the whistle.

https://boingboing.net/2019/05/02/so-late-so-soon.html

[sage-nebula]

Scrawlers! Is there anything your hoping to see with the new Evil Team in gen 8? (Besides a big bad lady team lead who is allowed to be awful come'on gamefreak PLEASE) I'm really hoping we see them used like plasma in gen 5 (I.E. Their plot and goal actually coincide with with the player character's journey) since we haven't gotten that in the last 2 gens now.

Hmm, I would say that all of the evil organizations have coincided with the player character’s journey, since you usually have to beat them in order to progress the story. I think what set Team Plasma apart in Gen V is that this was a crisis that involved the entire region. We had people on the streets talking and worrying about Team Plasma, and when Team Plasma raised their castle where the League used to be, the Gym Leaders themselves took to the front lines in order to defend Unova. (Which in turn makes Gen VI look so much worse, because that was the generation wherein the evil team wanted to commit mass genocide, and announced this in a region-wide broadcast, and no one—not the Champion, not the Elite Four, not the Gym Leaders—felt like getting involved. Amazing.) There was a real sense of urgency and stakes with what Team Plasma was doing. It didn’t feel like something we were doing on the side, something that was secondary to the goal of collecting badges and becoming the Champion; instead, it was something that put the entire region at stake, and near the end, you felt like you were collecting badges and facing the Elite Four not to become Champion yourself, but to stop N from accomplishing his goal. (Which made the realization that he beat you to it an even harder kick in the teeth. You raced there, out of breath, got through everything as fast as you could, and Team Plasma won anyway. Damn.) Like you, I would love to have that sense of urgency, those stakes, again. It’s part of what made Gen V’s story so memorable.

So to that end, if I had my way:

A female Big Bad who, yes, is allowed to be awful and is in this for her own ends. Lusamine was incredibly disappointing in so many ways, but the primary ways she was disappointing is the way she was “redeemed” by having her abused children look after and forgive her (taken to extremes in USUM when she was shown to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, like what), and the fact that her role in the story essentially relied on male characters. We learn through NPC chatter that the Aether Foundation was actually founded by either her father or her grandfather (can’t remember which), and that the experiments and research were originally started by her husband, and that she became obsessed with Ultra Beasts as way to get him back. Lusamine had no accomplishments or motivations that didn’t rely on male characters in some way or another. While all the other Big Bads before her created their own organizations and had their own primary drives and goals, Lusamine didn’t. It was wholly disappointing, and since she’s the only female Big Bad the series has right now (if you can even call her that after what USUM and the anime did), it smacks of sexism.But this can be rectified by giving us a female Big Bad who’s allowed to be every bit of a villain as the male Big Bads before her were. Give us a woman who is arrogant, who is intelligent, who is dangerous. Give us a woman who is not sorry for the things she does, no matter how terrible. Give us a woman who built her organization from the ground up, who is respected by those beneath her, who presents a real threat and who isn’t interested in being a wife or mother, because she’d much rather be a queen. She can be a Well-Intentioned Extremist to a degree (such as, maybe she wants to rule the world because in her mind that’s the only way to curb crime and other dangers, and if she has to crack a few skulls to get to the top to make life better for everyone after that, so be it), but I want her to be on the same level as the male villains before her, rather than someone who is reduced to being a damsel in in distress at the hands of those same villains. If we had a female villain like that, it would make what was done with Lusamine feel less sexist, and more like just a story choice that was made with her character.

I want the whole region involved again. Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, I want stakes and danger. I want to see the Gym Leaders, Elite Four, and Champion doing their jobs. (Or maybe the Champion turns out to be the Big Bad, and we’re overthrowing a corrupt government … oooooh, that’d be pretty cool.) I want people on the streets to be concerned and nervous, and actually affected by what is going on. One of the easiest ways to raise stakes in a story is to show people (and pokémon, in this case) actually being affected. We saw that in Gen V with Team Plasma stealing people’s pokémon, the castle being raised, and the Gym Leaders getting involved to fight the threat. I’d love to see something on that scale again.

That said, I’d also like some moral ambiguity, too. The one area in which Gen V’s story fails is the fact that the very obvious grey area wasn’t addressed. N wants to separate people and pokémon because he believes that humans abuse pokémon. At the end of the story, he’s made to realize that he was wrong, and thus abandons his ideals wholesale. But the thing is, he’s not completely wrong. There are people who abuse pokémon. That doesn’t mean that people and pokémon should be wholly separated, but it also doesn’t mean that N’s cause is an unjustified one. What needed to happen (and what I was going to show in my novelization that I never finished) was N and the protagonist reaching a middle ground of understanding. Maybe there is no ideal solution, but neither side is wholly wrong (which also means that neither side is wholly right). There are people who abuse pokémon, just as there are people who love and cherish their pokémon. There is both good and bad in the world, and the important thing is to recognize that and work toward reducing the bad and increasing the good as much as you can, doing as little harm as possible.That said, I know why Game Freak stayed away from the middle ground in this case. Admitting that there were trainers—perfectly ordinary trainers—who do abuse their pokémon would put a dark cloud over the series and could potentially hurt sales if parents didn’t want their kids interacting with media like that. (Then again, the anime had no problem showing a trainer abusing his pokémon in the previous region (Paul), so who knows.) But even so, I’d like to see something like that in the upcoming story. Obviously the villainous organization is, well, villainous, and I do want the Big Bad to be allowed to be awful (particularly if she’s female), but at the same time I’d like to see, say, NPCs debating whether or not the villainous organization has a point. If there is a friendly rival (and I hope to god we still get a jerkass one if there is a friendly one again), maybe the friendly rival is tempted by the villainous organization’s ways and temporarily joins them. (While the jerkass rival stays adamantly opposed. Wouldn’t that be a twist.) Things like that would add depth to the story and, again, make things more interesting.

Branching story paths. I know we won’t get this, but it’d be so cool if we could have branching story paths and multiple endings. (And maybe multiple save files to go with those multiple endings, please, Game Freak, it’s 2019.) Maybe you’re given the option to join the villainous organization, and you can actually take that option and agree to join them, and so you get an ending suited for that. You also get an ending for refusing to join them, one for joining and then betraying them later, and so on. This is more of a wide-scale game idea than anything else, but along with the moral ambiguity (however much there can be), I’d like it if we were actually given multiple endings, and that those endings did tie into the villains somehow. They’ve been asking us if we want to join Team Rocket since 1996 and they’ve never let us do it. Come on, Game Freak. Even if it’s not Team Rocket specifically, it’s still time.

So yeah, those are my wishes. I don’t expect to get any of them, but it would be nice, haha. I just wish the story could match the calibre of Gen V again. Gen V wasn’t perfect (the lack of moral ambiguity and Bianca’s treatment being the most glaring flaws), but it was damn well near. I’d love to meet that calibre again … here’s hoping that Gen VIII delivers. :)

[jyuanka]

A small fic for Cheadle’s birthday, which I headcanon is in September 12. She emits powerful Virgo energies.

Cheadle stared at the elegant bundle of lilies and the curious rectangle encased in pretty blue paper wrap –which she was damn certain is a book– and found her hand pressing anxiously over a rapid heartbeat.

Forgive me for missing your birthday

I’ll make up for it when I see you

Love,

Leorio

She had read the words on the card for ten times, and those were just the ones she counted. At this point they kind of just echoed in her mind even when she wasn’t looking at them –which wasn’t much; it’s been either in her hand or in her pocket since she’d received it– and now she finally had the peace of mind to sit down and contemplate it. Fondly. Terribly so. The smooth surface of the white card gleamed with her sweat.

The lilies were in a vase, the work of Beans, who remained conspicuously silent as he took the bouquet off her desk and arranged the flowers himself. She scrutinized him but he’d pretended not to notice.

The other gift still lay next to the vase, bright and mysterious, and if Cheadle obsessed any more over not opening it now the thing was going to develop a voice and start taunting her. She had better self-control.

She got off the couch and ripped the paper to shreds.

A book. Hardback, an exquisite shade of blue, embossed with golden letters.

The Uses and Abuses of Salamander Gray, an Impertinent Biography  

She wanted to shriek.

Her giddiness and happiness remained firm under the barrage of questions she wanted to ask. The book looked pristine, new like a novel that just dropped fresh this week and stood glossy behind bookstore display windows, yet her fingers reached tentatively, almost reverently, to open the heavy cover, in part because it was a gift from him and in part because this book was ancient. More precisely, written long time ago.

She was too nervous to actually look at the words inside on the first page. If she knew anything, it was that this book was either costume-made, which in this case definitely meant reprinted without author permission –Leorio was going to have to explain himself for that one– or –and this what made her breathless with expectations– a once privately-owned copy never meant for distribution.

It was the latter.

Once her eyes finally adjusted on the page, her heart grew another heart, one that beat with an exhausting fierceness.  

The date, the publishing house, and right on the next page, the autograph. More than that, a dedication in a sweeping, loopy, elegant handwriting that was definitely not Leorio’s.

For the illustrious Mademoiselle Yorkshire,

I have followed your career and work ever since I had the pleasure of reading your first article published in Vitruvia, and I find all of it most fascinating. Rigorous and dedicated, you observe the world around you with cautious yet sharp, curious eyes. I cannot imagine a more perfect successor. It’s an absolute delight to know worthy Hunters carry the torch of one’s lifelong work, a feeling with which I’m certain you’re familiar.    

A bloody-minded gentleman with remarkably steady hands and a talk full of you schemed and bartered his way into acquiring this book from me. A story I reckon he will enjoy telling you. I suppose I can no longer win with those feisty young Hunters. They become haughtier by the year, don’t you agree?

My memoirs now rest in your hands. A lesson, a challenge, or something else? I can only speculate as to which way you will approach what you find in this book, nevertheless I know you will make the best of it.  

Your fellow Hunter, and a fan,

S. Gray      

Cheadle suppressed a squeal of joy. She wanted to smack herself with the book to jolt her body out of the quiet, slumbering happiness that overtook every part of her senses, but knew that wasn’t even an option. Instead, she slowly fell back on the couch and had an urge to lay down with the book held tightly to her chest and stare in contentment at absolute nothingness until her world made sense again.

Her mind fell back to that instance in her past, that golden, glorious moment when she had finally figured out what kind of Hunter she wanted to be, holding the works of this very same man and seeing the answers to all her questions bloom within her like a flower that once unraveled, never withers. It had come to her in less than a minute, a furious spark, and she’d caught it, wrapping her fingers around it and knowing in that unshakable way that she wanted nothing more in the world than to be a virus Hunter. She had the medical background, after all, all she needed was to know the right people and establish herself in the field with some legwork.  

All because of this man.

And she had mentioned this to Leorio at some point. She knew she did but it was certainly in passing, certainly years and years ago, and he remembered. She could hazard a guess as to how he managed to not only meet one of the most reclusive Hunters to ever exist, but to get him to sign his memoirs for her, memoirs that were printed in a handful of copies and distributed within a limited circle. Leorio probably had blood on his hands for this. Not in a murder attempt, certainly, but doctors almost always found better ways.

Cheadle pulled her phone out of her pocket and contemplated calling him. It was 12 pm for her but 6 am for him. Unless there was an emergency in his vicinity then he most likely wouldn’t be awake. She slipped the phone back and decided it wasn’t a good time to call, and besides, she probably wouldn’t know what to say. A simple ‘thank you’ lurked there somewhere among the myriad of sentences she already cooked up, but that was too much brevity, even for her.

Her fingers were still tight around the phone when it buzzed. It almost slipped out of her fingers in her haste to answer. “Hello,”

“You know, I’ve read that nen science has developed so far that reversing the aging process is now completely within the realm of possibility. I know a professional, I can hook you up if you want.”

“Good morning to you too, Leorio.”

“Happy birthday, grandma!” Leorio cackled.  

She snorted. “Fuck you.”

“Sure, I’ll bend over.” He teased. “To be completely honest, that was my original idea for a primary gift, but since I wouldn’t have been able to deliver it on time, I thought I’ll keep it as a ‘secret gift’ for when we’re, you know, face to face.”

Cheadle smiled. “How disappointing.”

