#enjoy the one comment though! as opposed to previously having No Comment as their post text

[moeblob]

I present them with one comment this time:

They're based on a red light/green light aka two of the three colors in stoplights.

[beomglocks]

happy (very) 'belated' father’s day

summary : the only father willing to come to the dinner

pairing : dilf neighbor!soobin x (legal)!reader x beomgyu (?)

warnings & other: i wrote the day after fathers day, the title is edited bc im posting this like WAY later LOL, threesome (?), degradation, some beomgyu (no incest), sub!beomgyu if you squint like really fucking hard, definitely not a normal relationship, slight exhibitionism, some possessiveness, DON’T read if you’re uncomfortable with age gaps, edit: REwriting this, this one is for the dilf soobin stans, eat up, don't say i don't feed yall, enjoy <3, kind of proofread

w/c : ~4k

you realize it now.

after living side by side with mr. choi soobin and his son, beomgyu, for a couple of weeks, you’ve started to realize something quite interesting.

1. your mother has a liking for tall lean men.

2. she also has a liking for trying to set you up with the tall lean mens’ son.

now, you wouldn't say you're exactly opposed to getting close to beomgyu. he's conventionally attractive and he seems like a nice boy but you're very much more attracted to the one who created him. it made sense after all.

"give these to mr. choi for me?" your mother all but shoves the roses and chocolates in your arms. you look down quizzically at such gifts. "it's not valentine's day.." you trail off.

you have a strange feeling that soobin would be put off by such acts, not seeming to be as out there as your mother. she doesn't care.

"it's fathers day..well it was...yesterday," she shrugs, fixing her bombshell red lipstick. why was she doing herself up? well a certain mr. choi was coming over.

despite the fact that your own father was out of the picture, that didn't stop your mom from wanting to celebrate every holiday in existence. unfortunately, the only willing father in town to partake in your mother's antics was mr. choi.

he liked to rile her up, you notice. soobin liked to toy with your mother's clear affection towards him, just as he did you. he also liked to throw it in your face sometimes. you didn't say what you observed but you knew he liked to make her feel wanted by a much younger, much more handsome man.

without another word, you decide to give the outlandish gifts to your neighbor. you sigh, looking down at the gifts. some assorted chocolates, nice flower arrangements, and what seems to be a sealed note? you want to roll your eyes but a part of you wonders if soobin would really like these kinds of things.

when you get to the door and ring the bell, the door swings open and there's stands the man himself. he's more put together than you at the moment so you feel out of place even at the front step of his house.

"always a pleasant surprise~" he smiles. his eyes trail down to the gifts in your arms. "for me?" his eyes grow wide and his pouty lips, the ones which you suddenly can't stop staring at since they seemed to be stained cherry red, lay slightly agape.

"from my mom," you deadpan, holding the gifts out. "she's generous~" "overbearing," you correct. "we seem to have different views then," he shrugs. "where's my gift from you though? this can't be all," he ponders in faux thought.

you smile shyly, looking down in embarrassment. "what did you get me baby?" he teasingly leans down closer to you to properly see your face. "could it be perhaps-"

before soobin can place a hand on you, beomgyu comes from downstairs. he's looking sharp, which suits him a lot, you admit. his hair is parted, giving you a teasing view of his forehead. regardless of the fact that he's wearing casual clothes, a stark contrast from his father who dawns an all black attire, beomgyu still manages to make it work for him.

"we'll be seeing you at the dinner," soobin clears his throat, noticing your apparent staring at his son. you can tell that he feels off put by your slight attraction to beomgyu. however small or minuscule it may be its still there to him.

the dinner goes almost exactly how you thought it would. soobin and your mother hit it off, talking about whatever they could to distract themselves from their children for a while. to your surprise soobin barely interacts with you. he seems too occupied with entertaining your mom to pay you any mind.

you're not sure why but this bothers you. beomgyu is occupied in the bathroom at the moment so you can't help but glance in their direction every couple of seconds. your mom is currently leaning against soobin's broad shoulder, laughing at something he's previously said. so he’s a comedian.

you watch as he looks down at her with a satisfied smile on his face. you bite the inside on your cheek and as if on cue, soobin looks up in your direction and smirks. it's almost as if he's taunting you. you bite down harder until you taste something metallic in your mouth.

you're not sure where this feeling of jealously is coming from and you know it's not healthy but you can't help it. maybe you've gotten too attached to your older neighbor in these past couple of weeks.

beomgyu comes out of the restroom with a sigh, walking back into the living room where you are. he can feel a weird tension in your general area but decides not to comment on it. suddenly you stand up, catching beomgyu off guard.

"come on beomgyu!" you say loud enough for everyone to hear especially soobin. the man in question practically pauses in speech midway to look over at you and his son. he eyes you both, mainly giving you a glare that will be engraved in your mind but you don't care. he needs a taste of his own medicine.

"come on let's go to my room, i need to show you something~" you urge him along. meanwhile, you say those words while staring straight at soobin. you hear your mom assure him that it's ok, "the kids are doing their own thing." you knew you were being childish and petty but if soobin wanted to fuck around with you this is what he would have to deal with as well.

you drag beomgyu along to your room who seems quite eager to be in this position. all he knows is that there's a weird tension between you and his father but that's as far as his knowledge goes.

when you both arrive at your room you close the door behind you and lean back on it. "is everything alright?" beomgyu hesitantly asks. you sigh, ushering him along to sit on the bed with you. he looks around subtly at all the little items in your room. everything seems to reflect you well, in his opinion. "well.." you try to stall.

you look up at him through your lashes. "you like me right?" beomgyu stares at you with wide eyes, "i-i mean yeah?" he stutters at your boldness.

"then lets try something," you smile at him, casually pulling your shirt over your head. "let's see how long it takes for your dad to come see us in this position," you say to yourself.

soobin doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to know what's going on here. he knows you're being a brat on purpose but he doesn't care because it makes it all the more fun. he will say he's surprised that you're using beomgyu, his own son, to get to him.

at first, he was getting annoyed with how you seemed to take a liking for his son which is why he wanted to rile you up by seeming extra interested in whatever your mom had to say. now, however, he knew he had a plan for that. you were not going to outsmart him, he wouldn't allow it and he would just have to put you in your place.

"excuse me but i need to use your restroom," soobin makes up a bullshit excuse to get to where you are. "oh of course!" your mom nods at him, instructing him towards the one upstairs. perfect.

"ill just finish up the dinner then!" your mother offers. "great that's enough time to put this slut in her place," he thinks. he smiles at your mom heading for upstairs.

"beomgyu you look like you just saw a ghost," you chuckle lightly, looking down at him. "y/n," he groans at the sight of only seeing you in your bra. he reaches up to grab your breasts, fondling them as delicately as possible. "you can be rough," you offer.

without even bothering to knock on the door, soobin opens it to see you both on the bed in a lewd position. you shirtless on top of beomgyu. he sucks his teeth when you both look back in alarm at the door being burst open. "y/n," he chuckles, almost sadistically.

you can already see the look in his eyes and suddenly you feel bad for not only yourself but beomgyu as well. you try to subtly grab your shirt again in shame but soobin's glare stops you. "what do you think you're doing little slut?" he folds his arms over his chest. not even caring that beomgyu is in the room, he walks over to you and grabs your hair causing you to yelp in surprise.

"s-sir.." soobin narrows his eyes at you then they flit over to beomgyu. "sit over there," he motions to the beanbag in the corner of the room. "i want you to learn something from this." without another word, beomgyu scrambles over to the seat, his heart beating in fear and excitement strangely.

you feel heat rising up your neck and to your cheeks as well as your dripping pussy. "don't be embarrassed, im sure this was your plan all along," soobin tsks, shoving your face down into the sheets. you breathe out when he rips the skirt and underwear from your body without a second thought. the racy thong that was supposed to be his surprise for father's day discarded in a second.

"soobin-" a smack to your ass. "that's not my name."

he doesn't even give you a chance to correct yourself, messing with your sticky juices before entering his cold fingers into your hole. you try to stifle your moan by burying your head further into the sheets.

"god you're so wet," soobin comments. he slowly moves his finger in and out for a while, practically torturing you with how meticulous and slow he's being. "please," you whine pathetically. "please what?" he slows his movements to stare at you with a raised eyebrow.

"please f-fuck me, please, i need your cock," you beg shamelessly. beomgyu breathes heavily, trying to forget about his growing boner but not being able to ignore it. he painfully wants to do something about it but he's not sure if he's allowed to touch himself.

he opts for subtly dragging his hand to his clothed crotch and palming himself through his pants, as uncomfortable as it is. in the meantime, soobin rids himself of his own pants, shaking his head.

he lightly smacks your throbbing pussy and you jolt. "do you seriously think you deserve it? fuck, look at you, can’t wait to be fucked like a bitch in heat~" you whine, wiggling your ass wordlessly in his face to hopefully get what you want.

soobin rubs your clit with narrowed eyes, making sure beomgyu is watching. he could care less that beomgyu is touching himself. he drags some of your cum from your hole to your clit and sighs. "alright then.."

he aligns himself with your hole and without another word slips his cock in with ease, completely bottoming out.

you want to scream at how big he is but you're only left with ragged pants as you know you're unable to make any loud noises. it seriously feels like you could be torn apart at any minute but you love the feeling of soobin’s cock filling you out.

"you're so tight seriously," soobin breathes. he can barely move at first. the way his dick fits inside of your pussy perfectly. he almost wants to comment about how you were practically made for him. he's sure if he flips you over right now, he would see the outline of his cock in your womb.

after waiting a bit for you to adjust to his length he finally starts moving. "shit-" he breathes. you have to grip the sheets to stop yourself from yelling. soobin's hands find their way to your waist and when you look to the side just for a split second you can see beomgyu fighting for his life to not moan out loud.

"look beomgyu-" soobin says in between jagged breaths. "if you wanna fuck around with his pathetic slut this is how you treat her." a moan gets caught in your throat when soobin pounds into you at once. "ah- i-" a part of you wants to apologize and is trying to but he won't give you a chance to speak.

"isn't that right my slutpuppy? did you have something to add?" at the sound of the nickname your walls tighten around him and he sends a harsh smack to your ass. "you're enjoying this aren't you?" he rolls his eyes and sighs heavily.

soobin thrusts start getting faster and faster, beomgyu watching with his mouth agape at his father kissing and sucking at your neck to muffle his own moans. beomgyu can only bite his lip and noises from his throat barely pass his lips as he reaches his high.

soobin growls at seeing your eyes focus on beomgyu so he starts slamming his cock into you at an animalistic pace and you think you might break.

beomgyu bucks into his hand as he cums from the sound and sight of skin slapping added with the tiny noises you'd make. not too long after you feel yourself shudder, unable to warn soobin that you had come you squeeze your eyes shut and let out a whine instead.

"fuck- ok baby," soobin understands as soon as your walls squeeze around him. he pants a couple a times and as soon as he reaches his high he pulls out, pumping his cock to let his cum shoot out on your ass.

"s-sir," you moan. "shhh it's ok." soobin sighs heavily, coming down from his own high to tend to your broken state. he looks over at beomgyu, who's head is lulled to the side as he gazes at your sweat and semen covered body.

soobin sucks his teeth deciding not to say anything to the boy and let him chill for a minute. he shrugs his pants back on and carries you in his arms to the nearest bathroom.

you cozy up to his warm embrace, letting out a sigh. "baby we need to clean you off.." you hear him whisper. you almost completely forget that there's a dinner that's supposed to be happening and you cant just go to sleep with soobin like you'd want.

a sudden coldness hits your body and you shiver. "ok," you agree. his cum is already starting to dry on you and you want nothing more than to be cleaned like he offers. you're not sure how you'll explain your change of clothes to your mom but you're sure you'll come up with something later.

no words need to be spoken after what happened and you're glad because you're not sure what to say. soobin doesn't seem keen on talking at the moment either, too focused on cleaning you off, so you decide to stay quiet.

it's silent in the bathroom until you both hear your mother all out. "dinner's ready!"

you chuckle, breaking the silence as soobin looks up at you with a questioning eyebrow. “happy father’s day.”

[the-witches-you-couldnt-burn]

It started with a whisper

I originally wrote ‘Like I did with you’ as a one-shot but people wanted a sequel. This turned out to be waaaaay longer than expected (4.7k word count). Inspired by Everybody Talks by Neon Trees. I hope you lot enjoy!

Ao3

(Also this is Mari’s new outfit, all credits go to the original artist)

————

Two teens stood upon the balcony of a large banquet hall, exposed to the midsummer night air. The sky was a lilac blanket that hung over the Parisian buildings, speckled with glowing stars. The moon, with it’s crescent smile, beamed down of the young couple.

Hey, baby, won't you look my way?

Marinette’s eyes were closed as she rested her head upon his shoulder, relaxing after the night’s rapid escalation. Tonight she had arrived at the ball with the intent to be there for her friends, but somehow she found herself within the arms of Gotham’s (and probably Paris’) Ice Prince. She had overheard his nickname from the Gotham students, one of which being Jon, who was in the middle of mocking the young Wayne. She had never considered that nickname as suitable; sure he was temperamental & had a tendency to snap, but icey to the core? No.

I can be your new addiction

Damian was calm. For the first time in his life he felt like he could take a breath. His exhale was carried off by a small gust of wind, the bush over hanging the stone railing rustled. With his inhale, the scent of Marinette’s perfume became present once more. Mixed with the crisp night’s air, her usual scent of pastries was mixed with what could only be described as ambrosia. His phone vibrated within his pocket, it was never on volume due to the potential risk it caused during his heroic activities.

“Shit.” Notifications covered his screen, multiple tweets, Instagrams and Tiktoks in which he had been tagged in. But the alert came from his family’s private messaging chat. The whole thread was a shit storm, Grayson and Todd’s messages were completely capitalised (he learnt years ago this meant ‘to yell’ in writing form) and both had multiple ‘keyboard spasms’. Drake, like the thorough detective he is, had combed through the images and videos, investigating their validity. His honorary sisters had replied with ‘awwwww’(s) and ‘Omg we MUST meet this girl! I need to know how she tamed the demon!’. He could practically hear Brown’s shrill voice from across the ocean.

Hey, baby, what you gotta say?

No reply from his father or Alfred. The two of them were the only semblance of ‘normal’ paternal figures he had within his life, after the sham of a relationship he had previously held with his grandfather. Their silence unnerved him.

Marinette had noticed his attention had shifted to his phone, her own mobile was buzzing away within her baby pink purse. Messages, notifications of account tagging and comments galore. A sigh left her lips when she saw her parents seemed to be none the wiser. Good, she didn’t need to deal with future adoration for ‘The boy who swept our daughter off of her feet’ (or something along those lines).

Her cheeks regained some of the warmth they held before as she thought of her parent’s reaction. Scrolling through her Twitter she saw her friends had posted multiple images of the night’s events, majority being her shared dance.

Chloé Bourgeois @TheBestBourgeois

what kind of Disney shit is this? (Insert video of two teens dancing around an mostly empty dance floor.)

Alix Kubdel @Sk8trGirl

Replying to @TheBestBourgeois

I KNOW RIGHT?! THEY WERE FUCKING FLOATING!!!

All you're giving me is fiction

She was thankful that they hadn’t tagged her but she hadn’t been spared by others in attendance. Her post thread had blown up, thousands had commented and even more had viewed the evidence. There was no way she would come out of this unscathed.

“Has anyone been on Twitter today?” The blonde of the family asked as she walked into the dining room. Her eyes focused on her scrolling screen, brows furrowed in confusion. “Actually has anyone seen what’s happening on any of our socials?”

It was early in the afternoon and the family had recently returned home after a straining stakeout. The Joker had broken out of Arkham and the Batfam had to deal with his minions. Dick’s arm was in a sling (sprained from a grapple gone wrong), Jason was icing his hand, Alfred was stitching Bruce’s chest wounds while Tim and the girls escaped without severe injuries. All were still recuperating and finally able to recharge.

Alfred always enforced a strict ‘no devices at the dinner table’ rule; no matter how urgent it was, it could wait until after sustenance was consumed. Tim strongly opposed this, but there was no arguing with Agent A. This all surmises that probably no one had seen the crap storm on social media.

I'm a sorry sucker and this happens all the time

Bruce sighed, bringing his free arm up to rub his eyes. Tilting his head back to look at Steph, “Who was it this time?” Barbara quickly took out her phone to see what Stephanie was talking about, all the while glancing accusingly at Dick and Jason. Both of whom held up their arms (or in Dick’s case arm), declaring their innocence.

“It wasn’t fucking me!”

“Jason! Language!” Dick shot a glare at Jason and was met with one in return. “It wasn’t me either.”

“Then who-“ Bruce started before being cut off by his most rambunctious daughter.

I found out that everybody talks

Stephanie with a squeal, exclaimed that it was Damian. Visions of what the Wayne brat could have done flashed through the heads of everyone in the room. He had been sent overseas before the quarantines and lockdowns hit. During Damian’s first month in France he had been forced into online schooling and then finally when he got to go to in-person classes he hated it. Described the class as a kindergarten with petty and vindictive toddlers.

Had he broken someone’s arm? Was that person of such importance that it had spread over multiple social media platforms? France’s government had announced on June 15th, that teens were now being inoculated so him having COVID-19 was doubtful. Had he insulted the wrong person? Had he taken over the government? He certainly had the potential.

Everybody talks, everybody talks

What they saw stunned them, even Steph as she watched it for the 7th time. Damian Wayne was dancing. But not only that, he was dancing with a girl.

It started with a whisper

“What is this shit?”

No one verbally objected to Jason’s outburst but he was sent a harsh glare from Alfred, Dick and Bruce. Their focus soon returned to the images and videos before them. Babs’ and Steph’s phones were returned to them as the others ran to grab their own devices. They all met back at the table, comparing the posts and comparing their notes.

I can hear the chitchat

“There’s no way this can be real.”

“Jesus Tim,” Barbara rolls her eyes, “have you seen the amount of posts there are? You’d be an idiot to think otherwise.”

Take me to your love shack

“I’m with Tim, how do we know this isn’t some skit. I mean, Demon Spawn almost looks normal. That’s a matter of concern.” He almost dry heaved when he agreed with Tim. Damian couldn’t be capable of naturally exuding that amount of humanity unless there was something in it for him.

Mamas always gotta backtrack

“I was just saying Babs, that we should check the credibility of these images. For all we know they could be gorilla glued together and trying to get unstuck.” Tim cringed at his own reasoning, he really needed to either sleep (probably not going to happen anytime soon) or find his favourite coffee brand (which had been one of the first to vanish after the covid hoarders appeared).

When everybody talks back

Dick was too busy freaking out and spam messaging the youngest Wayne, to defend Damian’s humanity. The family saw this and followed suit, wanting to get information from the source.

Chat name: Alfred supremacy

BigBird: AHHHHHH DAMIAN!

BigBird: YOU LOOK SO CUTE!!!

BigBird: HAIFJDNDNFI

LittleWing: WTF HAPPENED DEMON SPAWN YOU LOOK ALMOST HUMAN

Babs: who knew the city of love would influence the brat

Blondie: they are so cuteeeeeee!

Blondie: We HAVE to meet her!

Silent-but-deadly: agreed.

Timbo: YO DEMON

Timbo: Apparently the videos are legit

Timbo: are you being blackmailed?

And it just devolved into more chaos from there, fueled by the fact that they saw Damian’s ‘Blood Son’ account appear online before vanishing once more. Dick shrieked, “I FOUND HER ACCOUNT!”

The family gathered around the eldest son, peering over his shoulder to view his iPhone 12max screen. They saw a young girl’s Instagram account. It was locked but they could see her profile pic, the girl had black hair and looked to be if Asian decent. They compared it to the videos but it was hard to see due to the hall’s lighting and the minimised facial features of the pfp. Alfred suggested that they search up her username and see who has tagged her, some might have other photos of her.

After research for awhile, the family began to get frustrated with lack of results.

