#even though I’m pretty sure it’s not really her area of knowledge

[dykesynthezoid]

My college campus is like. Sorry but we actually can’t fill your adderall prescription at our pharmacy. And I was like oh bc of the shortage? And they’re like nooo we just don’t want to.

Like oh sick ok. Thanks

[mochegato]

Take a Chance

The large ‘Welcome University of the Arts London International Students’ banner draped ominously over the double doors to the ballroom, outside which Marinette and Adrien stood frozen, or rather, outside which Marinette stood frozen and Adrien stood patiently waiting for her to move.

Marinette smoothed down the full skirt of her dress, hands running and rerunning over her fabric as though there were wrinkles in it.  There weren’t.  She knew that.  However, that knowledge in no way impacted her need to smooth down her skirt or adjust the belt around her sleeveless fitted bodice, which she should have thrown a cardigan over.  Not only would it have warmed her up, but it would also have made the dress seem more casual.  “I’m overdressed,” she groaned.

“You’re not overdressed,” Adrien sighed, a bemused smile tugging on his lips.  He didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a close thing.  This was the fourth time they’d had this conversation in the short walk over.  And that was despite Adrien having intentionally directed the conversation away from that topic and toward finishing the furnishing for their apartment, their upcoming first day of classes, and plotting ways to get Felix to ‘network on an interpersonal level’ otherwise known as socialize.

“Everyone is going to be more casual than this,” she insisted as she stared at the doors in a familiar wide-eyed panic.  “Oh, this is a disaster!  Everyone is going to think I’m strange and not want to talk to me and then they’re going to avoid me for the rest of our time here and I’m going to spend my entire time alone and ostracized.”

Adrien turned to her with a flat look that he was positive would have had an effect if it hadn’t been softened by the warm look in his eye… and if she had been paying him any attention.  Unfortunately, she was too far down in her anxiety spiral to take notice of him or reality, really.

He’d learned long ago, when she was in this state, the only way to get her attention was to ground her through touch, which fortunately was how he liked to communicate as well, he would just need to make sure to ground her periodically throughout the night.  A hug or arm slung over the shoulders here, a forearm squeeze and hip check there and everything should be good.

He grabbed her shoulders gently and forced her to stop walking and turn to meet his eyes with a soft smile but firm voice.  “First of all, no.  Second of all, everyone is going to be so impressed with how good you look, they’re going to want to be your friend.  Third of all, nobody can avoid liking you.  Many have tried,” he smirked, the tension in his shoulders easing at the emerging ghost of a smile on her lips.  He would have mussed up her hair if he wasn’t absolutely positive she would have ripped his heart out with her bare hands for even attempting it.

“Fourth of all, if everything you said was to somehow actually happen, which it won’t,” he added in hastily before she could interrupt, “you’d still have all of us.  Felix and I live with you, Ash practically lives with us, Kagami is at our place constantly, and Felix seems pretty insistent on doing everything in the common area for someone who insists he doesn’t actually care about us.

“So, you couldn’t get away from us if you wanted to,” he assured her firmly.  He pulled her into a hug, wrapping his arms around her like a weighted blanket until he felt all the tension ease from her body, only then pulling away to kiss her temple.  “Now, we can go home, if you want to, or… we can be brave and face it… together.  And together, we can do anything.”

Marinette snorted at his dramatic delivery, but grinned back at him, giving him a determined nod.  “Together.  We can do this.  We’re going to have an amazing time and meet new, incredible friends.”

He grinned and clapped her arms.  “That’s the spirit.  Now let’s go make new friends, and maybe something more for you.”  He waggled his eyebrows at her with a smirk before unceremoniously shoving her toward the doors.

Marinette squawked as she fought to keep her balance, throwing a dirty look at him over her shoulder as she entered under the welcome sign.  She ignored his presence behind her in favor of scanning the room to assess the scene.  The tables were set up around the periphery of the room, but almost nobody was seated at them.  Instead, they all seemed to be congregating in small standing groups near the dancefloor, dancing on the dancefloor, or grabbing snacks at the small dessert table.

The music was almost drowned out with the sound of conversation and laughter.  Everywhere she looked, people were smiling, not a frown, scowl, glower, or sneer in sight.  The jovial atmosphere drained away the last of her anxiety.  The smile spreading across her lips was Adrien’s only warning before she yanked him toward a friendly looking group of students to their right.

They slowly made their way through several different groups, each more friendly than the last and everyone… well, some of the girls and one or two of the boys, were, in fact, impressed with her dress, and told her as much.  After an hour or so, she couldn’t be sure how long it had been, having long since lost track of time, she had completely forgotten why she had been anxious in the first place and now felt chagrinned by her initial fear, not that she was willing to admit that to Adrien.  She had absolutely no doubt he was already well aware and would rub her face in it enough at a later date.  Acknowledging it to him would only bring that ‘later date’ sooner.

Toward the end of the night, she finally gave into her curiosity and excused herself to check out the desserts, not that she wanted to compare them to her parents’ she just… did, and get glasses of punch for her and Adrien, who had been quite vocal about how desperately he needed a drink or he wasn’t sure he’d be able to survive the night and since Ash was already sick and could barely talk, he had to make sure he could.

She shook her head as she made her way over, reevaluating her friendship with the drama king the entire way.  Luckily, she now got to share the burden with Ash and Felix, well, mainly Felix, but really it was just a matter of time before Ash moved in with them, though she wasn’t sure if that would make it easier to deal with him because there’d be another person helping distract him, or worse because he’d be acting up for her.

She was so caught up in her thoughts she didn’t notice the man standing in front of the punch bowl already, only looking up when she was just a step away, too close to divert without bumping into him and… oh god!  She realized too late to stop it, who was also holding a glass of punch that she was definitely going to spill onto both of them.

She tried to move to the side to mitigate the damage and brace for the impact, but it never came.  In the blink of an eye, he’d managed to set the glass down and turn back to her, his arms cradling hers to keep her from falling.  She blinked up at him, her eyes owlishly wide and her mind racing to make sense of what had just happened, but it was having a hard time once she met his brilliant blue eyes.  The combination of his kind eyes, sweet smile, and strong arms holding her was messing with her head, making cohesive thought impossible.  The only thought that managed to make itself known was that he looked really nice, personality and physically.

It took longer than she would care to admit, to realize she hadn’t moved from his embrace, but had continued to stare captivated into his eyes.  She blinked a few times and hummed lightly before stepping back, a bright blush on her cheeks.  “I’m so sorry!  Thank you for saving me.  It’s a terrible introduction.  I’m so clumsy.  I’m so glad I didn’t spill your punch on you.  I was positive I was going to.”

He grinned at her, only then pulling his arms back from their position hovering around her to ensure she was stable.  “Nope.  Guess we got lucky.  No spills.  It would be a tragedy to ruin that dress of yours.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, her blush turning from a rosy dusting to a full-blown fuchsia.  She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and looked down shyly as she busied herself with pouring a glass of punch, desperate for an excuse to look away while she willed her cheeks to cool down, a mission that would be helped significantly if his dark hair didn’t have those adorable curls falling across his forehead, almost long enough to fall into his eyes, and if his lanky appearance wasn’t belied by the concealed strength she could detect beneath his fitted shirt.

“Hi, I’m Jon.  American… uh, obviously,” he held his hand out to her, his eyes glinting brightly and his smile sweet and charming.

Marinette offered a small smile as she set down the drink to shake his hand.  “I little obvious, yeah.  But only after you started speaking…”  She turned away from him pretending filling her second glass was her greatest priority and not mentally chastising herself for her ridiculously awkward observation.  There was no reason to say that.  What did that even mean?  Of course it was after he spoke.  What else would it be?

It wasn’t until she noticed him moving to refill his glass that she remembered she hadn’t introduced herself.  She internally groaned and added to the list of things to chastise herself over while drifting off to sleep every night for the next few years.  “Bonjour.  Marinette.  French… also obviously.”

Jon chuckled, holding onto his glass with both hands, like he was nervous or unsure what to do with his hands, but he never lost his boyish smile.  “It’s nice to meet you, Marinette.”

“Enchanté,” she bobbed her head in introduction, her smile broadening at his bashful energy.

“Enchanté,” he repeated in a perfect French accent.

Her eyes lit up with a new-found interest.  “Vous parlez français?”

His bottom lip pulled down in a wince as his eyes dropped to his glass.  “A bit.  I’m learning.  I can’t… I’m not fluent.”

He sounded so apologetic, she couldn’t stop the chuckle that slipped out.  “Well, you sounded convincing,” she assured him, her voice kind but quiet.  His wince transformed into a brilliant smile at the compliment, causing her smile to widen as well.  After a moment, she blinked and took another sip while her mind raced for something to say, not willing to let the conversation drop so quickly.  She’d been talking almost nonstop all night long and yet now she couldn’t find anything to say?  “Are you enjoying the event?” she finally asked.

“I am, yeah.  I haven’t really met anyone other than my roommate so far in London, but I love meeting new people.  I’ve already met a lot of new people tonight.  You?”  She giggled at his wild gestures as he spoke, almost like he had forgotten he was holding the glass at all.  It was by sheer broken physics that the liquid stayed in the glass instead of ending up on both of them and the floor, table, all the other glasses, and some of the food.

“Yeah.  I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people tonight that I think I really like too, but to be honest, I was terrified at first,” she admitted, leaning closer to him and lowering her voice like she was divulging a deep, dark secret.

He cocked his head to the side and watched her with eyes only for her, waiting for her to enlighten him.  “Of what?”

She leaned back again and looked away shyly.  “I don’t know,” she lied.  Well, not an entire lie.  She knew some of her fears, but she didn’t know why she was afraid of it, she just was.  The idea of new people who she didn’t understand and couldn’t predict was terrifying.  It was almost never as bad as she anticipated, but it was like her brain never registered that little factoid when dolling out dopamine or serotonin.

“I can’t imagine anyone not liking you,” he offered so softly, she couldn’t stop herself from believing he meant it.

Marinette smiled and ducked her head to hide what she was positive must be a furious blush, taking another sip to hide the real reason.  “Adrien said the same thing as we were walking in tonight,” she admitted after a moment.

Jon’s face dropped momentarily but he recovered it quickly before she looked back up to meet his eyes.  “Well, he wasn’t wrong,” he smiled.

She snorted and waved him off.  “He usually isn’t, but don’t tell him that.  He doesn’t need the ego boost.”

She glanced back at the group of students she’d been in earlier, observing Adrien mid-story.  She could tell it was mid-story by the smirk he wore and the particular glint in his eyes.  That combination was unique to his telling a story that could be embarrassing, usually to her, if he divulged the entire story, and he knew she knew that’s what it meant.  She shook her head and smiled at him.  He couldn’t stop himself from acting like a cat even when she wasn’t watching.  “He was right.  I haven’t stopped smiling and talking since I got here.  I was just getting a drink for us.”

“Oh, right,” he nodded, his smile becoming a bit more forced as he eyed the second glass of punch.  “I’m sorry to take you from your date... well not sorry,” he admitted sheepishly as his hand found its way to the back of his neck, “but... I’m really glad I got to meet you.”

Her eyes snapped to his instantly at his admission.  “He's not my date...” she clarified quickly and a bit louder than she meant to.  She shifted awkwardly and took a breath before continuing at a more normal volume.  “I mean, he is, but not like date date.  It's platonic.”

Jon looked at the group of students she’d looked at earlier and back to her uncertainly, because they had been awfully touchy with one another throughout the night for a platonic relationship.  And that last look was awfully… familiar.  Not that he’d been watching her all night, at least not intentionally, but he’d found his eyes drifting back to her frequently.  Frequently enough that he was almost positive her friend had caught him several times.  “Does he know that?”

She smiled and added thoughtful to the list of his green flags.  “He does.  And so does his significant other.  They were supposed to be here, but they got sick.  I was supposed to be a third wheel.  Adrien and I are like siblings.  We went through a lot together in Paris.”

His smile returned in full force as the tension completely eased out of his shoulders.  He cocked his head to the side, his eyes sliding to the music stand and back to her, his smile softening with the movement.  “So, he wouldn't mind if we danced?”

Marinette smiled and brushed her bangs, not out of her eyes because they weren’t in her eyes, more she angled them toward her ear out of the need to do something with her hands.  His eyes followed her movement, but returned his eyes to hers so quickly she almost thought she’d imagined it.  “He would not,” she confirmed.

“Would you?” he asked slightly bolder this time.  He stepped around the table until he was standing just a few feet in front of her.

Marinette’s smile broadened as she grinned up at him, rocking slightly, shifting her weight from foot to foot, unable to control her sudden burst of energy any other way.  “I would not either.  In fact, I’d really like it.”

“Me too.”  Jon’s smile matched her own, shy but strong, as he held his hand out for her to guide her to the dance floor.  He wound through the couples until he found an open area, which led to a new issue… where to put his hands, which he fully realized was absolutely ridiculous.  This was hardly his first-time dancing with someone he liked.  He knew where to put his hands, but that didn’t stop his mind from screaming at him not to put his hands too low, that’s creepy, or too high, that’s strange, or too far toward her sides, they aren’t in middle school, or too far to the center, that would force her too close to him, which would be too forward for a first dance.  Or do French women expect men to be more forward?  Oh God, did that thought make him prejudiced?

His internal screeching battle royale was brought to an abrupt stop when she placed her hands gently on his shoulders and met his gaze with a sweet but nervous smile.  He felt the tension that had started building in his muscles immediately start easing and a content smile turned his lips up.  Instead of overthinking, he let his body act.  There was a bit more space between them than the other dancers, but it felt right for the moment.

They swayed together for a few moments, gazing into each other’s eyes with their shy smiles seemingly permanently fixed before Marinette spoke up.  “So, what are you studying?”

“Journalism,” he bubbled, his excitement for his chosen study bursting through.

“Oh,” she perked up, her eyes somehow becoming even brighter and moving a bit closer in her excitement, “my best friend is studying journalism.  How do you like it?”

“So far, I mean we haven’t started classes yet, but so far, it’s great,” he shrugged.  Marinette immediately cringed and barely stopped herself from turning around, running out the door, before dropping out of school entirely and starting over somewhere else so she would never have to face him again.  “I think that’s more the new environment and just, you know, college though.  Oh, no, wait, I’m supposed to say uni, aren’t I,” he chuckled and brought his hand from her waist to run it nervously through his hair.  He placed his hand back to her waist, unintentionally bringing it closer to the center of her back.  “What about you?  What are you studying?”

Her eyes slid to the side and braced herself.  “Communication design.  It’s studying how design can be used to communicate with the viewer,” she added quickly, used to the question by now.

Instead of the wrinkled nose and questioning look she was expecting, his smile widened.  “Oh! Maybe we’ll have classes together!”

“That would be great!” she grinned.  They swayed for a few more beats before she spoke up again.  “Where in America are you from?”

“Metropolis,” he answered quickly, hoping the reluctance he felt admitting that connection didn’t come through in his tone.  His eyes snapped to hers at the loud gasp she let out.  He’d already accidentally exposed his super speed to her just minutes before and now, combined with knowing he was from Metropolis, Superman and Superboy’s hometown… well, it wasn’t a large leap to his identity, was it?

“And you came here to study?” she demanded incredulously.  “They have a great paper there.  My friend wants to work there.  It’s why she went to America to study journalism instead of staying in Paris or coming here.  She wants to get an internship with Lois Lane.  If you ever meet her, my best friend that is, she'll ask you a thousand questions.”