He laughed. “No seriously, happy birthday. I wish you all the happiness and great things in the world.”    

She reclined farther on the couch, a stupid smile persisting on her face. “Thank you, I wish you the same as well.” She sighed, feeling her heartbeat hammer against the book. “Unlike you, to be awake at this hour.”

“I’m feeling energetic today.”

“Energetic enough to tell me about your little adventure?”

“Oh hell yeah,” Leorio said. “But not on the phone.”    

She couldn’t help herself but ask. “What was he like?”

“Kind of an asshole.” Leorio said. “It’s a good thing my hands were deep in his intestines, otherwise I would have been at a disadvantage.”  

Cheadle chuckled. “I’m sure.”

“Did you like them? The gifts, I mean.”

“Very much,” she answered, hoping that the sound of her erratic breathing didn’t reach him. “Thank you.”

“I’m so glad.” The sound of his erratic breathing reached her. “So, how does forging into the second year of your forties feel like?”

“Not bad, certainly much better than last year.” Cheadle said, and the peppiness in her voice wasn’t a conscious effort.

“Feeling old yet? You know forty in nen-user years is like twenty.”

Cheadle chuckled. “Not at all. In fact, I feel lush and exuberant. According to Cluck, I look ‘radiant’ today.”

“You always look radiant.”

She rolled her eyes, her brain’s defense against the way her heart swelled at his words. “No I don’t.”

“You do!” He insisted. “You always look freshly minted, like you just stepped out of the shower fragrant and fully dry.”

Cheadle shrunk on herself with embarrassment. If he was here she would have clamped her hands over his mouth.

“What are you doing?”

“I was preparing some papers for a meeting.” She said, neglecting to mention the time she wasn’t doing that which she spent diligently laboring over the card he sent. “You?”

“Looking at the sunrise,” he exhaled. “Wishing you’re here.”

She closed her eyes, processing the fluttery sensation in her chest. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Huh, why?”

“It makes me sad.” She confessed, and when he was about to say something she interrupted him. “I wore that black dress I showed you once, to the party last week.”

He swallowed back whatever he was going to say. “Pic or it didn’t happen.”

“I won’t let you manipulate me into sending you a picture.”

“I’m not asking for nudes here,” Leorio huffed. “But if that’s what you want…”

“I would never.” Cheadle grinned. “I know how it would go. I send you the picture, and then you say: ‘oh you look pretty young for a forty one year old woman’, then I would thank you but deep inside I would resent the implications.” 

“I’d never do that!” He protested, and she could hear his footsteps echo through the phone. “Also commenting on people’s age is a double edged sword for me, you see. I’m always careful with it.”

Cheadle chuckled. “Of course. I still remember when that nurse whispered how you were ‘too old for me’.”

“That.” Leorio said, a bite to his voice. “We weren’t even together then.”

“And we’re not together now.”

Leorio cleared his throat. She opened her eyes. Both of them seemed to abruptly sober up.

“You know what I mean.” Leorio’s voice was now quieter, almost apologetic.

“Yeah, I do.” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry,”

“It’s okay.”

A long silence stretched between them, exacerbated by the clanking noises around him, the sound of somebody else saying something to him, Bean poking his head inside her office to tell her something. She didn’t know if they had anything left to say. She regretted making that remark, the way it quickly turned the conversation sour.

“What are you thinking about?” He was still there.

Cheadle hummed. “Whether I should send you those nudes or not.”

“Really?” His voice was still quiet but he seemed to lighten up.

“Really.”

“Are you going to?”

She hummed again, pretending to be deep in thought. “The possibility is certainly present.”

Leorio snorted. “Any specific date? Time?”  

“No.” Cheadle snickered. “You’ll just have to spend your day in anticipation.”

He laughed but said nothing.  

Cheadle sighed. “When are you coming back?”  

“Next week, probably. I just need to wrap up some things here, leave some reliable people behind.”

“Alright,” she held the book closer to her heart.

“Cheadle?”

“Hmm?”  

“I want to talk about it when I see you, okay?”

“Your encounter with a most mysterious man?” She knew what he meant, but had this sudden need to stave off the inevitable, to stall the heavy conversation, to push back against conclusions.  

“No, I meant the ‘us’ thing. And about the Salamander guy, too.” He trailed off with an unsure chuckle.  

The Salamander guy. She didn’t even have it in her to be offended at his wording.

“We’ll talk about everything,” she assured him, and meant it, to her own surprise. “But mostly you’ll bend over.”

Leorio laughed. “Fine, but you will be very nice with me.”

“Absolutely.”

Beans popped his head inside her office once again, beckoning for her more urgently now, and she nodded to him. “I have to go, they’re waiting for me.”  

“Yeah okay,” Leorio said. “See you next week then?”

“Yeah, see you next week.”  

[ihaveanimagine]

You pick the skelebros, please include classic. They find out that their s/o is a writer, and writes amazing stories, full fledged books, but never shows anyone because she thinks they’re shit. She writes mostly romance, and a lot of it is monster x human, and then she also writes fantasy, but usually portrays the humans as the villain, not the monsters. She has one book, that is actually about everything that has happened since they fell into the underground, in extreme detail. Everything.

(I did UT, MT and Gaster!Sans and Papyrus)

Undertale!Sans

Sans found out about your work through Alphys who hadrecently fallen in love with your newest novel involving a “Shape ofWater” vibe and showed it to Sans who instantly recognized the Author’sname. Wanting to reveal he knows of your books in the cheekiest way possible,Sans asks Alphys for the cheesiest romance novel you made, and she hands himthis book called “The Tale of the Underground”.

Sans kinda just snorts at the title, inwardly squealing athow cute the title was and began to read it. He was surprised that this wasBASICALLY your diary dictating your thoughts as you travelled the Undergroundand…ooooohh boy, haha, Sans pulled at the collar on his shirt.

Ho boy was this detailed.

Marking the page, Sans went home and awaited your arrival.The second you walked in the door with a distracted “Hey, Babe!” Sansopened the book and read aloud: “…after sans had licked the red spaghetti sauceoff his teeth, i suddenly had the hugest urge to kiss his teeth until my lipswere numb.“

Silence was the only response he received.

“that offerstill stand, dear?”

Undertale!Papyrus

This sweet cinnamon roll was simply dusting (the dirt kind,not the dead monster kind) the house when he came across an unfinished booksitting on your desk wide open. Papyrus wasn’t one to snoop, he honestly didn’tmean to, but he saw the words “Papyrus” and “Gorgeous” nextto each other and allowed himself to read several one chapter.

Wowie!! Whoever this author is must have VERY good sourcesbecause it sounds like his wonderful S/O wrote this from entirely their persep-OH!! IT WAS!! Papyrus felt a wave of embarrassment and fluster overflow hisemotions. H-HE REALLY SHOULDN’T CONTINUE, BUT…HIS S/O OBVIOUSLY PUT A LOT OFWORK INTO THIS BOOK A-AND HE SHOULD BE ABLE TO GIVE AN ADEQUATE CRITIQUE!!

So he read everything up until the part you stopped writing(which he spent a good 10 minutes mourning over) before rushing back to hischores, waiting for you to get home later tonight.

Once you walked in the door Papyrus scooped you in his arms,twirled you around and planted a big fat kiss to your lips before allowing youto speak.

“Wh-what’s withthe greeting?” You asked, face completely red from blushing, “N-notthat I mind!” Papyrus simply grinned and kissed you again before helpingyou brush off the snow from your clothes.

“OH, NOTHING INPARRICULAR, I JUST WANTED TO HELP OUT MY ADORING SWEETHEART!”

“Aww, that’s awfully sweet of you!”

“WELL OF COURSE!! ALTHOUGH MAY I ASK A QUICK QUESTION?”

“Shoot.”

“HOW EXACTLY AM I A ‘PRECIOUS NOODLEBONES SKELE-BEAN THATCAN MAKE GLOOMY DAYS GO EXTINCT BY SOUNDING LIKE A BABY RATTLE SNAKE WHENEVERMY BONES RATTLE WHEN I’M HAPPY’?”

You just knew thatsentence was going to come back and haunt you….

Mafiatale!Sans (Colt)

He’s supposed to be grabbing a book on “how to wash bloodstains out of white clothes” when he sees your name scrawled across a bookin the “bestseller” section of the bookstore. At first he thinks it’s acoincidence, but then he picks up the book and thumbs through it, when this employee bounces along andasks if he’s interested in the series.

Series???? This should be good. Naturally, he says “yeah, but I dunno where tostart” which allows the employee to gush about how much she loves your work and how it has almost exclusivelyhuman/monster pairings that more often than not revealed the darker side ofhumanity through satirical situations and comedic monster characters.

Colt had to snort a little at that, not that he wasjudging (he was probably the reason you began the monster/human pairingsanyway) but he knew how much you wanted to repeatedly smack the whole ofhumanity with a baseball bat until it gained some sense and hey, the pen ismightier than the sword, right?

So after Colt accidentallybought one of the shorter book series, and a book labelled “Trip Down Under” heleft the store (completely forgetting his original goal) and began devouringthe books whenever you weren’t with him.

Once he got to “Trip Down Under” he nearly had a heart attack.Before this book, he thought your other ones were marvelously written, balancingpure, unadulterated snark with mushy romance (a trait that he was proud toadmit only he was the recipient of irl)but this one was………an extremelydetailed step-by-step walkthrough of your entire trip in the Underground.

Granted, there were different names and places andenvironments used, but this was creepy!!!He specifically remembered having this exactsame conversation with you at 1am about whether or not condiments were anacceptable flavor spice for pet foods that the protag and her romantic interestwere having.

So, what does he do? After his post-mission meeting withDon Asgore ends and he heads home and proceeds to do your normal routine of smothering each otherin relieved affection before placing his hand on your back and the other onyour head, dipping you backwards.

With a feral grin, he leaned in and whispered to you: “Am Iliving up to your expectations as your bone-ified,straight-shooting, suave-talking punster of a soulmate?”

You suddenly regretted every life choice you’ve ever made.

Mafiatale!Papyrus (Sniper)

This guy was most likely gossiping with Bayonet (Undyne)when she offhandedly mentioned this romance novel series she was reading thatwas set in a fantasy world that had a boss fight similar to the one she experienced when you had gone through Waterfall. Shethought it was just a coincidence, after all, the fight became common knowledge after a while but Sniper’s experience taught him nothingwas a coincidence.

So he went and Googled everything he could about thisauthor. 

He found online versions of your books, and read the book that Bayonet said she was reading, and BOY WAS HE SURPRISED. You certainly were detailed in your adventures, but you changed enough facts and names and places so it seemed that every important Family Secret you experienced were all different.

Being the little prankster he was, Sniper wanted to give you a scare. But, in order to do that, he had to pretend he had just heard about your book, and went and Google’d a picture of you.

WOWZA, DOES THIS PERSON LOOK FAMILIAR!!! HEY, S/O! COME LOOK AT THISPERSON!! YOU NEVER TOLD ME YOU HAD A TWIN!!!

You briefly considered lying to him when you felt embarrassment and a bit of fear well up inside you, but that idea wasquickly erased. “Sniper, darling….that’s….that’s me!”

Sniper looked back and forth between you andyour online picture before turning to you with a flirtatious smile: “OH GOOD, FOR A MINUTE I THOUGHT SOMEONE HADSTOLEN MY RECIPE FOR FONDUE! WINK!”

“OH MY GOSH, SNIPER!!!!”

Gaster!Sans (G)

You and G were out on a casual date in the town, arms linked, pulling you close together as you wandered aimlessly, idly chatting abouteverything and anything. Your romantic peace was interrupted by a pair of girlswho spotted you entering the park and ran over to greet you.

They immediately began squealing about your latest bookcalled “Echoes of Home” which set you off into an internal panic, G WASN’TSUPPOSED TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS BOOK, OH STARS YOU WERE GOING TO DIE OF EMBARRASSMENT!!!

Without any regard for your dwindling dignity, the girlscontinued to fangirl about “Echoes of Home” Going on and on and on about howmuch they fell so hard for the “teeth-grindinglyhot-headed, self-righteous, aloof little jerk of a hunk”.

