#got like another day of queued stuff i think

[leoxxii]

u know what maybe ill dissappear for a bit. just for a bit <3 for funsies <3

[fluentmoviequoter]

Merry and Bright

Day 9 of 12 Days of Ficmas

Pairing: Tim Bradford x fem!reader (The Rookie)

Summary: You invite Tim over on Christmas Eve, but he says he's working. A Christmas miracle occurs and Tim knocks on your door, presents in tow.

Word Count: 1.4k+ words

Warnings: so much fluff. How the Grinch Stole Christmas references. Tim is probably OOC. I made up some stuff about Tim and his sister.

A/N: I haven't written for Tim Bradford yet, so please feel free to leave feedback and let me know what you think! I'd like to keep writing for him and try to capture his amazing character better so please feel free to send requests if you have any!

Masterlist Directory | Request Info (& full fandom list)

Since you inserted yourself into Tim’s life, barging your way in with a basket of goodies after moving in next door, he has quickly become one of your best friends. If he’s undeniably handsome and one of the most caring men you’ve ever met despite his grumpy exterior, so what? You asked yourself that the first time you invited him over for dinner, but now it’s a weekly occurrence, and it is your week to cook.

Your favorite one-pan dish is in the oven, and the game is queued on your television, but all that’s missing is Tim Bradford. As you decorated for Christmas this year, you thought about him and how his sister isn’t coming to LA for the holidays, leaving him alone. You’ve since decided to do something about that.

“Anyone home?” Tim asks as he opens your door. “Because I know I’ve told you more times than I can count to lock your door.”

You look around the corner and smile at him as you argue, “My neighbor’s a cop, it’ll be fine.”

“Sergeant, not a cop.”

“My apologies, Sergeant Bradford.”

He smiles at you, less rare than it used to be, but a moment you take the time to appreciate, never knowing when he will grace you with another one.

“So, I know your sister isn’t visiting,” you begin, “and I was wondering if you’d be interested in spending Christmas here?”

Tim glances at your Christmas tree before answering. “I would love to, and I can’t thank you enough for thinking of me and offering, but I’m working Christmas Eve.”

“Okay,” you say, nodding as you smile. “I just wanted to extend the invitation.”

You turn around to remove dinner from the oven, and Tim places a hand on your arm, stopping you.

“Thank you,” he repeats quietly and bordering on reverent. “I really appreciate it.”

“Of course. You’re always welcome here.”

“I’m sorry. I would come if I could.”

“Tim, it’s fine. I’ll just have to give you your giant stack of gifts later,” you tease.

Tim nods, removing his hand from your arm and watching you turn away, his heart trying to decide whether it wants to shrink or grow.

✯✯✯✯✯

“Bradford, are you good?” Wade asks as he leaves the station.

“Fantastic,” he mumbles. Wade looks at him, unconvinced, and he sighs before saying, “I just wish I could be somewhere else. I’m glad I could help out the officers with families, with kids, and give them the night off, but…”

“You’re regretting it?” Wade finishes.

“Not exactly.”

“Well, if you want to come over when you get off, we’ll leave the lights on,” Wade offers.

“Thanks,” Tim says. He doesn’t add: I’ve got somewhere else I’d rather be.

Someone walks up behind Tim and places a Santa hat on his head.

“Cheer up, Grinchy,” Angela calls, walking out of the station. “Merry Christmas, Tim!”

“Yeah,” Tim says, more to himself than her.

“Dude, we need to find you a K9 named Max, finish off the Grinch look,” Aaron teases, sitting next to Tim as his shift begins. He’s working tonight for the same reason Tim is: to let the officers with families spend Christmas with their loved ones.

“Oh, should we get him a little heart pin, too, and try to make it grow?” Nolan chimes in.

“Sorry, Bradford, but you’re just so… Grinchy,” Aaron says.

Tim laughs, shaking his head as the Santa hat shifts with his movement. Nolan and Aaron look at each other in horror and amusement at the fact that Tim Bradford, who is wearing a Santa hat, just laughed. Tim, however, is only thinking of you and how you’d absolutely agree with them. Although, if you were here, or if he was with you, he wouldn’t be quite so Grinchy.

“Merry Christmas, LAPD!” Officer Jan announces, entering the station in a full Santa costume. “I have come to relieve one lucky soul of Christmas Eve duty.”

“Bradford!” Aaron and Nolan yell. “He has somewhere to be.”

“How do you-?” Tim asks.

“It’s all over your face,” Aaron says as Nolan answers, “Go get her… whoever she is.”

Tim looks at Jan, who nods encouragingly. Tim jumps to his feet and runs to his locker. He’s heading home for Christmas, but he has one stop. As he changes before climbing in his truck, he makes a mental list of everything he needs. Merry Christmas to all, Tim thinks.

✯✯✯✯✯

You smile at the ending of the Christmas movie on your television, your thoughts drifting to Tim as you wonder what it would be like to have him here. As you try to focus on the movie again, someone knocks on your door.

When you open it, you don’t expect to see Tim in a Santa hat and holding several gift bags. Your eyes widen, and your smile returns as you let him in, closing the door behind him. He opens his mouth to say something, but you wrap your arms around his shoulders and hug him tightly before he gets the chance. His arms wrap around you, loosely at first, before tightening when a Christmas song begins playing through your speakers as the credits roll. 

“I brought gifts,” he says against your shoulder.

“You didn’t have to. I just wanted to see you,” you reply.

He squeezes you once more, and you slowly step back, pulling out of the hug and looking up into Tim’s eyes.

“You brought hot chocolate?” you ask, stealing a peek into one of the bags.

“It’s Christmas,” he answers, as if it’s obvious.

“Didn’t take you for the sentimental type.”

“I’m not always.”

You smile and gesture for him to follow you, leading him into the kitchen and pulling two Christmas-themed mugs from your cupboard.

“Thank you for coming,” you tell him.

“Thanks for inviting me.”

✯✯✯✯✯

After making the hot chocolate, you return to the couch and turn on A Charlie Brown Christmas as you resist leaning into Tim’s side.

“This is one of my favorites,” he says quietly, “my sister and I watched it every time it was on cable growing up.”

“It’s a classic,” you agree.

“We would watch it, drink hot cocoa or cider, whatever was in the kitchen, and exchange one gift on Christmas Eve,” Tim adds.

“Do you want to open a gift?” you ask, facing him. “There’s only a few hours until Christmas anyway.”

Tim thinks for a moment and then smiles at you. “Just one.”

You stand, retrieving a small box from under the tree while he pulls a gift from one of the bags. When you sit back down, you sit a little closer than before. He opens his present first, smiling and leaning in to hug you as he thanks you. When you open yours, you see a gift you’ve wanted for years but no one ever remembered. You start to thank him, but something happens along the way, and instead, your lips land on his. His hand raises to your arm as he reciprocates, but you realise your mistake (was it really a mistake? you ask yourself) and pull back.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

His hand slides up your arm to rest at the back of your neck. You see a new smile as he pulls you back in. Pressing your hand against his chest, you stop yourself.

“Are you sure?” you whisper.

“Have you ever seen me so merry and bright?” he asks, his smile the widest you’ve ever seen.

You pick up the pompom at the end of his Santa hat and chuckle. “You are pretty cuddly,” you reply, noticing his other arm has wrapped around your waist. 

He rolls his eyes, still smiling as he kisses you again. You shift backward, your hand landing on the remote and resuming the movie. Tim laughs as he pulls back, pulling you against him.

“How’d you get off work?” you ask.

“Jan came in and offered to cover for one of us, and I was volunteered because I was being too ‘Grinchy.’”

You gasp in faux surprise. “Tim Bradford? You? Grinchy? I can’t imagine it.”

He smiles, and you lean in to kiss him again, your new favorite pastime.

“Thank you for coming. This is the best Christmas ever,” you say against his lips.

“Until next year?” Tim asks.

“What happens next year?”

“We’ll see.”

“And for now we’re merry and bright?” you respond.

“The merriest and the brightest,” Tim jokes, pulling you against his side as Charlie Brown appears on screen.

Merry and Bright, indeed.

[selfcestmovies]

New recruits at Avengers Compound don't get much face-time with the higher-ranking heroes. As much as you might have loved to get to know the gamed Natasha Romanoff face to face, she was far too busy for the green members of the squad.

Still, you'd hope for any chance at a meeting. You'd ogle at the Black Widow from afar. She was so intense. And hot.

Your first meeting was fully unexpected. Each new hero had a specialized training regiment run out of the Compound's newly refurbished Simulation Rooms — capable of recreating fully life-like and battle-ready simulations. When you arrived for your first session, it was none other than Agent Romanoff herself who handled your onboarding.

"Have you used the Sim before?" What followed was 30 minutes of jargon, but you followed most of it — Stark had cooked up a state-of-the-art holographic simulator to help Avengers of all levels practice combat without the need for a corporeal opponent. Natasha joked that it was in order to prevent her from kicking the ass of any new recruits. She had programmed your regiment herself. "You're to report here at 0900 each morning for an hour of combat. I'll be monitoring your progress and adapting the program daily. Follow?"

You nodded, trying to keep your cool. "When do I start?"

Natasha had already turned to walk away from the Sim entryway. "Now – your first training is already queued up."

You gulped and entered the large, blue simulation room. There was no opponent in sight, until slowly the walls around you began to flash with lights and whir with energy. Then you saw her.

"Glad you're here. Let's start." It was Natasha, through and through.

"Didn't," you stammered. "Didn't you just leave?"

The Nat just laughed and began stretching. "That was the real Nat. I'm just a simulation, although I — I mean, the real Natasha — programmed me herself, so I share her — or my — physical and mental map." She rolled her eyes. "We're the same, basically, except I'm not the real Nat. You got it?"

You nodded.

"Then let's begin."

The coming months, day by day, you'd report for brutally intense hours of training with the "Natasha" simulation. She showed you various moves, grapples, holds and parries before forcing you to try them at full-speed with hardly any preparation. For a simulation, she sure packed a wallop.

Did you entirely hate it? Not in the least. You had been crushing on the redhead since you were in high-school and first saw the Avengers on TV. While you'd never have the chance to get an hour of private time with the real Nat, getting this up-close-and-personal with her exact double wasn't too bad of a consolation prize. At one point she pinned you to the mat with her thighs. It was fucking wild.

"Good work," she huffed when the hour was up.

It was weird to see a simulation out of breath and sweaty. "You act so real," you noted.

Nat laughed. "Guess so. See you back here tomorrow." And with a flash of blue light, she vanished, and the front door to the Sim slid open.

What you never expected was how comfortable you started to become around the Nat simulation, or more surprising, how relaxed and fun she began to act around you. If you didn't know any better, you'd think the Sim was flirting with you. After another month, you built up the courage to wink at her once she pinned you to the mat. Another month later, you made your interests vocal. "Good workout, hot stuff."

Your heart was in your throat. The simulation didn't seem to mind at all, and if you didn't know any better, it seemed like she had reciprocated the interest.

The first time you kissed her, she kissed you back.