“Oh?” he asked breathlessly, completely unsure how to react to that; relief she didn’t guess his identity or mortification of her knowing who his mom was.  His body decided on both in quick succession with a bit of self-doubt added in.  Should he tell her?  Did he want to expose that part of his life to someone he had just met?  Did he want to change the trajectory of their conversation?  He would almost believe she was fishing, a subtle hint that she knew who he was, but nothing about her physiology indicated she was anything but completely earnest.  One thing was definite, her friend had to knew who his dad was too then, at least his civilian identity.

“Yeah, she had a blog about Paris’ superheroes.  She was one of the go-to resources on them,” she answered, pride blaring from her tone, “she thinks Mme. Lane would be a perfect mentor with all her articles on the superhero in Metropolis but also other important things.”  She winced and looked back up apologetically.  “Sorry, I should probably know more than just ‘important things’.  Alya would be mortified by my ignorance.”

He blinked; her friend would lose her mind meeting his family, absolutely go apoplectic.  Luckily, Marinette didn’t seem as affected.  “Oh, well… she…” he stammered at a complete loss on how to continue the sentence.  He refused to lie about it, so instead, he diverted.  He looked up toward the speakers.  “It appears we’ve come to the end of the song,” he noted without loosening his grip on her.

Marinette hummed in agreement but didn’t step away while she considered whether she should return to Adrien.  She had promised to bring him a drink, and Jon may want to talk to other people, he had said he wanted to meet new people.  But he was still smiling down at her, his eyes glinting, and his grip hadn’t eased at all.  It all made her feel warm and bold as the next song started.  “We have.  But you asked me to dance last time.  It would be rude not to return the favor.”

Jon grinned brightly and tightened his grip on her fractionally, just enough to convey his contentment with her suggestion.  “Well, it would be rude not to return the favor and accept and I was raised to be a gentleman.  My Grandma would have my hide if I was rude to a beautiful woman.  Definitely safest to keep dancing.”

Marinette flushed and looked down, almost burying her face in his chest.  She looked back up after a moment but didn’t move away so her cheeky smile was clearly on display.  “But it would be okay to be rude to an unattractive man?” she teased.

He barked out a laugh and returned to look down at her adoringly.  “No, no it would not.  I suppose it was just a way for me to compliment you,” he admitted.

She beamed at him.  “Glad to hear I’m dancing with a rather handsome gentleman.”

He preened at the description and stepped closer letting his arms wind further around her back, not quite pulling her against him but leaving less space between them than had been there when they started, a space that decreased as they danced through the song, and the next… and the next, until Marinette had relaxed in his embrace so much, she had essentially melded against him.  Even when she pulled back to look up at him, craning her neck to speak to or giggle at him, she did so without moving out of his embrace.

She hadn’t realized how comfortable they had gotten with each other, his arms overlapping themselves around her waist, one of her arms resting comfortably around his neck and the other resting against his chest, their eyes focused on each other’s, their faces close enough for their breath to intermingle, only becoming aware of how close they were when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

She blinked out of the little bubble they’d created and looked around to find the interruption, admittedly taking a bit longer than it should have for her to remember where she was.  It took meeting Adrien’s amused smirk before it registered.  “I just wanted to let you know my throat is so dry, I might not be able to speak tomorrow, you’re a terrible date, and I’m leaving.”

Marinette pulled away from Jon just enough to bury her head in her hands with a groan, but stayed close enough she could have hidden her face in his toned chest if she’d wanted to.  “I’m sorry.  I’ve completely ignored you.  I did get a glass ready for you… before I got distracted.”

Adrien snorted and waved her off.  “I’m fully capable of getting my own drink.  I am somewhat self-sufficient, thank you very much, no matter what you and Alya… and Kagami and Felix seem to think.  And I’m happy to be ignored if you’re happy.”  His last word came out questioningly as his eyes met hers with a pointed look.

She looked between Jon and Adrien a few times.  “Oh!  Right.  Sorry,” she realized sheepishly, and shot Jon a reassuring smile.  “Jon, this is Adrien.  Adrien, this is Jon.  He’s a journalism student from America.”

Adrien nodded at her confirmation and turned to shake Jon’s hand.  “Nice to meet you, Jon.”

“And you, Adrien,” Jon grinned back, glad for the confirmation that neither seemed jealous or upset by his proximity to Marinette.

Adrien looked over him critically for a few seconds before seeming to come to a conclusion.  “I’d love to interrogate you, but I’d like to get out and check on my significant other, make sure they have eaten something and are drinking water, which they tend to forget to do when they get sick.  Plus, they’re winding up here anyway,” he added motioning around them.

It was only then that Marinette and Jon looked around them and noticed the crowd had substantially thinned and some workers were starting to stack chairs.  Marinette’s smile dropped and she looked over to Jon sadly.  “Oh, I’ll…”

“I can walk her home,” Jon piped up quickly.  He looked between the two of them but took particular notice of the way Adrien’s eyes tightened and his jaw clenched in response.  He reached into his back pocket.  “Here,” he handed a card to Adrien, “my student ID… and my real ID.”  He held it up next to his face and schooled his face into the wide-eyed image in the picture from when they took the picture before the count of three.

Adrien snorted and handed the student ID back.  “That’ll do for tonight, I guess.  I’ll just have to interrogate you next time you’re with Marinette.”

Marinette blushed heavily at the insinuation.  He looked over to Jon as he extended his hand to Adrien and smirked at seeing his matching blush.  “I look forward to it,” his eyes darted to Marinette, “if she agrees when I ask.”

Marinette smiled and Adrien nodded in approval.  “We’re having a get together at our apartment Thursday.  You’re welcome to come.”

Marinette’s head snapped toward Adrien, eyebrows almost at her hairline.  “We are?”

He snorted and shrugged.  “I invited the people we were talking to after you abandoned me.”

She groaned and dropped her head into her hands again.  Jon smiled at their interaction.  It reminded him a bit of Stephanie and Tim, comfortable and teasing, like siblings.  “I’d love to,” he chirped.  Marinette peeked through her fingers and offered him a small smile.

Adrien smiled as he watched them.  “Right then.  I’ll be back later tonight.  See you when I get home.”

She watched Adrien leave and turned back to Jon.  “So… we should probably…” she motioned toward the door.

He blinked as if startled by the reminder, trying to pretend he was distracted by something other than having been staring at the way the spotlights were illuminating her hair.  “Oh, right.  Yeah.”  He smiled and motioned for her to move first.  “Did you have a coat or a bag or…”

She shook her head and followed Adrien’s path out the doors.  “Nope, I’m good to go.”

He raised an eyebrow but nodded as he grabbed his hoodie from the rack.  “Okay.”

It took less than a minute in the now crisp evening air for her to respond the way Jon was expecting, a shiver wracking her body, though he could tell she was trying to hide it.  He draped his hoodie that he hadn’t even bothered to put on, expecting this outcome, over her shoulders and grinned at the look of her swimming in his clothes.  It didn’t completely swallow her, but it was clearly a few sizes too big.

She jumped at the contact and started to remove the zip-up with an insistence that he keep it, but he held his hand up before she could and motioned toward his shirt.  “I insist.  I’m not cold.  The long sleeves are enough for me.”  He grinned devilishly.  “And my grandma would leave me limping if I let a gorgeous woman shiver while I was hot anyway.”

Marinette blushed but looked up at him with a raised eyebrow.  “Should I be concerned?  Your grandma sounds rather violent.”

He barked a laugh.  “I’ve made it sound like that, haven’t I?”  He tucked his hands in his pockets but swung back and forth as he walked making him look goofy and childlike, and extremely sweet.  “She’s not.  She’s one of the most supportive, sweet, down to earth, but no-nonsense women you’ll ever meet.”

She nodded and looked forward with a shy smile, pulling the hoodie tighter around herself and letting his smell engulf her.  “How are you liking London?” she asked as she looked up at him and swayed close enough their fingers brushed ever so slightly.

“I haven’t really seen very much of it,” he admitted sheepishly.  He ran his hand through his hair again, but quickly dropped his hand back down so it brushed hers again, even more firmly this time.  “So far it seems not too different from home.  I’m still trying to understand London’s vibe.  I’m positive there’s a ton I’m missing.  How about you?”

“It’s been fun,” she nodded.  “I’ve been here a few times, though.  I don’t know it like a native, but Adrien’s cousin, Felix, does.  Maybe I can ask him for advice, and I can let you know.”  She looked down but glanced up at him through her lashes.  “Or we can explore together,” she offered.  “I mean, I’d like to get to know the area better myself.”

“That sounds great!” he gushed.  “Oh, no wait.  What is it they say here?  That sounds brilliant?  Brill?”

Marinette giggled and shook her head.  “I’ve never in my life heard Felix say that but I suspect that’s more a Felix thing than an indication of British slang.”

“He sounds like an interesting fellow,” Jon chuckled.

“He… takes some getting used to,” she acknowledged slowly.  “He’s a bit prickly.  A bit standoffish…” she paused as she thought about how to describe Felix.  “A bit hostile,” she finished with a cringe, but she quickly turned it to a smile.  “But once you do get used to him, you’ll never find a more loyal friend… sometimes too loyal.”  She almost voiced her mental completion of ‘dangerously so’ but thought better of it.  “He’d try to overthrow a government if he thought you needed him to.  Probably succeed to,” she finished with a mutter.

Jon snorted.  “Yeah, I’ve got one of those too.”  He grimaced thinking of Damian meeting Marinette.  Honestly, it was impossible to tell if he’d embrace her, not literally of course, or try to kill her… literally.  “Honestly a bit scary what he could do if he put his mind to it.”

Marinette beamed up at him, but her eyes slid past him to the sky above and gasped.  The stars were shining bright enough she could make out a few even in the middle of London.  “Look, you can see a few stars!”

He hummed and scrunched his face, as if he needed that to assist seeing them and couldn’t see them perfectly with his enhanced vision.  “A few.  That’s something I miss from home… well, not home, but kind of home, my grandparent’s home; seeing the stars,” he rambled.  He shoved one of his hands back in his pocket, leaving the other to graze hers.  “At night you can see the entire Milky Way sometimes.  Millions of twinkling lights, absolutely gorgeous,” he sighed.

Marinette watched his dreamy expression for a few moments.  “I miss seeing stars like that,” she agreed.

He quirked his head to the side and looked back at her.  “You can see the stars in Paris?”

“Well… no,” she acknowledged.  “We don’t get to see the stars almost ever in Paris.  But I’ve gotten to see them closer and they were gorgeous,” she sighed, breathless at the memory of how beautiful the stars were between the fighting.

His face scrunched in earnest this time.  “Closer?”

Marinette’s eyes widened.  “Uhhhh translation issue,” she exclaimed quickly.  She shot him a strained smile.  “I never asked you, what brought you here?  It’s a long way from America.”

He eyed her suspiciously, but let it go.  “It’s one of the top schools for journalism,” he started slowly, still watching her closely, “and one of my mom’s colleagues, one she really respects, went here and would tell me about it for ages and…”  He sighed and looked down the street as they walked as he considered his next words, which was particularly difficult when he could feel her hand brushing against his so much it was like they were magnetized.  “I don’t know how much you know about Metropolis, where I live, but there is a lot of rogue activity.  I just… really wanted to get away from it, to have a normal college experience, a normal life experience, without fear of my school blowing up.”

Marinette chuckled mirthlessly.  “I get that.”

“How about you?” he asked, lightly bumping his upper arm into her shoulder.

“A bit of the same actually,” she acknowledged hesitantly.  “It’s a great school for design and, while I love Paris, it will always be my home… after our villain, there’s a lot of memories and a lot of aftermath, especially for Adrien.  I have family in London and so does he.  His cousin is going to a school just down the road, the London School of Economics?  So, he’s here and one of our best friends goes there as well so she’s just a metro stop away.  It seemed like a natural choice.  And it’s really easy for me to jump on the Eurostar and go home whenever I miss my parents or friends.”

“Yeah.  I’m close with my parents and friends too and I felt a bit bad leaving them but if they need me, it’s a quick flight home.”  He froze, his eyes darting to her and away quickly.  “I meant hop onto a plane and fly home.”  He rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled anxiously.  “How else would I fly?”

Marinette laughed nervously and glanced at her dress pocket.  “How else indeed…”

“But I do miss my friends,” he added quickly.  “I call all the time, but it’s different when you’re not in the same room.”

Marinette hummed in agreement.  “Yeah, like I said before, my best friend is also getting a degree in journalism, but decided to go to America for it.”  She chuckled and lightly slapped his arm to pull his attention back to her.  “It’s almost like you guys switched places,” she teased.  Jon grinned.  “And her boyfriend, Adrien’s best friend, is getting his degree at a film school there too, so even when we go home to visit, we still won’t get to see them.”  She sighed wistfully, a far-off look in her eyes.  “We used to basically live in each other’s houses.”

Jon nodded solemnly.  “The price of independence and a new start.” They walked for a few more steps as the weight of his words set in.  He suddenly bounced in front of her and started walking backward with a bright grin.  “But!” he motioned toward the Millenium Bridge in the background, “how else would I get to see things like that.  And I wouldn’t have met you tonight.  And that would be a shame.”

Marinette giggled.  “Tragic.”  She bit her lip in a vain attempt to keep her smile from beaming too wide as she moved her hand so he could grip it completely.  Her heart was thundering in her chest as she waited for him to respond, only slowing slightly when he finally interlaced their fingers and shot her a radiant smile.  No, nope.  She was pretty sure it was racing even faster after he took her hand.

“Exactly,” he agreed.  He turned back around to match her pace by her side again, this time, gripping her hand tightly in his, as they walked in companiable silence for a few blocks, throwing shy glances at one another.  “Penny for your thoughts?” he offered.  “Oh shoot, no, I guess it’s shilling for your thought or something.”

She smiled but looked away shyly tilting slightly away from him as she figured out how to verbalize her jumbled thoughts.  Her mind was racing, but not in the usual, overwhelming, anxious way.  She might not be able to pin them all down, but she could feel they all pointed to one conclusion.  “I’m thinking… I’m glad I took a chance.  I’m glad I faced my fears and went tonight.  I’m glad I decided to get a drink by myself.  I’m glad I said yes when you asked me to dance.  I’m…”

“I’m glad you let me walk you home tonight,” he added.

She turned her bright smile to him as she stopped and faced him.  “Yeah, that too,” she agreed.  They gazed into each other’s faces smiles so wide they surely outshone the stars.  “This is me,” she finally announced.

He looked up at the building and back to her with a nod.  “Oh.  Well, that… You were right.  That really was close.”

She hummed and rocked on her heels, not ready to let go of him yet.  “How about you?”

“I’m really far, but I’m right on the metro, no wait, Underground, so it’s not bad.”  He looked up at the building and back to her, not easing his hold on her hand either.  “Can… would it be okay if I called you sometime maybe... maybe to explore London together?”

Marinette beamed and bounced in place.  “Yes!”  She cleared her throat lightly and tried again.  “Yeah.  That would be nice.”

He grinned brilliantly.  “Great.  That’s… that’s great.  Yeah.  Oh!”  He pulled out his phone and handed it to her.  She entered her number letting her fingers brush against his as she handed it back with a matching grin.  Even after having held her hand for the last half hour, the contact still sent a jolt of electricity through his body.  “Thanks.  I’ll call?”

She hummed in agreement.  “I’d like that.”

