#don't turn on too many things at once because the electricity is limited

[threshie]

Life is a resource management game.

[drdemonprince]

I met a Bondage Side on Grindr and had a couple lovely times with him so far. Bondage Side as in he does not have penetrative sex of any kind, and doesn't really like oral -- he just wants to find cute boys to tie up, handcuff, and maybe prod with hitachis and tickle. we have a great time every time we have met up so far -- five hour stints of being hogtied and fumbling around on the floor trying to escape while he tortures me and feeds me edibles he baked.

When he contacted me, I had just decided to make it explicit on my Grindr account that I am not interested in vanilla -- after many years of doubting myself and pushing myself to try having sex with all kinds of people and being sorely disappointed and squicked out nearly all the time if there wasn't some power dynamic or intense kink at play. Meeting him was exactly the assurance that I needed. "No Vanilla" is allowed to be a limit. and by limiting myself to only what I am actually interested in, I get to find great, compatible partners like him and enjoy myself.

Sexual acts don't exist on some single spectrum from "standard" to "extreme," and I am not obligated to assent to any supposedly milder-seeming sex act simply because I am interested in more crazy kinds of sex. It was so foolish of me to believe that was the case.

I guess I still felt bad that what I wanted might be too strange for people or too disturbing, and kinda thought that if I ever wanted the neck corsets and rope and handcuffs that I would have to make some sacrifice and accept mid eye-contact-heavy sex and cunnilingus first.

But there are people who just like the neck corsets and ropes and handcuffs. I don't even have to pair that stuff with sex if I don't want to. I really thought that I would have to. Even so many of the ostensibly kinky people that I have met really only treat bondage, say, as a prelude to the main event of penetration. All of what I consider to be the actual fun stuff is just set dressing for them that they barely care about once the fucking starts.

You can feel a bit cheated and lied to after a certain point with people who only nominally pretend they are interested in kink as a way to access sex, or who say theyre sooo freaky but then reveal their crazy "fetish" is like, threesomes or cum. It can make you feel like you're too rare to live if you're a real deep freak, that you've gotta settle for what you can get.

But it turns out the moment I was more unflinching about exactly what I wanted and didnt pressure myself to "keep an open mind" to things I didn't want as some kind of transactional offering, I immediately met like three different super hot kinky people I could have great bondage and D/s play with in like, a week.

I can just be a D/s and bondage and hypno play side. I can be choking from a chain in a leather hood and a gag in a basement and beg to be beaten and scarred and turned into someones live-in dog and I don't have to want sex. "No vanilla" can be a limit. I'm not crazy for finding vanilla disturbing. There are guys out there who complement me, who want to do nothing but put chains around my neck and ankles and zap me with electricity and rub their dick a little bit while I endure it but never expect or pressure me for more.

[ahedderick]

Grandpa's chest

Sooooo, yesterday was the big chest-retrieval-from-Shunk-Pennsylvania day. My daughter and I set out at 11:30; she was riding along for moral support and navigation. She has a complicated phone and I do not.

Our first issue, just over the border in PA, was a 'Sunday' driver who was tootling along far under the speed limit. This trip was supposed to be 3.5 hours one way; I didn't want that to get even longer. However, even though it was a highway, it was too narrow to have a passing lane and too curvy to pass by pulling into the oncoming lane. We tootled. Anxiously. Then a shiny, bright yellow pickup pulled out in front, and slowed down. We were now 30 mph under the speed limit. Absolutely no safe way to pass. To my great relief, both vehicles pulled off onto a side road after a few miles, and I got the Subaru zoomies.

The rest of the trip north was uneventful traffic-wise. When we got off the highways and onto secondary roads just past Williamsport, the scenery was lovely. The temptation to just pull off and spend a while playing in the river* was intense! There were also downed trees leaning on the electric wires - not just one or two, but many! Yikes.

After a l-o-n-g stint on steep, winding backroads, we arrived at my late father's cousin's house, which is being cleaned out and sold off by her daughter, my second cousin. Got all that? Don't worry, not truly crucial info. The wooden chest that she was giving us had little caster wheels, ornate carving around the sides, some very interesting little drawers, and a flat top that really looked as if another piece was supposed to sit on top of it.

A neighbor helped us load it gently into the back of my car. He oriented it rightside up; it just barely fit. A little voice in the back of my brain was bothered by that, but I couldn't figure out why.

["This is wrong" "ok, why?" "Not telling you, just it's wrong!"]

As we started back down the gravel road, it because abundantly clear why. The flipping thing was sitting on its wheels - and rolling back and forth in the car at every turn and incline. We had to pull over, wrestle the thing out, then back in on its top. Sheesh.

There was no cell service, so K couldn't get the phone to give us directions back out, but we figured we could backtrack just by memory for a while, until the service kicked back in. That worked. Once she had directions again, we headed south. She was driving the return trip. "Uh-oh, my phone's at 20%"

I figured if the phone could get us as far as the main northeast/southwest highway, I'd be able to figure things out from there. And it almost did. It conked out when were were just a mile or two away from 220S. Unfortunately, so did my daughter. She was sick earlier in the week, and not quite recovered; after an hour of driving she got drowsy and I had to take back over.

Oop, I have a lot of party prep today, I'm going to have to come back to this later.

'* pretty sure this was Loyalsock creek. A puzzling name.

[nervouswreckhere]

I did promise that I will be an annoyance so here I come:

Stone Monsters Headcanons

In general, the magic system in Knighton is a soft one (I say after I watch one too many world-building tik toks). What that means is that it doesn't have hard outlines as to how it works.

Let's change that, hmm?

Monstrox is a necromancer, Wanda has weather powers and Merlock is a technomancer. (I haven't read anything other than the wiki. Just watched the show, got obsessed and here I am..) Merlock's nexo magic is iconic - very useful and always appears when you need it to. Almost as if it's a plot device. Its ability to enchant weapons and armor is extremely helpful when faced with Monstrox's... everything.

Now, Monstrox is interesting. As a necromancer we would assume what he does is bad and evil as they love to repeat in the show. And he is - insane and ambitious to boot. While I have no idea what made the Wizards' Council / Merlock spare him, his knowledge and power were locked into the Book of Monsters. That knowledge was what allowed him to - from what I can comprehend - summon, create, manifest the monsters. They weren't strong monsters, after all, Monstrox was stuck in leather, between pages. He had limited power - that's what evoked the whole let's search for all the evil books scattered around the realm.

And even their collection failed to resurrect him, seeing as everything blew up in the end. But the ritual still worked partially - it was a ritual to grant him a new form; magic, energy can't just go away, disappear! - so it gave him a form that was more well-suited for his magic. Hence the cloud.

And that's when we arrive at what I call my favorite brain rot. Monstrox's resurrection spell. The one that breathes life into stone. I do think Monstrox's spell is a combination of a few different necromantic spells, but that's for later. The stone monsters are sworn to his allegiance in a way I doubt the lava monsters were. Some of them exhibit some intelligence but none have discernable personalities other than a select few. Why?

Seeing as that spell, erased Clay's entire moral system while keeping his tenacity and determination, his desire to serve a cause, I doubt it's just personality erasure. But a spell can't just turn someone evil.

That's stupid! Evil is such a subjective thing and it's so nuanced that a simple wave of a hand or I guess zap with lightning doesn't just- just- evilize someone! So I made a chart!

There are three types of monsters in my book. (I'm not talking about how they look or their functions. I'm not talking about bouldrons, gargoyles, harpies, etc. I'm classifying them into categories!)

Type 1: The statues, given life. The bouldrons, the gravellers, etc. The one that get zapped and start destroying everything in sight. The ones that we see zooming around in the background in most episodes.

Type 2: The magically imbued statues. The statues put there with a reason - like the gargoyles. Haven't you wondered why there are so many gargoyles? Only a few of them appear smart so those are the few that I put in this type. Harpies are here too. Why? Because I think they were demons or something similar summoned to do Monstrox's bidding before they got petrified by the wizards' council. (I have their whole backstory written somewhere, I will share it later.)

Basically, type 1 is just making a statue move with densely charged, magical energy that imbues them with malicious intent. Type 2 has to work with what little magic the statue has locked within itself. That takes more power out of the initial blast, which is why type 2 monsters don't have to be constantly on the move - more of the magic has to work to diverge the energy channels within the vessel.

I love magical theory, guys

Now, type 3 is my favorite so far. That's the statue that was once human. Have you looked at how one brain works - it's all chemistry. Little electrical pulses send to and from different parts of it. In type 3 monsters, 3/4 of Monstrox's magic blast / ressurection spell go towards the mind. It has to change the being's priorities, to change the person's alleigence strictly to Monstrox. The other 1/4 goes towards making their body function in the way it has before - or as close as a living rock can get.

Ruina is a great example why this clarification works, Krakenskull, too. They were separate people, warlords in their own right before they got hit by Monstrox's magic, and then suddenly they readily follow his orders? And he doesn't worry about them betraying him? Sure, one can argue with Ruina ever being a warlord on her own but Krakenskull? He had his own army and then he was okay with someone else using it? Yeah right.

*takes a deep breath* I got a bit sidetracked. ...a lot sidetracked. But basically yeah. I have a lot of feelings about the magic in Nexo Knights and I am so sharing them with you. Just you wait!

[steldomo]

Notes:

tw gore, or at the very least blood and death

I am aware it is mediocre, cheesy, melodramatic, illogical, etc. etc. I didn't edit it, I just sat down at my laptop and shat it out within like an hour. It was fun, and I feel like sharing it because I'm proud. I'm not a writer, I don't write, I was just vibin

Speaking of not editing, there might be some misspellings or poor capitalization and punctuation.

I wrote it in discord like a madman. Because I kept hitting the character limit I had to split it between like 5 posts. I decided to leave in the message breaks for fun lol

Idk biology lol I was going off memory of how the muscular system and blood work

This is what happens when you listen to the Genshin Impact Sumeru boss theme a bit too loudly lol. That song describes this character to a T, which is a really funny coincidence (I swear I had this character idea before this was revealed in genshin ;-; I didn't steal it)

the leaves overhead cast speckled shadows on the four elementals. barons of light, darkness, ice, and lightning marched along the trail that had brought them out of the city. fos's palace - one of her many props to flash her status as the baron of light - grew ever smaller in the distance. no matter how much she longed to return, to hide in its golden halls, to continue her dark ambitions, she could never return. she was nothing but a puppet now. astrapi had studied biology. you see, the muscles of animals such as elementals are commanded to flex and relax by electrical signals throughout the nervous system. as the baron of lightning, this opened up incredible opportunities for him. hold still the signals headed to her arms, periodically direct currents into her legs... astrapi pulled fos's strings. even her power over light itself, one of the strongest elements out there, was switched off by a simple blockading of the electricity headed towards the portion of her brain responsible. the downside? nerves are hidden underneath the skin, and they are intricate. thousands of electric currents to command, all at once, without even seeing them. and the slightest mistake to seriously injure his little puppet. it was a delicate act. hunched over, hands outstretched, he did everything he could to help him focus on his control. it was as though he was reaching out to feel the currents throughout her body. tense this muscle. relax that one. together, they walked behind skotadi, the baron of darkness, and his lover pagos, the baron of ice. leaving the city was laughably easy; with fos completely trapped and surrounded by two barons, including the one commanding darkness, what could the citizens do? darkness was comparable to light in sheer power. infinite possibilities as long as a shadow existed nearby. astrapi couldn't have been a threat, however. he could not lose his grip on fos. he had to let the world blur and fade away, focusing only on the electricity beneath her skin

she wasnt making his job any easier. through the blur was incessant noise... she kept yelling, pleading, threatening to pagos, to skotadi, to astrapi. he gritted his teeth. the voice was getting clearer; his hold was getting weaker. "shut up!" astrapi snapped with clenched jaw. he felt fos turn her head to look at him. shit! he thought. she was screaming now, no doubt with a wide grin on her face. how could he focus on his mission with all this fucking noise?! he had no choice. splitting his attention even further, he commanded electricity into her face, forcing her jaw to clench itself up tight. great. another thing to focus on. tense this muscle. relax that one. astrapi wasnt entirely sure where they were headed. all he knew was that fos had to be stopped, for skotadi and pagos's sakes. they just wanted to live in peace with the dark spirits. they were skotadi's creation, he saw them as his own children. fos overstepped. she had forsaken their millennia-old treaty, and brought an army to skotadi's planet. the risk of war, of seeing their planets and peoples ravaged by the immense power of the barons, it all meant nothing to her. for her own idiotic justice, she had seized the dark spirits. not even their own wants could stop her. when astrapi realized they were perfectly content with skotadi, he defected from fos's posse. but her desire to be the righteous hero, to "fix," "save," or "release" them, blinded her to what was truly just. astrapi wasnt entirely sure where they were headed, but he didnt care. a prison, some exiled world, even a torture chamber... she had to face justice. real justice.