The next day your training session was cancelled, and a few hours later, the real Natasha was knocking on your dormitory door. "I've been keeping up with your progress," she started. Your panic was fully visible. "And it's looking good. My Sim seems to think you're ready to up your regiment. Does that sound good to you?"

You nodded, speechless. By the next morning, training was back on your calendar.

"I'm glad you're back," the Sim strutted towards you once you entered her domain. "I made a new proposal for your training."

"Oh?" You were curious.

"If you're interested in learning seduction, it was easy enough for you to simply put in a request. But we're going to need some assistance."

The Sim Room buzzed with blue particulates as the hologram shifted shape. You watched as another simulated figure stepped out from the shadows.

"Just watch what we do, okay? This'll be fun."

[underground-secret]

The Hunter and The Witch: Dean Winchester x Fem! reader

Description: A small town where dark secrets unfold isn’t anything new to these seasoned hunters, except when it has something to do with urban legends…apparently.

Warnings: cannon violence, mentions/talk of suicide, mentions of gruesome death, eye bleeding, Blood Mary (idk if this would be a warning but like 🤷🏼‍♀️), mentions of murder, witchy stuff

Tag list: @jesllianaquilesrolonsworld , @okayiamkassandra ,@fablesrose

A/N: I’m so sorry this took so long to get out again my AP class is really AP-ing and has taken up literally all my time. I spent four days working on a 20 pages packet that took forever meaning I had zero time for this. Again so so sorry.

Word count: 7,719

Bloody Mary

(Masterlist, Previous Chapter, Next Chapter)

“Sam, wake up.” Dean nudges the man in question, the car in park.

Sam wakes, confused, he sits up and looks around. “I take it I was having a nightmare.”

“Yeah, another one.” Dean confirms, and I nod too a frown on my face.

“Hey, at least I got some sleep.” Sam offers

“Sam” I stretch out his name, “that cannot be your positive to this.”

“You know, sooner or later we're gonna have to talk about this.” Dean adds.

But Sam ignores us, avoids the whole conversation, “Are we here?”

Dean lets him avoid the whole ordeal and I have to wonder how long he will let his brother lie. Though I guess I'm no better. “Yup. Welcome to Toledo, Ohio.”

Sam picks up a newspaper that sat on the console of the car, the obituary of Steven Shoemaker circled.

‘The Shoemaker family is sad to announce the sudden death of their beloved husband and father Steven Shoemarker. Steven was 46. A short service will be held on Wednesday, [...] 31 at 2:00 p.m. at the Toledo [...] and cherish you [...] Your [...]’ The article read.

“So what do you think really happened to this guy?” Sam asks us.

“That's what we're gonna find out.” Dean answers, turning off the car. “Let's go.”

We exit the car, entering the large hospital building that stood in front of us walking up to the two desks that lie in the room. One of them is empty with a name tag that reads, ‘Dr. D. Feiklowicz.’ The other one however was occupied by a Morgue technician in blue scrubs, “Hey” the man greets us as we approach.

“Hey.” Dean answers back.

“Can I help you?” The technician asks, looking between the three of us.

“Yeah. We're the, uh...med students.” Dean lies.

“Sorry?” The man asks back.

“Oh, Doctor—“ Dean stammers over the name, “—Figlavitch didn't tell you? We talked to him on the phone. He, uh, we're from Ohio State. He's supposed to show us the Shoemarker corpse. It's for our paper.”

“Well, I'm sorry, he's at lunch.” The tech informs us.

“Oh well he said, uh—“ Dean sighs, “—oh, well, you know, it doesn't matter. You don't mind just showing us the body, do you?”

“Sorry, I can't. Doc will be back in an hour. You can wait for him if you want.” He tells us, gesturing to the seats on the side of the room.

“An hour? Ooh. We gotta be heading back to Columbus by then.” Dean looks at me and Sam as if queuing us to lie with him.

“Yeah.” Sam and I say at the same time, “Jinx” I mumble underneath my breath just loud enough for Sam to hear me who in return gives me a scrunched face.

“Uh, look, man, this paper's like half our grade, so if you don't mind helping us out—“ Dena explains getting cut off by the man in scrubs, “Uh, look, man...no.”

Dean laughs a little. He turns around to face us, mumbling, “I'm gonna hit him in his face I swear.”

But I mean we can’t really blame the guy he’s just doing his job.

Sam hits his brother on the arm, taking a step in front of him he opens his wallet and pulls out some twenties. He lays a few of them, at least five, down on the desk. The Morgue Tech picks up the money, “Follow me.”

The technician gets up and leaves. I go to follow, seeing in the corner of my eye Dean grabbing Sam when he too tries to follow, forcing me to stop and go back a step to see what they are on about.

“Dude, I earned that money.” Dean complains.

“You won it in a poker game.” Sam clarifies.

“Yeah.” Dean answers.

Sam rolls his eyes, pulling away from his brother to follow the technician.

“You’ll make it back” I say, patting Dean on the back shortly to go follow the morgue man.

Dean stays back a half a second before following after us.

“Now the newspaper said his daughter found him. She said his eyes were bleeding.” Sam said as the Morgue Tech pulled back the sheet over Steven’s face. Revealing a pale, long faced man with dark hair, blood stained on his cheeks below his eyes as if he had cried them.

“More than that. They practically liquefied.” The tech scuffs.

“Any sign of a struggle? Maybe somebody did it to him?” Dean asks him.

“Nope. Besides the daughter, he was all alone.” He answers.

“What's the official cause of death?” Sam questioned.

“Ah, Doc's not sure. He's thinking massive stroke, maybe an aneurysm? Something burst up in there, that's for sure.” He replied.

“You mean like cerebral bleeding?” I ask, wanting to clarify.

“Yeah. This guy had more blood in his skull than anyone I've ever seen.” He responded.

“The eyes & mash;what would cause something like that?” Sam asked.

“Capillaries can burst. See a lot of bloodshot eyes with stroke victims.” The technician explains.

“Yeah? You ever see exploding eyeballs?” Dean scuffs.

“That's a first for me, but hey, I'm not the doctor.” The tech shrugs.

“Hey, think we could take a look at that police report? You know for, uh...our paper.” Dean requests.

“I'm not really supposed to show you that.” He answers, stretching out ‘that.’

Sam sighs clearly annoyed, as he pulls out his wallet.

Now leaving the hospital, walking down the stairs Sam suggests, “Might not be one of ours. Might just be some freak medical thing.”

“How many times in Dad's long and varied career has it actually been a freak medical thing and not some sign of an awful supernatural death?” Dean points out.

“Uh, almost never.” Sam answers.

“Exactly.”

“Well then, let's go talk to the daughter.” I announce”

We walk into Steven’s funeral, a picture of him on the desk.

All the men in the room are wearing black suits and the women adorned in black dresses, everyone except us. Dean points this very fact out, “Feel like we're underdressed.” I nod in agreement, my lips in a tight line, the guilt of interrupting these people’s mourning with not only us being undressed but also for not having a reasonable explanation of us being here.

But no one stops us as we keep walking through the house, all the way towards the back and outside to the backyard.

A man points us towards Donna and Lily Shoemarker, the daughters of the man we had seen on a metal table only moments before, who are standing near two people whom I can only assume is a friend or family member.

“You must be Donna, right?” Dean greets the eldest daughter as we approach the group of people.

“Yeah.” She answers sadly brushing her short brunette hair out of her face.

“Hi, uh—we're really sorry.” Sam says.

“Thank you.” She replies, and I know she must have heard that same phrase of ‘i’m sorry’ and must have answered the same ‘thank you’ over and over to each person here. As if the death of her father hadn’t broken what’s inside her enough.

“I'm Sam, this is Dean, and that’s Y/N. We worked with your dad.” He explains.

She looks at one of the adults near her and then back at us, “You did?” And I feel bad for lying to her about this to give her a connection to her father that had never existed.

“Yeah. This whole thing. I mean, a stroke.” Dean goes on.

“I don't think she really wants to talk about this right now” One of the men with her say, stepping in.

“It's okay. I'm okay.” Donna says, with a sharp nod.

“Were there any symptoms? Dizziness? Migraines?” Dean asks, listing out various options.

“No.” She says simply.

Lily, the youngest daughter, turns around, “That's because it wasn't a stroke.”

“Lily, don’t say that.” Donna snaps.

“What?” Sam asks.

“I'm sorry, she's just upset.” Donna explains.

“No, it happened because of me.” Lily speaks up.

“Sweetie, it didn't.” Donna tries to convince.

“Oh Lily”, I say sadly crouching down to be closer to her eye level, “What makes you think that?” I knew what it felt like to blame yourself for someone else’s death, especially your parents, especially when it happens twice and you're too young to understand why this would happen to you. I feel the eyes of the people around me bore into me, especially from the brothers behind me.

“Right before he died, I said it.” Lily answers.

“Said what?” I ask her.

“Bloody Mary, three times in the bathroom mirror.” She explains, pausing, “She took his eyes, that's what she does.” My eyes go wide, not exactly expecting that answer.

“That's not why Dad died. This isn't your fault.” Donna reasons.

“I think your sister's right, Lily. There's no way it could have been Bloody Mary. Your dad didn't say it, did he?” Dean offers, giving the kid some logic to combat what she believes.

“No, I don't think so.” Lily answers. But I know it will take her years to really believe it wasn’t her fault, if ever.

Saying ‘bye’ to the grief rickened family we head back inside the house, but instead of truly leaving we sneak upstairs, approaching the bathroom.

Sam pushes the door open, dried blood stained to the white tiled floor, “The Bloody Mary legend...Dad ever find any evidence that it was a real thing?”

“Not that I know of.” Dean answers, him and I trailing in after Sam who stoops to the floor touching the dried blood, “I mean, everywhere else all over the country, kids will play Bloody Mary, and as far as we know, nobody dies from it.”

I grimace, why would he touch the blood?

“Yeah, well, maybe everywhere it's just a story, but here it's actually happening.” Dean offers.

“The place where the legend began?” Sam asks and we both shrug, Dean opening the medicine cabinet.

“But according to the legend, the person who says B—“ Sam looks at the medicine cabinet mirror, it now facing him, he closes it before continuing, “The person who says you know what gets it. But here—“

“Mr.Shoemaker gets it instead” I finish his sentence.

“Right.”

“Never heard anything like that before. Still, the guy did die right in front of the mirror, and the daughter's right. The way the legend goes, you know who scratches your eyes out.” Dean adds.

“It's worth checking in to.” Sam concludes, as we leave the bathroom.

“What are you doing up here?” A blonde woman stops us, the same woman who was comforting the daughters outside.

“We—we, had to go to the bathroom.” Dean lies, poorly, because it makes perfect sense for three people to be using a private bathroom all at once.

“Who are you?” She asks us, naturally not accepting the poorly down lie.

“Like we said downstairs, we worked with Donna's dad.” Dean confirms.

“He was a day trader or something. He worked by himself.” She counters, and we should really start researching these people before we make up lies of how we know them.

Dean tries to cover, “No, I know, I meant—“

“And all those weird questions downstairs, what was that? So you tell me what's going on, or I start screaming.” She tells us, leaving no more room for any nonsense.