He started to walk away but Marinette called him back, running the last few steps to meet him.  She stood in front of him smiling for a moment before taking off his hoodie and handing it to him.

She looked up though her eyelashes, a look that he quickly discovered melted him to his core.  If she ever wanted anything, all she would have to do is look at him like that.  “Thanks for letting me use it.”

“Anytime.  Literally any time.  Just let me know.  I have a lot of very warm clothes and I can’t wear them all at the same time…” he stopped and grimaced slightly, cheeks glowing in embarrassment.  She grinned brightly and looked down shyly.

“I don’t want to wait until tomorrow to figure it out,” he burst out suddenly.  “Will you go on a date with me?  Tomorrow?  Noon?  We can do lunch at Fields and a walk in the park?  Maybe you can show me around a bit too, since you seem a bit more familiar with London than I am.”

Her smile got impossibly brighter.  “Yes.  Absolutely.  That sounds brilliant.”

“Great.  That’s...”  he darted forward to kiss her on the cheek.  “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” she nodded.

He waited until she was in the building before making his way to the Underground entrance.  She watched him enter before leaning against the door and squealing as she touched her cheek.  She raced up the stairs, pulling out her phone as she moved and pulled up Alya’s number to squeal some more.

[tobyfoxmademeascaly]

Dawntrail Postscript: What Do I Think Of It All, Anyways?

So, in the order of “whatever comes to my head first:

1. The new zones: the Yok Tural zones? No notes, they’re beautiful. The only complaint I can come up with is that upper Yak T’el might look a bit too similar to Kozama’uka. Xak Tural is, similarly, very distinct and nice to look at! (Even when its ugly on purpose i.e. Heritage Found)

Living Memory on the other hand… the thematic weight of it being shut down and all the lights going out are undeniable, but I really wish that the shut down state was less uniform. Why is everything made of electrope, with the exact same texture on most of the floors? The volcano island and the nature island still look decent while still holding that thematic weight, so they’d be decent middle grounds to look to. The water island in particular though suffers IMMENSELY from the depowered state just being like. The same few monochromatic electrope textures repeated across a large area.

2. The dungeons: despite only having one death across all the dungeons, hoo BOY was I feeling that increased difficulty. I had a great deal of fun with it, but I do wonder if this is quite the right move, since I’ve seen other people suffer a lot.

On the presentation level though, they’re pretty good! Some great setpieces, especially in Alexandria. Oh god, Alexandria. The gimmick of us running through basically the same place between each boss, as the beautiful Disney-Fantasyland town is reduced to ruins in apocalyptic lightning, is fantastic. And the creepy, mechanical voice getting more and more incoherent as Sphene erases her memories is such a great touch.

3. The scions: honestly. Hot take. I think the twins should have sat this one out. They’re very cute. I know. And its unbelievable for me, the number one leveilleur twins stan, to come to this conclusion. I know.

… But, well. How much do they do, really? Krile is obviously finally promoted to main character, G’raha is there to be Sphene’s character foil, Thancred and Urianger are there to be our rivals and aid Koana in his character development, and Y’shtola MUST enter the plot whenever a hint of the topic of the reflections come up. Estinien’s current role is perfect in its absurdity and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Yeah, they say they’re here to gain experiences and knowledge that could help in the Garlemald restoration, but, well. Do they really? We don’t hear much of their opinions on how plot events inspire them. Maybe this will change in the patches. I hope so. As it currently stands, the twins feel like they’re in the sour spot between background character and main character.

Zoraal Ja: his post-heel-turn design is SUCH a glow-down. His first design is decked in shining gold and bold green and orange accents and it makes SUCH a good palette against his blue scales. To say nothing of that voluminous feathered crown. So it feels disappointing that he was changed to just various shades of purple with usb sticks stuck to his head.

He made a good enough villain for the second act, but there’s just a bit missing from his character to really make it a Great instead of the Pretty Good it is. Namely, why did he have Gulool Ja? (And also how. He’s the only mamool ja we see in all of Alexandria. My bets are still on either “mamool ja can do parthenogenesis” or “some mad science cloning”). Its a big question that I’m surprised we don’t already have an answer to.

Queen Sphene: This woman has caused me physical harm and I’m only joking a little bit. When I first got into Heritage Found, I was so suspicious of her that I managed to give myself nausea. And to see everybody in the Outskirts seem so happy, despite their entire world being replaced by a dystopian-looking lightning-blasted landscape well within living memory…

Well, I felt like I was going nuts.

(Maybe that’s Alisaie’s ultimate role in the expansion. To make me feel less like I was being gaslit.)

I’m… still not sure what to make of her, actually. She’s obviously quite similar to Emet-Selch and Meteion in terms of story role. Maybe a bit too similar. (We even have the opportunity to make a BACK IN THE DAYS OF PARADISE joke again.) It feels like she tries and fails to meet those lofty standards rather than getting to stand on her own as an antagonist.

Wuk Lamat: oh that’s The Big One, isn’t it. Opinions seem very mixed. Sometimes for understandable reasons, often for absolutely bullshit ones. As for where I stand?

I like her! I was admittedly charmed at first because she reminded me of my own cat, Spooky (she’s got big ol’ eyes, a bigger stomach, and, initially, a fraidy-cat disposition). Her Power Of Friendship antics are great, her exuberance and earnestness charm me, and her and Namikka’s scene in Living Memory legit got me tearing up. She’s silly, she’s pretty, I love her.

Closing thoughts: I won’t lie. This expansion doesn’t live up to the shadowbringers/endwalker duology for me. But, like, of course it doesn’t. I didn’t expect it to. The last two expansions were lightning-in-a-bottle levels of blow-me-away! Nobody bats a hundred, and I think this is a decent enough start to the next major arc. Though there’s one thing bugging me majorly. The first half of the expansion, we have so much focus on the cultures of Tural. How they work together, how important it is to preserve them and their histories. Then, in the second half, we have a whole town subsumed by Alexandria’s displacement via dimensional fusion, needing to change rapidly to not perish in the lightning-blasted landscape. They’ve changed massively, but nobody seems to care. Everyone just says that all the changes made to the town were willing, and that’s the end of it.

Meanwhile, Solution Nine shows no signs of adopting any aspects of the Turalis’ culture except maybe that bit of environmental graffiti depicting a two-headed mamool ja. There’s not even cyber-future taco shops.

i’m praying that this gets expanded on in sidequests and the patches, because otherwise that feels like a BIG thematic hole.

… wait hold on we went the whole expansion without krile teasing alphinaud about her getting to be a pictomancer instead of him. 0/10 (joke)

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

9 Days of Lancaster: Dealer's Choice/First Date

I struggled to consider what I was doing right now my first date. Especially with the context that recollections of some of Pyrrha’s and I’s ‘outings’ provided.  

Fuck.

Not dwelling on that. 

By any other measure, a stroll through some town market with a guy and a girl who were now a thing was a date, right? Even though it was a patrol and we did basically the same thing yesterday, now it was different. Now we were ‘together.’

Ruby didn’t seem to mind at all, though, she flowed from place to place with her typical energy. It was as though she’d never been through these streets and past these stalls. She could just walk up to some person and talk to them. 

I… I really liked that about her.

Fuck.

She called me over from some RV that seemed to be a permanent feature in the square. Some short-term-long-term food-truck-restaurant? I wasn’t sure, but when she spun and called to me with a wave, I felt my jaw and was struck by the realization that I wasn’t sure just how long I’d been holding my teeth clenched together.

My face ached but she made me smile anyways as I paced over to her.

She smiled right up at me and I had to look away. I really wasn’t sure how I was even supposed to look at her. I almost meant that literally. Could I just, like, look at her now? Whenever I wanted?

I was trying not to be stressed about her of all things right now. Still, though…

“What’s up?”

“They’re moving people in from around the area.” She explained. I cocked my head. Beihfing and I had both been united about a panic. “They started a few weeks ago. I guess after the tower fell, a lot of people moved to bigger places, weird.”

Oh, maybe they hadn’t all died. Huh. “It's not that weird,” I disagreed, I eyed the woman Ruby had been talking to. She was twenty-five--thirty with blonde hair which made her stand out a little here, but her skin tone made her a match for some of the locals in terms of origin. “You had to run?”

“Well we couldn’t order dust or anything and it was pretty scary being mostly alone.” She shrugged, her casual ease with her emotions struck me. I was a total fucking stranger to her. Well, I was also a huntsman, so I didn’t analyze it and just nodded. “It was a good thing too, what with the other villages.”

I figured it was an open secret in GaiLong at this point, but I wasn’t sure. That kind of news would travel fast until everybody knew it at which point, why bother pretending? It was common knowledge.

“What’d you need?” I asked the two. 

It was Ruby who lured me in. “They wanted to pull the motor and alternator out of it and use it as a winch for other stuff. They’ve already pulled out all the bolts, but they don’t - well, if they already had a winch then they wouldn’t do this. 

“So?”

She rolled her eyes, “so nobody but you can lift it.”

The woman looked down at Ruby. “I’m telling you it weighs, like, four hundred pounds, easy.” I walked around and looked down into the hood. It was some dust-based thing with Atlas stamps, all smooth edges. It wasn’t designed to be repurposed. It was designed, perhaps, to not be able to be repurposed. Some technology was like that.

I reached down with one hand and, with a heave and a grunt, I lifted it and set it down. Ruby absolutely could have lifted it.

The woman blinked at me. “Oh uh.” Her eyes flicked to Ruby and back to me. “Could you set it over here? Then? If it’s not too much trouble?”

“Uh, no.” I returned.

She glanced at Ruby again. “No?”

“No, it’s not any trouble.” I clarified or tried to. “I didn’t mean… Not ‘no’…” I sighed. “Where do you want it?”

Ruby was laughing at me. I could see it as I passed her, following the woman to some cinder blocks. Our reward was something which I was assured was not ice-cream but was some kind of frozen custard-yogurt-stuff with sugar in it. 

To me it was good, for the time that I had it, that is. When we returned to the inn I still hadn’t showered after Ren and I trained that morning. Then I made the mistake of entrusting my teat to Ruby who had already nearly finished hers. 

When I got out of the shower there were only a few bites left of mine. “Ruby-“

“I left you some!” She pouted at me. I watched her take the last bite of hers from where she sat on her bed and set it daintily on the nightstand. Then she looked up and her smile never changed but she leaned forward onto her hands and stared at me.

I abruptly felt like covering myself, the towel and shorts I had on still showed off most of what I looked like. “Are you just going to stare at me?”

She blinked like I was alien. “Yeah.” Fair enough. I started putting on clothes anyways as she rolled around the bed. “I mean you stare at me, too, right.” I did. I had more than usual today, too, I didn’t want to hide what I felt from her. She continued, though. “I mean maybe not. Maybe, you like to look at girls like Sahov more?” 

“Who?” I wondered.

She tossed a pillow to my face. “The girl we were just talking to!” 

“Um…” I trailed off.

She slumped down into the covers. “Forget it.” 

“Ruby,” I started. I pulled a shirt over my head and began walking over to the bed. 

“I said forget it!”

I sat down. “Rubes you know you’re incredibly good looking right?”

“What?” She sat up from under the covers. “Yang’s the pretty one, I’m the cute one.”

“Ruby, if I didn’t know you and you came up to me on the street and started talking to me, I would assume I was being pranked somehow.”

“Ugh.” She let me know her disgust, but she wasn’t under the covers anymore and she was giving me this much sort of… sly smile.

I’d never seen that one before and it wasn’t something I usually associated with her. She crawled onto my lap and turned to face me, burying herself in the crook of my neck. I hesitated for a moment but let my arms rest around her slightly. 

“You really don’t think I’m cute.” She blushed. “I mean…”

“Oh yeah I just can’t stand to look at you,” I kissed her. Her bottom lip fit between my two and my ego was fed when I felt her relax in my arms. I chuckled as I pulled away.

She hit me and she was as red as I’d ever seen her. “Butt.” 

When I started laughing, she shut me down by kissing me again. 

[ollieofthebeholder]

And If Thou Wilt, Forget: a TMA Fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website

Chapter 17: So wilt thou toil in patience, and abide

It was exactly a month after the new staff came down to the Archives that Tim’s luck ran dry.

He’d managed to get into a rhythm—an awkward, almost syncopated rhythm, but at least a consistent one—once he’d figured out the others’ patterns. Sasha was punctual to the extreme, walking into the Archives with a cup of coffee in hand in the mornings in exactly the right time to get her computer fired up to start working at eight and walking out the door precisely at five; she spent the mornings fighting with the computer and the afternoons investigating statements and took her lunch at noon, neatly bisecting her day into four-hour chunks. Jon was prone to coming in early and staying late, but never more than half an hour in either direction—so far, anyway—and he disliked taking the Tube in the dark if he could help it. Martin tended to be early because he was so terrified of being late, which at least meant that Tim had an excuse for not seeing him on the Tube in the mornings; he’d also tended to stay late because he was struggling to finish all of his work before the end of the day, at least until Tim managed to convince Jon to let him type up the statements, which was easy enough that he could finish more or less before Jon was ready to go. Tim cheerfully spent his day doing research and filing as required and left at the same time as Martin to go home, have dinner with Gerry, and take the dog for his evening run; a couple of times a week, he would come back under the cover of deep darkness and try to pull the important files.

He was prepared to swear there’d been somebody else there one night, but when he’d gone to investigate the sound, he’d found nothing and no one. Either he’d been imagining it, or it had been the alleged ghost…or Gertrude was sneaking in without anyone knowing, somehow. Maybe she had an extra set of keys. Tim had to have faith that she had her reasons for not telling him she was there.

In a way, he was kind of enjoying investigating the patently false statements. Jon had announced the creation of what he termed the “Discredited Section”—an area of shelves dedicated to those statements that were obviously and provably false, as difficult as it was to prove a negative—which he “expected to get a good deal of use out of,” as he’d put it disdainfully. Since Tim was the only one of the three who didn’t really have another project…as far as Jon knew, anyway…he was primarily the one to pull files from the shelves and distribute them, and he’d been able to keep any of the real ones from the others.

So far.

Getting through the stack he’d pulled on Monday had been a bit easier than he’d expected; he only had one left that was still open, and he was reasonably sure he’d be able to finish it up by the end of the day. Jon had been interested in this one because it mentioned Jurgen Leitner—he at least had enough knowledge to recognize that name, which was something Tim wanted to poke at when he got the chance—but Leitner actually had little to nothing to do with the meat of it. There was an author involved, though, one whose name Tim vaguely remembered, so he’d reached out to his former boss and received an enthusiastic request-slash-demand for a lunchtime meeting. With that in mind, he’d driven in, stopping to pick up Martin on the way. They’d developed a pretty good friendship in the last couple of weeks, and so far, Martin hadn’t noticed that he’d told Tim far more about himself than Tim had let him know in return.

“How are you doing with those files?” Tim asked Martin as they headed for the side door. It was honestly a crapshoot whether or not Jon remembered to unlock it when he came in. “Anything you need help with?”

“No, I, uh—actually, I’m just about done.” Martin looked pleased and proud of himself. “I’m expecting an email, o-or maybe a phone call, from Tansy Colvin’s cousin to confirm a couple things and then I’ll know for sure if it’s got a paranormal explanation or not, but that’s the only one I have left.”

Tim tested the knob. Locked. “You finished the Bratticks file already?” he asked casually to distract Martin as he palmed the key and unlocked the door, trying to make it look like it had been open the whole time.

