#even now I love nothing more than to learn something new. like what a kerfuffle is.

[sunnywalnut]

I still got it boys

I got the Top 4.47% on this English Vocabulary test

[whitehotharlots]

CRT and the sad state of educational politics

If our culture is studied 100 years from now, the predominant theme of the research will be a sense of perplexed revulsion toward how we did nothing to address the climate crisis in spite of having decades of forewarning. If there is a second theme, it will be a profound confusion regarding our immense and unearned sense of self-certainty. A retrospective of the early twenty first century would be titled something like Who the Fuck Did These People Think They Were? 

The latter theme is illustrated in the debacle surrounding a recent slew of municipal and statewide bills that seek to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public schools. For the record, I am strongly against these bans. But I’m also self-aware enough to know my opinion matters very little, and therefore realize that an analysis of the discussion surrounding the bills will yield much more worthwhile observations than a simple delimitation of their pros and cons. Regardless of your personal opinion, I hope you’ll humor me.

I am, in some regards, a moral absolutist. But I also realize that abstract morality has very little bearing on material and political realities. In my ideal world, classrooms are free from political meddling. Teachers teach to the best of their ability, presenting students with truths that are confidently unvarnished due to the thorough amount of work that was required to reach them. I don’t cotton any of that socratic bullshit. Students are there to learn, not to engage in weird Gotchas with some perverted elder. The teacher’s job is to teach. The material they teach needs to be subjected to some graspable and standardized mechanism of truth adjudication before it is worthy of being taught. Teaching is not therapy. Teaching is not poetry. Teaching is not love, nor is it religion, nor is it a means of social or political indoctrination. There are plenty of other avenues available to accomplish all of those other things. Teaching is teaching. 

That’s the ideal. But ideals are just ideals. They never come true. The art of teaching, regardless of setting--from overpacked classrooms to face-to-face instruction to curricular design to nationwide pedagogical initiatives--boils down to a teacher’s ability to reconcile the need to convey truths with social and political pressures that are heavily invested in the suppression of truth. 

I have formally studied and practiced education for nearly two decades. In that time, the prevailing political thrust toward education has been a desire to casualize the practice of teaching, to render educators as cheap and fungible as iphones. The thrust takes different shapes depending on the political affiliation of whomever happens to be in charge of the state and federal governments that fund education, but the ultimate desire is always the same. The goal is always to attempt to make teaching rote and algorithmic, something akin to running a google search for How to do math? or What is morality?. The framing is always just windowdressing, empty culture war bullshit. 

Maybe it’s the inescapability of this thrust that’s rendered so many educators so blind to it? We only have nominal political choice, after all. The discourse gets more blinkered and vicious as the stakes decrease. At any rate, this is the undeniable reality, and anyone who doesn’t see that isn’t worth listening to. 

Non-administrative per-pupil spending as been on a steady decline since George W. Bush was president. Administrative bloat and meddling are becoming as common in k-12 as they are in higher education. The will of parasitic NGOs are implemented as common sense pedagogy without anyone even bothering to ask for any proof that they work. The so-called Education Reform movement is sputtering out due both to its manifest failures and rare, bipartisan backlash. But it will be replaced with something just as idiotic and pernicious. The thrust of causalization will not abate. 

And so what do we decide to do? What’s the next big thing on the education policy horizon? Critical Race Theory. 

Okay, this makes sense. In 2021, a local paper can’t run a news story about a lost cat without explicitly mentioning the race of every human involved and possibly also nodding toward the implied cisnormativity of pet ownership. So it makes sense that this broad rhetorical mandate would come to dominate the transitional period between Bush-Obama Education Reform and whatever bleak future awaits us. The controversy is so perfectly inefficacious that its adoption was inevitable. Because, seriously, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of the outcome of this kerfuffle, no problems will be solved. The real shortcomings of public education will not be addressed. Larger social problems that are typically blamed on public education in spite of having little to do with public education will especially not be addressed. Maybe white kids will have to do struggle sessions in lieu of the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe black kids will get full credit for drawing the Slayer logo in the part of the test where their geometric proof is supposed to go. Or maybe it won’t happen. Maybe instead these practices will be banned, and in turn liberals will begin to embrace homeschooling, the charter movement will be given new life as a refuge against the terrors of white supremacist behaviors such as, uhh, teaching kids to show their work. Whatever.

Within the context of public education, the outcome will not matter. It cannot matter. There will be broader social impacts, sure. It will continue to drive Democrats more rightward, providing their party’s newly woke corporate wing with progressive-sounding rationales for austerity. But so far as teachers and students are concerned, it won’t matter.

Why do I give a shit about this, then? To put it bluntly, I’m struck by the utter fucking inartfulness of CRT’s proponents. At no point has any advocate of CRT presented a case for their approach to education that was at all concerned with persuading people who aren’t already 100% in their camp. There’s been no demonstration of positive impacts, or even an explanation of how the impacts could hypothetically be positive. In fact, so much as asking for such a rationale is considered proof of racism. Advocates posit an image of existing educational policies that is absolutely fantastical, suggesting that kids never learn about slavery or racism or civil rights. But then... then they don’t even stick with the kayfabe. They’ll say “kids never learn about racism.” In response, people--mostly well-meaning--say “wait, umm, I’m pretty sure they do learn about racism.” The response is “we never said they don’t learn about racism.” You’ll see this shift from one paragraph to the next. It’s insane. Absolutely insane. 

Or take this talk from a pro-CRT workshop in Oregon. The speaker freely admits that proto-CRT leanings like anti-bias education, multiculturalism, and centering race in historical discussions have been the norm since the late 1980s. The speaker admits that these practices have been commonplace for 30+ years, as anyone my age or younger will attest. Then, seconds later, the speaker discusses the results of this shift: it failed. Unequivocally:

We had this huge, huge, huge focus on culturally relevant teaching and research. [ ... ] So you would think that with 40+ years of research and really focusing and a lot of lip service and a lot of policies and, you know, a lot of rhetoric about cultural relevancy and about equity and about anti-bias that we would see trends that are significantly different, [but] that’s not what we’re finding. What we’re finding that you see [is] that some cases, particularly black and brown [students] the results, the academic achievement has either stayed the same and gotten worse.

Translation: here’s this approach to teaching. It’s new and vital but also we’ve been doing it for 40 years. It doesn’t work. But we need to keep doing it. Anyone who is in any way confused by this is a dangerous racist. 

Even in the darkest days of the Bush-era culture war, I never saw such a complete and open disregard for honesty. This isn’t to say that Bush-era conservatives weren’t shit-eating liars. They were. But they had enough savvy to realize that self-righteousness alone is not an effective way of doing politics. You need to at least pretend to be engaging with issues in good faith. 

This is what happens when a movement has its head so far up its own ass that it cannot comprehend the notion of good-faith criticism. These people do not believe that there can exist anyone who shares their basic goals but has concerns that their methods might not work. Their self-certainty is so absolute and unshakeable that they can proffer data demonstrating the complete ineffectiveness of their methods as proof of the necessity of their methods.

For decades, the most effective inoculation against pernicious meddling in education has been to lean upon the ideal form of teaching I described earlier in this post. We claimed that teaching is apolitical and that no one is trying to indoctrinate anybody. Regardless of the abstract impossibility of this claim, it has immense and lasting appeal, and it was upheld by a system of pedagogical standards that allowed teachers to evoke a sense of neutrality. The prevailing thrust in liberal education is to explicitly reject any such notions, and no one--not a single goddamn person--has proffered a convincing replacement for it. We still say, laughably, that we’re eschewing indoctrination. But people aren’t that stupid. If you find it beneath yourself to make your lies digestible, people will be able to tell when you’re lying to them. 

This, my friends, bodes very poorly for the future of education, regardless of whatever happens in the coming months. A movement that cannot articulate its own worth is not one that is long for this world. Teachers themselves are the only force that can resit the slow press toward the eventual elimination of public education, and they have embraced a worldview and comportment style that renders them absolutely unable to mount any worthwhile resistance. 

[ineffably-good]

Prompt: Culture

This one is for you @tlou15 -- you asked, we deliver!

For the Good Omens 30th Anniversary prompts. You can see the 21 or so I’ve actually completed over on AO3. 

---

There were times when being an ethereal entity capable of dying and recorporating came back to bite you in the ass.

Over the years, Crowley and Aziraphale had become increasingly good at limiting their discorporations. It took a couple millennia of practice, however, to learn to recognize and avoid the obvious dangers in this new world of theirs. At first, the fatal accidents were more frequently and somewhat unexpected. A fall from a high cliff (demon), simply because neither of them knew that a fall could kill them. A rather unnecessary drowning (angel), simply because the entity in question didn’t know that failing to hold one’s breath underwater would result in death. A kick in the head from a large land ungulate (demon) with a grudge. A rather deep spear injury (angel) that could have simply been side stepped. The list went on and on.

Luckily, Above and Below were also somewhat more accommodating and liberal with the issuing of new bodies than they came to be later on.

As time passed, they got to better at the protocols of losing a body, too. Go back to home base, fill out the paperwork (in triplicate, for hell, using a scratchy pencil whose point always broke off), be polite (in Heaven) or surly (in Hell) to the body clerk, and get a new one issued as quickly as possible. Make your way back to Earth and then go back and clean up the scene of the crime, so to speak, so you didn’t leave the remnants of an ethereally-issued skeleton around. Tidy up the memories of anyone involved in the incident, and reassume your old life if possible, or, if a funeral had already been held and too many people were involved, simply move on to a new location or assignment. It all worked out.

For the most part. 

Being, as they were, two of the more lackadaisical, non-detail oriented entities ever stationed in this sphere, though, it was natural that here and there a few of the details got missed.

Which is what led to the two of them, standing in front of an exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, filled with a deep sense of foreboding.

“Is that…” Crowley muttered.

“No, it couldn’t possible be…” Aziraphale said under his breath.

“I’m fairly certain it is…”

“Oh, dear lord,” Aziraphale breathed. “Yes, that’s one of mine!”

In front of them, an exhibit on the Mayans did an admirable job showcasing their culture and achievements, dispelling the pervasive myths of human sacrifice, and above all showing a recreation of a temple display used to honor their dead. By punching holes in each side of a series of skulls and stringing them on a pole, like beads, to be displayed and revered.

And right smack in the center, oddly devoid of the same signs of aging and decay as the ones around it, was a brilliant white skull that bore more than a passing resemblance to the man staring at it in horror through the glass. To the human observers, it just appeared oddly pristine. But to Crowley and Aziraphale and any other ethereal entity who bothered to take a look, it was pulsing with remnants of celestial energy.

Crowley dissolved in laughter. This earned him a stern glare from the angel.

“What?” he said, snorting. “Your skull is hanging like a pendant on a stick in the Natural History Museum and I can’t laugh? How could you just leave one of your skulls laying around in – in what? Peru? Where did this come from?”

Aziraphale sniffed. “Mexico, I believe. I spent some time there, in San Lorenzo, the first Olmec capital.”

“You did?” Crowley asked. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

“We weren’t speaking at the time,” Aziraphale said. “Remember that big fight we had in Persia?”

“Oh, that…” Even after several thousand years, Crowley still managed to sound vaguely resentful. “You mean when you clocked me unconscious with your fist?”

“You hit me first!”

“Not the same, and you know it,” Crowley sulked. Being hit by a snake demon who was not bred for fighting was nothing like being punched in the jaw by the Guardian of the Eastern Gate. It was like being hit by a locomotive – although the comparison wouldn’t come to him for a few thousand years.

Aziraphale glanced over at him, taking in the sulky look on the demon’s face. “Oh come now, my dear,” he pouted. “We’ve long sense settled that particular kerfuffle. I apologized multiple times, didn’t I?”

Crowley mouthed the word ‘kerfuffle’ to himself with a grin. “I suppose we did, yes.” He stepped over a few feet and read the long and detailed card about the skulls in front of them. “Oh angel, listen to this.”

He read from the placard:  

Called a tzompantli by the Mayans, these ritual displays were believed to be used to showcase were originally thought to be a grotesque display of slain enemies, placed to rally the Mayan’s support for their leaders and to serve as a warning sign to others to stay away from Mayan territory. Although rumors have abounded about human sacrifice in Mayan culture, recent evidence reveals that these displays may have been more funerary in usage, highlighting the revered ancestors and that many of these skulls shows signs of being dead long before the post-holes were cut in them.

“How, pray tell, did you become one of the honored dead for the Mayans?” Crowley said, grinning. “Or were you actually sacrificed at one of their temples? Drowned in a cenote?”

Aziraphale frowned. “That’s a story for another time, my dear.”

“Oh, but I haven’t even gotten to the good bit. The part where they talk about the gleaming white skull in the center and how it shows signs of having been treated with some unknown and lost technology that made it ‘impervious to decay’.” Crowley chortled.

“I really should find a way to remove it from the display,” Aziraphale fretted. “Before someone decides to take a closer look at it under one of those – scanning microscope thingies they have now and discovers it doesn’t appear to be fully human. Or before one of the archangels finds out about it…”

“Ha!” Crowley shouted. “Imagine the uproar. Evidence of ancient aliens discovered in Smithsonian Museum! The chaos around the world!”

Aziraphale turned fully towards Crowley and looked menacing in the way that only he could. “Whatever foolish idea you’re forming right now for mischief,” he said warningly, “I absolutely forbid it!”

“Aw, angel,” Crowley whined. “Come on, I never get to have any fun.”

“You can have some fun by helping me pilfer this exhibit once the museum is closed tonight,” Aziraphale said. “I do believe the security here is rather prodigious.”

“You intend to rob the museum on our vacation?” Crowley asked, astonished. “You could just… you know… miracle the skull out, replace it with a duplicate.”

Aziraphale studied the exhibit for a long slow moment, considering, then turned and settled a blinding grin on his demon spouse. “I could,” he drawled, “but where would the fun be in that?”

Crowley felt a warm rush of something run through him. Love? Joy? Slight anxiety? Who knew. All he knew was the angel was quite possibly the most perfect thing on the entire Earth. No, in the galaxy. Quite possibly the galactic cluster.

“So,” the angel continued. “Are you in or out?”

“I’m in,” Crowley managed to croak, through his haze of feelings. “I’m so in.”

Aziraphale rewarded him with a peck on the cheek, then offered his arm to the demon and shepherded him down to the café, murmuring something about having heard they had the loveliest cakes here. Time to do a little planning, and what better way then over a little dessert?

[bittysvalentines]

My Best Friend’s Breakup

From: @missweber

To: @pwoops

Tags: Snowy/Tater, Snowy/OFC, background Zimbits, background Parswoops, friends to lovers, fluff, mild angst, accidental marriage, deliberate marriage

Summary: Everyone says that Snowy and his girlfriend are perfect together. This bothers Tater, which makes sense given the crush he has on his best friend. But he’s not the only one who is disturbed by how perfect everyone says Snowy’s girlfriend is. (This is in the same verse as ‘Fourteen Weddings and a Kerfuffle,’ but can be read as a stand-alone story.’)

Alexei wasn’t sure if he loved or hated Family Skate.

Family Skate meant skating with his friends and not having coaches yell at him or some asshole on the other team pick a fight with him. And there was always lots of food. That part, he loved.

What he didn’t love was always showing up alone, with no wife, no girlfriend.

Or no boyfriend, which was an intriguing new way to feel alone.

He tried to be subtle about watching Zimmboni with his little B over by the boards, talking and laughing with Carrie and Snowy…

…and Laurel.

Another thing Alexei hated about Family Skate was that it made him dislike a woman who truly didn’t deserve it. But how could he not dislike Snowy’s girlfriend?

Without his notice or his permission, Alexei’s feelings towards Snowy had turned into something that wasn’t just friendship. It was probably inevitable, given how Snowy was his best friend and a very, very handsome man as well. 

Given that Alexei enjoyed men as much as he enjoyed women, he had been doomed from the start.

For the sake of his heart, Alexei had long ago accepted that nothing would come of his crush and he would enjoy the friendship for what it was. And what it was, was the best kind of friendship a man could hope for.

As for that little touch of melancholy that it would never be more than friendship? It eventually settled into something almost pleasurable, like the soreness after a hard workout, or the burn of vodka searing down his throat.

This was very Russian of him, he decided smugly.

Again, he glided past the little group by the boards, past Zimmboni’s hand on B’s back, past Snowy standing close to Laurel, past Laurel saying something about ‘anniversary.’ 

This time, the jolt of melancholy wasn’t remotely pleasurable.

Everyone said it was only a matter of time before Snowy proposed. Laurel was a sweet girl, a perfect hockey girlfriend who would be a perfect hockey wife. 

Marty had even started a betting pool about when Snowy would propose, and Alexei had been grumpy enough to put money on them breaking up before Easter, just to be an ass. 

His best friend was going to get married and Alexei would just have to learn to live with that and with the fact he had thrown good money away purely out of spite.

* * * 

Dustin sank into the oversized, overstuffed, and over-engineered chair with a groan. Tater’s new recliner wasn’t at all to his taste, what with the red leather and the cup holder, but he would be the first to admit that the vintage Bauhaus furniture in his own apartment was more suited to a fit of ennui than a wallow in self-pity.

“Breakups fucking suck,” he whined.

Tater made a sympathetic noise that abruptly morphed into a huh? 

Dustin side-eyed him and got a puzzled look in return. 

“I thought you break up with her?” Tater asked.

Another groan. Tater’s recliner welcomed him further into its womb-like depths. It was even uglier than Zimmermann’s god-awful running shoes, but damn it was comfortable. 

“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck, because it’s not like I still don’t care about her, y’know?”

Tater grumbled with frustration, probably over Dustin’s tangle of negatives. 

Dustin took pity on him. “I broke her heart, and I feel like the worst person in the whole fucking world right now, okay? And Marty’s gonna slit my throat, because Gabby and Laurel are BFFs, and argh!” He screamed into his hands.

In so many ways, Laurel was perfect. Everyone said they were perfect together. She was hot, smart, funny, fun in bed, thoughtful, able to cope with all the bullshit that went with dating a hockey player…

“I made a big fucking mistake, didn’t I?” 

Thirdy had all but ordered him to lock that down, kid, at Family Skate two weeks ago. He had been weirdly insistent that the end of the regular season would be an awesome time to propose, but that wasn’t the important part.

The important part was that afterwards, things started going a bit… sideways with Laurel. Not bad. Just…

Sometimes, looking at something from a new angle made it look like a completely different thing.