“All right, all right. We think something happened to Donna's dad.” Sam begins.

“Yeah, a stroke.” She answers.

“But it isn’t a typical sign of stroke, it might be something else.” I say softly, ashamed for suggesting such a thing to someone who has no knowledge of our world. These people are going through so much the last thing they need is some random people questioning what they know, I wouldn’t blame her if she did scream.

“Like what?” She scoffs, crossing her arms in front of her.

Sam explains this time probably sensing my unease with all this, “Honestly? We don't know yet. But we don't want it to happen to anyone else. That's the truth.”

Dean tilts his head, “So, if you're gonna scream, go right ahead.” My eyes widened, snapping to look at him, and suddenly that unease I felt vanished, replaced by a burning hot feeling that rushed through my veins and brought a flush to my face. I gulped, trying to push down the feeling a simple sentence that wasn’t even directed towards me made me feel. The cockiness it held as well as the allowance in his voice…it shouldn’t have affected me, and really shouldn’t have created a burning-longing in my gut.

“Who are you, cops?” The woman questions us, but my eyes haven’t left Dean as if he was light and I a moth.

I catch Sam and Dean looking at each other, speaking without words, in my peripheral vision. “Something like that” Dean answers.

It’s then that Dean must have felt my gaze on him, my lips slightly agape as I looked at him through my lashes. His attention turned to me as Sam continued the conversation that I had long blanked out of. Dean looked me over, eyes trailing over my very being, only worsening the burning I had felt within. His eyes met mine again giving me that devilish smirk of his, I swallowed again my eyes falling to his lips.

Sam clears his throat, nudging his brothers hard enough that he knocks into me slightly. Effectively catching our attention.

“Let’s go” He tells us, the woman still in front of us this time her attention to a small piece of white paper that I assume has some sort of contact information on it.

“All right, say Bloody Mary really is haunting this town. There's gonna be some sort of proof—Like a local woman who died nasty.” Dean begins as we walk into the oddly dark library, the stale smell of cleaning products surrounding us.

“Yeah but Blood Mary is a widespread legend with tons of versions of who she actually is, with no clear answer. There’s the mutilated bride, a spirit conjured to tell the future, a witch, and a whole lot more” I answer.

“All right so what are we supposed to be looking for?” Dean asks.

“Well in every version's got a few things in common. It's always a woman named Mary, and she always dies right in front of a mirror. So we've gotta search local newspapers—public records as far back as they go. See if we can find a Mary who fits the bill.” Sam adds, answering.

“Well that sounds annoying” Dean admits.

“No it won't be so bad, as long as we…” Sam trails off looking over to the table lined with computers all that say ‘Out of Order’, he chuckles “I take it back. This will be very annoying.”

We quickly turned around, heading back to the motel we were staying at to do our research there. Dean sat leaning with his head on his hand on the small table in the room on his brother's laptop. The younger brother in question had fallen asleep on one of the beds, the rustling of the sheets giving away the fact he was tossing and turning. I however sat crisscrossed on the other bed Deans to be specific, not like he cared anyways, researching on my laptop trying to find any relevant info on a Mary in this town or deaths relating to mirrors.

“Why'd you let me fall asleep?” Sam suddenly speaks up, voice evident with sleep.

“Cause I'm an awesome brother” Dean scoffs, he’d never admit it was really because Sam hadn’t been able to sleep or at least sleep long for the last couple of weeks.

“And what’s your excuse Y/N?” Sam questions me, leaning on his side with one arm propped up.

“You were sleepy!” I admit simply, smiling at him. He rolls his eyes, huffing a laugh.

“So what did you dream about?” Dean asks him, though what he was really asking was ‘did you have another nightmare?’

“Lollipops and candy canes.” He answers sarcastically. So sassy and for what?

“Yum” I reply, my eyes going back to my laptop.

“Did you find anything?” Sam asks us.

“Oh besides a whole new level of frustration?” Dean huffs, making Sam sit up, “No. We’ve looked at everything. A few local women, a Laura and a Catherine committed suicide in front of a mirror, and a giant mirror fell on a guy named Dave, but uh, no Mary.”

Sam falls back on the bed, the crisp sheets making a ‘whoosh’ noise beneath him, “Maybe we just haven't found it yet.”

“Thing is, there’s also been no strange deaths in the area, no other eyeball bleeding. Nothing. Which you know is good in hindsight but not quite helpful for us.” I explain.

Dean adds on, “Whatever's happening here, maybe it just ain't Mary.”

Almost as if on cue Sam’s phone rings, he answers, still laying down. “Hello?”

Charlie, the blonde woman who questioned us before, sat on the park bench slightly hunched. I sat next to her to offer some comfort, while Dean sat on the back on the bench, his leg nearly brushing my back.

“And they found her on the bathroom floor. And her—her eyes. They were gone.” Charlie nearly sobbed, having explained everything that happened with her friend Jill.

Jill, who had wanted to tease the blonde women about believing in such a legend, saying the name in the mirror and winding up dead. Her death being in the same manner as Mr. Shoemaker.

“I'm sorry.” Sam answered, eyebrows scrunched together.

“And she said it. I heard her say it. But it couldn't be because of that. I'm insane, right?” She whimpered, using the back of her hands to clear the wetness from her cheeks.

“You aren’t insane” I tell her clearly.

“Oh God, that makes me feel so much worse.” She whines and I try to not let it hurt me, because she's griefing, even though it does.

“Look. We think something's happening here. Something that can't be explained” Sam explains. Dean adding, “And we're gonna stop it but we could use your help.”

Dean lifts me up again, this time to reach an elevated first floor window rather than a fence. His hands sliding from tight around my hips, to brushing down my thighs as he lifts me in reach of the window sill. The window wasn’t that high to reach in the first place but with my height, amidtely being shorter than both the boys, it wasn’t exactly comfortable or super easy to reach the window and pull myself up and in.

My hands grasp the cold white window sill, my rings clinking against the surface as I pull my body up. I swiftly slide my hips sideways making my butt land on the sill, in the same sort of movements you would use when you lift yourself out of a pool.

I move my legs inside the carpeted room, ducking slightly as to not hit my head on the open window. The room belonged to Jill, and as my feet hit the soft gray carpet I officially feel the disgust of intrusion creep up on me.

I slide off the windowsill moving into the room more, Sam quickly taking my place near the window to pick up the duffle Dean threw up at him. He catches it, putting it on the bed and immediately digging through it.

“So what did you tell Jill’s mom?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest, the uncomfortability of being in someone’s bedroom let alone a dead girls bedroom crawling up my skin and in my bones.

“Just that I needed some time alone with Jill's pictures and things.” Charlie answers looking between us and the door nervously. Dean climbs through the window shutting the curtain behind and Sam pulls something out of the bag. “I hate lying to her” Charlie adds.

“Trust us, this is for the greater good. Hit the lights” Dean orders.

She goes over to the lights, “”What are you guys looking for?

“We'll let you know as soon as we find it.” Dean hums.

Sam hands him a camcorder on and ready, the object he got from the duffel, “Hey, night vision.” He recalls prompting the older brother to do so, his face scrunched with focus as he finds the button.

“Perfect.” Sam smiles.

The little screen of the camcorder is facing Dean, in a ‘selfie’ like mode, “Do I look like Paris Hilton?” He smiles.

I laugh, slapping a hand to his upper arm on instinct, “Sure you do, baby” I joke, the pet name not something I ever use slipping from my tongue before I could realize. His head turns to give me an amused and smug smirk. In his distractment Sam takes the camera back, going over to the closet door filming around the mirror.

“So I don't get it. I mean...the first victim didn't summon Mary, and the second victim did. How's she choosing them?” Sam asks out loud.

“Beats me.” Dean answers, focusing back on the situation at hand. “I want to know why Jill said it in the first place.”

“It was just a joke.” Charlie reasons.

“Yeah well somebody's gonna say it again, it's just a matter of time.” Dean replies.

Sam wandered into the bathroom now, looking at the mirror there. “Hey!” He calls out, getting us to turn and look at him. “There's a black light in the trunk, right?”

Dean immediately went off to go get it coming back rather swiftly, just as Sam placed the mirror on Jill’s bed laying it upside down after having carried it from the bathroom. With the black light now in hand, he peels off the brown paper that’s on the back of the mirror, shining the purple light on its back revealing a handprint and the name ‘Gary Bryman.’

“Gary Bryman?” Charlie reads out loud both as an acknowledgment and also a question.

“Do you know who that is?” I ask her.

“No.” She answers simply.

Back on the bench, in nearly the same positions, Sam recalls his findings. “So, Gary Bryman was an 8-year-old boy. Two years ago he was killed in a hit and run. The car was described as a black Toyota Camry. But nobody got the plates or saw the driver.”

“Oh my God.” Charlie gasps, horror in her eyes as she covers her mouth.

“What?” I ask the question we’re all thinking.

“Jill drove that car” She answers. Without looking for confirmation I know the boy's eyes are wide too, but there’s no room for the talking that comes after shock.

“We need to get back to your friend Donna’s house.

Somehow, with the help of Charlie, we convinced our way into Donna’s house back up to the bathroom we were in only hours before.

Hunched over the mirror with the black light, our suspicions were correct. There’s a handprint, one I have to say looks like the one in Jill’s bathroom, but I'm no criminologist. This time the name ‘Linda Shoemaker’ is written on it.

We all look at each other, knowing it’s likely that Steven killed his wife hence why Bloody Mary went for him and not the young girl who chanted her name. But the only way to have any idea of this theory is correct is to ask the brunette teenager downstairs.

“Why are you asking me this?” Donna asks us.

“I’m really sorry, Donna, but this is important.” I try to explain, but I know it won’t make sense to her. I mean we are total strangers asking her uncomfortable questions about her dead mother.

“Yeah. Linda's my mom okay? She overdosed on sleeping pills, it was an accident, and that's it.” She fumes, eyebrows scrunched together in fury, “I think you should leave.”

“Now Donna, just listen.” Dean reaches a hand up, as if to motion ‘calm down.’ But it doesn't work. Teary eyed and a little red in the face she yells, “Get out of my house!” Swiftly she runs up the stairs, not giving us another option.

“Oh my God. Do you really think her dad could've killed her mom?” Charlie asks, finally picking up on our theory.

“Maybe.” Sam shrugs.

“I think I should stick around” Charlie announces, referring to staying with Donna, which is probably a good idea.

“All right. Whatever you do, don't—“ Dean tries to warn getting cut off, “Believe me, I won't say it.”

The crisp smell of old books and, oddly, cinnamon fill my nose as I take a deep breath, flexing my hand as I work out the cramping from writing a little too intensely in my small journal.

Dean sits next to me on the cold metal chairs in the library we decided to research in (different to the original one we were at), he’s typing away on the clunky computer the library has. Sam’s staring off at a bulletin board behind us with all sorts of things on it.

“Wait, wait, wait, you're doing a nationwide search?” He asks Dean, alerting us of him coming back to his seat on the other side of his brother.