At one point in the conversation one girl looked over at Gwho had been relatively silent and said with an awe-struck face “Is this him???”She almost screamed with glee. Sensing this was your way out, your shushedloudly and began dragging G away with a quick wink to the girls who giggled andwaved goodbye (you were sure one was about to faint from swooning so hard).

Once you were both out of earshot G threw you a curious look“what was that about?” He asked, your face erupted into color and tried tobrush it off as nothing.

The matter was dropped until you walked past a bookstore with “Echoes of Home”displayed proudly on the window, showcasing the edition of the book with a picture of the main characters in each other’s embrace. “ain’t nuthin, huh?” He asked with anincreasing smirk, you frantically tried to pry G away, but CURSE HIS STRENGTH he was too hard to move!!

“huh, this guy on the cover looks like a weird version ofme. total coincidence, am i right?”

“YEP, ABSOLUTELY, LET’S GO NOW!!”

“ah, darlin’ I’m messing with ya. I’ve known about your bookwriting career for a while.”

“You wHAT!?”

“yeah, your fangirls are rabid.”

Cue an embarrassment-induced faint.

Gaster!Papyrus (Aster)

Aster was out on a grocery runwhen he came across an elderly woman struggling with her bags and decided tohelp her. While he was stuffing the bags inside her car, the old woman hadmentioned that he reminded her of the main protagonist in this book: Tall,suave, drop-dead gorgeous, and the personification of chivalry.

Since there wasn’t aplethora of writers in the Underground, Aster made an inquiry as to who thewriter was, the old woman couldn’t remember for the life of her, but she didgive him the book’s title and recommended he read them as soon as possible.

And so he did.

The book was a romance novel filledwith cheesy fantasies that were definitely made for the hopeless romantics.Scenarios of tall but gentlemanly heroes with a passion for science or artoften guided or encouraged a lost, starry-eyed female to follow her dreams andscrew with the system if it tried to stop her.

After several novels, hefinally read the one the old lady had recommended him, and, oh dear, is that-!!???It is!!!!

This book was a, uh, detailed edition of your travels in theUnderground.

He knows this because he’s the one who taught you thatspecific chemical formula of the carbohydrate strings which would allow foroptimum flavor!!!

And- hey wait, he rememberedthis part!! This was when he took you out on your first official date with him!!He was always so scared he over did it on the pulling out all your chairs,taking your coat, having no physical contact beyond hand holding or arm linkingbut this narrative showed that you-you….oh….didyou really think that?????

Aster felt his face explode incolor and he had to put the book he felt so flustered.

Later, when you came homethat day from a sleepover with Alphys and Undyne, Aster met you at the door likenormal, took your coat, kissed your cheek and asked you how your day was. Onceyou both got the pleasantries out of the way, Pap circled his arms around youand bent down.

“Do I really make you swoonjust by existing, my darling star?”

[respheal]

Two years of Galebound

Hey guys, Res here! Long spiel ahead because I’m getting personal and long-winded here. Full text after the cut to spare your dash.

tl;dr: A brief history of Galebound’s development and my experiences with telling a story, joining a community, depression, and living inside my characters’ heads for two solid years.

[cut]

So I was working on page 103 early last month (yeah, the week page 103 was due to go up aaaahhahahaha -cries-) when I realized what was coming up: the second anniversary of Galebound’s start as a webcomic. The exact date of the anniversary is a little nebulous. The decision to make it a webcomic was made on 4/20/16 when I completed drawing the concept art for all the main characters (which I had set as a prerequisite for going on the hare-brained adventure) and drew what would become the title page. The first page was published on Smack Jeeves (where galebound.com is hosted) on 5/14/16. So the birthday of the webcomic is somewhere between those dates but I’m going to consider it to be 5/14, which is why I’m rambling about it today. I want to talk a bit about Galebound’s history and what it means to me.

Galebound was originally a short story called Noblesse Oblige. It was written in first person POV from Conan’s perspective and published on DeviantArt back in 2007 or so. I really wish I could find that original draft because I bet it’s wonderfully terrible. I didn’t really know what I was doing with the story at the time--Conan was an untrusting jerk, Din was an arrogant troll, and Pascal was downright unhinged. The basic mechanics of the Obligation were there (simply that Noblemen could command Magicians), but that was about it.

I pants’d the story until it got to--well, just after this point actually. The conclusion of the battle on the bridge, and then I stopped. I don’t entirely remember why. But the story stuck around in the back of my mind while I met new friends (Hi, Skypernauts!), went to college, moved across the country, met my first boyfriend, got my first job, met my future husband, and casually worked on developing an RPGMaker game in my spare time (That RPG is called Memory and that story will likely get turned into a comic eventually as well).

While I was working on Memory’s battle system, I had the thought: how would I convert Noblesse Oblige into an RPG? The magic system would probably have to be something like the field generator from the original .hack games: string together words for a certain field or, in this case, magic. That way the command side of the Obligation would be integrated into the gameplay.

I played around with that idea for a bit longer, but ultimately decided it wouldn’t work; there was a major design flaw with the game. I can’t say what that flaw was because figuring out the solution to the design flaw led to the realization of a huge twist in NO’s story. I had to get this story out. Now.

Around this time I had abandoned RPG-making (because making nice maps is a PITA), so I took Noblesse Oblige through a JulyNoWriMo (NaNoWriMo, just in July). This time I took the story through Norin, Evenheim, the bridge, and on to Cymaria and beyond, compelled as if by Obligation. I accomplished my goal of 50k words, but the story still wasn’t complete. I slowed down the writing process and kept at it, but I also wanted to share the story so badly.

And uh...well. No one was interested in beta reading it except one friend, when time allowed. My fiance made an attempt, but didn’t get very far (He tried though, bless him, and said that although the beginning was rough--lord was it ever--it picked up eventually). In his eternal patience, my fiance at least let me spill the whole story at him. He didn’t like parts of it, mainly some things that happen around the midpoint and Din as a character in general (Din was a bit more actually evil back then). But he listened to the story as a whole, which was a lot more support than I felt anyone else had given the project at the time (Thanks, Mike <3). He also made a hell of a lot of puns about the ending of it, but in fairness the ending does lend itself to a lot of puns. It’ll blow you away (ba-dum-tsh).

I started getting really frustrated. There was this story that I just had to tell, but seemingly no one who would listen. I’d put a couple chapters up on Wattpad or Tablo, but got no feedback there (and didn’t learn until much later that those sites are miserable for anything that isn’t romance). An excuse would be that I wanted to know if this project had any sort of worth and if I should continue with it, but real talk: I wanted validation. I know better now what was happening then, but...well, hindsight.

While this was going on, I posted this illustration in the NaNoWriMo forums, the first drawing I had done in about two years or so.

No comments for a bit, but one day I was browsing through the thread and noticed someone quoted me and responded, asking if I was doing a webcomic. Um...No? I had tried making a webcomic before, but it was a LOT of work and I figured it wouldn’t be something I would have time for now.

Buuuuuuuuut the seed was planted. At this point I had determined the reason no one was interested in reading my rough novel was because A) the writing must be terrible (it kind of was) and B) nobody ain’t got time for reading books. So maybe this story could be told and find its audience as a webcomic. But only if I could draw ALL of the main and secondary characters. I would have to draw them hundreds of times, so no point in trying if I couldn’t even draw them all once.

Suffice to say, I succeeded. And the comic began under the new name Galebound.

Even as the comic went up, however, the need for validation persisted. I meticulously tracked subscription counts and likes and faves and everything, craving proof that people were reading this story. It got better as the story went on and some events did provide temporary boosts (Like Galebound getting featured on a “Top Five New Comics” list from Top Web Comics -excited screaming- and I met a new friend who I could talk to about the story and she actually read the monstrosity that was the first draft), but, well...

So, long story short: I was suffering from clinical depression with all that entails, and did for quite a while. Still am, technically. Just well managed now (yaaaaaay therapy and medication). It’s funny because I can pick out the pages it was hitting me the hardest because Conan was super bummed in those pages too.

I guess what I’m saying here is that this story was a big part of my life during some of the hardest and darkest times of my life.

I’m doing better now (see: aforementioned medication and therapy). Really I’m lucky because I see and talk to other webcomic artists who have similar struggles and similar feelings and the same reactions when sad or disappointing things happen and I want to suggest they get professional help when I recognize the signs of depression in them, but I realize I’m extremely fortunate in that I even had the opportunity to get the medical attention I needed. (I will recommend up and down all day long that if you’re suffering from depression and have the opportunity to see a doc about it, do so. For years I had tricked myself into thinking it wasn’t that bad even when...it was.)

There were good things, too. I met new friends and joined a community of other webcomic creators. I contributed to some drama in the community in an attempt to hold our publishing platforms accountable. I created a website to help webcomic readers and creators. I attended my first convention as an artist (and actually sold a sticker and a booklet! Woo!) and by the time this gets published I’ll have attended my second. Galebound has gained a small fanbase and I’m so proud of how clever the readers are. Seriously, you all keep me on my toes.

Regarding the story itself, Galebound is, by my estimates, about a fifth of the way through the full story, which means it will likely run for about ten years total if things don’t speed up (and I really want to speed things up). If you consult the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet, we’re somewhere in “The Debate”, that debate being “Who is Din and can he be trusted?”

Spoiler alert (warning: song with explicit language)

The whole concept of the Obligation stems from the dichotomy of what one wants to do versus what one feels compelled to do. That could be taking over the family business, going to college, going to church, even choosing a life partner based on expectations as opposed to one’s true feelings--as a character will say in the future, “not all Obligations are magic.” This sort of Obligation is something I think a lot of people face, and something Conan, too, will face throughout the course of the story.

Galebound is also about redemption and forgiveness. There are characters who have made terrible mistakes and decisions in the name of hatred and prejudice, and those who have brought harm to others out of sheer ignorance. It’s about self-worth and purpose. It’s about friendship and reconciliation. It’s about platonic and familial love. It’s about duty...and obligations.

It’s complicated, but “simple stories are inherently false. Life is complicated, and perspective matters.”

To sort of go into Conan and Din’s headspace a bit as they are now, they’re not in a good place emotionally, and it’s soon to get worse (because a certain someone Can’t Follow Instructions). They will hit rock bottom, but after that...well, there’s no place left to go but up? After this chapter, both of them will be reeling from mistakes made in the recent and distant past, but these events--as well as what will happen with the next few days--will put them in a place to rethink everything.

Long story short, I’m excited for what’s to come, but when am I not?

Anyway, that’s my spiel. Thanks for reading and for reading Galebound! My goals for it this year are to finish the first volume, start editing some of the earlier pages in preparation for printing, get a few chapters of the novel written (again), and get to the turn into act two. I’m actually so hyped for the turn I’ve edited this paragraph a millions times to keep myself from dropping even hints of spoilers because wow I want to talk about it.

So I better stop.

Thanks again for reading and Galespeed! <3

Links

Read Galebound here: galebound.com Prints and Stickers: store.synestories.com Social Media: Twitter | Facebook Support: Ko-Fi | Patreon

[rantceratops]

Insecurity

(Warning: this is roughly the size of a small fucking novel, sorry.)

(Also I skipped Agendas for now because I REALLY wanted to get this episode done. This has been in my drafts for like a month or two)

I fucking love this episode. Have I ever mentioned that before? Because if Failsafe is all aboard the feels train, this episode is all aboard the roller coaster of emotions. Like, wow is this one of my all time favorites.

IT’S SPIDER-MAN– oh wait, never mind it’s his evil twin, it was hard to tell in this lighting.

Cissie! Who I know nothing about except that she’s in the Arrow fam eventually and that everyone was dying for Artemis to be her mentor in s2 of Young Justice. I kind of miss some of the fandom ideas for what s2 would be like. :(

“I’m sorry, you know how it is. I’m on dead line. And so are you.” OH HO HO SPIDER-MAN, YOU SO PUNNY.

Aw yeah, archer babes to the rescue!

Look at them, looking all badass with the moon behind them! Could there BE a better time for your name to be Artemis and your talent to be archery? Definitely not.