Hey honey you could be my drug

You could be my new prescription

“Come on!” Jason complained, “What kind of teenage girl doesn’t post her life online?” He ignored the girls glares and went back to researching. How had the account by the name of ‘mariiiiinette’ to managed to prevent the entire Wayne clan from accessing it? Damn Instagram privacy settings. He groaned, dragging a hand down his face, “We are fucking stupid. Why don’t we just use the Bat-computer? It would be so much fucking easier.”

“It shouldn’t be used for civilian issues-“

Too much could be an overdose

“The girl could be a meta for all we know! We aren’t safe until we know who she is.” Jason points a finger at Tim, his paranoia flared up and even though he would never admit it, Jason would do anything to protect each member of his family (although Bruce is still debatable).

All this trash talk make me itching

Barbara and Tim took their usual positions as Oracle and Red Robin (who had been banned from patrol due to lack of sleep). The rest of the Batfam stood behind them either with arms crossed or still failing at researching.

Oh my my shit

“The account is owned by a girl called Marinette Dupian-Cheng. She is French-Chinese and her parents own a popular bakery. Also if it wasn’t already obvious, she goes to Collège Françoise Dupont, aka Damian’s French school.” Tim begun informing his nosy family, “But this account has been inactive for the past 6 months, which is strange due to her frequent posting schedule before hand. It seems she probably has a second account and this is her old one.”

Everybody talks, everybody talks

“Not only that,” Barbara interrupted. “There are unopened messages from other accounts that accuse her of being a bully. There is a whole Facebook page about this girl and how she has been hurting her old friends, but neither side seems reliable. The so called victims seem to be twisting the truth but there is barely any information about Marinette so we can’t disprove it either.”

“Read out some of the messages.” Bruce took a cup of coffee from Alfred and sipped it.

The main screen of the bat computer displayed a Facebook group with the banner picture being a photo of Marinette. “They are mostly complaints expected of teen girls when there is a girl they don’t like; ‘Marinette is such a know-it-all’, ‘She is constantly insulting Lila’s intelligence’. They go on to talk about how Marinette was briefly expelled from the Collège before being reinstated by the principle for a reason unknown to them.”

Everybody talks too much

“Her school reports up until this year were good. The newest one states, ‘While Marinette is a wonderful and bright student, I encourage her to settle her disagreements outside of class. This seems to only be a recent occurrence and I implore her to go to the guidance council if she is in need of help.’” A beat of silence echoes through the cave, Tim sighed. “Jason’s meta theory could be correct. She could have just recently started exhibiting her abilities and using them to get what she wants.”

“Bruce what do you want to do?”

“We’re going to Paris.”

She opened her eyes to the blaring morning light that streamed through the blinds. Her lashes still painted with mascara that refused to leave. She felt a pang of sorrow when she was removing her makeup and dress last night, she never wanted the night to end. She shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen, covering her mouth when she yawned. She greeted her mother as she entered the kitchen to get breakfast.

She glanced at her phone and there was the chaos that was started hours ago and it was still occurring. It was the weekend, she wouldn’t need to deal with her classmates until Monday. But she would still have to survive her parent’s interrogation. Out of the corner of her eye she caught her mother smirking at her.

Everybody talks

“Nadja told me some interesting news about last night.” Marinette held her breath, glaring at the toaster, willing it to hurry up so she could escape. “Well,” Sabine patted her shoulder before rubbing Mari’s back. “I know you didn’t want to go but I hope you had fun.”

With that she exited the kitchen, probably going to help her father in the bakery. The ravenette stared after her, eye widened in shock, jumping when the toaster went off. Buttering her toast she went over the conversation, her brows furrowed in confusion. She had expected a ‘When do I get to meet the oh so famous prince?’ or ‘Should I be expecting a new guest sometime in the near future?’ or at least a ‘Who was that young man, Bǎozàng (宝藏 it means treasure)?’ But she said nothing.

A small smile was plastered upon her face as she changed and went down to help her parents in the bakery. Her father didn’t say anything either, he gave her a knowing smile before continuing to kneed the dough. She sat at the the store front as the cashier whilst her parents were busy making ‘Paris’s Finest Pastries’.

Her musings slowly faded as she was brought back to reality by badly hushed whispers. Two young preteens were by the bread roll casing near the door. She had seen them come in before with their parents, the girls went to the prestigious international school over in the 16th arrondissement. The one with purple hair kept whispering to the brunette, both ‘subtly’ glancing towards her. Using her enhanced hearing she listened in on their conversation.

“That’s her, I swear that’s her in the video.”

The blonde’s face soured likes she sucked on a lemon. “No, it wasn’t good lighting there is no way he would dance with someone like her.”

Everybody talks

Marinette had tough skin but their words had an impact, only a small one due to her defence mechanism of repressing emotions. She stopped listening and went back to drawing in her sketchpad, she was in desperate need of a new school outfit.

The two girls eventually came up to the counter, goods in hand. Marinette rung up and bagged their items (paper because save the turtles sksksk) in a tired daze. A phone was shoved into her face, her eyes barely adjusted to view the screen before the blonde spoke.

“Is this your instagram?” She asked in a tone so snobbish that it should be illegal from a person her age. Marinette finally was able to view the screen that was barely an inch from her face. Her old Instagram ‘mariiiiinette’ was displayed on screen, she hesitantly nodded, gaze flicking back to the two in front of her.

The blonde’s nose scrunched up and the purple goth girl squealed in delight. They soon after left the store, their conversation had devolved into ‘See! I told you’ and ‘Yeah, yeah. You were right.’

Walking to school on Monday, she had finally come down from cloud nine. She still rode the tail end of her high as she rushed along her path to her campus, she wasn’t going to be late but she sure wasn’t going to be early. She had spent the better part of the weekend designing and sewing a brand new outfit. Her new look was composed of a black cropped singlet (L'amour gagne hemmed into it and it’s straps), paired matching peach plaid cropped overshirt and a-line miniskirt. Her hair was down, ballet flats were worn and her makeup was the usual with the added edition of a rose gold eyeshadow.

Even though her face was covered in a black and gold mask, she looked hot.

She reached the campus and the whispers started again, people were still buzzing from Friday night. Her classmates, the majority of her grade and the younger years seemed to gossiping before class about the formal’s events. She couldn’t spot any of her friends or the two Gotham transfers, so she was stuck listening the the chitchat. Why couldn’t she have been late like usual?

Damian had a fowl disposition and it showed in multiple icey glares (and that was before he even reached the collège). His family had made their appearance known in Paris at 1am Sunday morning. He could have used his dorm to escape but his family didn’t have the word ‘privacy’ within their vocabulary. He didn’t want to have to pay for a lock replacement due to his brothers’ (most likely Todd with Drake & Grayson laughing at him) lock picking habit.

The Ice Prince was back with full force. He had just been... influenced by all the other couples. Yes he did respect Dupain-Cheng and he appreciated her company & pleasant conversations. He would struggle to hide a small smile at the memory of the dance, even if he denied himself the happiness of normality, he felt content when reminiscing.

“Ooo the Ice Prince is here, did he have a fight with his princess or something?” The voice seemed to mock him.

“The Disney Magic is gone. The demon is back.”

Everybody talks

At the second jeer he shot a glare at the perpetrator. Jon held his hands up in an ‘I surrender manner’, laughing as he joined Damian at his side. The two entered the school’s large foyer and looked to see if any of the classes were open yet. Sadly they weren’t, before he was wrong and the his class was plain torture but this was truely hell.

He saw Dupain-Cheng sitting alone on the stairs, drawing within her sketchpad. He wondered how a girl like her, who always seemed to be involved in other’s lives (for the better) was ignoring all of the comments about her. She felt his focus centre on her, eyes flicking up to meet his, she provided him with a small wave before continuing to draw.

Jon nudged him with an elbow to his ribs and dragged him off to the side, into the boy’s locker rooms. Jon scowled at the door, “It’s a mad house out there. You’ve heard what some people are saying right?”

“Why would I care about these imbeciles?”

Jon jabbed Damian in the chest, causing the demon to stumble. Green eyes darted from blue eyes to the tan finger. “You care when lies hurt people you care about.”

The day began to rapidly decline once the two dance partners took their seats, next to each other. They had both been placed up the back of the class and them sitting together hadn’t been a problem until now apparently. She wasn’t even safe when the teacher started their lecture, whispers and glances were cast towards them. Once the two got to biology it was better, Ms Mendeleiev was a strict teacher and was able to control the class.

Everybody talks

But the recess came. When the bell rang she slowly started packing up her equipment, Alix and Max (who she shared biology with) waited for her; she watched as the Ice Prince left through the door. She knew she didn’t need to be concerned about her friends joining in with the gossiping, if anything they would dispel people and tell them to ‘Mind their own fucking business’ because this whole situations is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous.

She did receive some slight teasing from Alix about being a Disney princess, but Marinette quipped back about the skater’s fairytale story being ‘Pinknette, the Geek and the Beast’. The three met up with the other two of their group, they had just come from geography. Kim was complaining that Argentina was a state in America.

“That’s Arkansas you idiot!” Chloe shrieked, lightly hitting his arm with her white handbag. Max held his head in his hand as he approached, how had his tutoring sessions failed so badly?

Chloe turned to Marinette, a smile forming from her glare. The blonde examined the designer’s clothing, nodding. “You look like you are about to have a hot girl summer.”

Marinette’s face burned, the tips of her ears coated in red. Alix chuckled and nudged her shoulder.

Everybody talks

“Look at her, she is so desperate for his attention that she probably copied those designs.”

“Why do you think he danced with her anyways? Maybe she has something on him? I mean, she forces him to sit next to her in class, who knows what else she has done.”

What. The. Fuck.

Chloe glowered towards Lila’s posy. “We have a fucking seating plan, those cretins-“ She made a motion to storm over but was caught by the ravenette, looking back to Mari, her rage decreased from a boil to a simmer.

“No Chlo. It’s fine, it’s not worth it.”

Everybody talks... back

The group walked out to the school’s front steps, it was a mad house... a mad courtyard? Students sitting on the stairs, on the grass and standing around mingling, all of them now were staring at her. She held her backpack close to her chest (she had swapped her signature coin-bag purse for the pastel pink bag), pretending its a shield. Her friends circled around her becoming an obstacle to prevent their stares. If people were afraid of a scowling Kim then they don’t know the scorn of Chloe or Alix’s bite. And Max, sweet quiet Max.... you better hope he doesn’t have blackmail on you (he probably does), he can dismantle your life with a single anonymous post.

Rushed footsteps approached them. The group was broken apart by a rude Wayne boy, he swept Mari away from the school and the gossip crowds within. Her four friends shouted at him and he kept walking, shooting a glare at them in response. He kept pushing Marinette forward with a hand placed on the small of her back, her backpack was now swung over his other shoulder.

They ended up in her favourite alcove. She had brought him here with the other Gotham transfers for a native’s tour of Paris. It had always been her safe place to be creative.

It started with a whisper (everybody talks, everybody talks)

“My apologises for our rushed departure but you seemed to want to get out of their anyhow.” His gruff tone danced through the silence, his head still peaking around the corner; watching for any unwelcome guests.

“Thank you.” She whispered, her voice almost being carried off by the gentle wind. A genuine smile illustrated upon her face.

“We weren’t able to converse after the events of the other night. I would like to formally apologise once more for my actions causing this adverse reaction. If I had kn-“

“You don’t need to apologise!” She squeaked, hiding her eyes behind her fisted hand. Her shoulders curled inwards as she tried to make herself seem as small as possible, a side effect of her common use of her secondary miraculous form: Multimouse.

“I chose to dance with you, you don’t need to apologise for my own actions.” He stared at her with confusion. He had taken the blame so she wouldn’t need to do so herself; but she had taken it anyways. He had given her an out. Why does she always take the blame, even for things out of her control?

“But if I hadn’t danced with you then you wouldn’t have been the focus of the entire school.”

Marinette stepped forward, her eyes hardened and blazing. “Damian Friday night I went there out of obligation to my friends, I didn’t want to be there. But dancing with you? That was the highlight of my week, probably my month too. I enjoyed our time together.” Her face softened, lips twitched downwards ever so slightly. “I don’t regret anything about that night, but do you?”

He was bad at comfort. Everyone in his family avoided him when they were in need, he plainly didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t visibly upset but he sensed that she is disappointed that he apparently didn’t share the same opinion of the night. The only thing he regretted about that night was letting Jon call him a coward, but then again if he didn’t he never would have danced with Dupa- Marinette.

He picked up her clenched hand, the tension in her body alleviated at his embrace. He remembered how Grayson would apologise to Kor’i or how his father interacted with Ms Kyle. He brought their hands up and placed a kiss upon her knuckles.

And that was when I kissed her (everybody talks, everybody talks)

“I do not regret anything either—“ he cleared his throat, “In fact, I’d appreciate if we would be able to interact more, especially outside of that cesspit.”

Was he...?

It didn’t matter.

She smiled the same dazzling smile she gave him at the dance. She nodded while laughing, “I’d love that.”

Everybody talks

The two stay talking, hidden within their secret alcove for the rest of the day. She texted her parents to say she was with a friend and would be back later that night. Damian didn’t bother texting his family, Marinette knew he had to be back soon due to his dorm’s curfew.

The sun was setting at they walked back together, he did the gentlemanly thing and dropped her off at her bakery door. She could see her mother behind the register inconspicuously looking over at the two of them. Damian’s lips quirked upwards, she was satisfied with his kinda-smile.

He walked back, hands in pockets and a neutral expression upon his face instead of a scowl. He reached his door and took his keys, he found that it was already open. Damn.

His family was splayed out within his two roomed dorm. Todd and Drake were fighting over a place to sit on his bed, whilst his father sat at his desk, watching the commotion. The three of them turned to him as he enter the room, they were the only family members able to attend on short notice; Cain had a ballet audition, Gordon & Brown had concert tickets for tomorrow, Grayson had to take care of Mar’i while Kor’i was on Tamaran and Alfred stayed to ensure no one died during their night time activities.

“We need to talk Damian.” His father stood, leaning onto the desk chair. “The school called and said you had an unexcused absence for half the day. Where were you Damian?”

Damian stared into his father’s eyes. He was fifteen, almost an adult, but was treated like he was ten again.

“I was with a friend.”

“Probably the girl from the dance. Marinette, right?” Todd mocked him. Damian snapped his head in the direction of his bed, glaring at both his brothers.

“That’s what I want to talk about with you Damian. Now I don’t know her personally but from what we’ve discovered through our investigation we have some concerns. What’s happened Damian?”

The youngest Wayne’s glare shifted off of his brothers to the floor, and then finally to his father; his family sitting in wait for his answer. Straightening his posture, his shoulders clicked as he rolled then back. His statement’s tone was sure and steady, “Everybody talks father.”

Everybody talks... back

[felassan]

Jon Renish (Foundation Technical Director @ BioWare, working on DA4) recently did a Twitch stream where he played through some DAO. Although he works on DA, this is his first time playing through DAO. He’s playing through it looking at random details from a dev perspective as he’s currently working on DA4 and therefore wants to know more about the previous games.

On the stream he mentioned some tidbits on the development of DA4. There were also some insights and anecdotes about the development of DAO and similar. It’s a 3 hour stream so I collected them here in case that’s of use to anyone (for example not everyone can watch streams which don’t have subtitles/captions). The stream is a fun/interesting watch though, so if you’re curious or able to watch I recc doing so. 😊 The rest of this post is under a cut for length.

Please note that there’s some paraphrasing on my part, this is not a transcript.  There are also some additions from another dev who featured on the stream to give some commentary. The stream also contains more snippets that at times I couldn’t make out (I tried my best!).

(There is a mention of Cullen’s VA in the text below.)

DA4

Jon said he can talk about things about DA4 that aren’t “consumer-facing”, but he can’t say anything about the game that would be consumer-facing but which isn’t already publicly available. There are several reasons for this. One, that’s not his job, there are people whose job this is and they let each other do their respective roles. Two, BW are a publicly-traded company, so if he said something that could affect that that would be insider trading. Three, they’re not done making DA4 yet, so if he said that they have added [x] to the game and people got all excited about that or pre-ordered on that basis, but [x] ended up being cut, people would be like ‘BioWare lied to us’, when it’s just that things changed during the course of development, as is often the case

He’s glad that fans are excited for the game but notes that fan expectations are always double-edged. It can be really tough as some people started ‘playing’ the game in their heads as soon as they heard of it. That’s fine, he loves that, but he hopes that peoples’ expectations don’t turn into requirements. Clearly BW have alluded to certain characters, like Solas, being in the game, but some fans say things like “If [say] Morrigan isn’t in the game, then, rahhh!” Y’know, there’s a lot of talk about how certain characters have to be in the game, and yeah.

On characters which are quantum (i.e. characters which can die or which can have similar end-states as death in previous games): their being quantum makes it really hard for the devs to work with those characters in subsequent games. The devs naturally aren’t going to put as much effort into characters which could have died previously. A character can have had an amazing appearance throughout/role in a previous game, but if there is a risk of something happening to them and of them being removed [effectively] from the plot, it just doesn’t make sense to have them as a major character in a subsequent game. If a character can, say, sacrifice themselves in some glorious ending, the devs have to make sure that if they use them again, in worldstates where the character didn’t do that, the character is kind of ‘muted’, as the devs don’t want to disrespect the players who made a different choice

A comment in chat expressed a wish for Shale in DA4. Jon’s response is that he has no idea on that front

Bugs don’t come out of crunch, they come out of development in general. Crunch does impact on the quality of a game though. In recent years BW are always really trying to reduce crunch, they’re currently working really hard to bring it down. The best way of doing that is by controlling scope. As creatives it’s tough to balance wanting to make great stuff and be industry-leading with the desire to constantly do extra passes over things they’ve created like the audio, art etc. Their biggest enemy is time, other ways of reducing crunch or time spent in general include iterating tools to make often-repeated processes as time-efficient as possible

I think the following was an observation on the industry in general as opposed to a BW-specific/-exclusive comment: he thinks that as a result of this sort of thing [working to reduce crunch], a lot of games are going to have to be smaller and a lot more focused in scope i.e. the devs will have to focus on hitting the key selling points of that particular game/series as hard as they can, and cut down on branching out sideways/wide on a bunch of random other stuff

Jon doesn’t personally engage in character creators in games, but he knows that for some players that expression is worth a lot of time and focus. BW want to be industry-leading in this kind of stuff as it’s something which is interesting/key/integral to their games

In a way BW have made their own nest of problems what with every DA game being so different to the previous one. Still, he notes that each game has a staunch fanbase that says that their particular favorite game is the best one in the series

He doesn’t want people who think that DA4 isn’t what they want to buy it and be upset - there are so many other great games out there! BW are going to make the game they’re going to make - if some people like it, that’s great, and if some people don’t, that’s cool. Sometimes waiting until reviews are out and/or really seeing beforehand if a game is something that you want [has things/features in it that you want] prior to getting it - as opposed to jumping right in or pre-ordering - is a good idea. Fans don’t always know what they want, but they do know what they like - these are 2 different things

He hopes that whatever they ship for DA4, people go “I enjoyed this experience”, and that then, if there’s additional content for it down the road, people can decide, “do I want this further content?”