“Wasn’t really anything to do with that one,” Martin confessed, surprising Tim. “Once I verified that there’s not actually a Charles Bratticks—the name didn’t come up anywhere and the contact details were made up—I knew it was fake.”

“Jon’s not going to let you get off that easy,” Tim warned him. “You know how he gets.” He did a deliberately poor imitation of Jon’s voice. “‘While the statement may be incoherent and fantastical, we must do our due diligence. You can’t just assume because it’s too hard to look.’”

“Tim, shh, he’ll hear you,” Martin said with a nervous giggle, darting a glance towards the front of the Archives. “It’s—i-it’s a poem. ‘A Positive Reminder.’ I recognized it right off, and, you know, the date was too recent to have been what inspired the poem, so—”

He broke off with a startled oof as he collided with Jon, who had just unexpectedly emerged from behind a shelf with his nose buried in a file. The stack of files he’d been carrying slipped from his arm and landed on the floor, scattering every which way, some of the pages slipping out of the folders as they did so.

“Martin!” Jon snapped, sounding even more annoyed than usual. “Can’t you watch where you’re going?”

“Sorry, sorry!” Martin said quickly. “Here, let me—”

He bent to help pick up the papers just as Jon did, and their heads collided with a thunk that made even Tim wince. They both reeled back with a yelp and a curse respectively.

Tim saw Jon swelling up to yell at Martin further and stepped in, squatting down rather than bending and reaching for the files. “Here, let me help you pick these up��are these ready to go back on the shelves? I can take care of that for you. I’m done everything but the Braisewell file, and I’m talking to someone at lunch to get the last of that.”

“No, these are new,” Jon said, surprising Tim once more. “You’re not the only one who’s nearly completed. Sasha closed out her files yesterday, and Martin only has one left—” He shot Martin a glare, making him flinch. “—allegedly, so I went to get the next stack. No sense in everything coming to a standstill just because I’m recording. We’ll never get through all this otherwise.”

“Ah. Well, I’m not doing much this morning, so—” Tim began.

“I’m going to skim over them and sort them into at least broad categories. Perhaps if they’re at least loosely connected, or taking place in the same areas, we can get multiple sets of answers at once that way.”

Fuck. Tim kept his easygoing grin in place, even as he scrambled for a solution. “I’m happy to do that for you, too. You know, save you time.”

Jon stopped and gave Tim a look that was somewhere between puzzled and suspicious. Tim shrugged and blinked innocently. “You shouldn’t have to do the work for us, you know. Just supervise.”

At that, Jon softened, at least a little. “Thank you, Tim, but I think this qualifies as ‘supervising.’” He took the folder out of Tim’s hand and added, “If you’re looking for something to do this morning, try and get these damned papers to stay together. They get everywhere and it’s hard to keep them straight.”

“Only so much I can do about that,” Tim said apologetically. Martin had made himself scarce, probably to make tea before the workday really got underway, so Tim lowered his voice and took the opportunity to be helpful. “You’re not supposed to use metal fasteners when you’re archiving stuff. It rusts, you know? Not great for long-term storage.”

“That’s why we’re recording,” Jon replied. “And typing them up.”

“Both of which depend on the technology to read those files. Mister Megabytes won’t last forever, and eventually we’re not going to be able to read the floppy discs. And despite what Sasha seems to think, ‘digital’ and ‘permanent’ are hardly synonymous,” Tim pointed out. Jon grunted. “Not everything is going to be on a computer. Even now.”

“Well, you may be right,” Jon said grudgingly. “The older some of these cases are, the less likely it is we’ll be able to find the research on them through the computer, I suppose.” He drummed his fingers against the file at the bottom of the stack. “This one’s nearly twenty years old, and from what I was reading, the man was on drugs. Even if there was any evidence for it, I can’t imagine we’ll be able to find much information on a man living alone with a ‘singing coffin’ in his flat.”

Tim’s blood ran cold, and he couldn’t have said why. “Wait, what?”

Jon dislodged the file and opened it. “Statement of a Mr. Joshua Gillespie, regarding a coffin he apparently had in his house for around two years. I haven’t read it in detail, but frankly, from what I saw, it’s ridiculous. Almost ludicrous. If it wasn’t in Bournemouth, I doubt I would have given it a second glance.” He snorted. “At least my hometown isn’t entirely devoid of paranormal activity.”

Tim fidgeted a little bit with his ring, then made himself stop so Jon wouldn’t notice. It was tempting to let him believe that, to just agree that it was bullshit and let it go…but something told him Jon wouldn’t actually leave it at that. He’d investigate it himself, despite his assertion that it was fake and impossible to research—or worse, he’d give it to Martin. Jon might, key word was might, leave it alone after a cursory investigation and an inability to prove it. Martin, longing for approval, afraid of being caught out as a fraud, and desperate to prove himself, definitely wouldn’t. Tim couldn’t have said how he knew, with a certainty he could feel in his bones, that this was a genuine case, but he did.

And if he let any of the others investigate it, he’d never forgive himself if they got hurt. Or worse.

“Let me do some digging,” he said, reaching out to tug the file out of Jon’s hand and apparently catching him off-guard enough that he didn’t resist. “I’ve got some tricks Gertrude taught me—and she’s introduced me to a few people, so they’ll talk to me if they won’t talk to anyone else. Suspicious, you know? I can’t make any promises about what I’ll find, but I’ll do what I can.”

Jon hesitated for no more than a second before nodding. “Thank you, Tim. I’ll sort the rest of these before I start recording the statements we already have.”

Tim nodded, and smiled, and tried not to show that he was agitated. “Where’d you find all these, anyway?”

“That back corner. I must have straightened it up twelve times in the last three weeks, but it keeps getting…disarranged.” Jon scowled disapprovingly in the direction of the shelves. “I was going to work our way from the front to the back so at least the shelves would be more presentable and organized the closer to the front we were, but in the first place, it’s going to be years before we back there at this rate, and in the second place it was going to drive me mad.”

“The shelves must be uneven back there.” Fuck, fuck, FUCK. Tim had no one to blame for this but himself. He knew exactly which corner Jon was talking about, because he’d taken to stowing any files that felt real but that he hadn’t had time to go through to see if they were useful back there, specifically because he knew Jon was working front to back. He was careful to keep it neat but not suspiciously so…so either the shelves actually were uneven and things were sliding around, or he had heard somebody moving around back there and they’d been rummaging through the real statements.

Which might not be a bad thing. Maybe they’d taken the worst of them. Maybe the only real one left was this one he was holding now. Maybe he’d be able to keep Jon and Martin and Sasha from getting too close to anything before Gertrude got back and gave them the okay.

Yeah, right. And maybe if his grandmother had wheels she’d have been a wheelbarrow.

Tim knew as soon as he sat down and started reading through the statement that finding anything helpful about it wasn’t going to be quick. Since the longer he took about it, the longer he could keep Jon from reading it—and the longer Jon would give Martin, who after all didn’t have Tim’s specific training or connections, to research his own stack of statements—he determined to take his time. He went back over it a second time, more slowly this time, and started making notes of what he could research and what might prove to have some answers.

Jon emerged from the Archivist’s office about half an hour later looking grumpier than usual and deposited a stack of half a dozen files on each assistant’s desk, then stomped back to do his recordings. Tim waited until the door had shut behind him and Martin was distracted by the phone call he’d been expecting, then hovered his hand experimentally over his new cases.

There was at least one genuine encounter in there, maybe two. He could feel it radiating like heat off of the stack of files, and there was maybe a small temptation to pause his research and rifle through them to see what there was. Two or three of the ones he’d set aside were ones he was almost positive involved the Stranger, and he needed to keep the others away from those. Maybe if he let them have a couple of the others, ones where the ritual wasn’t coming up, he could do extra research into the Stranger’s and just…not tell the others. But he couldn’t really do that with Martin and Sasha sitting right there, even if Sasha was focusing on the Archives computer for the moment, so he went back to his research.

This one was the Buried. He could sense that a mile off. Gertrude had taken out the Buried’s ritual years before she ever met him, so it wasn’t exactly crucial or time-sensitive. He almost offered to swap with Martin, but…no, no, he needed to keep going with this one. He’d promised, and anyway, he rationalized, he didn’t know any of the ones in the others’ stacks were real. He was just assuming.

He was probably right, but still, just assuming.

At the very least, it killed time during the morning. When the hot spot shut off, he saved his work and powered down his laptop. Martin, working away opposite him, looked up in surprise. “Where are you going?”

“Meeting someone for lunch to close out that file,” Tim reminded him. He’d told Martin that on the way in, but sometimes you had to remind him two or three times because he’d get distracted and forget.

“No, I mean—you’re coming back, aren’t you? Why take your laptop with you?”

Because he didn’t trust Sasha not to hack into it, was the answer. In the month he’d known her, Tim had quickly realized that she was catlike in that she couldn’t stand being denied access to anything, so if there was a secret out there, she’d find it. And if Martin went to lunch and left her in the Archives alone, he was pretty sure she would want to look into his laptop just to see if there were things he had in there that he hadn’t shared with the others. There wasn’t—or at least not much—because he wasn’t entirely stupid, but he didn’t think she was above at least trying to get into his email and see what he and Gertrude had talked about, if nothing else.

He shrugged carelessly. “Habit, I guess. Gertrude always warned me not to leave my laptop down here unattended.”

“I’m surprised she knew what a laptop was,” Sasha grumbled from where she sat with her back to them. As if in response, Mister Megabytes honked an error at her.

Tim was momentarily torn between the need to defend Gertrude and the desire to let the others keep underestimating her, then leaned into the joke. “She was convinced it would come to life and eat her. See you later, Marto.” He patted Martin on the shoulder and headed out before he said something he would regret.

The Braisewell file might have been taradiddle from beginning to end, but it at least had given him an excuse to call Lou again. He’d been worried about how she would react. Turned out he hadn’t needed to. She immediately got the business part of the meeting out of the way by informing him that the statement was almost word for word a summary of the plot of a poorly written book Thaddeus Braisewell had tried to sell as “based on a true story” and he’d probably done it to give it legitimacy, and they spent the next hour catching up. Louisa Wexler was significantly less serious than Gertrude Robinson but no less sharp, and Tim had forgotten how much he genuinely enjoyed her company.

“I hope good old Gertie knows what a gem she has in you,” Lou said as they left the restaurant, having permitted Tim to pay for their lunch only because he’d promised to expense it back to the Institute. “We went to school together, has she told you that?”

“She doesn’t talk about the past much,” Tim hedged. It was true, but he also wasn’t going to admit that she was currently missing. “Is that why you suggested I apply at the Institute?”

“Truth be told, Timmy boy, I didn’t think you’d apply for a job,” Lou admitted. “When I suggested you go in for an interview, I meant to go talk to her about whatever happened to Danny. I could see it was eating you up inside and that you didn’t know how to talk about it. Figured it was either a Cain and Abel situation, in which case you’d go to your priest, or something you couldn’t wrap your brain around, in which case it would be right up Gertrude’s alley.” She touched his hand. “I let you go because I could see she’d already helped you. And I can see it’s done you good, being there, doing that kind of work. You look a hell of a lot better than you did the day you packed up your office. Gertrude’s good for you.” With a laugh, she added, “And that new man of yours probably doesn’t hurt.”

“Not unless I ask him to,” Tim quipped, earning him a groan and a sock on the shoulder. He laughed, too. “I enjoy the work. Miss you and the gang, but…you’re right. I think this is where I need to be.” He held out his arms for a hug. “Good to see you again, Lou.”

“Good to see you, too, Timtam.” Lou hugged him tightly, then kissed his cheek before patting it twice. “Don’t be a stranger.”

Tim’s good mood lasted until he walked back into the Archives to see Sasha hunched over her desk, tapping at a laptop that definitely wasn’t hers while Jon stood behind her, arms folded and scowling. She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t get it. The settings are fine, and it hasn’t done that to any of the others.”

“What’s up?” Tim asked, unslinging his laptop bag and setting it in his chair. “Computer eat one of your files?”

“Something like that,” Jon groused.

Sasha glanced up at Tim. “The audio file got corrupted. I tried cleaning it up, but it’s really badly damaged. And trying to re-record it did the same thing.”

“Maybe you need to reinstall the software?”

“I did. And I did a test recording, and it was fine. And then Jon did a test recording, and it was fine. And then he read the first part of a statement, just as a test, and—” Sasha pressed a button on the laptop.

Tim jumped as a horrible, discordant squeal came out of the speakers. It almost sounded like words, somewhere, but he couldn’t make them out clearly. “Jesus Christ!”

“Yeah.” Sasha, mercifully, stopped the playback. “It’s just that one statement, though.”

“No, it’s not,” Jon said with an exasperated sigh. “It’s the one I was trying to record, which was that statement about Old Fishmarket Close up in Edinburgh, and then it was a rather useless fragment I would normally not have bothered with but thought would do for a test, and then it was this one.” He waved at the folder on the table next to him. “But none of the others. I don’t get it.”

Tim looked at the file Jon had waved at. His stomach flipped as he realized which one it was—Joshua Gillespie’s statement. “What was the other one? Old Fishmarket Close?”

“Guy who said he had an encounter with a creeper in Edinburgh a few years back that just kept saying ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ over and over,” Sasha said. “Like six people went missing at the same spot over the years, and at least three of them were smokers, too. And then there was a weird cell photo of a seemingly empty alley, but when I cleaned it up a bit—okay, a lot—it looked like there was a hand in it. So, maybe not totally fake.”

No. No, not fake at all. Tim’s stomach lurched so hard it practically walked out of the Archives without him. He tried to keep his tone light…and maybe distract them a bit, too. “Huh. Weird. And here I thought Gertrude was just bad at technology.”

“What do you mean?” Jon asked sharply.

Tim shrugged and began unpacking his laptop again. “I didn’t say anything because I figured you’d have better luck, but I asked Gertrude once why we didn’t have people who came to give statements record them as audio files rather than write them down. She said she’d never had any luck with computer recordings, and people tended to look at her funny when she asked them to record on the tape recorder.”

Jon straightened. “There’s a tape recorder?”

Shit. Tim froze momentarily before turning to Jon. “Uh, yeah, or at least there was. Haven’t seen it since I got back, though. And there aren’t any tapes lying around.”

“Well…it might do,” Jon said thoughtfully. “In a pinch. At least for the more…difficult statements. See if you can find it. It’s a bit easier to find blank cassette tapes than it is to find recorders in stores these days, so if you can find the one we already have, I can try that out.” He turned to Sasha. “Go to lunch now that Tim’s back, Sasha. I’ll go when Martin gets back. If he manages to get back in a timely fashion.”

Tim bit his tongue to keep from saying anything about that. Sasha nodded and got up. “Right. See you in an hour. Good luck with the hunt, Tim.” She waved and strode out of the Archives. Jon scooped up his laptop and headed back to the Archivist’s office.

Left alone, Tim sighed deeply, then turned to study the Archives. He knew most of Gertrude’s hiding places, and he also knew there had been at least two recorders, so even if she’d taken one with her wherever she was, he could almost certainly find the other. Did he want to, that was the question. Maybe if he pretended he couldn’t find it, Jon would just put a note on the difficult statements and move on.

No, probably not. More likely he’d just go online and find one somewhere. Besides, Gertrude read them into the void sometimes and got the same power from them. Even if Jon wasn’t really the Archivist, even reading them would probably bind him closer to the Eye, make it harder for him to walk away…or for Gertrude to release him once she came back. At least maybe if he found it himself, he could mitigate the damage a little.