Small detail that’s nice: you can tell whose arrows are whose because Ollie’s are tipped with a lighter shade of green than hers.

Awww, I love that part! I love how the camera kind of specifically pans more toward Artemis to convey that Cissie is awestruck by her in particular. Like, she’s seeing this badass female archer with blonde hair just like her kicking bad guy ass and saving her dad. And you can tell she’s just thinking “I want to be like that some day!” Artemis is literally being a badass inspiration right here and she doesn’t even know it, and it’s just so fucking cute! My baby is an amazing role model!

Fuck you, Sportsmaster, go away! (I will say that I like Sportsmaster’s voice though, and whether intentional or not I almost feel like a huskiness to the voice is just another trait that Artemis shares from his end of the gene pool.) Speaking of Artemis sharing in Sportsmaster’s end of the gene pool, have I ever mentioned that I honestly adore the decision to have Jade (the villain daughter) share more with Paula (the nice parent) in looks, while having Artemis (the hero daughter) sharing more traits with Lawrence (the awful/villain parent). I just thought it was an interesting thing, I don’t know whether they did that on purpose or not, but it’s just a thing I picked up on and thought was kind of neat.

Ollie stop trying to sound cool.

Damn, Artemis must be pretty fucking strong to still be standing after a possibly grown ass man just did a literal backflip off of her shoulders! 

“Good girl! Uh… take the lead on this one!” Oh, Ollie. XD He’s just letting her take the reigns while he tries to recover his wounded pride. Also, I just got feels thinking about how different it must be for Artemis to work under GA’s tutelage instead of her father’s. Like, can you imagine the contrast? All that praise and affection Ollie no doubt showers her with, compared to the harsh commands and emotional/mental abuse from Lawrence growing up? She probably hardly even knows what to do with Ollie’s praise half the time. 

Out of the penalty box. Sportsmaster, please.

“Bonus points for poetic justice.”

“Did you see the look on his face!? O-okay, he was wearing a mask, but– did you see the look on his mask!?” Oh my god, she’s so precious and giddy! I really wish we had gotten to see more of her interactions with Ollie, like this moment is seriously the most giddy we ever see Artemis in the series. You can tell she absolutely loves kicking ass with Ollie, and once again, tying in with the contrast between Lawrence and Ollie as mentors to her, it must be so exhilarating to literally be given the reigns on a mission, and then praised and encouraged for doing so! I don’t think Artemis would ever admit it, but I could honestly see her craving that interaction with Ollie every week, that kind of fatherly guidance. This is why I so love the idea of her seeing Ollie as a father figure, etc. 

And Ollie’s just so amused by her giddiness!

Shut up, Roy, go away. 

It must be really awkward at parties when your belt starts talking to you.

Can someone explain to me why Sportsmaster is having to sneak inmates out of Belle Reve when it’s under control by Strange? (I guess most of the guards still think it’s a legit detention facility or something? That would make sense, actually)

“Set a good example, join the Team first.” OKAY, IN WHAT UNIVERSE IS ROY EVER A GOOD EXAMPLE, OLLIE. (god I’d like to smack that scowl off of Roy’s face!)

“You should have seen the look on that little girl’s face, she was so grateful that her dad was safe.” (awwww, Artemis, babbu, this is why you were made for the hero life

“This life suits you, Artemis.” Yes, yes it does mama Crock! “Most mother’s would be horrified, but for me, it’s a relief. You don’t know how nervous I was when Arrow and Batman first confronted me about your… activities.”  STOP. “Confronted us. They figured out I saved my soulmate Kid Flash and confronted us.” “Not… initially. I’m your mother. They talked to me first.”

OH MY GOD PAULA’S SMUG TONE AND FACE AT THAT PART ALWAYS CRACK ME THE FUCK UP.

Look at that fucking smug ass face! XD She’s like I fucking pushed you out, they talked to me first because I’m the badass that made the tinier badass they were after. 

“What-what did they say!? What did you say?” Artemis is like OH GOD MOM HOW DID YOU EMBARRASS ME THIS TIME.

“I was afraid you were in trouble. While I was in jail for my crimes as Huntress, I lost one daughter, I couldn’t bear to lose another so I begged them to help keep you on the straight and narrow–” “You begged!? So I was some sort of pity case!?” 

Ooooh, man, Artemis is fucking PISSED. All the confidence that she’s built up since joining the Team shatters almost instantly as soon as she hears the word begged. Paula, of course, didn’t mean it that way; she didn’t beg them to let her on the Team because she was afraid she would still turn out to be a bad seed. She begged them to keep her on the right path: a path that Artemis had clearly already chosen on her own. Artemis had already been saving lives all on her own, and I think that Paula was relieved and proud when she found out, and I think the “begging” that she did was nothing more than a mother desperately wanting what was best for her daughter. Artemis had already CHOSEN the “straight and narrow” on her own, and I think Paula wanted to make absolutely sure that she had the tools and connections she needed to keep going in that direction, and to stay out of Sportsmaster’s influence. Artemis, of course, doesn’t see it that way, and instead takes it as an insult to her skill; this whole time, she’d thought that she’d impressed them enough on her own for them to come calling, but now she’s thoroughly convinced that they only wanted her on the Team as a favor to Paula, who begged them. Which, of course, is not actually the case.

“This isn’t T.O. Morrow!” “Klarion, this is Professor Ivo.” Oh my fucking GOD, the way Sportsmaster says that is actually kind of HILARIOUS, because his tone suggests that he’s trying to appease a bratty kid… which he pretty much IS. XD 

“Okay… so maybe I wasn’t brought in because I impressed them.” Oh, my poor baby! :( Just sitting on her fire escape with her knees pulled up, stewing in fucking insecurity. 

“I just spent the last four months doing nothing but. I’ve got nothing to prove, I’m one of a kind.” Yes you are, bby! (You can tell she doesn’t believe her own words though, because even though her hands on hips body language at that moment might LOOK confident, the unsure flick of her eyes over toward the alley wall conveys that she’s doubting herself.)

“Artemis! Just in time, look who’s agreed to join the Team.” “Finally!”

Oh, wow. I feel so sorry for poor Artemis in this particular episode. I’ve joked around that this episode could have been her super villain origin story, because man oh man is it just one thing after another piling on top of her insecurities at the beginning of this episode (it’s called Insecurity for a very good reason). So not only has her confidence just taken a very heavy blow because of her mother’s revelation that GA and Bats talked to her alone first, but then she Zetas to the Cave and what the fuck is the first thing that greets her upon materializing there? Roy. And GA smiling and saying “Artemis! Just in time, look who’s agreed to join the Team.” and Wally happily throwing his arms out and saying “Finally!” I can honestly only imagine the horrible sinking, burning feeling in her gut in that moment; seeing her father figure mentor and her crush standing there, smiling happily at another archer that she had, only a few months earlier, been accused of taking the place of by Wally. She had literally just been trying to convince herself that even if she was a pity case, she’s done nothing but prove herself over the last four months… only to Zeta to the Cave and see Roy Harper ready to join. (”We have no quota on archers.” “Yeah, and if we did, you know who we’d pick.”) Another insecurity dropped onto her already overburdened shoulders; Roy is here, and she feels like she’s not going to be wanted or needed anymore. And really, that insecurity has been lingering in the background since Infiltrator.

“Sure. Team’s needed a real archer.” The derisive sarcasm in Artemis’s tone is fucking palpable. Roy is a threat to her at that moment; what other reason would they finally have him on the Team other than to push her out, to replace her with someone “better”? She already thinks that she was not actually chosen out of skill, but out of pity, whereas Roy has always been the desired archer for the Team. She feels like her place on the Team is being compromised, and that she’s not good enough. And that terrifies her.

Wally, meanwhile, isn’t completely oblivious to the scathing remark that Artemis makes in response to the news. We see his expression visibly shift in response, his mouth drops and his eyebrows raise in something like surprise. He hadn’t expected that kind of response out of her because he himself has always wanted Roy on the Team simply because they go way back as friends, and at first I don’t think he understands why Artemis reacted the way she did. He even casts her one last aside look as GA and the others turn toward the screens.

For Wally, Roy joining the Team can only be a good thing! Right? I think, then, that it slowly starts to dawn on him between this briefing room meeting and boarding the Bioship, that Artemis is upset. I think he stews on it, tbh. He was truly bothered by seeing Artemis react that way, that she seemed so upset about something. And I think it begins to dawn on him, the more he thinks about her posture and her comment. “Sure. Team’s needed a real archer.” I can almost imagine the sinking feeling he starts to get in his gut when he realizes that he himself largely contributed to the obvious threat she’s feeling from Roy’s presence. HE treated her horribly and acted like she wasn’t good enough in the beginning, HE wanted Roy on the Team instead of her, HE accused her of replacing Roy and driving him away, and HE just now showed extreme happiness and RELIEF at having Roy join their ranks. How must that have looked to Artemis? Like he was happy that her better had just showed up to replace her, the archer that the Team (that Wally) wanted more than her to begin with? But she’s Artemis, right? She wouldn’t let that bother her! But Wally realizes very quickly that he has royally done goofed. That the way he treated her in the beginning really has stuck with her, that it didn’t just roll off her back as her confidence always suggested. And Wally, at this point, is very much aware of his crush on Artemis, he’s finally dropped some of that denial, and he’s moved on from trying to trick himself into thinking he wants Megan (or even has a chance with her). So ultimately he realizes that he needs to take a chance and open his heart up to her and try to make things right. This antagonistic behavior they’d kind of harbored throughout the season needs to end; Wally’s no longer suppressing the way he feels about her, and I think he’s more than ready to be a man and just… make the step to change the way they behave around each other, to try and lead this relationship to the place it was always meant to be. And I think he comes to the conclusion that letting her know that he doesn’t see her as some replacement nuisance, that she is a real archer, that she has made her own place on the Team and has absolutely nothing to prove to him, is the right first step.

“In full costume? Nervy.”

This is it! The single most important Spitfire moment in the entirety of s1! Oh god, all aboard the feels train!

“Aaah, this could wind up being one of those things that sounds better in my head than out loud.” 

He’s so nervous about saying this to her. You know he was stewing about what to say to her this whole time, how he could word it so that he comes off as genuine about it as he feels, so that she’ll know he’s telling the truth. He’s alone in the main cabin with her for the few precious moments in which Kaldur and Roy are storing his motorcycle in the back, and he finally just grits his teeth and tells himself that it’s now or never time. She needs to hear this before the mission.

“But, you are a real archer.”

Complete sincerity in his eyes. Complete sincerity in his voice, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world to him. “You are a real archer.” How could she think otherwise, after everything she’s done? Wally might not have been so sweet on her at the beginning, but she has more than proven time and again, has saved his ass with the same arrow TWICE. He would still be lying to himself if he thought she was anything less than capable. (I think he has honestly begrudgingly accepted that she’s an amazing archer for a long time, or at least for the very beginning when he was still pinning her on Roy’s aversion to the Team. And even pinning that on her was less about Roy and more about him having a gross crush on her and being embarrassed by their first meeting.)

Artemis seems less than impressed. I don’t think she believes him at first. Her face almost screams, “Really, Wally?” Like, she saw how relieved he was that Roy joined the Team, she knows that he prefers him as the Team’s archer, right?

“No, I mean I’m jazzed about Red Arrow! We go way back, you know? But, you…” He’s making it clear that he’s happy about having one of his best friends finally join the Team, that he’s not happy because oh, the guy she “replaced” is finally coming to push her out of the Team and take her place, or prove that he’s better than her at archery. None of that ever even crosses Wally’s mind; in fact, when Artemis first Zeta’d into the Cave and Ollie told her the news and Wally says “Finally!” with happiness, his eyes are actually on Artemis. Like, I think he fully expected her to share in the happiness, or at least be okay, because to Wally it was only ever about “one of my best friends is finally joining, hell yeah!”. Robin, Kal, and Wally all wanted Roy to join from the beginning, so it stands to reason that Wally is happy when he finally gets the stick out of his ass and joins. (Wally definitely knew that Artemis never really “drove” Roy off the Team, not by any intention or fault. Roy was honestly being a huge pain in the ass about it from the beginning, continuously ignoring their attempts to get him to join up BEFORE Artemis even showed up. And I doubt Roy had any intention of joining when he brought the Roquette mission to them either. Again, blaming Roy’s refusal to join the Team on Artemis was just a “peg for his insecurities” about Artemis and his self.)