Tater let out the long, rumbling hmmm that meant he was putting concepts together, taking them apart, and carefully reassembling them in a different language. 

While Tater pondered, Dustin thought about begging Laurel to take him back. He could say he was freaked out by the pressure of trying to secure a playoffs spot, and did something impulsive. She would take him back, right?

The certainty that she would knotted up his stomach more than he expected.

Tater got up and went to the kitchen. “This need pie,” he announced. 

Next came the crinkling of foil and the clink of plates being placed on the counter.

“B make blueberry pie, just for me.” Tater called from the kitchen. “When he hear about Laurel, he say I should share.”

The knot in Dustin’s stomach unfurled and bloomed into warmth. “I get Bittle pie? Aw, man, you really do love me.”

A long pause. An exasperated sigh.

“I only share little piece.” 

A few minutes later, Tater came back with two generous slices of pie, warmed up and garnished with a dab of sour cream. 

The first time Tater had served pie with sour cream, Dustin assumed it was a mistake, and that Tater meant to get whipped cream but read the packaging wrong. 

“Is not mistake,” Tater had retorted, testy at being corrected. “You see.”

The combination of hot, sweet fruit and cold, tangy sour cream was a revelation. In retrospect, it should have been obvious how perfect they’d be together.

Tater draped a napkin over Dustin’s lap with a flourish, then handed him the pie. Both plate and napkin were bright and fussy, like something Tater’s babushka might have bought. 

Again, not to Dustin’s taste, but you couldn’t serve sympathy pie on minimalist matte-black plates.

“Now we talk,” Tater said. “You sad because Laurel sad, yes?”

He nodded. He saw events play out as if they’d just happened. The expectant, eager look on Laurel’s face when he said he needed to talk to her, the way her smile just shattered when he said he didn’t want anything long-term, the sound she had made. The sudden nausea when he realized that their anniversary was in three days and she had been expecting will you marry me and not it’s not you it’s me.

“Yeah. Like I said, worst person in the world.” He pointed at himself with his fork. He might not want to spend the rest of his life with Laurel, but he still liked her. Loved her, even if not enough for forever. And he had hurt her. Badly.

“Imagine something for me,” Tater said after a minute, unusually serious. He leaned in and put a hand on Dustin’s shoulder. “Imagine she not sad at all. Okay, maybe little bit sad, but she say ‘You are right, Snowy. We should break up. Now I move to Vancouver and meet someone new.’ How you feel now?”

He thought. He thought about not having her around to go on dates with, to sleep with, to be around, to have fun with. She checked all the right boxes. 

She was the perfect girlfriend—

—for someone else. 

“I feel…”

Underneath the guilt and sadness, he felt the same peace he felt when he first realized he could just end things. He felt the absence of a dread that grew each time someone said something about how perfect they were together, or about locking that down.

He felt relief at avoiding something that was starting to seem inevitable.

Other things became clearer as well.

For example, how fucked up was it that he got more of a cozy domesticity fix from his best friend than he ever had from his girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend.

“I feel like I did the right thing.” 

Laurel could begin moving on instead of waiting for a proposal that would never come or that would turn into a disaster of a marriage. She could find someone who wanted to be with her forever.

“But I still feel like shit for breaking her heart. I wish I could fix that.”

“See? You good person.” Tater punctuated this with a sharp nod. “Not worst in world.”

“You’re a good friend, Tates. The best.” He sighed. “I guess marriage just isn’t my thing.”

Tater went silent and pensive for a moment. Probably thinking about his own lack of relationship success. At least that made two of them, now.

Dustin turned the chair’s massage settings from ‘Meditative Waves’ to ‘Angry Swedish Nurse.’ He deserved it, after all this emotional shit.

“No. I lied. I’m gonna marry this chair.”

Tater tsked. “No. You need time. You just break up, remember?” 

Dustin laughed. If it was shaky, he would blame the massage setting. “Where’d you get this thing anyway? And why?”

Tater muttered something vague about impulse buys and winning lots of money on some stupid bet, then showed Dustin how to turn on the seat warmer.

He could stay here forever.

Funny how that thought didn’t fill him with dread.

* * *

Alexei spent more time at B and Zimmboni’s place in the days after winning the Cup than he did at his own. It wasn’t exactly intentional, but Zimmboni had a couch that was long enough for him to stretch out his bad leg, and B loved having someone to fuss over. Besides, his apartment was just two floors down so he could go there any time he wanted. 

In theory.

“I’m surprised you aren’t spending more time with Snowy,” B said. It sounded like a question. Zimmboni shot him a look.

B ignored that and handed Alexei a slice of pecan pie. It had taken some coaching on B’s part, but Alexei could finally pronounce ‘pecan’ correctly. He would have to find an excuse to drop it into an interview at some point.

“Snowy live in building two blocks over, not two floors up,” he said between bites of pie. “And his furniture not comfortable.” He sketched out the shape of one of Snowy’s chairs in mid-air. It looked more like a geometry exercise than something you could sit in. “All metal and edges and… yuck!”

It was a reason, but it wasn’t the only reason.

“I see,” B said brightly. “And here I was all worried that something was wrong between you two.”

“Wrong? Nothing wrong! Why you think something wrong?”

It wasn’t really a lie if things were only wrong in his own head, right? Once he stopped dreaming about kissing Snowy after winning the Cup the way Zimmboni had kissed B, everything would be fine. Right?

“Oh, no reason,” B said, voice like sugar. “Just… you two normally spend all your free time together, but instead you’re here.”

Alexei smiled and held out his now-empty plate for a refill. “No. Everything fine!”

B took the plate, but did not head back to the kitchen. He looked down at Alexei. 

“Normally, I would never, ever be deliberately rude to a guest, especially an injured guest who knows how to properly appreciate a good slice of pie, or a half-dozen biscuits with gravy, or a whole pound of bacon, but you’ve got me wondering, hon—what’s Russian for ‘cock-blocking’?”

“Jesus, Bits…” Zimmboni groaned, but he was also laughing. “It’s not that we don’t love you Tater—”

“—but a little alone time would be kind of nice. Listen. Whyn’t you come up for breakfast tomorrow? You and Snowy both. I’ll make those blueberry pancakes you like so much.”

Before Tater could do anything but nod, B was on the phone with Snowy. “If you want to come over and retrieve your favorite Russian, that pie I promised is all ready for you… Mmm-hmm… Blackberry with crumb topping… Right… See you soon!” He hung up and his smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, showing that any irritation he had felt had melted away. “I think he’s missed you, the past few days.” 

It took less time than it should for Snowy to get to Zimmboni’s place. Maybe he was already on his way over when B called, and Alexei didn’t know what to do with that idea.

Maybe Snowy didn’t know, either, because instead of coming right in when B opened the door for him, he just stood there for a moment. 

“Hey, Tater,” he said, strangely quiet. B ignored any awkwardness, and handed Snowy a pie box before dragging Zimmboni down the hall towards the bedroom. Neither he nor Snowy said anything until they heard a door being shut firmly.

“Sorry if I’ve kind of been avoiding you the past couple days,” Snowy said. He ran a hand through his hair, pulling it all out of order. “I had to get my head around a couple of things.”

“I understand.” The daydream about kissing Snowy started up in the back of his mind. He had no idea how to stop it playing. Also, hadn’t he been the one avoiding Snowy? “Is okay, now?”

Snowy nodded sharply. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about things since I broke up with Laurel, and also since…” He nodded down the hallway. It was quiet for now, but it wouldn’t be much longer. “Things have changed, or no… it’s not that they’ve changed. I’m just seeing them differently. Anyhow, I’m not making a whole lot of sense, so let me just get to it—can I take you out to dinner?”

Alexei looked at Snowy. At the way Snowy looked at him. “That sound like date,” he said cautiously.

“It can be.” Snowy paused, so nervous it broke Alexei’s heart. “If you want, that is.”

“I do. I do want. For long, long time.”

* * *

Two years later, or at least close enough to the two-year-anniversary of being more-than-friends, Dustin and Tater woke up in a Las Vegas hotel room that made Tater’s apartment look starkly minimalist by comparison.

Tater frowned at the ring on his left hand. Dustin had a matching one. “Not again…” Tater groaned.

“Viva Las Vegas,” Dustin muttered. It was about time he got accidentally married in Vegas, like so many other Falcs had. Tater had been through it twice already with Parson and Seguin (they really needed to not have the NHL awards in Vegas). “So, you know what to do about this?” 

“Da. We take care of before practice, easy-peasy.” 

Or not so easy-peasy, as it happened. The Aces’ lawyer, a fussy, grumpy little man, glared at them through big, round spectacles as he explained why—given that they freely admitted to engaging in intimate relations over the past two years—a nice, speedy annulment was not an option.

“It will have to be a divorce, which will take longer, which means more of my time that will be billed to the Falconers. Most teams have it set up so the fees can be deducted from your paycheck. Please note that I bill five hundred dollars hourly, and that—”

“No,” Dustin blurted out. In the silence that followed, he wondered what the hell had possessed him.

“No?” The lawyer’s gaze could have impaled butterflies to a mounting board. 

“No?” Tater just looked confused. And also a little sad. “But you always say you not want marriage, nyet? Is why you break up with Laurel. So we divorce.”

“Yeah, you’re right. No! Not about the divorce!” he said quickly, before Tater could look any more sad. “I mean about Laurel and why I broke up with her.”

The lawyer cleared his throat. “While these soap opera dramatics are entertaining, gentlemen, I do have other business today…”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Look, it took me a couple of years, but I finally figured it out.”

Tater raised an eyebrow. He looked as if he didn’t trust himself to speak. 

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be married. What I didn’t want was to be married to someone who isn’t my best friend. Who isn’t you.”

Tater’s smile started small, then bloomed across his face. He turned to the lawyer. “Never mind! We go!”

“Yes, yes, fine.” He shooed them off with a flick of his fingers. “Congratulations and so on, but please refrain from any celebratory fornication until you are off the premises.”

They hurried out past the line of other happy couples waiting to have their marriages annulled. Tater paused to fist-bump Bogrov, his good buddy on the Aces, who apparently had accidentally married one of the linesmen instead of his girlfriend. They also nodded hello to Marty and Guy, and said they’d tell the coach they might be a little late to practice.

“So, when do you want to tell the guys?” Dustin asked. 

Tater looked guilty. “I already tell them about accidental marriage.”

“What?!” 

“Not that we decide we stay married,” Tater hurried to explained, “but Parson tell Zimmboni about tradition Aces have—”

They entered the locker room just then, and Dustin learned the hard way that the Aces glitter-bombed players who got drunk-married for the first time.

He was still finding glitter in awkward places later that night, when he and most of the other Falcs were at Kent Parson and Jeff Troy’s place for a sudden but not-so-accidental wedding.

He enjoyed the ceremony, even though both grooms had crashed his net a total of four times during last night’s game and they were all in the middle of the goddamn Stanley Cup Finals. He would always remember how for a few blissful hours under the desert sky, it didn’t matter that they’d played a vicious game last night and would play another one tomorrow night. 

What he would remember most of all, though, was the way Parson and Troy couldn’t stop gazing into each other’s eyes as they recited their vows. It left him awestruck and reaching for Tater’s hand. From the way Tater squeezed his hand in return, Dustin knew he felt it, too. 

If that’s how he and Tater looked at each other, then why the hell had they taken so long to get their act together?

“Wanna join in?” he whispered to Tater. A number of other couples were taking advantage of Nevada’s marriage laws and the presence of an ordained Elvis impersonator to tie the knot or to renew their vows. “It kind of sucks that our friends weren’t at our first wedding, huh?”

Dustin wasn’t sure what he expected when Tater told the group that they were staying married and renewing their vows. Congratulations, for sure. Also chirping. Marty might take in and dole out cash as people collected and paid off wagers on their wedding. There might even be tears.

What he was not expecting was slack-jawed silence followed by “Wait, WHAT?”

“Uh, I don’t see what’s so surprising, guys. We’ve been dating for like two y—”

“You’re dating?!”

“TWO YEARS??”

As for poor Jack, he looked like someone had shorted his circuits.

“I think we forget to tell them,” Tater whispered.

“Whoops?”

The only one not surprised was Bitty, who gave the rest of the Falcs a gentle bless your hearts before turning back to him and Tater. 

“I think what they all meant to say is ‘congratulations.’ I don’t know why they’re so surprised. After all, anyone can see that the two of you are perfect together,” Bitty said. 

Other people had said that to him once, and it had felt like a life sentence. Now, though, it felt like freedom.

“Yeah,” he said. Dustin leaned up to peck his husband on the cheek. “It just took some of us longer to see that than others.”

[msaprincess]

Multiple System Atrophy... The diagnosis

After years of experiencing some mysterious and seemingly unrelated symptoms, I finally received a diagnosis in October 2019. It was something I suspected for months but I was still surprised and even shocked by my neurologist's confirmation that it was what he also suspected. You might wonder how I came to be suspecting a very rare disease that most doctors and even many neurologists have not even heard of when I am not a doctor? The answer is really my own curiosity, persistent research and the fact that I unintentionally scared the living daylights out of one of my grandchildren. It was that last point that made me determined to get answers in the hope that I could prevent it from ever happening again.

The good news is that I haven't frightened any of the grandchildren since that one time. The bad news is that it turned out to be something I couldn't control and that it was a harbinger of doom of sorts. What 'it' was was a nightmare...literally. My grandson suffers from occasional night terrors, but it wasn't his nightmare but my own that caused the kerfuffle. Eight-year-old Cam was having a sleepover and because of his night terrors he didn't want to sleep in a room by himself—fair enough. I made a bed for him on the floor of my bedroom. At around midnight, I began screaming in my sleep. I yelled, 'Someone call the police!' and 'Get out of my house!' over and over, punctuating my shouting with some blood-curdling screams while flailing about against an invisible assailant. I was awoken by the sound of our two sausage dogs and my husband, who had been in the living room watching a late movie, scampering down the hall. Cam had awoken in terror from my screaming and in the dark was running back and forth in the bedroom, not knowing where to run to for safety because, obviously, Grandma was not safe. Once awake, I was overwhelmed with guilt. I apologised and hugged a distressed little boy for some time and after a long while, we both managed to get back to sleep. Although Cam easily forgave me, he understandably wasn't keen to risk another sleepover for a while. Thus, my search for answers began. I had been having these weird and unpredictable outbursts in my sleep for at least a few years by that time. Although no grandchildren had been victims before, at one stage I did a Google search for acting out my dreams, read that there was a connection to some neurological diseases, decided that there must be a simpler, more benign, explanation and stopped looking until Cam's fateful sleepover.

I expected to find that it was something of no consequence, related to something I ate or some nutritional element missing in my diet. It didn't take very long to discover that no change of diet was going to fix it and my earlier web searches were probably in the ballpark for a possible diagnosis. The more I researched, the more three unpleasant possibilities kept surfacing. Those were Parkinson's Disease, Lewy Body Dementia and Multiple System Atrophy. I also found a dozen or more other less likely but still possible diseases that had acting out dreams as an occasional symptom. I researched every one of them, looking up symptoms and reading medical journals and research articles until my head hurt. It was like learning a new language and I spent a lot of time looking for meanings of medical terms. If there is one thing I'm grateful for, it is that I don't have Lewy Body Dementia. As cruel as MSA is, at least hallucinations and depression are not common symptoms as they are with Lewy Body Dementia.

It was only a few months later that other symptoms surfaced; bladder issues, then persistent headaches and sudden drops in blood pressure that made my head swim. I had my first MRI scan in April 2018 to look for a cause for the headaches. Nothing was found. I saw a urologist and had some tests that were unsettling and revealing in more ways than one. They showed that something was definitely wrong with my bladder and surgery was a possibility. I didn't think surgery would help if the problem was neurological. Finally, I got to see a neurologist and my hopes were high, but I was disappointed. Although he brushed aside my concerns about my dreams and other supposedly non-neurological symptoms, he did note a very slight abnormality in the swing of my right arm when I walked that I hadn't noticed. He didn't suggest a follow-up appointment. Also, after experiencing some unusual sensations in my chest, I had appointments with a cardiologist and more tests which showed some slight abnormality in heart rhythm, but nothing to worry about. The cardiologist didn't think my problem was neurological. Months passed, during which I saw two gastroenterologists and an ear, nose and throat specialist. A benign tumour was found in my duodenum, but nothing that was directly related to my other symptoms. But my family doctor had the bit between her teeth. She detected other biomarkers, such as muscle hypertonia, which I was unaware of and she could see something was wrong and assured me she wasn't giving up. She was suspecting Multiple Sclerosis. It was something I had not suspected because I had not heard of Late-Onset Multiple Sclerosis and I thought that after forty-years-old, MS was an impossibility. She sent me for another MRI and messaged her professor in Melbourne, whom she knew was an expert in MS and asked him who he would recommend in Townsville.

Neurologist number two did something very unusual. After asking me about symptoms and examining me, he said he realised that I’d probably been looking for answers for a long time and that I would have done some research.Then he asked me if I had some ideas of what I might have. I wondered how honest I should be, having had my ideas brushed aside by some doctors, but I decided to trust him. I told him the sorts of research I had done and that although other doctors hadn't thought my acting out my dreams was significant that I did think it was significant. Finally, I said I was able to eliminate everything except Multiple System Atrophy implying, I thought, that he would find some reason why it could not be MSA. Considering I was expecting him to let me know that there were other possibilities which I hadn't considered because I was not a neurologist. To my surprise, he agreed that my acting out my dreams was very significant and that he also thought I had Multiple System Atrophy.

You might think this should not have surprised me, but it did, and I actually gasped a little from the shock. The doctor immediately apologised for being the bearer of such bad news. His apology was lovely but unnecessary because his honesty and his straightforward approach were refreshing. There is also some relief in having a diagnosis after a long search even when it is a bad diagnosis. It was the inescapable realisation of what my future now looked like that had stunned me. Not that anyone with MSA can really know exactly what the future holds because it is so different for everyone. Multiple systems that the brain controls are affected, but no two patients ever have exactly the same combination of symptoms. It just depends which brain cells are affected in each patient. The reality is that there is no cure, no remission and no slowing of the progressively disabling symptoms. There is also no way of knowing what new symptoms to expect or how bad any single symptom will become. 

Some people only live a few years with the disease while others soldier on for fifteen to twenty years. That’s what I hope for.

[honey-bunches-of-nope13]

If you have watched venom how would team rwby react to their s/o being a host for a symbiote? And that their s/o makes sure eat a lot of chocolate so that the symbiote doesn't have to eat brains?