his focus was stretching too thin. tense this muscle. relax that one. he had to sacrifice something... he needed her legs to move where he commanded, he couldn't risk letting her regain the use of her arms, and returning her powers would be downright idiotic. he groaned, and released her jaw. "stay quiet." he commanded. she obliged; she must not have liked having more strings on her. the four were completely out of view of the city now. in a clearing, skotadi stopped, signaling that the others should do the same. astrapi was still staring intently at fos, leaning close and stretching his arms towards her. though no longer having to control every muscle in her legs at regular intervals anymore, he still needed to focus on keeping her inert and incapacitated. despite letting himself relax a bit, he couldnt risk looking up to see skotadis grim face as he pulled pagos aside to whisper with him. "...speak simply?" fos asked cautiously. astrapi grunted. even if he could let the world return to more clarity than before, he didn't want to take any chances. besides, why would he ever listen to her? nevertheless, he didnt tune her out as much as he did when they were walking. he couldnt help but pick up her words. "theyre whispering," fos informed him. "without you. why?" "not my problem," he muttered in return. holding her was getting difficult. "lots of trust. they plan without you. you really dont care?" what is she plotting this time? is she trying to divide us? astrapi wondered. she did have a way with words... after all, she had tricked him into hatred and ignorance once before. he shut her out again, this time for his own sake. he was sick of hearing her voice. everything else was drowned out, and astrapis entire universe was the electricity he commanded. in the blur he could hear her fall quiet. guess she got the message.

her voice didnt cease for long. astrapi soon heard her mutter something in the background of his mind. he tried to tune it out, to focus solely on his mission without distraction, but it was getting louder. something about it was letting it cut through the curtain he had put up. was it... panic? "astrapi." huh? my name? "astrapi! let me go!" ugh, not this agai "ASTRAPI! PLEASE!" what is... "ASTRAPI! LET ME RUN! PLEASE! ASTRAPI! HELP ME! LET ME GO ASTRAP-" he lifted his head just in time to see a cloud of gold begin to rain down on the grass, accompanied by a thunder of ripping sounds. a massive, pitch-black construct of darkness in the shape of a spike had pierced straight through fos's torso. everything within astrapi plummeted. he lost all control over fos; the shock was too great. she stared in horror at the spike as golden blood dripped from it and her mouth. shakily, she slowly fell to her knees and looked up at astrapi, eyes still shot wide. he felt that he had the same expression as her. then she turned to skotadi and pagos, and constructed a blade with the light that shone through the nearby trees. losing consciousness, she swung the floating blade downward in their general vicinity. skotadi threw his arm in front of his face on reflex, meeting the blade. it embedded itself in his forearm, and he cried out in agony as his hand fell limp, nearly severed. astrapi barely noticed. the sound of the slice couldnt replace the terrible squelch of the spike as it shot into fos's now dead body. her blood, colored gold by the power of the baron of light, spread throughout the grass beneath her. astrapi stood, eyes fixed in a shape of pure horror as he stared at her. she had called out to me. she couldnt even fight back. she had no chance. she was my puppet, i brought her here... and they brought me here. he slowly turned his attention to pagos and skotadi. they stood, disturbingly calm, looking down at the corpse.

"...what did you do?!" skotadi screamed "oh, right... you were too busy focusing on your job. you must not have heard her," skotadi replied. "during the trek, she was yelling insults and threats. she said that, no matter what we do, she will come back and finish what she started. we could imprison her, beat her, anything. shes immortal like us, after all. pagos and i then realized that, as long as she were alive, our family could never be safe..." "so you USED me?!" "you needed to focus!" pagos added. "if we distracted you, she could have escaped and killed us on the spot, or even run off to come up with some other scheme!" skotadi spoke slowly. "besides... werent we in agreement that she had to be stopped?" "not like this!!" astrapi could feel he was shaking. trembling with terror... and rage. "i didnt know this was the plan! i didnt know what i was set up to do!" he put his face in his hands. how could they? how COULD THEY?! he had never intended to take a life! she wouldnt have even lost her life if he hadnt been there! he was the one that pulled her strings. she was his puppet. and yet... he brought her right where they wanted him to. he held her in place exactly how they wanted him to. they say they came to this conclusion just recently, but... had he really been the puppet all along?! he felt something sticky on his cheeks. quickly pulling his hands away, astrapi looked down and saw flecks of gold. reaching out to help him visualize his control and channel his focus had brought his hands close enough to...

lightning-hot tears suddenly poured from astrapis eyes. he fell to his knees, focusing on nothing but the sight of fos's blood splattered across his hands and the feel of it spread onto his face. pagos and skotadi... they used him. he was their plaything all along. they pulled his strings, tricked him into carrying out their perverse sense of justice. just as she had done. he couldnt be their puppet anymore. he needed to be the puppeteer from now on. enough manipulation. if he was to see true justice, he had to be the one with power. he couldnt have strings anymore.

[ferretdev]

Writing an extension to my previous post. After some consideration and planning, I have decided on a few key gamplay elements that are crucial to make my game stand out.

First things first, runes. Runes are (too keep things short) basically just letters from the old Norse language. These letters/symbols would each have an inherent "Elemental" power to them, and do a multitude of different things. These elements are the Element of the Flame, Element of the Divine, Element of the Fluid, and Element of the Earthrealm. More on Runes and Elements later.

What does a player do with runes? There will be three primary uses of these runes that you find, "Knowledge," "Art," and "Power."

"Power" is the most simple category. Runes placed into a Power slot are engraved directly onto the surface of your weapons and tools. A rune with the Element of the Flame as its focus would in some way shape or form increase the temperature of the object it's on. Be it a flaming hammer, a molten sword, or even just a stick that explodes on contact with enemies.

"Art" is also fairly easy to understand. Art refers to the act of creating some kind of salvo, effigy, or totem with the power of runes imbued into them. Totems would be placeable objects that can't be moved after placement. This would allow the player to create stationary sentry turrets shooting divine beams of light at anything that gets close, or an area of effect that heals you. Effigies are like throwable/placeable items that can be collected after use. A holy hand grenade with 10 charges? Okay. An item that turns into a giant boulder once thrown? Sure, if you're creative enough.

"Salvos" are consumable items that transfer their energy into the consumer, I don't think I need to elaborate further on this. Many possibilities.

"Knowledge" is the last and most complicated usage of runes.

Knowledge runes can be anything from passive effects to additional abilities. These runes are grafted directly onto the players skin, allowing them to charge themselves with a potentially infinite flow of energy. This however comes at a hefty cost.

Let's say, for example, you happened to find a Rune of the Divine with an effect that charges the object it's placed on with electricity. If you placed this onto your player without much more thought, you would simply electrocute yourself and die. My reasoning for making this category known as "Knowledge" is because the player will have to utilize many runes in conjunction with one another to tame their energy and quite literally program themselves into a conduit of anything they can imagine. Shoot flames from your hands whenever you thrust towards an enemy? Heal yourself over time at the cost of energy? Create an energy field that repels projectiles? Charge yourself with a specific element and then discharge it into whatever you're holding? The only limit is your imagination, provided development goes well.

So this obviously opens up many possibilities, allow me to demonstrate how a player could become more powerful.

To start with, you find a single Rune of the Flame, and place this onto your war hammer. You now have a flaming hammer, pretty cool. It's actually capable of dealing some damage to Odin's Constructs, but not enough. Making use of one example in my Knowledge explanation, a player could further enhance this Element of the Flame by also charging the player with some, and then transferring it into the hammer to increase how powerful the Flame is. You could further enhance this by placing a totem that charges you and your hammer with Flame, consuming a salvo that charges you with Flame, and then discharging it all into your hammer as you swing it into the body of your opponent, discharging the energy from your hammer into the enemy and engulfing their entirety in inextinguishable Flame.

How do I control the Elements and ensure I don't accidentally turn myself into a pebble, or shoot a beam of light that pierces the entire world and destroys everything?

Good question. There are three types of runes. Starter Runes are simply your standard runes, preprogrammed with certain abilities or effects and will generally have slots for Alteration Runes that allow you to further enhance or control said effects and abilities.

Alteration Runes are how you control your energy. Alteration Runes can be transcribed into your Starter Runes and can increase, decrease, channel, or change an Element with values and percentages depending on the quality of the Alteration rune. Some Starter Runes don't work as intended without additional Alteration.

Lastly, in order to actually utilize this energy that is stored within the runes, you have to then finally place the Altered Starter Rune into a Trigger Rune. Trigger Runes are fairly self explanatory. For the most part, Trigger Runes would allow you to discharge energy at the press of a button or after certain criteria have been met. Logic gates for magic, essentially.

If pressing Right Trigger, and stored Element of the Flame is above 90%, then

discharge element from [weapon/hand/totem/effigy]

This has been a fairly lengthy but descriptive walkthrough of how I am imagining the gameplay in Runeforged. Any comments, suggestions, questions, or even just speculation is appreciated, as I am serious about developing this project so long as I can attract some interest.

[spicybi-tm]

I still love to learn

But it's a love that feels both unrequited and forbidden.

I loved learning about math and how it felt like I was solving a puzzle

But I learned that this love I held would only bring me pain.

I was 11 and subjected to the ridicule of my peers because "of course you like math, you're Asian aren't you?"

So I hid the love I held and sabotaged my grades in an effort to put a stop to the small jabs, an effort that was fruitless.

I loved to read books and visits to the library were my favorite part of the week

And don't get me started on when the book fair came and I would beg my mom to "just a couple of dollars, please they have the next book in that series I told you about!"

I remember the reading comprehension tests we were given in elementary school and how I glowed with pride every time the proctor told me that I could read a few grades above my classmates level.

I don't know when books had lost their charm.

Maybe it was 7th grade and I was halfway to 13 that I couldn't get lost in those pages like I used to.

And with such a high reading level, I adored writing.

Specifically, narrative pieces. I would get so upset when I was given a maximum page limit. It was near impossible for me to write a story so short and sweet.

But I was a perfectionist, often told that I was a natural. That this talent of mine was innate, ingrained into me and as sure as the blood in my veins.

So, deadlines came and went. The ones I did turn in only received low marks because of how late it was. I don't think any of them understood how much of my worth was based on getting it perfect the first try.

So that love had brought only tears then.

I still want to learn.

I want to learn all I can about Mechanical/Electrical Engineering.

I want to learn all I can about Paleontology.

I want to learn so many different languages and the mother tongue that my dad has all but forgotten.

I want to learn how to do so many things.

But a part of me has whispered that it's too late. Leave all of this to the youth.

And I wonder if I'm still young? Am I allowed to be?

But that small part of me whispers once more that I haven't been young in a long time. Foolish and naive? Absolutely. It whispers poison telling that I have to leave childish dreams behind. Grow up and understand that you have to kill that part of you.

I still love to learn but I feel as though I don't deserve to. That I am too late to act on that love.

[soundsfaebutokay]

I cannot get over the sizzling energy of "Secret Worlds." Like, after that suspenseful wait for the new TAD album, they exploded back into my life with Joey yelling, "COME ON!" so of course I lost my shit, but even now, weeks later, this song is still such a thrill. It's exuberant and youthful and just...SO MUCH FUN.

Like, you can hear the laughter and mischief in Madeleine's voice when she sings, "It's my dad's" about the stolen camera, and you can just see them, young and reckless, running around high on rebellion and intoxicated with each other's presence, pushing their limits. They're burning bright, not letting anything hold them back.