On hair: BW are using the new hair technology in the latest version of the Frostbite engine, so they’ll see what they can do! This was said in response to a comment about the hair in the latest FIFA games (as EA make FIFA)

A comment in chat asked about a flying mechanic (griffons). Jon’s response is that flying is such a heavy gameplay mechanic that you can’t put it in a game without everything in the game being built about it (see Anthem)

Relating to the above comment, in DA4 mounted combat would be cool but then they’d have to make the game ‘around’ mounted combat and make the mounted combat feature meaningful

On the underwater concept art: it should not be interpreted as a promise of gameplay. BW have amazing artists who sit down for a couple weeks while they’re in early production and just draw loads and loads of all kinds of stuff. Concept art is like a moodboard or Pinterest board. Elsewhere in the stream he advised, take all the concept art together like a mosaic and ask, ‘what is the overall theme[s] here?’, and to zoom out from individual details. [This stuff echoes PW’s word on concept art]

BW don’t generally write things or the choices as bleak as the choices in DAO were anymore. This is a conscious choice on their part, they want their game to be fun [note: this was said when the side quest in Orzammar where the Warden has the option of convincing a dwarven mother to abandon her young baby to die was being played through. It seems to refer to intensively grimdark choices/beats of this kind]

I think this was more of a general comment on games: SSDs (solid state drives) mean that players will see shorter elevator rides (Mass Effect - was this a reference to the remaster?) and fewer switchback corridors (those are actually loading zones). Generally, these are going to change mechanically the time it takes to do stuff in games

The devs have lots of features on their backlog that they’d like to offer players but each will ofc involve implementation and subsequent maintenance, and each one that is chosen to add is being chosen over something else. And sometimes, it’s hard for them to tell if [x] feature or [y] feature would be better to add to the game

They’re about to work on a giant feature (a pure tooling feature, something that isn’t consumer-facing) that is probably going to take ~2 staff years of effort [I think “staff effort” includes multiple staff working concurrently, so 2 years of staff effort doesn’t = 2 years of time chronologically] to get done in the next few months. They’re investing all this effort across the people working on it because they don’t want their artists and designers etc to have to deal with the problem that it’s going to solve anymore. I’m not sure what this feature is but elsewhere in the stream they referred to tooling and automation and gave the example of, the better your tooling is, the fewer times you have to manually set the camera for a human vs elf vs dwarf position, for dynamically-generated [cinematic?] content and for the first pass to be automated (if this is the case, less time is spent/wasted on redoing it and manually touching it up) [see last bullet point in this section]

He doesn’t know how big DA4 is going to be but said “let’s ballpark and say like most games it’ll be somewhere between 70 and 100 GB”

If we kept our Wardens as the PC throughout all 3 games, at the end they would be so powerful that it’d be a bit like “Let’s just do [thing], I’ve killed gods before, whatever”. He thinks it’s good that they have fresh characters each time in DA in order to reset that power level. Some people want more Commander Shepard in the next Mass Effect and he feels like, ‘what else could you possibly want / what else could that character possibly do after 3 games?’

When asked how much freedom he/they have now to focus on next gen, he said that there’s actually almost no difference on that front. The problems never change. They now have better renderers, better ray-tracing, better graphics cards etc, but they have always made DA games for high- and low-spec PCs, so it’s actually about gameplay systems. The freedom isn’t power-based and them getting access to more cores and more RAM generally isn’t going to change how the games are played. The games still have to be made for hard drives on PC. Dev creativity matters more than power here. The challenge of building a BW game is more about/from managing loads of different plotstates, loads of different art pieces, etc

On the title situation (two): names are the last thing they worry about because names have to go through legal before being approved. Every name, including character names, has to be checked in case it’s a famous person, or associated with something bad, or offensive in a different language due to localization etc

They don’t do face scans of people with big beards

There was also a bit about changes/developments to/in the cinematic design process and associated tooling [?] but I found it too hard to follow sorry >< This bit of commentary begins at timestamp ~ 1:52:45 and continues til ~ 2:00:05 [keep listening through the bit where they pause for a cutscene]

General BW

There’s currently ~350 staff in Edmonton, ~200 in Austin and more elsewhere

He notes that DA games sell pretty well, but relative to EA games in general, they’re a drop in the bucket compared to FIFA

DAI

5% of players of DAI never created a character [Q: does this refer to people who just used the default appearances/presets with no editing, or people who only played multiplayer?]

The mounts don’t actually go faster than running, this is an illusion

I think they said it has 55,000 lines of dialogue. [I’m pretty sure I remember devs elsewhere saying it has 80,000 lines of dialogue]

One of the companions had to have their name changed during development because of legal/translation reasons. It sounds like the original name sounded too close to something offensive

DA2

Back when DA2 was internally code-named “Nug Storm”: this was at the beginning when it was pitched to the team on a set of slides. The image on the slide for that pitch had devil horns, a metal hand and no flesh, it was just made out of fire and flames

DAO

The engine DAO is made on is the third engine that they tried for it during development. [David Gaider has gone into the DAO engine stuff some on Summerfall’s series of DAO playthrough streams]

The cracks on the cracked eluvian asset are modelled after the crack on the Tardis in Doctor Who from around that time, as at the time some devs had been talking about Doctor Who a lot. A dev actually added this factoid to DAO’s entry on TV Tropes but someone else (evidently not a DA dev) came by and deleted it saying that it was too much of a stretch x)

Before the game had its name there was an HTML script that randomly generated possible titles for consideration, it adds verbs and nouns together e.g. “Grim Dark”. One of the craziest possibilities that it once generated that the devs always remember is "Bone Wind”

One of the portraits that’s used for decoration around the world in-game (it’s of a bearded human man) is actually of a specific BW staff member

He played through Stone Prisoner, where Wilhelm’s son Matthias gives exposition in the cellar. Matthias is voiced by GE and this had been pointed out to Jon earlier on. Jon: “I don’t think that character’s voice acting was super strong there”

On the in-game area towards the end of Stone Prisoner: Outdoor areas in games are large and one of the things needed for them is streaming, so different chunks can be ‘streamed in’. There’s a tower [?], and technically the top of the tower was made an outdoor level so that sky stuff could be there, though it didn’t really need to be. The person that made it an outdoor level chose the very smallest chunk size for the terrain mesh, which determines how fine of a streaming they do. So when playing, every time you moved like 4 meters, the game would stream out 50-100 chunks behind you and the same in front of you (this is the bubble around the player of what actually exists). Because it was so small, it was constantly thrashing the CPU and disc to do all the loading. The devs were like “this isn’t going to work”, but they barely had any time. The solution: they made a new level that was outdoor and copied all the sunlight and other settings, but with the largest chunk size. They copy-pasted the entire level from one to the other. The problem with that many chunks then is that there was a giant expanse of flat terrain sticking out of the middle of the tower. They didn’t know if the story was going to involve shots of the outside of the tower for this sequence or not, so they took the terrain deformation tool and bundled all the terrain vertices at the bottom of the tower in a giant clump. So to this day there’s a mess of vertices and twisted terrain at the bottom of the final level that probably no-one has ever seen [not sure though if this anecdote is in reference to a place in that DLC or somewhere elsewhere in the game?]

There were also some tidbits on Anthem, however I didn’t note them down (sorry).

If you think I misheard or misunderstood anything from this stream please let me know and I will edit/fix it. :) 

(Thankyou to some of my friends who explained a tech detail from this to me.)

[source]  <-- current rewatch link

[do-it-four-swords]

do you believe that four is a system ?

~~This is me speaking as the admin, not the character~~

I really don’t know enough about systems to be able to comment. I know plenty of people headcanon Four as a system, and plenty of people don’t.

I know that JoJo suffered some backlash for the way she talked about systems in her explanation of the Four Sword, but it was just an issue of lack of knowledge, and she quickly corrected her mistakes and apologized.

The only information I have about systems is what I learned in my high school psych class and stuff people have posted on tumblr (I am not counting fanfic because I know that it isn’t always accurate in its portrayal, though I have read a few system four fics as well)

I’ve never interacted with a system in person and I don’t think I have online either

So I really do not have enough information to be able to have an opinion

I know a lot of people have different opinions. I couldn’t say which I prefer

As stated previously, I have read a few system Four fics and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I am very much not opposed to the idea of Four being a system

But in terms of the rp, I cannot play Four as a system. I would not know how to properly portray a system, and I know that I would definitely offend some people if I tried.

My goal in rp is to have fun and tell jokes. I don’t have a set way of doing things. So the way I present Four may be different depending on what I’m doing (playing as Four as one person, playing as the colors split, playing as Four but without one color because that color was turned into food, etc).

So my Four for the rp is not a system.

As for the character in general, if you headcanon Four as a system, that’s great. If you don’t, that’s fine too. It doesn’t matter to me, as long as you’re having fun and being respectful of others

I know this whole thing is kind of a non answer but the short of it is that I don’t know enough about systems to say

(Also if I said anything wrong or messed up the terminology, please let me know and I will change it)

[arcticdementor]

Some thoughts on territorial integrity

One of Steven Pinker’s much touted metrics of the world improving is that from WW2 onwards, no country had their border changed by force (Crimea is generally considered the break in the trend, though debatably there are scattered others like Kosovo). Territorial integrity is a precondition for making sustained national sovereignty possible, and both are key elements in the post war world order. On its face, the knowledge that your country won’t have its borders arbitrarily redrawn by a bigger, stronger country is an incredible sign of progress that allows smaller, developing countries a level of safety and security never previously enjoyed.

But a while back I had to do some research on secessionist movements and was staggered by how many there were. For the random two decades we looked at there were over 70 different secessionist groups scattered across almost as many countries. There are a few countries with multiple movements (Myanmar is the undisputed winner here), but even cutting out the repeats leaves dozens upon dozens of countries containing some group of people that desperately wants out. Realizing this sort of made territorial integrity look less like an unambiguous sign of progress for me.

These secessionist groups are basically always ethnic or religious minorities. Sometimes they’re trying to secede because they’ve dealt with brutal oppression or discrimination, sometimes they just don’t feel like they signed on to some post-colonial country that had its borders drawn by outside actors, sometimes they’ve just gotten pretty good at self-governance and want their polity made official.

These secessionists aren’t all innocent victims, they include violent terrorist organizations like the Tamil Tigers and Abu Sayyaf. But many of them are; many of these groups have legitimate claims to oppression, decades or centuries of enduring ethnic cleansing and brutal state oppression. Many of them have valid desires for independence and self-governance. The strength and durability of the surrounding nation they have to live within doesn’t provide them safety and security, it’s often the very thing forcing them to live without safety or security.

This isn’t a polemic about how territorial integrity or national sovereignty is bad, or how the US or whoever should encourage secessionist groups, which I generally oppose. I have other issues with strict interpretations of national sovereignty, like the fact that diplomacy must be conducted state-to-state in denial of on-the-ground realities of who has authority (ex: Somaliland is a far more functional “country” than Somalia, but we insist on negotiating with the failed state half of the nation). But these objections aside, territorial integrity and national sovereignty still seem important to me for all the normal good reasons, like international stability and peace.

This is mostly a thought dump of something weighing on my mind. But I gotta say, learning that almost a third of the world’s countries contain people who want to escape sure made those unchanged borders look a lot less like progress and a lot more like cages.

[rainydaydream-gal18]

Cal Kestis x Reader: Continued

(Author's Note: Oh wow, so I finally have a fic to publish! It's been a while since I've posted any Cal Kestis content. I hope my Star Wars crew enjoys it! I am currently working on a Hobbit fanfic as well, so stay tuned. Again, thank you for your patience and support. I've had some serious writer's block, and I'm glad to finally have something for you guys. Apologies, I need to fix the spacing and indentation since I am publishing on my phone right now. But for now, enjoy!)

    The forests of Kashyyk were dense, and the air was humid.  It was a great space for training, which is why you and your mentor-slash-boyfriend Cal Kestis were there.  Plus, he had made friends with the Wookies on his journey and liked to check up on them every now and then.  

   Focusing your energy, you launched yourself off a boulder towards the platform above.  You made the landing with ease, shooting your companion a pointed look.  Your skills were certainly improving.  Training more with Cal was paying off.

    Your victory was short-lived, though.  Moments after your feet met the platform, they slipped on the wet surface and caused you to stumble backwards.  You didn’t fall very far before a strong hand grasped yours, pulling you the rest of the way up until you were face-to-broad-chest with Cal.

    “Hey,” you said.

    He chuckled.  “Hey.”  

    BD-1, who had previously been resting on his shoulder, jumped off and gave a few amused beeps.

    You smiled at the droid before meeting Cal’s gaze again.“Thank you for that.  I wasn’t really looking to fall on my butt today.”

    He shook his head and took a step back.  “If you were focusing more instead of bragging  with your eyes….”

    “Oh, please.”  He was right, of course, but you waved his comment off.  Finally, you sighed and conceded, “alright, I’ll try and be more focused and less braggy.”

    At that, he chuckled again and kissed you on the forehead.  It was the strangest thing.  One moment, he was pulling away, and in the next moment you were locking lips.  It was gentle with passionate undertones.  His arms wrapped around you, and your hands rested on his shoulders.

    The sound of Wookie speech interrupted your moment.  You and Cal broke away abruptly and put a little distance between you.  The small patrol of Wookies weren’t fooled, though, and they eyed you both slyly.  One let out a smug phrase in their language, and you felt your cheeks grow warm.

    BD-1 let out beeps of laughter and jumped back up onto Cal’s shoulder.  He seemed to be blushing too, which was a rare but cute sight.

    “Hello there,” Cal greeted the patrol with the wave of his hand, recovering from the moment.

    The Wookies greeted him in response, and as they conversed, you took in the world around you.  It was very beautiful there.  Such a shame that the Imps were trying to take over and enslave the brave people who lived there.  You were careful not to allow bitterness and hate take hold, but it definitely created some unsettling feelings in you.  It is difficult to feel compassion and care for something and not get upset when it’s threatened.  However,  is it possible that your compassion could extend to all?  Of course you were opposed to what the Empire was doing, but perhaps there was room for compassion towards the individuals brought up in the regime, those who were sucked in out of fear or lack of purpose. How dark it must be for them.  There may be a way to reach them...

    Your train of thought was interrupted by Cal’s beckoning gesture.  You had been so deep in thought, not even realizing that you were beginning to wander.  You strided back towards the platform and leaped up to join the others, making sure to focus and not slip off this time.

    “The Wookies say they’re very happy to be working with us.  They’ve invited us back for a meal.”

    “Oh, that’s great,” you replied, smiling.  As exciting as it would be to dine with another culture, a part of you was nervous.  You weren’t exactly fluent in Wookie, nor were you familiar with their customs.

    As if sensing your feelings, which he probably did, Cal offered a soft smile.  “I’ve been catching up on my language skills, so don’t worry.  I can translate, and it’ll be a learning experience for us both.”

    You nodded, feeling more at ease.  Cal explained to the Wookies that he and you needed to check in with the rest of the Mantis crew because apparently they were invited as well.  You’d return to that spot in the forest shortly.

    As you parted ways with your allies for a short while, you sensed something was off.  There was a particularly dark feeling that was nagging you under the surface.

    “You feel that?” Cal asked, suddenly growing tense.

    “Yes,” you nodded.

    Suddenly a blast came out from nowhere, and you quickly activated your lightsaber to deflect it.  Cal activated his as well and got into a defensive stance, holding the blade close.

    A small squad of Imperial Troopers were nearby, you could feel it.  They were hidden away as they fired at you and your companion.

   Despite your ability to deflect these blasts, you were getting tired of them remaining safe while you and Cal were sitting ducks. You wanted this fight to end quickly.  So you paused your deflecting, drawing in a calm breath. You focused and pulled the opponents from their hiding places in the brush. They all came flying into the clearing at once, shouting. You held them in place for a moment. 

    When you opened your eyes, Cal was gazing at you with lips parted in amazement. You glanced around and realized the troopers had been knocked off their feet and were still recovering.

    You were just as surprised by your move as he was. With lightsaber in hand, you approached the closest trooper. The glowing blade hummed as you gave it a spin in your hand and aimed it at him.

   "Please, no!" The trooper begged. 

   "You are endangering these people. They've been through enough, don't you think?" You questioned, tone sharp.

   Cal grew uneasy beside you, but didn't intervene. He must have sensed that you meant this individual no harm.

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," the trooper continued.

  "We are all capable of darkness. So I want you to remember this moment the next time you are faced with a decision; the next time the Empire demands that you take a life or try to enslave it." Your tone grew softer as you knelt down. "I will keep fighting you if you choose to keep attacking, but I'm giving you the chance to walk away. Remember this moment, and think about what you'd want if you were in their place." 

   At that, you rose to your feet. Other troopers had gotten back on their feet as well and begun aiming blasters at you. The trooper in front of you held up his gloved hand as a sign for them to halt. 

  "We will say that the jedi were too strong and that we had to retreat," he informed them.

   One tried to protest. "But, sir-" 

   "Let's go," he insisted. "We don't belong here."

   And they left. They hurried away into the forest, and you turned to Cal. "We're fighters," you said, "but we're also supposed to value mercy and peace."

   "A very important lesson," he agreed. "I struggled with it for some time after order 66. But moving on doesn't mean I have to be okay with what happened. Perhaps, I can bring about more change with meaningful words and action rather than just a lightsaber, like what you just did."

    "Maybe it changed something for the better, maybe not." You shrugged. "I guess we'll find out."

    "Let's get back to the Mantis. We need to fill them in on everything and make it to dinner with the Wookies on time."

    "I really worked up an appetite there," you agreed. "Let's go."  He leaned in and planted a kiss on your lips.  "What was that for?"

   "Oh, no reason. You're just beautiful, is all."

   You rolled your eyes, smiling. 

[2centsnobodyasked4]

Reviewing SOME Hyun Bin Kdramas

I spent 80 days in quarantine and watched 7 Hyun Bin Kdramas!!! He was my quarantine buddy. I’m so in love with him. 

I had previously reviewed Secret Garden, Memories of the Alhambra, and Hyde Jekyll Me. I finally finished the last three that I needed but I had so much going on that I didn’t get to review them...and since they are no longer fresh on my mind I’m just going to do a quick summary of the main things that I remember.

My Lovely Sam Soon

I LOVED this drama. I really thought I wasn’t going to because of how old it was. Literally the oldest one I’ve watched. But it was good!

I really wanted to do a post dedicated to this drama but I would never finish at this point.

First Hyun Bin drama where I was SOOO mad at him!!! I wanted Sam Soon to leave his ass!!!

I was upset that they made the second female lead likable and sweet. Under other circumstances, i would have wanted her to end up with Hyun Bin...

I was shook that he literally slapped a woman.....i do not understand that at all! maybe because it was a different time...idk.

I hated that Sam Soon begged him...thats the trope that i detest!!!! I only like the guys to beg -.-

There were lots of cheating elements that people might HATE and therefore hate Hyun Bin.

This drama is one in which you’re either going to LOVE it or f****** hate. I watched it on viki with the comments on and damn the comments were completely divided! 

Snow Queen

I was originally not going to watch it because I read a review saying that Hyun Bin was dull in the entire drama and cried the whole time. So I came in with the lowest expectations ever.

Overall, I did like it.

I think he did cry at least once in every single episode, but it fit his character and he was NOT dull! I felt his emotions and he was so lovable. 

The story was cute and simple...and so unfair!

It was those kind of destiny dramas... where they have to end up together but suffer.

If you watched ‘A walk to remember’....then expect the same thing. 

It was beautiful and effing painful.

Only watch if you feel like suffering.

Ps: I lived for his scruffy face

Worlds Within

As opposed Snow Queen, I came to this drama with high expectations...so i was let down for the first half. I was bored to death and kept skipping and not paying attention to anyone else’s dialogue because I didn’t find it relevant..and at times I didn’t even understand.

The second half of the drama (starting on ep.9) got really interesting and I finally started caring about the side characters.

The overall concept was good though....kdramas within a kdrama.

But the romance was soooo refreshing...it was SOOO real and straight to the point.The moment they started dating they had s*x and i was like YASSSSS!!!!

Right away they talked about marriage and kids and I was here for it! They had a beautiful relationship.

At some point they break up for the stupidest reason so that was annoying... and that trope that I hate occurred....she embarrassed herself begging for him back -.-

The ending pleased me though! I was so content with it. Not a perfect ending like Secret Garden...but it was perfect for the story they told.

I did enjoy the meta jokes they had in which they made fun of the kdrama tropes we see all the time..so they tried to stay away from them which made it more realistic but still with that kdrama spark.

Overall what stood out was the great chemistry they had. One of my favorite romances ever.

[gameofdrarry]

Wizards Hearts: A Night on the Town!

Wizards Hearts Game/Fest ran for a full four months, and is now officially over, though we are ever appreciative towards our readers for spreading love to Drarry fics old and new, short and long. 900 comments were left as a result of the game.