This took forever and I am SO sorry!

While I would hope their S/O would tell her about this before it pops up on its own, for this, I’m going to assume that they haven’t; most likely because it can be kind of off-putting and they likely want to get to know their girlfriend and have her get to know them before dropping that bomb, and things go awry.

Ruby: 

- Obviously, she is shocked. How could you not be when faced with something like that? But, when the shock wears off, she thinks it’s a cool Semblance or something.

- When her S/O explains that it is not a Semblance, but a separate being living within them, she still thinks it is cool!

- She will 100% want to touch it.

- She will talk to the Symbiote  as a separate being because she believes that it deserves that recognition. She’ll more likely than not become good friends with it.

- Unless her S/O is uncomfortable when she does this, she will consider the Symbiote’s opinion in things just as much as her S/O’s. It’s along for the ride too, so it’s only fair.

- She won’t like to refer to it as “it”, so she will ask it what its name is and if it wanted to be refereed to as male or female, or something else. She wants her new friend to feel respected. (Seriously, I’m not a comic book person, so I have no clue how this works. Do they even have genders? Do they just take on the gender of the host? Does it even matter to them?)

- When her S/O tells her about the whole “it eats brains or it eats me” thing, she is understandably concerned. But, she is relieved when they tell her about how chocolate in large quantities can work as a substitute. She’s a sugar fiend already, so she usually has chocolate on hand. She just makes sure to ALWAYS have it on hand from that point on in case her new friend gets a little peckish,

Weiss:

 - There is going to be a freak out moment. Not a mad freak out, just a “holy hell! What the fuck is that!?” kind of freak out. Now, Weiss has been taught all her life that swearing is unladylike and she shouldn’t do it. So, if she is is cursing, you know she’s freaked out BIG TIME.

- When she calms down, she wants answers. What was that? How did you end up with it? Things like that.

- She thinks the brains thing is gross, but since it’s not her S/O’s mouth that has ever eaten them, she’ll get over it.

- The fact that chocolate is an exceptionable replacement makes it easier for her to get over it.

-  It’s a bit weird for her since there is always a third party involved. Eventually, she gets used to it. She’ll likely learn to even like the guy/girl/thing.

- She won’t take it as far as Ruby does, but she will be conscious of the being’s feelings.

Blake:

- She’ll be scared of it at first. I mean, those things are terrifying!

- She will be even more scared when she learns about what it is. I mean, eating brains? Super strength? Near invulnerability? Who knows what else!? This thing could take over her S/O’s actions and go on a killing spree if it wanted and her S/O likely wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

- While it freaks her out, she is an understanding and open-minded girl, so she would never leave her S/O over it.

- She won’t be mad about them keeping it a secret either. She’s kept her fair share over the years, so she has no room to judge; also, she knows that her S/O wouldn’t want this odd situation to define them because most people wouldn’t even give them a chance if they knew about this right off the bat.

- The chocolate thing will ease her a bit since brains aren’t a REQUIREMENT, and she will make sure to have it on hand. Think Christopher Titus’s bit about his phycho girlfriend who had a “sugar imbalance”. If you haven’t seen that comedy special, Norman Rockwell is Bleeding, I recommend it (it’s on youtube). But, I won’t make you watch it to get this bit. “I started carrying twix in a holster” *pretends to whip out twix and shakily offer them to the psycho whilst shielding face* “There’s two for you, none for me!”

- It will take a while, but once she is sure the Symbiote won’t go on a head-munching rampage, she’ll ease up. She’ll even take the time to get to know the thing. 

Yang

- Her shock and fear of the thing is going to be joined and nearly overpowered by her anger. As we all know, she HATES people keeping important things from her. One, she feels betrayed and lied to; two, she hates that they didn’t trust her enough to be open with her about something so HUGE.

- There will be a yelling match with some insults thrown at the Symbiote. The Symbiote will likely come to its own defense and will quickly learn that Yang is not to be trifled with whether it be physically or verbally. Poor thing has never gotten a tongue lashing like that in its entire life!

- Once she gets that out of her system, they can have a real talk about what this thing is and why her S/O kept it a secret. She’ll still be peeved and pout for a bit, but that will pass pretty quickly once it is all out in the open.

- Like Blake, she is worried about the Symbiote taking over and hurting people, specifically the people she cares about, and making her S/O do things they don’t want to do.

- Unlike Blake, she won’t take such a mild approach. She’ll strait-up threaten the thing! “I hear you’ve got a problem with fire. Well, they don’t call me ‘Firecracker’ for nothing. If you even think of trying something, I’ll barbecue your alien butt!”

- Once her and her S/O have their little kerfuffle and their heart-to-heart, and she and the Symbiote have their little chitchat to set CLEAR boundaries, they’ll all be cool with each other. She’ll like the Symbiote’s sarcasm, she picked her S/O so of course she already likes them, and the Symbiote is likely going to love her spunk.

Bonus for Yang: “I’ve thought about having a threesome once or twice, but this isn’t how I thought it would happen.”

[afro-elf]

it’s all ogre now, i think @farrahda5hy is done torturing me

it’s Over

Author’s Note: HAPPY HALLOWEEN, BITCH🎃

The door opens inside the room, getting the attention of the three captives inside. Frederick and Samuel enter. Samuel looks to the other and asks, “What are they doing here?” pointing at your friends.

Frederick shrugs. “They came looking for their friend, and I thought they’d make good additions to the Ritual,” he says.

“We can’t just do that, Frederick!”

“I mean, it’s a bit late, now.”

Samuel sighs. “Fine, but, we’re gonna have to be stricter now about how we do this, since Thomas thought he could slip past us.”

Your friends shudder and whimper as they’re lifted up, their bonds resituated so that their hands are tied in front of their bodies. Tom is silent as Frederick lifts him from his spot. Samuel leads the line outside, collecting Wesley and you, hands tied behind your back, on the way. The procession goes; Samuel holding Laura captive, Wesley with you, Frederick with Tom, and Rupert with Jordan. You all walk into the forested area behind Samuel’s house, down a cobbled path for several minutes. The full moonlight peaking through the trees seems to signal your oncoming doom. You shiver with fear. You have faith in Tom (and a little in Wesley, maybe) that you’ll all get out of this somehow, but the odds feel so stacked against you.

Finally, you see a clearing in the forest up ahead, over which the full moon is nearing the zenith. Panic runs through your blood even more furiously now; what the hell are you to do?

A flash later, you hear Tom shout, “Now!” from behind you. You see Samuel reel in front of you, a pained hiss passing through his fangs. You see Laura with the bracelet, your bracelet, on her wrist, and twisting her tied arms so that it’s pressed against Samuel’s neck. His stance weakens to the forest floor the longer her wrist is pressed to his neck.

The next thing you know, you’re being pushed off the path. You tumble to the ground, confused. As you look up from your spot on the ground, you see Rupert and Wesley fighting. Clearly Rupert has the upper hand, but Wesley is doing his best. You see more clearly the smoke rising from Samuel’s body as Laura lifts herself from him. You pick yourself up now, and it takes you a moment to realize that your hands are no longer tied. You deduce that Wesley must have discreetly loosened your bonds while you were walking down the forest path. Some hope and relief finally enter your body.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Rupert!” Wesley shouts as he swipes his claws at him.

Rupert cackles, his fangs bared. “You seem to forget that I am the sire of this little sect of ours!” he shouts. “What I say goes. And right now Wesley, I say that if you don’t stop this right now, you’re gonna die, too.”

Wesley, enraged, swipes again at Rupert. You see Laura try to reach for him now, her hands still tied (bless her), but Frederick is swift and throws her to the side. Now Wesley is fighting off two of his bandmates.

While they’re all distracted, you run up to Tom, and immediately reach to loosen his bonds. He shoots you a quick, “Thanks, love!” before rushing to help Wesley fight.

You turn to find Jordan frozen in their spot, unsure of what to do. You run to them, and loose them from their bonds.

“Get a stake or something!” you tell them. “Lots of trees here, lots of wood! Let’s go!” They simply nod, and you turn to find Laura struggling to find an opening in the kerfuffle. You run to her now, and help her loose, despite how well she was managing with her hands literally tied. “Listen, give me the bracelet,” you tell her. Before she can do anything though, you’re tackled away.

“Not so fast, sacrifice!” Frederick says over you with a hiss. “We are doing this Ritual and there’s nothing that can be done to stop us!”

Just as quickly as he tackled you is he kicked off of you. Wesley now stands heroically over you. “I seem to have more in me than I thought,” he says. He swipes down at Frederick, shedding some blood from him. You see Jordan running up now, stake in hand, and you slide out of their way, shouting a series of frantic “Stake him!"s at them. They lunge down and plunge down the stake right into Frederick’s chest. He hisses in pain, and smoke rises from the fatal wound.

"HolyfuckIjustdidthatohmygod,” Jordan breathes out. Quickly, they faint. Wesley catches them. He looks at you with a silent question.

“I think they’ll be alright,” you say. “To be fair, killing a vampire is a lot to have to take in.”

Suddenly, a clawed hand swipes at his neck from behind, and he lets out a pained hiss and drops Jordan. You screech.

“Wesley, you goddamn fool!” Rupert shouts.

Suddenly you’re dragged up, and you screech again. Rupert has your arms locked behind you in his strong vampiric grip, and he pulls you closer to the clearing. You struggle against him, but you are no match.

“It appears I’m the only one feeding tonight,” Rupert calls menacingly. “Too bad for you, Thomas, and for you, Wesley! As soon as I drain your precious human of her blood, I will squash you like a common centipede.” You look through teary eyes and see Tom’s form running up to you. You hyperventilate and pray silently for any last bit of hope that can help you. “I’ll have to find new bandmates, now, of course. So tragic, since you guys were truly amazing instrumentalists.” You whimper.

“I don’t think so, Rupert,” you hear Tom say. Next thing you know, you’re falling backward with Rupert, but his hands are off you in the next second. You roll away, and look to see that Tom is pressing something into Rupert’s neck. Rupert struggles to pull Tom off of him, but he visibly weakens with each passing second. Tom looks equally as pained, his face growing a deeper purple as he presses harder into Rupert. You don’t know how long you sit there, watching this spectacle, until Rupert no longer moves, and his eyes gloss over with one final breath.

Tom yanks his hand away, sucking air through his teeth. His breathing is labored. You see what he held down onto Rupert fall to the ground with a glint. Your bracelet! You look to Tom.

“The bracelet… was pure silver…” he says through strained breaths. He looks down to his burned up palm, and groans. You gasp and crawl to him.

“Tom, your hand!” you say, but he holds up his other hand.

“I’ll be fine,” he whispers, and pulls you into a tight embrace. “What’s important now is that you are, too. My love.”

Tears fall down your face and onto Tom’s chest, as you sit there for what feels like forever. You didn’t see clouds in the sky at all, but it starts to rain. You look up, and sure enough, the moonlight is eclipsed by dark clouds. Tom, in a sweet gesture, picks up your braclet off the ground and puts it back on your wrist, despite the clear pain it causes him. He tenderly kisses you, and whispers, “I’m sorry I put you through all of this, my love.”

“You protected me,” you say, matter-of-factly.

He rubs his forehead against yours. “And I’ll keep doing that, forever. If you wish for me to, that is.”

You simply lean up and kiss him with a smile.

Épilogue coming soon

EPILOGUE: Wesley died that night. As you walked up to collect your friends, he lied on the ground, short of breath. You tried convincing him that there’d be hope for him, but, he’s not that dumb, he told you. You and Tom thanked him for his help in the end, and sadly watched as he, too, perished. You made it back to your home, and cleaned yourselves up the best you could, and laid the still-fainted Jordan on your couch. You debated whether or not to convince your friends that everything that happened was a figment of their drunk imaginations when they woke up. You really wanted to, but Tom figured that they could be trusted with this secret. They could.

You had to do a lot of readjusting, after that. Since Tom didn’t feed on Halloween, he started feeling hunger pangs for the first time in several years. Luckily, you had friends in nursing who were willing to be discreet, and Tom had a lot of cash, so you snuck him some “expired” blood packets to help tide him over. “I might have to do the Ritual with these babies,” he joked.

It took a lot of time to process everything that really happened. Watching four people die after learning the truth of their situation? Realistically, no therapist would be able to help you process that one. No human therapist, at least. Tom was convinced that there had to be at least one vampire out there in emotional counseling. You still haven’t found one yet.

Dealing with all of the possessions that his bandmates left behind was a whole nother issue. Forging the wills of people that were alive way longer than any human should be? Woof. You tried convincing Tom to just burn their places down. “But, I kinda just want all of those instruments,” he said. You rolled your eyes.

After he did get a hold of all of those instruments, he started his own one-man industrial project. It was gonna take a while for him to get new bandmates. Bloodbathory was over anyways.

The next Halloween, despite his jokes, he did bring some blood packets to feed on. Luckily the Ritual only required blood, and not a living sacrifice.

“Listen, darling,” he said to you, as the waxing moon reached overhead. “I’ve thought and panicked a lot about what I’m about to ask you.”

“You know that after everything we’ve been through, you can tell me anything, right?” you said.

“I know, but–” he huffed. “It’s a very serious thing.”

You look up at him, your heart racing. “Yeah?”

He took a deep breath. “We know that I’m basically immortal. And that you’re not.”

You looked away sheepishly. “Yeah…”

“But, we could change that, if you wanted.”

You looked up at him, your eyes wide. “Wow, that is– that is a lot to ask.”

“I know, it took me a lot to even bring it up.”

“I just– I don’t know. What gave you the idea?”

“A lot of it came from this very real fear of losing you, like I almost did last year. 70 years to you is nothing to me at this point. I know I’m still a young vampire, but–” He huffs. “I know I want to hold on to you for as long as I can. I know that’s selfish of me, but…” He trails off.

“I mean, yeah, it is.”

“You don’t have to, though. I’ll just learn to seize the moments that I have with you now.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t think about it at least. Because I will. No guarantees of a yess, but I will.”

Tom smiles at you and pulls you into an embrace. “I love you, Kendra.”

“Just a quick question– So you’re not gonna ask me to marry you then?”

Tom giggles. “We’ll have some time to think that over, too.”

“Alright, drink your blood.”

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter 100221

2 October, 2021

Dear Dad--

I got your care package and thank you thank you! I’ve already watched the movie, and I’ll read the book, and I’ve already eaten the tootsie rolls. That was a pretty amazing movie, 1917, wasn’t it? I hope you watched some of the DVD extras, assuming you own a copy that has the same extras as the one you sent me. Because learning how they did everything they did to make the movie look like a single continuous take was fascinating! Alfred Hitchcock did a similar thing with Rope, if you’ll recall. And the Michael Keaton movie Birdman was similar, but none of them had all the fun explosions and battle scenes that this one has. I wasn’t expecting the movie to do that! I was just expecting a regular WWI movie. Thank you again; it’s definitely a keeper!

What else is going on in my life? I continue to work Sunday through Thursdays. Last Thursday our parking garage at the casino was much more full than usual because of a funeral service for a sheriff who’d been killed, taking place at the convention center across the street. The governor came. It was a big deal. Didn’t affect our jobs, we’re still auditing the casino’s income and making sure everything adds up. Someone finds a quarter on the bathroom floor and decides to give it to the cage cashier as “found money,” we have a form we fill out for it, and places in spreadsheets where its existence is documented. It’s a bit like picking gnat shit out of pepper, I think, but it’s nice when all the numbers balance the way they’re supposed to.

Other than that, it really has been a slow week. I’ve spent a good deal of the week being dissatisfied with how little I’m being paid at my job, and spent a small amount of time reminding myself that my paychecks will get bigger soon, when I’ve paid for my gaming license and some snafu with my health insurance which somehow put me a couple hundred in arrears (still don’t know how, or with whom) and they stop taking all that extra money out of my paychecks. I’m considering talking to my HR person at work. Be nice to know when I’ll be done paying for this stuff, and if it’ll happen before I enter the time of year when I have a kerosene bill to pay each month.

We had a fun kerosene kerfuffle yesterday! We get our kerosene from a company called Morin, and yesterday, for the first time since early spring, they came by to top off our kerosene tank. Not a bad bill, only $44. The problem was, the bill said it was for trailer 1, which we are not, and that my name was Lee Robbins, which I, even more vigorously, am not. So I figured, I needed the top off anyway, and they’re my kerosene dealers, not like I got screwed in any way, and in this case, someone else is being billed for it! But I also figured, the guy in trailer 1, whose name is apparently Lee Robbins, is still going to need kerosene too, and at some point, he’s going to realize he paid for some, but never got any. So I called Morin and let them know.

The nice flunky that I got on the phone from Morin was quite entertained by the whole thing. He thanked me very much for calling and letting them know. I explained that the manner in which our trailers are numbered defies rational thought, and implored them against giving shit to their fuel delivery dude who made the mistake. I realized the Morin flunky with whom I was speaking didn't know that I was a Morin customer, because, at one point, he had to ask, “So! Um...did you, like...Um...Did you NEED any fuel today? *nervous chuckle*” and got to tell him, “Yes, it’s getting cold, I figured I’d be topped off soon, you guys are my kerosene providers, it’s all good. No harm, no foul. Obviously, everything is going according to the good Lord’s plan.” (What I said in person did not include that last part.) Then he suggested I send them a check or stop by to pay for the kerosene, and I reminded him that they have my billing info on file, just suck the money out that way.

That worked out fine, but I began to realize that I probably don’t interact with strangers and people doing their jobs the same way most people do. I had a doctor’s visit, and the nurse’s assistant said, “I see you declined your last colonoscopy?” And I had to tell her, “Oh goodness no, I didn’t decline it, I just thought it was icky and I didn’t want to do it.” And she nodded sagely, like medical professionals are supposed to when you say something dumb as dirt, like that was, but then snorted through her nose and said, “It was icky and I didn’t wanna do it!” and laughed. I guess I’m just a witty motherfucker. Take that, boring badinage.

And OH SHIT a good thing just happened to me! I knew that the grocery store had some prescriptions ready for pickup, and intended to pick them up this morning. I had put this off a little bit--actually I was dreading it like a trip to the gallows--because I figured the grocery store pharmacy now knows that I have insurance through my work. Now that I have insurance, my shit won’t be 100% covered by MaineCare like it was, and I may have co-pays. If the co-pays are too big, it may put the meds out of reach. And that’s just bad in every way, to say nothing of having to tell the pharmacy, “Yeah, I can’t afford that. Can you please take those pills and give them to someone less undeserving than I,” while the folks in line behind you shake their heads and think, “Get a job, and you won’t have this problem, you pinko ragamuffin,” despite the fact that getting the job is what caused the problem.