“Yep. The NCIC, the FBI database—at this point any Mary who died in front of a mirror is good enough for me.” Dean answers.

“But if she's haunting the town, she should have died in the town.” Sam points out.

“I'm telling you there's nothing local, I've checked. So unless you got a better idea—“ Dean explains and as much as I love him I cut him off.

“Well, Mary’s victims have a pattern, which I know you guys already know so I'll just cut to the good part. Both victims had secrets relating to where people died and, here’s the good part, there’s a lot of folklore on mirrors, specifically that mirrors are a reflection of your soul. And with that your secrets and lies are revealed to the mirror.

Fun Fact! It was the Romans who believed that the soul would regenerate every seven years, so if you broke a mirror then you’d have to wait seven years until your soul was cleansed of the bad luck and misfortune.

And while I have more fun facts about mirrors I will end it there.” I smiled, satisfied with my information vomit as well as my fun fact because fun facts are wonderful.

Both boys look at me strangely, a mix of confusion and what I think is amazement (they should be amazed cause that was a really great fun fact). Dean seems to shake it off, “Right. So if you've got a secret, I mean like a really nasty one where someone died, then Mary sees it, and punishes you for it.”

Sam adding, “Whether you're the one that summoned her or not.”

“Correcto!” I answer, and by correct I mean that’s what I was thinking for our working theory.

“Then take a look at this.” Dean announces, clicking a few buttons on the computer before leaning over to the nearby printer, pulling out and handing us the paper. It’s a picture of a woman lying by a mirror in a puddle of blood. He prints out another picture, this time of a handprint and the letters “Tre.”

“Looks like the same handprint.” Sam points out and I nod in agreement.

“Her name was Mary Worthington—an unsolved murder in Fort Wayne, Indiana.”

“I was on the job for 35 years-detective for most of that. Now everybody packs it in with a few loose ends, but the Mary Worthington murder—that one still gets me.” The detective states, unfortunately I immediately forgot his name. It's not the nicest thing to happen but I was also really focused on his country accent that’s just a little too funny.

“What exactly happened?” Dean asked, leaning forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees.

“You boys and girl said you were reporters?” Mr. Detective questioned.

“We know Mary was 19, lived by herself. We know she won a few local beauty contests, dreamt of getting out of Indiana, being an actress. And we know the night of March 29th someone broke into her apartment and murdered her, cut out her eyes with a knife.” Sam recalls the gruesome story.

“That's right.” He confirms.

“See sir, when we asked you what happened, we wanted to know what you think happened.” Sam clarifies for him, somewhere between a curious and condescending tone.

Mr. Detective eyes us over as if he’s contemplating something. He spins his wheely chair around swiftly getting up and going to a large file cabinet. “Technically I'm not supposed to have a copy of this” He huffs, pulling out a file and then a picture, the same picture Dean had already found on the computer. “Now see that there? T-R-E?” Detective reads out, even though unbeknownst to him it’s old news to us.

“Yeah” Dean answers.

“I think Mary was trying to spell out the name of her killer.” He theorizes.

“Do you know who it was, or any theories?” I ask, trying to get any sort of new answers.

“Not for sure. But there was a local man, a surgeon-Trevor Sampson.” He pulls out another photo, this time of this Trevor guy, he has an oval face with curly short hair definitely on the darker side but I can’t say exactly what color due to the black and white photo. He’s also wearing some sunglasses.

“And I think he cut her up good.” He finishes, his accent thick.

“Why do you think it’s him?” I question further.

“Her diary mentioned a man that she was seeing. She called him by his initial, ‘T’. Well, her last entry, she was gonna tell ‘T’'s wife about their affair.” He answers, and for a detective that truly means nothing.

“No offense but how does that directly correlate to Sampson… I mean there’s other people with the initial ‘T’ right?” I question him again, hoping it doesn't offend the man.

“It's hard to say, but the way her eyes were cut out...it was almost professional.” He explains.

“But you could never prove it?” Dean asks, chiming in.

“No. No prints, no witnesses. He was meticulous.” Mr. Detective nods.

“Is he still alive?” Dean follows up.

“Nope.” He sighs, sitting down. “If you ask me, Mary spent her last living moments trying to expose this guy's secret. But she never could.”

“Where's she buried?” Sam asks this time.

“She wasn't. She was cremated” He answers. No digging up bodies for us today.

“What about that mirror”, Dean nods towards the one in the photo, “It's not in some evidence lockup somewhere is it?”

“Ah, no. It was returned to Mary's family a long time ago.” He explains, leaning back in his chair.

“You have the names of her family by any chance?”

We drive down the roads, the sun setting behind us. Sam’s call dictates where we go, either to whatever location he gives us or back to the motel.

“Oh really? Ah that's too bad Mr. Worthington. I would have paid a lot for that mirror. Okay, well maybe next time. All right, thanks.” Sam hangs up, pocketing his phone.

“So?” Dean asks.

“So that was Mary's brother. The mirror was in the family for years, until he sold it one week ago to a store called Estate Antiques. A store in Toledo.” Sam stated.

“So wherever the mirror goes, that's where Mary goes?” Dean raises.

“Her spirit's definitely tied up with it somehow.” Sam simply puts it.

“Isn't there an old superstition that says mirrors can capture spirits?” Dean asks.

“Yeah! People would cover up the mirror when someone died so that their spirit/ soul wouldn’t get trapped.” I explain, happy to spew some more of my fun facts.

“So Mary dies in front of a mirror, and it draws in her spirit” Dean works through the facts.

“Yes! But I don’t know how she’s working through various mirrors” I admit.

“I don't know either, but if the mirror is the source, I say we find it and smash it.” Dean proposes.

“Yeah, I don't know, maybe.” Sam gets cut off by his own phone, “ Hello.” A look of concern washes over his face, becoming pale “Charlie?”

The motel room is colder, the rain outside causing that meek fact. Charlie’s sitting on Sam’s bed, her head on her knees, after we picked her up from school all terrified. All the curtains are drawn shut, all the mirrors and reflective surfaces are covered with sheets or turned aquas towards a wall or the floor there will be no bloody mary getting in here.

Sam sits next to Charlie, “Hey, hey it's ok. Hey, you can open up your eyes Charlie. It's okay, all right?” She looks up reluctantly and slowly, “Now listen. You're gonna stay right here on this bed, and you're not gonna look at glass, or anything else that has a reflection, okay? And as long as you do that, she cannot get you.”

“But I can't keep that up forever. I'm gonna die, aren't I?” Her voice wobbled, fresh tears running down her cheeks.

“No. No. Not anytime soon.” Sam comforts, but I don’t think it helps.

Dean sits on the bed too, “All right Charlie. We need to know what happened.”

“We were in the bathroom. Donna said it.” She answers simply, rocking herself slightly.

“That's not what we're talking about. Something happened, didn't it? In your life...a secret...where someone got hurt. Can you tell us about it?” Dean pushes.

She looks around uncomfortably, swallowing she begins, “I had this boyfriend. I loved him. But he kind of scared me too, you know?” She looks over at me for confirmation knowing without any previous conversation about it that I would understand. And she was right. It was as if bad boyfriends were sewed into the fabrics of being a woman, it would be a little strange if you hadn’t had one.

I nod and she continues, “And one night, at his house, we got in this fight. Then I broke up with him, and he got upset, and he said he needed me and he loved me, and he said "Charlie, if you walk out that door right now, I'm gonna kill myself." And you know what I said? I said "Go ahead." And I left. How could I say that? How could I leave him like that? I just...I didn't believe him, you know? I should have.” She cries harder, going back to her previous position.

I move towards her, Sam getting up to allow me to sit close to her. I hug her, holding her close despite her awkward position. “That’s not your fault” I told her simply, and I meant it too. She uncurls herself, quickly wrapping her arms around me and stuffing her face into my neck. I hold her tighter. “You did the right thing, leaving him” I mutter.

Dean huffs, gripping the steering wheel slightly tighter, “You were right back there Y/N, her boyfriend killing himself, that's not really Charlie's fault.”

“You guys should know as well as I do that spirits don't exactly see shades of gray. Charlie had a secret, someone died, that's good enough for Mary.” Sam reasons.

“I guess” Dean sighs.

“You know, I've been thinking. It might not be enough to just smash that mirror.” Sam suggests.

“Oh, what do you mean?” I ask with a tilt of my head.

“Well Mary's hard to pin down, right? I mean she moves around from mirror to mirror so who's to say that she's not just gonna keep hiding in them forever? So maybe we should try to pin her down, you know, summon her to her mirror and then smash it.” Sam explains.

“Well how do you know that's going to work?” Dean questions.

“I don't, not for sure.” Sam shrugs.

“Well who's gonna summon her?” Dean follows up.

“I will. She'll come after me.” Sam states as if it’s the most obvious answer and with no care for himself.

“You know what, that's it.” Dean nearly shouts, pulling the car over quickly and roughly making my body shift nearly knocking into the door.

“This is about Jessica, isn't it? You think that's your dirty little secret that you killed her somehow? Sam, this has got to stop, man. I mean, the nightmares and calling her name out in the middle of the night—it's gonna kill you.” Dean fumes, not quite yelling but also not quite talking.

“Now listen to me—It wasn't your fault. If you wanna blame something, then blame the thing that killed her. Or hell, why don't you take a swing at me? I mean I'm the one that dragged you away from her in the first place.”

“I don't blame you.” Sam answers plainly, almost in defeat

“Well you shouldn't blame yourself, because there's nothing you could've done.” Dean adds.

“I could've warned her.” Sam sighs, and the pain in his voice makes me want to cry.

“Sam…you couldn’t have known that would happen.” I chime in, though it doesn't quite feel like my place.

“And besides, all of this isn't a secret, I mean we know all about it. It's not gonna work with Mary anyway.” Dean exclaims.

“No you don't.” Sam states, no further explanation given.

“I don't what?” Dean asks.

“You don't know all about it. I haven't told you everything.” Sam shrugs.

“What are you talking about?” Dean questions, face full of confusion.

“Well it wouldn't really be a secret if I told you, would it?” He replied sassily.

Dean looks surprised, “No. I don't like it. It's not gonna happen, forget it.”

“Dean, that girl back there is going to die unless we do something about it. And you know what? Who knows how many more people are gonna die after that? Now we're doing this. You've got to let me do this.�� But Sam doesn't get any answers, with a roll of his eyes Dean drives off. Conversation over.

Sam is trying to pick the lock on the shop's door, somehow without any word he became the designated lock picker. The dark oak door opens and all around the store are mirrors, mirrors of all shapes and sizes and varieties. Truly the worst place to be in this situation.

“Well...that's just great, '' Dean sighs, pulling out the photo of Mary’s corpse to look at the mirror, the one we’re looking for being a wooden frame. Not very helpful considering our location where there are countless mirrors that look exactly the same. “All right let's start looking.”

I nod in agreement handing both boys their crowbars. I shifted my baseball bat in my hand, there wasn’t a third crowbar and there was no reason for it anyways, a baseball bat is just as good at smashing.

We enter the dark store, flashlights on, splitting up we look for our specific mirror.