Players are sorted and assigned at random to four different teams. All team activities and discussions are completely optional but can yield extra points to help win the game! There are weekly team activities and longer, creative team activities where players can imagine new, fun headcanons in the Harry Potter universe and perhaps a few stories of their own!

Team Activity 5: Celebrity Visitations and Incidents

As was previously reported on, Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter made visitations at multiple casinos. Those casinos have been kind enough to share their footage surveillance and first person accounts of what exactly happened during these visits. Some went much better than others, of course.

Teams were asked to 1) Write a fic about the incident at their casino (as written by their rival casinos) and tell it from the perspective of A) Harry or Draco or B) a 3rd Person Narrator for a minimum for 500 words. 2) Create an image to accompany their fics.

View the first Team Activity post here

View the second Team Activity post here

View the third Team Activity post here

View the fourth Team Activity post here

View the final Team Activity post under the cut!

Team 1: Loch Lomond’s Treasure

Before Draco was inside the casino, he thought the whole thing to be rather silly. A masquerade ball he would have been right at home in. But the way Harry had described it, this was almost closer to a costume party, and he wasn’t entirely a fan of their chosen costumes. He understood why Harry had chosen them, of course, but that didn’t mean he had to like them.

But when he stepped inside the Loch Lomond’s Treasure casino, all of his worries were dashed away, and he was taken aback. He had known about the Gillyweed Ball, but goodness Merlin… It was exquisite. The way the lights danced around the water seemed to make everything sparkle, and everyone was laughing and having a grand old time. Near immediately, the two of them were approached. Even behind the shoddy glamour, Draco was able to recognize Mr. Richens. Elder gentleman, halfblood, and owner of an up-and-coming potions shop down in Diagon. “Ah, Mr. Potter!”

And just like Harry said, it worked. Everyone thought that he was Harry, and that Harry was him! He watched the way Richens seemed to fall all over himself to speak with him, all while snubbing Harry. Unable to help himself, Draco threw a smirk to Harry for what he knew would come at the end of the night when everyone cast off their costumes. Harry chuckled at his side, and it seemed to throw Richens off a bit, but Draco gave the man credit where credit was due. He plowed on as though nothing were amiss.

And that was what went on for the rest of the night as well. Business owners, politicians, and anyone looking to get anything to sell to the papers all came flocking towards him as though he truly were Harry Potter. He supposed that was what they believed to be true, at least. “Mr. Potter, everyone is just dying to know who made your costumes,” one of the women tittered. Draco barely kept from rolling his eyes.

“Blaise Zabini, of course,” he answered, and no one noticed the smoother, more cultured tones of his voice, as opposed to the rough and tumble way Harry spilled out his words. “He’s a new designer, and one to certainly be on the lookout for. He was anxious to make these for us, and I think we can agree that he did a fabulous job on them.”

When he and Harry were separated, Draco saw out of the corner of his eye, multiple people that Harry bumped into or tried to play nice with all give him cold glares, and seem to spit venom at him. Harry, of course, took none of it seriously and answered it all with one of those sunshine smiles of his.

Later in the evening, Harry called him over, “Harry,” he said, and Draco heard that teasing tone in his voice clear as day. “Come on over here, they’re announcing the winners of the costume contest.”

Draco chuckled to himself. “Alright, alright. You won’t let me go until I do.” So Draco walked over to stand beside him.

He wasn’t much surprised when he and Harry were announced as the Kings of the costume contest. Everyone pleaded with them to remove their costumes, and Draco glanced to Harry. When Harry nodded, Draco smirked and waved his wand silently to send their costumes away. The shock, awe, and fear on the faces of many in attendance did so warm Draco’s heart.

At his side, Harry’s fingertips brushed against his arm. “You enjoy some more of the buffet. I’ve got a few… business partners to talk to.”

Draco near purred, “Sounds lovely. Would you like me to save you a few crab canapés? They’re absolutely divine.”

“I think you’d be happier to have them all to yourself,” Harry chuckled, and Draco did so love the sound, as the shivers running through his spine attested to. “Just save me a seat?”

“For you? Always.”

Team 2: Golden Scales

It was All Hallows Eve, a day that Harry tried to forget. Harry usually spent this day locked up in his room at Grimmauld Place. Ron and Hermione would visit him to make sure he ate and give him company. This year, the duo was busy with their newborn child, Rose, and hence, Harry was going to spend the day alone. 

Draco and Harry had struck up a new friendship after Ginny and Pansy’s wedding. Draco knew from the girls that this day was always hard on Harry, and so he took it upon himself to do something fun this year. 

That’s how they ended up at the entrance of the Golden Scales Casino. The Casino was organising a Masquerade and Bonfire Night to welcome the season. Bring your best mask and your whimsy and prepare for a magical evening, the pamphlet had read. It was just what they needed to take Harry’s mind off of gloom and doom.

Draco had worn a beautiful silver mask with green feathers and rhinestones. Harry looked equally handsome in a red and black mask that accentuated his emerald green eyes. They met in the front lobby of the casino near the dragon statue. Before walking in, Draco rubbed the golden ace card held by the dragon, which was rumoured to bring patrons good luck. Their masks were a blessing, and not many heads turned.

The boys tried their hand at the casino’s patent game ‘Bluffing the Dragon’, and Draco even won a round and graciously treated Harry to a shot of Dragon Bite. They were sitting by the bonfire, enjoying the warmth and spectacular light show performed by the casino’s miniature dragons when a flame from one of the dragons skimmed Harry's face, causing him to panic and jerk away, spilling Draco’s drink in the process.

“Watch it, Potter, this suit is Italian and very expensive,” Draco said irritably.

Harry, however, had started hyperventilating. 

“Calm down, Potter. You’re drawing attention to us,” he said.

“Shut. Up. Malfoy.” Harry bit out, and soon they had reverted to their schoolboy ways of hurling insults at each other. 

The commotion had alerted the authorities, and two burly bouncers approached their table. Seeing this, Draco put an arm on Harry’s shoulder to calm him down, but Harry pushed him away, ripping his mask off and pointing his wand at Draco’s throat. A collective gasp was heard, and then the room went silent.

Draco looked at Harry, eyes wide and full of hurt. Harry, realising his overreaction, dropped his wand. Draco turned on his heel and started leaving when Harry came back to his senses and ran after him, but Draco pushed him and apparated away.

Harry had bumped into another patron who had consumed the Queen of the Night cocktail, causing a coughing cum fire breathing fit. The ensuing commotion was too much, and when the bouncers escorted him to the golden elevator, he went willingly.

The previous night’s debacle was all over the papers the next day. Everyone had a take on what must have transpired. Some called it a lover’s tiff, others a spat between friends, and some even speculated that Harry had been led to the Casino by devious means. Of course, none of it was true, and the only person who deserved to know the truth was Draco. Harry had to set things right—the look on Draco’s face had haunted him all night.

He wasn’t sure if Draco would want to see him, so he wrote him a letter explaining how he’d been lost in his own head. The flames had taken him by surprise, plunging him back to the night in the Room of Requirement when he and Draco had almost perished in the Fiendfyre. He didn't expect Draco to forgive him, but he had to apologise.

An hour later, Harry’s floo chimed and Draco stepped out of it, wrapping Harry in a tight hug.

Team 3: Vanaheim

It was stiflingly hot inside the infamous Vanaheim Casino, and the glamour Romilda wore didn’t help matters much since it clogged every pore of her face, making her feeling more uncomfortable. But she didn’t dare take off her glamour and risk being detected. Ever since she’d been caught bribing Mundungus Fletcher to steal things from the more noteworthy guests, she’d been banned from the premises under threat of public humiliation. 

Tonight had been dreadfully dull though. She’d had high hopes for this event, with both Harry Potter and his more than questionable choice of boyfriend, Draco Malfoy, as guests. But everything was going smoothly. Too smoothly. Not even a row over winnings or counting cards or anything, just a slow hum of voices and the occasional outcry whenever someone won at that weird dice game they insisted on playing here that she could never understand or remember the rules for.

She sighed, glancing at her wristwatch, when something caught her eye. How on earth could she have missed this? She was sure she had kept her eyes firmly on Potter the entire night, but somehow she hadn’t noticed him walking up to… to none other than the literal god and eligible bachelor Thor Odinsson. Oh, this was good. This was almost too good to be true. But where was Malfoy?

It was difficult trying to scan the room for Malfoy while simultaneously keeping track of what Potter was doing with Odinsson, but when Potter leaned into the other man, placing a hand on his big bicep and whispering in his ear, Romilda felt like she had found the thirteenth use of dragon’s blood. Surely she would get promoted after writing a story about this?

Unbelievably, it got even better when she heard a cry of rage to her right, and saw Malfoy elbow his way through the crowd towards the two men. Romilda was whispering furiously to her Quick Quotes Quill while Malfoy started having a shouting match with Potter, and even went so far as to push Potter away from Odinsson. But in her haste to get everything written down, she had forgotten to keep her glamour, and she felt it slip enough that the bouncer by the door noticed her. He’d always had a keen eye, that one, and wasn’t easily distracted by gossip-worthy fights, not even a big one like this. Luckily for her, Malfoy yanked Potter away towards the loos by grabbing his collar. She took the opportunity to slink away in the general commotion that caused, grieving that she hadn’t become an unregistered Animagus like her predecessor Rita Skeeter so she could follow the two men and see the rest of the row. By the look of Malfoy’s face, it promised to get juicy.

* * * * *

Draco pushed Potter unceremoniously into the loo and slammed the door behind them. After a quick check to make sure they were alone, he cast Colloportus and pushed Potter up against the sink.

“I saw you,” Draco growled.

Potter’s eyes widened but he didn’t move. 

“In front of everyone. They were all watching their Saviour. They think I don’t deserve you.” Draco took a step closer until they were inches apart. “I saw you. Whispering in his ear, touching him, and he looked like he wanted to devour you. Make you his.” 

Potter exhaled, his eyes dark. “How did that make you feel?”

Draco slid his thigh between Potter’s and crowded into his space. “Incredibly turned on. He wanted you, thought he could have you.”

“The look on your face,” Potter murmured in Draco’s ear. “I was watching you the whole time. I love it when your cheeks and neck get flushed. You’re gorgeous when you’re jealous.”

“Fuck, Potter.” Draco leaned in and brushed his lips against Harry’s jaw, kissed down his neck and Harry tilted his head to the side in encouragement. “But you’re mine, aren’t you?”

Harry’s breath hitched as Draco nipped at the sensitive spot by his ear. “All yours. You’re the only one I want.”

Draco sucked a bruise into Harry’s neck to mark what was his, then came up and claimed his lips in a searing kiss. When they broke apart, Draco had only one coherent thought on his mind. “Apparate us home. Right now.”

With a loud crack, the room was once again empty.

Team 4: Arc en Ciel

Read here on AO3

[thebeautyofdisorder]

The Undone & The Divine (BBC Dracula) - Chapters 1 & 2

A/N: Okay, I am rusty - very rusty, so feel free to give me some notes. This will be multiple parts - maybe 4 or 5 - and will remain open ended for future additions. It will be a snarky, confused occult monstrosity with a lot of thus far unresolved sexual tension and I'm not sorry. Takes place after the end of The Dark Compass. I will be posting this on AO3 eventually, but for now...

Rating: T, currently just for some blood and maybe language

Pairing: Dracula & Zoe/Agatha 

Can be found on AO3 - Right HERE -

“Wherever this shadowed path might lead, we were both irrevocably committed to follow it to the end.” - Susan Kay, Phantom

                                                       Chapter 1

The first thought that arose in Zoe’s mind was simply that she shouldn’t be having any. No, an inward argument seemed to be countering, but that she had been growing accustomed to. Faith was an inner struggle she was stubbornly coming to terms with, given that there was a very literal opposing force in her ancestor that enjoyed prodding at her modern, atheistic convictions. Not even in religious fervor, nun’s habit notwithstanding, but just for amusement’s sake. She could see where she inherited her argumentative nature from.  

Head swimming, potential psychosis or no, she had expected at least death to be final. A distant bell of alarm jolted somewhere in her mind, as some sense of memory and consciousness began to return to her, soon followed by sensation seeping back to her body. She expected the worst, but what she experienced instead was simply…nothing. The pain which had been her constant companion for the last few months was gone. She didn’t even feel the typical stiffness of a woman pushing forty waking up on a cold, hard surface should rightly feel. 

Cold, hard surface…

Her eyelids shot open, and she sat up so quickly she felt immediately dizzy. At least there was still blood to rush to my head, she mused dimly, though luckily her legs hadn’t gotten the fight or flight message quite as quickly, or else she would have tumbled straight onto the floor. The hard, polished marble beneath her, still sticky with her blood, brought the events of the morning, however distant they were, rushing back to her.

If this wasn’t some twisted form of coma dream, and she wasn’t actually hooked up to some machine at the hospital, she was going to have to have a chat with Auntie Agatha about consenting to suicide by vampire. Mostly due to the fact she was very much alive – or at the very least, moving and conscious. Her hand pressed to her neck, feeling nothing but dried blood surrounding a slightly raised scar at the crook of her shoulder.

Not always equivalent, she reminded herself with barely repressed panic. Or maybe Agatha reminded her. It was becoming harder and harder to tell the difference.

But what of the vampire? 

Half freezing in the semi-darkness, Zoe waited what felt like a decade, searching for any sound or sign of movement in the room…in the flat. Nothing. Silence. 

The natural curiosity of the scientist, refusing to lay dormant any longer, pushed past her fear and uncertainty, and drove her to slide off the edge of the table on shaking legs. There was no sign of Dracula, dead or alive that she could see. Instead her eyes sought out a light switch. 

She half expected to see a large pile of dust and ash, or worse – some sticky pile of blood and skin, like a B-horror film she’d seen as a teenager, but aside of what remained of Lucy, the floor was immaculate, in only the way the living dead could maintain. 

Strangely lacking any sense of urgency, she paced through the rest of the flat, observing the dark modern decor with a distant amusement that belonged more to Agatha than to herself. The washroom was almost entirely unused, save for the large standing shower, more of a luxury than a necessity, she assumed. The kitchenette seemed to be only taking up space, and while there were a few stray tea bags and a chipped mug, likely belonging to some human help – the lawyer probably, the rest of it was barren. Finally reaching the bedroom, she found the curtains still fully drawn, and the bed large and vacant.

If he survived, he was gone. Some unknown part of her felt a pang of disappointment, and an equal echo of triumph. She wasn’t sure which one to blame Agatha for, and she was left no hints.

Well, that was one mystery solved.

Collapsing on the mattress, Zoe closed her eyes, and did something she never thought she’d have to do: she fell silent and listened for her own heartbeat. At first there was an unnerving stillness. Finally, after approximately 15 seconds (she had been counting), she heard the first soft thump in her chest. Half relieved, she let out a breath, and began counting again – she heard it once more. Faint and very slow, but present, yes!

Fascinating. Agatha’s quietly accented tone was one of clinical fascination, something Zoe could ascertain easily as it echoed through her mind.

Zoe quietly agreed. Somehow, she…they were now something more than undead, but less than fully alive. 

Something like the count himself. 

------

There were times that the highly illegal nature of the Harker Institute was a damning thing, and one that caused Zoe great inconvenience. This was not one of those times. A woman previously dying of cancer showing up to work to get a full range of clandestine tests was not something to be trusted to the general public. If she hadn’t been so amazed, she was sure her predecessor would’ve been highly disappointed to see her. 

She had left Dracula’s London flat exactly as it was, and headed straight to the Institute. It wasn’t exactly a police matter, and now that Agatha had destroyed the vampire’s …agoraphobia? Whatever it was she had done, there wasn’t anything they could really do to ward him away. The sun was no longer a viable weapon, and while she was sure his distaste for Christian imagery wouldn’t just vanish overnight, his need to be invited into a location was gone and probably easily forgotten when convenient. 

The dirt…well, that was a different story. She found no trace of it in his flat, save for a musty residue in the corner of a now empty closet. That was the one part of the puzzle she had yet to figure out. Was that just another part of his self-ordained folklore, or did it actually have some restorative power. Did it contain some needed mineral or compound? Surely there was a scientific reason behind it if so.

As scientific as why you’re walking around with half the blood you need to function? Or that you haven’t eaten in 36 hours and have no appetite. You can drink water, at least, that’s a blessing.

She refrained from voicing her annoyance aloud – last thing she needed was for her colleagues to think she was undead AND crazy. Neither of which was entirely true… or entirely false. At least they weren’t locking her up. Not yet. 

“Dr. Helsing?” 

Zoe shook herself from her thoughts to look up at the lab tech who’s just entered the room, giving the girl a distant smile. 

“Yes?” 

“Dr. Bloxham wants to see you downstairs…it’s about your test results.”

Which test results she wanted to ask, but didn’t, merely got up and followed the girl who was taking great pains to keep a healthy distance between them out of the room. She didn’t blame her. It had taken Jonathan Harker a month to show any vampiric urges. They saw her as a ticking time bomb. 

------

“Well, for the positive, any trace of cancer seems to have…vanished from your system.”

Zoe had guessed as much, and perhaps her lack of reaction was what brought the look of concern to her colleague’s face.

“And for the negative?” 

The other woman silently bit her lip for a moment, and instead of immediately responding, she stood from her chair and gestured for Zoe to take the seat in front of the computer. 

Pointing from over her shoulder, Bloxham indicated two files in the folder in front of her. One was labeled with Zoe’s name, and the other was data collected from Dracula’s blood sample. 

“What’re you trying to show me?” She sounded tired, and perhaps she was. It was hard to tell anymore. The enfeebled exhaustion she had felt constantly up until the night before was gone, but the memory lingered like a bad taste in her mouth.

“Open them.” The comment was clipped, but more in anticipation than impatience. 

Zoe did just that, and looked over the standard blood analysis results. To say the differences were minimal was almost too generous. 

“I don’t know what happened to you exactly – given you won’t tell me…,” she began, eyeing Zoe with a meaningful look, “But your DNA is...I don’t want to say mutated, but...altered. You’re alive, don’t get me wrong – but your readings all look as though they should come from someone on the verge of death – in a coma at the least! And well…look at you.” It was rhetorical, Zoe knew, but she still found herself seeking out the nearest reflective surface, just to ensure she saw her own face as she knew it looking back at her. 

“I can’t force you, but I’m going to strongly recommend you stay here so you can be closely monitored for any further….changes.” 

Zoe, never one to be a victim of circumstance, rolled her eyes with a casual scoff. If she was going to be anyone’s lab rat, it might as well be her own. 

“Well, obviously. I want every even minimal change documented to the fullest,” she agreed, immediately standing to her feet and stalking over to a microscope she knew without needing to ask contained a slide of her sample, rerouting her focus. “Have you compared the saliva?” 

The other woman’s relief was palpable. Or maybe she could smell it? Zoe shook that possibility off, quickly, refusing to jump to that particular conclusion quite so quickly. 

“Still waiting for the full analysis, but what I do have is Dracula’s sample, which is frankly…fascinating,” Dr. Bloxham stated excitedly, eyeing Zoe with a curious expression as she approached, her caution taking a backseat to her excitement. 

“Oh?” A woman after her own heart.

“Yes… take a look,” she offered, changing the slides quickly and offering the scope back for her perusal. “It contains some almost psychotropic like compound. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Zoe felt her body temperature rise for the first time since she’d awoken in London. She wasn’t sure if she had the circulation to blush, but she dearly hoped not. For once, there was no snarky Dutch echo in her mind – in fact, aside from a flash of orange light, and blink of another memory she couldn’t latch onto, her mind went suspiciously quiet. 

“Yes. Fascinating.”

                                                 Chapter 2

Frank Renfield considered himself a generally normal man, by all intents and purposes. In fact, he had always been considered normal to the point of being right boring, so it was he himself who was most surprised how easily he had adjusted to playing personal assistant, in matters both legal and practical, to a blood drinking supernatural entity. On that note, it was with only minimal confusion that he found himself returning to his residence after a resolutely boring day at the office, to find his front door broken half off the hinges, and a trail of thick, congealing blood leading through his sitting room straight through to the loo. 