Heaving another sigh, he set off into the bowels of the Archives. Him and his big fucking mouth.

[abroadlifeactually]

How Did I Get Here – Moving Abroad

Where do I begin? I decided to start writing down my thoughts, reflections, and candid stories because I’m at a crossroad, and I’m hoping that writing will lead me to new revelation and help me figure out my new path.

Just to give a little background, I’m a 40 something expat housewife that feels very blessed to be in my position, but it came with its own set of challenges and a lot of change all at once. They say living abroad can be isolating, the same is said about being a new mother. Add both those things together, and you have what I was living.

I am lucky enough to have an amazing loving husband, and the most beautiful joyful child. But, before I became a wife and mother, I “did my thing”. I had a great job in a cool creative industry that people are dying to get into. I traveled around the country, interacting with famous people, staying in 5 star hotels on an expense account. I look back on that life fondly, even though, if I’m being honest, it was also filled with various degrees of sadness off and on, for a variety of reasons. I was confident, fashionable, surrounded by people who loved me, and was able to not only take care of myself, but also save money. At the time, I lived in a tiny apartment in a neighborhood that will probably never be gentrified. It allowed me to get on my feet since starting out in my industry meant low wages, and it was what I could afford. By the time I left I was making very good money, had a stacked 401k and a decent savings. Think off-rack Carrie Bradshaw, from around the way. 

Side bar, the apartment was in a tiny co-op, and my neighbors were all something out of a Tyler Perry movie. There was the old lying gossiping lady who you had to be nice to because she was the unchallenged president of the board of the last decade, and was able to pull strings to get things done for you. The successfully educated woman with the husband with a long criminal past (and at the time present) that made everyone uncomfortable. Two pastors (one of which I got into a cold war with…), and a bunch of families and good hearted people just trying to feed and take care of their families. I’m pretty sure the property management company was robbing us, and when I spoke up and tried to bring attention to it, I was accused of being messy (sigh). There wasn’t enough parking for the amount of cars of the people who lived there. The running joke was, any time a single woman purchased an apartment, it was a matter of time before her boyfriend moved in, adding to the strain on parking. It was a mess, but it was home and I lived there for a decade.

After many years, and I do mean many years of being single (which provides me with a wealth of stories), I finally met my husband. He was my manifestation list come true. I met him on an app…. which back in 2016 was unimaginable to me. I signed up with the encouragement of a friend because I was bored, and tired of traveling to the neighboring state (where I worked) to date what I deemed were men on my same page, so I decided to see who was single in my sleepy area. I found a damn needle in a haystack. I credit my years of dating for giving me the knowledge to know a good thing when I found it, and to push through the self-sabotage to snag him. We dated for 2 years, got engaged, and then had a very small destination wedding. 

With marriage came a lot of change. We were both so used to living alone, that our coupling was a huge adjustment.  We didn’t live together for the first two months of our marriage. One, because of our job locations, and two, because frankly, neither of us was jumping at the idea of giving up our spaces. We just visited each other on the weekends, and talked until we fell asleep every night like high schoolers. We finally moved in together (which is a story in itself), and after 3 1/2 years of marriage, and a baby that we worked really hard to conceive, my husband was offered a position in an Asian country. So while I was on maternity leave, 3 months after the baby was born, we moved, and I became a housewife. 

It’s been a little over a year since we arrived. I feel adjusted to my new surroundings, far far away from my loved ones, but now I’m at a crossroad. I love the privilege I have of being able to be home with my child (although, being a fulltime housewife is the hardest job I have EVER had). I have a part time nanny/housekeeper to help keep me sane, I live in a beautiful apartment overlooking one of the most amazing cities in the world, and I have a husband who happily provides for our family financially, physically and emotionally. But Instead of relishing in all of this, I’m cursed with the burden of constantly worrying about the future and trying to work it out in my head. I cannot stop agonizing about my career and if I will be able to find work with a hole in my resume. I tried to convince last job to let me stay on, but I was a pretty new employee to the company, and they were seriously committing to their return to office ……  I realize that this might be the worst sob store ever…. “poor little rich girl”, but in my defense, this feels like a fun break, and we’ll have to get back to our real lives when we return home. So here I am, trying to figure out what’s next. I absolutely do not want to return to the office after working from home for three years, and now being home for the last 1 ½  with my child. I feel like I’m still recovering from an absolutely horrendous commute I did for YEARS, I shudder when I think about it. While I loved my job while I was doing it, it required a lot of schmoozing and I just don’t have it in me to do that anymore. I’m a private person so it’s not likely that I’ll try to be an influencer, and or do something openly on social media. I started an instagram before I moved thinking I would post about my life here abroad, and quickly realized I lacked the energy for all of that. I don’t want another degree, I already have a masters. We’ll be in this country for the next few years, but I don’t speak the language (it’s written and spoken in characters i’ve never seen before, and can’t even wrap my head around, although I have made an attempt to learn it), so working here is not really possible. It’s also possible that when we leave here, we may move to another country other than home. So what’s next for me? I’m hoping to get a sign that I can’t miss that points me in the right direction, and ideally leads to some sort of an independent career. In the meantime, I’ll continue to pour into my little sunbeam, and jot my thoughts and experiences here. 

[revserrayyu]

2.6 Penacony thoughts [part 1]

**Spoiler warning** for everything up until the end of Boothill’s first encounter with Robin. Might reference things that happen later since I already finished the mission at this point, so be wary if you haven’t yet. Lots of random ramblings from me as usual with new stories, especially with all the silly stuff that happened.

Going back to school never really thrilled me back in the day, so learning that we’re all attending Paperfold University for this update was kinda meh to me. All the crazy trailers and the fact that we’re taking a trip back to Penacony did pique my curiosity enough thanks to our previous adventure inside the land of dreams though. I did enjoy how interested Dan Heng was about attending and when his voice actors would seem genuinely excited one moment then revert back to his usual calm, collected self the next in an attempt to hide his enthusiasm. It’s okay to show emotions, sir!

I’ll admit that I believed that Pom-Pom was actually joining us for the briefest moment until I remembered that Boothill used our conductor as his fake name last time upon checking in.

I don’t even know too much about DnD but at least I spotted this reference to it, yeah?

The treasure chest was quite the convincing substitution, fooling me and even Numby who was alerted to it, so props to our new ninja friend I guess.. who joined us in the dream pool not even five seconds later.

Damn them for bringing this stupidly catchy song into the game because it has been sneaking into my mind so often these past couple days!

I will say that hearing the Trailblazer’s sing the song did make the experience much better and I would definitely listen to it more if it means they allow the Trailblazer to speak more like they have been in story missions recently.

Our true first meeting with Rappa and girl really had a whole anime OP of an introduction.

First off, beautiful cutscene will all the colors and neon. Secondly, I did actually question why they listed her name as “???” here and started wondering if Rappa really was her name or not and.. yeah, this makes sense later.

We’re literally so darn stupid and silly and I love it. Poor March cringed so bad she didn’t even want us as a friend anymore. Incredibly rude since my text message has your little face decorated next to it, ma’am!

The Dreampeak calls return and I wasn’t expecting to hear one about Boothill and him dreaming about his family, aww! But wow.. y’all really did call your kid ‘Boothill’ huh? Tell me why.

Our sus teacher makes his grand entrance and now I’m continuing to doubt everyone’s real names at this point.

Dan Heng please, you’re allowed to have fun! You can admit you do things solely for your own enjoyment!

Aeons.. they make him look so sketchy and untrustworthy with that smile and I’m so fine with it. Thankfully he didn’t turn out completely evil, but I accept his villain vibes regardless.

His knowledge freaked me out a little bit at first because why would he know all this?? Has he been watching playthroughs of the entire game? Or has he done his research about the Astral Express? Of course it makes sense now as we later find out he’s a Memokeeper and memories are pretty much their area of expertise.

I didn’t even bother to change my result on which academy I would personally attend, but I’m glad it turned out this way as it allowed the Express trio to all go somewhere different.

Pffftt.. looking through screenshots and this makes me realize how tall this man truly is, like I think Feixiao is reasonably tall by in game women standards, so to see Reca way past her ears is quite something. I dunno, maybe I don’t pay attention to character heights all that much, but his surprised me anyways.

Now I know whomever this chili-dipping person is couldn’t have been Jiaoqiu since it’s well known he attended the Ranzhi School on the Yaoqing and I’m like 99% sure our healer never stepped foot in Penacony before, but I couldn’t help but think this is something he would’ve done too if given the chance..

And I’m certainly not crazy to think so as he’s briefly mentioned in one of the options we’re given! Yay.. I miss our hot pot king. But wow, March being strong enough to pin us down? I’m rather impressed and wish to see fanart of this chaos.

I enjoy Boothill so much whenever he appears in the story that it’s a shame that I probably won’t ever pull for him since I’m not too big on his combat.

That way that I didn’t even think twice about him suddenly saying bananas outta nowhere because of how his swears are (unwillingly) censored all the time anyway is hilarious. It seemed normal and I figured he was being caught up with all the banana chatter this patch has, but nope.. something is clearly wrong here.

It’s been quite a while since we first arrived in Penacony because I seriously forgot Robin is capable of doing this rainbow harmony thing too. It also slipped my mind that she and Boothill have indeed met before inside that one dream way back in 2.2. I don’t remember them interacting all that much then so the scenes they shared this patch were a treat.

Thank you Robin for healing him so he can swear normally.. or at least to his usual censored way of swearing. It’s silly but I love hearing them. His voice actors must have fun tossing around such words so often.

Well aren’t you just the definition of a precious angel. This patch really started making me feel some regret about not pulling for her.. but next time, for sure.

Speak your truth girlie! Also I dunno if it’s true since I don’t play Genshin, but I saw people saying that this npc sounded a lot like Navia, and if so, then that’s adorable to have Brenna (who also voices Yunli) and Andrew (Boothill va) share a scene together since they’re married. Whoever this npc really is though, they had a nice singing voice.

For some reason my mind thought of the bullet wound on her neck and how she wouldn’t want to be near any fight that Boothill may start, but I doubt that was the intention behind this line since I know Robin was worried about how easily she would stand out because of her reputation. Still, I think it’s pretty brave of her to hang around someone who prides themselves on their sharpshooter skills, though I’m positive Boothill would never let a stray bullet hit anyone aside from its intended target.

Yeah girl, no need to act so formal around our cowboy! Y’all worked together before so I can bet we’re past the level of acquaintances now. Be friendly! I’m not only wishing this because their dynamic intrigues me very much, but also because I just wanna hear her go full country accent and say “partner.”

Not gonna lie but just the thought of seeing these two interact more further along in the story keep my spirits up significantly and oh boy, I wasn’t disappointed.

I’ll end it here for now. The rest will take up two more posts if I can manage to fit everything.

[meenawrites]

Again with Trudy y’all!

Okay SO! We all know that Trudy HAS to have excellent taste in music. Like look at her.

I’m sure this woman has been gradually building up her musical library since she could afford it and now she has like 10 000 songs or something.

I think she sings a lot by herself like just jamming as she works on her kestrel or does stuff around the lab and eventually she starts sharing the music with Spider.

So it becomes like a mama-son thing for to give him one of her earpieces and they just sing at the top of their lungs together and have dance parties. Trudy used to be way more private about people seeing her sing or dance but like after the shit she’s gone through on Pandora it seems pretty trivial, plus it makes the kid happy so she’s just like whatever.

I also think that Trudy would have a great voice. Like I think she’d have a strong belt with a bit of a rasp to it (think kind of voice like Persephone from Hadestown’s voice). Like she can go pretty deep in her voice, her range is good. She can’t hit super high notes though, her throat tightens up at those and just like refuses to work.

Spider also has incredible range. He’s been a good singer since he was a kid both in Na’vi and in English and Spanish. He just has an ear for music and he loves it because it’s a different form of storytelling for him. He can hit those high notes even as he grows older, not like soprano level but mezzo-soprano or something.

Now I’m not enough of a music connoisseur to give a definitive look at what Truyd’s taste in music is but I can try from what I know. I think her vibe would be like 80s and 90s rock and some indie music. Like Spider, she also really listens to the lyrics of songs and not just the sound so most of her song collection has what she considers to be meaningful lyrics, with only a few staple generic pop songs that she can’t help but like. I think she’d be into indie music as well and some grunge. The type of music that comes to mind from my limited knowledge would be Paramore, Pink, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Journey, Aerosmith, etc. I think she’d have some Taylor Swift songs up in there; though I’m not like a die hard Swiftie, I’ve listened to her lyrics and her writing is honestly great so yeah she’s on there. I also think her guilty pleasure would be musicals; she doesn’t even show Spider those at first because she had a bad experience for her fellow soldiers judging her about it when she first joined the army, but eventually Spider gets unlimited access to her collection. And he eats that shit up! Yet another form of storytelling for him to explore that mixes narrative and song and sound and she finds out because she finds him belting along to like a Heathers song or something cause he has already memorized the lyrics.

I also am so sure Trudy has some sort of sex playlist listed an an obscure name with some dirty songs. That isn’t really my area of expertise though so I don’t know what would be on there per se but yeah. Though I am picturing this one song I know called “Kiss or Kill”. I don’t think she’d have any songs on there that are like super explicit but more just capture the feeling of when she’s in a sexy mood. I’m also picturing Dove Cameron’s “Boyfriend” being on there.

And we can’t forget her roots! She’s gotta have a huge Spanish playlist. Again this is not my expertise but I have a friend who does know! So hopefully I will make like an update post for that to include some songs she would have on there soon! If anyone does have any ideas I’d love to hear them.

So yeah Spider and Trudy have song alongs and dance nights together and that fills my brain tbh.

If anyone is interested in submitting songs you think Trudy would listen to, I would love to see them and maybe make a playlist out of them to share on here!

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 7 Minagoroshi pt. 33

I agonized about whether to make part of this post be a part of the last one. I don’t want it to look like I’m trying to drag out this chapter for longer than it is, I’m kind of just operating on how I feel like where it should end in terms of where the screenshots should stop.

I don’t know if you particularly care about my rationale for why I screenshot the way I do. The thought that goes into where and when to screenshot these. When this scene was happening it doesn’t really happen the way the screenshots imply, lot of text, then the poetic white screens. Sometimes the poetry seemed to happen at somewhat random times amid the dialogue, and I didn’t necessarily want to have another thirty to fifty screens of one sentence of dialogue.

Really curious why they opted to give Takano the Nazi skull there. In the remake art (in other scenes, this one particular shot is a console exclusive) it has something similar to an eagle design, and in the original art it’s just a beret with no ornamentation on it. I can only speculate as to why she has it, but it’s a very unfortunate choice since the rest of her military outfit doesn’t necessarily scream Nazi to me.

Zooming in on it blurs it to hell, but I assure you it doesn’t look like a Nazi eagle. Enough about the Nazis though.

We’ll get back to them in the next chapter.

I’m not so sure about this particular motive either. But I get ahead of myself.

My problem with her views that this action ascends her into godhood strikes me as a pretty misguided belief. After all, according to the manual, basically all information about the operation, the outbreak all of it is going to be buried. Maybe eventually in twenty years when they reopen the area someone might find out something, but not before then. It doesn’t explicitly say so, but I get the impression that all the soldiers and everyone involved in this cover-up is sworn to secrecy under pain of death. So she can’t exactly go around hinting at her involvement with the scheme.