“Maybe they've already sold it.” Dean suggests, from some part of the store.

“I don't think so.” Sam says, stopping in his tracks. Dean and I walk over on either side of the taller man, Dean pulls out the picture again comparing the two. It’s our mirror.

“That's it.” Dean sighs, “You sure about this?”

Sam hands over his flashlight and sighs, “Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary.” He looks between the both of us, “Bloody Mary.”

A light shines through the store windows, illuminating the room.

“I'll go check that out. You guys stay here, be careful. Smash anything that moves.” Dean shuffles away.

I grip my bat tighter as a breath that isn’t mine nor Sam’s surrounds us. He turns around quickly but I keep my back towards him, “Nothing?” I ask and he hums in confirmation.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Mary in one of the mirrors, I step forward swinging my bat back and then forward hard. The glass shatters falling to the floor around my feet. Then Sam hits a mirror behind me, before swiftly turning back to her mirror.

“Come on. Come into this one.” He mutters underneath his breath.

He tilts his head watching his regeneration weirdly when suddenly he starts breathing heavily grabbing at his chest.

“Sam!” I shout, grabbing his arm. His eyes begin to bleed, blood trickling down his cheeks. He drops his crowbar, the metal clinking against the floor loudly.

“It's your fault. You killed her. You killed Jessica.” A voice rings out, one that sounds like Sam’s though I know it’s not him speaking. I help him to the floor carefully as he grabs his chest harder.

“You never told her the truth—who you really were. But it's more than that, isn't it?” The voice fumes.

I get up leaving Sam to the floor, “That’s enough of you” I mutter, gripping my baseball bat tight. I hit her mirror, the glass shatters around me.

I hear Sam take a deep breath in, when I look down at him he’s no longer holding his chest. He holds a thumb up to me, weakly.

But for some reason the voice didn’t stop, Mary was no longer hurting Sam but her accusations wouldn’t stop.

“Those nightmares you've been having of Jessica dying, screaming, burning—You had them for days before she died. Didn't you!?! You were so desperate to ignore them, to believe they were just dreams. How could you ignore them like that? How could you leave her alone to die!?! You dreamt it would happen!!!”

I smash three more mirrors, anything to get it to stop by it doesn't.

“SAM, SAMMY!” Dean shouts, rushing into the room and crouching down to his brother.

“It's Sam” He answers meekly.

Dean holds onto his brother's face gently, eyeing his face and the blood on it, “God, are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” Sam replies, a little unsure though considering the circumstances I get it.

“Come on, come on.” He pulls Sam up, bringing his arm around his neck with a nod of his head towards the door. I follow the boys towards the exit.

A sudden crunching noise forces us to turn around. Mary crawls out of the frame of her mirror, her long black hair covering her face, she walks over the broken glass with no care, her head tilting to the side as she crawls towards us. Her dark nearly black eyes bore into us, somehow she forces us to the floor.

My chest feels tight as if someone was squeezing my heart, I try to crawl backwards on my hands like a crab walk when a sharp pain surges through my hand followed by my eyes. I bring my hand in front of me, a large slash runs through my palm, a piece of glass sticking out of it. The ache in my eyes I know is not caused by glass but by Mary, I reach my gold hand up to my cheek blood trickling down my face. I suck in a breath, the pain not helping the already pain I was feeling. I look over to the boys on the left of me nearly on top of each other as blood runs down both their cheeks.

Mary stands approaching us with a head tilt and a limp. I grumble holding up a shaky hand, waving my hand once, slowly, making long mirrors form in a line in front of Mary acting as a wall between us.

“You killed them! All those people! You killed them!” A female voice cried out, Mary’s voice.

She looks at her reflections scared, when she begins to choke. She grabs on to her throat and her chest, crumbling down to the ground she shrieks, turning to a puddle of blood

With another wave of my hand the wall of mirrors shatters, glass falling to the floor loudly.

“Hey Y/N?”

“Yeah?” I hum feeling a little defeated.

“This has got to be like...what? 600 years of bad luck?” He asks me and I can’t help the big smile that falls on my face.

“Mmm I can’t wait” I laugh, the sarcastic comment coming to me with ease.

The sun rises in front of us, gleaming on the Impala. Our faves are cleaned up, ridden of blood and the event that unfolded. The only proof of it happening being my hand that’s carefully wrapped in white gauze, the glass now out and the cut cleaned.

Charlie sits next to me in the back seat as we pull up to her house, it's odd having someone else back here with me.

“So this is really over?” She asks us, her eyes puffy from her night of crying.

Dean looks at her through the rearview mirror, nodding, “Yeah, it's over.”

“Thank you.” She says, Dean reaching back to shake her hand. She turns to me next, arms open in a hug. I close the gap between us and give her a good squeeze.

She smiles a little sadly at me, getting out of the car.

“Charlie?” Sam calls out, stopping the woman in her tracks. She turns around, “Your boyfriend's death...you really should try to forgive yourself. No matter what you did, you probably couldn't have stopped it. Sometimes bad things just happen.”

She smiles faintly, turning back around to go into her house.

Dean hits his brother's arm gently, “That's good advice.”

We drive off the car falling silent for a beat before Dean talks again, “Hey Sam?”

“Yeah?” He answers.

“Now that this is all over, I want you to tell me what that secret is.” Dean tells him, looking between him and the road.

“Look...you're my brother and I'd die for you, but there are some things I need to keep to myself.” He admits with a sigh, looking out the window.

The car falls silent again.

Healing isn’t easy. It's not something you can put a bandaid on and expect to be fine, and maybe all that Sam shared will be enough for now but that’s not something we can gauge.

That is times doing, and time isn’t something we can control.

God knows i’ve tried.

[cybertron-smash-or-pass]

I am soooo hashtag tuned the eff into this blog the since the last three days gangggg this is what I imagine sports fans feel like checking in on the game for their favorite ball player babes <33333

But for realsies this is such a fun and awesome blog, just the amount of people able to come together and be so deranged and goofy about this smash or pass type of stuff is so great :333 I LOOOOVE WEIRD TRANSFORMERS CHARACTERSSSSS YIPPEEEE🎉🎉🎉🎉🎊🎊🎊🎉💖💖🫶🫶🫶💖💗💗🫶🫶💕💕

Give it up for strange weird tf characters‼️‼️‼️✨🎉💖🎉💖🎉‼️‼️‼️

Honestly I'm honored that anyone's paying attention to my silly little posts, let alone, like, invested in when the polls drop. It's god to see o many people that wanna kiss robot and the skrunkly ass humans around them.

TFA human character design appeals to me so much just because they make the characters look like real actual people with physical variation and not carbon copies of the same 12 acceptably attractive templates. It's also why I'll die on the hill that Nanosec is hot.

If you got a big nose or a crooked smile or laugh lines or any other features you're supposed to think are some kind of substandard deviation from the norm, you're probably hot as fuck and the basic taste rich white ppl get richer by convincing you that you aren't. Never forget that shit is a lie they blow millions on maintaining.

We got another one, fellas

Queued, I went with g1 bc you didn't specify, and also because I think that version is unbelievably pretty.

[copperbadge]

I had a very successful and entertaining day today, as you guys can probably tell from the posts I made. There's a few more queued posts of stuff I didn't get to post in-situ, so enjoy that!

Some anecdotes I did not post about from today:

-- I can't remember the last time I queued for a museum. Mostly because if it's not one of "my" museums, like the Field or the Art Institute where I know the best ways in, I'm attending on a weekday deliberately so that I am not amongst the crowds. The line to get into the British Museum was a full block long, but to be fair it only took me ten minutes from opening to get inside. I was mostly amused by the people who a) didn't understand how museum entry works or b) didn't understand how to stand in a line without also blocking foot traffic on the rest of the sidewalk.

-- Almost got in a fight with someone, a definite first for me in a museum. I got salty with a guy who touched a sculpture when he knew he shouldn't, and he got up in my face, and I think genuinely the fact that I knew what the sculpture was called and he didn't confused him so badly he backed down. So if you're looking to defuse a situation via confusion, the phrase "Hey, don't fucking touch the Lamassu and we won't have a problem" worked for me.

-- The British Museum is great but among other issues (looted objects, weird relics of museum-specific imperialism, etc) it does suffer from poor display design in places. I'm okay with that, I kind of like old museums that are a little fucked up, even as I acknowledge that old fucked-up museums also have old fucked-up messaging. They appear to be trying on that front, but they could use a display placard overhaul. At one point I found an object in a case that appeared to be a carved human leg bone, and while I'm not a Bone Specialist there was also absolutely no placard about the bone at all. (I looked it up in the collection later using other objects in the case as reference, and it's just noted as "bone".)

-- I did have a great time overall; I saw most of the museum and then had a fancy meal, as documented. I was especially pleased to get to sample their coronation chicken since I collect tastings of coronation chicken, and I think they either used molasses in it or the bread had some, and either way it's grist for my mill as I start to develop The Chicken Salad War. After lunch I went on the hunt for a few last things, but I could feel myself getting tired and Becoming Unmedicated so I decided to leave a little early, which was the right choice, and gave me a little time to do some exploring.

-- @neil-gaiman did a post a while ago about stuff to see in London which I saved, and while I mostly planned my own journey, I did stop at Atlantis Books on his recommendation, which was well worth it. The woman working the till left me alone until I was ready to buy my book, then praised my choice (always a good move) and made a few minutes' small talk about my visit from America while she was ringing me up. Also I have never seen such a variety of Tarot decks for sale in my life. It was extremely impressive given the entire shop is roughly the size of my bedroom in Chicago.

All in all an excellent day out in London. Tomorrow I'm traveling to meet up with a friend, so probably fewer photos, but day after tomorrow I'm bound for Amsterdam so expect Rijksmuseum photos! I did not get into the Vermeer exhibit sadly, but I still want to see the museum and I'm on a quest for freshly made stroopwaffels and authentic gjetost, so I'm excited for the journey. I thought this trip might be one small anxiety after another -- would I be okay on the plane, would I get on the right trains, etc -- but I'm feeling more confident now, and I think between my early-bird tendencies and the ADHD meds I kicked the jet lag pretty quickly. I'm off to bed in a few, because tomorrow is an early day, so I guess we'll find out then how much I really kicked it....

[slafkovskys]

All of this start of the season Jack content is making me feel things!!! All I can think about is him and older Norris reader after the ring toss! What does he plan for the date? How does it go? What is everyone in their lives reactions to it? Does she go to Jersey with him? Jess your writing is so immaculate this AU has infiltrated my brain😂🥰

read part one here :)

as she hears his footsteps descending the steps, she thinks about how she wouldn't be doing this for anyone else, especially not on a first date.

her dress and heels were long abandoned in a guest room, instead exchanged for a pair of jack’s sweatpants and a too big t-shirt from her college days she had left at the hughes brothers’ house at some point during her many trips there over the past few weeks. her hair was now pulled away from her face, the fact that she had moved her wash day for the occasion be damned.