But I steeled myself and went to the pharmacy and said I had prescriptions for pickup, and she said it was three medications, and I thought, “They’re going to ask me for a hundred bucks and then I’m boned,” but she said there was a zero copay for all three medications. That’s a big damn happy thing, so...what has gone wrong? I knew confirmation was in order, so I told her, “Well, I have insurance now...shouldn’t my ass be bleeding from all the copays by now?” (Again, not the actual phrasing I employed during this exchange at the pharmacy.) And she said, “Um...nope, it’s split between (someone) and (someone), and neither of those is gonna be called whatever you call it, probably.”

This was when I made my mistake, and I hope it isn’t a bad one. I didn’t have her explain who the (someone) and the (someone) were, and it’s not spelled out on the paperwork that came with my pills. I think she said one of the entities was “Advantage” something or other, and there's an “ADV” on my new Caremark prescription card. And I think the other entity had the letter M in its name, which might mean MaineCare. And I find myself thinking, I shouldn’t have to be Indiana fucking Jones to figure out how my own pills are being paid for. Obviously my only concern is that the other shoe will drop, and I’ll get a letter saying, “Dear icky poor person. You were accidentally charged a zero copay when it should have been $587.29. Enclose immediate payment in the envelope provided, or we’ll come take one of your thumbs.”

Probably that won’t happen. For the time being, I’m just going to be grateful for the fact that my medications didn’t cost me anything today. Also for the fact that fall has officially begun here in Maine, and the foliage is starting to turn. The cats are now more demanding of physical affection, for the warmth, and every mile of my drive to work is a picture postcard of autumn in New England.

More next week! All my love to you both!!

[joyfullynervouscreator]

Growth

Part of ‘Motorcycle Club’!

Strength - Original imagine for @hiccuplovver​

School’s Out & Lazy Sunday

word count 2729

Dwalin was being distant – had been for weeks, actually, ever since you got back from your teaching seminar – and you were tired of it, tired of him hiding out at the garage; leaving early and coming home late, too tired to do much more than peck your cheek and head to bed. You were worried. Not just for him, for yourself too, now, staring at the friendly face on the other side of the table.

“I need to speak with my husband,” you croaked, barely hearing the ‘Of course, I understand, Mrs. Fundinul, have a good day.’ chirped at your back.

Driving out to the garage required all your attention. Half-way hysterically, you wondered what Balin would say if you got arrested for reckless driving. Dwalin’s brother was a lawyer, and his quick wit had saved the Club from more than one legal kerfuffle.

Walking into the shop, you saw only Thorin, who looked up at you with a strained smile.

“Look, I don’t know everything that’s going on between you but…” he said, grabbing your arm as you made to pass. The pained voice made you stop, looking up at the man who was closer than a brother to your husband. Thorin’s dark blue eyes were hooded. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it, shaking his head, something like sadness in his eyes. “Just… he’s a good man,” he said, lamely, scowling at himself more than you as he let go, nearly fleeing outside into the light drizzle. Your puzzlement didn’t last long, overpowered by the loud clamour of your thoughts returning.

 “Dwalin?” you asked, wincing when the sound startled him, hearing his curse as he banged his head against the underside of the car he was working on. Sliding out from underneath the vehicle, he looked up at you with something like apprehension, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but with you.

“What’s ye doin here, then?” he asked, his voice gruff. You noticed the lack of his customary endearment, and in your heightened emotional state it was enough to make you burst into tears, sobbing loudly into your hands. Dwalin panicked. “No, please, lass, you know I don’t like it when ye cry,” he babbled, running his hands up and down your arms, trying to soothe you. “Please, amrâlimê,” he pleaded, but you didn’t hear the ancient word, only felt the way he wasn’t wrapping his arms around you, holding you tight and safe. You cried harder. Dwalin cursed. You vaguely heard the sound of fabric tearing and then his strong arms were wrapped around you, pressing your trembling body against his broad hairy chest. “Please, elskling, stop crying,” he murmured, pressing his face into your hair. Feeling marginally comforted, you hiccupped against his skin, but continued to weep. “Stop crying and tell me,” he ordered, though his voice was soft, strained somehow.

“I took a pregnancy test,” you sobbed, burrowing against his warmth.

“I know,” he whispered, and the devastation in his voice made you look up. He knew? And he wasn’t happy. You stared at him, tears spilling down your cheeks. Dwalin looked close to crying himself. “Please, elskling, I need… even if it’s not true,” he took a deep breath, while you stared at him, utterly confused, “please don’t tell me you decided to have an abortion.” At first, his words didn’t even register through your shock. Dwalin began babbling again. “I know you always said the school was more than enough children, you never wanted to have your own, and I never really cared, I know, but…” As you watched, Dwalin seemed to crumble before your eyes. “I just… please…” You could count the times the great Dwalin Fundinul had begged for anything on your hand – he was not so proud as Thorin, but pride definitely ran deep in the clan of Durin, you’d learned – but Dwalin was begging now. “Please don’t tell me you want to kill our baby…”

Dwalin’s words finally registered, making your eyes widen in shock. “You… you want to have children?” you asked with a sniffle, feeling small and insecure. Your hand unconsciously went to your stomach, staring at Dwalin as you bit your lip.

“I never thought I did,” he admitted, “but… aye… I do.” You couldn’t hold back the tears that began rolling down your face. Dwalin looked chagrined. “I’m sorry!” he cried, picking you up and hugging you even tighter this time. It hadn’t been an easy realisation.

10 days earlier:

“I think Anna’s pregnant,” Dwalin said, staring at the fire in their small camp. Thorin startled; neither of them had said a word since Fíli and Kíli had been put to bed, hours ago.

“Congratulations,” he said, when he found his voice, picking up a stick and poking the fire awkwardly.

“We’ve never wanted children,” Dwalin admitted. “I don’t know if…” Thorin hummed.

“I think you’d be a good father,” he said, decisively. Dwalin reared back as though struck, staring at him.

“Thorin!” he exclaimed.

“What?” Thorin smirked. “Dís said so just last week, watching you teach Fíli about tying knots.” The words made a small ball of warmth appear in Dwalin’s gut, as proud embarrassment coloured his ears. “What did Anna say?” Thorin continued. The ball of warm goo was replaced with icy lead in an instant.

“She didn’t tell me,” he admitted. “I found the test wrapper in the bathroom trashcan, but not the test itself, last weekend when she went to that teachers’ seminar.”

“That’s why you’ve been walking around like a moody bear all week?” Thorin asked, glad to have a reason for Dwalin’s odd mood at last. He’d been half worried that they were having actual problems, considering saying anything even remotely related to the topic of Dwalin’s wife had been a sure way to get his head bitten off. It was the impetus behind this weekend’s camping trip in fact – as well as getting in his sister’s good books by taking the two hellions off her hands and tiring them out in the forest. Dwalin grumbled something monosyllabic; a sound Thorin had always just called ‘The Scottish noise’ which was a versatile communication tool – capable of expressing anything from incredulity over boredom to joy or anger. He had tried to copy it – his grandfather’s people were from Scotland – but he’d never managed. Dwalin had the unfair advantage of being the son of a Scotswoman, of course, who had fallen in love with his father when she was on holiday, while his own mother was Canadian.

“I don’t know what to do, Thorin,” Dwalin admitted, shocking his cousin. Dwalin was never uncertain about anything, look how he’d gone after Anna in the first place, after all, getting her to move halfway across the globe to marry him.

“You don’t know?” Thorin asked dumbly. “Don’t know if you want the child?”

“I don’t know anything!” Dwalin roared, losing his temper. “I don’t even know if there IS a child!” Throwing his stick into the fire, he paced around the small clearing. “Anna said nothing about it when she got back, and I’ve been too much of a coward to bloody ask her!” Thorin gaped. Coward was another word which Dwalin embodied the antonym for; the man was a decorated war hero, for crying out loud, with the medals and scars to prove it. “And if there IS a child, and Anna doesn’t,” he paused, swallowing heavily, “doesn’t want it… what then? I’m scared to find out whether I want it… I don’t want to lose my wife, Thorin, my Anna.”

“Well, then you do know one thing,” Thorin said, trying for levity and falling short. “Look, did you never talk about the possibility?” he wondered, remembering the debacle about birth control a few years back. Anna had not been on the pill when they married, having had very little experience before Dwalin, and having bad experiences with the drug in the past. After four months of a lethargic and disinterested wife, Dwalin had nearly begged her to get off the pill again, feeling that getting anything was preferable to a moody nothing – even if that meant condoms purchased in bulk. Thorin had laughed at the predicament at the time, though he had not enjoyed working beside Dwalin for the four months it took his brother-in-all-but-blood to realise – something that required an intervention by Dís armed with a bunch of statistics as well as a far too teary and whisky-soaked conversation that Thorin had done his utmost to forget afterwards – that it was the pills that had killed his vixen’s drive, not some elaborate punishment she had devised for something he’d done without knowing.

“Not as such,” Dwalin frowned, slumping down on the log next to Thorin. “Anna always claimed she had enough children in her life, with the school and playing aunt for Dís’ two rascals.” Thorin nodded slowly. Dwalin blushed slightly. “The way she said it though, I kinda always assumed she thought she couldn’t, ye ken.”

“And you’ve never cared,” Thorin replied, knowing the truth of that. Before he met Anna, Dwalin had pretty much only cared about his bike, Thorin, Balin, and Dís, along with Fíli, who was little more than a toddler at the time. Dwalin shook his head.

“Still don’t know that I do,” he said softly, “but the idea of watching her… watching my Anna, round with my child… there’s something about that image that won’t let me go.”

“And the idea of a child…?” Thorin probed. “A small face with your eyes and Anna’s nose, maybe,” he could picture it, actually, and the sappy smile on Dwalin’s face told him he was picturing it too. “Hopefully not your nose… at least if it’s a girl,” Thorin teased, startling a laugh from his companion. An owl screeched somewhere in the woods.

“Aye,” Dwalin said, when the fire had burned down to nothing but a few stray embers. “I think I’d like to have a child. With Anna’s nose.” Thorin just nodded, relieved that this conversation had not involved enough whiskey to kill lesser men nor a teary-eyed Dwalin wondering if he was so bad at sex his new wife would divorce him. All in all, a weekend with his nephews in the woods was better for both of them physically – and mentally, Thorin ruefully admitted, still carrying the scars of watching his sister give an in-depth explanation of female anatomy, complete with charts – dragging Dwalin away from the ashes of their fire and pushing him towards the tent.

“You- you want to have a baby with me?” you asked, feeling ten tons lighter all of a sudden. Dwalin had always been indifferent to the idea the few times it had come up in conversation, and though you had watched him with his pseudo-nephews, he’d never expressed real desire to be a father – much like you’d never truly wanted to be a mother. Being the mother of Dwalin’s child, however… you felt like crying all over again when he nodded, kissing your forehead as he put you back on the floor.

“Aye, amrâlimê, I do,” he said, hoarsely. For the first time, you noticed the tired circles beneath his eyes, the strain he couldn’t quite hide when you were this close. You cupped his face, kissing him gently.

“Dwalin, I’m pregnant,” you whispered, the smile breaking through your resurgent tears. “You’re going to be a father.”

“Anna,” he whispered, suffusing your name with so much love it broke your heart. “Tell me again that you want to keep my child.” His hand had slid down, closing around yours and pressing against your abdomen lightly, even if there was nothing much to feel at all; hardly even a bump yet. “Tell me.”

“Our child,” you whispered, pulling your hand away so his rested against your soon-to-be-growing belly. “Our child is in there, my love.” You weren’t surprised when you felt his arm wrap around your back, though you had not expected him to fall to his knees, burying his face against your middle and the outright sobbing nearly scared you. Humming softly, you scratched your fingers through the hair at the back of his head, stroking the shiny dome with its intricate ink gently. Dwalin’s sobs abated, giving way to tiny kisses all over your stomach, his beard tickling through your shirt. Feeling buoyed by his positive reaction, you reached into your bag, pulling out a small piece of paper. There was little enough to see, but you’d needed proof, somehow, and the technician had been kind enough to circle the small blobs you needed to show him. Stuffing the paper underneath his palm, you waited for his reaction.

“What’s this?” Dwalin asked, staring confusedly at the small black-and-white printout. The blue ink from the technician’s pen did not seem to make sense to him.

“This is the reason I hope your cousins will be willing to help us redo the spare room as a nursery,” you whispered. “This is the first picture of our children.”

“…” Dwalin stared up at you for a few seconds, his eyes wide. “THORIN!!” he bellowed. You jumped, which instantly made Dwalin look contrite, rising from his position with one last bristly kiss on your belly to claim your lips in a blazing kiss, his hand rubbing lightly across your abdomen, the picture clenched tightly in his fist.

“Aye?” Thorin asked, popping his head through the door – apparently, he had returned once you’d disappeared into the garage. Dwalin grinned.

“Come see what my Anna brought me,” he crowed, holding out the printout. You grinned.

“Ah, a whatsit… sonogram!” Thorin replied, proud that he’d remembered the term. You laughed, joy filling your veins with bubbles as Dwalin picked you up and spun you around, reclaiming your lips once more. “Congratulations, both of you,” he smiled, clapping Dwalin on the shoulder. His eyes returned to studying the small picture. “Err, what’s the markings?”

“Twins,” Dwalin exclaimed, kissing you breathless. “We’re having twins.” Thorin sat down heavily, staring from the picture to you to the picture a few times, lost for words. “You’re going to be an Uncle to my twins!” Dwalin laughed

“I’m still hoping for girls… with Anna’s nose,” Thorin remarked faintly. You chuckled, kissing Dwalin’s nose and making it twitch – much like another protrusion currently digging into your belly, in fact.

“Nothing’s wrong with Dwalin’s nose,” you said. Thorin laughed. Digging in one of the toolboxes, he uncovered a magnet, tacking the sonogram picture to the notice board.

“It’s a fine nose… on Dwalin.” With a wink, Thorin turned back to you, kissing your forehead. “Congratulations, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Now take Dwalin away and make sure he gets some sleep tonight. He’s been a mess for weeks!” Looking up at your powerfully built husband, you knew Thorin was right; even if Dwalin’s smile was currently as powerful as the sun, he looked tired.

“I’ll take good care of him,” you promised. “He’s only got 6 more months to stockpile sleep, after all.” With a wink at Thorin, who chuckled good-naturedly, you dragged Dwalin out of the garage. He shivered lightly.

“Let me get my jacket, woman,” he grumbled, but the smile never left his face.

“Why are you half-naked?” you wondered, enjoying the view as he rooted through his locker, looking for a shirt but finding only his leather jacket.

“Engine grease on my shirt,” he said sheepishly. “I wasn’t about to hug you like that.” He gestured to your white shirt, “Though perhaps it was a waste,” he sighed. “I didn’t think about wiping off my hands,” he continued guiltily, while you stared at the large black smudges that marred your white shirt.

“I just bought this last month!” you complained, glaring at him half-heartedly.

“I’ll buy you another,” he promised, sealing it with a kiss. “Now let’s go home and I’ll try to make up for ruining your shirt.” Wrapping his arms around you, he kissed your temple. “Perhaps you should just take it off,” he suggested, fingering the top button. You felt your nipples perk up against the fabric of your bra. Smirking lasciviously, he licked his lips. You suddenly had a very good idea of what was going through his mind. “I wonder if you taste differently now,” he whispered, stealing your mouth and pressing his erection against your hip.

[gadgetsrevv]

Rebekah Vardy-Coleen Rooney Instagram feud: Why the football wives are fighting

As Britain descends into an increasingly bleak political horror show, today the country is delivering on its most famous export: Shakespearean drama. On the morning of October 9, two famous wives of major football (i.e. soccer) players were embroiled in an epic feud that just so happens to be deliciously suited to the era of Instagram Stories and private accounts. It’s the kind of splashy kerfuffle that forces people who previously had zero knowledge of or interest in a group of people or perhaps an entire sport to eschew all their responsibilities and learn everything they possibly can about it all in the span of a few hours.

This particular English Renaissance play stars two women, Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy (who goes by Becky), both wives of footballers who played for the England national team. Like many WAGs (an acronym for the wives and girlfriends of athletes), the two were friends, and Rooney had trusted Vardy enough to be included on her private Instagram account, where Rooney would post personal updates about her friends and family.

But according to an operatic tweet posted by Rooney on Wednesday morning, which is at once a brutal damnation of Vardy’s actions and a master class in scene-setting and plot building, Vardy was selling those private stories to the press. “For a few years now someone who I trusted to follow me on my personal Instagram account has been consistently informing the Sun newspaper of my private posts and stories,” it begins.

“After a long time of trying to figure out who it could be, for various reasons, I had a suspicion,” Rooney writes. Here’s where it gets good: “To try and prove this, I came up with an idea. I blocked everyone from viewing my Instagram stories except ONE account.”

Coleen Rooney in 2018.

Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

Rooney then writes that, over the last five months, she posted a series of fake pieces of information about her life to see if they ended up in the Sun. They did: On August 15, the Sun published a story about Rooney and her husband traveling to Mexico to seek controversial gender selection treatment. On September 28, the paper published a story about Rooney possibly joining the BBC reality show Strictly Come Dancing; a third piece about a supposed flood at the Rooney’s Cheshire mansion was also published by the Sun. (All these stories published in the Sun have since been taken down.)

Rooney writes that it was difficult to remain silent and refrain from commenting when the false stories spread about her but that it ultimately helped her find the culprit.

“I have saved and screenshotted all the original [Instagram] stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them,” she writes.

“It’s……. Rebekah Vardy’s account.”

By the time Americans were starting to wake up, the news had lit up British media. That’s not just because the British press is among the thirstiest in the world. It’s because the story had everything: a Notes app-esque manifesto, the genius weaponization of social media, the demonization of a woman named Becky, the exposure of shady tabloid inner workings, and yes, two very rich women fighting with each other, one of whom is widely beloved among football fans for “standing by her man” (Rooney) and one of whom is seen as a fame-hungry money-grubber (that’d be Becky). The Rooney-Vardy feud lets us all feel the kind of vindication of knowing a maybe-bad person is an actually-bad person; it allows us to share in Rooney’s catharsis as she closes her explosive note with the absolute perfect kicker. It’s ……. really great gossip.

Who are Coleen Rooney and Becky Vardy?