Honestly, the way Wally says “But you…” kind of makes me fangirl so hard. The way he just looks up at her when he says that, the emphasis on her. Like, woah, did she come in and make her own place on the Team! He very much noticed throughout all these months; she just waltzed right onto the Team like she owned it and then proceeded to be a huge badass at every turn. He thinks she is amazing and somehow that fact is so brilliantly conveyed just by the emphasis he pressed into the word “you”. (It’s like he’s saying “You’re not Roy. You’re something else entirely.” in the most sincere, endearing way imaginable.)

And Artemis just can’t even believe that Wally West is saying these things to her. That he’s actually sitting there, making an effort to just wear his heart on his sleeve for her in this exact moment. 

“You’ve made your own place on the Team. You’ve got nothing to prove.”

He is making her feel wanted and needed and maybe, just maybe re-convincing her that she has, in fact, proved herself over the last four months. That she is, in fact, one of kind, that she’s not replaceable, that he doesn’t want her to leave so Roy can finally take her place. Some of his words even echo the very words she used to try and convince herself: “I’ve got nothing to prove, I’m one of a kind.” “You’ve got nothing to prove.”

“Not to me. Okay?”

“Not to me.” He’s very specific about adding that, about mentioning himself. Because once again, I think he knows that he has stemmed a lot of this insecurity she’s displaying; I believe he may have even seen her obvious eagerness to join in on the mission as a giveaway. Roy joins and the boys get a mission immediately, and Artemis is intent on joining in, and her expression is serious and intense. Wally is not stupid, he made that connection, realized that the reason she was jumping in was because she wanted to further prove that she IS a real archer and that Roy isn’t going to take her place. But to Wally, it’s almost funny that Artemis would think she’d even need to prove herself; she’s already done that so many times over the past four months! But her scathing “Sure. Team’s needed a real archer.” comment just really clued him in on the fact that he specifically is partly to blame for her insecurities. So when he says these things to her, he realizes how important it is to come from him; he knows she needs him to say this to her, it’s a sort of “apology” long overdue, an acknowledgement of how useful and amazing she is and how she’s made her own place on the Team. And he emphasizes “Not to me.” Not to him, least of all to him.

“…okay.”

Artemis just lets the words sink in, and I could only imagine how warm the Bioship probably felt to her in that moment. And she just slowly looks up at him through her lashes, and I swear to god this was probably one of the single most important moments of her life. Like, she needed to hear Wally say this to her; it had to be Wally. I sincerely do not think any words of encouragement from anyone else would have had even remotely the same impact, it only would have felt empty, like hollow words of reassurance. 

Can we just all remember and appreciate the fact that, at her core, Artemis is a teenage girl with a crush? Put aside all the missions, the costumes, the fighting, the secret Cave, the life or death situations… and all of them are still just teenagers. And I bring this up because honestly, as I rewatch this scene over and over to try and commentate it as best I can, it just really strikes me how self-conscious Artemis gets once Wally starts spilling his heart to her; the way she kind of looks at him with wide eyes, then swiftly drops her gaze down to her lap, with this almost shy expression. She’s self conscious, a teenage girl with a serious crush.

Look at her. Having his attention on her, just between the two of them, and him saying words that she’s needed to hear from him for so long. She’s known she has a thing for him for quite some time, yet that whole time she’s been scared, afraid that her past would come out and that Wally would reject her in every way imaginable. They already started out on the wrong foot, and their relationship suffered from it; obviously they found a comfortable place, full of banter and snark and quite frequently barely contained antagonism– all because he tripped in front of a cute girl, and she snarked because of a cute, shirtless boy. To Artemis, that tentative friendship with Wally could have all tipped right over the edge of the cliff if the truth about her criminal family came out. To her, that’s all it would take for him to fully reject her, maybe for him to even accuse her of being the mole. And those thoughts terrified her, because Wally means so fucking much to her that it’s unreal; rejection from him in any form is unthinkable. She cares about him too much. 

So then, just when her confidence is being completely shot, just when she thinks maybe nobody needs her, that the Team– that Wally –wants to replace her with Roy because she was just a “pity case”… Wally tells her that she has nothing to prove. Not to him.

This moment means so damn much to Artemis that I can’t even properly put it to words. Wally is opening up to her, letting her know that she’s amazing and needed and he was stupid for giving her such a hard time when they met. He’s meeting her halfway, as Greg once put it. And it’s this show of something deep and sincere that makes Artemis all the more terrified of the secret of her family coming out. Something is happening between her and Wally, something is finally giving and they’re both so, so close to giving into previously suppressed feelings… and her past could royally fuck that up. 

So she goes to the extreme to keep it locked away. Artemis goes into that mission with the intent of proving herself, of further cementing her abilities and proving to everyone and Wally that she’s NOT to be replaced. But after Wally says those things to her on the Bioship, for Artemis the mission then becomes a drive to confront her family on her own to keep her secret. Wally's words meant the world to her, she wasn't trying to prove herself anymore after he told her she didn't need to, she was trying to protect the bond forming between herself and Wally, as well as her past.

“And, um... Wally?”

“It sounded... fine, out loud.”

UGH MY HEART. LOOK AT HOW SHE GAZES AT HIM AND HOW HE’S SMILING TO HIMSELF DJSNFJSDFNSDJFNSD

Like, UGH you can tell Wally feels so GOOD for saying that to her, and the fact that it seems to MEAN something to her, that she LISTENED to him and genuinely, sincerely echoed his “okay” back at him when he was done. God it took him so much nerve to even work up the courage to tell her those things, but he knew he needed to and then he did and that risk was rewarded. He’s SO ready to change things between the two of them, to tentatively stick his foot in the water and see where it might go. And Artemis is ready too!

Or at least, she would be, if not for that one final obstacle: her family tree.]

GOD I HATE ROY. 

“And suspect number 1 is Artemis.”

“No offense guys, but even my boredom is bored.” “Maybe a night off wasn’t the best idea.”

Come on, Conner, we all know you’d just go all angry and shit if you went on a stake out, especially since you’ve started doing drugs-- I mean, Shields-- just last episode. He’d probably hulk the fuck out and go on a rampage.

TORNADO OUT. Seriously Tornado gave like no fucks at all. He has important things to do like make a human android so that he can flamingle with the humans.

Oh, Zee, you curious thing you. She’s probably a riot at parties.

“Pursue, but maintain a discreet distance.” Roy says, as he jumps on a fucking jet ski and starts immediately following Sportsmaster in his fucking rental boat. Like, damn dude. I suppose that the ski would sort of be drowned out by the boat engine but that still doesn’t seem like the most discreet method that could have been used; at least Wally’s on a motorcycle on the road, that could be conceived as pretty inconspicuous to Sportsmaster. Geez.

Also the rental boat is kind of making me laugh because it reminds me of the whole “What do you call this, the Arrow Boat?” “I call it a rental.” Like, I feel like in the Young Justice universe, that boat rental shacks make an ass ton of money renting boats to superheroes and villains and they don’t even know it. (or maybe they lose money, because half the boats mysteriously come back with giant holes in the center, and gashes in the paint, etc. Being a boat rental person must be a tough job in that world. They’re obviously the real heroes (or villains?) at the end of the day.)

“That goes double for you, Artemis.” Wow Roy could you BE anymore fucking hostile? I’m not sure who’s worse, Wally in Infiltrator, or you in this fucking episode as well as Performance. God.

Kaldur in his natural habitat. It would have been nice to have more chances to see Kaldur in his element tbh. Then again, I suppose there was a bit more of that in s2 with the whole Black Manta sub and shit.

I bet Wally is itching to run instead of use that motorcycle. (There should have been more Team on motorcycles, imho.)

Artemis, bby, no. T_T I sort of wish she had just stayed put. Then again I wouldn’t have wanted to listen to Roy’s stupid mouth, either. Or, you know, let my shitty criminal dad ruin like everything I’ve ever worked for.

CHESHIRE! <3

“Heeey, sis! Long time no reveal who you really are to all your friends!” Wow, it’s like Jade LITERALLY popped in just to remind us of what’s driving Artemis for the rest of this episode. Like I mentioned before, I feel so sorry for Artemis in the episode, it’s like the cards are all just stacked against her, everything is at stake and that’s why she’s so goddamn reckless in this episode.

You know how there’s that episode in s2 where everything keeps going wrong and Artemis keeps saying “Perfect.” to herself in her mind? I feel like Cheshire showing up in this episode is one of those moments. Like, now not only does she have to worry about her dad, but now she has to worry about Cheshire spilling the beans on her as well. Fucking perfect.

CROCK SISTER FIGHT! (they’re both so badass I love them)

Appreciation time:

I always loved that badass little throw that Artemis does. You go babbu!

“Bet you run out of arrows before I run out of sword. Unless you plan on breaking out the pointy ones to use against your own sister.” “Why shouldn’t I? You are working with Sportsmaster!”  Damn Arty got some fury in her voice.

“Why, Arrow, if you wanted another date you only had to ask.” “You two are dating!?” LOL oh my GOD Artemis’s fucking cracking voice of disbelief makes me laugh every time! She is so fucking horrified it’s not even funny! Like holy fucking HELL I’m crying. 

“Really I’m so fond of you both, I couldn’t bear to hurt you. Much.” Yeah, yeah, play is up Chesh, but we all know you would never seriously hurt Artemis, and probably not Arrow either considering. 

Goddamn that was a brutal leg sweep, Jade. (it’s even worse with the sound)

“Oh, too bad, lover boy.” Woah, Jade, chill with the bedroom voice, there are children present! 

I’m... honestly unclear on Jade’s motives for obviously holding that kiss until Artemis saw it. Like... idk? I mean it seems like a very Jade thing to do, but I can’t quite pin her motive for specifically making sure Artemis saw it. Possibly just to mess with her though, I suppose, and perhaps to pin some suspicion on Roy for some reason or other? IDK, JADE TELL ME YOUR INNER WORKINGS.

“But at least a kiss is still a kiss.”

“And a sai is just a sai!”

“And quite the souvenir, by the way.”

Oh, Wally. <3

“He’s out of range.” I can’t honestly tell if Artemis purposely didn’t put the tracker on or... okay, yeah, she had to have done it purposely, because our girl Arty can seriously hit pretty much any target, she’s hit some hum dingers throughout the season (Home Front, anyone?), there’s no way she couldn’t make that shot. But why, then, did she hold back? Did she want to let Sportsmaster get away and then try to track him down on her own? Like, idk, girl, tell me your thoughts.

“You’re abandoning!?” “I’m prioritizing!” 

“Oh, that’s gotta sting. He makes the shot you were afraid to even try.” Jade, I really think you hit a fucking nerve, considering how Artemis’s night has been going.

Siblings can be a real pain, huh, Artemis?

Always loved that Wally sort of gets in a defensive position between Artemis and Cheshire.

Wow, Roy. That was... spectacular. You sure did distract Sportsmaster so well. ‘_’

“Leave him alone!” Yessss, gimme dat Revelation parallel!

“Artemis!” YAS LAWD GIVE ME MY OTP

“Did you...?” “Tracer’s on her sword.” “Brilliant. I knew you could-- hey, there’s the guys.”

WALLY. It takes a LOT of skill to cock block yourself.

But in all seriousness, look at him fucking encouraging her! <3 God he’s just continually encouraging her and having her back in this episode! He knew she fucking needed it and tbh I think he just WANTED to. Like ajsdhjdhjshfjdsfh god he’s so fucking supportive in this episode because even though he said that meaningful stuff to her on the Bioship, he STILL continues to point out how amazing she is and to defend her against Roy’s suspicions. WALLY IS SUCH A SWEETHEART SOMETIMES I SWEAR.