But as much as the song is high-spirited and exhilarating, at the center of it is a very poignant awareness that things are changing, that they themselves are changing, and they don't know what's coming next. "On that tree I'll carve your name," they sing, "'Cos in years to come we both know we won't be the same." And that feeling feeds into the intensity of the song—like they need to get even higher, burn even brighter, before they lose the moment to memory. The effect is electric.

HIGHLIGHTS:

The leaves like broken shards of stained glass windows

—I've spent too many hours lying under trees watching the way light filters through the leaves to be any kind of normal about this line.

You were a king and his castle I was every dirty rascal

—Ms. Madeleine, that delivery took me places.

Speaking of, what do you guys think of the idea that the rascal in this song is one of the kids of the couple in "Chords" (They are my rascals, I can’t let them walk away)?

Write me well, my love, write me weird Write me willing, write me well

—Joey Batey as a lyricist is a sorcerer who weaves spells with sounds and he cannot be stopped.

Didn’t the trees tell us their stories? Yeah but we, we thought you were mental You were talking to trees!

—I can absolutely see his facial expression here, because I've had it turned on me more than once. TREES ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN MANY HUMANS I HAVE MET, JOEY, LET ME LIVE.

Welcome to ruin

—Never mind, I'm dead.

[maniacwatchestheworld]

So here are some things. Electricity and magnetism are so closely tied together that some people will even say that they are essentially the same thing. Where you have magnetism, you can get electricity, and where you have electricity, you can get magnetism. This is all to say that Heisenberg should ABSOLUTELY have access electric abilities in addition to his ability to control metal with his mind. (I mean, it's already stated that he does have electric organs and this is what allows him to control metal. So really it shouldn't be much of a surprise for him to be able to give people a pretty nasty shock if he so wishes.)

Personally, I like to think that he mostly just limits himself to ferrokinesis to show off. Like, sure. He can shock and stun people like an electric ray could. Maybe he can even kill people with this ability. But isn't it just so much cooler to be Magneto!? Electrocuting people is easy. But using the electricity coursing through his body to create magnetic fields which he can in turn use to manipulate metal? SO much cooler! Takes a bit of thinking and cleverness too. After all, we don't see any electric animals controlling metal in the wild!

I also very much think that he figured out how to do the electricity stuff before the metal bending stuff. I mean, for many animals with electric organs, shocking other critters is a defense mechanism, and I can very easily see Karl having discovered that he had this ability while trying to escape the experiments he was being subjected to, or after being attacked by something or other. Once he figured out that he was able to produce and control electricity within his body, he then realized that he could apply it in some very creative ways. (Basically, he quickly became a pain in the ass to anyone trying to keep him captive because once he figured out how to control metal, no metal locks could keep him contained, and anyone that tried to grab him without proper equipment would be in for a shocking surprise!)

But this train of thought also makes me think... You know, unless you more or less disable his abilities, or handle him only with non-conductive materials, (which is probably pretty difficult given that people are conductive and they are in a pretty small, isolated community...) Heisenberg doesn't really have to be touched by anyone that he doesn't want to. And given all of his scars, I imagine that he has probably been handled very roughly throughout most of his life and therefore tends to keep his guard up and doesn't trust anyone when it comes to others touching him.

And then THAT just makes me imagine... Poor man. Reflexively hurting anyone who tries to lay a finger on him. He's probably incredibly touch-starved. Just... Can you imagine the first time he brings himself to trust someone enough that he actually lets them touch him...? Him letting his guard down enough that he doesn't defensively shock this person whom he cares about when they get too close... And when he finally lets someone touch him he just... Melts into their hold, not having let anyone lay their hands on him in years. And his trust is rewarded with all the love and affection that he has denied himself out of fear but has been craving for a very very long time.

It's a long train of thought, I know, but DAMN do I want to see someone other than me play with these ideas!

Also whenever I'm reading a fic where Karl is being manhandled against his will, the fact that he should just be able to shock the shit out of them just creeps into my mind and starts to bug the crap out of me. And it's hella distracting! But this is solely a me problem, I think.

[hecate-spawn]

It's free rent right?

A one shot with my obey me oc Megan

Cw: none

Room decorating is fun. Especially if you're a mythology or fandom nerd. I'm both. So my room my have one to many chibi posters or Gods, anime and book characters. And maybe a smallish clutter of fairy figurines. But in all honesty, back at my apartment is worse. Both of my roommates can confirm this.  But there's something about putting familiar stuff in a new room that makes it a little less homesick. And it's not permanent since I stuck it to the walls instead of using pushpins. Even if I'm only stuff in this fancy ass mansion (aka the house of lamentation) for a year I still want to feel comfortable here since outside is quite literally a whole new world. 

Getting down from my stool and flop onto my impossibly soft bed and think about everything that transpired these last three hours.  These are the only things that I've properly understood:

I'm stuck here for a year

I'm living with six demons, three of which are taller than me adding to their scare factor

I have to polish my soul or whatever so I don't fucking die

I can die because apparently demons eat humans (but humans with shiny souls scary demons)

all of them seem like manipulative shits (except maybe the Diavolo guy)

free rent

I'm still very confused as to why I was chosen for this exchange program. I'm not particularly smart. My grades are pretty average, well except my English ones but those have always been good. Shouldn't some honor roll or scholarship student be here and not me? This seems way too hard. But at least I get free. Wait, I do get free rent right?

"Ah fuck," I curse to the silence of my room. They didn't mention that I had to pay, but it's a definite possibility. How much money would they be dropping on me for groceries? Electrical bills? Water bills?  It's better to straight up ask Lucifer then worry about it for hours, even days.

So, gathering any courage that came to me, I stand up, walk to the door and then turn and walk to my shelf. I paced my room once, twice, three times, and more. I just stopped counting at three. I can't help it. It's scary. Interacting with new people, not even people literally demons, you've known for three hours. Sure they've offered to help you, sure they're letting you stay in their residence, but it all felt wrong. Like I shouldn't have their help. Like I wasn't worth it. But I'm always like this with help. I really need to stop being such a bitch. 

"Alright fucker, we're opening this door on three," I whisper, holding my breath. "One, two, three-" As the last word escapes my lips I close my eyes, turn the handle, and open the door. I stand in my doorway with my eyes closed and a hand on the knob of my door for what feels like an eternity but was probably only half a minute. Opening one eye I exhale and sigh in relief. No one witnessed my bout of stupidity. Now that won't be in the back of my mind if I ever talk to one of them. Good job Megan, actually doing something right here. My self congratulations doesn't last long because soon, I am a little lost. The demon dumbass septuplets didn't exactly give me a proper tour. Money bitch (aka Mammon) just showed me to my room and claimed he had more important things to do than babysit a human. I'm not sure if that's true though.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Freezing in my journey up some stairs I freeze and feel my blood run cold. That may be the voice I'm looking for but I feel like this wasn't a good situation to hear it in. I feel like a deer caught in head lights or a child who was eating cookies at three am and was suddenly found out. 

"I'm sorry!" I say turning around. All my hairs are standing on end and everything in my body is telling me to run. "I- I was looking for you, but I got lost since I don't know the house very well and it's really big, so I kinda just wandered around since I didn't know where you'd be. I wasn't aware this section of the house was off limits I swear I'm not lying!"

Lucifer looks less suspicious and angry, rather more tired. "You could've just texted me," he sighs. He's right. Would've been the better way to solve this. But here I am making shit complicated.

Sorry didn't think of that," I apologize. "U-um anyway, do I pay rent to live here? Because like, in my university if you don't get in on a scholarship then you have to pay to stay in the dorms so I was wondering if it was the same deal to stay here."

Did Mammon tell you this? That you had to pay rent?" The dude sounds exasperated as hell. I guess his younger brother is a piece of work, and a scammer. 

"No, I just jumped to conclusions," I reply.

"Staying here is free of charge. I'm doubtful you even have Grimm. We just expect you to do your tasks."

"Great won't be a problem." And I like the absolute moron I am, I do finger guns. At a demon. If god stuck me down now I wouldn't mind. 

Let me walk you back to your room Megan," he says expertly ignoring my moment of utter cringe. 

Sure. And just Meg is fine." I scurry down the stairs so I can keep in pace with him, making sure to look anywhere but his face. Here less than 24 hours and I've already shown my incompetence. Typical.

[wendystales]

Memories - lrh (Chapter Twelve)

Memories (also on Wattpad)

Chapter Eleven ※※※※※ Chapter Thirteen

I approach my boyfriend seeing him completely tense. The long, callused fingers from the guitar strings tightening in distress. His eyes didn't know where to look, staring into the spotlight like they were monsters from his childhood.

The thick brown coat was a few sizes too big for him, but he's still beautiful all the same. On the eyelids, a black eye shadow ending with a pink tip gave it a charm. The lip balm seemed to bring out the color of his lips, making me restless to kiss him.

“I don't know if it was a good idea.” Luke, let out all the air as I wrap my arms around his neck.

“It was a great idea! You look awesome.” I bite my lip, controlling the urge to take him into a room and do various indecent things. “Just relax and enjoy. As in a play.” I advise him, trying to calm him down."

Ever since the invitation for him to be the face of this perfume had arrived, I was bursting with pride and anticipation to see him doing his photo shoot, following something completely different from the band.

"Don't you think it's too exaggerated?" he asks, unsure of the look. I hold his face in my hands, touching our foreheads. I allow myself to drown in his blue eyes.

“You look handsome.” I say slowly, so he can record my words well. “Now, let's get this quick, because seeing you like this is making me very excited and I don't know how long I can take it.” I sigh, uneasy. Hemmo gives a nice laugh. Glad to see him more relaxed.

Watch out when the photographer yells for them to start. I give my boyfriend a little kiss, ready to pull away, but Luke holds me in his arms still.

“I love you!” he whispers, like a secret.

“I love you!” I give him a little kiss on the tip of his nose. "Anything just scream, I'll be right there." I blink at him.

I take a few steps back, not taking my eyes off his. So as not to bump into anything and make a mess of his work, I turn around, running behind the spotlights and flashbulbs.

I watched the photo shoot totally proud and delighted. Little by little Luke was loosening up and having fun. I don't wipe the smile off my lips, so every time he looks at me, he smiles more.

Nearly three hours later, my excitement was already making me irritated that photo shoot wasn't over and I feel like I lost all control when in the last costume, where Luke rips the white blouse. I hold my breath, staring at the ceiling, wondering how I'm going to make it home and calculating which is closest.

~.~.~.~.~

We left the elevator hand in hand and in hurried steps, we weren't running, but whoever passed us realized we were in a hurry. I squeeze his hand seeing the door with the number 609.

"Thank God." I comment euphoric as Luke opens the door.

He walks in and pulls me to his chest. His hand tangles in the hairs on the back of my neck, enveloping us in a desperate kiss. Urgently, I open the buttons on his shirt, feeling his other hand find my ass, squeezing hard.

I force the fabric to slide down his arms, enjoying the texture of his warm skin. The tequila flavor still inhabits our mouths, which makes the kiss better, plus the soft touch of his lips pressed against mine.

I roll my eyes as his beard scrapes my neck, along with his hot mouth, giving me goose bumps.

“The door.” I say with difficulty, noticing it ajar.

Together, we staggered back a few steps, closing it. Without much patience and with a lot of desire, we ended up staying there. Hemmings presses me against the wood, pulling me into his lap. I scratch the back of his neck when I feel his erection against me, releasing the electricity that seems to rush through my body.

It was amazing how seeing him on stage, with those tight pants and silk shirts moving me. Honestly, he can wear anything, and at the end of the day I'll be falling for him. Not to mention the eyes full of glitter. He had me in the palm of his hands like that. So beautiful. So magnificent.

Luke always knew this look messed with my hormones and destroyed my self-control, and in the end it always ended up like that, having sex, because I couldn't help myself.

Of course, the drink has a big weight in this, but I'm not going to take our blame for this story, after all, we teased each other from the moment we stepped into that dressing room.

The desperation and excitement is such that we reach our first orgasm right there, against the door. No foreplay, no undressing completely, and not caring if anyone passing in the hallway heard anything.