It has not been nearly as fun of a day for Becky Vardy, of course. Shortly after Rooney’s post was made public, she posted her own statement to Instagram denying the allegations, claiming that other people had access to her Instagram account and if only Rooney had called her when she first suspected that Vardy was leaking stories, she could have changed her passwords. “I don’t need the money, what would I gain from selling stories on you?” she wrote. “I liked you a lot Coleen & I’m so upset that you have chosen to do this, especially when I’m heavily pregnant. I’m disgusted that I even have to deny this.” Vardy has also reportedly tasked lawyers to conduct a “forensic investigation” on her Instagram account to find out who has access to it.

But for many who have followed both Vardy and Rooney for years, the two statements were vindication that their opinions about each woman were correct all along. “Becky Vardy has always been shady,” says SB Nation soccer writer Kim McCauley. “It’s very obvious she wants to take down Coleen because Coleen has always been the media’s favorite WAG, who got all the best TV spots, and Becky wants to take her place.”

Jamie and Becky Vardy in 2018.

Jan Kruger/Getty Images

“The Vardys are not nice people,” agrees Nicolle Zamora, who writes for the soccer site Unusual Efforts. She points to a series of racist statements both Becky and her husband Jamie Vardy have made in the past. Jamie has been caught on camera multiple times calling a person of Asian descent a racist slur; in 2014, Becky tweeted “Getting followed at 3am from work to your car by a weird black man has to be up there with one of the scariest moments ever!”

Becky in particular is also widely considered inappropriately fame-hungry — she was a cast member on the reality series I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and regularly appears on talk shows like Loose Women, Good Morning Britain, and This Morning. Many have long suspected her of being the writer behind the Sun’s “Secret WAG” column, which covers football gossip from an anonymous WAG, which would solidify the link between Vardy and the Sun’s coverage of Rooney.

What adds insult to injury, Zamora adds, is that the Sun has a long and bitter history with the city of Liverpool, where both Coleen and her husband Wayne Rooney were born and raised (the Rooneys now live in the US, where Wayne plays for DC United). Since 1989, the people of Liverpool have boycotted the Sun for its false reporting on the horrific Hillsborough disaster, where 96 people were killed at an FA cup football game due to overcrowding inside the stadium.

Meanwhile, Coleen Rooney has long been royalty among football WAGs, once a part of the original queen WAG Victoria Beckham’s crew in the mid-aughts and now most known for being a mother and loyal wife during her husband’s various reported infidelities. People like her because, as London-based football fan Scott Perdue tells me over DM, she has a “humble background, stuck by her man, tries to stay out of the headlines.

“Coleen Rooney has absolutely bossed Rebekah Vardy,” he adds.

Why the Coleen Rooney-Becky Vardy feud is irresistible

But there is also something more universal going on with the Rooney-Vardy feud that’s pulling in even people totally unfamiliar with British WAG culture. Humans love stories about celebrities acting as investigative reporters of their own lives, and Rooney isn’t the first person to weaponize her social media accounts: Kim Kardashian has reportedly sent her friends fake photos of her newborn children to find out who is leaking information to the press. Fans, meanwhile, have started referring to Rooney as “Wagatha Christie” in admiration.

It might also simply be more banal than that. It’s refreshing, for once, to have a clear winner and a clear loser, to be able to root for one team without feeling sorry for the other. Ironically, this is also what can be so appealing about being a sports fan.

Charlotte Wilder of Sports Illustrated draws this parallel: “I’ve always said that sports are the greatest reality show. Even on reality TV, we assume that everything’s edited or manipulated. But you can’t have spoilers for a game, and there’s something really pure about that. And when the athletes’ lives mirror that unexpectedness, it’s thrilling to me.”

Wayne, Coleen, and son Kai Rooney in 2013.

Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images

Often, when we see athletes’ or celebrities’ lives play out in the press or on social media, there’s a tendency to assume what we’re seeing is in some way fabricated. The Rooney-Vardy feud, meanwhile, feels pure in its messiness. “A lot of times these athletes are very calculated because they know people are paying attention,” Wilder says. “And when done well, it becomes a master class in public relations. With something like this, [Rooney] knows she’s bulletproof, so she can take a risk. You don’t do this unless you’re pretty sure it’s not gonna backfire.”

Ultimately, what we’re talking about is leaked personal interest stories about the lives of famous people. “It’s still fairly petty,” Wilder laughs. “It’s not that there’s some horrible crime at the center of this, so it makes it a little more harmless to enjoy something like this. If it were really ugly and messy I would feel sad, but at this point, we can enjoy it.”

All of which makes Coleen Rooney and Becky Vardy the perfect distraction from literally everything else happening in the UK right now: a feud so neat and perfect it can be tied up with a bow, a Twelfth Night-style comedy of errors that writes itself where the good guy gets all the faves and the bad guy gets canceled. If nothing else, it beats talking about Brexit.

Sign up for The Goods’ newsletter. Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.

Source link . More news

via wordpress https://ift.tt/35khvC6

[him-e]

Which are your top 5 book!Sansa moments and why?

i.

The rasping voice trailed off. He squatted silently before her, a hulking black shape shrouded in the night, hidden from her eyes. Sansa could hear his ragged breathing. She was sad for him, she realized. Somehow, the fear had gone away.The silence went on and on, so long that she began to grow afraid once more, but she was afraid for him now, not for herself. She found his massive shoulder with her hand. “He was no true knight,” she whispered to him.

Okay, this is a classic. It is early in Sansa’s journey, she still has to undergo the massive character evolution of the later books (and learn the True Face of Official Chivalry and what it will do to her), and yet she’s already moving past her initial assumptions, holding the Beast’s gaze with resolve and dignity, seeing the abused child in a man that legitimately terrifies her, acknowledging his legitimate anger, understanding that what really wounded him wasn’t his brother’s assault per se, but the fact that Gregor was never punished for it, but upgraded to “ser”. With that “he was no true knight”, Sansa defends the true ideal of knighthood against impostors, and already implicitly denounces (and challenges) the profound injustice of a society that rewards violent, cruel men and corrupts noble ideals. And, “somehow, the fear had gone away. […] she was afraid for him now, not for herself”—this eleven years old harmless little girl is suddenly no longer scared of [one of the most terrifying men in the seven kingdoms] the Hound, but worried and sad for him, and I think it’s amazing.

ii.

She threw back the shutters and shivered as gooseprickles rose along her arms. There were clouds massing in the eastern sky, pierced by shafts of sunlight. They look like two huge castles afloat in the morning sky. Sansa could see their walls of tumbled stone, their mighty keeps and barbicans. Wispy banners swirled from atop their towers and reached for the fast-fading stars. The sun was coming up behind them, and she watched them go from black to grey to a thousand shades of rose and gold and crimson. Soon the wind mushed them together, and there was only one castle where there had been two. She heard the door open as her maids brought the hot water for her bath. They were both new to her service; Tyrion said the women who’d tended to her previously had all been Cersei’s spies, just as Sansa had always suspected. “Come see,” she told them. “There’s a castle in the sky.“ 

I just love this passage; the beautiful prose and imagery, the (relevant to the bigger picture) symbolism of there was only one castle where there had been two, how it perfectly encapsulates Sansa’s imaginative, romantic nature and transformative gaze on reality. A trait that is both a hindrance and an asset, as we see in various instances.

iii.

What are you looking at?” Joffrey said. “This is what I wanted you to see, right here.”A thick stone parapet protected the outer edge of the rampart, reaching as high as Sansa’s chin, with crenellations cut into it every five feet for archers. The heads were mounted between the crenels, along the top of the wall, impaled on iron spikes so they faced out over the city. Sansa had noted them the moment she’d stepped out onto the wallwalk, but the river and the bustling streets and the setting sun were ever so much prettier. He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can’t make me see them.

Another early passage, another classic, one that was nicely adapted on the show too, but I can’t not pick it because it’s such an iconic and character-defining moment for Sansa—both a turning point in her attitude and one of her first victories against her oppressors. Sansa gives no angle here for Joffrey to play. Outwardly compliant and submissive, she however doesn’t give him the satisfaction of letting him see her suffer, as he was certainly anticipating. She chooses not to see. Again, the transformative gaze; it becomes a shield, a full coat of armor. 

But shortly after that: A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will give me your head.” And: The outer parapet came up to her chin, but along the inner edge of the walk was nothing, nothing but a long plunge to the bailey seventy or eighty feet below. All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn’t even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn’t matter at all. So. Much. Anger. SO MUCH HATRED. I love Sansa when she’s like this, and I thank GRRM for writing her in such a relatable way. She first utters something INCREDIBLY defiant, then coldly considers committing regicide then and there, not bothered at all by the likely collateral damage of her dying too, whether she goes down with Joffrey or she’s executed later. It doesn’t matter. “Those fat wormlips.” Her disgust for Joffrey knows no limits, and I love it.

iv. 

Sansa threw a plain grey cloak over her shoulders and picked up the knife she used to cut her meat. If it is some trap, better that I die than let them hurt me more, she told herself. She hid the blade under her cloak.

She’s just found ser Dontos’ message, that she doesn’t know yet is from ser Dontos. She is in turmoil the whole evening, paranoid about everything (including her bedmaid), torn between wanting to meet her mysterious ally in the godswood and suspecting this is nothing but a trap orchestrated by her own captors to test her loyalty; she goes to bed, but then some kerfuffle near the walls tells her she might take advantage of this distraction and reach the godswood unnoticed. And so she goes. She chooses to meet the author of the letter, who might as well be ser Ilyn Payne and behead her on the spot (as she indeed fears). Clever girl, she brings a knife, and will not hesitate to point it at ser Dontos when he approaches her. “If it is some trap, better that I die than let them hurt me more”. It reminds me of:

and then they say Sansa is “passive”. No. It’s that her situation only allows her a minimal wiggle room. But when she finds a loophole, she goes for it. (also, sad reminder that Sansa has been feeling lowkey suicidal since Ned’s death.)

v.

They made a tall tower together, kneeling side by side to roll it smooth, and when they’d raised it Sansa stuck her fingers through the top, grabbed a handful of snow, and flung it full in his face. Petyr yelped, as the snow slid down under his collar. “That was unchivalrously done, my lady.” “As was bringing me here, when you swore to take me home.” She wondered where this courage had come from, to speak to him so frankly. From Winterfell, she thought. I am stronger within the walls of Winterfell. 

the whole snow castle scene is beautiful and poetic and symbolic, but I’m picking this moment in particular, in which Sansa, almost intoxicated by her rekindled connection with Winterfell, finds the courage to directly question Littlefinger—Littlefinger who just decided to invade her own private moment of remembrance of her childhood, who played word games with her, who took advantage of her desperation, who lured her in this strange place with the false promise of taking her home. I don’t want to read a sexual metaphor in Sansa’s breaking the tower—rather, this is Sansa destroying something she created with Littlefinger’s (unwanted and intrusive) help, and throwing it in his face. Foreshadowing? Only a gentle and playful teasing? I don’t know, but there’s a lot of subdued anger in this gesture alone, and it’s also a moment of sharp lucidity. Shortly after this, LF forces a kiss on her and she notes how he “sounds like Marillion” (i.e. an attempted rapist). She questions the fact that she could as well be his daughter, and protests that he should be kissing Lysa, instead. 

This moment, followed by the icing on the cake of Sweetrobin’s destroying the castle and throwing a fit, is the catalyst for so many things in Sansa’s arc. It’s an eye-opener on the nature of her relationship with Petyr (it makes it clear to both Sansa herself and the reader that Petyr is sexually attracted to her, and perfectly capable of acting on it, despite Sansa’s age). It makes Sansa temporarily break the spell of the Eyrie and decide to be proactive about her situation, at any cost (I will tell my aunt that I don’t want to marry Robert. […] She wasn’t a beggar, no matter what her aunt said. She was thirteen, a woman flowered and wed, the heir to Winterfell. Sansa felt sorry for her little cousin sometimes, but she could not imagine ever wanting to be his wife. I would sooner be married to Tyrion again. If Lady Lysa knew that, surely she’d send her away… away from Robert’s pouts and shakes and runny eyes, away from Marillion’s lingering looks, away from Petyr’s kisses. I will tell her. I will!) But it also unleashes Lysa’s anger on her, which in turn leads to Lysa’s death and Sansa’s complete descent in Littlefinger’s underworld as Alayne. So, a lot of things going on here.

(Sansa has a lot of small & quiet Fave moments, so it was hard for me to just pin it down to 5. I just chose the ones I felt like discussing the most. Also, sorry for the late answer, but I needed to take a break from writing meta.)

[apparitionism]

Consummative

This is mostly just some silly dialogue—I heard a particular exchange of lines in my head and then had to motivate it somehow. The place it went is one of great cliché, but sometimes that’s the ditch you drive into... plus I’ve got this other thing I’m working on that’s way more serious, and I needed a frivolous exhale—and what better time to post a bit of frivolity than in the wake of the weekend’s kerfuffle? The fairy-tale setting of this is just so they can be princesses and not have, like, cell phones. Plus one other pointless detail that I liked and didn’t want to cut. Anyway, the thing as a whole doesn’t go anywhere, but as I’m finding myself tempted to spend real time on it that I can’t afford, here you go! Raw cookie dough!

Consummative

Once upon a fairy-tale time, two princesses from neighboring realms were sent to attend the same royal boarding school. Princess Myka and Princess Helena could not have been more different: Myka always had her nose in a book, while Helena, who found her studies insufficiently challenging, engaged in whatever foolish schemes came into her head. Yet the girls became fast friends; they enjoyed each other’s company very much indeed, when Myka raised her eyes from her books and Helena in turn took a moment to still and catch her breath.

The girls grew into women, and while their differences were still apparent, they still also became closer, with Myka generally, if at times frustratedly, tolerant of Helena’s wild streak, and Helena solicitous of Myka’s quieter nature.

One day, however, in their final year of school, Myka went to the stables, where she was to meet Helena to tutor her for their final riding practical examination—Helena rode like the wild thing she was, and while the horses were well-trained enough for her to get away with improper equitation, Myka did not want to see her fail the practicum. (She also pitied the horses, who had to do most of the work.) But in the barn, she found Helena kissing a stablehand—a strong young woman who liked to wink at princesses. She had even winked at Myka once, making her blush furiously, and now Myka was blushing furiously again, and she was also, unaccountably, angry. She ran out of the stable. Behind her, she heard “Myka, wait!” But she did not wait, because she was blushing, and she was very, very angry.

She could not parse the depth of her anger at first... but, ah, of course she was angry, for Helena had made a fool of herself, again and as usual, with her imprudent actions. That was it. What other reason could there be? And, Myka told herself, she felt so angry because this was the last straw: Helena was clearly no longer even pretending to care about their examinations. She had clearly been lying when she said she wanted Myka’s help to prepare, if all she really wanted to do was... kiss the stablehand. Well, fine, then.

So she ducked away from Helena in the hallways, avoided Helena’s gaze in the classroom, and even, once late one night, ignored Helena’s increasingly loud knocks on the door of her room, despite the accompanying, plaintive “Myka, please.” Upon hearing that “please,” Myka nearly gave in. But then she re-saw the scene in the barn... and she hardened her heart. She turned back to her book: it was a heavy philosophical tome, and she told herself that its seriousness would protect her from any likelihood that Helena could sway her with that “please,” now or ever.

She imagined telling Helena, with dismissive hauteur, “How relieved you must feel, now that you need no longer feign a sense of friendship.” This despite the fact that she knew perfectly well that their depth of feeling had not been feigned, not on either side... but perhaps it had been inevitable that two people with such divergent outlooks must part ways.

School ended. Back at home, Myka continued her pursuit of knowledge. She was also, from time to time, given news of Helena’s escapades: while her mother still ruled, Helena adventured through her realm and the realms of others, vanquishing all manner of evils... and stealing all manner of hearts. Myka did not particularly enjoy receiving word that Helena had yet again risked her life, or that she had yet again demonstrated that no one among all the kingdoms’ people could resist the dashing princess.

Helena’s youthful pursuits came to a halt, however, when Helena’s mother took ill. Helena returned home to see to her care... but her mother died. Helena thus found herself home to stay. Myka, upon hearing the terrible news, sent her a letter of earnest condolence, for Helena’s mother had been a wonderful queen and, Myka knew, an even better mother. In the letter, she also, equally earnestly, wished Helena well in assuming her throne. And as an impulsive postscript, she wrote, “I regret the loss of our close friendship. I grieve that too. I miss you.” The moment the letter left her hand, she wished she had not added that postscript, for it was so... personal. They were not schoolgirls anymore. To convey such a sentiment, she should have translated it into the language of official communication and included it in the body of the letter.

Not very many days later, Myka was distracted from her reading by a commotion outside her chambers. “Let me in, you imbeciles!” she heard a familiarly impatient voice say. “I am a queen; of course I can have an audience with the princess!” Paper rustled. “And did I not receive this letter from her?”

“You don’t look much like a queen,” one of Myka’s retainers said. “Besides, the king will have our heads if his daughter is unduly disturbed.”

“What do I care for your heads? And as for my disturbing her, that would be no innovation, so all that remains for any of us to quarrel over is whether any such disturbance would be in fact undue.”

Myka opened her door and regarded the scene: a dark-haired, dark-eyed spitfire of a woman who had shed a great deal of the girlishness Myka remembered was shaking a page of Myka’s own handwriting at two impassive men half again her size and age. Her battered leather armor and muddied cape stood incongruous against her imperious aspect.

Though Myka could barely believe that Helena had had time to receive the letter, much less to read it and then to retrace its path back across both their kingdoms, she was not made unhappy by what she saw. “It’s all right,” she said. “I think I probably am due for a disturbance of this kind.” She beckoned to Helena, whose chin lifted in triumph as she sailed past the men into Myka’s rooms

For a moment, once Myka had closed the doors behind them, they did nothing but look at each other. Then Helena glanced down at Myka’s letter, still in her hand. She folded it, with a care that surprised Myka, and slipped it under her armor. “Well. Princess,” Helena then said, and Myka curtsied. Helena might have looked a mess—Myka suspected that the horses had had, this time, to do all the work—but that had no bearing on the new but true fact that she was now a queen.

“Well,” Myka said, her body still bowed. “Queen.”

Upon hearing Helena sigh, Myka looked up. “Oh, stop,” Helena said. She twisted her mouth into a combination of scowl and self-deprecating smirk. “Even if I believed that you believe yourself inferior to me in any way, do you imagine that that is what I ever would want from you?”