Unless she plans to achieve some sort of godhood by “accidentally” leaking information about the outbreak on the nascent internet, but then she’s just one kook among many. Using the post-game TIP from Tsumihoroboshi for an example all the conspiracy nuts believe it to be aliens, not the work of Oyashiro. Same with the reality of Himatsubushi’s future where Akasaka and Ooishi don’t possess any of the knowledge about Oyashiro and so they’re operating under the faulty assumption it was the volcanic gas that killed these now two thousand villagers. Assuming of course the two are unrelated timelines, and all that.

I don’t know man, I just don’t think this particular plot is going to work out for her in the long run. It kind of seems to me that she’s more or less dooming herself to obscurity in the not too distant future.

I liked this little epilogue for the most part. I felt it conveyed the terror of a containment event really well, even if I didn’t think it stuck the landing very well. I wish I had more to say about it other than a generally enthusiastic thumbs up for it.

[pickalilywrites]

AOT ladies making or buying chocolate for their boyfriends. (RicoIan, Mobuhan, Rivetra, Mikenana, Eremika)

some of the ships i put in are kind of implied ...? i hope that's ok ;-;

chocolate-coated love

snk ladies. modern au. 1118 words.

Every year Nicolo takes a few weeks before Valentine’s Day to host chocolate-making lessons for people who would like to gift their significant others handmade chocolates. It’s been a sought-after group activity and his chocolate-making classes have only become more and more popular with each year. He enjoys teaching his students how to properly temper chocolate and sprinkle in bits and pieces of chocolate knowledge he’s learned himself over the years, and it’s wonderful to see the bonbons that people are able to make by the end of class. Sometimes students even send him photos the next year showing how much they’ve improved in making chocolates. 

Typically, people come in with next to no knowledge on how to work with chocolate. At most, someone might have a little experience with amateur chocolate-making. It’s always amusing when Nicolo is met with a group with a vast range of skills in making chocolate such as the one he’s currently teaching. 

This afternoon he’s teaching a group of five, some of which are more comfortable dealing with chocolate than others. Usually, tempering chocolate is the difficult part about making bonbons. It’s what Nicolo believed would be the most difficult in this case too after turning down the temperature on one student’s double boiler after he saw they had turned it up to the highest setting to “make the chocolate melt faster.” However, it seems crafting the bonbons has its own difficulties that Nicolo had never thought possible. 

Nicolo walks slowly behind his students, observing them as they pour the tempered chocolate into the bonbon molds. Some students are more stressful than others. He has a strained smile on his face as he says, “Remember, this is something I’ve done hundreds of times, so don’t feel discouraged if they don’t turn out perfectly. As long as you make them with love, your partner is sure to appreciate your efforts.”  

“I sure hope so,” says Hanji, the one who had put the double boiler on the highest setting earlier. They look down glumly at their overfilled mold. The chocolate is spilling over the sides even though they’ve stopped pouring. It’s running across the counter and threatening to pool over and spill on the floor, but it seems Hanji has stopped trying to be keep their space clean and is waiting for the inevitable mess that is about to happen. “My love pretty much exploded out of these chocolates.” 

“Oh, fuck,” Nicolo curses, hurrying over with a bowl to catch most of the chocolate. He gets the rest of the chocolate with the scrapper. “No worries. It’s always normal to make a bit of a mess with these.”  

“Really? Because Petra and Mikasa’s stations look awfully clean. Did you guys even get to the molds yet?” Hanji asks suspiciously after spying their companions’ pristine work area.  

“I’m used to not making a mess in the kitchen,” Petra replies without looking at Hanji. She overturns her bonbon mold above her bowl of chocolate, getting rid of all the excess so that she’s only left with the chocolate shells in her mold. “Levi gets fussy if he sees so much as a crumb on the countertops.” 

Beside Petra, Mikasa nods, too concentrated on her own chocolate to properly to reply to Hanji. Out of the students in this current batch of students, Mikasa seems to be the most acquainted with chocolate-making. Not only was she comfortable with tempering the chocolate, offering pointers to her friends during the lesson when they were heating the chocolate, but she even took the time to decorate the mold a bit before working on the chocolate shells.  

Rico, another student, taps a finger against  her own mold as she looks at Hanji. She’s already emptied it and is about to fill the chocolate shells. “Remember to dump out the extra chocolate,” she reminds Hanji. 

“Shit!” Hanji curses before hurriedly flipping their mold over. They don’t remember to flip the mold over their chocolate bowl and the chocolate drips back onto the counter. “Oh, shit! Sorry!”  

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Nicolo says even though it’s not entirely true. He catches most of the chocolate that overflows on the counter, but there is a small pool forming on the floor that he’ll have to get later.  

“God, this is awful,” Hanji groans as they set their mold back on the table. They look glumly down at their mold which now has chocolate shells that are much thicker than they should be for a normal bonbon.  

Hanji’s friend Nanaba leans over to assess the damage. She looks down sympathetically and says, “It’s not so bad. Anyway, Moblit won’t mind. He’ll love anything you give him.” 

“Moblit is not the same as any of your men,” Hanji says as they hold a hand up. “Like, Levi would eat the most messed up chocolates out of the palm of Petra’s hand even if he saw her step on them in front of him.”  

“Why would I do any of that?” Petra asks, her expression filled with disgust at even the idea of doing such a thing. 

“I’m pretty sure Moblit would do the same if it was you two in that scenario,” Rico snorts.  

“That’s different. Moblit deserves chocolate crafted from the hands of gods and filled with ambrosia,” Hanji mutters. They pick up a piping bag of ganache and begin to fill their thick chocolate shells. Much like the mold earlier, the chocolate shells are overfilled with ganache.  

“And our boyfriends don’t deserve any of that?” Nanaba asks. It’s clear that she’s trying hard to stifle her laughter by clenching her teeth in a smile. 

“Hanji, I’ve seen people react to their partner’s chocolates. No matter how the chocolates end up, they always love them because they were handcrafted with love. I’m sure your partner Moblit will feel the same way,” Nicolo assures Hanji, but they remain unconvinced. 

Mikasa is scrapping the leftover ganache out of her chocolate shells and glances up at Hanji’s displeased smile. “You could also just buy a box of chocolates from here and say you made them,” she suggests, which finally turns Hanji’s frown into a smile. 

“Oh, you’re a genius, Mikasa!” Hanji says. They notice Nicolo’s disappointed frown and add, “As an extra precaution in case these turn out terribly.”  

Nicolo shouldn’t be so disappointed. Quite a few of his students end up buying a box of chocolates in the end when they find out making chocolate is more difficult than it seems.  

“I’ll give them to you for free if you clean up this station before you leave,” Nicolo tells Hanji.  

“Deal,” Hanji says with a grin. 

Nicolo regrets clasping Hanji’s chocolate-coated hand as they seal the deal.  

[skynapple]

Budding Romance | Ch. 9

Love and Deepspace | Jeremiah x MC / slow-burn / friends-to-lovers

warnings: none

Multi-chapter | A03 link

Beginning | <- Prev | Next ->

"Gushing Gossip Girl Talk" Tara's here and she has a lot to say.

The young huntress sat in the middle of her lunch break, across from her eccentric friend and colleague, Tara. The overtly filtered air from within the deepspace hunter’s mess hall somewhat reminded her of a hospital. There were potted plants scattered around the area, meant to make the otherwise stale area welcoming, but felt a bit out of place. The food, at least, was good. Tara held the other woman’s phone in her hands, staring at the contents of the screen.

"That's him? Oh wow." There was a bright glimmer in her eye.

"Tara! Shh!”

It was embarrassing enough to have lead into the conversation about a new cute friend that she might have just slightly developed a crush on. It felt better at least to admit it, and to have her friend at least approve the appearance. She didn't need the entirety of the mess hall to know. 

“Sorry!" She quickly apologized, clutching the phone as if it held something precious. "-but he's so cute!” 

The other huntress, currently a shade deeper in embarrassment, only stared down at her food, poking it with her fork. There was a giddy but reserved tone to her voice as she said, "I know."

Her friend leaned a little closer, short brown hair bobbing with her movement. She kept her voice low, careful to try not to attract any peering eyes from fellow hunters. ”I’m so happy you finally got his number! Has he messaged you?"

"Not...really." She responded, a little withdrawn. "I feel like maybe he's trying to keep things professional. Maybe?”

Tara put a forkful of broccoli in her mouth, thinking as she chewed. The huntress in question was half inclined to believe her friend was coming up with some kind of profound or occult answer, knowing her habits of consulting tarot cards for just about everything. Instead, as she watched her swallow, and was stunned by her next  statement,

“Hmm," She gestured with her fork, "You know how men are. If they're interested, they're interested and they can't help it! If not, then you just won't hear from them." 

Sliding the phone face down across the table to return it, she seemed pretty decisive as she continued. “If they want to, they will. If they won’t, they won’t.”

A bit shocked, the woman retrieved her phone and rubbed the back of her neck, thoughts swirling.

Am I just imagining things? What if he’s only friends with me because Xavier is? What if he just isn’t attracted to me? Am I crazy? He did say something nice things before though…

"Ok but…” She attempted. “Maybe he's just been really busy. He owns a business. And…stuff." It was probably for the best the less people had knowledge of whatever it was that him and Xavier seemed to be involved in. While it was nice to know Xavier trusted him greatly, she still wasn't sure entirely if she could trust either of them whole-heartedly - even if she really wanted to.

The sensation of the slightly sweet food against her tongue as she thought felt like it was taunting her, directly in contrast to the bitterness of her uncertainty.

Tara looked thoughtful again, “I knew your thoughts would be tumultuous when I read your cards this morning! It looks like you’ll have to be careful. I saw a word of warning too! Tread cautiously.” 

With a sigh, she looked down at her food while her friend went on,

“If you want my advice, you deserve someone who's going to show up for you, all the time. And you already had to go through the effort already of getting his number! That’s plenty! Now it's time to sit back and let him show interest."

With a sigh, the woman listening could only stab her food, a little impatiently, wrestling with the fact that she knew the girl was probably right.

“Yeah… I just don’t know what to think. Sometimes I feel like he’s flirting, and sometimes I feel like he doesn’t mean it."

Tara clicked her tongue. "Mixed signals! You really need to be careful.”

Taking a bite of food, she tried to use it to sooth her thoughts. ”I know, I know! I am! But, even if he's not... I mean, he's still been cool to get to know."

She heard her friend giggle, and looked up to see her eyeing her like a cat eyeing its prey. "Yes! Cool, and very cute.”

The encouragement triggered her more gushing thoughts. "And sweet, and helpful, and funny, and-"

"The hair! The eyes!” 

Both girls laughed. While they had only met as adults, she could imagine they would have been good friends in high school, fussing over boys that they weren’t sure would give them the time of day. It would be just like this, over a lunchtime meal. In moments like these, it was hard to believe adults lived any differently. It really reminded her that people tended to be the same as in their hearts, just wrapped in older, aging bodies. 

They talked fora while more, with Tara giving more reminders to be careful, along with a caring yet assertive instruction to give wait at least a week before reaching out again. Thus a deal was made as meal trays were cleared, or else meet Tara's wrath. It was far too soon or early to be considering any kind of relationship, she thought, especially if he wasn’t quite ready or wanting for something serious.

As they began down the corridors towards the large central elevator, she was plagued with thoughts of his past relationship. According to him, it was years ago, but she distinctly remember that he noted it had happened quickly. 

Is that what he’s like when he falls in love? 

Although she had no idea how many relationships he’d actually been in, all she could do was speculate that maybe he was the sort of person who felt deeply. Did he feel like he just knew? Is he that type of passionate person? What if being slow isn’t in his nature? Does that mean he actually might not like me?

"What is it?" Tara asked, concerned at her sudden change in demeanor as they walked.

“Nothing.” She replied, not wanting to go into detail, not really able to even if she wanted to. “Just thinking about what you said. You’re right. I'm going to take it slow.”

“There, there. No need to rush these things!” The brunette bobbed her head up and down as she reached a delicate finger out to press the elevator button. "Let him pursue. You're worth that!"

She smiled. "Thanks, Tara." It was supposed to be encouraging, so why didn't it feel that way? In fact, now she only felt worse about everything. Now, more than ever, all she wanted to do was see him again, as if it would give her any sort of clarity.

No, I have to be patient.

The ladies parted ways to their respective departments. For the rest of the day, the restless huntress poured herself into her busy work, trying not to let her thoughts stray too far.  However, try as she might, she just couldn’t stop thinking of him. She clung to the sweet things he’d said, the way he acted the night of the summer market, the book he bought her that he definitely didn’t have to. There were a few things that added up, and other things that didn’t, like how he never went out of his way to contact her for any sort of small reason. 

Work was a small blessing in that it was at least something of a distraction. That day her duties maintained within the walls of the organization. She’d rather have been fighting wanderers if it meant something else to do with her mind. Then, as if hearing her thoughts, her leader, -a legend in her own right- Captain Jenna approach her desk with an emergency. For the whole rest of the week she was busy with Xavier, buried in a mission work, and along with it, corresponding reports to fill out.

It wasn’t enough that had to spend a lot of her time with Xavier. From then on, she felt she started running into Xavier everywhere. He would pop up in all other areas of her common life: at the  grocery stores closeby their apartment, at the office, in elevators, across the park, by the beach. It wasn’t that she minded, he was sweet enough to help her carry groceries back, or left notes and snacks on her desk since his desk was the one right beside hers. None of it was particularly bad at all, and she liked feeling like she was becoming his friend. Nevetheless, he maintained a certain distance and mystery. Warm then cold. Answers never seemed to be very clear with him. 

When their day off finally came, it was on a normal workday for everyone else in the world. She didn’t care. She was happy for the rest she’d earned. 

"What are you going to do?" She was asking Xavier on their way out of the building. 

"...Sleep."

She wasn’t sure what she expected when he said that. All she could think was, Of course. What she wasn’t expecting was what he brought up next: The topic of the newest installment of a popular movie trilogy. It had recently been released in theaters. For once, it was something a little less stiff, a peer into his daily interests. Both expressed interest in wanting to see it. Then he bluntly asked,

"Really? Then... we could go tomorrow, if you want.”

She felt panic creeping in. It didn’t look particularly good for a young single woman to be going out to the movie theaters of all places with another man who was both good looking and also single, especially when she felt she had no actual interest in seeing him in that way. Plus, as her interest was drawing towards someone else who also just happened to be in close proximity to him, she really didn’t want word getting out that she went out with him to the movies. Even if it was probably fine to be platonic, she had no idea where Xavier actually stood or how he felt. Knowing she had only a split second to come up with an adequate response, she settled on somewhat of a comeback.

“Won’t you fall asleep in the theater? No, thank you." She tried to make it funny, a quiet rejection that she hoped he’d pick up on. He did not.

“I’ll just take a nap before.” He just said, with a soft smile.

The panicked sensation of having to come up with a new excuse continued. “Well, I... usually go see that kind of thing by myself, so I can analyze it. But, thanks anyways!" 

"That's not what you said two weeks ago. You said you hated going to the theater by yourself,” he shook his head, still sounding warm, albeit confused, “Isn’t that why you rent things at home?”

Stunned that he remembered that much, she almost didn’t know what to say. "I do-” She started cautiously, “-but it depends on the movie.” She really hoped she didn’t sound as panicked as she felt. "But, hey, if you see it, we can talk about it after. Anyway, have a good weekend!”