It was something far above lust or desire. Despair to feel our skins against each other. Taste and touch. That feeling of feeling incredible, loved, wanted, as if the only chance to stay alive was there inside of us.

I wake up in a jump. My heart pounded, causing pain. My body seemed to boil, prompting me to kick the covers off quickly. The fresh memory of the dream causes shivers. The way I felt his touch, all those sensations and reactions my body gave.

I lie down on the bed again, wanting to calm down and not think too much about the dream, or what else seemed like, memories. I don't know how to handle it, these are the first sexual memories I have with him. My God, how am I going to look at Luke now?

I pick up my phone, which poin just over an hour earlier than I planned to wake up. Since I know I won't be able to get back to sleep anymore, so I start getting ready for today's meeting.

I decide to have breakfast first and once again review my past contract to get a sense of what will be discussed. Between one paragraph and another, I browse my social networks seeing what's going on.

Without being impressed anymore, I watch a little video or two that some fans make about Hemmo and me. Slightly, I melt at the way we look and smile at each other.

I go back to my room, and head for a shower. I hope that water takes those memories from earlier today down the drain, but the steam seems to open more fields in my brain.

I close my eyes, feeling various parts of my body tingle, as if he's there, touching me, holding me. My breath heaves and my belly tightens. What the fuck is going on?

Cheating on me yet again, my brain presents me with the two of us on the floor of that hotel room. In my kitchen. In the car. In some bathroom. Some of the countless times we'd lost ourselves in each other's arms.

The many times I ran my hands over his chest, drawing a new path, as I thought in that hospital hall. The times his mouth wandered over my body, his hands took me with such force and conviction.

The phone ringtone brings me back to reality. I turn off the alarm and hurry my shower. With Noah's guidance, I change into something comfortable and a bucket hat Calum gave me to hide my pink hair.

After a few hours, I find myself analyzing a huge photo of myself at the Hastings agency reception. With Noah, I follow a huge hallway to a conference room, where Mr. Hastings and a lawyer would be waiting for us. The twin next to me has a hard face, which is weird since Noah is always so excited and smiling.

“Marnie, dear! Long time no see! How have you been? Did you receive my basket?” Mr. Hastings question me without waiting for me to walk right into the room.

“Hi! I'm great and yes, I loved the basket, it was very kind.” I squeeze his hand, not knowing quite what to do.

“Hello son!” it's not exactly a warm welcome, but I want to believe it's just because we're in a work environment, dealing with serious matters.

“Hi Dad. Can we start?” my friend guides me to a chair.

During the meeting, Mr. Hastings clarified some news of the new contract. Things like: salary increase, partnership with new brands and the whole process of publicizing the names that already worked with us.

“Closing here, you will go to the closet to take new measurements. These numbers will be sent to the brands that hired you and they will send you clothes for you to use on a daily basis. For example: if you go out with Leah for coffee, you must wear a Louis Vuitton coat, so the photos you take will publicize the coat and well, nowadays young people find everything and want everything you wear. You will get a scale of which brands to use, so it's easier for you.” Mr. Hastings explains by summarizing a contract sheet.

As for photo shoots, until my arm gets better and I can get rid of the cast, I'll be limited to rehearsals on jewelry, makeup, glasses and shoes. On my hair, if the contracting brand determines, I will have to wear a wig.

I keep mentally reading every line of that contract, wondering if I could handle it all. Well, you’ve handle it for the past two years, it shouldn't be that hard.

As determined, after the meeting, Noah walks me to the closet. A huge space where had several clothes and accessories, as in The Devil Wears Prada. My measurements are taken and I get annoyed when the guy who's putting the measuring tape around my waist grumbles that I've put on weight.

The bad thing about being a model is it, this constant imposition of a perfect body. Since the accident, I don't remember seeing anyone on Leah's foot for her to lose weight or keep her body. I always watched her nervous appetite, not caring if it would add to her number on the scale.

Okay that Leah's biotype was skinny and maybe that made things easier for her. But since I understand myself by people, I've always been short and broad hiped and never cared. And even if I erased a few years, I don't think I've changed much.

From the reflection in the mirror, Noah sinalized for me not to care what the guy says, but I think it's kind of difficult. It's not just him talking about my body, it seems like everyone on the internet has an opinion about my weight, especially some Luke fans.

Blocking in my mind, the offensive words that I always end up reading through social media. However, I keep watching my body in the mirror, wondering if it wouldn't be better to lose some weight.

Soon after having my measurements taken, Noah is called to a meeting with his father and a french businessman, leaving me alone. As I wait for the car to arrive, I consider what I can do on my last day off. Everyone is working and I don't want to disturb anyone.

Finally, I decide to go to my mom's office and have lunch with her. I go down at the door of a huge, mirrored building. At the front desk, I ask about her office, getting a badge before I go upstairs.

The frosted glass door holds a huge space, which occupies one/quarter of the eighth floor. The various prints, fabrics, furniture and color palettes create a fun atmosphere, contrasting with the white walls of the place.

"Marnie! Hey!” a woman with curly hair, tied up in a purple turban, approaches with a huge smile.

“Hi.” I reply politely, but having no idea who she is.

“Oh, sorry.” she seems to notice. “I'm Dominique, your mother's partner.” I open a bigger smile, now informed. "Have you come to see her?" she guides me in the office inside.

“Oh yes, I came to have lunch with her.” Dominique smiles broadly and sympathetically.

"She's going to love the surprise. She's just finishing up with a customer. Want something while you wait?”

“Oh no, thanks!”

Dominique walks away, making it clear that anything was just asking, that I was home. I'm amazed at how things evolved for my mom, before she just had a small room away from the center and now she had all this space and staff.

I watch several people go from one place to another, making projects, budgeting, designing furniture and spaces. My mother's laugh brings me back just in time to see her in her office doorway, rosy cheeks, awkwardly in Mr. Marshall's company.

I open a smile finding the scene adorable. I look for Dominique, hoping she hasn't shut up in her office yet, as she might know something about the two of them. I find the brunette, leaning against the reception desk smiling like me.

"Marnie?" I turn quickly, finding Mr. Marshall next to me. “How have you been?” I hug him while my mother stands wide-eyed in the door.

He hadn't changed much. The face that was once smooth now had a very charming gray beard. The hair was still dark.

“I'm great, thanks. It's great to see you.” I keep my smile, finding it all wonderful, unlike my mother.

“I'm sorry about the accident. I would have send you something, but I didn't have your address and it was a little difficult to reach your mother.” he admits sympathetically. Have I told how much I like him?

“No problems. I’m grateful for your consideration and about you have found my mother again. Isn’t, mom?” her gaze at me turns withering. I'm screwed.

“Well, I'm also very happy to have found Debra again.”

I hold the 'awn' who insists on wanting to leave, when he smiles delightedly at my mother. Man, he's so into her.

“Hm, sorry to be rude, but taking advantage of our meeting, I want to invite you to a new restaurant location opening. It will be this Wednesday.”

“Oh, I'm honored. It will be a pleasure. Right, mom?” I watch my mother want to sink into the ground and disappear, and I can't help think how funny is it. "Do you mind if I invite my friends?"

“No! Of course not! Feel free.” he opens a gentle smile. His gaze flies to my mother and there they stare at each other for a few seconds. “Well, I have to go. Debra, thank you so much for the project, it's beautiful. Marnie, it was a pleasure to see you. Until Wednesday.” he hugs me again. With my mother, I notice them without knowing how to say goodbye.

I wait for Mr. Marshall to leave the office to let out the sigh caught in my throat, which my mother doesn't like.

“Stop this!” she slaps me on my back. I walk into her room laughing at the whole past situation.

“My God, you guys are so in love. Why don't you just assume it?” I ask, sitting in the chair across from her desk.

"Because there isn’t nothing to assume. It's a professional relationship.” she replies angrily, setting the table.

“Mom?” I call her, until she looks at me. I raise an eyebrow, emphasizing that I don't believe her.

Her shoulders slump, letting go of the tension. I watch her hide her face in hands after a sigh. Her eyes catch mine and a nasal laugh breaks the silence, then I see her there, shy and unsure, a small smile, which soon opens, reflecting all over her face.

"I don’t have age for this anymore. I mean…” she takes a bunch of flowers from behind the table. “Look at this.”

"Awn." I cover my face, not taking it. “Of course you have agr for this. If my father can find someone and be happy, then of course you can too. Mom, you're young and beautiful, and there's an amazing guy who's into you. He's clearly in love and apparently he's been doing everything he can to demonstrate, you should give him and… you a chance.” I finish in a whisper, touching myself that those words were good for me too.

I replay in my mind everything Luke has been doing, trying to win me back, and I'm glad that, somehow, I giving both of us a chance, even if it's a non date. I let out a laugh at the memory of the invitation, before letting my mind drift back to this morning's memories.

“I think you're right. Maybe on Wednesday, I can talk to him.” her red cheeks make me smile more.

“It's a great idea. How about we discuss this over lunch?” I suggest, listening to my belly come alive.

“Great idea.” she picks up the phone, dialing something.

Since I had nothing to do, I stay until early afternoon with my mother, gossiping about her crush on Mr. Marshall, about my relationship with Luke, about the meeting and our Wednesday night outfit.

Dominique joins us in a few moments, having fun with my passionate and nervous mom.

Around 3pm, Ashton calls, inviting me out for coffee, just him and me, like old times.

“Why can't I go? Do you not love me anymore?” I cover my mouth, stopping the laughter from coming out, when I hear Calum yell..

“Yeah! I can't take you anymore. How am I going to talk bad about you if you're there?” Ash replies.

"You are talking here. What does it matter to talk there? At least that way you buy me coffee.” Calum rebuts. While the couple argue, I listen to the fight, paying attention to the details of the ceiling.

"Are you still arguing? What the fuck is just coffee? Who is so important for all this? The pope?” I hear Luke arrive and realize he doesn't know I'm the guest.

“It's actually Marnie and from my experiences she's very important to some of the people here.” I don't need to see Ash's face to know he's making fun of Luke.

"Can I go?" I bite my lip, holding back the laugh.

“If you let him go and I don't, I'll never look you in the face again.” Calum gives the ultimatum.

“I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm still here and would like the DTR resolved if possible.” I say out loud, hoping it works.

“Sorry, Marnie. Five seconds.” Irwin asks. I think about making a joke with the band's name, but it's better to leave it alone.

"Is she listening?" Luke speaks in amazement. “Why do you…” then everything becomes too muffled and I can't hear.

“Enough! Nobody goes but me. I want to go out with my friend and I will. Marnie was right, I shouldn't have introduced you.” I hear Ash mumble, causing me to laugh. “Give me your address, I'll be there in a few minutes.”

We ended the call and I return to questioning my friendships. Why God? Why?

Sitting at a small table on the sidewalk, Ash and I discuss which coffee to drink. It wasn't very difficult to know that he loves coffee and understands a lot about the subject, which gives me complete confidence in letting him choose which one I should try.

When the cup reaches the table, I taste the drink under his hopeful, curious gaze. I open a smile, approving of my best friend's choice. I hi-five him, celebrating.

"It was the coffee you had the first time we went out together." he comments with a cute smile.

“Awn, Ash!” I can't stand the way they always remember everything. "So, ready to officially become older tomorrow?" I crack a smile, excited about our dinner tomorrow.

“No! I found a white hair this morning.” he grumbles, eliciting a laugh from me.

“I don’t see anything.” I comment, trying to cheer him up.

"I wasn’t talking about my top hair." he comments, drinking his coffee next.

"Ashton!" I reprimand him, covering my eyes, traumatized. “I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about it.”

I hear his laugh, letting me laugh too. The problem with having intimacy is exactly that, your friends no longer filter out what to say to you.

“So why didn't you bring Cool Guy Cal?” I change the subject.

“Because I spend the whole day with them, I can't stand to look at those disgusting faces anymore.” I laugh, imagining what a mess that studio must be. "And how am I going to speak ill of him with him here?" I complete this last part with him, laughing. “Exactly.”

“And you have something bad to say?” Ash shakes his head.

“No! Cal is an amazing guy.” Boys… “But I wanted to spend time with my best friend. After the accident it was difficult to have time alone. How are you?” I shrug.