“I can’t imagine what you do want from me,” Myka answered quickly. Too quickly. She said, softly, “I really am so sorry, so sad, about your mother. She was always so kind to me.”

“She loved you. She knew... well, in any case, she did love you.”

“Not even the tiniest fraction as much as she loved you, and you her. I’m so sorry. I know this must be a difficult time for you.”

“It is. Or, it has been. But I... I was so pleased to receive your letter.” Now Helena’s mouth shaped itself into a simple, warm smile.

Myka smiled in return. “I’m glad it was a comfort to you.”

“Well. A comfort, of course, but also... well, but also, you did...” Helena cleared her throat. “You did say you missed me. And so here I am.”

Because of Myka’s impetuous postscript? “It was good of you to come, but I never meant to pull you away from your obligations. Your new obligations.”

“No, you... Myka, I....” Helena took a deep breath and drew herself up, and in that moment, Myka understood that she truly had become a queen. Myka’s immediate admiration—for Helena’s bearing was dignified, stately, in astonishing fulfillment of all the potential she had shown when they were children—was coupled with a momentary sadness: We are even more different now, she thought.

Helena took another, not quite as regal, breath, and Myka saw, fleetingly, the girl she had once been, one who used bravado to cover any doubts. She said. “Myka, I have all the experience of the world I need to govern my people. I lack only two things: one of them is knowledge, of the sort that comes from books.”

“You’d have that sort of knowledge if you had not always instead been so bent on trying everything. Doing everything.” She meant her words as nothing other than gentle nostalgia.

But Helena said, “That experience is something you yourself do not have. Your own people—the people who will one day be your subjects—know it; they wonder whether so learned a ruler will understand anything of the dirt of their lives.”

That made Myka bristle. “Time will tell. What business is it of yours?”

“I want to see you succeed.”

“That’s big of you,” Myka said. An ill-tempered response, but Helena had not been particularly measured either, with her gibe about experience.

“And I want to succeed as well.”

“What is stopping you? You could read books. You could gain knowledge.”

“I could read books. But as I said, I lack two things.”

“Well, what is the other?”

“You don’t know? You haven’t even a guess?”

“A guess at what? Perhaps someone who shares your worldly experience would understand what you’re talking about; I certainly don’t.” How very Helena of her: to assume that what she was thinking made so much sense that no one could fail to see her meaning. (Yes, some part of her brain whispered back at her, how very Helena... yet also how very fine and bright, to be in her presence once again, to have occasion to think how very Helena...)

“I had hoped you would,” Helena said. She sounded... petulant? Not quite that. More... stung. Wounded. “I had hoped... when I received your letter, I hoped it had at last become clear to you. But I see that I should leave you to your books... they will make you far happier than anything else ever could.” She turned away swiftly, hair flying. She put her hand on one ornately worked door-handle and made as if to pull. Myka saw her shoulders rise, fall, settle into straightness; Myka braced herself for what now seemed an enormously painful, but also truly inevitable, leave-taking.

But then Helena turned back to Myka; they stared at each other, as they had in the first moments after Helena’s arrival. And unaccountably, Myka felt a familiar feeling rise in her, as when they were young, at school, and they would catch each other’s eyes at times they knew they should not. At times they knew they should be concentrating on matters far more important than each other’s eyes... but at those times, no matters seemed more important than each other’s eyes. Unaccountably, Myka was visited, with great force, with the alteration in breathing that would strike her at those times.

Before Myka could recover breath enough to say anything—and she never knew, looking back, what she might have been moved to say—Helena said, “I made a promise to my mother.” Then she repeated, “I could read books.”

“You made a promise to your mother that you could read books?”

“I’m being serious.” Stung again. Wounded.

Myka relented. “I know you could. And in fact, in times past, you did—although only the barest minimum to get by.”

“I was restless. I have been for some time. And besides, you—”

“Yes, all your foolhardy undertakings. Your perilous quests, your slayings of dragons, your romantic intrigues... I know all about them. You’re so foolish. You put so much at risk, and you never seem to care. Even at school, you never did seem to care what you put at risk. Including our... friendship.” Myka was aware that she herself now sounded stung. Wounded.

“You didn’t tell me that you cared so much,” said Helena. No longer stung and wounded: now hushed and gentle. “You didn’t tell me anything.”

“What good would it have done? You never listened to me.”

“I would have, if you had said anything. I mean, said anything persuasive.”

“What in the world would persuade someone as headstrong as you?”

“Nothing in the world. That is what I have found. Nothing in the world, that entire large world out there, could persuade me.”

“Then I suppose your people will have to resign themselves to the whims of a headstrong, intemperate leader.”

“Not necessarily,” Helena said. She took one step, two, three; she was now very, very close to Myka. She said, very low, “I could read books.”

Myka found her breathing extremely troubled again. “You said that before,” she pointed out. “You keep saying that.”

“That’s because you keep failing to attend to a point salient to the situation.” Her face was now inches from Myka’s; every word she said was hot against Myka’s cheekbone, her ear, her neck.

“What point...” Myka said, and Helena repeated a breathy what point against her cheekbone, “salient to...” and she felt salient to, against her ear, “the situation...” and her neck was ready to receive a warm exhalation, but instead Helena said, “I could read books... but you already have.”

“I don’t see how that’s salient.”

“How can a person so learned be also so thickheaded? That question is rhetorical, by the way, in case you were considering formulating a scholarly answer.”

Myka did not see how she could possibly have been considering formulating a scholarly answer, certainly not given Helena’s proximity, so she settled for a modified echo. “How can a person so devoted to decisive action be also so obscurely wordy? That question is not rhetorical, by the way.”

“Then I will be direct: I need you. I need you, and I believe that you need me. I believe this has long been true.” She placed her hands at Myka’s hips, and she looked with great, glowing intensity into Myka’s eyes. “Nothing in the world could persuade me of anything... only you. Only this. Refuse me if you will—if you must. But I’ve loved you so long. So long.”

“You say that convincingly. Yet I’ve heard that you romanced everyone in the world but me.” Her own accusatory tone was perhaps not entirely convincing, she realized, as she had made no attempt to escape Helena’s arms, which had now moved up Myka’s back to draw her into a true embrace.

“That is because you gave a very good impression of not wanting me,” Helena said, but she was tracing her lips up and down Myka’s neck, and Myka suspected that the heat she felt blooming in her body, in the wake of those lips, was now giving a very good impression of something else.

“Funny,” she said, even as she arched her neck for more, “you gave a very good impression of not wanting me.”

“Oh, stop. Let me kiss you. All the rest of the world I may know, but not that—and that is all I want to know.”

“That’s very elo—” But then Helena was indeed kissing her, bringing their mouths together once, twice, again, this last a deepening kiss that Myka would not, until moments ago, have said would bring her such a vibrant sense of both promise and completion.

“All I have ever wanted to know,” Helena said at last, with a gratifyingly rapturous sigh.

“Ever?”

“Well. I may have learned one or two things of interest in my travels.”

“Have you.”

“For example: are you aware that dragons generally need not be slain? A stern talking-to is all they require. I suspect you would be quite good at that.”

“You’re saying you want me to be your dragon-scolder?”

“Consider the admiration you would inspire among your people: their polyhistor of a princess, become vanquisher of lizard-beasts!”

“At not sword-, but lecture-point. Sounds less than fully heroic.”

“The task may not require a sword as such, but one does need courage. They can be quite fearsome to behold. And of course they do breathe fire.”

Myka felt it would be unseemly to reveal how elated she was to be listening to Helena say words. About dragons or anything at all... so she put on the most skeptical aspect she could muster and said, “You are seriously trying to sweep me off my feet by telling me that I will be well-served by confronting fire-breathing monsters who will yield not to a sword—which I can wield quite well, you know, or have you forgotten who bested you at school?—not to a sword, but rather to my rhetorical skills. This is your grand attempt at romance?”

“Is it working?”

“What happens if I say no?”

“Then I will return to kissing you. Like so.” And she did, with admirable enthusiasm, and with—Myka had to admit it, though her own experience was quite limited—admirable skill. Helena’s mouth was still soft and close as she said, “Do not discount this element of my quite strategic plan of enticement.”

“I... am not discounting that element.”

“So is it working?”

“What happens if I say yes?”

“Then you would make me the happiest person in all the world. And I would strive every day to make you the same.”

“I don’t think there can be two happiest people. Wouldn’t one always be happier than the other? And now that I’m considering the question, how would happiness be measured at all? Is there some objective scale, some gauge with which to assess any individual’s inches or grams or pints of happiness?” Helena kissed her again, blurring her thoughts, making her heart swell and scale up, such that she revised, “Or perhaps happiness is measured by the bushel, the mile, the long hundredweight...”

“I think you will need to make an academically thorough investigation of this matter of happiness. I think it will take many, many years—decades, even!—for you to reach any definitive conclusions.”

“I think I could not possibly undertake such study alone. I think I would need the aid of some assistant... some party equally invested in the investigation. Even unto its more academic aspects.”

“I can see that prevailing upon the dragons not to singe your eyebrows will present no difficulty at all for you. And they will adore you for the smooth ease with which you make your case.”

“What did you promise your mother?” Because Helena had been about to leave, and something had stopped her. And Myka wanted to know.

Helena’s answer was prompt and florid: “To adore you even more than the dragons will.”

“Now I’m being serious,” Myka told her.

“At heart, so am I. My promise was that if I ever had a second chance with you, I would not be too proud, too hasty, too impetuous—”

“You promised that you wouldn’t be yourself?”

Helena ignored that... mostly. She did roll her eyes, but she went on, “I promised that if I found myself lucky enough to gain a second chance with you, I would not give up until you told me to go away.”

“Now that sounds a little more like you... but I should be honest. I hadn’t realized until today, until this...”—and this time she was the one whose lips sought and found, as she leaned down, just a little, to get at Helena’s neck—“until this, I hadn’t realized that I had wanted any chance at all with you. Not this kind of chance.”

Helena exhaled an unusually high-pitched “ha!” Then she said, “Do you want one now?”

“What happens if I say no?”

“I will declare you the most impossible woman in the world.”

“And what happens if I say yes?”

“I will declare exactly the same thing, even more loudly.” She was still so very close, and she spoke of loudness—yet her voice was so contradictorily soft. “But I will stand by your side as I shout it... as long as you do not tell me to go away.”

“I suppose you may have a point in your favor.”

“A point? One sole point? A single, solitary point? A point isolated, forlorn and abandoned, with not a kindred point to alleviate its loneliness?” She clearly would have continued on, so Myka took a page from Helena’s own book and kissed her to bring her to a stop... and stop she did. She stopped, and she participated enthusiastically in the kiss, and Myka began to believe that Helena genuinely had wanted her as she herself had—and she knew now that she had—wanted Helena all along. How she could have misunderstood herself, she did not know, but with Helena in her arms, with Helena’s mouth melting against hers, she could not deny the truth. How astonishing that she now knew this truth, and that she had come to know it in such a direct, such a practical way. Such an unremittingly lovely way... only some time later did Helena say, “Well, I suppose if it is in my favor... what is this point?”

“That salient one you mentioned earlier: that you need me, and I need you. Although I suppose also that just as you could read books, I could run around the world. For the experience of it.”

“If that is your desire, I certainly could not and would not stop you... but it does seem like unnecessary duplication of work. On both our parts. Would it not be better for a heroic queen of action and an equally heroic philosopher queen to rely upon each other’s expertise? In the interest of efficiency, if nothing else.”

“What of the romantic adventures, however? Would you deprive me of those?” But Myka asked this happily, because she knew exactly how Helena would respond...

And Helena did not disappoint: “I would not deprive you of those, not in my lifetime,” she said. “But I would very much appreciate your enjoying them with me and me alone.”

They began such enjoyment that very night. And thus did they live exclusively—and efficiently—and very, very happily—ever after.

END

[ineffably-good]

The First Heist Of The Rest Of Their Lives

I wrote this story for two different people -- first it was for @tlou15, who asked for a story about Aziraphale and Crowley finding one of their skulls from a prior incarnation. And then I also worked it around to cover the heist story I promised  @lovermrjokerr for their 8k writing challenge, which I signed up to participate in two months ago! I’ m two days late posting my story for that challenge -- but I had to get through the rest of my May story prompts first! Too many irons in the fire, as they say!

Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley come across a relic of one of their former corporations in a museum, and immediately realize they have to liberate it. Hijinks ensue. 

______________________________

There were times when being an ethereal entity capable of dying and recorporating came back to bite you in the ass.

Over the years, Crowley and Aziraphale had become increasingly good at limiting their discorporations. It took a couple millennia of practice, however, to learn to recognize and avoid the obvious dangers in this new world of theirs. At first, the fatal accidents were more frequently and somewhat unexpected. A fall from a high cliff (demon), simply because neither of them knew that a fall could kill them. A rather unnecessary drowning (angel), simply because the entity in question didn’t know that failing to hold one’s breath underwater would result in death. A kick in the head from a large land ungulate (demon) with a grudge. A rather deep spear injury (angel) that could have simply been side stepped. The list went on and on.

Luckily, Above and Below were also somewhat more accommodating and liberal with the issuing of new bodies than they came to be in later years.

As time passed, they got to better at the protocols of losing a body, too. Go back to home base, fill out the paperwork (in triplicate, for hell, using a scratchy pencil whose point always broke off), be polite (in Heaven) or surly (in Hell) to the body clerk, and get a new one issued as quickly as possible. Make your way back to Earth and then go back and clean up the scene of the crime, so to speak, so you didn’t leave the remnants of an ethereally-issued skeleton around. Tidy up the memories of anyone involved in the incident, and reassume your old life if possible, or, if a funeral had already been held and too many people were involved, simply move on to a new location or assignment. It all worked out.

For the most part. 

Being, as they were, two of the more lackadaisical, non-detail oriented entities ever stationed in this sphere, though, it was natural that here and there a few of the details got missed.

Which is what led to the two of them, standing in front of an exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, filled with a deep sense of foreboding.

“Is that…” Crowley muttered.

“No, it couldn’t possibly be…” Aziraphale said under his breath.

“I’m fairly certain it is…”

“Oh, dear lord,” Aziraphale breathed. “Yes, that’s one of mine!”

In front of them, an exhibit on the Mayans did an admirable job showcasing their culture and achievements, dispelling the pervasive myths of human sacrifice, and above all showing a recreation of a temple display used to honor their dead. By punching holes in each side of a series of skulls and stringing them on a pole, like beads, to be displayed and revered.

And right smack in the center, oddly devoid of the same signs of aging and decay as the ones around it, was a brilliant white skull that bore more than a passing resemblance to the man staring at it in horror through the glass. To the human observers, it just appeared oddly pristine. But to Crowley and Aziraphale and any other ethereal entity who bothered to take a look, it was pulsing with remnants of celestial energy.

Crowley dissolved in laughter. This earned him a stern glare from the angel.

“What?” he said, snorting. “Your skull is hanging like a pendant on a stick in the Natural History Museum and I can’t laugh? How could you just leave one of your skulls laying around in – in what? Peru? Where did this come from?”

Aziraphale sniffed. “Mexico, I believe. I spent some time there, in San Lorenzo, the first Olmec capital.”

“You did?” Crowley asked. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

“We weren’t speaking at the time,” Aziraphale said. “Remember that big fight we had in Persia?”

“Oh, that…” Even after several thousand years, Crowley still managed to sound vaguely resentful. “You mean when you clocked me unconscious with your fist?”

“You hit me first!”

“Not the same, and you know it,” Crowley sulked. Being hit by a snake demon who was not bred for fighting was nothing like being punched in the jaw by the Guardian of the Eastern Gate. It was like being hit by a locomotive – although the comparison wouldn’t come to him for a few thousand years.

Aziraphale glanced over at him, taking in the sulky look on the demon’s face. “Oh, come now, my dear,” he pouted. “We’ve long sense settled that particular kerfuffle. I apologized multiple times, didn’t I?”

Crowley mouthed the word ‘kerfuffle’ to himself with a grin. “I suppose we did, yes.” He stepped over a few feet and read the long and detailed card about the skulls in front of them. “Oh angel, listen to this.”

He read from the placard:  

Called a tzompantli by the Mayans, these ritual displays were believed to be used to showcase were originally thought to be a grotesque display of slain enemies, placed to rally the Mayan’s support for their leaders and to serve as a warning sign to others to stay away from Mayan territory. Although rumors have abounded about human sacrifice in Mayan culture, recent evidence reveals that these displays may have been more funerary in usage, highlighting the revered ancestors and that many of these skulls shows signs of being dead long before the post-holes were cut in them.

“How, pray tell, did you become one of the honored dead for the Mayans?” Crowley said, grinning. “Or were you actually sacrificed at one of their temples? Drowned in a cenote?”

Aziraphale frowned. “That’s a story for another time, my dear.”

“Oh, but I haven’t even gotten to the good bit. The part where they talk about the gleaming white skull in the center and how it shows signs of having been treated with some unknown and lost technology that made it ‘impervious to decay’.” Crowley chortled.

“I really should find a way to remove it from the display,” Aziraphale fretted. “Before someone decides to take a closer look at it under one of those – scanning microscope thingies they have now and discovers it doesn’t appear to be fully human. Or before one of the archangels finds out about it…”

“Ha!” Crowley shouted. “Imagine the uproar. Evidence of ancient aliens discovered in Smithsonian Museum! The chaos around the world!”

Aziraphale turned fully towards Crowley and looked menacing in the way that only he could. “Whatever foolish idea you’re forming right now for mischief,” he said warningly, “I absolutely forbid it!”

“Aw, angel,” Crowley whined. “Come on, I never get to have any fun.”

“You can have some fun by helping me pilfer this exhibit once the museum is closed tonight,” Aziraphale said. “I do believe the security here is rather prodigious.”

“You intend to rob the museum on our vacation?” Crowley asked, astonished. “You could just… you know… miracle the skull out, replace it with a duplicate.”

Aziraphale studied the exhibit for a long slow moment, considering, then turned and settled a blinding grin on his demon spouse. “I could,” he drawled, “but where would the fun be in that?”

Crowley felt a warm rush of something run through him. Love? Joy? Slight anxiety? Who knew. All he knew was the angel was quite possibly the most perfect thing on the entire Earth. No, in the galaxy. Quite possibly the galactic cluster.

“So,” the angel continued. “Are you in or out?”

“I’m in,” Crowley managed to croak, through his haze of feelings. “I’m so in.”