“So we threw the fight as ordered. After Artemis planted the tracer.” That tone in his voice,  he’s like “Hell yeah my girl Arty nailed that shit like always.” <3

“Sportsmaster was headed south-- kinda like this mission.” I hate you, Roy but that’s a good line XD

Ugh, it pains me to see Artemis trying so hard to protect her identity. Like... it’s made all the worse because of Wally defending and standing up for her so much. Like... fuck. This whole episode hurts my soul. Wally’s on her side but she’s throwing all sorts of wild goose chases to try and protect what she has with her makeshift family and Wally... Artemis may not be doing these things for the stupid ass mole reasons that Roy thinks she’s doing them, but she is in fact fucking with the mission. And that’s why the end of the episode hurts so much. On the one hand I 100% don’t blame Artemis and can see her reasons for acting as she does in this episode... but on the other I’m just shaking my head and begging her to STOP. T_T

“Artemis...”  UGH. GOD JUST MAKE IT STOP.

Goddamnit, Artemis, you stubborn fool. I LOVE YOU BUT STOP IT.

Love Zee’s little magical boost! The animation on it is so smooth, and the brighter colors mixed in with the puff of smoke definitely gives off a “magic” feel.

In the episode or so where Conner isnt actually seen using a Shield, I love the small detail of him kind of subconsciously scratching his bicep all the time. Don’t fucking do drugs, kids.

“Bark if Tornado comes back.” LOL 

“Is that what I think it is?” A dead body. Yes, Zee.

I must confess I’m a little fond of the MONQI’s and their dumb laughter. It was refreshing to hear it again for the first time since Schooled. Then again I also really like the episode Schooled.

Sportsmaster is such a lackey in this episode. The dick.

Hey look, it’s the same Madri Gras warehouse background that was used in Terrors.

“Pulled it off my sword about a minute after you put it there. Thought you’d want it back, since it goes so nicely with the one Red Arrow gave you.”

Of course Jade would know that Artemis put a tracker on her. You know, as much as I love the Jade and Artemis dynamic and the fact that they still love and care about each other despite being on opposite sides, I would still love to see a good, even playing field fight between them, post s2. Because like... at their core they were both trained by the same man as young ones, but after that it starts branching out. Jade probably learned more from the streets and from the Shadows. Artemis learned a hell of a lot from Black Canary’s training as well as sparring with her Teammates, etc. I definitely wouldn’t want them to truly hurt each other (and I don’t think they ever would), but a straight up fight between them would surely be an awesome sight!

“*sing song voice* Someone on your Team doesnt trust you.” Goddamnit, Jade. I honestly wonder whether Jade would truly WANT to actually out Artemis’s connections in s1. She threatens her with it a few times, obviously, but... there’s this part of me that honestly thinks maybe Jade is proud of Artemis for finding her place, even if it is on the hero side, so I can’t see her ruining that. But I suppose that’s another bit of meta for another episode or something. (I tend to think Jade mostly just bluffs about revealing her identity because she knows it’ll make Artemis back down, because it means too much to her)

Jade why are you carrying around a tablet and where the fuck is that camera view even coming from?

Can’t get to Arrow in time? Blow the door up and knock him on his stupid ass! You’re welcome, Roy!

“So you’re pretty much allergic to radioing a warning?” “Artemis to Arrow: look out.” I love my sarcastic babbu <3 (also pretty sure if she had tried to radio him he would’ve either NOT listened to her, or else it just would have taken too long to relay and Sporty would have stabbed him with a big ole javelin. So yeah, explosion was the best option)

“Sooo, is Red building a friend or what?” LOL 

So I’m guessing that considering the fact that it doesn’t show the android below the waist (and when it does there’s another part in the way), and Zatanna’s “friend” line, and the fact that she says it really needs some pants... that it’s, ahem, anatomically correct. Or something. Kinda freaky. But okay, Red. I don’t even want to know.

“Wolf.”

LOLOLOLOL.

“Is this a sign of disrespect?” “Curiosity!” “Boredom.”

Fighting time! 

Okay, Roy, this is one of the only times I’m gonna say this but... KICK SPORTSMASTER’S ASS, OKAY. He’s an even bigger dick than you!

I just really like the animation on Artemis landing there. 

LOOK AT HIM. Helping her gently to her feet! Using both of his hands to hold her’s even though he could have easily just done it with one. OH my god please kill me, THEY’RE TOO ADORABLE 

JUST. FUCKING--

LOOK AT HIM CUPPING HER HAND IN BOTH OF HIS. I’M DYING GOOD-BYE.

“Do as she says: Freeze!” I honestly love Klarion. XD

WALLY YOU BROKE JADE.

Hello I just wanted to point out how close they’re standing to each other okay

OH NO, HERE WE GO. SHIT’S GETTING REAL :(

“You know, I’m getting pretty tired of you dumping on her!” Do it, Wally. Punch his stupid face!

(I kind of wonder... if part of the reason Wally was getting so fed up with Roy’s shit was also in part because he realized that’s how HE must have seemed towards Artemis when she first joined, you know? I mean in Infiltrator, specifically. And maybe it just made him doubly pissed with hearing Roy talk to her that way, because it’s kind of echoing how rude he was to Artemis when she first joined, and it’s kind of getting under his skin that he behaved that way. Maybe I’m thinking too much into things, but I really do think it’s possible.)

“Her tracer, so? Cheshire ditched it.” “No. Artemis ditched that to send us on a wild goose chase. She put this one on Cheshire.”

Oh god make it stop. Look at his face

“Artemis. Are you that freaked out about Arrow joining the Team you had to prove yourself by bringing down the bad guys solo? Please tell me I’m wrong.”

Oh dear fucking god the end of this episode is seriously downright PAINFUL for me to have to watch! There’s just so much misunderstanding and holding back and blaming and just... it distresses me so goddamn much. This episode is only tied with Failsafe for how many feels it gives me, I can’t bear to watch them be SO fucking close to each other, yet so far away.

And all because of Artemis’s stupid criminal family. 

And oh, oh god the worst, the WORST fucking part is when Artemis opens her fucking mouth to tell him and then just falters!

First of all look at the completely HOPELESS fucking face she’s making when he’s asking her to tell him he’s wrong.

Like oh god, he’s got this angry, disappointed look on his face and it’s directed at HER and things had been going so fucking well between them, she could feel it. But now everything is just hitting her right in the face, all the mistakes she made, the last ditch, desperate measures she took just to try and keep herself from getting outed. The saddest part is that she did all this to try and keep what she had with the Team, and more importantly, with Wally, safe; but in the end it all still winds up leading her and Wally straight back to square one, the same antagonistic, unsure distance they’ve had for the entire season. Only now... now it hurts ten times worse.

Fucking look at her. She’s desperate to tell him, she wants to, or at least to just fucking defend herself, to let him know that she wasn’t trying to prove herself, that his words to her on the Bioship did fucking mean something to her, that they meant the world to her, that she was only trying to protect herself, that she’s related to Cheshire and Sportsmaster!! But she fucking can’t, she stops, freezes up, and just stops looking him in his disappointed eyes; because she can’t tell him. If she tells him that she’s the daughter and sibling of criminals, then he’ll reject her in every way. If she just lets him think that his words on the Bioship meant nothing to her and that she was still trying to prove something... at least he’ll still be around. At least he’ll just be mad. 

Mad is better than gone. She can’t lose this Team... can’t lose him.

“Well, nice goin’. What you proved is that you’re insecure and selfish. Keep the sai. This is the right souvenir for the mission.”

And oh god. Oh, Wally, bless his fucking soul. He’s so goddamn hurt at the end of this episode; both of them are, in two very different ways. To him, her display, her leading them all astray and seemingly trying to go after Sportsmaster and Cheshire all by herself is basically like her rejecting what he said to her aboard the Bioship; to him, it’s a slap to the face, it’s her showing that his words, his heart, meant absolutely nothing to her. He told her she had nothing to prove, not to him, because he was the one that caused her insecurity and he knew that. And she told him okay, that it sounded fine out loud, and he felt so good, so happy that she had seemed to take his words to heart, that she wouldn’t feel the need to try and go an extra mile to prove herself better than Roy, or to prove herself to Wally (whom she certainly never needed to prove herself to in the first place). But obviously she didn’t care, right? She didn’t care about his words; she still went off recklessly, sending them all over the place and making them look stupid and fucking up the mission-- and for what? 

To prove herself better than Roy. As if Wally’d never said any of that heartfelt stuff to her before the mission.

All for nothing. 

He’s embarrassed, and hurt. Oh man, is he fucking hurt. Finally he gathered up the courage, and the maturity, to want to try and move things forward with Artemis... only to seemingly be rejected in the most painful way.

But of course, the most painful part is that it’s absolutely not true. None of it. 

His words meant the world to Artemis, and she wasnt trying to prove herself anymore... but Wally can’t know that. They’re both at a crossroads.

“So how will you betray us next time?” SHUT THE FUCK UP ROY YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE. MY BABIES ARE HURTING, LEAVE THEM ALONE.

(Also, remember that in outing Artemis for sending them astray with a tracker, Roy was trying to pin Artemis with evidence as the mole. But that thought never even crossed Wally’s mind; he didn’t think she was a mole for it, just that she was disregarding his feelings. Wally never suspected Artemis was the mole, why would he?)

“Enough! If making a mistake was a betrayal then we would all be traitors.” Thank you, Kaldur, bless.

Ugh, I just realized... the entire Team was standing there. The ENTIRE fucking Team sat there and watched that exchange between Wally and Artemis. Oh god...

“You’re not who you say you are. This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”

Oh my poor baby. :[ You have just had a fucking horrible night, haven’t you?

“Artemis? Is everything--” Paula just wants to help her upset bby :(

“Shhhh. We wouldn’t want to upset your mother.” God stop being such a fucking CREEP, Sportsmaster.

“What are you doing here!?” Fucking do it, Artemis. Turn him into a pin cushion; it’s the least he fucking deserves.

“Blamed you, didn’t they?”

(You know how Sportsmaster is mentally and emotionally abusive? This whole scene is a shining fucking example of that.)

“Will they keep you around now that Red Arrow’s joined up? And what if they learn the truth about the family ties you’ve worked so hard to hide? Would they ever trust you again?”

Like... Lawrence is literally throwing every insecurity Artemis has had in this episode, right back in her face. He’s undoing Wally’s reassurances; he’s re-enforcing the fear she has of her family being discovered; he’s playing off the fear she has of being untrusted and rejected by her makeshift family. He’s tearing Artemis down mentally  because he knows she’s in a vulnerable spot. He knows that this is the time to strike, as it were. To say these things to her while she’s down, to try and use her insecurities to manipulate her onto his side of things; she’s his little soldier, after all, he made her what she is. 

“Thanks for the pep talk, dad, we should have these family reunions more often.”

I love the lighting on Artemis’s face throughout this scene.

“You tried, baby girl. You can fight Jade, you can fight me. But you can’t fight who. You. Are. Time to switch sides, Artemis. You’ll never be one of them. You belong with us.” 

And there’s the emotional abuse. You tried, you failed, and the reason you failed is because you were meant to work on the side of evil. You were born into this, you don’t have a choice. And everything that’s happened tonight is proof of that; you mislead your Team, they brought in someone to take your place, they won’t trust you anymore now; what else is left for you now? You can’t fight genetics.

If any of that were true, if Artemis were a lesser person, if her heart wasn’t fucking golden and if she wasn’t meant to be a true fucking hero... this episode might have been her villain origin story. 

But Lawrence was fucking wrong. Artemis Lian Crock was never meant to be a villain, not in this lifetime. 

[lost-n-stereo]

Anyone up for reading 2k words of original fiction?

As most of you that know me know, I’ve been working on some original fiction that I hope to self publish sometime in the next year.

Well...I have the first 2,000 words of my debut novel ready to be read and would love to hear some feedback! This is just a little sneak peek, the prologue of my book, but I’d like to hear some honest feedback from my followers. For example, after reading these 2,000+ words, do you even care what happens next? Are the characters interesting? Funny? Lovable? Totally unrealistic? These are the things I’d like to hear from you!