"Surviving. It's only been a month and it seems like, I don't know, six. There's still so much I'm discovering.” I look at my coffee thoughtfully as I twirl the spoon in it.

"Finding out what? Your feelings for Luke?” he mocks. I scold him softly, laughing. This is a sensitive subject. "So how was the kiss?" I spit half the hot drink back into the cup.

I look at my friend in full alert. I can't believe Luke told him. We had agreed to wait a while. Irwin kept his smile curious, waiting for my answer.

“I’m sorry…?” he raised his eyebrows and then it hit me. He played and I delivered. "Ashton!" I kick your shin.

“Ouch! You who kiss and I who get beaten?” he rubs his shin, confused.

“How did you find out?” My God, does everyone know already? "Have you told anyone?"

“No! I didn't say anything and I didn't even try it with Luke. But how do you think I wouldn't notice? I've known him for years. He comes down Sunday morning, all smiling, all silly, more than usual. Super in a good mood after a party like that. Hemmings never wakes up in a good mood.”

I take a sip of my coffee, wanting to hide my smile.

“And about you?! You're my best friend! It's easy to see what's going on. Even more after what I already followed the first time. So?” the australian asks curiously, causing me to laugh.

"It was just a kiss. I don't know, it was automatic, and I ended up giving him a little kiss, and he took advantage of the break and kissed me. And I left.” my cheeks heat up as I hold in the sassy smile.

“And what does that mean?” he drops into his chair. I shrug.

“I do not know. I like Luke's company. I really like! He makes me feel safe and so unique. He's fun and so silly.”

"That he is!" Ash comments in a whisper, making me laugh.

“And I like it all, but…” the words don't come out anymore.

“You are afraid.” he completes.

"What if he gets to know me better and he doesn't like this Marnie?" I dry swallow. Ashton grimaces thoughtfully, considering my question.

“Nah!” he shakes his head, dismissing the possibility. “Luke loves you, Marnie. And you know this.” He points a finger at me. I look down, embarrassed. “The only thing left is for you to understand and accept how you feel about him. Of course, in your time, no pressure.” he adds quickly.

My heart speeds up with the direction of the conversation. I organize in my mind all the events that happened between Luke and me. All your discreet and indiscreet advances. All his looks and smiles at me, his shy, goofy way.

On the other side, I put everything that we lived before the accident. Everything I saw and remembered. I stare at Ashton, slumped in his chair, waiting for my answer. I take a deep breath, nodding my head positively.

“I think I already know how I feel about him.”

[settersprouts]

꒦ ikanaide : chapter four ! ꒦

半神

. . : oikawa is the son of athena, while iwaizumi is the son of ares. both godly parents are known to be rivals, but what does that mean for their children ?

or, hq + percy jackson au, where oikawa is not the son of aphrodite for once, but people still think he is because he's pretty, and he's flattered and confused.

. . : okay hear me out, oikawa is known to be strategic and analytical, which is perfect for a descendant of athena. that is my reasoning for this alr dont attack me pls also, vv sorry this was late, i was feeling like shit all week and couldn't finish m sorry :((( hopefully you guys didn't wait too long :((

iwaizumi's about had enough of his bullshit.

his fists were shaking as he stood in front of his divine cabin, the front door ajar and an absolutely horrid smell wafting out from the cabin. he stepped closer to the cabin, stiffening even more as he pushed the door open the rest of the way. the whole place was absolutely trashed- both his and his other roommates' clothes mixed together in many piles on the floor. he could tell just from the strategically placed items all around the room that the place was definitely rigged with mediocre traps. nothing would kill him, but it would most likely maim him.

the demigod growled, stepping over the tripwires on the floor and grabbing his khopesh. it was charged with electricity, thanks to yū nishinoya from cabin one. in exchange for the many weapons the son of ares' crafted, the son of zeus would help charge a select few and give them back to him.

the added energy would definitely be helpful for when he beat the absolute shit of a certain demigod.

he was seething with bloodlust as he stepped out of his cabin, walking towards the beach, where he knew the person he was looking for would be.

and there he was. sitting in one of the little tide pools, talking with one of the sea nymphs. she was way too close to him, but oikawa didn't look like he minded in the slightest. or he didn't notice, one of the two.

she bent down to whisper in his ear, his pupils growing smaller in his brown eyes, and he let out a laugh. it was really melodic, which was common for a son of aphrodite. their beauty was immaculate, and they were practically irresistible to everyone, unless you had a decent sense of self control. iwaizumi knew that oikawa had the whole camp under his fingertips. except for him.

iwaizumi let out a groan, clenching his fists. fuck morales. he knew that his father and oikawa's mother were on really good terms, but he couldn't help but feel attracted to the absolute need to punch the brunette in the face. with a concrete slab. or choke him with aphrodite's famous scarf. one of the two.

he let out an animalistic growl, drawing the attention of oikawa and the unnamed sea nymph. oikawa blinked at him, unimpressed, while the nymph shrieked and dove back into the ocean with a splash. oikawa glanced at the bubbles where the nymph had disappeared, and let out an unamused sigh.

`oh, well, she was kind of boring anyways,` he said nonchalant, stepping out of the pool, buck-naked, without a care in the world. iwaizumi's eyes widened as he turned away almost immediately, his face flushing completely.

`what the hell do you think you're doing?` he seethed, his usual bark lacking no bite, since oikawa really couldn't see his facial expression.

the latter let out a chuckle. `calm down, you can turn around, now. i'm decent.`

forest-green eyes slowly darted back to the brunette's figure, pupils growing bigger in relief, as he realized that he really was decent. he was dressed in the atrociously bright orange camp half-blood shirt, and bleached denim jeans, rolled up to just above his ankles. his bead necklace was still wrapped around his neck snugly. it was extremely tighter than iwaizumi's, which hung down just over the scar on his left pec. he must've tightened it like a choker. it was kind of smart- usually, monsters with half a brain used those necklaces to pull demigods towards them if they couldn't grab their limbs. this tactic limited the amount of things they could grab on him.

iwaizumi would've never thought of that.

`so,` oikawa mused, folding his now damp towel. he must have used it to dry himself off while iwaizumi was looking away from him. `what do you need from me?`

the other demigod blinked, mouth forming an 'o' once he realized his reason for being there. he totally didn't forget that he wanted to sock oikawa in the face just because he saw him naked. `right. i have a bone to pick with you, oikawa.`

`oh? is that so?` the brunette smiled sweetly at him, his eyebrows furrowed in an act of confusion and innocence. disgusting.

iwaizumi stepped forward, whipping out the khopesh he had stuffed in his pocket. with a simple flick of his wrist, it extended. the contraption was thanks to someone in cabin number six, with the help of cabin nine- apparently, iwaizumi had saved someone dear to them, and he was given the khopesh as a thank you. however, the person never did reveal themself to iwaizumi. it was an athena cabin secret.

oikawa's brown eyes widened at the sight of the weapon, but that expression was quickly replaced with an amused sneer. `oh, what's this? you want to fight?`

`no, you're going to let me maim you in silence, i refuse to fight someone as weak as you.` iwaizumi retorted, fists clenching. the brunette gawked, his mouth agape in a silent shout.

`weak? excuse me? i'm far from weak. just because you come from cabin five, doesn't mean you're higher than everyone else.` he replied, sticking his nose high up in the air. `i'll have you know, i've won many tournaments against your cabin.`

iwaizumi rolled his eyes. `yeah, because you always cheat and sneak over to athena's group.`

`i don't cheat! and i don't have to sneak over to athena's group, i have a place there you know!` oikawa shrieked, whipping out a dagger and pointing it at iwaizumi threateningly. however, the latter remained unphased, which pissed the brunette off even more.

`yeah. sure, and what's that?` iwaizumi said, letting one of his eyebrows raise. if rules served him correctly, there was no teaming allowed in any game at camp half-blood, unless stated otherwise. however, he always saw oikawa with athena's group, but he let it slide, thinking the ares' cabin would win anyways. he was, unfortunately, very wrong.

oikawa blinked. `are you stupid? athena's my mother.`

`huh?` the son of ares' stepped back a bit, glaring at the other. `you- athena's son? but- you're-`

`pretty? yeah, i get that a lot.` oikawa sheathed his dagger, stretching out his muscles. `people mistake me for the son of aphrodite way too much. it's kind of annoying, actually. there's a lot more to me than my face,` he mused, glaring at iwaizumi. `looks like you're no different from the rest of them. shame. i actually took a liking to you.`

the other stood there, unmoving, confusion lining every forehead wrinkle. `what are you saying? there's no way-`

oikawa sighed. `i should've known you were going to be hard to convince. look, i'm the son of athena, and the current ruler of the cabin. if you don't believe me, ask my cabin mates. they'll tell you.`

`then who the hell's trashing my cabin?` iwaizumi seethed, still not convinced by oikawa's truths.

the latter let out a melodic laugh. `i thought that was obvious. i saw some of hermes' cabin sneak out to yours during lunch. makes sense, they're always trying to pull pranks on everyone and see their reactions. yours was most likely the best one of them all.` oikawa smiled, his eyes twinkling as he walked away. `well, while it was fun talking to you, i have to go. it's getting dark, and i'd rather not get caught being out past curfew.`

iwaizumi looked up to the sky to find out that he was, in fact, right. the sky was slowly darkening, the sun almost disappearing at the horizon. the green-eyed demigod let out a sigh, turning to glare at oikawa, to find out he was long gone.

`..damn it!`

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

`can you believe he's even athena's cabin ruler?` takahiro hanamaki muttered lowly to his fellow cabin mate, issei matsukawa, who also stood in front of a very emotional toorū oikawa. he had been ranting about how he was sick of everyone mistaking him for a son of aphrodite, and when his cabin mate shigeru yahaba said it could've been a compliment, the hysterics had gotten even worse.

fortunately, the 18-year-old had tired himself out, and was now resorting to laying on his bed and blinking the tears out of his eyes.

matsukawa sighed. `no. i can't. not when he's like this.`

`i can hear you, 'ya know.` oikawa muttered, tear-filled chocolate brown eyes turning to them accusingly. `you can't even act like you're tired of me, you just got here.`

`true,` hanamaki replied, kneeling down next to his dear friend. `but according to yahaba, you've been complaining about this for the past forty-five minutes. don't you think that's a tad bit excessive?`

oikawa sat up abruptly. `no! well- maybe. but it's so stupid!` he exclaimed, fists furrowing in his fluffy brown locks. `i don't act like aphrodite at all! i don't even look like her, but i'm pretty and that's the only reason people need to lump me in with that cabin. i actually liked iwa. of course, he's just like the rest.`

`oh.` matsukawa snapped his fingers, pointing at oikawa. `he's the guy who rescued kiyo and takeru, right?`

the brunette shuddered. `right. that memory just gives me chills.` he thought back to that day, where a gorgon had came across oikawa while he was taking his sister and nephew shopping. the gorgon smelled him, and realized he was a son of athena, and attacked the group, leaving oikawa bruised and bloodied while he took kiyo and takeru as prisoners. however, a group of demigods from camp half-blood on a quest sensed the violence occurring, and rushed to the scene as quick as possible. iwaizumi was amongst the group, but he had taken off after the gorgon, and didn't get a good look at oikawa's face.

when the group returned to camp, oikawa had made the khopesh iwaizumi had sported, and left it on his bed while he was out training with his cabin mates. he also left a thank-you note, but didn't sign it, hoping to leave his identity anonymous.