“Master?” He called, uneasily, taking care to hop over a particularly dark pool seeping out from under the door. 

He was met with silence, save for a subtle gurgling sound that brought a wince to his face, though it was not coming from his loo any more, but from the spare bedroom directly adjacent. He used to have a flatmate, but he’d moved months ago. The room now contained nothing but junk, some gym equipment he never used, and a few large crates that Count Dracula had asked him to store, though why he had no idea. 

“C-count?” Renfield stammered, his hand turning the knob. Taking a deep, staggered breath, he finally pushed open the door.  

The treadmill in the corner of the room, heavy and outdated as it was, was toppled and resting almost completely upside down. A box of heavy and expensive law tomes had been dumped out across the floor, and the box was now leaking a dark liquid which had soaked through the cardboard. The lid of one of the large wooden crates was splintered, and half-resting against the back of the door, making it impossible to push all the way open, though Renfield could see well enough from the hall that the crate was now overflowing with some sort of dark soil, and it was the tall form of what he assumed to be his master that was splayed at an unnatural angle inside of it, though he did not look like his suave and put together self.

His shirt was torn, and stained almost entirely in various shades of black, red and rust brown. His hair was graying in reverse, as though the color had dripped out of the roots, plastered around his aging face. 

“Renfield…”

He heard the name whispered inside his mind, Frank realized with mild horror, because the sound that came from the creature in front of him was too much of a croak to contain any proper syllables. Finding the strength to force himself into the room, he rushed to the vampire’s side only to realize with a strange sort of amusement that the entire mess seemed to be due to Dracula vomiting all over his flat much like he had after his first college party. A stomach ache for a vampire, apparently was much worse than for a hungover teenage boy, however.

“Master! You seem to have eaten someone very unhealthy for you…. One moment.” 

Dodging around the pools of what he could only assume was half-digested blood, Frank squeezed back out of the room and came back with a sterile bag of B-positive that he cautiously presented to the weakened form. 

“Picked it up from the blood bank this morning… nuclear physicist, visiting from Sweden…seemed to be a wasted opportunity,” he offered, weakly, but he needn’t have bothered. The vampire had already punctured the bag with one of his ghastly sharpened nails before he’d opened his mouth and was sucking it down with a sharp and unsettling growl, and Renfield didn’t stay around to watch.

“I’ll go and…fetch something more lively, hm?” And with that he scuttled out of the room, before the count could regain the strength to seek out the next source of sustenance in sight…mainly him.

-------

“How are you feeling?”

“Indestructible.” 

Indestructible. That had been the word he’d used, just before the ship had sent him to his century long sleep. He never thought for a moment that it would be true, nor that he would have any reason to lament that fact. And yet… here he laid. Weak, indeed. In pain, surely. But very much alive… as alive as he could get anyway. He had forced himself to ingest the poison, and he had waited for death’s sweet embrace. Nothing. He just laid there, the sun beaming directly into his eyes, his stomach roiling like it hadn’t done since he was an insipid mortal, and yet he never even lost consciousness!  For once he had sought out oblivion, instead of fighting it, and it wouldn’t take him! The nerve! He had given death hundreds…thousands over the years! And she would still turn him away like some sort of petulant beggar. 

It was hours before he decided that if death wasn’t going to be quick about it that there really was no use waiting around. Zoe’s body lay stiff beside him, and though he knew the likelihood was slim, the sick ones rarely did more than rot, he left her there just in case. If he were any less…himself, he would’ve labeled it a blind, potential hope that she would rise again. That if he were going to be stuck being alive (not that it wasn’t her bloody fault he was suddenly so aggravated by that!), that maybe she would be stuck with him. Would serve them right… the Van Helsing women, the biggest inconveniences he’d had in his whole un-life. 

He couldn’t stay there…that boy knew where he was, and would no doubt send someone to look for him, or return himself. He considered, of course, waiting around, but honestly he didn’t even know if a stake to the heart was worth bothering to test at this rate. All of his other beliefs were useless… his fears. Why would he think just because it’s worked on some half-mad fledglings it would even work on him? Luckily he knew better than to keep his potentially useless dirt all in one place, at the least. Would he eventually regenerate without it? He didn’t know anymore. All his memories seemed to twist and deform. And with five centuries worth, that was an awful lot. 

A chance he decided not to take. If he survived this, he would need to buy his lawyer new carpet. He would need to do a lot of things. Perhaps venture south of the equator. 

------

It was fascinating how much the lack of needing to eat and sleep as often, nor attend five different doctors, affected her time management skills. Zoe felt like she never ran out of time, for research or reading or…well, that was it really. That was what she devoted her time to – not just for the sake of others now, but for her own future.  So much so that not leaving the institute didn’t really seem like a confinement at all, even though that was precisely what it was. 

As the days turned into a week, the other doctors – her friends, her colleagues, became even more unsettled by her presence. Not because she looked, or behaved like a walking corpse, but just the sheer lack of human ‘distractions’ she participated in. Also the constant shifting of vocal inflection didn’t seem to help.

Apparently Sister Agatha Van Helsing was not going anywhere. Either she wasn’t able to, didn’t want to, or had permanently infected her mind. She was beginning to get used to it. She had to wonder if Dracula himself ever had issues like this with anyone. Did Agatha hound him to? How much of his personality is his own and how much is taken from his victims? One had to assume it was the superstition of his victim pool that had tainted his own beliefs – that and the fact that even he refused to embrace the art of being a predator with limitless power. 

She sincerely hoped that wherever he’d gone to, he’d kept that in mind. Something told her, however, that he wasn’t actually that far. It wasn’t a voice, or any particular deductive reasoning that gave her that knowledge. It was just something she knew, however unsettling that fact was. 

“Zoe!” 

She frowned, blinking out of her daze. Dr. Bloxham was blocking her from pacing back to the computer where she’d been unconsciously headed. 

“Love, you have got to get out of here for a while. You haven’t slept longer than 3 hours a night since you’ve been here, you barely eat. You need to take a break.” 

Zoe sighed, reluctantly relenting her attention. 

“My body’s becoming intolerant to certain...things, I’m currently trying to find out what it isn’t intolerant to. And what it’s desperately lacking – iron, for starters. Does that help?” 

“Great. We’ll figure out what it’s intolerant to at the pub, before you drive yourself batty… no pun intended.” 

“I don’t drink,” she protested, but found herself shrugging out of her lab coat anyway.

“You stopped drinking because you were ill, which you no longer are,” the other woman protested, quite logically unfortunately, taking the coat from her. “Besides, there’s food there as well, which you desperately need, and sunlight would do you good. Have you even tried to eat anything but crisps and Chinese take away? Maybe you need something a little more tangible, that’s all.”

She sincerely doubted it, but anything – even tossing up her guts at a pub – was better than everyone looking at her like some sort of foreign contagion. She wasn’t a vampire. Not yet, and if she could help it, she never would be. 

---

Edited to add tags for the people on this hellsite that have been keeping me from writing this by posting their own undead content that I’ve been consuming instead - be it fic or gifs or playlists or just thirsty shitposts. Ha, I have defied your attempts at distraction, but I honor you all the same: @my-fanfic-library @ohveda @imagineandimagine @wannabebloodsucker @hoefordarkness @mymagicsuitcase @crazytxgradstudent @itendedbadly @theplumsoldier @gatissed @allfandoms-writings @littlemessyjessi @punk-courtesan @vampiregirl1797

I’m sure I’ve forgotten many of you, but I legit just scrolled my last week worth of likes, and now I have to go to the dentist, then hope I’m not too whiny to finish my fanvid. 

[alpha-imagines]

Lifeguards (Billy Hargrove)

A/N: Inspired by that latest Stranger Things trailer and my hatred for Karen Wheeler. Hasn’t been proof read and also had no real plot haha but hope you enjoy nonetheless!

“You do know you can’t actually ban people for life” You said to your colleague as you handed the bottle of chilled water up to where he was sat on the lifeguard tower “Only Bev can do that and even then you’d have to do something really bad, like attempted drowning”

You weren’t looking up at Billy but were stood facing out towards the pool, hand across your brows to shield your eyes from the sun

“They don’t know that” He said sternly after taking a sip from the bottle you’d just handed him

“Well let’s hope they don’t catch on” You smirked up at him “Or then you really would have no authority” you said with a laugh, heading back to your lifeguard tower opposite Billy’s.

Billy had joined the team about 3 weeks ago and to say the power was getting to his head was an understatement. He thrived sitting there barking orders at kids, threatening to ban them all just so they’d calm down and give him a moments peace. You often sat there wondering why he took a job that involved being surrounded by children when it was so obvious he loathed them.

This time it was Billy’s turn to do the water rounds, so as he climbed swiftly down from the tower, you couldn’t help but roll your eyes as you watched the group of mom’s quickly reposition themselves in an attempt to gain some attention. You also couldn’t help but roll your eyes watching Billy lap up the attention they gave him, god his ego really knows no bounds you thought to yourself.

“Here” He barked extending his arm up towards where you were perched

“Thanks” You replied, gladly accepting the cold bottle and quickly unscrewing the cap to gulp the water down

“Uh oh best get back to your post Hargrove, your fan club is looking rather jealous” You said with a laugh, motioning your head ever so slightly to the aforementioned mothers who were watching your interaction like hawks

Billy just scoffed at your remark and remained stood at the bottom of your chair

“No I’m serious” You carried on, returning your gaze back to the pool “I don’t want to cause any trouble, god forbid you talk to any girl your own age”

You both let out a snort at that, whilst Billy avidly encouraged any sort of flirtation he could understand how comical they must be to watch

“Sounds like your jealous of all the attention I get” He replied mockingly

“All the attention you get? I mean just the other day I got hit on by Mr Sanders and a middle schooler, looks like I’m the popular one here Hargrove” You mocked which earned a laugh from Billy

“Sure thing hot stuff” He joked back flirtatiously before moving off from where he was leaning against your post and heading back round to the opposite side of the pool.

Whilst you and Billy joked around occasionally at work you had never really spoken at school. You both ran with different circles and whilst you’d spent most of your time putting in effort and working hard, he seemed to prefer partying every weekend and hooking up with anyone he wanted.

***

“God he’s so hot” Jennie whined, head resting in her hand as she watched Billy Hargrove dribble the basketball around the opposing team

“Shame he only has 2 brain cells” You chipped in, not looking up from your notes you were writing, “and even then he shares one with Tommy H”

That earned a laugh from the small group you were sat with, there was no denying he was good looking, it was just such a shame he had little else going for him.

“At this point I don’t even care” Jennie laughed, “All I want is one night in his Camaro”

“One night?” You asked, “That’s unlikely, I think his style is more fuck you, chuck you and then never speak to you again, doubt you’d have longer than 30 minutes in his delightful company” You said with an eye roll

You’d heard all the rumours and seen enough girls crying in the bathrooms on a Monday morning when they realised that their hookup on Friday was not in fact enough to change Billy, and that they’d got their hopes up for nothing.

You didn’t like that about Billy Hargrove one bit.

It was finally closing time as the sun began to set, drawing another scorching hot day to a close. Whilst you ushered the few remaining stragglers out from the changing rooms and locked the front door, Billy set about closing up all the shade umbrellas and returning the sun loungers to their rightful places.

“Please tell me that Mrs Wheeler isn’t actually out there waiting for you?” You shouted across the pool to Billy.

You’d seen her car parked out front as you were locking up, and despite knowing she was actually waiting to pick up Mike, whom you’d just ushered out, you thought you’d ask anyway. You wanted to know the gossip, even though you doubted Billy would actually tell you anything.

“She’s parked out front” You clarified when Billy raised his eyebrows in question at you “Don’t tell me you wait for me to leave and then do it in the car park” You joked

Billy just laughed in response as he grabbed the other side of the pool cover and you both began walking the length of the pool, dragging the cover with you as you went.

“You know if you wanted a Wheeler that bad, you should have tried Nancy first” You suggested

“Not my type” He replied back instantaneously

“What and a middle aged mom of three is your type?” You asked back, eyebrows raised

“It’s just a bit of harmless flirting” He replied defensively, it’s not like anything was actually happening with Karen Wheeler, it was just some fun.

“It’s disgusting that’s what it is” You quipped back and shot him a glare

“Well good job it’s none of your business then” He said back with a sarcastic grin

“Stop flirting on the job then and it truly won’t be my business” You replied, the same sarcastic grin plastered on your face

“Just because you’ve never had anyone in your life to flirt with” He said with a huff as you both simultaneously secured the pool cover at the other end.

“Touché” You responded with a smirk “but rather that than acting like jail bait”

Billy had meant for his comment to be more biting. He didn’t need you to be criticising his life, he was only having some harmless fun, who were you to tell him he shouldn’t?

“Whatever” He grumbled “just because you’re jealous”

If you were going to tease Billy then he had no qualms winding you up to.

“So jealous” You said sarcastically, straightening up from the edge of the pool and placing your hands on your hips as you watched him tie the last knot

“I bet you just really want me all to yourself” He replied with a shit eating grin as he too stood from where he’d previously been crouching

“Oh yeah” You hummed, “Can’t believe I’ve been rumbled”

Billy should have known that you wouldn’t have got annoyed at his teasing, if you were any other girl you would have done, but you always just played along and took no notice. He couldn’t help but smile at it, even if you were pissing him off

“Well you best not keep Mrs Wheeler waiting” You said with an eye roll as you both headed inside to grab your bags from the office

“Shut up” He moaned, trying to suppress a smile

“Well I’ll see you tomorrow” You shouted whilst heading into the changing rooms to change into some clothes better suited to the walk home “That’s if she hasn’t locked you in her basement or something” You said with a laugh and you could hear Billy let out a snort at that one too.

[duchessfics]

Preview of A Lasting Mark Pt. 2

I have been working on this, but school is keeping me busy. At this point I have the draft written up and just need to type it so I thought I would post a small preview. I think this is going to end up pretty long (like over 5000 words) but I feel pretty good about it. So I hope you enjoy this little preview! 

You can hardly contain your smile as the host leads you to the table Billie and Audrey reserved for your date. It has been around a month since you have seen either woman in person and you are looking forward to reuniting with them. Over the couple days you worked with them on set you had gotten to know them better and found yourself falling hard for them both. But you decided to wait to go out on an official date until shooting was done. However, that didn’t stop you from texting and having a couple late night facetime sessions with them both. As you walk, you smooth down your dress and notice they lead you to a more secluded area. Then you take a couple breaths to calm your nerves. Unfortunately, that effort fails as you see them sitting at a circle table beside each other.

Audrey looks adorable with her short hair and wears a lacy, off-white dress that compliments her skin beautifully. And she looks to Billie who wears a blush pink dress and pearl necklace. And you have no doubt that they are genuine pearls. Her hair is curled and loose as per usual making you want to run your fingers through it to see if it’s really as smooth as it looks. They both look up as the host steps forward and you can’t help the blush on your face as they both smile up at you.

 After murmuring a soft thank you to the host, you take a seat and Billie murmurs, “You look beautiful tonight, sweetheart.” Did Billie Dean Howard really say that—to you? That is not something you thought you would ever hear even in your wildest dreams. You smile and blush even more as she looks you over appreciatively and reply, “Thank you. You both look stunning as well.” Audrey giggles and bites her lip, but something about her seems…off. Maybe they had a disagreement? They both have very strong personalities. Or she was filming for hours on end and definitely could be exhausted from that.

As you pick up the hefty, leather-bound menu and Audrey says, “We’re so happy to see you, darling.” You look to her sweet face and reply with a smile, “I’m really happy to see both of you too.” Then you pause, looking between them and wonder if this is too forward, but you decide to say it anyways, “I’ve missed being around you both.” Audrey blushes with the biggest grin while Billie smirks and looks as if she knew that already and it feels so good to be with them in person once more. Then you open the menu and before you can stop yourself your eyes widen at the prices adjacent to the food options. “Order whatever you would like, darling. We’re buying.” Billie says. Immediately you look to her and stutter, “T-that’s ok. You don’t have to do that—” But Billie raises her hand, making you stop and her glossy lips form into a smile as she purrs, “It’s my pleasure.” Your mouth suddenly feels dry as her darkened eyes keep contact with yours, so you simply nod.

You go quiet, looking over the list of delicacies and don’t know what half of these things are. The level of luxury in your life is very minimal. So, you decide to choose something that is basic, but at least you have an idea of what the item is. The waiter comes over and they look to you to order so you do so with a blush as you think about the price. Then the waiter looks to Billie and she orders something that you have never even heard of. But her practiced ease makes your stomach warm in arousal. Cool your jets, you inwardly tell yourself. It’s just a dinner order. Finally, the waiter turns to Audrey, but what happens next throws you for a loop.

As she begins to order, her throat closes up and she drops the menu, making your eyes widen. Her jaw clenches as her cheeks turn a dark red, but when she goes to speak, a moan escapes her lips. What the hell? Should you…do something? You aren’t sure so you keep quiet trying not to embarrass her further. Luckily Billie seems to notice and takes Audrey’s hand while saying, “Audrey seems to be tongue-tied at the moment. So, she’ll be fine with the same meal as me.” The waiter looks as shocked as you, but doesn’t say anything, leaving with an awkward smile.

By the time you return your gaze to Audrey, she seems less tense, but still blushes. “Are you ok, Audrey?” You ask, searching her face to get an idea of what’s wrong. She clears her throat and replies, “Y-yes. Sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me.” Even though she says she’s alright, you eye her down, very skeptical, but she gives you a small smile. As she does, out of the corner of your eye you see Billie smirking and know she must be up to something. But before you can ask anything more about it, Billie asks, “So have you previously dated anyone?” Ha! That’s a good one. You look down, a little embarrassed by your dating history or lack thereof.

“My older brothers were very protective of me, so they usually scared off anyone that was interested.” You begin and make yourself look up at them before you continue, “I dated a guy my senior year in high school. But it only lasted a little less than three months and fizzled out after we both graduated, and I moved away.” They both study you and Audrey says, “So…you’ve never dated a woman before?” Oh crap. Your eyes widen and you begin to inwardly panic as you explain, “Well, um, no. But I-I was, am, I am attracted to women. I just…no one asked me out.” Then you swallow and take a deep breath before explaining, “I-I like men and women…Hopefully that makes sense.” Then your eyes falter as your face burns. Did that really just happen? Unfortunately, it seems so.

Billie reaches over and takes your hand in her smooth, warm one, making you look back up. They both give you reassuring smiles and Billie runs her thumb over the top of your much rougher hand as she soothes, “That makes perfect sense, sweetheart.” You smile, glad that they understand and wonder why you thought they would judge you in the first place.

Billie’s smile turns into a smirk as she casually asks, “And how far did you go with your boyfriend?” At this point, you feel your face and chest heating up as you look between them and reply, “I…well…we just kissed.” Instead of looking to Billie’s dominant gaze, you look to Audrey and she chirps with a pleasant smile, “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, darling. I am quite certain that he loved every kiss you gave him.” You let out a little giggle and Billie releases your hand as the waiter comes over to deliver the food.

Once the dishes are served, before they can probe anymore about your romantic life, you ask, “So how did you two meet?” Immediately, Audrey’s eyes light up and she looks to Billie as she replies, “Well, we first met at an award show and even though I find most Americans to be abhorrent, I felt a connection with Bill right away.” You can’t help but smile as Audrey speaks and you find her nickname for Billie adorable. “So, we exchanged numbers and began to text back and forth. Eventually when the both of us had a break from jobs, we went out on an actual date.” Audrey finishes, letting out a sigh of happiness as she practically swoons under Billie’s gaze. While Billie is much more covert, you see that attraction reciprocated in the way she cares for Audrey. She looks to Audrey and murmurs, “The moment I saw Audrey walk into that restaurant, I knew I was head-over-heels in love with her.” At that, Audrey giggles and lets Billie give her a gentle kiss.