What to know:

This is a second chance romance, set in flashback and present day form. Roxy is a college sophomore with big dreams and a ten year plan. When Silas, her summer fling from two years before, shows up in her life unexpectedly again she is forced to deal with the way she ended their relationship. New Adult/Contemporary romance that will be aimed for a mature audience. The sneak peek however takes place in a flashback, so it only contains strong language.

Any feedback is welcomed! If you love it, tell me! If you hate it, tell me! I’ll respond to any messages privately and just would love to hear what you have to think!

Prologue

Roxy

The summer before I turned eighteen started like every summer that came before it.

School ended, days turned hotter. Jeans and hoodies were traded in for short shorts and bikini tops. Cheap flip flops in every color of the sun stayed in a mismatched pile on the floor of my closet, their thin plastic straps threatening to fall apart every time I slipped my feet into a pair.

The sunny beach town where I’d grown up went through a transformation at the end of every spring. The first day of summer vacation was like a flood, visitors from all over the country pouring in, filling the cracks with their spending money and sunburned faces. Our businesses flourished while the townies complained. Townies like my parents and the self-proclaimed hippies they played bingo with every Saturday night of the off season.

The first day of that summer was brutal, in that the weather was too hot and the streets were too full. My white tank top was sticking to my skin and I regretted, not for the first time that day that I didn’t think to throw anything on top of it. Walking around half naked and sweaty was not my idea of a good time but neither was dying of heat stroke.

I waved to Mrs. McDougall, our eighty year old and slightly deaf neighbor, as I passed by her house.

“Good morning, Sherry!” She called out to me and I answered in kind, even though it was nearing two in the afternoon and my name is definitely not Sherry. My mother always told me to be nice to the elderly because one day I too would be eighty years old and slightly deaf, waving to neighborhood kids and calling them by the wrong name, and would I want them to treat me poorly?

So I did what any nice person would do and I waved, said good morning as the afternoon sun beat down on my neck and continued my walk downtown.

Downtown Seaview, which isn’t really a downtown by any definition of the word, is a long stretch of beachfront shops, restaurants and hotels on the right with the wide expanse of the Atlantic on the left. Our tiny North Carolina town might be aptly named, albeit a little on the nose, but it’s a go to spot for the wealthy and privileged three months out of every year. The boardwalk dead ends at the main attraction, a 65ft Ferris wheel that conjures up memories of my childhood. My friends and I racing towards the entrance, our fingers sticky from cotton candy and our laughs loud enough to hear from the other side of the boardwalk. First dates with boys that didn’t know the first thing about kissing, but still tried when we reached the very top because it was romantic and cliché. Swirling lights, pinks and purples, blues and greens, lighting up my grin as I soared high over the little town that raised me.

I was born there, had lived there all of my life but I was determined not to die there. Unless a freak accident whisked me away from this Earth before my eighteenth birthday, I was getting out of that beach town if it was the last thing I did.

Not that I don’t love it because I do. I walked down the busy street, smelling the delicious smells of the boardwalk. Churros from Mr. Cruz’s beachside stand. The scent of fresh lemonade, always squeezed daily with just the right amount of sugar, wafted through the air when I passed Lucy’s Sweet Shop. Lucy Reynolds’ daughter Emma has been my best friend since birth. I saw her through the window of the little café and waved at her to come meet me out on the street.

“Where are you going dressed like that?” Emma’s eyebrows were up so far I thought they’d disappear into her hairline. “I thought you were starting at Mickey’s today?”

Mickey’s Ice Cream Shoppe, one of the oldest relics of our small town, had been my summer job for the past three years.

“I am,” I said, shielding my eyes despite the fact that I was wearing sunglasses. My five dollar aviators were no match for the sun that day. “You and I both know I’ll get stuck wearing the uniform de jour and frankly, it’s too fucking hot to wear anything else.” I looked down at my outfit, simple cutoff jean shorts, white tank and purple flip flops. “Why?”

Emma shrugged. “I’m just so used to you being all,” she waved a hand up and down in front of my body. “You know, buttoned up and not showing these off.” She poked me in the boob and I slapped her hand away.

“Well, it’s hot. Do you expect me to wear flannels? Leave me alone,” I said laughing. “Don’t you have some work to do?”

“Bitch, you called me out here,” she said with a chuckle as she headed back towards her family’s shop. “Stop by after work and I’ll hook you up with some fries.”

“Better make it a burger too,” I called as she skipped her way through the front door. “A burger, Emma!”

I laughed as I made my way back down to Mickey’s, not really paying attention to where I was walking because I had walked that same route practically every day of my life. And it was because I wasn’t paying attention that I walked smack dab into a wall.

Okay, not actually a wall but the chest I ran into was as hard as one.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” Strong hands steadied me, warm palms grazing my arms, as the owner of the deep voice chuckled. “Alright there?”

“I’m fine,” I said as I pulled away. My skin tingled from his hands. “Sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“No, it was me. I wasn’t paying attention at all. I’m sorry,” he apologized again.

When I finally looked up at him, and I mean I really had to look up because he was tall, I was stunned to see the most beautiful human being I’d ever seen smiling down at me. Dark hair, cut short on the sides but longer in the front, pushed out of his face in this sexy perfected way that made me want to bury my hands in it just to mess it all up. Honey brown eyes that were sparkling with amusement set under an arched eyebrow that screamed trouble.

Everything about this boy embodied money. From his designer board shorts all the way up to his two hundred dollar sunglasses. A soft grey t shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders and I briefly thought about how his shirt alone probably cost more than my entire outfit. Wealth clung to him like the expensive cologne I could smell when he leaned close to me.

“I’m Silas,” he said, holding his hand out in the space between us. He laughed when I looked at it like a foreign object, reached for mine and made a show of us shaking hands. “And you are?”

I’d seen guys like Silas before, hell I’d dated guys like him before. Gorgeous tourists that think pretty local girls are there for their entertainment like the jet skis they can rent down at the beach. I wasn’t looking for romance, not from him. Not from anyone.

“Late for work,” I retorted as I backed away from him, a slow smile forming on my face. “Nice to meet you, Silas.”

“That’s it?” He called after me as I turned around. “After almost knocking me over, I don’t even get your name?”

I snorted when I faced him again, my feet carrying me backwards without needing to watch my steps. “You ran into me, remember?”

“At least tell me where you work!”

A group of freshman age kids walked past him then and Silas scowled when they laughed at him, one of them coughing out the word, “Desperate!”under their breath before scurrying off towards the beach.

“I guess you’ll have to find me,” I said as I raised my hand in a wave. “Later, Silas.”

I left him stunned into silence and smiled all the way to Mickey’s, the small ice cream shop already packed full with a mid morning rush. On days like that, when the temperature reached ungodly levels it didn’t matter if it was eight in the morning or eight at night, everyone wanted ice cream.

“Morning, Louie,” I said as I lifted up the counter to head towards the back of the shop where the lockers were.

Louie Monroe, owner and proprietor of Mickey’s, grinned at me as I walk past him. “Morning, Sailor. How’s my favorite employee doing this morning?”

“Hey!” I laughed as Ronnie Miller, another Mickey’s alum, punched Louie in the shoulder. “I’ve been working here just as long as she has.”

“Sorry, Ronnie. I’m just prettier than you,” I teased before giving Louie a delayed glare. “And what I have told you about using my real name? It’s bad enough my parents named me that in a damn beach town, I don’t need the tourists thinking of me as some novelty item they can fawn over.”

Louie laughed as he motioned towards two girls I didn’t know that were scooping ice cream into waffle cones. “Then you’re going to hate today’s uniform.”

I groaned when I finally took in what everyone was wearing that day. Navy blue shorts with wide buttoned fronts, white shirts with red ties and actual sailor hats.

Fucking sailor hats.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, turning to glare at Louie who was now bent over laughing so hard his face was as red as the raspberry ice cream we sold out of every day. “Why would you do that?”

“It’s in honor of you Sail…” I raised an eyebrow and he conceded. “Roxy, sorry. It was just a little joke to welcome you back. Uniform’ll change tomorrow, don’t worry.”

The only constant about working at Mickey’s was that there was no constant. Every day was like Halloween with a new theme and uniform to shake things up. Some days we wore crazy hats, some days we dressed like our favorite superheroes.

And apparently some days we dressed like fucking sailors.

“I’m only doing this because I need this job,” I said as I headed to the back where the lockers were. My locker every summer was number 21, which made no sense because there were only six lockers total. My sailor costume was hanging in the locker already, in my size, and I grumbled and complained the entire time I put it on.

My parents naming me Sailor wasn’t the only ridiculous thing they had done. They used to be investment bankers in New York but when my mother got pregnant with my older brother they decided to start their own business and work from home in the beach town my mother visited every summer as a child. When my brother was born my parents decided to name him Anchor, in honor of the ocean and their love of the water. Then came my older sister Coral and then finally me, Sailor Roxanne Reynolds.

It didn’t take me long to hate my name in a small town like Seaside. By the time I was nine I was going by Roxanne and by twelve I was just Roxy.

Which is why it annoyed me so much that Louie refused to call me by my preferred name. Being a townie in a beach town was bad enough. Add on top of that a novelty name and I was nothing more than a shiny seashell you could buy for twenty five cents at the corner gift shop.

But I wasn’t lying when I told Louie that I needed the job that summer. I was saving up to buy myself a car before college started and I refused to buy one until I earned every dollar myself. My parents had money, not a lot but enough to support our family in a tourist town year round, and while they would have happily purchased a car for me to take to Boston in the fall I wanted to earn it. West Bridge University was my dream since childhood. I had everything planned down to the letter. Double major in psychology and criminal justice. Date a few cute boys, go to some parties. Graduate and become the best forensic physiologist in North Carolina. Live a long and happy life.

Easy, right?

So that day I stood in the back room of my neighborhood ice cream shop, my annoyingly accurate sailor costume in hand and vowed to work my ass off that summer to make my dreams a reality.

Come hell or high water, I was getting out of that town and nothing and no one was going to stop me.

[thesummerstorms]

How do you imagine Darman reacting to what happened to Etain during her pregnancy? Because for me, Darman would be FURIOUS to know the mother of their child was threatened, banished to a situation that nearly led her to miscarry, and even forbidden to think of a name for the baby, not to mention everything else that went on...

I was sitting on this for, well, a very long time because I wasn’t sure how to reply. Just FYI, parts of this post are based on the canon of the actual novels, but a large part (mostly near the end) are written from my own perspective in the context of my Etain Lives verse.

It’s also very long (quite possibly more info than is called for, and I apologize for that), so beneath the cut I’ve broken the post into three pieces

What does Dar know, canonically? (And what reaction does he have?)

What doesn’t Dar know, canonically? (Why? Would he have ever learned in canon? How he might have reacted if he found out?)

What happens in a verse where Etain doesn’t die? (When and where Darman might learn, and what his reaction might be. This is entirely contextualized in my Etain Lives verse, which means some AU and headcanons are in play.)

While I know the original ask centers on how will he react, I kind of got caught up in figuring out what he does or doesn’t already know and why before I got there. And the end result is a rambling mess, so I apologize.

So what does Dar know, canonically?

So the interesting thing that I realized when I was going through and rereading/researching for this is that Darman does canonically know at least some of the story. Specifically, he knows that Kal a)prevented Etain from telling him about the baby and b) threatened to take the baby away from her entirely.

“Shab, no, son.” Skirata’s face was anguished and exhausted. “She adores you. It was me—I stopped her telling you. She wanted to, right from when she knew she was pregnant, but I threatened I’d take the kid away from her if she didn’t do as I said.”     **

Darman didn’t believe him. Skirata might have been a pitilessly hard man, no stranger to violence, but he was the kindest of fathers. He’d never have threatened Etain. 

“Don’t cover for her, Kal’buir.”

“I’m not. It’s true. Ask Ordo—he walked in on the row, and I’m not going to dress it up. I stopped her telling you, and that was wrong, whatever the circumstances.”

Dar’s initial response is disbelief that Kal would in any way be a threat to Etain- because he trusts and loves Kal, and expects that love and trust to carry over into Kal’s relationship with his significant other. That actually makes sense to me.