`yeah, why don't you just tell him that you're a relative to kiyo and takeru? the whole camp knows about that quest, so if iwaizumi knows your identity, everyone else will too. people won't mistake you for a descendant of aphrodite anymore,` hanamaki supplied, reaching into the tupperware of ambrosia oikawa was given (he had started a fight with kyōtani from ares' cabin to relieve his stress- both parties sporting the same amount of cuts and bruises) and popping a bit into his mouth.

oikawa shrugged, snatching back the tupperware before hanamaki could steal any more. if a demigod ate too much of the sweet, healing treat, they could get extremely sick. `yeah, maybe. but,` oikawa grinned, turning to his two friends that stood by his bedside, `beating him at capture-the-flag tomorrow sounds way more fun.`

the two boys sighed, smiling at the sight of their best friend with a much happier mood. capture-the-flag with demigods was always a very violent and extreme sport, but all cabins ended up having a lot of fun playing the game. and, no matter what side the athena cabin was on, they always ended up winning. no one could remember a time where they lost.

beating the ares' cabin was going to be a piece of cake for oikawa.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

`you seem on edge, iwaizumi.` ushijima had muttered to the demigod, taking a seat beside the other. they were currently stationed in the middle of the forest, with the job of guarding the red flag. `do you want to talk about it?`

iwaizumi glanced at his companion. under the absolutely atrocious battle helmet was a look of concern and worry for his friend. the dark-haired demigod let out a sigh, nodding slightly. `yeah. i'm just.. shaken up, i guess.`

`how so?`

`well..` iwaizumi pondered, trying to figure out the best words and phrases to lay his point across. `i pissed off one of the sons' of aphrodite here, because apparently, he's the son of athena, and not aphrodite. like, what the fuck? the dude even acts like the deviled spawn of her, so i don't understand why he's so pressed.`

ushijima nodded, listening intently. `you mean toorū oikawa, right?`

iwaizumi gaped. `how the hell did you know that?`

`i made the same mistake you did, thinking he was a descendant of aphrodite.` ushijima mused, looking up to the sky. the clouds reflected in his olive-coloured eyes, but were less noticeable than the clouds reflecting in oikawa's eyes. `when he had first came to camp half-blood, he was called weak by one of our cabin-mates. he challenged him to a duel and won. i then told him he should have been a descendant of ares, not one of aphrodite. he would have a rightful place here, with us.`

`oh? what'd he say, then?`

the olive-haired demigod shuddered. `he slapped me. very hard. and then yelled at me, saying he was a son of athena, not aphrodite. he apparently doesn't like being addressed as a child of aphrodite.`

a sharp wolf-whistle came from the trees. ushijima and iwaizumi stood up, quickly switching to a fighting stance. iwaizumi clenched his khopesh as the figure who was listening to their whole conversation emerged from the trees.

and of course, it was fucking oikawa.

`y-you?` iwaizumi shouted, almost dropping his weapon. `how long were you there?`

the brunette stretched, calm despite the fact that a sword and a khopesh were both aiming at his chest. `i heard the whole conversation. i've been watching you two for quite some time, now.`

ushijima stepped forward as to greet oikawa, but faltered. his eyes widened, and he turned around. leaning on the flag they were supposed to protect was a silver-haired male holding a celestial-bronze axe. his honey-brown eyes met ushijima's olive-green ones, and a corrupt smile split his face. `finally. you noticed me. i was wondering how to get your attention.`

iwaizumi turned around to see the second attacker, letting out an almost animalistic growl. `it's a fucking ambush.`

`correct~` oikawa mused, taking out his dagger and smiling at the other. `however, suga-chan isn't allowed to touch you. i wanted to do all the dirty work myself.`

the silver-haired demigod nodded. `my only purpose here is to take the flag once oikawa defeats you. he requested to fight you both at the same time.`

oikawa nodded, flicking a little switch on his dagger iwaizumi hadn't noticed before. as soon as he did so, he dropped the dagger, and it extended into a much longer weapon. the other demigod scanned it, recognizing the weapon to be a scythe. 'suga-chan' smiled at the sight, meeting iwaizumi's questioning eyes. `you guys better be prepared. he hasn't lost a duel since he came here.`

the brunette nodded, pointing at ushijima with a smile before lunging at the demigod. before the latter could even react, oikawa had connected his foot with ushijima's abdomen, sending the demigod flying. he landed on his back with a gasp, having the air knocked out of him. iwaizumi's eyes widened- he hadn't even been able to react either. that was how fast oikawa was.

ushijima sat up quickly, blocking oikawa's attack with his sword. the other demigod smiled sweetly, twisting the scythe and yanking ushijima's sword out of his hand. it landed in the dirt a couple yards away.

iwaizumi growled, running at oikawa with his khopesh up high. the brunette turned around, unamused, sidestepping iwaizumi's attack and tapping at the end of his weapon. the khopesh hissed and groaned, a net pooling out from the back end, trapping iwaizumi in the knots. the demigod gasped, writhing around in the trap. `wh-what the hell?`

`you seem to be confused. could it be,` oikawa laughed, `that you didn't even know that was there?`

`s-shut up! how the hell did you know anyways?`

oikawa deadpanned. `i made the stupid thing. i think i would know every little thing there is to know about it.`

the dark-haired son of ares stared at his attacker, watching as he stalked over to suga and ripped the flag out of the ground. the brunette turned and smiled sweetly at his victims, waving. `well, see you.`

the two demigods sprinted off, laughing at the shouts coming from behind them.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

`i can't believe him!` iwaizumi kicked the boulder, ignoring the pain from doing so. `he's so fucking insufferable! but i can't even do anything about it, because apparently he made this stupid weapon-` he waved the khopesh in the air, `-and i have to be grateful, but he's making it so goddamn hard!`

kyōtani glanced at the demigod, popping another piece of ambrosia in his mouth. he was still recovering from his fight with oikawa earlier. `you didn't know he made that for you? i thought it was obvious.`

the other glared at his cabin mate, confusion in his eyes. `what do you mean?`

`well,` kyōtani chewed the left over ambrosia in his mouth and swallowed, before continuing. `i'm pretty sure he has a crush on you, or something. he's been watching your duels ever since he came back with your group.`

`what group?`

`the quest you had a while ago.` kyōtani muttered under his breath, probably ridiculing iwaizumi. `you saved his sister and nephew from a gorgon. remember that?`

iwaizumi deadpanned, the memories all but flooding back to him now. `that was him?`

`that was him.`

`so he really is a son of athena?`

kyōtani nodded.

`..fuck, i'm an idiot.`

`i know.`

─── demigods.

[cheese-greater-official]

The Great Gatsby .. I think antibucci Summary: Literally just the great Gatsby. Nothing else here. Absolutely no changes. Definitely use this for class, or reference. The Great Gatsby is public domain now after all. Anyways here's the totally unaltered and complete book of the Great Gatsby. I swear nothing was changed, most definitely. Of course credit to F Scott Fitzgerald for writing this commentary on both his life and the world he was in. A lot of this can still relate today, so keep an open mind when reading. Notes: I'd like to preface this by saying... This is really I mean REALLY just the Great Gatsby. I swear. There is nothing going here that is out of the ordinary! Nothing at all! Chapter 1 Chapter Text Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!” - Thomas Parke D'Invilliers. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought — frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction — Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament.”— it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the

wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day. I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him — with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe — so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why — ye — es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two. The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog — at least I had him for a few days until he ran away — and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove. It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. “How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly. I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood. And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all. It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size. I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented

rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month. Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago. Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that. Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it—I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game. And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch. He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body. His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts. "Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own. We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch. "I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly. Turning me around by one arm

he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore. "It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside." We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor. The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in. The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room. "I'm p-paralyzed with happiness." She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.) At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me. I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour. I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me. "Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically. "The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore." "How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby." "I'd like to." "She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?" "Never." "Well, you ought to see her. She's—" Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder. "What you doing, Nick

?" "I'm a bond man." "Who with?" I told him. "Never heard of them," he remarked decisively. This annoyed me. "You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East." "Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else." At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room. "I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember." "Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon." "No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training." Her host looked at her incredulously. "You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me." I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before. "You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there." "I don't know a single—" "You must know Gatsby." "Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?" Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square. Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind. "Why candles?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it." "We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed. "All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly. "What do people plan?" Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger. "Look!" she complained. "I hurt it." We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue. "You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—" "I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding." "Hulking," insisted Daisy. Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here—and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself. "You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?" I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way. "Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently. "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The

Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?" "Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone. "Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved." "Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—" "Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things." "We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun. "You ought to live in California—" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair. "This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and—" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. "—and we've produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?" There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me. "I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?" "That's why I came over tonight." "Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose—" "Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker. "Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position." For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk. The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing. "I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. "An absolute rose?" This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house. Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether. "This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor—" I said. "Don't talk. I want to hear what happens." "Is something happening?" I inquired innocently. "You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. "I thought everybody knew." "I don't." "Why—" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York." "Got some woman?" I repeated blankly. Miss Baker nodded. "She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?" Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table. "It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety. She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: "I looked

outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away—" her voice sang "—It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?" "Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables." The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police. The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee. Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl. "We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly. "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding." "I wasn't back from the war." "That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything." Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter. "I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything." "Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?" "Very much." "It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." "You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated—God, I'm sophisticated!" The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged. Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the "Saturday Evening Post"—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms. When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand. "To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table,

"in our very next issue." Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up. "Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed." "Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over at Westchester." "Oh,—you're Jordan Baker." I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago. "Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you." "If you'll get up." "I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon." "Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—" "Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word." "She's a nice girl," said Tom after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her run around the country this way." "Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly. "Her family." "Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick's going to look after her, aren't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her." Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence. "Is she from New York?" I asked quickly. "From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—" "Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly. "Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—" "Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me. I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called "Wait! "I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West." "That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were engaged." "It's libel. I'm too poor." "But we heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true." Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage. Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York" was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart. Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in

his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens. I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness. Chapter 2 Summary: Just chapter 2 of the Great Gatsby Notes: (See the end of the chapter for notes.) Chapter Text About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight. But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground. The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress. The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car. "We're getting off!" he insisted. "I want you to meet my girl." I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do. I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside. The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had occurred

to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes. "Hello, Wilson, old man," said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. "How's business?" "I can't complain," answered Wilson unconvincingly. "When are you going to sell me that car?" "Next week; I've got my man working on it now." "Works pretty slow, don't he?" "No, he doesn't," said Tom coldly. "And if you feel that way about it, maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all." "I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant—" His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: "Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down." "Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom. "I want to see you," said Tom intently. "Get on the next train." "All right." "I'll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level." She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door. We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track. "Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg. "Awful." "It does her good to get away." "Doesn't her husband object?" "Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive." So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train. She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of "Town Tattle" and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass. "I want to get one of those dogs," she said earnestly. "I want to get one for the apartment. They're nice to have—a dog." We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller. In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an indeterminate breed. "What kind are they?" asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window. "All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?" "I'd like to get one of those police dogs; I don't suppose you got that kind?" The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck. "That's no police dog," said Tom. "No, it's not exactly a police dog,"

" said the man with disappointment in his voice. "It's more of an airedale." He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back. "Look at that coat. Some coat. That's a dog that'll never bother you with catching cold." "I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?" "That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten dollars." The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture. "Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately. "That dog? That dog's a boy." "It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it." We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner. "Hold on," I said, "I have to leave you here." "No, you don't," interposed Tom quickly. "Myrtle'll be hurt if you don't come up to the apartment. Won't you, Myrtle?" "Come on," she urged. "I'll telephone my sister Catherine. She's said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know." "Well, I'd like to, but—" We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in. "I'm going to have the McKees come up," she announced as we rose in the elevator. "And of course I got to call up my sister, too." The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room. Several old copies of "Town Tattle" lay on the table together with a copy of "Simon Called Peter" and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door. I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of "Simon Called Peter"—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn't make any sense to me. Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door. The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed i

Feel free to delete the first one. I would do anything for you if post this. The Great Gatsby in all it’s glory

im aware i was probably supposed to read the whole thing to find out if you changed anything and tnhen find out you hadnt and id wasted an hour of my life but i am way too lazy to do that

[orangecountypoolbuilder]

Orange County Pool Builder: Things to consider

As a homeowner, there are many questions you may have when it comes to building a pool. One of the most important aspects to consider is the size of the pool. This article will cover some of the basics on how to find the best Orange County Pool Builder.

When you are looking to build a pool for your home, the size is extremely important. Most people get very overwhelmed when thinking about the size of the pool that they want. There are a lot of options when it comes to choosing a pool size, and you don’t want to spend a lot of time looking for the right one. Here are some things to consider when thinking about pool size:

Pool Size & Covered Areas:

There are many options when it comes to pool size, but when it comes to what you want your pool covered with, there are three most common options.