“so,” he lets out a big sigh before quite literally falling onto the l-shaped part of the sofa beside her. she’s got her legs tucked underneath her, a wine glass held tight in one hand, and her head resting on another on the back of the couch. the remote is resting on her thigh and all either of them had to do was press play on the third mighty ducks movie (“it’s better than miracle, jack. not even an argument,” and she quickly learned that jack does whatever she wants, so that was an easy debate to have before he retreated to shower) that had been queued on the screen for the past twenty minutes. instead, jack throws an arm lazily over her legs, gives her that stupid grin of his she’s become obsessed with, and nods, “tell me about y/n.”

“you know about y/n,” she states as though it was a fact, which it was. they weren’t strangers to each other in the slightest, having been somewhat background characters in each other’s lives for the last eight years.

“no, i don’t. i know about the y/n whose posts i see on instagram or whatever updates my mom tells me she’s learned from your mom. that doesn’t count,” his index finger traces the outside seam of the pants she was wearing from her calf, to just above her knee, and back, “i want to know about the y/n in front of me.”

“okay then,” she takes a deep breath, swirling her wine around in her glass before taking a sip, “i was born here in michigan, but moved to germany for a little while when my dad was still playing. before you ask me, no, the only german i can remember is my old address and how to tell them i was lost. when we moved back here, i picked up hockey for a couple of years before deciding to leave it to the boys-”

“you played defense, right?” jack interrupts, staring at her with such an interest.

she hums, “why do you think i always win when me and my brothers fight? i had potential, but it really just wasn’t for me.”

“is that so? because i remember a certain tipsy moment a few weeks ago where you said you quit because you didn’t like the colors of the uniform.”

“that may have been a contributing factor, but i was fourteen and very fashion-conscious. you can’t hold that against me,” she rolls her eyes. she catches sight of the wristbands on his arm and she can’t help but to reach down and tug on them as she resumes her story, “anyway, graduated high school, moved to minnesota for college. go gophers-”

“debatable,” he teases.

“got my degree in communications. thought that i met the love of my life in the backyard of a sigma chi frat house, which we both know how that worked out. moved down to florida, got engaged, called off the engagement, and now i’m back living with my parents. i have lived a life, jack hughes,” she sighs as she finishes off her glass. she didn’t miss the way that his face twitched at the mention of derek and how she just barely ghosted over what had happened. due to the movement, his damp hair had fallen over his eyes and she reached out to push it away, “it’s going to take more than one glass of wine and a first date to get into the good stuff.”

“but i already knew all of that,” he huffs, “tell me something that i don’t already know. tell me about something that makes you happy.”

“recently?” she quirks an eyebrow and he hums, “honestly, you.”

and jack’s world comes to a screeching halt. for as long as he had known her, she wasn’t the type to get sentimental, vulnerable, but over the last two months, he felt that he had seen more versions of her than he knew existed. from the first night she was home, to that plane ride to florida to get her things, to watching her toss her engagement ring into the water right outside his house, it wasn’t enough. he wanted, no he needed more of her. he needed to know every single version of her, every single story, every single emotion that she had to offer him.

her eyes find his and he squeezes her knee, a silent ask. he watches as her throat bobs and just as he goes to crane his neck up to meet her, an alarm sounds. that stupid fucking pizza.

after scouring the entire grocery store, they couldn’t find any pre-breaded chicken for chicken parm and neither of them wanted to bother with doing it themselves. so that’s how they found themselves snatching up a premade pizza with a reduced sticker on the front because its sell-by date was that day and even though jack insisted on getting one that was fresher, she only rolled her eyes and insisted it would taste the same. he, of course, let her sit it in the basket along with the thing of cookies she suddenly had a craving for the second she laid eyes on them. the way her face lit up made it worth the extra work he was going to have to put in later.

despite the insistent beeping from the stove timer, neither of them dared to make a move to go and pull the pizza from the oven. she blinks, “we should probably go and check on it…”

“i think that it can wait for a couple of minutes,” and yeah, it definitely could, because jack was leaning in and so was she. the second their lips meet it’s like nothing either of them had felt before. the build-up, the tension between the two of them over the summer was worth it as they melted into the kiss.

jack’s hand grips onto her thigh while her hand cradles his cheek. it was easy to get lost in each other, lips moving against one another’s like they’d been doing this forever. only when the need for air becomes too great do they pull away panting, still holding onto each other like either would disappear at any given second.

“we really should go check on the pizza,” she insists, swearing she can smell the cheese starting to burn.

he frowns, “can we do more of that later?”

“if you hurry back, you don’t have to wait that long,” she incentivizes and jack is all but scrambling towards the kitchen with the sounds of her laughter following behind him.

yeah, this was definitely something they could get used to.

(they never did hit play on the movie and the pizza didn’t burn, but it didn’t get eaten either. they were too lost in each other to even bother slicing through the crispy dough as it grew colder and colder on the countertop. oh well.)

[heymrspatel]

ART TAG

thanks for tagging me @deathclassic @kiennilove @suzy-queued @doshiart and @sgtmickeyslaughter 🥰💙

Have you always been interested in creating art? i have, yea! i've been drawing for as long as i can remember!

What's your favourite medium to use? If digital, what programs do you like? right now i would say digital since it's what i use the most nowadays. i use procreate on an ipad that is about to give out on me (and i really really need it to NOT do that).

Do you create outside of fandom? yea, i make silly little sketches for myself almost daily. just to stay sane while i work a corporate 9-5. those will never see the light of day.

Share something you haven't finished and/or never got around to posting this is like 90% done... but i never posted it because i didn't feel good with it at the time lol like something was off and i felt like i would have to undo too much to get it where i wanted it to be... (does this make sense?)

Favourite piece you've made? this is hard! i feel like it changes all the time? i'm going to go with this one because i really like how the background turned out and because i'm a soft bitch

Draw your icon in a minute or less hehe his cheeks

An underrated piece you've made in your opinion 'baby boy' idk i think it's really soft and lovely

but also, a lot of the kinktober pieces… i’ve been so so so very proud of them because they’re so vulnerable and i think i did a nice job with some of them, but they don’t quite take off 😅

Do you do art in a professional setting? i do not. my work is the furthest thing i could get from being creative.

A piece you don't like but did really well on social media uuuhhh i think i'll skip this one! simply because i could pick apart probably everything i've ever posted lol!

Post an old piece and compare it to your most recent, what are the similarites? i'm not going to do my most recent because it's kinktober and i also went for a pretty different style... SO! i'll do the first comic style one i did and the latest one!

the color palette is still the same, they're still very soft and gone for each other, i really love a gentle face hold!

Have you ever collaborated with another artist/s? i don't think i have? but i've collaborated with a couple of writers to make some pieces for their fics!

What piece has the most notes? Are you surprised? roadtrip boys! i'm not really surprised, not for nothing but i did my thing here. there's lots of details, storytelling, dreamy colors. i get it.

Who/What is your favourite subject matter? tbh it's landscapes or mundane still lifes...lol!! "julissa, not bowls of fruit!", everyone cried! you'd be correct. not that. but everyday kind of humdrum but meaningful pieces. atmospheric. yanking you back to a point in time. - i did a drawing of my grandma's vanity once. with her lipsticks and little lotions and stuff. like that.

Show us something not from fandom you've made here go:

Where do you like to create? on my couch. absolutely hunched over like a shrimp.

Do you have a tag that you use to group your creations? Tell us so people can follow it i do! i put everything under myart

Give yourself a shoutout, where can we commission/buy/follow you for more pieces? i don't do commissions or have anything for sale and i also don't exist anywhere else lamdsflj i'm just here and i crosspost on ao3 💙

i'll tag @deedala @michellemisfit @gallapiech @lingy910y @vintagelacerosette @gallawitchxx @spookygingerr @romidoes if you'd like to play! if not, this is just me giving you a little nose boop!

[changingplumbob]

Little Tiny Update

Details below the cut but trigger free version I was busy today and will likely be busy the rest of the week. I've got stuff queued but eventually there might be a few days gap. Please keep sending me the asks, I will get around to them when I can. Possibly be slower responding to things just because they take brainpower. Much love

Results of the vet visit for my fluffly sister, the cat, today (Tuesday) show she has kidney disease. My IBS nausea was intense all day and taking her there and back took energy. Tomorrow (Wednesday) I'm getting up early to take her in and they're going to flush her with fluids to try get better kidney numbers. Normally it would happen over 2 days but here our Thursday is ANZAC day so public holiday so vets closed. So I'm glad she won't have to stay there overnight, don't want her thinking she's got another long cattery stay, but it does mean a whole pile of busses tomorrow, thank the lord they let us take cats in carriers on buses here now. Then Friday it'll be another trip in for repeat bloodwork and discussion of how we can change her diet to help.

Probably still in a bit of shock, the vet was saying her physical examination looked good apart from her weight loss from her reduced eating. She has to stop the arthritis pain meds which I'm hoping improves her appetite. The vet doesn't seem to think we need to think about palliative care just yet thank goodness so fingers crossed we'll still have some time with her.

Friends what would really help me is if your posts contain pet illness (realistic illness not the ones that give them glowing red noses etc) or pet death you put a trigger warning and/or put the death below a cut. Scrolling through and seeing a cat passing on is not what I need right now, even if it is a simple sims representation. Obviously I can't tell you how to do your content but it would be appreciated.

[inventors-fair]

Important Tips!

Huh? Oh, shoot, that's right. I'm not exactly around for stuff right now, sorry, this is a queued post.

So, uh, I thought I'd say some stuff about what to keep in mind for when you're submitting cards, because I've noticed a couple things that I'd like to pass on.

1. The more effort you put in, the easier it is to talk about your card.

This is something that feels strange to say, because I want to feel that everyone puts in as much effort as they can when they submit. I'm no professional critic, so I'm not going to tear everyone's dreams down and say that only suffering creators are worthy of positive feedback. What I'm trying to say is that it's always better to push for the limits and then dial it back than to push up to the edge and say "good enough."

It's far easier than it might seem to see which cards reach that "good enough" point when they are, indeed, good enough. And goodness is good! What that means on our side is that there's a functional card that ends up being particularly hard to talk about because its presented goal is to be functional. Again, that doesn't make for a quote-unquote "bad" card—but a card that's got effort, no matter what kind, gets that hook where we can actually talk about it. Talking about a card's weirdness opens up dialogue, whereas function alone ends up inadvertently stifling it. If you're worried about a card going too far, at the very least you're pushing for a conversation, and that's where the crux of card creation as an art lies.

2. It's okay if it's been done before—just make me care.

Then again, you'll also hear me say that simplicity is the way to go for winning cards. That's a bit of a hard line to balance, because on the one hand I do like talking about the kooky nonsense that people submit here from time to time, but I also love a well-executed trope. I suppose the challenge here is where "well-executed" lies.

For some people, that'll be enough just to reference certain characters or planes or events or the fact that there's a Saw in the set about murder-house-clown-horror. That much never gets my engine going. No, it's the matter of choice, of circumstance, of history, of all the possibilities that the mechanics and/or flavor are depicting that matter. Cards have action, and cards also have impact, and cards also-also have their own little world where this all takes place. If I could break down how every part of a card mattered, then I sure as hell would, but that's a post for another day when I don't have the world on my shoulders.