From there the conversation progresses into Darman’s anger that Kal is keeping things from him- first about his son and Etain, then about the larger web of things Kal is hiding from them- the cure research, the desertion plans, and all the other operations Kal is running against the Republic without telling them.  The combination of learning about Ko Sai and the revelation about Kad is what pushes Darman to beat the hell out of Skirata. Again, he’s going through crisis mode here because he’s realizing he can’t trust Kal. And that makes sense.

But what’s odd to me is that we never see him come back to that very first crime of Kal’s, that he threatened Etain, even after he’s moved past denial. After beating up Skirata, he seems eager to “forgive and move on”, and pretend that his anger was merely heat of the moment, which might have something to do with it, but…

It’s still weird in the context of Darman, who has been noted to be super protective of Etain, both emotionally and physically, long before they were even dating. He never brings it up with Etain (that we can see) or calls Kal out on the threats, or otherwise seems to be concerned with that detail. Perhaps it’s a matter of his underestimating exactly what threatened looked like in this case, being so overwhelmed by his loss of trust in Kal in general that he loses sight of it, or of not being mentally prepared to face it, but it is odd. 

I personally would have expected a stronger reaction at some point, although it’s been pointed out to me that Dar is still very much in that abusive relationship with Kal himself, and honestly doesn’t have much room to react even if he wants to. I also am unsure how much Etain would be willing to tell him of what transpired, given that one of her initial goals in telling him about Kad was explicitly to not blame Skirata for anything.

Which leads me to….

((** technically, yes, this is inaccurate… at first Etain’s plan is not to tell Darman right away which she comes up with a plan and figures out what to do, in order to protect him. But we do see by the time she’s 3 months/6 months into her pregnancy in True Colors she’s already thought the better of the idea and would contact him and tell him were she not forbidden to by Kal (pg. 18-19 in the paperback) so I’m perfectly willing to still let Kal have the blame on this.))

What doesn’t Dar know, canonically?

So Darman knows that Kal prevented Etain telling about the baby, and that he threatened to take the child from her all together, although he likely knows very little actual detail. The things we never see him learn on screen, on the other hand, are exactly the ones you bring up:

the fact that Kal twice gave Kad a name with out any say so from Etain, and explicitly told her she wasn’t allowed to choose a name for her son

that the threat to take her child was ongoing and ever-present rather than a one time, when she found out she was pregnant kind of thing

the fact that Kal chose to send to Etain to Qiilura with no medical or emotional support rather than Etain being genuinely assigned there

that Etain nearly miscarried

that Kal emotionally blackmailed Etain, accusing her both of being unfaithful and of using Darman

In one of the RepComm group chats I’m in, we more or less decided that had Darman been told about Etain’s near miscarriage during his initial conversation with Kal, he very likely would have tried to kill Skirata then and there. Kal is his father-savior-figure from childhood, yes, but at the same time:

Darman’s trust has already been broken enough to push him to violence against Kal, just based on the revelations about Kad’s existence and Ko Sai’s death

While Darman is angry with Etain, the quote from the last section again indicates that his expectation was that his love for Kal meant that Kal would also be a father to, or at least be kind to the woman he loved and had chosen as his partner. Learning the specifics of Kal’s treatment of her- which Kal also hid from him- is another specific betrayal of his trust

Darman is incredibly protective of Etain, to sometimes a not necessarily healthy or normal degree. We see this in his reaction to Fi in Hard Contact, to Scorch’s teasing in Triple Zero and his plan to “smack Sev later for the wisecracks [about Etain’s decision making]” in Order 66 , not to mention his reaction to her emotional states or to actual physical danger. Even if he’s heartbroken and angry that she’s been lying to him,  that’s a long way from being okay with her coming to harm or dying. He still would not have taken well to learning that she and her baby were both placed at risk of dying because Kal put her in harm’s way with no access to medical resources. 

The problem here is that there are only two people in the room when he confronts Skirata who would even have that information to give him: Vau and Kal himself. 

Vau absolutely does not involve himself in any way except to tell the other commandos to let Dar go after Kal without interference, and he has no particular motivation to become involved in the drama. It’s quite possible that there’s still even things on the list he doesn’t know. (For instance, he knows about Etain’s near miscarriage, but not the initial threats or conversation, or anything about the names, even if he did care to reveal it.)  

Kal, who does know everything, has absolutely no incentive to drag anything out into the open that isn’t already there. He accepts some blame because he has become attached to the idea of Dar and Etain together since she gave birth, but he isn’t going to want to go into everything else that happened if Dar doesn’t already know.

So inside that scene as it stands, there’s no way for Darman to discover the full context. Outside of it only a handful of people know everything. Ordo was unwillingly dragged into most of it, and I tend to think this means Mereel and the other Nulls likely know as well after Bardan alerts Mereel to Etain’s pregnancy. But again, Ordo has no particular incentive to bring up anything Dar doesn’t already know  after seeing the injuries Kal has sustained, and Darman has no incentive to turn to Mereel (who is close to Etain, but likely not Darman) or the other Nulls.

Which only leaves Etain. 

On screen, Etain and Dar don’t really have another conversation about her secret-keeping after he forgives her and she decides not to press him too hard or too much further re: his feelings towards Kal. Traviss drops all actual conflict from the scenario pretty quickly, and we never see it come up again between the two of them.

But, reading between the lines and inferring? We see Etain in Order 66 trying to actively change her behavior and not exclude Dar from her decision making. We know that she was miserable lying to him, and that she wants to make things better between them. Realistically, during the course of the month they spent together with the baby, with Darman still very much aware that things had been kept from him, I think there would have had to be a series of slow, careful conversations as they mended their relationship. So Etain probably did tell Darman that Kal suggested “Venku”, that she had complications while she was pregnant, etc…

I just don’t imagine she did so in a way that actually implicates Kal.

“There was no purpose to be served by telling him Skirata had stopped her. She’d deceived Darman from the start, planning to conceive, making him think there was no risk of pregnancy. It was her fault: she would face the consequence alone.” (Order 66, pg. 199)

From the way I read the series? Etain is absolutely still traumatized by her pregnancy, even if she prefers not to confront those emotions. Telling Darman exactly what happened would mean she would have to relive it again, and Etain already spent a lot of time miserable and afraid. 

But more importantly, she a) believes she deserves what happened to her and any consequences still forthcoming b) wants desperately to love and be loved by Kal, because Kal has made himself so essential to the family she wants, which means not pointing a finger in Kal’s direction.

It’s not great as far as making amends and being honest goes, but Dar probably gets the version with some of the details… and none of the blame or responsibility. He doesn’t know how Kal specifically engineered the hurts Etain’s faced, only that Etain had a difficult time.

 After Etain canonically dies in Order 66, he loses any opportunity to hear directly from her. Kal still has no incentive, and neither do Ordo or Vau. He’s already in really, really bad shape after losing Etain, the point of a full trauma-induced breakdown and she’s past any helping. 

I suppose this whole section is my long-winded way of saying that as it stands, generally in a verse where the novels happen as scripted, I don’t expect Darman to ever actually find out.

What happens in a verse where Etain doesn’t die?

 The thing is, I’m not sure how the topic would ever come up in my Etain Lives AU. By the time Etain is recovering and reunited with Darman, they still face some of the same issues as the original scenario:

Dar is in a really bad mental place, and telling him is probably not going to help him deal with things any Any reaction he has is likely to be extreme.

Etain still feels like she deserves it and also doesn’t want to have to deal with facing the emotions behind what happened to her again, particularly when she needs to feel as if she can love and trust Kal

Even if they do confront it, they can’t do anything about the situation it leaves them in; they’re still dependent on Kal. even if Dar wants to, he can’t declare Kal dar’buir on the spot.

Kal has put himself at the center of this family and therefore their every other social connection. They have no contacts, resources, or wealth not tied somehow to him. 

The cure isn’t developed. 

The Empire wants them both dead. 

They both have an assortment of physical and mental traumas to deal with. 

And on top of that, they have a baby who is also under threat, and who would be completely and utterly dependent on them if they decided to leave.

But when (there has to be a when, in this verse, not an if, if they’re ever meant to actually heal and get better) the information does finally come out… it’s not going to be good. 

To some extent, Order 66 can already be partially blamed on Kal. Yes, Traviss handed Etain the idiot ball, but there was no reason for Etain ever to have even returned to Coruscant. There was no reason for the clan to have stayed on Coruscant as long as they did, and in fact Ordo at one point tries to tell Kal it’s a bad idea, that they should get out while they can. 

Events play out the way they do largely because Kal committed to the random exfil date he had put on his calendar and to evaccing everyone from the same place, when multiple other characters in text point out that those things make no sense.

On top of all of this poor planning of Kal’s, which help feed to Etain’s (nonsensical) canon death, he never actually told either Etain or the commandos that he had a date set for the desertion. They had no ability to plan or prepare, because Kal literally doesn’t tell them it’s happening for sure until the Purge actually comes down on them the night before his planned date.

The Etain Lives Verse has reframed and restructured the events of Order 66 so that they make more logical sense, but in either case Etain’s fate during the Jedi Purge is at least partially a direct result of Kal’s continuing need to be in control and to hold back information from the rest of his family in order to achieve that control.

Darman, who is already furious at Kal for keeping secrets, is confronted with a situation where the exact things that Kal did to hurt him before have now almost cost him Etain’s life. 

To quote @izzyovercoffee from the group chat, there’s two ways things go at that point:

I feel like [Darman] would be too fatigued mentally [to yell at Kal for the situation that leads to almost losing Etain] , because if Kal didn’t GET IT from the actual beating then he won’t ever get it. Because that blow up between them?  That’s the same thing. It’s the same situation. Kal withholds information and people get hurt…. 

…either Darman explodes … or he fizzles out. The only thing that saves him is that Etain is still alive, but whatever reaction he have will be an extreme one. 

 For myself?

I see Darman being absolutely furious just at how Kal’s need for control lead to the Purge situation, without knowing about how Etain’s life had been previously endangered. I see it pushing it’s way to another blow up, another explosion. He’s grieving and in traumatized and realizing that he can’t make things better with Kal because Kal doesn’t change his behaviors. It probably ends with another fist fight, although this time his brothers know what to expect and try to step in earlier.

But that doesn’t make things any better with Kal, who writes Darman off in the same way he’s always dismissed the Nulls as “unstable”, without actually changing the behavior.

At which part Dar… fizzles.

He can’t trust Kal, but he also can’t fix the situation. He stops trying, retreats, becomes harder in an attempt to defend himself. He’s suspicious. But his anger is too exhausting to try and wield as a sword when Kal will only ever dismiss him.

He might have killed Kal during the second fight, might have declared him dar’buir…. but in this verse, Etain is still alive, still needs him, still needs him to look after his son. And Kal has got him in a position where he can’t do that, or can’t seem to, without Kal’s good will.

So he retreats, and probably suffers for it.

I don’t see the rest of the story coming out until after he’s already lost that confrontation,and in bits and pieces at that. I’m not even sure how it starts- does Mereel say something to him, quietly, that leads him to ask Etain? Does she, trying to deal with her own almost-death and the pressure of being expected to live as part of one large, trauma-free family, begin to confess to him one night when she’s almost in tears and too tired to hold it back?

Dar doesn’t explode this time; he can’t afford to. But the anger sits like a knife in his mouth. He’s short tempered and restless. He questions everything he’s told, has to battle suspicion even when it isn’t Kal speaking to him. He refuses to accept anything Kal says at face value, cuts him out as effectively as if he had actually formally divorced the man as his parent. He lays contingency after contingency, some needed and some not, because he can’t trust anyone else to keep Etain and Kad safe. Omega knows something’s wrong, tries to reach out to him because he isn’t coping, but Kal dismisses his pent up rage as an unrelated part of his PTSD and thus “beyond fixing”. Eventually the planning shifts to trying to find a way out for him and his family.

It’s honestly probably a really bad time for a while, because what Dar (like many other members of the clan) needs is a therapist to start helping him work through his trauma and some sort of safe autonomy.

Ultimately the situation can’t improve much, doesn’t improve until someone steps in to help find him some outside help (my money is on Rav here, tbh) and until Mereel’s death ultimately furnishes them with a way to escape Kyrimorut.