1. Pool Cover: Pool covers are the one that is most covered with space. They can either be completely opaque, or they can have a translucent side.

2. Elevated Pools: These pools can be very versatile, and they can be covered with space.

Orange County Pool Builder - What should I know before building my pool?

How much will the pool cost? How will I finance the pool? What size pool should I buy? What other services does a Orange County Pool Builder provide? Choosing the Best Orange County Pool Builder for Your Location When choosing the best Orange County Pool Builder for your location there are a few things you should consider. First and foremost, you should know what area you live in. Find out what there is available around you when it comes to the kinds of pools available. For example, pools in the inland California area often include many other things like a BBQ, playground, cabanas, and even a water slide. When it comes to prices, it is important to make sure you are comparing apples to apples. When you buy a new car, you don't compare it to a 1980 Cadillac, you compare it to a 2014 Mercedes Benz.

How much space do I have?

What materials should I use?

Where should I put my pool?

Why is the pool so important?

Will it take up too much space?

Can I buy it ready-built?

What is the cost?

What are the cost and installation?

Is it going to be delivered by a builder?

How long is the installation?

Is it going to take place in a swimming pool?

Do I have to hire a builder?

What are the tax benefits of owning a pool?

Why should I choose a Orange County Pool Builder?

Do I need a drainage plan?

What are the plans?

How will I know if it is ready to be installed?

What will the builder do?

How long will it take?

Do I need to hire a certified pool installer?

How will I know when the pool is ready?

How will I know when the installer has finished?

What are the fees?

Orange County Pool Builder - Pool sizing

After determining what size pool you need, it’s time to find a company that will help you get it built. After much searching, consider choosing a home improvement contractor who sells pools. While there may be other Orange County Pool Builders in your area, you’re looking for a business that specializes in building pools. Their services can be most helpful in finding a small pool that is also a party pool. Size Once you’ve picked a company that specializes in pool building, it’s time to size your pool. It’s important that the pool is small enough to fit on your property and doesn’t take up too much of your garden space. Traction You also need to consider the amount of speed and slope that the pool is going to have. Speed is important for things like water slides and floating things.

Pool planning

You may have a big vision of a giant pool for your backyard but just like a piece of cake, it can be difficult to find. The reason for this is because a pool is very easy to scale up.

Sometimes we make the mistake of assuming a large area is meant for a large pool. When a well-maintained, and new pool is opened, it can actually look smaller, than an average size pool.

Pool sizes

You are most likely thinking of square meters. To help put a number to this, the size of a pool can be measured in pool meters, a square meter is approximately 1 square yard.

A meter is usually around one and a half feet or 8.3 inches. Let's say the average length of your pool is 50-60 feet. If it's a 15x15 foot pool and one pool meter was used, then it would measure about 4.6 square yards.

Pool material for Orange County Pool Builder

The second step is selecting the pool's material. There are many materials used to build a pool. But each material has a different trade-off. Some of the materials used to build a pool are concrete, wood, composite, plastics, and artificial turf. To build a pool, you must first determine what type of pool you want to build. The type of pool will dictate the type of materials you need. Some common materials used in building a pool include concrete, wood, and composite. Depending on your preferences, you can also get a completely custom pool made with wood or concrete. The materials you use are also important for other reasons. You need to consider which materials you can afford.

There are two types of pool material: concrete and plastic.

Concrete: A pool constructed of concrete is generally sturdier and will not have as much of a leak-prone factor as a pool constructed from plastic. Plastic pools are popular for a few reasons. These pools allow you to be as creative as you want with the materials you choose for the pool liner. Plastic pool liners can also be made more comfortable on the skin by adding pool floatation features.

Most people prefer pool liners that have a natural rubber or vinyl feel to them.

Orange County Pool Builder & Construction

The pool construction process has many components. Here are the most important steps to take when selecting your pool.

The first and most important factor to consider is the material you will use to build your pool. There are a wide variety of materials that you can choose from. If you are not quite sure what to choose, consider the options listed below.

Steel

In the pool construction industry, steel is one of the most common options. Steel is a great option when you want a solid structure for your pool, but you don’t want to spend a lot of time or money on it. This material is not only stronger, but will also have less maintenance.

Steel is great for swimming pools because it does not allow water from the pool to escape and leaves a higher level of quality in the water. Steel materials are most common for pools because they are a good starting point.

Quality Materials for Your Pool

The materials used in the construction of a pool vary depending on your desired look and what size pool you want to build. If you want a pool that is very narrow and only big enough to fit a few chairs and lounge around in, the materials you use will likely be different from a pool that is big enough to fit a couple of lawn chairs and a few kids to splash around in.

You will want to consider the materials before you make a final decision on your pool, since you will be spending so much time staring at it.

Finding Orange County Pool Builders

There are several different methods a homeowner can use to find a Orange County Pool Builder. You can contact local pool shops to get a list of available Pool Builders. Or you can use a few other online resources to find a Orange County Pool Builder you're interested in. When you contact a Orange County Pool Builder, you want to make sure you know exactly what you want. You will also want to make sure you're being as clear as possible about what the Pool Builder's list price is. An important tip regarding finding a Orange County Pool Builder is to not limit yourself to just any Pool Builder you see. Once you've found a Orange County Pool Builder you like, you should ask if they offer an additional discount if you pay a deposit and do the work yourself. Pools Options And Costs You should also research the various costs associated with a pool.

At its simplest, you can think of the pool and the project as two separate parts that you want to be done separately. On the one hand, you need a swimming pool, and on the other hand, you need to hire a Orange County Pool Builder to get it done. The latter is where you will find the main differences in the costs of the different companies you choose to hire. The main reason for this is that most people build their own pools, so you’ll need to pay for the materials and labor yourself. If you buy the pool, then you don’t have to pay for anything except for the labor. There are a number of factors to consider in choosing the right Orange County Pool Builder to complete your project. This article will discuss the most important ones.

It is recommended you use an in-house builder. They are able to understand your needs as a homeowner. An in-house builder will also have access to all of the necessary information for the job. They can also get you the pool without needing to have hundreds of hours of time logged into it. Some pool contractors are only able to take on jobs that have been logged in with a pool contractor. This means they may only be able to complete a certain number of jobs before they are required to use the pool again. In the long run this will add up to higher prices for the pool.

Conclusion

After going through these steps, it is your turn to determine which Orange County Pool Builder is right for you. This is a decision that is very personal and can change as your family grows. Finding the right Orange County Pool Builder may take some work, but it will be worth it. Just remember to shop around and make sure that you do your homework. How much you will need to spend Start by estimating the cost you will spend on the pool. It can be pretty obvious if you think about how much water and electricity the pool will use. You can also look at your budget. Before purchasing a pool, you need to decide how much you can afford. Finding a Orange County Pool Builder that can build a quality pool for you can help you reach your budget.

Blue Fountain Pools & Spas 

1151 S Grand Ave

Glendora, CA 91740

(626) 335–0006 

[roswelldetails]

RNM 2x06 - Sex and Candy

EPISODE SUMMARY:

Maria’s (Heather Hemmens) investigation into her mother’s disappearance leads her and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) to the home of a mysterious boot maker named Travis (guest star David Anders). Meanwhile, on her journey of self-discovery, Isobel’s (Lily Cowles) night out leads her into the arms of someone unexpected. Finally, after making some major scientific strides, Liz (Jeanine Mason) is dealt a devastating blow. Geoff Shotz directed the episode written by Rick Montano & Vincent Ingrao (#206). Original airdate 4/20/2020.

DETAILS:

Max and Isobel's fight:

Lights start flickering when Max starts getting aggressive and then get brighter as he gets more worked up.

The first attempt to expel it seemed like he was causing an earthquake.  He blew out all the windows in the gym, knocked Isobel down, and there was shaking.  But it didn't seem to go beyond that room - no damage is seen when Michael arrives or around town.

Note, after the earthquake thingie the lights go out 

His hands are doing the electric power thingie and THEN he also grabs the lightning.

I think Isobel used her telekinesis to stop it and then push it away, which seemed to work...but if so then why couldn't Noah do that last season? 

Was it the sheer volume of electricity? There was definitely MORE than with Noah.

Michael uses his telekinesis to manually reset Max's heart.  This is very smart of him. Note that he's using his own heart/pulse to get it right.

They are using the antidote to Liz's serum to try to heal Max's mind. 

Michael says that they've been giving him antidote injections for three days (time jump).

Three days of antidote and no new memories for Max.

Isobel remembered her blackouts within a few hours of getting injected with the antidote in 1x10.

Note: Liz hesitated using the antidote this way in 1x10 because Isobel could still be dangerous and they didn't know about the 4th Alien yet.  There doesn't seem to be a similar hesitation with Max. Because Liz trusts him more? Because him forgetting her is more personal? It's not like there isn't a chance that Max is still dangerous…

Maria arranged a Mexican market in the Pony parking lot to subsidize her income.

Buffy the Beagle is Forrest's dog!

Maria comments that the meteor shower makes animals act strange. And humans too.

Forrest and Maria are organizing an open night mic at the Wild Pony.  Free drinks for performers.

Maria clearly approves of Forrest and Alex getting to know each other.  She smacks Alex for his awkward flirting.

The bootmaker's farm is about an hour outside of town.

The Science:

Kyle and Steph are watching a "surgical separation of craniopagus twins".

Craniopagus Twins = twins attached at the cranium/head. (Aka not a heart surgery).

"Did you know, ever since 1947, twin births in Roswell are higher than the national average? Maybe it's aliens."

Speaking of awkward flirting…. "You're just my favorite person I can't stand."

The Spanish:

Le cambio una bolsa de chiles para mi papá...for the free fries next time you come to the Crashdown.

Liz is bartering.  She says basically, I'll trade you a bag of chiles for my papa for free fries next time you come to the Crashdown. 

Note, the captions for this are wrong and use the Spanish word for grasshoppers instead, but you can clearly hear Liz say chiles. Thanks to @rosaortecho for pointing that out to me.

Max says:

I'm trying to eat clean. Uh, tiene carne seca sin como se dice, preservativos.

He's trying to say, basically, does the jerky have preservatives. 

Quiere carne a sin preservativos?

Basically, you want meat without condoms?

Lo siento. Uh, no lo entiendo.

I'm sorry, I don't get it.

Él quiere decir conservantes.

He means preservatives.

Gracias. Estoy embarazado.

Thank you. I'm pregnant.

Michael asks Max who he's texting. Max says everyone has been messaging him but Cameron is the only one who hasn't responded, which isn't like her.

Wildly curious who he was texting though.  It's not like he's a social butterfly. His mom? The sheriff? Who? As I pointed out to some friends the other day, he spent his 21st birthday getting trashed with his SISTER. This is not a trait of a guy with lots of close friends.

Just as another note, Michael says he ghosted her. When exactly was that? Yes, Max ran out on her in the middle of a handy in 1x03, but they addressed that the next day.  She "broke up" with him in 1x07, but they were still good right up until she left town. 

Isobel:

"Does he seem different to you?"

Alex and Maria playing "Never have I Ever" in the car. Good way to do background on characters.

Maria has never cheated on a boyfriend

Alex has never been in a real relationship. Not even "Kellie Sommer-something".

Alex says that whenever he was with a woman he was trying to disappear.  Except for Sophomore year after Battle of the Bands. Seven Minutes in Heaven in Haley Moore's hall closet. Alex and Maria kissed and it was Maria's first kiss (and boob graze).  She always thought she'd marry Alex. Had to come up with a new plan after he came out. 

Alex says "I did too."

"Kissing you in that closet was the first time in my life that I enjoyed touching someone."

Max picks up Liz for their first date…

Just as a note, Save Tonight was the opening song in the pilot of OG Roswell. During the "oh, Max Evans is staring at you again." exchange between Liz and Maria.  So, it might go well with new beginnings or something ;-)

The Science:

"Psychogenic amnesia limits retrieval of stored memories, but if we light up your limbic system and gustatory cortex with some familiar signals…"

"Your milkshake might bring all my memories to the yard?"