Aziraphale rewarded him with a peck on the cheek, then offered his arm to the demon and shepherded him down to the café, murmuring something about having heard they had the loveliest cakes here. Time to do a little planning, and what better way then over a little dessert?

 --

They hunkered down in the museum’s café, over a gaudy orange tray that held two lovely napoleons and two cups of a rather poor excuse for tea, and started making plans.

Aziraphale surveyed the room around them. “We could just – you know, hide somewhere until everything is closed tonight. Saves breaking in.”

Crowley took a sip of his tea, made a disgusted face, and nodded neutrally. “We could, of course. That’d be the sensible thing to do.” He took a smaller sip. “Or, we could really go for it. Assemble a crack team, get some tech, do that thing with carabiners and cables.” He mimes a Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible style, arms-out float down from the ceiling and manages to convey that he would also be holding a knife in his teeth at the same time.

Aziraphale smiles, noncomittally. “Well that does sound exciting, my dear. But I can’t quite imagine that we have time to set that all up by tonight. And I do think we ought to get my skull out of there as soon as possible. It could hardly be a coincidence, don’t you think, our running into it here today?”

Crowley frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, just that we have a way of stumbling onto things at exactly the right moment,” the angel said. “Who’s to say that if we put the recovery off for a week, we wouldn’t somehow have Gabriel leading a team of school children through here tomorrow for some reason and discovering it, or some stupid Earth magician about to steal it for his own magical purposes?”

Crowley blinked at him. “You’re saying it’s fate that we came here today and that we’re not meant to leave without the skull? It’s not Armageddon, angel.”

Aziraphale took a bite of his napoleon and then delicately tapped the edges of his mouth with the napkin. “Well,” he said, leaning forward. “Doesn’t it feel a bit urgent to you? I mean, underneath it all?”

Crowley had to admit, the angel had a point.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “No tech. Can we at least synch our watches or something?”

Aziraphale stared at him flatly for a moment and then pulled out his ancient pocket watch, complete with chain. “If we must.”

Crowley grinned.

 --

It was funny, Crowley thought, that it was Aziraphale who insisted that they be appropriately attired for their heist. They’d hidden themselves away in a maintenance wing close to the Mayan exhibit, and Aziraphale had first used a miracle to suit them both up in black, skin tight cat-burglar type outfits, then another miracle to cover those up with maintenance worker uniforms and caps which made them fit right in so that no one would give them a second look.

“Stop fidgeting with your coveralls, Crowley!” the angel hissed, handing him a push broom. “You look very suspicious. Now get out there and let’s figure out where all of the cameras are.”

It was nearly closing time, and no one noticed anything awry when they wheeled their carts out into the Mayan area and began putting up bright yellow “Wet Floor” signs and started sweeping up the debris of the day. A quick, small miracle made them completely unnoticeable to the other maintenance staff – just two ordinary guys, no different than the guys they saw every day working this area, obviously well underway on their evening chores and with no need of any further supervision.

Soon enough, the building was closed and even the maintenance staff was putting away their equipment and getting ready to leave through the service entrance, leaving the building in the hands of the security staff. Crowley and Aziraphale made themselves scarce in a storage closet, until all the sounds in the building had ceased. Then they took off their coveralls and headed out to the exhibit in their dark-colored gear.

A quick miracle took care of the cameras, shifting them just slightly so that they showed everything except the skulls display. After that, they stood in front of the glass case, examining it closely.

Aziraphale rolled his shoulders. “Shall I just dissemble the case, then?” he asked quietly, reaching up to place his hands on either corner of the front panel.

“No!” Crowley all but shrieked. “Stop. Look, there’s a laser, right there.” He pointed at a small blue light that was shining on the edge of the glass door, just above the lock. “Clearly if the door is opened and the light beam gets interrupted, an alarm will go off. Don’t you watch movies, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale dropped his hands and stepped back. “Not unless you make me, no. So, what do we do about this laser?”

Crowley thought for a minute. What would James Bond do? Shoot someone and kiss a girl, probably. He failed to see how either was helpful at this point in the process. And if he was kissing anyone, it was going to be the angel, and he had that activity slated for quite a bit later in the evening. He sighed. What was the world coming to when even James Bond couldn’t provide insight?

Aziraphale looked at him, a little worried, and that spurred him into action. Crowley held out his pointer finger and concentrated until a demonic claw sprang into existence where his fingernail should be. He sharpened it, made it harder, and whittled it down to a fine, fine point.

“Stand back, angel,” he said. “If we can’t open the door without setting off the laser alarm, we’re just going to go in above that.”

And feeling just like every bad-ass heist hero he’d ever watched in a movie, he started carving a large circular hole in the glass case in front of him. This normally wouldn’t work on the specialized shatter-proof glass that the museum used, but the one thing the special chemistry of the glass wasn’t prepared to repel was demonic intention. It cut before him like butter, silently and gently, until a large, 12” circle of glass fell loose in his other hand.

Crowley turned and handed the removed glass circle to Aziraphale, who carefully put it on the floor and gave the demon a bright smile.

“Oh, that was very nice, dear,” he whispered. “Very slick.”

“Now,” Crowley said, aware he was showing off a little bit, “we just reach in there and remove your skull from the pole –”

He stuck his hand through and then froze as several things happened at once.

One, a large alarm started blaring.

Two, they both suddenly realized that the skull was affixed to the horizontal pole through both sides of the brainpan, and that they could neither straight-out remove it nor could they slide it off the pole because of the number of other skulls hanging from the same pole on either side of it.  

Three, a huge puff of some kind of gas came shooting out of the display case, hitting Crowley directly in the eyes. He dropped to the floor like a stone.

Aziraphale, having a slight second more warning than Crowley did, immediately stopped breathing, picked up his demon, and bent time and space to manifest them both back to their hotel. He put the demon down on the bed, covered him up, ensured he was breathing, and then realized he’d forgotten the skull.

“Oh FUCK,” he exclaimed, using the word for what was only the third time in his life. He snapped again, miracling himself back to the scene of the crime, and used magic to remove the central skull (and a portion of the pole with it) from the display. He had just raised a hand to disappear himself home when three security guards with guns drawn came running into the room.

“Freeze!” the shouted, their flashlight beams playing over him. “Hands up and turn around!”

Aziraphale turned slowly. “I can’t put my hands up, as you can see --” he called out in his most soothing voice, blinking through the blinding beams of light to try to see who he was dealing with, “-- because I am holding a rather priceless artifact. Please stay calm.”

He heard the safety on a gun click off and did his best to raise both hands and the pole with it over his head. The skull – his skull, disturbingly – rattled ominously as he did so. This was most offputting, he thought.

“Kneel!” the frontmost officer shouted, and Aziraphale sighed and rolled his eyes at the absurdity of all of this, but did so, carefully balancing the – his – skull overhead the whole time.

“Really, gentlemen,” he said quietly, using a tad of angelic influence. “We can talk this out. No need for those weapons.”

“You can talk it out with the police,” the front man said. “Lay down the artifact in front of you VERY SLOWLY.”

Aziraphale sighed. “I’m so sorry, but I’m rather afraid I can’t do that. You see this skull is nearly three thousand years old and if it touches the ground it might disintegrate.”

“Lay it down, NOW!” the man screamed, and Aziraphale suddenly noticed a couple of red laser sight dots playing about on his chest. This, he decided was getting much too serious.

Oh botheration. He usually left this kind of manipulation to Crowley to carry out – he was so much better at it. Nonetheless, Crowley was home and unconscious and possibly injured, and he wasn’t helping anyone by allowing himself to be shot or captured, and there was no way it was going to get back to heaven that he had been arrested – and for BURGLARY! – so with a deep, dejected sigh, he conjured up his powers and sent a wave of gentle but unavoidable exhortation and watched as all three men froze in place.

He slowly made his way to his feet, cradling the skull to his chest with one arm, and walked over to the exhibit, where he created and inserted an identical but non-ethereal copy of the skull and pole he’d removed, replaced and repaired the glass, and turned off the alarm. He checked the cameras to ensure that they were all still off. They were. And finally, he walked over to the armed men and gently touched each of them on the temple, one after the other.

“You will not remember the events of the last fifteen minutes,” he said, poking around the tiniest bit to ensure that this was true. “You will wake in a few minutes, after having a lovely dream about whatever you like best.”

And with that done, he returned to the hotel to tend to his demon.

 --

Crowley woke up a few hours later, groggy and confused. “Angel?” he shouted, leaning up to look frantically around the room. “Angel?”

“Hush, dearest, I’m here,” Aziraphale said, sitting down on the bed beside him.

“What happened?”

“Oh, well,” the angel said. “We got interrupted. You set off a second alarm when you reached into the case and were sprayed with some gas that essentially knocked you out for a few hours. I brought you home and then went back for the skull.”

Crowley moaned and flopped his head back down on the pillow. “You mean – I missed everything? You went back without me? Angel, how could you?”

“You were unconscious, my dear,” the angel said reasonably. “And it wasn’t so hard. I removed the skull, put in a duplicate, wiped the memories of the three security guards who were thinking about shooting me, and popped back home, quick as a jiffy. No harm done.”

“Three men with guns?” Crowley said, looking suddenly very alert. “You went back alone to face three Americans with guns? You know how they are, angel.”

Aziraphale tutted. “Well in my defense, there were no men with guns when I left, so they were a bit of a surprise. However, I assure you that I was never in any danger. I turned their bullets to marshmallows as soon as they entered the room.”

“Marshmallows,” said Crowley flatly. “Really?”

“What’s wrong with that?” the angel asked, a tad indignantly. “I thought it was a rather nice solution to the problem.”

“Not very criminal of you,” Crowley muttered. He looked, the angel thought, jealous and pouty.

Aziraphale smiled softly. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to finish the heist with me, my dear. It would have gone so much more smoothly if you were there.”

“’m good at heists,” Crowley mumbled.

“The very best,” Aziraphale said, wondering if he was laying it on too thick. “Definitely as good as anyone in the Bond films.”

“Only as good?” the demon said, with the hint of a smile.

“Oh, definitely better than some,” Aziraphale replied. “I’d say you’re head and shoulders above Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan.”

The demon preened a little, although he was clearly trying to hide it. “And Sean Connery?” he asked.

“Hrm,” the angel said, consideringly. “I’d say you’d give him a good run for his money.”

Crowley sat up more fully, looking much more like himself. “And let’s not even start on Daniel Craig,” he said. “Hey, do you think the hotel television has movie channels? Maybe we can find a couple Bond films to watch before we eat dinner.”

“Might be wise of us to lay low tonight,” the angel said. “After all you were injured and we did just break into the Smithsonian. Perhaps we’ll order room service instead of going out.”

“Dinner and a movie?” Crowley said.

“That sounds just lovely.”

In the corner, in a duffel bag, a blindingly white skull with two large holes in it just above the ear canal sat quietly, a piece of ancient wood tucked carefully in beneath it. They’d take it back to London, Aziraphale had decided, and find some way to dispose of it there, or simply lock it up in one of Anathema’s spell-guarded chests if they couldn’t destroy it. It could take up a new life beneath the floorboards of the bookshop, somewhere where no one could find it or use it to cause them any trouble.

They were safe as houses, Aziraphale thought, problem averted. But just in case, he carefully warded the doors and windows as soon as dinner had been delivered so that no one could enter or leave for the rest of the night.

You could never be too careful.

[jurakan]

Alright the mess that is Assassin’s Creed: Unity

@tarynsullivan asked for it so here we go.

Assassin’s Creed for those not in the know is a historical science-fiction series about the secret war between two secret societies throughout history, the Assassins and the Templars. The way these stories were originally framed was that some dude in the modern day, Desmond Miles, was reliving the memories of his ancestors through a machine called the Animus, learning Assassin skills and information about the secret history of the world all the while.

Thing is, nobody really liked Desmond. Alright actually lots of people liked him, but critics didn’t, and his segments were frequently cited as the most boring in the video games, because for the most part there isn’t much action. After all, the main draw was the historical sections, so that’s where most of the budget went. The first game has all of his segments wandering around the lab uncovering clues. The second had some fighting and parkour stuff, but only a little. The next couple didn’t have any fighting at all. So Assassin’s Creed III decided to fix this by giving him a couple of missions where he fights/assassinates, and then killed him off at the end.

Yeah, here’s the thing though--without a central protagonist, the present day storyline pushing it all kind of floundered around.

Oops.

Pushing things further was that this was a series that was constantly trying to reinvent itself, which can be a difficult when you’re releasing one game per year. Which makes sense--you have different historical periods, you have different kinds of weapons and societies and such, so how the game works has to change. And of course, this was when consoles were switching, so they’d be getting brand spanking new types of systems (the Xbox One and the Playstation 4) to play these games on, after the polarizing Assassin’s Creed III and the near-universally loved Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.

And so...Assassin’s Creed: Unity.

To be fair here this was one of the most ambitious titles in the series. It was the setting that people had been clamoring for since it was announced that the first game would get sequels: the French Revolution. It would feature the city of Paris actually to scale, rather than the scaled down versions of cities in past games. And you’d get to go in buildings, and they’d be taking a back-to-basics approach to assassinations, which means that instead of scripted events that end with killing someone, you just have a target and you can pick however you want to get to them. Movement was revamped, so climbing around was much easier (and beautiful to look at). Combat was made more difficult to put more emphasis on stealth, and now you could customize your character in a bajillion different ways, which would help you when you did co-op multiplayer, where you team up with your friends online and killed people together. You know, bonding. The idea being that your different friends focus on different skills; you’d be the stealth guy with lockpicking, he’d be the combat guy, she’d be the sniper, and so forth.

The first major issue was before release. See, at some game convention, someone asked if you could play as a female Assassin. The actual answer was no, because you’re always playing as the main character of the game, who’s a dude, and in multiplayer each of you sees yourself as that main character and your friends as other Assassins. Which is weird, but whatevs.

But somehow someone took the actual statement and twisted it to “Ubisoft official said women are too hard to animate,” which led to this whole kerfuffle of people saying they were wrong, that Ubisoft was claiming that they couldn’t have a female protagonist (even though they’d done it before, so obviously not true), and some people going so far as to say that the Assassin’s Creed series didn’t have female characters, which isn’t even close to being true. But hey, you get the Internet social justice movements rolling, there’s little that’s going to stop them.

So already a bunch of people were saying they were going to boycott this game.

The thing that most critics noticed was that there were tons of bugs. Like...a lot. Ubisoft scrambled to fix as many as they could right after release, but the damage was already made. The game had forever been branded as the one where people’s faces didn’t load, and the much-anticipated co-op multiplayer was laggy. You had to pay for certain online features to unlock everything. So people kept saying not to buy this game, because it’s broken and glitchy as fudge, which led to lower sales. Obviously longtime fans were buying, but newcomers (the market Ubisoft had been courting since killing off Desmond) stayed away because everyone was saying this game wasn’t very good. So Unity had much lower sales than expected.

Except longtime fans didn’t like this game so much either, because of the story. There pretty much wasn’t a modern day story, other than a new character popping up with no introduction saying to find this person so that we can find him before the Templars do in modern day; which at the end, turns out to be taken care of, so it didn’t go anywhere. There was an ancient artifact in the story, like in most games, but no one seems to care that it exists, or what happened to it after the historical sections of the game. So again, goes nowhere.

The historical sections were also plagued by protagonist issues. People rant about how Arno Dorian, the new Assassin, wasn’t very good and was just a copy of more popular protagonists of the past. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. He’s snarkier than them, and he’s got his own woes and troubles and is sympathetic enough. I think the problem is just that the story told isn’t his. Let me expound:

Basically, the story starts with him as a wee little lad. His father is mysteriously killed, so he’s adopted by the De La Serre family, a wealthy aristocratic family who has a daughter (Elise) about his own age. They grow up together, they fall in love, but then Elise’s dad/Arno’s guardian is murdered and Arno is framed for it. Arno’s locked up in the Bastile (in the segment shown in Conan’s playthrough) where he meets a friend of his father, who trains him to be an Assassin. They escape on Bastile Day, he becomes an Assassin....BUT OHES NOES, it turns out that the de La Serres were actually a Templar family, and Elise’s dad’s murder was a coup within the Templar Order itself. So Elise is on a rampage of revenge, and Arno wants to help her, but he’s more there for her and she doesn’t care about personal safety and also other Assassins think working with a Templar is stupid and--

Look if this sounds really complicated, it is, even by AC standards. But my point is this: the story doesn’t center around Arno. It centers around Elise. It’s her revenge plot. It’s her father who was killed. Yeah Arno’s dad was also murdered, but he doesn’t seem overly concerned with that and it never comes up again. By all rights the story is about Elise, but we’re not playing as her. So while Arno isn’t a bad character, the fact is that it isn’t his story, so he isn’t allowed to shine his best.

Compounding on all of this is that the French Revolution is mostly a backdrop. Past games used a lot of historical events and tied them into the plot. Ezio’s dad, for instance, was killed because he knew about the Pazzi Conspiracy before it happened. Connor goes and kills the Templar Pitcairn at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Edward goes and helps get Blackbeard medicines from Charleston when he blockaded the city. And so forth. History was stretched to fit the plot sometimes, but it was still there.

Not so for the French Revolution. Yeah, he breaks out from the Bastile on Bastile Day, but other than that? Nothing. Napoleon pops up in a few scenes but doesn’t do much. The King is executed in one cutscene, but it’s not actually related to anything anyone’s doing. And Robespierre’s fall is in the game but it’s not until towards the end. So it’s mostly a way to have a certain aesthetic without actually having history in the story.

Furthermore, the history is...off. And often biased. The past games weren’t as perfect as some fans like to think. Painting the Borgias as obvious incestuous supervillains, for one. Charles Lee being racist against Native Americans and a complete dickwad, despite actually being married to a Native American in real life, something the game doesn’t bring up. But Unity paints Revolutionaries as just being violent extremists to make a moral against extremism. Myths like Louis’s execution being decided by one vote are repeated. The lack of money and food was just because the Templars did it, rather than mentioning that France was in debt because of all the wars it had waged. Robespierre is a Templar despite in real life being paranoid about secret societies and conspiracies. Charlotte Corday, one of the most famous assassins in history, isn’t part of the Brotherhood but just an angry woman who murdered Marat (who isn’t alive in the game at all). Actually most real life revolutionaries have either reduced roles or just aren’t in it--Danton only shows up in co-op missions as ‘the Hero of the Revolution and the friend that Robespierre betrayed!’ Champollion as an adult is in a side mission, despite him having been about three years old at the time.