All I'll say is that you gotta consider, for any given trope, what the emotional hook is for someone who may not otherwise care about the trope. You're making an argument, and you're here to win me over.

3. Ambiguity is the mind-killer.

And by that, I mean that "I don't get it" will create frustrations upon frustrations. Where are there the biggest potential ambiguities? Great question, me, let's see.

Name: If you're going for something esoteric in the name, the rest of the card's gotta explain it. Actions need to be connected to the name.

Flavor text: Is there someone talking? Is it related to the action of the card, or something before, or something after? Does it flow well off the tongue? Show it to someone else—do they understand?

And most importantly: how are these elements connected?

4. Don't add flavor text if you don't need it.

If you have a lot of rules text on your card, you're good without flavor text. If you can't think of anything that's not already being expressed, some up with something different. If you're not confident, keep writing until you are. Creative writing is hard. Really hard. Trust me. In the end, you're just gonna have to keep at it. Pro tip: read more if you want to get better at writing. Read beyond what you usually read and it might surprise you.

5. And if nothing else, add an art description.

Art is integral to a lot of Magic cards. Seriously! If you feel that you're missing anything, use your words to say what you wanna say. Or if you're really not sure how to describe it, draw it yourself! Draw it badly! I'm a terrible artist and I still absolutely love drawing because sometimes you just have to get those ideas out of your head. It matters to your vision and it matters to the card.

Adding mood, placement, color, etc. can create the context that cards need that otherwise can't be depicted on the text or even the flavor text. Treat it as part of the main dish, as it were.

I know I've said some of this stuff before, but I hope you're still reading and learning like I am. Lord knows I've got a lot to learn.

@abelzumi

[prettygirluriel777]

this one's a little long oopsie

day twenty to twenty-six

sorry for not posting in like a week 😭 i wanted to have significant news to share instead of just "haven't tapped in yet" and while it's true that i haven't,, i've discovered a method that i'm really comfortable with and i honestly believe tonight is the night !!

so i start off w this meditation which is meant to make you feel like you're floating (sound familiar ?) and then i have this theta track queued to play right after !! i do my best to maintain the feeling i got from the meditation while the track is playing and the next part is arguably the most important for me.

i'm someone who,, by nature,, is always looking into the deeper meaning of things and possible results / effects and how things tie into other things so it's always been a little difficult to affirm stuff like "i am pure consciousness" to help tap into the void bc my mind automatically starts bringing up a bunch of questions,, so i brought states into it.

i'm not sure how it happened,, i kind of just ended up there and i can say without a doubt that i'm really glad i did. i believe in the idea that we are all pure consciousness expressing ourselves in a human form and because of that affirming that i was pure consciousness always made me a bit skeptical bc what exactly was the difference between being pure consciousness while tapping into the void and being pure consciousness in my everyday life ? (and yes you could say that the word 'pure' was capable of being a differentiator but that didn't really do it for me). this brought me back to a conversation i had w myself yesterday that really helped me have a strong position on the nature of my being.

to myself,, i am everything and to others,, i am human but regardless of all that,, i am in truth pure consciousness (take a shot every time i use this phrase 😭). i remembered coming to this conclusion and after that,, this edward art post came to mind (i've literally never read his stuff before LMAO). specifically the part where he mentions that when neville was imagining himself back in new york the outer world didn't exist (or smth along those lines). this really resonated w me and i couldn't help but draw a connection between forgetting about the outer world and the void.

now this is where states come in. armed with everything i'd learned the previous day i was finally able to create the difference i'd been searching for; as opposed to affirming "i am pure consciousness" i began to affirm "i am in the state of pure consciousness" which,, for me,, entailed not only completely disregarding the outer world but also truly embodying the truth of my existence. in addition to this,, i now think my day-to-day can be summarized by the affirmation "i am in the state of pure consciousness in human form".

this might sound silly and look like overcomplicating to a lot of people but to me it actually really simplified things for me and helped me create peace w so much. this isn't really meant to be an advice post so i'm sorry if you don't get what i'm saying. i'm just putting my personal experience out there but i'd be glad to talk about it in dms w any of you !!

one way or another,, my next post will be my success story so look out for that 💪🏼

[taz-ma-raz-skylar]

Taz Skylar on training his body and cooking skills ahead of One Piece Season 2!

Taz Skylar was met with an overwhelmingly warm welcome from One Piece fans at the 2024 MEFCC

By Sarah Kuleib ( February 15, 2024 )

Every pirate crew needs a cook. With a captain like Monkey D Luffy, whose ship seems to sail to the sounds of his stomach, finding a cook who could whip up the most delicious bowl of fried rice to join the Straw Hat Pirates was pretty high on his priority list. Luffy finds his cook in Sanji, and Netflix’s smash hit One Piece finds their Sanji in Taz Skylar.

When the Spanish-British-Lebanese Olivier Award-nominated actor was announced to be playing the romantic chef, Sanji, in Netflix’s live-action adaptation of One Piece, Skylar was catapulted to international stardom.

Skylar and his co-star Iñaki Godoy (Luffy), were recently in Abu Dhabi for the 12th edition of the Middle East Film and Comic Con (MEFCC), where they were met by thousands of passionate fans in straw hats queuing up for hours to take photographs, get autographs, and witness the pair’s charming interactions at panel discussions.

Esquire Middle East sat down with Taz Skylar at the MEFCC to discuss his intense stunt training, Season 2 of One Piece, and what’s in store for the rest of 2024.

–

ESQ: You’re a man of many titles: actor, screenwriter, thrill-seeker, professional surfboard creator. What drew you to each of those things and how do they come together to inform one another in your career and life?

TAZ: I was a really shy kid and I never used to leave home much. Thrill-seeking, I used to see it in movies and I thought “Oh that would be cool!” Surfing was the first thing that I did. I remember the first time I got in the water with a surfboard and a wave hit me – it wasn’t even very big but I was little, and I was like “Ahhh!”, and I got out [of the water]. The guy who was teaching me – he was called Juanito, and he’s still my friend today, 15 years later – was like “What are you doing man? Get in!” He grabbed me, put me back on the board, and pushed me out and that changed my life that day. That was the gateway. I got into other scary stuff and I would get angry at being scared. So if I was scared I would be like, “Cool, now there’s no choice, now you gotta do it.” That kind of spiraled and now it’s just a thing that I do.

Writing and acting… well, acting was an accident.

ESQ: A happy one?

TAZ: It was a happy accident! I’m very happy about it! I only like acting when I like the thing I’m acting in; nobody likes acting when they don’t like the thing they’re acting in! So, I only act in things that I like – at least now, I’ve definitely made that choice – and I always like what I’m writing. I want to make films, I want to make shows. Being in them is a cool part of it, but I want to make stuff. In a world where financial security is there, I don’t find much point to life other than leaving a legacy I can be proud of, and I think that can achieved by making stuff.

ESQ: There’s a different joy in filmmaking and writing.

TAZ: Yeah, yeah! You feel resolved in what you’re doing and connected. You have some sort of choice over what it can say or what the outcome can be. One Piece in particular was really cool because Matt and the whole team were really good to us in terms of saying “What do you want to do with it? What do you want to bring to it?” and that’s not always the case. When I do a writer’s room with other writers, my thinking is like: What do you like? Do you want to sit on a chair? A yoga mat? Do you want to bob around on a skateboard? What makes you most creative? Because whatever it is, do that thing. That’s the kind of environment I want to create and be a part of. When a film or show or play has been made in that way, you can feel it, you can feel that it’s been made very rag-tag.

ESQ: On the topic of One Piece, how did you prepare for the role of Sanji – mentally and physically, I know you did all of your own stunts – and with season 2 confirmed, is there anything you learned that will inform or change how you prepare for season 2?

TAZ: Ooh… yeah I did all my own stunts! Part of how I prepared for it… I really went psychopathic on it. Like, let’s throw absolutely everything we possibly can at the wall because we don’t have much to stick right now, we’re starting from zero.

It was 4 hours of training in the morning, then I’d cook a dish we needed to do for the show, repeat that dish over and over again, another 4 hours, then we’d go to the sauna and stretch, they’d pull on my legs and push on my back. That made me improve really quick but what it also did was decimate my legs. I have scar tissue on the inside of my ligaments and it took me about a year to feel like I could land on my legs without pain – I used to duct-tape my legs! I had to be quiet about it so they’d let me do my own stunts.

There was no real way of improving whilst not hurting myself because of how far we needed to go. Whereas for the second season, because I’ve maintained my level and haven’t stopped training ever since– I trained this morning with Iñaki at the UFC gym [in Abu Dhabi]! Iñaki came with me to a kickboxing session and he’s gotten so good at tricking in between the seasons too! So, because we’re kind of at a level that we’ve maintained, the second season for me is about how much quicker I can be. There are not many new kicks or moves to learn, so it’s more about how great we can make those moves. Part of it is going: instead of training 8 hours today, I’m going to train 4 and focus on choreography. Or maybe today I’m just going to do 2 and then stretch, because the less injured everything is, the quicker everything moves.

So for season 2, I want to enjoy it more, and I want to make what we had a lot better… and I want [to do] the party table kick.

ESQ: Was there a specific stunt that was the most difficult to do?

TAZ: Yeah! So there was this one where we jump over a pool, kick the Fishman mid-air, and land on a little rock. And that was all practicals! It was so difficult to do because he was underwater and they had to time pulling him out of the water at the exact same time that I jumped, and landing at the same place so that I could kick, and then there was another wire pull that took him to the other side of the pool. That must’ve taken an hour and a half which doesn’t sound like that much, but we were up against time. I remember thinking: “If we don’t get this, they’re going to cut it. They’re going to cut the stunt and this stunt will never exist.” It was the last take where we just managed it and they all looked at it and went “Cool, we got it! We can keep it!”, and we just started cheering. Isn’t it mad to think that there’s a world in which half an hour would’ve made the difference between it existing and not existing?

ESQ: Now, I must ask… how do you really feel about Oregano?

TAZ: [Laughs] Ha! I love it! I put it on salads! It’s not for savages! It’s nice – have oregano it’s good for you!

ESQ: Who and what are some of your personal influences as an artist?

TAZ: Florian Zeller is my favorite writer. Rappers are my favorite poets. I like old films. Keanu Reeves in Point Break made me want to skydive and surf and jump out of planes. I love Bond. My dad loves Bond, we used to have a box set. I love the way those films are made. I just worked with Martin Campbell who made two of my favorite Bond films.

ESQ: What’s in store for Taz Skylar this year?

TAZ: I’ve got four TV shows in development, with different production companies. One of which is called Seesaw which made a lot of Florian Zeller’s films that I’m really excited about! I don’t have that much time until we go shoot [One Piece] again. There’s a book I’m trying really hard to get the rights to and adapt, so I’m chasing the author about that. I’m going to try and see if I can get all of those things done before I go shoot again.

https://www.esquireme.com/culture/interviews/taz-skylar-on-training-his-body-and-cooking-skills-ahead-of-one-piece-season-2

[poupeesdecirque]

Posting by Queue, or: why I need some distance from my crafts

It has been some time since my last hobby meta blog entry, it had different reasons and one is that I need distance. Like, yes I of course enjoy crafting and sometimes I am like a little child that runs everywhere to show off things.