**Note, second reference to this song in the context of Liz bringing Max milkshakes. First was in 1x06 by Isobel. Hmm. 1x06 and 2x06… maybe they should crack this joke in 3x06 too.

"Sometimes when people wake up from comas they have different personalities, different tastes even…"

Everything you ever wanted to know about psychogenic amnesia:

But, my main takeaway is that it's a specific type of amnesia where there's abnormal memory function but no brain damage or other clear cause of it.

Limbic system:

Basically the part of your brain that stores emotion, behavior, and long term memory.

Gustatory cortex:

Basically the part of your brain that processes taste.

Maria compares Michael to Chad because he starts fights and lies.  Alex disagrees and lists ways that he was doing good things:

He lied to protect his family from Alex's family.

He shouldered the burden of a murder he didn't commit for ten years so that Isobel didn't have to.

He pushed Maria away to protect her - which might be a good thing too because of all his baggage. 

First Date:

Max went to Ranch camp one summer and dislocated his shoulder while trying to read Lord of the Rings on horseback. #nerd. 

Liz references the gala as not their first date, but there was also the desert in high school.  I guess she doesn't count that either. 

Side note: Cam and Liz talked about him peacocking in 2x03, but that kinda felt out of character at the time to the Max we knew.  This Max DOES seem like he's peacocking a bit. Got dressed up, taking Liz horseback riding. He admitted to trying to one up whatever they did together before. Just an interesting (to me) observation.

Liz looks panicky when Max suggests truth serum (because Science!Liz probably could make truth serum), but once she realizes he means whiskey she's like, "oh yes, that's fine." Oh Liz… 

Diego details:

They were engaged just last year

Liz left without saying goodbye

Bioengineer 

They were working together on the Denver study

They would come home and keep talking about work

He had ideas to help improve it

They both spoke The Science

He pushed her to get better at The Science

When the funding was cut she realized she loved the work more than him

Liz couldn't figure out how tell him that so she packed her things in the middle of the night, hit the road, changed her phone, and blocked him on Facebook.

**This is the first time LIZ has mentioned social media. Interesting given the crap Maria keeps giving her about it!

Travis and fresh warm milk. What is up with it??

"Nice ring. Does it keep you from burning up in the daylight?"

David Anders introduces himself as Travis.

Just as a point of interest, Maria researched enough to find the bootmaker, figure out where he lives, but she didn't get his name??? 

Vampire Diaries/Originals reference.

Travis says he can't help with car stuff.

The milk was from a cow named Jennifer.  He milked her for the last time today. (Creepy).

Weird contradictory statements from Travis:

"You're the best thing I've seen in a long time."....

"Mm, I'm sorry. So many customers and all their ugly faces get all sewn up and stitched together in my mind."

"Yeah, that's the woman that bought them boots. While back. Nice lady. She paid cash."

Second reference to animals behaving strangely during a meteor shower:

"Meteor shower's got my girls singing a bit off key tonight.  Jennifer, she likes a good lullaby."

"Okay this guy is going to turn us into skin suits." (OG reference? Or just general sci-fi?)

Meteorchella at Planet 7 (Coachella-style party during meteor shower?) with any excuse to add sparkles!

Kyle says he's at Planet 7 because he's trying not to hang out with people from high school.

Isobel says she's trying to have fun without feeling like prey.

Don't think the details of Kyle/Isobel dancing matters all that much, but as a point of amusement I'll share that in the panel on Tuesday night they shared that Lily whispered something different to Trevino on every take...And they got progressively dirtier to the point that she finally felt like she crossed a line and profusely apologized.  Also the lick was a Lily addition. 

Max's confession about killing the drifter:

Kind of an interesting thing, comparing the first version of the drifter story in 1x06 to the 2x06 version. 1x06 was more dramatic, but 2x06 was more personal, I think. 

1x06

"There are moments that define our lives, and there are moments that divide our lives. Incidents that separate us into two different people: who we were before and who we will be after. Forever…One day we were children and the next we were something else. I was a killer. Michael an accomplice.  And Isobel...Isobel was broken."

2x06

"I killed a man once, on a camping trip. This drifter came out of nowhere, attacked Isobel.  I wasn't even thinking. I killed him. With this. I arrest people who kill people. Most of them usually regret what they did. You know, you can just tell that they're forever broken. It's like a piece of them dies with their victims. So when I could feel that darkness, like I had to kill, I wanted Isobel to let me die. Because I couldn't risk hurting even one innocent person. Cause life just wouldn't be worth living."

Kind of an interesting narrative choice to confess to murder on a first date and then have the girl just brush it aside. 

"No, it just hit me why you're so happy and idealistic, and I feel like an idiot. You are that way because you don't remember me. It's a clean slate.  It's like when you got out of the pods with whatever memories you had erased it's probably for your own good."

"Last I heard you were the love of my life."

"Your cohorts, they left out some details. Cause if you had your memories I'm positive the worst thing that's ever happened to you is connected to me. And I can't bear the weight of making you remember that again."

**Note, second time this has been implied.  Last time was by Michael in 1x08 regarding the alien symbol.

"...it's gotta have some connection to us right? Maybe it was something we saw somewhere before the crash."

"Sorry, are you, Max Evans, acknowledging that we must have had lives before we hatched out of the pods? You never want to talk about home."

"Hey, Roswell is home. Look, I'm sorry man. You're right. I've spent a lot of time not talking about where we come from or why we're here.  Keep thinking I can pretend the past away and just be normal. But if Isobel's blackouts are some alien thing, then I need to know more. Okay, and this symbol? That's all I have to go on. I mean don't you think it's strange that we don't have any memories? I mean, no parents, no language. We weren't infants, man. We were seven."

"I just figured our memory faded. Over 50 years in those pods. Maybe it was just time. Or maybe whoever put us in those pods doesn't want us to remember."

Travis and Trevor's house...with added bonus of his ring that Alex comments on.

Leather ribbons/strips on the wall are for (from?) Hayley and Gertrude. More cows, I presume. 

There's also a framed Purple Heart on the wall next to a photo of Travis?

"War really messes with a man's mind.  Gets it all twisted up.

Timeline issue!! Alex says Mimi was missing for 3 weeks, but according to the clearly established timelines in 201-203 it was 4 weeks (or a month ish).  I wrote about this here:

Maria put her jacket on a scarecrow to trick Travis. And did she leave it there?

(Answer: yes. She doesn't wear it for the rest of the episode. Smart of her, actually).

Michael sees Trevor come out of the house and is about to shoot him. Maria immediate knew it wasn't Travis and threw herself in front of Michael's gun

Trevor shoots Travis.

A bullet from the Crashdown shooting falls out of Max's journal.  Does it look like it has blood on it? Or maybe just ketchup? If it's THE bullet it would make a lot of sense that he kept it hidden - evidence that Liz was shot. See this comparison between one of Wyatt's bullets in 1x02 and the one Max finds in 2x06

"Sorry about my twin here. He's had a rough go."

"Combat does not make you an axe murderer."

"No, it wasn't the combat. It was the R&D. If a paramilitary group ever asks you to take part in a study, you run the other way. He showed up a few weeks ago. Locked me up out back. Lucky y'all showed up when you did. Gave me a chance to escape."

R&D is a military acronym for Research and Development. (Aka...The Science.)

Priscilla - the cow Mimi's boots were made from.

This is literally the only direct information gained about the boots from this little sleuthing excursion. 

Well, and that Mimi paid cash, which isn't like her.

Side note - I didn't really know what Paramilitary meant, so just in case any of you are also not good with military stuff, Paramilitary groups are like private armies. Like, I dunno, the private security firm that Jesse and Cam discussed in episode 2x04. 👀

Male doctor operating on Steph clearly states:

"All right we're approaching an arterial junction."

A female doctor replies and its less clear.  What I hear is...Blood gasses are back? Anyone else hear something that makes more sense than that?

He replied something like...the stint through here

She says something about pH levels.

Max admits that he didn't know what would happen when he decided to bring Rosa back.  He just wanted to fix the worst thing that ever happened to all of them.

"I can't believe we were Shyamalan'd by an evil twin."

I think Alex is referring to the twist ending? Or maybe just the insane axe murderer stuff.

M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed the Sixth Sense, Signs, Split, etc…

During this scene is the first time we see Michael's tattoo… it's on his arm. I struggled with getting a cap of it, but I know there are gifs going around.

I had every intention of detailing the dialogue in the trailer scene, but before I could get to it, Carina posted the script, so I didn't think it was a good use of my time. Here's the script:

The next morning, Alex calls the Sheriff from outside the trailer for an update.

The Sheriff tells him that Travis and Trevor burned their home and ran...weren't caught by the sheriff.  Which means we may not have seen the last of them.

The Spanish:

"Oh my God. Dios mio, Max. I took off your pants before I even said I love you. I'm some kind of zorra."

Dios mio basically is Oh My God! So Liz really was spiraling. She went, "Oh my God, Oh my God..."

Zorra - female version of Zorro. Basically a vixen, bitch, prostitute… the internet has all sorts of fun words that it translates into. 

"I call this one Visceral Werewolf Part 2, dedicated to my boy Chee Chee, may he rest in peace."

Can we have more Bert? Bert is the best. Also kudos to his goofy friend who is wayyy too excited about this.

Forrest's slam poem:

Locked up for days,

Time slipping away,

On my knees I would pray to break free from this cage.

But bargaining for keys, you forget hidden fees.

And wishing for what you’re missing ain’t the same as living the dream. 

And now I’m fighting to stay on this side of the cage.

Even though I know a part of me wishes I’d stayed. 

Ain’t no prophet or rebel or savior or devil

Could have predicted, fought, cheated or leveled. 

A life with potential that’s squandered, 

A comfortable cell is a question I ponder. 

Am I a free man or a prisoner wanderer?

Max's memory flash:

Young Max, chained to the ground as described in 2x03. 

Max looks scared.

He's dressed all in white like the 1947 aliens after the crash (As shown in 1x12 and 2x03).

He's in a cave or something like a cave. 

Holes in the wall are glowing an orangey red color.

The ceiling is like the alien ship material with the alien symbol in it.  

A figure approaches from behind him, bends down, and places a hand on his shoulder.

It mirrors the figure approaching Nora in 2x03 and touching her shoulder before burning the military men...probably the same person? Noah? The stowaway? Someone new?

After the figure touches Max, he looks at the hand, and then a red glow lights his face.

MUSIC:

1. Xocoyotzin Herrera "Esperanza"

2. Jose Luis Lepe "La Carreta"

3. Eagle Eye Cherry "Save Tonight"

4. Lousiana Red "I Done Woke Up"

5. Whissell "Magnetic"

6. Stop Dead "Alchemistress Dance"

7.  Orville Peck "Turn To Hate"

8. Kim Petras "Close Your Eyes"

9. Orville Peck "Queen Of The Rodeo"

10. Moontricks "The Fall"

11. Years & Years "Hypnotised"

12. Jordan Critz Feat. Birdtalker "Through Your Eyes"

This time I couldn't find the Whissell and Stop Dead tracks on spotify - however the Stop Dead track is referenced at being by Chelsea Dawn in the closed captions.  Which I did find. Trying to confirm this. Let me know if anyone else had better luck!

[galaxierowls]

The Great Gatsby

by

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;

If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,

Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,

I must have you!"

—THOMAS PARKE D'INVILLIERS

Chapter 1

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why—ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

"How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it—I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.

"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.

"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore."

"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's—"

Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"What you doing, Nick?"

"I'm a bond man."

"Who with?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."

"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."

At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."

Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single—"

"You must know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

"Why candles?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

"All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly. "What do people plan?"

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—"

"I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Daisy.

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here—and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently. "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in California—" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and—" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. "—and we've produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?"

There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose—"

"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker.

"Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position."

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

"I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. "An absolute rose?"

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.

Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.

"This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor—" I said.

"Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."

"Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.

"You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. "I thought everybody knew."

"I don't."

"Why—" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York."

"Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.

Miss Baker nodded.

"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?"

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.

"It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.

She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away—" her voice sang "—It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?"

"Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."

The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.

The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.

Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

"We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly. "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."

"I wasn't back from the war."

"That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.

"I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything."

"Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"

"Very much."

Thank you.