People had often criticized how the games had you change history, but this one was criticized for almost ignoring it. The Assasssins are all about doing stuff for the little guy, but stay almost entirely out of this event. At least one article said ignoring the Revolution was like setting a story in NYC in 2001 and not talking about the 9/11 attacks.

Past games also tried to get accents right? The first one had Altair with an American accent sure, but other characters spoke with Arabic or French or German accents, and Altair’s was fixed in later games. The Renaissance games had voice coaches teach the actors to speak with Italian accents. Connor and his people actually speak Mohawk in their scenes. Unity... skipped this step, and went with British accents despite them not being English. This is pretty common in fiction, but it was jarring in a series that usually did better. And it didn’t work with a character like Napoleon Bonaparte speaking perfectly good upper-class English when in real life he was mocked for speaking French with an Italian accent, being from Corsica.

The TV Tropes pages have more comprehensive stuff if you’re curious.

All of this put together this made the game something of an embarrassment for the people at Ubisoft. They straight-up apologized for it in public, and its low sales led to the series going on break for 2016 (if we don’t count the movie). Syndicate, the game that immediately followed in 2015, was widely considered to be a sort of apology--not a brilliant game, but a step in the right direction. To this day though, Arno’s often left out of official materials and the events of the Revolution aren’t mentioned most of the time.

Aaaaand yeah. That pretty much sums it up as best I can.

[rogue-one-drinks-coffee]

Get to Know Me

I was tagged by @rlc19 (Thank you Buddy!)

Warning: This is very long. Enjoy or scroll past at your leisure

1) What images do you have set for your desktop/cell phone wallpapers?

My laptop has the TARDIS in space and my phone has a quote for my lock screen “Always be yourself unless you can be Felicity Smoak then always be Felicity Smoak”, and my home screen is Stephen Amell shirtless because why not?

2) Have you ever had a crush on a teacher? 

Yes.

3) What was your last text message? 

“Thank you” with a bunch of emojis

4) What do you see yourself doing in 10 year

I’m an English major that doesn’t want to teach so probably nothing fun

5) If you could be anywhere else right now, where would you be? 

Home with Buddy

6) What was your coolest Halloween costume?

I’m pretty generic when it comes to costumes but when I was little I was Aurora and I was really excited because she was extremely rare then.

7) What was your favorite 90′s show?

It’s a tie between Friends and Buffy?

8) Who was your last kiss?

Never been kissed (and no I’ve never seen that movie)

9) Have you ever been stood up?

No, but to be fair I don’t date. If I did I’m guessing probably all the time.

10) Favorite ice cream flavor?

Depends on my mood, but coffee or chocolate.

11) Have you been to Las Vegas?

Lots of times but interestingly enough not since I turn 21

12) Your favorite pair of shoes?

My black slip on Vans

13) Honestly, have you ever cheated on your significant other?

Never had anyone to cheat on

14) What is your favorite fruit?

Apples (red not green)

15) Have you talked to anyone on tumblr that you could see yourself dating/having sex with? If possible?

No

16) Are you into hookups? Short or long term relationships?

Hell if I know. I have issues.

17) Do you smoke? If so, what?

Nope

18) What do you do to get over your anger?

Talk/write it out to myself. My journal is not a happy place.

19) Do you believe in God? 

As a physical being no.

20) Does the person you’re in love with know it?

I’m not in love with anyone so there’s nothing to know

21) Favorite position?

Curled up with coffee and a good book.

22) What’s your horoscope sign?

Pisces

23) Your fears?

Failing and hurting the people I love.

24) How many pets do you have? What kind?

A cat and a dog

25) What never fails to turn you on?

Middle-aged actors

26) Your idea of a perfect first date?

Talking

27) What is something most people don’t know about you?

I actually do warm up the longer you know me.

28) What makes you feel the happiest?

Spending the night alone.

29) What store do you shop at most often?

Target

30) How do you feel about oral? Giving and/or receiving?

I’m a virgin so I have no idea

31) Do you believe in karma?

Mostly

32) Are you single?

So single. So so single.

33) Do you think flowers or candy are a better way to apologize?

I think you should buy something specific to the person you’re apologizing to. For me that’s books.

34) Are you a good swimmer?

Decent.

35) Coffee or tea?

I like both. Dark roast for coffee and green tea for tea

36) Online shopping or shopping in person?

Depends. Since moving to a city I shop online a lot. Outside is too people-y.

37) Would you rather be older or younger than your current age?

Younger as long as I can retain my current knowledge otherwise…I guess still younger. Give myself another shot to not suck.

38) Cats or Dogs?

I have both and I love both.

39) Are you a competitive person? Depends but not usually

40) Do you believe in aliens?

Yes.

41) Do you like dancing?

With and/or around others? No. Alone? Yes.

42) What kind of music do you listen to?

I listen to basically everything. I’ve been into soundtracks lately (Thank you Hamilton) Yay Hamlet!

43) What is your favorite cartoon character?

Elsa from Frozen

44) Where are you from?

Arizona, but I was born in California. I don’t remember that though.

45) Eat at home or eat out?

Home. I can’t eat when there’s too many people around me.

46) How much more social are you when you’re drunk?

A little. I don’t morph into a socialite or anything but it dampens my anxiety to the point I don’t feel the need to die.

47) What was the last thing you bought for yourself?

I’m a student without a job.

48) Why do you think your followers follow you?

Who knows. I’m a horrible human.

49) How many hours do you sleep at night?

As much as possible. It’s death, without the commitment.

50) What worries you most about the future?

Everything. Literally everything.

51) If you had a friend that spoke to you the same way you speak to yourself, how long would you be friends?

I don’t know. I am a doormat so it’s possible I’d be friends with them until they got bored and found a new punching bag.

52) Are you happy with yourself?

No, not in the least.

53) What do you wish you didn’t know?

I could stand to forget some family stories I’ve heard over the years.

54) What big lesson could people learn from your life?

Be honest. Avoiding things doesn’t make them go away. It makes you forget and then you’re lost in the dark abyss unaware of how you got there or how to get out.

55) If you could live in any home on a television series, what would it be?

Does the Bunker from Supernatural count? What’s not to love about a Bunker with a library? You’d have to wheel my corpse out on a stretcher to get me to leave that place.

56) What’s your favorite website?

Tie between Tumblr and YouTube

57) What’s the habit you’re proudest of breaking?

I’m pretty much a walking collection of habits that need to be broken.

58) What was your most recent trip of more than 50 miles?

I’m pretty sure it was in October when I went to Palm Springs.

59) What’s the best bargain you’ve ever found at a garage sale or thrift store?

I don’t know.

60) What do you order when you eat Chinese food?

An appetizer assortment mostly. I love eggrolls and rangoons.

61) If you had to be named after one of the 50 states, which would it be?

Virginia.  

62) If you had to teach a subject to a class, what would it be?

My authority over subjects is limited so…something fiction/fandom related.

63) Favorite kind of chips?

Banana chips.

64) Favorite kind of sandwich?

Turkey with Brie and spicy mustard.

65) Which do you use more often, the dictionary or the thesaurus?

Thesaurus.

66) Have you ever been stung by a bee?

Proud to say, no I have not. I live in fear though so *knocks on wood*

67) What’s your favorite form of exercise?

Used to be weightlifting but my anxiety and my bank account don’t allow that anymore so I’m sad about it.

68) Are you afraid of heights?

Theoretically yes. I have dreams all the time about being afraid of heights and when I think about it I’m afraid but if I go stand on something tall I’m fine.

69) What’s the most memorable class you’ve ever taken?

British Lit.

70) What’s your favorite breakfast?

Tropical smoothie.

71) Do you like guacamole?

YES.

72) Have you ever been in a physical fight?

No.

73) What/who are you thinking about right now?

Buddy because he said he’s been in a physical fight and I did not know that so now I am retroactively worrying.

74) Do you like cuddling?

No. Don’t touch me.

75) Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?

Yes. All the yes. All the things. Just—so many.

76) Have you ever experienced one of your biggest fears?

No, but I face it every semester when I sure I’m going to fail.

77) Favorite city you’ve been to?

Not a fan of cities in general. I didn’t hate Munich or Seattle though.

78) Would you break the law to save a family member?

Yes.

79) Talk about an embarrassing moment?

My whole life is an embarrassing moment.

80) Are there any causes you strongly believe in?

I believe people need to rationally and intelligently be able to speak to one another in order to find common ground and make the world a better place but considering the news I don’t think that’s ever going to happen so my belief does nothing I’m afraid.

81) What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?

I can’t think of anything. I have a high pain tolerance and have never broken anything.

82) Favorite day of the week?

The day I don’t have to go anywhere. This semester happens to be Friday.

83) Do you consider yourself sexually open minded?

Yes.

84) How do you feel about porn?

Indifferent. Don’t care to watch it, don’t care that others do.

85) Which living celebrity would you like to know?

I don’t know. I feel like that’s not a fair question because for me to know them they’d have to know me and that’s kinda mean.

86) Who was your hottest ex?

I don’t have any ex’s to consider hot. I’m generally an ignored human.

87) Do you want/have kids?

No. The world is a shitty place why would I do that to an innocent?

88) Has anyone ever told you that they wanted to marry you?

Haha no.

89) Do you get easily distracted?

Yeah kinda

90) Ass or titties?

Ass.

91) What is your favorite word?

Kerfuffle. <-- yes. Thank you Buddy

92) How do you feel about tattoos?

I like them. I have one.

93) Do you have any pets?

Yes.

94) How tall are you?

5′3”

95) How old are you?

22

96) 3 physical features you get complimented on a lot?

My eyes. That’s it.

97) Is there anything you’re really passionate about? Fiction

98) Do you have trust issues?

Yes.

99) Do you believe in love at first sight?

Not even a little.

100) What are some words that you live by? Why?

I don’t know if they’re specific words, but I just try to remember to look inward and not outward because if you’re looking for something, chances are you’re not going to get it from someone else. You have to be ok with you before you can add other people to the mix. For better or worse, at the end of the day you’re all you have.

Alright, that was fun. I’m tagging anyone who sees this and wants to. It’s really fun I highly recommend it. I was quite upset and this made me feel way better :)

[bates--boy]

“No, you have to twist it-- you have to twist it sideways!”

The voices carried through the stairwell before Peter and Timo even turned the corner. There were many guesses as to what was causing the hoopla, and the sight they came upon when they ascended the stairs to Peter’s level confirmed at least two that he could see so far.

“No, your left-- left! What the hell does left mean to you, Magnus?”

It was a rare phenomenon to hear Berwald raise his voice, and why wouldn’t he? The couch was wrenched tight in the doorway; he and Magnus were both red-faced and sweating, even in the cool, airy space and their jackets slung on the railings; the younger two who elected to stay here and continue helping, Emil and Viktor, sat on the boxes they carried up the stairs and pressed their phones to their noses, looking like they were two seconds away from turning on their Teenage Angst and start a whinging marathon. Even the pets were getting restless, with Jack pawing at his carrier’s mesh door and Neptune squawking at Y-Front from across the stair landing (but not his sweet Raspixx, the little darling who’s practicing the most patience of them all and chilling in her polyglass case like the good girl she was).

“Left would make it more stuck, you asshole!” Magnus huffed as he wiggled the couch and tried to shove it in more. 

“As opposed to now?” Berwald jerked the piece of furniture to attempt to get it into another angle. It did not budge, and Berwald rested his head on the armrest and groaned. 

Timo and Peter squeezed themselves into the only empty patch available and sat the bags of various takeouts on the floor, in a far corner out of the way from the mishap. 

“...So, what’s all this?” Peter asked, rubbing his hands together and looking towards Emil. 

“They got the couch stuck in the door--”

Berwald’s head shot up from the armrest. “Magnus got the couch stuck!”

“Uh huh. Anyways, it’s been like this since a few minutes after you guys left, we can’t get anything else in because of it, and now it’s about to be a third world war in here.” 

“Why didn’t you guys bring in more boxes before trying to shove in the couch?” Timo asked.

Erland shrugged. “Uncle Magnus was on some nonsense about doing the harder stuff first so they wouldn’t get too tired like carrying all the boxes would make them. He insisted on it, so…” his nose twitched. “What did you guys get? I’m starving.”

“Some pizza, some Asian stuff, some pastries.” Timo shrugged. “You know, pig-out stuff.”

Behind Berwald, Lukas floated into view, nothing but his eyes upward visible; it was likely he had to stand on his toes to achieve just that. He tilted his head to peer through the small open space above the couch. “Okay, fixed that light in the-- Still at it, hm?”

“It’s really wedged in there tight!” Magnus grunted while putting his weight into the couch. “Oh! Hey, don’t you have some spell or--”

“No.”

Magnus, too, pressed his face into the plush cushioning of the couch. He let out a muffled whine and lifted his head. “Whyyy?”

“Besides either ruining the integrity of this house and putting our nephew, and a lot of families living here, in danger, or ruining a good couch based on how the beings blessing me with the power feel? Uhm… so you’d learn your lesson, I supposed.”

Magnus planted his face back into the armrest, slumping and groaning into the fabric. Peter rolled his eyes and grinned, coming up next to Magnus and putting his hands on the couch to find some purchase.

“Alright, then, let’s just get this thing out of the way before the food gets too cold. Uncle Lukas, you help Papa in there. Daddy and I will help Uncle Magnus. Emil and Erland, you two press the stuffing in as we go.”

--

Of course, “easier said than done” applied here. Too many times, the group almost erupted into screaming matches for the proper way to shove the couch inside, and they had to stop too many times when they heard the threshold creak or when either of the teens had their fingers trapped. 

But difficult doesn't mean impossible! Eventually, they did get the couch in, dumped face down into a plush, cushion-less tent to the side so there’d be enough room for everyone to sprawl out on the floor and relax their sore muscles and nerves. Lukas busied himself with administering cold spells to teens’ aforementioned injured hands, wizardry that he allowed himself to partake in. Peter, himself, still darted in and out of the apartment, carrying in the pets who were getting fussy in their holdings.

“Peter,” Tino huffed, “The next time you move, please find a place with a bigger doorway.”

“Or get a smaller sofa.” Erland flexed his fingers through the ice rings formed around the joints. 

“Mn, noted.” With the animals inside, Peter paused to redo his ponytail and gaze around the room. “So, who’s ready to eat?”

They all mustered enough energy to raise their hands. Peter chuckled as he, with the help of Lukas, carried the food inside. They urged the rest to clear some space for the banquet, and made a professional-looking spread on what Peter was sure was a previously-cleaned floor (he had to take the realtor’s word for it). Wielding paper plates and plastic forks, the group attacked the food, to the dismay of the yowling cat and squawking gull who had to take in whiffs of the food but not tastes. The high sodium and bursting flavors renewed the life behind everyone’s eyes. The room filled with overlapping conversation, though not one of them thought to ask for a food item to be passed around instead of leaning over everything and everyone to get to it. Magnus discovered an efficient mode of eating, consisting of dumping a forkful of lo mein into a large slice of pizza, rolling that slice, and eating it like a wrap. Not everyone was wholly disgusted.

With no trace of the takeout left, the men and teens settled in, rubbing their bloated bellies, holding in belches, or groaning as the sodium and grease settled heavily in their stomachs. The cat was still mewling in the background, so Peter forced himself to his feet to release Jack from the cage. The chubby creature ambled over to the empty cartons, sniffing and licking at the carnage. 

Timo watched the cute little dickens, then gazed around the cluttered living room. “I have to say, Peter, I really love this new place of yours, already!”

“Yeah, it’s about damn time you moved out of that dump,” Magnus chuckled. He sensed the glare from Lukas and coughed. “Oh, come on, like it wasn’t true…! Sorry.”

From where he lay sprawled on the floor and staring up at the ceiling, Emil asked, “How did you even afford this place, anyway?” He turned to Berwald. “Being a secretary in a city hall doesn’t pay that much in Sweden, does it?”

“Peter isn’t a secretary, anymore,” Timo chimed in. He raised a brow at his son. “What is it you do again? I know part of it is animal care, but aren’t you dancing, too?”

Peter sighed while retaking his spot on the floor, the food in his stomach jostling too much, and nodded. “I’ve been performing in the aquarium. Choreography and whatnot with th whales and dolphins. I even moved up to aerial silks and hoops!”

Emil lifted his head from the floor. “Aerial silks?”

“Yeah, it’s this sort of acrobatic dance where you… You know what?” He pulled his phone out and did a quick YouTube search. “It’s better if I show you.”

He turned the screen into the circle, playing when the rest had scooted closer.

The video was from the Karlstad Animal Conservatory channel. The video was of the performers. It was their latest one, and on the screen stood Peter, glittering in his red and gold swim leotard, waving to the cheering crowd. Dolphins leaping out of the water, circling the silks hanging in the center. Peter and his fellow swimmers dive into the pool and begin their choreography, a fiery, lively number that had Peter swinging and diving, swinging and diving.

“Oh, I love this!” Timo clapped when the video ended. “I swear, the next time I’m here, I will come to one of your shows!”

Berwald had his own phone out, opening the browser. “Where do you get tickets?”

Peter waved the question away. “Naaah, family of workers get in free. Just show up, ask for me, and I’ll let you in. Although, you will need to sign up for the aquarium performance newsletter to get show dates.”

“Geez, Peter, is there ever a time you don’t sound like a salesperson?” Erland scoffed. 

Timo glared at him. “Erland, don’t be rude! Be happy for your brother!”

Erland shrugged. “I’m just saying: give it a rest sometimes.”

“Or, you can get on my level, upgrade that pile of sticks of yours.”

“Don’t you two start!” Timo pointed at them both, Erland fuming to the point of a cherry-red face, Peter smirking and raising a challenging eyebrow. “We’re too tired and too full for this.”

“Hmph, fine.” Erland threw up his hands and lied back down. “Whatever.”

Magnus, ignoring the kerfuffle, had Peter’s phone in his hand, scrolling through the videos on the conservatory’s channel, picking one to play. “Wow, I can’t believe it. My nephew the, what was it? Aerial silks! My boy’s an aerial silks dancer. You really are a circus act, ain’t ya?”

“Shut up.” But Peter was grinning, something in his chest glowing with pride at the awe on Magnus’s face as he watched one of the performances, Lukas even leaning in to watch from Magnus’s shoulder. 

“So, what now, Peter?” Berwald asked. “What’s your next big move?”

Peter sighed, looking around his new place, absentmindedly scratching the head of Jack who took refuge on his lap. He bobbed his shoulders. “A lot.”