Between bites, Audrey explains, “We went out on a couple more dates before I let Billie take me home.” Billie chuckles, raising her eyebrow as she looks down at Audrey, and comments, “You let me take you home? I distinctly remember you begging me to take you to my home. But perhaps I’m mistaken.” You giggle at the comment while Audrey huffs, but smiles. Then Audrey looks to you and lets out a dramatic sigh before saying, “Anyways, then we really began to explore our relationship. Billie is amazing. I mean, she makes me feel like a teenager again even though the days of my youth are long over.” At that comment, Billie shushes Audrey and kisses her cheek before she says, “You are nowhere near being old, my darling. You’re like a fine wine, getting better with each day.” You practically swoon at how Billie compliments Audrey and can see Audrey genuinely smiles.

Audrey brings her hand up to fan her face and she says, “They really ought to keep this place cleaner. Blasted dust getting into my eyes” But you and Billie chuckle, knowing dust has nothing to do with it. By now you are to the last bites of your meal and Billie speaks up, “After taking Audrey home, I learned she can be such a darling submissive.” Then she looks to you with an eyebrow raised and asks, “You know what a submissive is, sweetheart?” Your cheeks burn for the umpteenth time and you nod, your voice failing you as your own arousal resurfaces.

Billie chuckles at your response and takes Audrey’s hand as she looks her over. “For example, last night, I told her that she could only cum from my words.” Then she glances to you before murmuring, “No touching.” You face burns and you did not expect this insight into their sex life, but you are most definitely not opposed to hearing about it. Billie’s dilated eyes look you over hungrily and a whimper nearly escapes your mouth. “You know what sent her over the edge?” 

Fuck. Me. Well these panties are definitely ruined. You clear your throat and squeeze your thighs together to get some reprieve before squeaking, “No.” Billie grins and looks to Audrey who is suddenly very quiet but has a small smile playing on her lips. “I told her to imagine someone touching and kissing her in all of her special places. And just before she came, she cried out your name.” Your whole body heats up and you glance at Audrey who looks as red as you feel at the moment. But her eyes are almost completely black, and she licks her lips, clearly aroused.

Then Billie leans towards you and murmurs, “Darling, the thought of you touching her made her have the most intense orgasm she’s had in weeks.” A smile creeps up on your face at the thought of causing that. You haven’t felt this kind of influence and it does a number on your butterfly-filled stomach. Meanwhile, you still can’t manage to speak words, thinking about what Billie just described and wishing you were there. Billie releases Audrey’s hand and leans back, clearly amused at you and Audrey’s very apparent arousal. Then she tuts her tongue before saying, “But Audrey sometimes has problems with her attitude and that has to be addressed.” Then she looks to Audrey and says, “No one likes a bratty girl.” Audrey doesn’t speak and averts her eyes, only making small glances at Billie.

Before Audrey can respond, Billie returns her gaze to you and explains, “Today was one of those days. So now she’s paying the price.” You furrow your brows completely confused. She’s on a date with you…Is that a punishment? Surely not since she had an orgasm at the thought of you. So, you tell Billie, “I-I don’t understand.” She grins and pulls her chair over, so she sits beside you, making Audrey let out a whimper of protest. Then she pulls out her phone and opens an app as she murmurs, “Currently, sweet Audrey has a vibrator in her that I control.” Suddenly, things begin to make more sense and you are in disbelief that this is actually happening. But god you would love to have Billie dominate you too.

Your face flushes and all you can manage to say is, “Oh.” Billie chuckles and you suppress the shiver of arousal that almost made its presence known. It doesn’t help that her sweet scent now completely fills your nose as she gets even closer to you. Then she says in a softer tone, “I’ll show you how it works.” You watch her press a button and look up as Audrey drops her fork on her plate and takes a deep shuddering breath, closing her eyes as she trembles in pleasure. As this all occurs, the room temperature feels like it has risen significantly.

Billie chuckles and says, “I can turn up the intensity too.” And she slides her finger over her screen to increase the number present. “Billie.” Audrey says in a strained moan and grips the table, clamping her mouth shut. Billie’s dark eyes look to you and she asks, “Should I stop?” Your eyes widen at being the one to determine this. After looking to Audrey’s desperate gaze you nod and reply, “Yes.” But you can’t deny that there is a part of you that would not have minded teasing Audrey further.

Audrey lets out a sigh of relief as Billie turns the vibrator off. Then she looks to you and breathes, “Thank you.” You look to Billie, unsure if you should reply. Wait—what? How does she determine what you say? She gives you a small nod and you look to Audrey before replying, “You’re welcome.” Giving her a small smile, still imagining her crying out your name in the thrashes of her orgasm. Audrey picks up her fork and goes to take her last bite as Billie says, “Audrey and I have been doing this for a couple hours and she does deserve a reward for taking her punishment so well.” At that, Audrey perks up and looks to Billie with a smile on her face. Billie ignores her, looking to you and murmurs, “Now you don’t have to do this at all, but I know Audrey and I would love it if you came over and helped me reward her. Would you be interested?” You look between them and know your answer before Billie finishes her question. “Yes.” You say almost as soon as she finishes speaking.

She eyes you down and asks, “You’re sure? It’s ok if you say no. We won’t be upset.” But there is no doubt in your mind. Looking to them both, you have no idea what the night holds, but you are as sure as hell that you are not leaving this place without them. You give her an affirming nod and try to make yourself sound more confident as you answer, “I want to.” After hearing that, Billie grins and gets the waiter’s attention for the check...

[naancypants]

Back To Normal

@nancydrew-onthecase​ I ended up kinda combining this prompt with my headcanon post lol, so hopefully that’s alright. Thank you for the prompt submission!! And I hope it’s enjoyable ❤ I’ve also popped this onto Ao3 if anyone wants to support it there. I’m always accepting more Jancy prompts! ;)

After a case brought Nancy Drew to a town neighboring Bayport, it was only natural for her to drop in to the Hardy residence and say hello to her favorite brothers in the world; and, naturally, the trio spent the next few days finishing up the case altogether, eventually tracking down the notorious jewel thief who had been hitting a carefully selected array of towns all the way across the United States. Finally bringing such a criminal to justice was an immensely satisfying feeling no matter how many times it was experienced, and knowing that the guy was safely behind bars for years to come, the detectives decided it would be nice to spend a little mystery-free time together on the night before Nancy’s departure back to River Heights - that is, until they realized that this happened to be the same night Frank had previously signed up to give a lecture on criminal justice at the local community college. “Well, at least the timing of this last case kinda worked out. Now I have some fresh experiences to share,” Frank says with a halfhearted grin, “Look after Joe tonight, will you, Nancy?” They exchange a long, tender goodbye hug as Nancy chuckles a little, “No problem.” Frank begins striding towards the entryway, teasing inflections lacing his deep voice as it gets gradually further away, “Yeah, well, you might want to wait and see what it’s actually like watching over him! Not as easy as it sounds.” “Hey, I’m right here,” Joe jokes back, waving his hands a little from inside his hoodie’s pockets. Nancy gazes after the older Hardy brother as he leaves, “Bye.” “See you, Nancy.” The front door opens then closes, leaving the two remaining sleuths in silence. Joe takes in a deep breath, glancing at the vintage CLUE board game that Aunt Trudy had gifted to the brothers for Christmas when they were 8 and 9 – an expected favorite of theirs. He casually ambles over to where the unopened box sits on one edge of the angled fireplace, gesturing towards it. “Well, there’s no reason we can’t still have a game night of our own, right?” Nancy shrugs, “I don’t see why not!” As Joe sets up the board on the living room floor, Nancy goes into the kitchen to fetch a glass. “Joe, do you want anything to drink?” “Nah I’m good,” he responds, attempting to shuffle the deck of Room cards back and forth in his hands; split the deck at a random place, shove the two halves back together, hope for the best. Repeat. Frank was a much better shuffler, to be honest, but someone had never bothered to teach Joe how to do it properly. So. This is the method he is using. Shut up. A mild look of distaste suddenly clouds Joe’s face, though despite his furrowed brows there’s a bit of a smile playing at the edges of his lips, “Hey Nance, you’re not about to do that thing where you just drink plain milk, are you? ‘Cause –” He twists his body around to see the strawberry blonde shuffling sheepishly towards him with both hands protectively cradling a glass full of solid white liquid. “Oh my God.” Nancy crosses her legs and sits opposite him, “It’s good for you.” “It’s also gross.” “No, it’s not!” “Milk is good for cereal and absolutely nothing else!” Nancy shakes her head at his antics – in this case, a dramatic finger lifted into the air as if he were making some grand point – and lets out a short giggle, “Ookay, Joe. Are we ready to get started?” “Absolutely,” he points to the two messy starter decks he’d already dealt out, “Pick your poison – err, I mean… well, yeah. That’s pretty on the nose for a game of CLUE, don’t you think?” Nancy nods, cheekily yet subtly repeating Joe’s line from just a few moments before, “Absolutely.” Hours pass as the two race each other to crack each miniature case, and the stakes keep getting higher as they find small ways to make the mysteries harder – taking random unseen cards 100% out of play, limiting their amount of turns before someone has to make an accusation, and in one heated round they even ditched their notepads entirely, opting instead to take on the challenge of storing everything in memory. Nancy crushed him in that round, because Joe’s long term memory is all right, but short term…? Forget about it. Joe keeps a win/lose tally on his phone, of course, and by the time 10:30PM rolls around Nancy has him beat by 3 wins. He isn’t sure if it’s because of the dim lighting from the many candles Mrs. Hardy likes to keep around the house or the fact that he’s still on this semi-childish competitive high, but when he looks up at Nancy while she’s gathering up the pieces from their latest game, he’s reminded of something. “Hey Nance, do you remember doing this as kids?” She pauses, absentmindedly setting down the weapon pieces in their correct spots on the board. “I do. ‘Course, we didn’t get to do it very much.” There was a chuckle at the end of her sentence, after which Joe emits one of his own. “Yeah. Man, things were so different back then.” “How so?” Joe starts to open his mouth, but realizes he isn’t sure how to explain what he meant. Game nights back then for Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys really were few and far between, but every once in a while - whenever Carson was away on business and Hannah had family matters to attend to - the stars would align, and Nancy would be allowed to stay with the Hardy family for a few days. On the night of Nancy’s arrival Laura always made sure to bake up a fresh batch of her famous chocolate chip cookies, which was a favorite of the 3 young teenagers. Unsurprisingly, the heaping pile of cookies would be devoured in about 5 minutes flat… Joe really wishes he hadn’t thought of that. Now his mouth is watering. He also realizes that Nancy is still waiting for him to answer her question. He shrugs. “I don’t know, I mean, we were kids. Of course it was different.” “You’re not different, though,” a playful, sincere smile works its way onto her face as she looks up at him in the candlelight, “I think you’ve changed the least out of all of us.” She means this to be a lighthearted comment, Joe knows, but internally it makes him feel a little funny. He thinks he’s changed a lot since then. True, he’s still impulsive and daring and makes himself laugh at all of the stupid jokes that formulate in his brain… but not everything is how it was back in those days. Long before the world caught on to the inherent connection that exists between Frank & Nancy, Joe was actually the one who had first taken an interest in the girl detective; well, as much interest as an awkward, inexperienced 13-year-old could. He had just started noticing girls, and Nancy was very pretty, but… she was so, so unlike all the other pretty girls at Bayport Middle & High School. But obviously he doesn’t feel that way anymore. That’s probably the biggest difference between now & then, because Joe had easily understood that if Nancy were ever to break up with her longtime beau Ned Nickerson (which probably wasn’t going to happen), the next person in line for her romantic affections was going to be Frank Hardy (who is definitely not Joe). And he was totally okay with that. In fact, it was kinda fun to watch Nancy & his brother’s friendship grow over the years, especially when he got to tease Frank about all the lingering glances and “unspoken words” he never had the chance to say to Nancy. Poking at his brother is something Joe enjoys no matter the context. Back in reality, Nancy has finally finished dealing out the cards for another game and is looking expectantly at her friend. “Your turn to choose!” Joe thinks he remembers her saying the exact same thing when they were about 15, sitting in the exact same spot on the floor, playing the exact same board game. Her reddish-blonde hair had been pulled into a side braid as she usually wore it at the time, as opposed to the natural perfect curl her hair comes to at her shoulder blades now, but her ice blue eyes were as sharp and sparkling as ever. It’s been a long time since Joe has looked at Nancy. Like, looked at her in the way he did when they first met. In fact, up until this moment he thought that her freckles had just disappeared as she got older, but underneath the dancing shadows on her face he can still see a light dusting of them going across her nose; subtle, but cute, and only noticeable if you’re really looking. ...Oh. Joe swallows. At last he picks up the leftmost deck of starter cards and fans it out in his hand, examining the assortment in front of him; Peacock, revolver, wrench, conservatory, billiard room. His heart pounds a little heavier than usual as he marks them each off his list. Anxiety isn’t something Joe usually struggles with, but he thinks this is what it feels like. It’s okay, though, Joe reasons with himself, This is just a weird flash of… whatever. It’ll pass and all will go back to normal. “Alright. You can go first this time.” when Nancy looks up from her notepad, she must take notice of the thoughtful look on Joe’s face. She frowns a bit, her brows furrowing in that concerned, inquisitive way they do. “Hey, are you okay?” Joe clears his throat. Back to normal. “Yeah, sorry! Was thinking about… something totally unrelated. I’m good. Lets go.” With that he flashes her a trademark Joe Hardy smile, picks up the dice, and does not give it another thought.

[ukdamo]

KZ Sachsenhausen

One of mine... 

KZ Sachsenhausen ; there and then, here and now

In the summer of 1936 the posters on the underground in Berlin declaimed to every traveller, “Escape the big smoke. Come and enjoy the forests and lakes of Oranienburg". A forty-five minute train journey from S-Bahn Friedrichstrasse (1), in the heart of the city, brought sun seekers into the pleasant countryside to the north.

And why not? The dappled forest paths and clear lakes offered welcome relief from the thronged streets of the capital, streets filled with thousands of visitors who had come for the Olympiad being held in the new stadium, built to the west of the city.

People from all over the world had flown in to Flughafen Tempelhof, the airport whose buildings were a stone testament to the vitality of the l000 Year Reich. From there, visitors jostled along Swastika-hung streets to view the city sights: the Brandenburg Gate, the treasures of the Pergamon Museum, Schloss Charlottenburg; to climb to the top of the Siegessäule (2) not yet moved, on Hitler's order, from its home in front of the Reichstag; to stroll down the Unter den Linden  - although the crowds were no longer shaded by its eponymous trees since they had been felled so as not to obscure the vista of Nazi (3)  parades.

Few visitors, admiring the State Opera house, recalled the newsreels of 1933  which showed this building lit by the flickering light of a great bonfire - a bonfire of burning books heaped on the adjacent square.

Impressionable tourists lunched in the Café Schottenham, by the Anhalter Bahnhof (4), and then walked admiringly past the Bauhaus designed Europahaus en route to the splendid new Air Ministry building. Only a few years earlier the sightseers might have taken their coffee and cake in the Hotel Prinz Albrecht but this was now the HQ of Reichsfűhrer SS (5), Heinrich Himmler.

With every pavement, café and square teeming with tourists it was no wonder Berliners escaped to the relative calm of Oranienburg, to take a boat out on the lake, or to walk through the woods.

There were some city-dwellers, however, who travelled there under duress and for a more sinister purpose. To prevent the possibility of any embarrassing incidents in Berlin during the period of the Games, to disguise its anti-Semitism, and to forestall any negative publicity, some of the measures taken against the Jews by the regime were suspended.

Behind this façade (quietly, unobtrusively, diligently), the Gestapo (6) intensified its labours rounding up the enemies of the Reich - Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, liberals, Christians, Jews, Sinti and Romany peoples, pacifists,

Jehovah' s Witnesses, homosexuals, those designated 'anti­-socials' or criminals - and took them to the purpose built camp on the outskirts of Oranienburg. It was known as KZ Sachsenhausen. (7)

On a wintry day in February l996, I followed in their footsteps.

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

I was part way through my week in the city when I made my ‘pilgrimage’. After breakfasting, showering, and dressing in my most colourful clothes and dangliest earring,

I picked up the remembrance (8), quitted my Berlin lodgings and set out for Oranienburg. The journey that had brought me to this time and place had begun years before in quite another location. As a younger man, studying Modern History at the University of Liverpool, I had focussed my enthusiasm on nineteenth and twentieth century European history: Berlin was a pivotal place in the scheme of things. My perspective, particularly on twentieth century German history, was informed by the lived experience of being a gay man. There and then reached a spectral hand into the here and now.

The cold February sky was downcast; grey, lowering. pedestrians turned up their coat collars to insulate themselves and hastened to their destinations. Sometimes I drew startled looks - my appearance being somewhat conspicuous - opposing the bleakness of the morning as it did. It was the fluttering ribbons which attracted most interest though.

(Like the compelling image of the red coat in the film "Schindler's List"?)

      The train journey to Oranienburg was a journey in time as much as through a landscape. The train trundled across the city, heading northwards. Tenements gave way to light-industrial enterprises, these, in their turn, to detached houses with steeply-raked roofs. The houses thinned out and were separated by fields, wooded areas, little ponds and watercourses. As we clanked onwards, the landscape became more open. I could see now that the ground was waterlogged; crusty, muddy and frosted with snow. Even the larger lakes were frozen. Denuded trees pointed bony fingers to the sky. Somehow I had drifted into the winter of l944/45. The train reached its terminus and we few passengers reluctantly turned out of the warm carriages to brave the wind-scoured platform.

         Almost immediately, a gentle dusting of snow began to fall. (I am surprised to find that 1 feel glad it is snowing. It seems appropriate). I am possessed by the unshakeable conviction that no-one should visit at a pretty time of year. It would be  sacrilegious.

There is a mixture of buildings in the town, old and new, the streets are cobbled not asphalted. It requires no effort of imagination to see columns marching along this road. Straggly columns, sore-footed, threadbare.

        Oranienburg is a smallish town, similar to my own home town in NE Lancashire. There is some road traffic thudding over the cobbles; Trabbies and Wartburgs as well as VWs and Opels. Some kids look at me with unrestrained interest, older people with more reserve. Some of them even have a reproachful aspect.This is no longer Berlin, where people of unusual aspect arouse little notice and less comment. This is not even Manchester, where gays can be visible with a modicum of safety. This is the familiar, narrow, inhospitable ‘small-town’ Bronski Beat sang about with such eloquence.

I recognise it from my own lived experience.

I become conscious of many thoughts; "This building would have been there then"

"What must it be like to live here now, with such a legacy?"

"What do these little kids make of it?"

Practical considerations imposed themselves and I looked for a signpost. There was one. How sobering, how chilling, to see it written. No longer a name from the past but a place here and now: Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen (9).

Following the directions indicated, I walked towards the camp. As I neared it, the monument became visible above the rooftops. It stands uncompromisingly  - a concrete grey monolith with pinkish triangles on the upper section. You could easily imagine that it was physically holding up the clouded sky, like Atlas.

At the corner of the Strasse der Nationen (10), which leads to the entrance, there is a small display board that remembers those who were killed on the 'Death March'. In the spring of l945, when it became obvious that all was lost, the authorities decided to march the camp inmates to the Baltic, intending to put them on ships and sink them.

Six thousand died before the column was liberated - they were shot, beaten to death, or killed by cold and exhaustion. It was a sombre marker for what lay ahead.

Before going into the camp proper visitors walk through an entrance gate and along a wooded way that leads past the information centre. Through the trees to the left (sparse, wintry and naked) glimpses of the perimeter wall can be had. I went in to the office and collected an English guide map. The room was dominated by a big, green-tiled stove that radiated masses of heat. It made the cold outside seem that much more intense.

"What must it be like to work in such a place?" I wondered,

"Do you grow used to the horror of it all? Can you afford to forget?" I quitted the building and felt very alone. There was just me, the remembrance, and the reality of Sachsenhausen. There and then, here and now. I feel strongly that Sachsenhausen is not history: history has no life in it. Sachsenhausen can never be mere history as long as there is someone who knows, who remembers, who lives in the light of that remembrance.