Right when she took a step to move towards a different direction, even if she had to take the long way, she heard him yawn a little and continue to step beside her.

"You're not going home?" He asked, sounding like he’d sleep any moment.

“No,” She said stopping. “I gotta run some errands on my way home.”

"What errands?”  He took a step toward her, making her instinctively shrink back slightly.

She hesitated. "I need a new plant for my work desk. I was thinking an air plant, something I don't really have to...you know.”

He grinned. "You mean something you can't kill? And now I wonder what your specialty is. Killing wanderers, or killing plants."

She made a face at the retort as he laughed before continuing to speak, “Well, you're in luck, we know a guy.”

For some reason, her heart skips a beat. She pretended to be nonchalant. “You do? Oh, wait, that’s right. I almost forgot.”

She wasn’t sure why he seemed almost pleased when she said that, but didn’t question it as he beckoned her to follow. A feeling of excitement and anticipation stirred within her as he began to lead her in a familiar direction towards a certain flower shop. 

After all, it’s been a week.

[fieldofgoldenrushes]

Rose is a strategist

My best friend and I were doing our monthly rewatch of the show when I noticed something that made me wish they shed more light on.

Even though it was a given that Rose was one of the best fighters in the Huntsclan since she was raised and trained by the Huntsman himself. But she had to have proven to the Huntsmaster that she was worth to be his apprentice.

We already know that Rose can take care of herself in battle—the many times she fought Jake with or without the Huntsman, the guardian serpent, the chimera. And clearly she needed to have endurance, strength, agility, and accuracy to be able to be on the field. However the one thing I noticed that was one of Rose’s biggest strength was that she was talented in coming up with plans for offense and defense. And she was also very resourceful of her surroundings when she needed to be.

Here are the few times when Rose proved that she was a great strategist.

1.The Ski Trip

This was the episode that practically introduced Rose’s capabilities and showed that her training did pay off.

While Rose was on the ski trip, she was given a mission by the Huntsmaster to capture a yeti and send it back to the Huntsclan. While we didn’t see how she was able to trap the creature, we were shown that she was able to capture the yeti twice in this episode. No doubt she used her knowledge of magical creatures to lure the yeti into her traps.

Then, after she found out that the American Dragon was in the same area as her, she decided to use the yeti as bait and catch him in the same traps she set up. This idea would have been risky because they were in the middle of a snow storm but it’s like she knew that he would come immediately the second he knew a magical creature was defenseless. She literally hiked out of the blizzard to set up her trap in the highest peak of a mountain to make sure the American Dragon could see her and then set her plan in motion.

It would have been nice to be able to see her set them up because it would have shown how resourceful she is as well. She was literally in a forest full of snow and all she had to work with was wood and her staff.

That’s pretty impressive if you ask me.

2. The Hunt

This episode gave us two moments that showed how quickly Rose was to make a plan on the spot.

The first was when she lured Jake into the subway. One may argue that it must have been the Huntsman who came up with the idea, I’m not doubting it but the way Rose executed the plan made me believe she tweaked it a little bit.

Because even though the Huntsman had more experiences, Rose knew Jake. She knew her enemy and what made him tick. At this point, she knew it was his ego. So instead of shooting right at him, she shot at the roof behind him, making him think she missed, only for the debris to fall onto him and initially bruising his ego. That was enough for him to give chase.

Then there was the time when Jake tried to use himself as a distraction to give the other captives a chance to run free. While the rest of the Huntsclan were busy trying to shoot him down, Rose went ahead and snuck around Jake and surprised him with a trap she came up with on the spot. Remember this was the time when she wanted nothing more than to slay her first dragon and fulfill her destiny so she should have been the one desperately trying to shoot down Jake more than the others. But instead she thought quick on her feet and managed to capture him again.

3. Homecoming

I say this episode was the biggest showcase of how insane Rose’s abilities as a strategist really is.

Huntsman found out Rose was a double agent and used her parents as blackmail—mind you, she hasn’t even met them yet—to get the last of the Aztec Skulls for him. Faced with an impossible choice between the family she always wanted and the boy she loved, she did what the Huntsman did and led him to the skulls. At this point, everything seemed like it was going downhill; the Huntsman got the skulls, Jake and his crew were powerless, and Rose seemingly betrayed everyone to get the normal life she dreamed of.

Then all of a sudden, just as the Huntsman was about to make his wish, Rose shoots him in the back and stole his chance and wished for the destruction of the Huntsclan instead. It was a huge plot twist.

Rewatching this episode made me realize that Rose came up with this plan on the spot.

This girl knew that she wasn’t in the position to win it all. She had to lose one or the other in order to defeat the Huntsman. She couldn’t just destroy the skulls because the Huntsman already knew Jake’s identity and he could go after his friends or family. And if she didn’t follow through then she would have lost her parents. The problem of it all was the Huntsclan itself so she figured there would be peace without their existence even if it cost her her own life.

So she took her time and put her plan into motion once she saw the opportunity. She betrayed Jake by giving the skulls to the Huntsman yet she betrayed the Huntsman to use the skulls against him. She betrayed everyone in order to save the magical world.

It was genius.

4. Hong Kong Longs

A little side note: I want to point out that I’m glad the creators reminded everyone what a badass Rose was in this episode. Girl just got her memories back and she sprung into action without hesitation. Her loyalty is insane.

Back to the topic, on the very last episode, Rose once again showed why she’s an excellent fighter. She had just gotten her memories back, she knew very little of the situation—she only ran with what Jake told her—and she came to the temple to help everyone defeat the Dark Dragon. She probably already knew who he was since he was a notorious villain in the magical world but this is the first time she’s ever fought him and she doesn’t know the extent to his powers but she still held up her own very well without a plan.

Up until the last minute. It was obvious that she was just distracting the Dark Dragon long enough until everyone got out to safety. But when the temple started to fall, she used it to her own advantage; she tricked the Dark Dragon to break a few pillars and that caused the rest of the temple to fall onto him, giving her a chance to escape. Even though she wasn’t able to successfully get out as some of the temple fell on her, it was a smart move for her to use her surroundings to slow him down and potentially send him down to his death.

In conclusion, it’s not wonder how Rose became the Huntsgirl and why she’s one of the most badass characters of the show.

[jedi-kat-18]

Miscellaneous Circuits & Sinew Thoughts

 I have a bunch of ideas for setting and character stuff for this universe, and I’m not the best at organizing, so I’m gonna dump em here.

 After the Kaiju War, the Wall of Life project was ended, and most of it was torn down to be used as construction material for rebuilding coastal cities. But a few sections are still standing, usually in extremely poor or depopulated areas. Most of the time they either sit there and get taken over by wildlife, or slowly crumble into the ocean like concrete glaciers. Some people build houses and shantytowns next to, on top, or even inside of the sturdier sections.

 A lot of what the PPDC does postwar is basically disaster relief and cleanup duty, helping rebuild destroyed cities and clean up pollution caused by the Kaiju. They’re technically still a military organization, and they’re keeping a watch on the closed Breach just in case, but everyone’s pretty sure the Kaiju are gone for good.  I thought a neat way to show that some time has passed would be that each of the main four, Raleigh, Mako, Newt, and Hermann, has some little tweak to their design. Also they’re color-coded now because I can’t stop doing that.   Mako’s hair streaks are red instead of blue. In the first movie, she’s surrounded by grays and blues, her world is defined by the trauma caused by the Kaiju. I think it would be neat if her color is now red, symbolizing that even though the pain she experienced was important, she’s no longer defined by it. Her world isn’t dominated by the Kaiju anymore, instead it’s dominated by passion, courage, and the strength of the human spirit.   Raleigh grew a beard. This is because a) while I was compiling images for his Pinterest board I found several pictures of a bearded Charlie Hunnam, and he looks... really good. And b) it’s a great way to show that some time has passed, and that Raleigh’s grown wiser. His color is yellow/amber like in the first film, symbolizing hope and loyalty.   Hermann is much closer to how he looks in Uprising, with a black coat and less layers than he wore in the first movie. He’s not as uptight and closed off, he still likes his privacy, but there’s less of a barrier between him and the outside world. His color is black because in this story, black is the color of experience, knowledge, and quiet determination. It’s also the color of space, and the idea of him and Newt having a Space/Ocean theme going on SLAPS.   Newt dresses closer to how he does in Uprising, but he still has his glasses, and his sleeves are rolled up. His color in this fic is blue. Blue is the Kaiju, the Drift, the depths of the ocean and the depths of the mind. Blue symbolizes Newt’s connection to the Hivemind, a connection that he’s initially unaware of.

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Lancaster Stuff from Motion Sickness

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

I struggled to consider what I was doing right now my first date. Especially with the context that recollections of some of Pyrrha’s and I’s ‘outings’ provided.  

Fuck.

Not dwelling on that. 

By any other measure, a stroll through some town market with a guy and a girl who were now a thing was a date, right? Even though it was a patrol and we did basically the same thing yesterday, now it was different. Now we were ‘together.’

Ruby didn’t seem to mind at all, though, she flowed from place to place with her typical energy. It was as though she’d never been through these streets and past these stalls. She could just walk up to some person and talk to them. 

I… I really liked that about her.

Fuck.

She called me over from some RV that seemed to be a permanent feature in the square. Some short-term-long-term food-truck-restaurant? I wasn’t sure, but when she spun and called to me with a wave, I felt my jaw and was struck by the realization that I wasn’t sure just how long I’d been holding my teeth clenched together.

My face ached but she made me smile anyways as I paced over to her.

She smiled right up at me and I had to look away. I really wasn’t sure how I was even supposed to look at her. I almost meant that literally. Could I just, like, look at her now? Whenever I wanted?

I was trying not to be stressed about her of all things right now. Still, though…

“What’s up?”

“They’re moving people in from around the area.” She explained. I cocked my head. Beihfing and I had both been united about a panic. “They started a few weeks ago. I guess after the tower fell, a lot of people moved to bigger places, weird.”

Oh, maybe they hadn’t all died. Huh. “It's not that weird,” I disagreed, I eyed the woman Ruby had been talking to. She was twenty-five--thirty with blonde hair which made her stand out a little here, but her skin tone made her a match for some of the locals in terms of origin. “You had to run?”

“Well we couldn’t order dust or anything and it was pretty scary being mostly alone.” She shrugged, her casual ease with her emotions struck me. I was a total fucking stranger to her. Well, I was also a huntsman, so I didn’t analyze it and just nodded. “It was a good thing too, what with the other villages.”

I figured it was an open secret in GaiLong at this point, but I wasn’t sure. That kind of news would travel fast until everybody knew it at which point, why bother pretending? It was common knowledge.

“What’d you need.” I asked the two. 

It was Ruby who lured me in. “They wanted to pull the motor and alternator out of it and use it as a winch for other stuff. They’ve already pulled out all the bolts, but they don’t - well, if they already had a winch then they wouldn’t do this. 

“So?”

She rolled her eyes, “so nobody but you can lift it.”

The woman looked down at Ruby. “I’m telling you it weighs, like, four hundred pounds, easy.” I walked around and looked down into the hood. It was some dust-based thing with Atlas stamps, all smooth edges. It wasn’t designed to be repurposed. It was designed, perhaps, to not be able to be repurposed. Some technology was like that.

I reached down with one hand and, with a heave and a grunt, I lifted it and set it down. Ruby absolutely could have lifted it.

The woman blinked at me. “Oh uh.” Her eyes flicked to Ruby and back to me. “Could you set it over here? Then? If it’s not too much trouble?”

“Uh, no.” I returned.

She glanced at Ruby again. “No?”

“No, it’s not any trouble.” I clarified or tried to. “I didn’t mean… Not ‘no’…” I sighed. “Where do you want it?”

Ruby was laughing at me. I could see it as I passed her, following the woman to some cinder blocks. Our reward was something which I was assured was not ice-cream but was some kind of frozen custard-yogurt-stuff with sugar in it. 

To me it was good, for the time that I had it, that is. When we returned to the inn I still hadn’t showered after Ren and I trained that morning. Then I made the mistake of entrusting my teat to Ruby who had already nearly finished hers. 

When I got out of the shower there were only a few bites left of mine. “Ruby-“

“I left you some!” She pouted at me. I watched her take the last bite of hers from where she sat on her bed and set it daintily on the nightstand. Then she looked up and her smile never changed but she leaned forward onto her hands and stared at me.

I abruptly felt like covering myself, the towel and shorts I had on still showed off most of what I looked like. “Are you just going to stare at me?”

She blinked like I was alien. “Yeah.” Fair enough. I started putting on clothes anyways as she rolled around the bed. “I mean you stare at me, too, right.” I did. I had more than usual today, too, I didn’t want to hide what I felt from her. She continued, though. “I mean maybe not. Maybe, you like to look at girls like Sahov more?” 

“Who?” I wondered.

She tossed a pillow to my face. “The girl we were just talking to!” 

“Um…” I trailed off.

She slumped down into the covers. “Forget it.” 

“Ruby,” I started. I pulled a shirt over my head and began walking over to the bed. 

“I said forget it!”

I sat down. “Rubes you know you’re incredibly good looking right?”

“What?” She sat up from under the covers. “Yang’s the pretty one, I’m the cute one.”

“Ruby if I didn’t know you and you came up to me on the street and started talking to me, I would assume I was being pranked somehow.”

“Ugh.” She let me know her disgust, but she wasn’t under the covers anymore and she was giving me this much sort of… sly smile.

I’d never seen that one before and it wasn’t something I usually associated with her. She crawled onto my lap and turned to face me, burying herself in the crook of my neck. I hesitated for a moment but let my arms rest around her slightly. 

“You really don’t think I’m cute.” She blushed. “I mean…”

“Oh yeah I just can’t stand to look at you,” I kissed her. Her bottom lip fit between my two and my ego was fed when I felt her relax in my arms. I chuckled as I pulled away.

She hit me and she was as red as I’d ever seen her. “Butt.” 

When I started laughing, she shut me down by kissing me again. 

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

-WG

[casualjacobwrites]

I also graduated high school in 1999, and I’ll add that (at least in my area) I didn’t know trans was a thing.

In my small southern town, there was a black trans woman, but no one called her trans (or even referred to her as a woman, sadly). I didn’t know her personally, but it was a small town so all us high school kids saw her when we went to the grocery store or to the local fast food joints. She was just someone everyone knew about. Mostly because she stood out in public because she was very unapologetically herself, which makes a person stand out regardless of their gender identity in a small town. I can’t recall what class it was or even what the heck we were talking about, but I remember an entire classroom having a discussion about her. With the teacher included in the discussion.

I’m sure you can imagine the sort of things that were said, though my vague recollection was that it wasn’t the worst conversation I’ve ever heard when on the topic of queer folks. I think a few of my peers were actually respectful in the best way. There wasn’t anyone who understood the concept of changing one’s gender. The nearest comparison we had was probably RuPaul, but that’s not nearly the same thing. Maybe one or two people who knew her personally did say, “She says she’s felt this way since she was a child.”

In hindsight now, I look back and think why the hell were a bunch of teenagers and their teacher taking up important classroom time to talk about a singular person in my town. Had it been anyone else in the town, we would have been scolded for gossiping/talking about someone behind their back. As I said, I can’t really remember why she was even mentioned or the full conversation we had, but I do remember feeling very aware that almost everyone around me thought she was “wrong” and “unnatural.” The very worst thing you could be was queer, and I was already bullied and labeled as weird, so my budding bisexual self kept my mouth shut. I had already learned not to talk about queerness and this one one of those defining moments when I knew people like me were not safe.