The first place that presents itself to the visitor is a modern exhibition centre (1961) which houses photographs, archive material, and an allegorical stained glass memorial window. The building dates from the original opening of the camp as a centre for national remembrance, in what was then the GDR (11). It focuses on the wartime history of Sachsenhausen. It stands in what was the SS barrack area, just in front of the gatehouse. Inside, I noted the brief descriptions of the photos in English. Many needed no explanation: the horrors were all-to-evident. Among the most harrowing were the pictures of those murdered on the march to the Baltic.

    Corpses were scattered along the route - in fields, in ditches, in the woods, by the roadside - killed by a single pistol shot to the head. From under makeshift coverings (which those who found the bodies had used to try and afford them the dignity denied them by their tormentors) poked emaciated limbs, bruised and disfigured faces, unshod feet. Other photographs detailed those who were left behind, the three thousand in the 'hospital', found when the Russians entered the camp on April 22nd 1945.

On that April day, some few miles to the south, Hitler was in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. He had celebrated his last birthday two days previously. The sounds of the strife above ground were muffled and did not disturb the delusions of ultimate victory he cherished. In the cold reality of day, Flughafen Tempelhof was about to fall to the advancing Russians.

Within a week Hitler would be dead.

Some of the prisoners in Sachsenhausen made slow recoveries and joined the sea of 'Displaced Persons' trying to get home in post-war Europe. For others, death's grip was too tight for liberation to make a difference.

Leaving the photograph collection, I turned toward the entrance to the camp proper and walked through. Arbeit Macht Frei (l2) said the mocking inscription on the gate. By the end of 1944, over 204,000 people had read that sentence as they passed under the lintel and in to the Appellplatz (13). Once inside, more than 100,000 of them were systematically put to death. Others met death in camps they were transferred to. It would be invidious to try to describe the sufferings endured by camp inmates in a purely statistical way; in any case, the destruction of records means that an accurate total can never be known. The information in Sachsenhausen suggests that some 30,000 gay men were sent to the camps under the Nazis. Estimates vary. A figure of 60,000 or more may not be unduly high. Perhaps as many as 2/3rds of these men did not survive.

Standing there, 1 felt as if I had ought to remove my boots and go barefoot. A stupid idea but an almost overpowering feeling. I gazed across the open courtyard, at the monument towering beyond, and was filled with unutterable sadness.

The camp is laid out like a gigantic triangle, with the gatehouse in the centre of the baseline. Emotionally, I felt this to be an obscene joke. Apparently, it was simply the result of Nazi thoroughness and the exigencies of security - a shorter perimeter, fewer watchtowers, fewer unobserved corners, better sightlines. All so easily calculated.

The courtyard presented a large semicircle - the placement of the first row of huts being indicated by a latticed wall. Behind me, to my left and right was the neutral zone (actually a killing field); a wire boundary marker, a few yards of bare earth, then an electric fence.  Finally, and almost superfluously, there was the perimeter wall with its barbed wire crown. To step over the marker invited being shot without warning. Photographic evidence shows that some prisoners chose this. Still others crossed the death strip and embraced the electrified wire.

I looked down at the map in my hand. It was difficult to use it nimbly because of the cutting wind and my chilled muscles. My eyes were watering, too, but I could not blame the wind for that. The ribbons on the remembrance fluttered; the only colour in the landscape.

Immediately in front of me was a great concrete roller that weighed three metric tonnes. The Häftlinge (14) were forced to run pulling this and were beaten if they moved too slowly. A semicircle just in front of the first row of huts was identified as the Schuhprűfstrecke (15), Here, in a broad arc, were nine sections - each of a different surface - gravel, flint, broken stone, sand etc… Prisoners had to walk over these for ten hours each day (about 25 miles, carrying 35lb in weight) to test the durability of shoe/boot soles. I looked down. The frost-frozen ground cracked beneath my own booted feet and I sank into the mush. Scattered snowflakes flitted by. A few rooks called, screechingly.

A party of British teenagers came in through the gatehouse. They were chatty, boisterous, as kids are. But their voices grated on my ears even more than the shrill rooks. Some places in the world must only ever be silent places. Not because noise is a bad thing.

No, Act Up is right when it says that Silence = Death. But in Sachsenhausen the silence is needful. It is what makes it permissible to be noisy elsewhere. If the potent and clamorous silence of that place is ever trodden underfoot, then the laughter, songs, protests, whistles and dancing that enliven and affirm us wherever we are will be themselves in danger of being silenced forever.

There are those who wish it so.

In September of 1992, a number of individuals broke into the camp and burned down two of the huts (known as the Jewish Barracks). It is thought that this act was a deliberate desecration of the memorial and was an indication of the resurgence of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in the recently re-unified Germany. In Berlin itself, on Oranienburger Strasse, stands the recently restored Neue Synagoge (16). It is guarded by three armed policemen and is protected by stringent security measures. Inside is an exhibition that focuses on the history of the Jewish people in Berlin, even so, it acknowledges that racism and prejudice have deep roots are widely prevalent.                      

Closer to home, there is a latent racism abroad on the streets of my own town. The National Front has contested, and continues to be active, in local elections. Dispersed asylum seekers meet with thinly veiled hostility. In 1994 an NF candidate was successfully elected in local council elections on the Isle of Dogs, London. Jewish cemeteries are regularly vandalized. Violence directed at lesbians and gay men, is, sadly, an unremarkable occurrence.

My train of thought had been interrupted by the noise of the school kids, so I allowed them to go their own way and then turned my attention back to the map. Over to the right was a temporary exhibition that told the story of the Jewish Barracks and their inmates. The future of these two barrack blocks (38 and 39), destroyed in the arson attack, remains to be decided.  

Further on was the special detention camp set up for prominent political, and other, prisoners. A number of the cells are still there. Prisoners were often held in solitary confinement for long periods, tortured, denied food and drink, kept in darkened cells for months or even longer. Martin Niemőller (17) was a prisoner here. To walk along and look into the tiny cells (some with memorials inside) was a humbling experience. It was not hard to imagine the clang of steel doors, the turn of keys, the sounds of brutal interrogation echoing down the narrow corridor.

What was the date again?

At the far end, the building opened on to an exercise yard, separated from the rest of the camp by a high wall. I stepped out again into the bleak, dismal light. To the left was the Erdbunker (18), a burial cell or pit where prisoners were virtually entombed, exposed to bitter cold and oozing wet walls with only a small, steel barred hatch above.

What would you see from inside? A cross hatched patch of blue? A slate grey torrent?

On the February day I was there, the ground was waterlogged. I could hear the drip of icy melt water as it fell into that dark maw. A great puddle surrounded the hatch, frozen on top, squelchy underneath.

Just beyond the bunker, on the wall, was the memorial plaque that I had come to see; journey’s end for the beribboned remembrance, journey’s beginning for my living remembrance. The plaque is a stark in its simplicity: a black rectangle with the letters punched out by stencil, exposing the wall behind. On the ground below, a few tiles, and, scattered on them, a few carnations. Had they once been pink? The wording of the memorial was as stark in its simplicity as the plaque itself. How else could it be? How can you dress it up in fine language?

TOTGESHLAGEN

TOTGESCHWIEGEN

DEN

HOMOSEXUELLEN

OPFERN

DES

NATIONALSOZIALISMUS

Taking hold of the remembrance, I drove the pole in to the ground as far as it would go and then banked up the mushed, sandy, ice-filled soil around it to hold it steady. Not caring whether I was observed or not, I knelt down in the waterlogged yard,

sank back onto my haunches and waited quietly for about the length of time it takes a man to walk a mile slowly. Everything was hushed. The ribbons flapped and the poem waved about as  the wind caught it. For a moment or two, there was a dancing rainbow

When the time was right, I stood up to continue my journey. (I returned to the remembrance before I finally left the camp, the hard frost meant that the banked earth at the base of the pole was already beginning to freeze. Almost as if to ward off the chill, the freedom ribbons fluttered gaily. This optimism made the leave-taking that much easier).

I moved on item the exercise yard to the exhibition mounted in the former prisoners’ kitchen.  The route took me past the sites of the gallows where prisoners deemed to have committed offences were hung,. Other grisly punishments were also meted out here during roll call "pour encourager les autres". Away to the right, by the perimeter wall stood a monument to those who died in the camp during the period 1945-50. For Sachsenhausen's infamy did not end with the war's end. The Soviets operated the site, under the name of ‘Special Camp No. 7’, and imprisoned former members of the Nazi Party, members of the SS, and the Wehrmacht (20), as well as prisoners of war released by the Western Allies, and others. Later on, inmates included people who were victims of denunciations, people who were arbitrarily arrested, growing numbers of Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and Liberals, opponents of the Soviet occupying power, and of the emerging East German Communist regime. It is estimated that 20,000 people died as a result of the conditions in the camp..

The sights that met the eye once inside the former cook-house were stinging. Further calculated horrors, to which the prisoners were subject, were held up for unwelcome yet necessary inspection.. There were artefacts from the wartime history of the camp – Zyklon B canisters (21). Human hair, gathered for use as war materiel. Fillings from teeth.

Striped uniforms, with their triangles of various colours (22). Plates and cutlery, stamped with prisoners’ numbers. The ‘height measurer’ from Station Z (23). This building was a place I wanted to run through quickly and escape from. Instead, I walked slowly and deliberately through it all, step by step, case by case, from one information board to the next. It was like the Stations of the Cross. Is it realistic to hope for a Resurrection? ‘Can there be lyric poetry after the Holocaust?’ someone asked.

Can there be?

I do not feel able to answer that question. But I can witness to this: the even in Sachsenhausen it proved impossible to crush the creativity and aspirations of the human spirit. Prisoners crafted necessarily small but beautiful things from the most basic materials and contraband. They made chess sets, inlaid cigarette cases, even a crude radio receiver. Furthermore, there is at least one recorded instance of resistance, carried out by the ‘Jewish 18’. In the autumn of 1942, in protest at their inhuman treatment, eighteen Jews staged a protest in the Appellplatz. Their act of resistance, though brutally suppressed, did result in some amelioration of camp conditions for the Jewish inmates. It did not save the 18 from Auschwitz-Birkenau.

When I had reached the end of the exhibition I paused for a long time by the visitors’ book because   had to frame carefully what I wanted to write there. What response can on make to such horrors?

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof must one remain silent", noted Wittgenstein in his philosophical investigation of language. He must have been thinking of the situations that test the boundaries of human experience when he formulated that precept. And here was I in such an extremity. Just how do you write down a howl of anguish in the soul?

When I left the block I saw the great monument towering before me. I went up close and looked at its huge bronze figures and its concrete vastness. The scale was so big as to be scarcely human. In a way, this is perversely fitting since the dreadful events to which it testifies are equally vast in scope and inhuman in character. The sculpted group of figures at the base of the tower is entitled "Liberation". (A secular version of Resurrection?)

Feeling tiny, I turned and walked the short distance to the site of Station Z.

If Dante's Inferno is taken as a metaphor for Sachsenhausen, then Station Z may be thought of as the deepest and most damned region of that place. Perhaps it is fitting that this was the last place I visited and the place where I most nearly lost what measure of self-control was left to me.

The area is shielded from the elements by a canopy. The suffering and the loss are recalled in an affecting monument; bronze figures two adults with a dead child. More affecting still are the remains of the building that stood on this spot. It was built in l942 and was staffed by the SS. Here thousands upon thousands were gassed, or shot. Their bodies were profaned (treated as the source of raw materials for the war effort) then burned. Any remains were crammed into a subterranean bunker close by.

Given what preceded death, this can be no real surprise. Often, camp inmates were used as a slave work force for various SS-run enterprises. Prisoners from Sachsenhausen were compelled to build the canteen and recreational facilities, used by the Gestapo and SS, on the Prinz Albrecht Terrain (24). In the 'hospital' prisoners were used in experiments to test drugs, chemical weapons, and 'treatments'.

The foundations only remain.

No access is allowed: visitors look through a wire fence on to the features that rising up from the earth. Clearly discernible are the rooms that comprised the gas-chamber (disguised as a shower room) the ante-room where prisoners stripped before going in to the 'shower', and the ramp where the dead, having been thrown on to carts, were pulled the few yards to the crematorium.

          Also evident were rooms used for interrogations and a killing room made to appear like a clinic. Prisoners were stood against a height measurer attached to a wall. (A wooden finger that ran between two slats, marked off in centimetres). Unknown to the inmate, there was a hidden room behind the wall. Once the wooden finger was upon his or her head, someone in that room would shoot them in the back of the neck. Bodies were dragged across the floor and through a door that opened on to the crematorium.

           All so convenient, so duplicitous, shielded from the eyes of the other inmates.

But there could be no secrecy; the smoke, the smell, the miasma, the point of no return.

It must have been evident for miles.

The wind whipped up again. Steam rising from the boiler house in the old laundry block caught my eye and was transformed into the smoke from this charnel house. It was suddenly 1944 again. The camp was filled beyond capacity with the enemies of the Reich, 90% of them non-German. There were representative groups from virtually all of Nazi occupied Europe.

Russian prisoners were being systematically exterminated. Food was scarce, warm clothes scarcer still. Prisoners were beaten, worked to death, tortured, subject to crazed experiments.

The rooks sent up a cacophony of cries that brought me to myself again. Here I was, in 1996, looking& back at what had been. Statistics in Sachsenhausen indicate that there were more than 2000 concentration camps, sub-camps and detention centres in Germany alone.

I blinked back tears as I looked through the fence and reconstructed these terrors in my mind's eye. Walking round the site, moving clockwise past the sculpture in the near left hand corner, I caught site of a feature that I did not immediately recognise and so moved closer. Suddenly, even through eyes misted over, it became all-to-evident.

The few courses of bricks, the metal doors and the flues, resolved themselves into ovens. There were four in a row. I was absolutely stricken. My legs buckled and I let out an involuntary cry as I stumbled and reached out for the wire to support myself.

From then on, I was in a daze. I tottered across the frozen earth and picked my way gingerly down the trench that led down to the bunker where the bones had been dumped. Signs on the sides of the wooden ramparts indicated where prisoners of war had been shot. Others who met their death at this entrance to Hades included those sent to Sachsenhausen by Reichssicherheitshauptampt of the SS and the Gestapo (25).

Most sickening was the mechanised gibbet, worked by a winch and pulley, which allowed four people to be hung at one time, with the minimum expenditure of effort or manpower. It was what 1 had come to expect of the Nazis during the course of my visit. That I was no longer shocked by such atrocity was a shock in itself. I stared out of the pit at the vast grey sky, punctured only by the concrete finger of the monument. The sky was heavy under the weight of its own sorrow.

The closing scene from the film Judgment at Nurembergcame to mind. An American (small town) judge visits his leading Nazi counterpart whom he has just sentenced for war crimes. The German judge offers, as mitigating explanation, that he thought the Nazis could be controlled and used, that he never imagined it would come to this. His counterpart dismisses this very cogently and simply: "It came to this the first time you sentenced a person to death whom you knew to be innocent."

If Sachsenhausen indelibly imprinted one idea in me, it is this: that every step down the road which begins with disrespect for another person ends at KZ Sachsenhausen. All the sentences which begin, "I'm not …………… (insert your own favourite prejudice)…… but ......" conclude, ultimately, with the sharp report of a pistol shot, or the creak of rope, or the bolts sliding home on the door to the 'shower'.

Many of the entries in the visitors' book say, "This must not be allowed to happen again". My feeling is that it has never stopped happening. I believe that it may prove truly fatal to think of there and then and exclude here and now. I am convinced that the celebration of life and difference, the promotion of human flourishing, is dependent upon us being ever vigilant, and ever respectful of the dignity of others.

My visit to Berlin showed ample evidence that a significant number of people share this perspective. In the wake of the arson attack on the 'Jewish Barracks' at Sachsenhausen, there was a spontaneous gathering at the memorial to express concern and regret. Subsequently, a demonstration was held which focussed on the theme 'reflecting in Germany - together against xenophobia and anti-Semitism'. 7000 people attended.

When the Berlin city authorities were considering what uses the Prinz Albrecht Terrain might be put to, concerned citizens and organisations took an active interest and even direct action, including a symbolic 'dig' on May 5th., 1985. The discovery of the foundations of the buildings associated with the site, particularly the cells used by the Gestapo, and those parts built by the slave workers from Sachsenhausen, together with the insistent pressure brought to bear by those who saw the necessity of an explicit recognition of the role that the site played during the period of the Third Reich, resulted in the opening of an exhibition pavilion and associated memorials which currently comprise the site. The motto of the groups coordinating the May 5th dig seems very appropriate: "LET NO GRASS GROW OVER IT!"

The city is notable for the number of memorials and plaques that detail the location of many buildings, and chronicle many events, which some would rather forget. Berlin's insistence on facing up to the past and continuing to confront it in the present struck me very forcefully. Less formal but no less striking is the graffiti that can be seen in the city. Particularly in the workers residential areas, like Prenzlauer Berg, graffiti appears to be regarded as necessary.

Graffiti ist kein Verbrechen!

Lesben Pauer

Nazis vertreiben, Auslanderinnen bleiben  

This is a Nazi house

Much graffiti was focussed on current concerns – Kurdish refugees, the confrontation between Neo~Nazis and their Anarchist and Anti-Fascist opponents. Some was witty and creative but most was political in its inspiration. Amongst my favourites was the pointed reminder: "Wer bunker baut, wirft bomben" (27).

Comparing this situation to that nearer to home gives cause for unease. I do not feel that we recognise the dangers of forgetfulness, or apathy. Remember Pastor Niemöller's lament?

       Muted public concern permits our government to play fast and loose with human rights - witness the attempt to expel the Saudi dissident, Mohammed al Mas'ari, to protect lucrative arms deals with the Saudi government. Consider how the Criminal Justice Act is used against travelling people and against those who wish to undertake direct and legitimate protests.

Examine closely those churches who claim to esteem the unique dignity of the human person in absolute terms yet couch their teaching and pastoral documents in such a way that the human dignity of some is completely abrogated. This may be noted particularly when the churches address themselves to women’s issues, lesbian and gay issues, or issues of race and ethnic origin. There is no comfort to be had in looking at the wider situation - the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Chechnya, or Rwanda.

I wish I were able to claim for lesbians and gay men some innate virtue that renders us impervious to the propaganda of racism and sexism, but I can't. Though we may identify more strongly than some with the women, children and men who were butchered there and then in places like Sachsenhausen, and though we might feel their suffering acutely and recoil in genuine horror, still that does not confer an automatic immunity to the hateful thinking patterns that produced the concentration camps.

If it is true that lesbians and gay men (among others) have a 'privileged' access to the experience of the Häftlinge, then we have a particular responsibility to be vigilant. The danger we face because of that propaganda and its attendant terrors may be more subtle and understated in Britain than it is overseas but it is no less invidious. We must be vigilant not simply to prevent the virulent return of those values that consigned us to the camps (the fear of being inmates in the here and now) but also to prevent us from being seduced by the simplistic slogans and false promises that would make us accomplices in their institution. Without such vigilance we face the awful an almost unimaginable possibility of being deceived into acting as the new guards.

The lesson that Pastor Niemöller learned (too late?) was that if it could be you, it could be me, and if it were me, then it could be any of us. For that reason the same thing is demanded of each of us:

Vigilance and respect; there and then, here and now

                                                                                              2001 © PD Entwistle

Notes

(1) S-Bahn Friedrichstrasse:

Berlin is served by a variety of train and tram routes. S-Bahn refers to the Schnellbahn - the overland train network, Friedrichstrasse to the station in the centre of the city.

(2) Siegessäule:

Victory Column, built to commemorate the military victory over the French  which led to the founding of the Second Reich in 1871.

(3) Nazi:

NSDAP  Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. The National Socialist German Worker's Party. Elected to power in 1933, the party began to usurp the power of the state, supplanting the rule of law and government by the fiat of the party and the instruments of terror it wielded. Within a few months Hitler had stifled all opposition and abandoned any pretence of democratic rule.

(4) Anhalter Bahnhof:

This was one the chief railway termini for Berlin. Severely damaged in wartime bombing, there now remains only a portion of the facade.

(5) Reichsfűhrer SS:

Himmler’s official title, ‘Reich leader of the SS’. The SS (Schűtzstaffel) was the Protection Squad of the Nazi Party.

(6) Gestapo:

     Geheime Staatspolizei, the secret state police.

(7) KZ Sachsenhausen:

Konzentrationslager, concentration camp. In the earlier years of Nazi Germany  the camps were sometimes referred to as Schutzhäftlager, protective custody camps.

(8) Remembrance:

This had its origin in two distinct items which seemed to belong together as a 'token' that could be taken to Sachsenhausen and left at the memorial there. The remembrance consisted of 6 freedom ribbons, in the rainbow colours, attached to a pole. These ribbons had been part of a larger banner that had been carried on the Lesbian and Gay Pride March (London) in the summer of 1994. Together with the ribbons was a poem (see below).

                       The Colour of Forget-Me-Nots

                                         rose pink

                                     carnation pink

                                         perky pink

                                            panther

                                    champagne pink

                                         in the pink

                                        lily the pink

                                            lipstick

                                       blushing pink

                                     candy floss pink

                                         baby pink

                                          bootees

                                    marshmallow pink

                                     bubblegum pink

                                        fuchsia pink

                                           Triangle

(9) Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen:

Many of the former camps have been designated as places of national remembrance and reflection. Sachsenhausen is the one closest to Berlin.

(10) Strasse der Nationen:

      Street of the nations

(11) GDP:

      German Democratic Republic more commonly referred to as East Germany .

       Now, of course, no longer in existence since the reunification of Germany.

(12) Arbeit Macht Frei:

       The motto which was found at the entrance to the concentration camps. Work shall  

        set you free.

(13) Appellplatz:

The place where inmates were assembled for roll-calls, punishments etc…

(14) Häftlinge:

Prisoners of the camp.

(15) Schuhprűfstrecke:

The shoe-testing ground.

(16) Neue Synagoge:

The 'New Synagogue’, completed in 1866. One of two dozen synagogues vandalised and set alight on Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass), November 9th., 1938. Following this pogrom 12,000 Berlin Jews were brought to Sachsenhausen.

(17) Martin Niemöller:

       Pastor Niemöller, U-Boat commander in WWI and a one-time supporter of the      

       Nazis, came to reject Fascism and was incarcerated in Sachsenhausen.

       He is, perhaps, best remembered for the following verse –

First they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out  - because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

And there was no-one left to speak out for me.

(18) Erdbunker:

       Literally, ‘earth bunker’.

(19) Totgeshlagen…:

       A literal translation is difficult. The inscription may be read as –

                                           BEATEN TO DEATH

                                         SILENCED TO DEATH

                                                       THE

                                              HOMOSEXUAL

                                                   VICTIMS

                                                       OF

                                                   NAZISM

(20) Wehrmacht:

       The German Army.

(21) Zyklon B:

      The cyanide gas pellets used in the gas chambers.

(22) Triangles:

       Prisoners in the camps were made to wear triangles of different colours. The

       respective colours indicated the reason for their incarceration, eg. green = criminal,

       red = political offender, black = anti-social, pink = homosexual.

(23) Station Z:

       The mass extermination facility, built by the SS in 1942, and run by the

        Totenkopfstandarte SS  (Death’s Head battalions of the SS). Here, thousands

        upon thousands were systematically butchered.

(24) Prinz Albrecht Terrain:

       An area of central Berlin that housed the offices and HQ of the Nazi state terror

      apparatus eg. the Gestapo, the SS. Bounded by (what is now) the Wilhelmstrasse,

      Niederkirchnerstrasse, Stresemannstrasse, and Anhalterstrasse.

(25) Reishsicherheitshauptamt:

      An approximate translation would be Head Office of Reich Security.

(26) Graffiti:

Colloquial translations might be –

Graffiti is no crime!

Lesbian Power!

Deport the Nazis, let the immigrant women stay

(27) Wer Bunker…:

     Whoever builds bunkers, drops bombs

[onwardintolight]

Canon Catchup

With TROS coming out soon, I’ve been doing a lot of catchup on canon material that I’ve missed, particularly that which I think will be most relevant either for the movie or for Resistance Reborn (which I finished yesterday and will talk more about below). I will avoid major spoilers, as excited as I may be about some of them, haha, but I wanted to write out a few of my thoughts here while they’re fairly fresh.

A Crash of Fate by Zoraida Córdova and Galaxy’s Edge by Delilah Dawson—these don’t seem quite as relevant to TROS, but I read these two Galaxy’s Edge tie-in novels a few months ago and I thought I’d say a few words. I REALLY enjoyed the A Crash of Fate; it was such a lovely, heartwrenchingly beautiful story that reminded me a little of Lost Stars in the way that it focused in on a friendship/romance between two people who wouldn’t ever be main characters in the movies. The story was told primarily over the span of a single day, and wow did I not expect my heart to be pulled in so many different directions. Definitely one I will read again and again. 

I’m not sure I’ll do the same with Galaxy’s Edge. It was a super fun read, with some great, Indiana Jones-like action sequences, and I’d recommend giving it a go especially if you’re planning on ever going to Galaxy’s Edge—but it also had a few seriously problematic elements that I just couldn’t overlook. For one, NO WAY is Leia going to force Vi to work closely with someone who tortured her, and speaking of torture, many black people have already commented on the problematic nature of the excessive violence Vi undergoes in this book.

TFA and TLJ Junior Novelizations by Michael Kogge—I wanted to get a refresher on these stories, and since I’d never read the junior versions, I decided to give them a try. Overall I enjoyed these quite a bit. The TFA one was way better imho than the adult novelization by Alan Dean Foster, and both had some really meaningful character moments. There was one Leia scene at the end of the TFA one that brought me to tears.

Aftermath: Life Debt and Aftermath: Empire’s End by Chuck Wendig—I’d originally read the Aftermath trilogy as each book was released, but with everything I was hearing about Resistance Reborn, AND with the return of Palpatine in TROS and the promise of finally figuring out what’s been going on in the Unknown Regions, I thought it was a perfect time to revisit it. I skipped the first one (my least favorite of the three, and also my copy is in a box somewhere from when we moved last and the library’s audiobook copies were checked out) and read a synopsis instead to refresh my memory, then dived straight into Life Debt. Both of these books were as good or better than I remember them. I enjoyed them the first time, but I enjoyed them even better this time around. I feel like they’ve gained even more significance now. My HanLeia shippy heart is happy with some of their scenes, and also I rediscovered that I absolutely adore and would probably die for Norra, Wedge, Jas, Sinjir, Temmin, and crew.

Spark of the Resistance by Justina Ireland—this was a super cute but ultimately rather forgettable junior novel. The best part about it was seeing Rey, Poe, and Rose interacting. I may revisit it sometime after TROS and see if my unexpectedly skyrocketing feels for these characters (see below) makes it better.

The Poe Dameron comic run—I’d previously read the first trade (Black Squadron), the third (Legend Lost), and maybe a tiny bit of the second (The Gathering Storm), and aside from a really poignant bit in Legend Lost I just didn’t find myself very invested. This time around, however, flipped that on its head. Trades 4 and 5 (Legend Found and The Spark and the Fire) completely did me in, and without warning, I found myself 100% invested in Black Squadron. Poe, Jess, Snap, Karé, Suralinda, and L’ulo have officially joined the Aftermath crew in my list of characters I would die for. I just want all my babies to be okay! There were numerous moments in those last two trades (including the AMAZING Annual #2, a must-read for HanLeia new canon fans) which made me cry. I’m not even joking. So good. Well done, Charles Soule.

Resistance Reborn by Rebecca Roanhorse—Buckle up because I have a lot to say! I HIGHLY recommend reading the Aftermath trilogy, Bloodline, the Poe Dameron comics, and watching the Battlefront II campaign (which I talked about in another post) before reading this because HOLY MOLY. You won’t be lost if you don’t, but it will mean so much more to you if you do. Speaking of crying, I literally lost count of the moments that brought me to tears, and so many were significant because of how all the stories I mentioned and more have been so beautifully interconnected in this one. Wedge and Norra, Zay and Shriv, and so many others—each was given their due and it was amazing. One character’s surprise appearance had me practically on my knees with joy and heartbreak all at once, and I would say more but I’m really trying to keep that promise not spoil you, haha. 

If the Poe Dameron comic weren’t enough to win me over, this book has officially cemented Poe as one of my favorite sequel trilogy characters. Tbh, I’ve had trouble feeling much of a deep connection with any of the sequel trilogy leads—I love them, sure, but not like Leia, Han and Luke, the trio I grew up with. I’ve wanted to love them more, I’ve wanted to be more invested in them, but it just hasn’t happened. I’m really glad I read this book before TROS, because I think this has changed that. I was definitely getting a few OT golden trio vibes with Rey, Finn, and of course, my Boi™ Poe—except they’re completely their own characters, and I’m really starting to love them for who they are.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book, it felt really meaningful, and I can’t wait to read it again. 

That being said, when I finished it yesterday I felt a little bit disappointed, like it tasted a little bit bittersweet. I’m still trying to figure out why that is, but I think it may be down to three things: 

1) Though there were a number of fantastic character reveals, there were some obvious people absent and I can’t help but wonder where they are. I hope they’re not dead. I hope TROS includes some of these characters, too. I hope we get the rest of their stories either way.

2) The book is way too short. Especially on the heels of the Aftermath trilogy, this feels like only the first act of at least three. The ending comes way too soon, just after it really seems to get going. This I don’t blame the author or the publishers for at all; they are very limited, after all, in what they can portray leading up to TROS. But it really left me longing for more. This book had such a wonderful focus on character, but in the end, I wanted to see the character arcs get even more resolved than they do here... but I guess they really couldn’t be, and that’s what TROS is for. I just hope the movie does it well! I need all these people to be okay <3

3) It doesn’t shy away from grief, struggle, and the mental cost of war. Honestly, that’s part of why I love it so much, but I think that’s also part of why it left me feeling a little melancholy. The Resistance is in such a seemingly hopeless place, and while things do get better over the course of the book, there’s still such a terribly long way to go.The First Order rains merciless terror on anyone or any planet who gives even the slightest hint of opposing them or of aiding the Resistance. The whole galaxy is afraid. Poe struggles deeply with guilt and with how to make up for the horrible mistakes he made in TLJ (this is not brushed off in the slightest, not by the book or by the characters in it, and I appreciate that). Rey is confused and still unsure of her place in things. Characters are faced with the fact that they will almost certainly die because of their choice to join the Resistance, and it’s heavy. And Leia. Oh, Leia. I am deeply grateful to Roanhorse for her very realistic portrayal of Leia as someone who has lost so incredibly much (most recently her husband and brother), most definitely has PTSD, and probably is dealing with a bit of depression. Leia is weary. Leia struggles to keep stepping forward, struggles to figure out the next step for those she leads. Leia struggles to keep hoping. The battle between hope and despair in the face of terrible loss and terrible odds is very much felt in this book. But as ever with Leia, hope always wins in the end. By the end of the book, you can still feel the struggle, but hope wins. 

I think that because I personally relate so much to Leia, reading some of that was hard. Not because I feel like it’s contrary to who Leia is, but because I resonate with it so much and because it reminds me in a particularly strong way of some of the struggles I’ve dealt with that I’d like to forget. It’s no wonder that my heart felt heavy after I closed the book. But along with that, I also see how Leia perseveres, how she’s finally gotten to a place where she lets herself rely on and be comforted by others, and how she accomplishes the seemingly impossible just because she damned well refuses to give in to despair, no matter how tempting it may be. It reminds me that I, too, can accomplish incredible things despite all my struggles, despite the odds stacked against me.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book. Resistance Reborn hasn’t quite come up to the level of Bloodline or LPOA in my personal ranking, but with future rereads, it very well might someday. 

This book—along with all of this reading—has put me even more on the edge of my seat for TROS than I was before, if that’s possible. I desperately want it to be the best ending possible for the Skywalker Saga and for all these characters who’ve become so beloved to me. I’m trying to temper my expectation—TFA still isn’t especially my jam, after all, and while overall I’m a fan of the ST (the TROS trailers made me cry, for goodness sakes), I have a somewhat complicated relationship with it in general—but goddammit, I’m hoping anyway. There’s so much beautiful setup in the new canon EU, such a deliberate focus on character, and so many hints that this might reach through the whole saga and bring together something bigger than we can imagine. 

I’m hoping anyway.

[violetosprey]

BTD2 My thoughts on Lawrence

I covered my thoughts long ago on all of the “Till Death Do Us Part” game characters, but I never really took the time to talk about my thoughts about the main series “Boyfriend to Death” characters.  I have actually talked about many of these characters through various different posts.  But otherwise, there haven’t been that many posts dedicated specifically to certain BTD characters.

These posts will mostly be about my own opinions and views (a rough analysis more than anything).  I may end up focusing on multiple aspects of the character, or just one particular one if I think it defines them best (we’ll see).  For those that have read some of my other posts, there likely WILL be some thoughts I’ve stated before that I’ll simply be re-iterating here.  But there may also be some new stuff in here if it happens to come to mind, or because I’ve simply not had the time before to go over such a topic.

It will take a while to get through all 8, so please have some patience and just check back later if it looks like I don’t have a post up yet for a character you’re really interested in.  I will also be talking through these under the assumption that you’ve played/read all the routes (so I might mention but not go into explicit detail on a scene).

*major spoilers below *

Fun Fact: When BTD2 was announced, the character who’s route that I was MOST interested in playing was Lawrence.  He was completely different from what I was expecting to see as a character from these games.  I’m not quite sure what it was about him.  Even with his physical appearance, I could state his traits out loud and it wouldn’t sound like he’d be the kind of guy I’d be into.  But it just seems to work here.  Also, I had this goal when I started the games that I was going to try REALLY hard to survive on my first attempt for at least 1 out of the 4 guys. Needless to say, I failed spectacularly on my first attempt.

I’ll be completely honest here.  I’ve wanted to write about Lawrence for a while now because he’s one of the characters I got REALLY into.  He’s the only one in the BTD series (excluding TDDUP) that I almost was able to get all the endings on my own.  I had two left before I broke down and looked up a guide.  If I had tried a little harder, I probably could have figured out how to get his best survival ending in the bathroom (I had the scenario set up for it), but I couldn’t have figured out the “name” thing on my own (which was the ending I was really looking for).  

The problem is I wasn’t quite sure HOW to talk about Lawrence.  I’ve said this before, but as opposed to BTD, BTD2 gave the characters a lot more depth this time around.  Among them, Lawrence is the hardest to figure out and comprehend. Hell, Gato’s even explained through asks from time to time about Lawrence’s history with finding the river after a drowning incident I believe, how leaving it (or was it constantly returning?) is slowly rotting him, and how he keeps wanting to go back.  We have been given information, but I often have a difficult time either remembering the details, or putting together the pieces. So other than acknowledging that Lawrence was born human but has become something supernatural overtime…not much more I can expand on here at the moment.

One thing the creator has said about Lawrence is that he’s “not good with people.”  I couldn’t agree more!  Lawrence has this conflicting nature where he simultaneously wants someone to bond with, but doesn’t know how.  At the very beginning of the game, he’s meeting up with Ren, whom he’d been chatting with online previously (presumably more than once).  When things get awkward and Ren leaves early, Lawrence becomes SO distraught that he puts the blame on the MC and attacks them.  Then later when the MC is held captive by Lawrence, he may start to like you but…well…remember the whole “spine” bit?  Yeah he’s probably not fully aware that some of the ways he interacts with others could be off-putting to say the least.  He’s also very apprehensive about what the MC says or does at times (ex. MC screaming or taking too long in the bathroom). When he feels he’s starting to lose control, he’s quick to restrict and gag the MC.  And if you push him to complete insanity, he reveals that under that nervous exterior he does indeed have a slight hint of sadism.

Right before I started this post though, I thought of something that I don’t think I’d taken the opportunity to do on my tumblr before:  Compare Strade and Lawrence.  I mean JUST the two together (not compared with all the other characters at once).  They’re both characters owned by Gato that operate in COMPLETELY different ways.  Strade was such a hit (possibly the most popular in the first game), that’s it’s almost like “How do you top that?” or “How do you avoid recycling older material that you know worked the first time?” Strade is just a pure sadistic monster with no supernatural qualities to him (with the exception of a fox boy in his house).  He has no real motivation for being evil other than he enjoys it.  Lawrence on the other hand, is a human whose mind has been gripped by supernatural events, causing him to become mentally unstable. He’s detached from reality and constantly on edge, but still has at least a small desire to connect with other people (that he’s often unable to).

I forget who the heck made the post, but someone made a comment about how after having to deal with Strade’s “unbroken stare” in BTD, it was quite a shift to face Lawrence who is often looking away from you.  This is both hilarious and true.  Strade carries himself with a lot more confidence in a jovial manner.  Lawrence, even when he has you tied up, is nervous and not sure how to deal with the situation at hand.  Strade knows he’s in charge while it feels like Lawrence has to remind himself that he’s in control of the situation.  For example, Lawrence says “he can do whatever he wants to you,” but if you start kicking up a fuss he’ll freak out.  He has the strength to keep you down, but he appears to lack…authority?  Really, the times he seems the most composed ironically are when he becomes COMPLETELY unstable and goes to cut you up.  That’s pretty terrifying.

Strade also loves to hear his victim’s screams, while Lawrence can gag you frequently in his route. Yes, you could say it’s because Strade has you locked up in his own house where people can’t hear you while Lawrence is in a shared apartment building (one time one of the tenants even hears the noise).  But I think even if Lawrence were alone, I feel like he just doesn’t like loud noises or resistance in general.  He’s implied to have gotten a little “dirty” with corpses after all…and a corpse won’t fight back or say a word.  I personally perceive Lawrence as something like a frightened dog.  The dog wants some attention and compassion, but if you’re not careful, you could corner and frighten him to the point where he bites you.

The weirdest thing I probably have to say is that…both Strade and Lawrence like people in different ways.  Strade I get this feeling that he genuinely enjoys conversation and interacting with others. That’s why he appears so friendly. But then he gets his kicks out of torturing people, so how much he can ACTUALLY care about another human being is debatable.  Lawrence (I’m running into speculation territory here) I don’t think necessarily hates or dislikes people, but they do make him nervous.  Still, he wants some kind of companionship (first with Ren, then with the MC if you get him to really like you).  In a strange way, Lawrence comes off as liking you more “genuinely” than Strade ever could.  I don’t really know how to explain it.  But the problem with Lawrence is that when he does decide he likes you and wants to keep you…he clearly doesn’t know how to have a proper relationship (*coughs* cuts your limbs off so you can’t get away *coughs*).

The best ending for Lawrence (as in HIS best ending at least- not talking favorite endings) is where you two connect when you mention the river.  It’s definitely a rather sweet ending.  I think what this may also imply, when comparing this ending to the one where he amputates you, is that Lawrence can never really have a “normal human relationship.”  His mind is has been warped too much by the river and he can never view or interact with the world in a normal manner again.  You have to be on the same level as Lawrence in order to truly bond with him. Kind of interesting.

So what did I think about Lawrence?  I loved him! Definitely don’t regret spending as much time (the most time even) on his character as I did.  Even if it meant just getting killed over and over…and over…and over again for several hours (let’s just say that maybe by the time I got to Ren’s route I wasn’t COMPLETELY upset that I had to kill the guy).  Regardless, Lawrence also gets the award from me for being the HARDEST character to figure out in the main BTD games.  This post was fun to write, but it was just challenging to try to come up with some solid viewpoints.

P.S.  In the event someone reading this is aware that my blog is half BTD/TDDUP and half yanderes goes “Are you seriously not going to talk ONCE about Lawrence as a yandere character?”  Well here’s a short answer for you:  I could see why someone might (and you are more than free to) label Lawrence as a yandere, but I personally do not.  The reason is…Lawrence is weird?  Sorry if that’s an unsatisfying answer, but if I really wanted to get into my reasons why here then this post would be way too long :P