It took me until I was 40 to figure out my gender. If I had known as a child or even a teenager that someone could be trans, I absolutely would have explored my gender far, far earlier than I did. So many things from my early childhood and memories I’d tried to forget make sense now to me in hindsight. But even me, a trans person, back then didn’t have the language, the knowledge, or the experience to understand what it meant to be queer. Neither did anyone around me, authority figures included.

And somehow, despite never being exposed to positive queer representation in media, never learning about gender identity or sexuality (outside of “being gay is a sin and awful!”), and having parents who tried to make sure to direct my tiny child self toward activities more suited to my assigned gender, I still turned out the way I did.

As for the woman, I’m not sure what ever became of her. I haven’t lived in that town for a very long time. She might still be there, or maybe she moved to the “big city” at some point. I do remember anytime I saw her in public that she was always laughing and talking to people around her, who obviously thought she was pretty awesome. I’ve heard rumors that one of my classmates came out as trans, and one other one came out as gay that actually surprised me, but I never confirmed that was true and the source was dubious at best.

So to sum up: You didn’t hear about it because we didn’t talk about it. Those that did were punished, while the rest of us were left scared and confused not understanding what was wrong with us.

I graduated high school in 99.

There was a student at our school named Wayne.

Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.

Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.

The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.

Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help. He went to guidance counselors for help. He went to the principals for help.

He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.

Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.

So... no.

No one in my school talked about being trans.

Because the only way to survive being openly queer was to bash people with a lunch tray.

[evans-heaven]

SpaghettiOs ; Eddie Munson

Another Eddie fic because what’s stopping me? This would’ve been up last night but tumblr decided to crash and I lost the entire post 🙃 so, was up until 2AM re-typing it, but if I’m being honest, I like this version better. Hope y’all enjoy 💕

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader (no use of Y/N but teeny tiny hint at size difference)

Warnings: Ridiculously melodramatic content, talk of food, swearing, angst but then fluff (like its gross), opinions about marriage that are not my own, brief description of Chrissy’s death scene, implied smut at the end.

WC: 2.7k

Your boyfriend was antsy, and you couldn’t blame him.

It was really just one thing after another for him during the past couple of days. First, he helplessly watched the queen of Hawkins High die a very macabre and unexplainable death in the middle of his trailer, when he just wanted to make a sale. Then, he fled from said trailer and ended up at the drug dealer Reefer Rick’s boathouse, in fear of what just happened.

Then, for the sour cherry on top of the already shit pie, he found out the authorities were trying to pin this on him. The crime (if a girl having her bones snapped and eyeballs yanked into her skull by some unseen entity could even be called that) took place in the home of the ‘freak’, that was all they’d need to have suspicions.

Not just that, but they were looking for you as well. They probably thought it made sense, you and Eddie were attached at the hip, the ‘anti-it’ couple of the school/town. The police had their suspicions that you knew something about Chrissy’s death-or worse, even played a part in it.

And just like that, hiding out in Rick’s boathouse became all the more justified.

You didn’t even want to get into Dustin, Robin, Steve and Max giving you the knowledge that Hawkins had been home to, apparently, many supernatural events, and they’d been at the center of them. What happened to Chrissy was just another one of those events. Trippy as it was, the group seemed like they were being 100% candid and knew what they were talking about. The people of Hawkins had really begun to feel like their town was cursed, and, truthfully, you had been nursing an unsettled feeling in your stomach for the past couple of years, because you knew something in this town had started to become off.

Maybe the devil had come to America. But it wasn’t D&D, and it sure as hell wasn’t your boyfriend.

That morning, you found he had broken into Rick’s home, unspotted, hopefully. This area was pretty secluded, but still, you didn’t want to take any chances. The house was by a huge lake where anyone could’ve looked across.

You snuck in yourself, and were greeted with the sound of drawers opening and closing, utensils crashing against each other, and cupboards creaking. You entered the kitchen to find Eddie searching through the pantries.

“Hey, babe,” you greeted, gaining his attention. He jumped just a little before he turned around and saw it was you. He smiled, though you could tell it was strained.

“Hey,” he greeted. 

“What are you doing?” you asked.

“We’re out of food, so I came to see if ‘Ol Ricky has anything of sustenance,” he sighed, looking around the dormant kitchen. His normally bright and doe-y eyes were now tired and frantic. He was right though, the initial food supply the gang brought you at first was completely devoured by the two of you. Well, mostly Eddie. Stress eating was a hell of a thing, he’d said to you. 

“Okay,” you nodded. “Hope no one saw you come in here,”

“Doubt it,” he said dismissively. He opened another cupboard and came across a can of SpaghettiOs. He took it out and inspected it briefly, before breathing out “Yep, you’ll do,”

“You sure that’s not expired?” you wondered, jutting your chin towards the can in his grasp.

“It's not like we have much of a choice right now, sweetheart,” he said, and there was a noticeable bite in his voice. He began searching the drawer again, most likely looking for a can opener.

Your eyebrows twitched up a bit. Eddie had never used that tone with you, but you realized that, given the circumstances, you understood. The police were on the hunt for him. He was a wanted man, hiding out in the home of a jailed man. Canned foods that may or may not have gone bad wasn’t something you could afford to worry about, right now. It's not like he could run to the store on his own.

You took a step towards him. “Hey, Ed, I’m sorry-”

“It's okay,” he replied shortly.

You watched him as he found the opener. He placed the can down and was about to open it, when you saw him pause. He audibly inhaled and exhaled a few times, stiff shoulders rising and falling, trying to calm himself down. 

But if he managed to, it didn’t last long. It was like he was a ticking bomb, with 10 seconds left on the countdown from when you entered the kitchen.

It was then you were startled by the tool harshly dropping against the counter. Eddie hunched over, and gripped the edge of the counter so tight his knuckles began to go white, peeking out under his chunky rings. 

“Ed,” you breathed, and came up behind him to grasp his biceps in your small hands to get his attention.

“God, I just-” he began, and you cut him off.

“Ed, shhh, it’s okay,” you said, pressing your cheek to his shoulder.

“Its fucking ridiculous, is what it is,” he hissed, but remained in your grip. “Just because a person has an interest that doesn’t align with the majority, just because they play a fucking fantasy game that everyone suddenly decided to have an issue with. Just because a person looks…different,  it means we’re….I’m….capable of something so…,” he trailed off, not even finding the words to describe it. He just sighed. You listened to him vent, knowing he needed it. When Eddie felt something, he felt it hard. He needed the time to get his thoughts out. 

“We got lucky with Dustin and the others, they’ve seen shit like this before. They know what this really is. Can’t say the same for those glorified security guards. Or the rest of the town,” he groaned. “Its like Robin said, once my name goes public, everyone’s gonna be gunning for me,” he shook his head, his voice becoming weaker as he said, “And now you’re dragged into this mess too,” 

“Hey,” you said sternly, and used all your strength to peel him from the counter to turn him around. You reached up and held his face in your hands, feeling his stubble scratch at them lightly. “I’d be here with you even if Hawkins PD wasn’t looking for me,” you assured him, voice leaving no room for protest. “I’d never, ever let you go through something like this alone, Ed,” you promised, brushing your thumbs against the bags under his eyes.

He just looked at you with no words, lips trembling a little. You did nothing but let him be, wrapping your arms around his shoulders, feeling him nuzzle his head into your neck.

You placed a few kisses on his shoulder, hoping to soothe him. You wanted to say more, wanted to assure him, but of what? The reality of the matter was, Hawkins was paranoid and was looking for someone to blame for Chrissy’s demise. Obviously someone, or something, was responsible, and they seemed to have their minds made up on the culprit. You couldn’t predict the future, as much as you wanted to be right about things being okay. 

“I’m sorry for snapping,” he said into your neck.

“It's alright,” you assured him, you had long forgotten about it.

After holding onto him for a few minutes, you heard his stomach begin to grumble a bit, and you were beginning to feel a little hungry yourself. “Ed,” you mumbled, and he straightened up, looking down at you. You brought a hand up to brush some hair from his face, placing a kiss on his cheek. “Why don’t you go relax for a bit, I’ll make the SpaghettiOs for us,” you suggested, lightly scratching his scalp.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, nodding. “Sounds good,”  he brought his hands to your cheeks for a moment, simply looking at you with an expression you couldn’t read. He pulled away and said “I’m gonna try to get a hold of Dustin, see if he can get us some more food,” he released you and walked off, but not before looking at you over his shoulder. “Food that isn’t a day away from expiring,” he smirked.

You giggled and shook your head, there was your sarcastic boy. 

You heard him speaking into the walkie talkie, calling out to Dustin and referring to himself as “Eddie the Banished”. His voice faded as he got further from the kitchen.

You got the can opened, and lit a pot on the stove. You poured the contents into it and began to stir it up with a wooden spoon you had found. It looked appetizing enough, and as the smell began to enter the air, you realized it wasn’t too bad.

You enjoyed cooking, so this brought you at least a little bit of ease even if you were just stirring a pot. Having grown up with a mother who worked late nights and sometimes wouldn’t come home until the early hours of the morning, you learned to hold your own in the kitchen, eventually becoming quite comfortable in it. Now, at 18, your paycheck from your job at Kinney Shoes was able to get you ingredients for simple dishes, that you either made at home or in Eddie’s trailer. He loved being your taste-tester, and you knew for a fact that he had no proper meal plans if you didn’t show up.

You heard him take a seat at the small table that was just off the kitchen, the chair scraping on the ground. “Wheeler picked up, then promptly hung up on me,” he reported, “So this will have to hold us over til…,” he trailed off and shook his head.

“ ‘til Boccob knows when,” you said nonchalantly, bringing the spoon up to taste the sauce from the SpaghettiOs. 

Eddie’s gasp made your head snap towards him. He stood up, jaw hanging. “Do my ears deceive me?” he asked in that deep, theatrical voice, the same one he used to read that bullshit Newsweek article. He swiftly came up behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist in a snug hold. Amidst your confusion, his action made you giggle and almost drop the spoon. “Did my girl just make an accurate D&D reference?” he asked in disbelief, and you angled your body a bit to face him.

“I mean, it's not like I never paid attention during the many D&D games I’ve sat in on,” you said, smiling, and relishing in the affection he was giving you,. You and Eddie had been going strong for a little over a year now, and in that time, you had attended quite a few Hellfire Club meetings. It shouldn’t have been too much of a shock that you had some basic knowledge of the characters-or, more specifically, Boccob, the God of Forecasting. Although, you were happy you had unintentionally given him an instant mood boost.

“True,” he admitted. He nuzzled his face into your cheek, placing featherlight kisses there. “Nice one, baby,” he whispered, and you were thankful he held your body up, because you were sure your legs would give out from underneath you. That deep voice of his coming out in a whisper was damn near sinful.

“Thanks,” you said proudly, placing a quick kiss on his lips and pulling away before it could deepen, causing him to pout a little. It was hilarious whenever he did that, seeing your rather intimidating looking boyfriend, with his tattoos and black jeans and unruly hair, sticking out his lower lip like a little boy. You snickered at him and wriggled out of his grasp to turn the stove off, the meal all heated up. Deciding not to dirty more dishes than necessary, you just grabbed another spoon from the drawer. “Okay, soup’s on,” you said. 

Eddie rushed ahead of you when you began to make your way to the table and pulled the other chair out for you. You gave him a small smile of gratitude and you both sat down and dug into your processed meal. It was decent enough, and Eddie seemed like he was satisfied. You occasionally gave him a few bites from your spoon, just to make him smile-for some reason he loved when you fed him.

After a while of comfortable silence, he spoke up through a mouthful. “You know, I love doing this with you,”

You quirked a brow. “Eating canned food while hiding from the police?” you snarked.

“No,” he said, failing miserably at keeping a straight face, you just knew he wanted to smile, because you knew he loved your sass. “I meant, eating with you after you cook for us,” he clarified.

You couldn’t stop the flustered feeling that grew at his words. “Ohh,” you mused, and held up another spoonful for him, and he took it. “I love it too baby,” you said sincerely, smiling softly. 

“Seriously, though,” he said after swallowing. “I love it so much I’m willing to throw my very strong opinion that the marriage industry is a scam-powered by social conformity and money hungry businesses-clean out the fucking window if it means I get moments like this,” he gestured to your little set up, the two of you and your pot of SpaghettiOs, “For the rest of my life,”

It was your jaw’s turn to drop. “Do my ears deceive me?” you asked, imitating his words and tone from earlier. “Did my guy just say he’d…conform for me?” you asked, placing a hand on your chest with a purely exaggerated look of shock on your face.

“Hey, fuck it, call me a conformist,” he said, shrugging lightly and lounging back in his seat. Then, he gazed upon you with a look so full of love and sincerity. “But only for you,” he finished, eyes not wavering for a minute, and you knew he wasn’t bullshitting you. 

You and Eddie had never spoken about marriage. You were in High School, for fuck’s sake. And, both of you weren’t exactly big fans of the concept. You just heard Eddie reiterate his own beliefs, and as for you, after watching your parents’ marriage crumble right before your eyes as a little kid, you’d grown up with the opinion that the entire thing was bullshit.

But still, sometimes, you saw the little things Eddie did, and the endearing feeling in your heart would grow, and you would think, “I wanna see that for the rest of my life”. It was the way he would fold his lips in when he focused on something. The little dance he would do when he was excited or fired up. The blush he’d get on his cheeks that he would never admit to when he saw you in the hallway at school. Then there were the bigger things, namely how passionate he would get about the stuff he felt strongly about. It made you think about how badly you wanted to hear this drama king’s speeches about any and everything, again, for the rest of your life. And just wake up next to him, for the rest of your life. It would be quite a while before you were ready for that, but you knew who you wanted it with.

Holy shit, you were so far gone for this long haired bastard.

Wordlessly, you dropped your spoon and climbed into his lap, draping one arm around his neck and placing a delicate palm on his cheek, feeling that stubble again. His large hands gripped your waist as he looked up at you expectantly. You pressed your lips to his without any hesitation. His grip on your waist tightened, if possible, as the kiss deepened, your mouths moving against one another passionately. You poured every emotion you felt into it-love, longing, anxiousness. Even frustration, because this moment should have been happening over some beef stroganoff in your kitchen or in his trailer, not over SpaghettiOs in the halfway dining room of some incarcerated drug dealer. You wished Hawkins PD could see this Eddie, the soft Eddie no one else knew, and realize he would never commit such a gruesome and humanly impossible act.

You broke the kiss, your forehead finding purchase against his as you both panted heavily. You placed your other hand on his cheek, savoring his breath against your lips. It was then you felt it-that growing, tingling heat between your legs

You had been too worried before to even think about sex. But after that moment you shared and that kiss, your heart filled with longing for him, and the distraction laying with him would bring, for the two of you.

And, it was like Eddie read your mind, as he hoisted you up into his arms and carried you over to the couch, ready to satisfy your unspoken needs.

Maybe there would be chaos when he was eventually found. Maybe you wouldn’t be able to prove his innocence. But at that moment, feeling him against you blocked those thoughts from your mind-and you allowed it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The ending feels rushed but I’ve never been good with them anyway😅 hope y’all liked this one, it was a labor of love. I’m gonna go take a nap now 😴