But it got ... less intense. And I learned I do better when I keep projects or at least details to myself to sit on them for longer. That the first euphoria is purely mine and not to be shared.

Like for my photos I have a buffer of several weeks now. Yes, I know past-me would have kind of hated that. But I learned I do better when I have a time buffer. I do take photos weekly but sometimes they don't feel special enough to get the weekly photo feature?

Friday & yesterday I went out for photos and while I like the ones from yesterday way more than the ones from friday I am not sure if the set from yesterday will get the feature or not as it's only a hand full of photos giving me that certain spark.

Other than that I am a very emotional artist, I sometimes really fuck up my art and hate it at the moment I worked on it, but then, sometimes, after a few days or weeks I can look at it and just wonder about what was my problem the day I made it.

Another thing is that I, myself, enjoy my art. The process of it. And I like to see my blog updating, sometimes I forget what post will go online and then I check the blog and think "ah yes, this was that thing!", and it reminds me why I made the blog overall, to show myself I had progress and that every tiny step counts.

Which leads to another reason why I hold back in regards of posting. Yes, I do share some snippets in my stories over on insta but not always and not all. I sit on over 300 drawings from the last two years alone nobody ever will see, I enjoyed drawing but it's nothing for the public eye. I will maybe go back and redraw some and share the redraws then, who knows?

But wait, there is actually more reasons.

The biggest or main reason is ... i sometimes go really wild on projects. In January I finished so many dolls it was insane, I worked on Cosplays and other crafts in an incredible speed, I have literally no idea where I found the time but I somehow did and doll parts arriving every week did the rest.

I keep the blog running with partially 2 month old stuff but .... to be honest I don't have doll stuff aside photos to do anymore. All I can do is wait for bodies to be shipped (or dolls even) and arrive. There has been no movement since January. Aside Iza getting the shipping notice for our Split, might take a while until its at her place and I can't really start on the Akuma until I got the body (which I at least have finally ordered this month) as colors need to be matched and mods to be made.

I am truly itchy to do something else than sewing all the time, I do enjoy cosplay but you know how much I like sewing (hint: not at all). So to remind myself of the fun I had in the past weeks I have mixed my blog to bless me with some progress I had which was maybe not sewing all the time. And well, the Cosplays have deadlines and I do get some ideas aside purely sewing while doing them, so that keeps me going for now.

Yes, I could start redoing dolls like Alastor or Erwin. But you know what? IT'S ALMOST ALL SEWING. Urgh.

Aside that real life is pretty good at eating me up and I just want to enjoy crafting. Right now drawing feels like stress relief but I hate the results and just scan the pieces and put them away to never look at them again, I have a bunch of posts queued up without any captions, a wip entry of a current project only has two photos but I lack the spoons to actually get them done. But since those posts are so far back it's fine (yes I know drafts are a thing).

In general I enjoy having my art to myself to get used to it before I put it out into the wild as I just recently got reminded I do bad with direct comparisons still and it hits some triggerpoints from the past and makes everything harder, I don't need that.

I literally have no idea if this blog makes sense even, lol. I just am tired of sewing and stopped working on my current project around lunch time and have drawn so much today and I walked way too much the whole week my friends urged me to stay the ef home and at least try to relax. But I'm restless as my body is too stressed (I know it all I'm a certified relaxation trainer so eh), so, have an over the place blog entry.

[genericpuff]

Dude…You.. are truly a mean spirited person by the way you attack Rachel and her comic. I was hoping to see actual valid criticism on this blog that are good takes and respectful…but all I see is a savage, hate-mongering being; projecting your own personal fears on fictional Greek gods, with loads of malice; accusing RS of so many things that’s not even an issue in the slightest.. like bro are we reading the same story?? Bc I’d assume you’d dislocate your shoulders from all the reaching you do, to just cherry and nitpick the comic so much; at this point I think you’re dedicating your life’s work to shitting on this comic with asinine accusations?? hell, I get the comic aint perfect but the way y’all shit on it damn near has the same level of hate you’d normally have for a fucked up, white supremacist manifesto…. have you ever sought inner peace or?? what’s the problem,,,

Your views are truly horrid and y’all are why ppl are scared to come out with their own series bc of malicious people like you getting kicks of punching down an author and mocking them instead of being more civil with your views. Probably haven’t considered creators like RS with ADHD have RSD too huh… maybe haven’t considered how ppl with RSD got symptoms where it’s pretty difficult to take criticism…lmao.. aaaaand yet you antis are just as barbaric as obsessive LO stans and y’all just won’t leave well alone smfdh

Heaven help you fr. Hope you cease your obsessive hate for a fictional story and seek actual help than pouring all this hate on a book and pointing fingers at issues that’s nonexistent in the series.😒

Ooh yay it's been a while since I've gotten an ask calling me out. Love to see it :3

So here's the fun thing - I do have way less "spicy" takes on the comic (because let's face it, the definition of "valid" in this context is often... very subjective, I've seen people call the most respectful criticisms and reviews of LO "hate" plenty of times before) but I also just enjoy dunking on it because it's fun and it's how I engage with this comic that, believe it or not, I did genuinely used to love. I don't talk this much shit about comics I've never cared about. Boyfriends and Let's Play are also both godawful but I never loved them quite as much as I loved LO back when I used to read it religiously, so I just don't feel like talking about them as much as I do LO. Saturday nights used to be my favorite night of the week but they became dreadful after a while as my love for the series' drained relative to its decline. Now I have to find other things to look forward to on Saturdays, so I've gone ahead and made my own things, things that have rejuvenated the feelings I used to feel reading LO.

Here's another fun fact, in case you're new to Tumblr and don't know how it works - this is just my account that's dedicated solely to LO stuff. There are other things that I do besides shit-talking this comic and using it as fuel to create my own interpretations of it, but you don't see that here because this blog is, again, purely for my LO related stuff. I also have a day job that's completely unrelated to webcomics, and draw webcomics that aren't related to LO. I spent like.... 6 hours playing Slime Rancher today. I know it doesn't look like I have a life outside of this when you sift through my anti-LO-themed blog of queued posts all in one go, but I do lmao

Sorry I don't have a more satisfying response than "it's fun!" I have a great time in this community, everyone in it has been genuinely sweet and caring and accepting. Many of the people in this community are genuine friends now, who I go to for things outside of LO, from comic discussion to real life talk.

You know which community doesn't make me feel safe or welcome? The core LO community that's come at me in my inbox, snuck into our fan groups to spy, and even outright made bots to breach our privacy. As soon as I had even the slightest bit of criticism for the comic, back during the trial arc, they decided I wasn't "one of them" and I realized I was terrified of being an "anti" because I knew how anti's were treated by the community. I had to find ways to accept my own feelings as they were changing and having the antiLO/UnpopularLO community accept me the way they did... really changed my perspective on the whole "fandom" thing. I can take part in both sides in the anti/unpopular community - praise and criticism. Maybe consider for a second the only reason the criticism is so loud... has to do with the fact the comic itself isn't worth praising anymore.

All that aside, it's fine if you don't like my takes or don't agree with how I choose to spend my time! There are both better and even worse takes out there from other people just as pissed as I am about the turn LO has taken. None of those people, myself included, do what we do to "make" others hate the comic or hate on Rachel. None of us are encouraging outright bullying directly at Rachel, we're literally just curating our own space for discussion and memes and art and writing surrounding this dumb little comic that many of us did find enjoyment in back when it first started. And I don't think any of us are saying that because we don't like this comic, that means we're gonna automatically trash on anyone else's just for existing? Because, again, none of us encourage direct bullying, and if anything, all these accounts have inspired more people to take up comic creating through AU and fanfic content of the source material that they wish could have been better. If anyone's legitimately "scared" to go into webcomics because of a few strangers' opinions on the Internet about a massive commercial comic that's completely unrelated to their own work and far above what most creators will ever make... well, I don't know how to fix that or help with that. Maybe apply your own advice that you're giving me in your ask and stop caring so much? I'm just a person engaging in one of their many hyperfixations on the Internet and there are others who happen to share in my interests and enjoy my takes, whether or not that includes the saltier ones. There's nothing special enough about me to warrant any sort of finger-pointing like what you're doing. I'm not a monolith nor am I the end-all-be-all to webcomic creation or discussion lmao

It's honorable you want to defend Rachel, or people with ADHD/RSD. I can't shame you for that. But coming onto my blog that's themed around antiLO/unpopularLO content and doing the same thing you're claiming I'm doing (which I'm not because again, it's not like I'm going directly at Rachel with any of the things I say or do and I would never encourage anyone else do that either lol) is a little... hypocritical, don't you think?

But - sass time - what do I know. I'm just someone who's also ADHD. Autistic with RSD too! Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, as none of us can speak on behalf of the entire neurodivergent community.

Appreciate the crit though, thank you for taking the time to write <3 Sorry to hear my blog didn't turn out to be what you expected but... I don't recall ever setting those expectations in the first place. At least not when I started. Now that Rekindled's a thing I suppose people aren't gonna expect blatant trashing when they find it but that's why I'm also trying to move away from purely trashing on LO so that I can put my time and energy into more productive stuff (even if that "productive stuff" is making a comic that started as an LO-spite project LOL)

But at the same time... I mean, is it really that surprising? Like I guess this can serve as a general "heads up" to anyone else who's new here, but I do not go easy on LO and have a lot to say about it (and I'm very loud and disgruntled about it) but I figured most people would realize that's the amount of spite needed to redraw the whole thing as I'm doing right now LMAO Like c'mon, you think someone who only dislikes LO mildly would really put in all this work? 🤣 I do it because I can't stand to see where it's gone, and I want to give myself and others who were disappointed alongside me the closure we all deserve. Trying my best, at least (～￣▽￣)～

That's all for now! Have a good one :' )

[1000roughdrafts]

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hi everyone :) I have missed you all so much! I have been kicking myself these last two years for being gone for so long. Not only did I feel like I was letting y'all down, I felt like I was letting myself down. Writing is my biggest passion, and I felt like I abandoned it, and you. For context, before I left, I had Covid pretty bad, and am now suffering from long-term effects with my health because of it (that are thankfully more under control now). After having Covid I left a toxic relationship to unwittingly enter another, even more toxic and controlling relationship (whew is that a story!) and I learned that I have ADHD! (How fun is that!)

Anyway, to everyone that's still following me,

No seriously, thank you for sticking around!!

I have been working on some stuff for the last few months that I am so excited to share with y'all!

A few hours after this post will be a little Valentine's Day fluff fic to come out. Then in the coming weeks, I have a song inspired DeanxReader fic to be coming out labeled If You're Gonna Lie, and the following requests (under the read more with snippets of the fic) ready right now, to be queued. The requests will be coming out first, and then my own idea fics.

If you're interested in updating the tag list (whether that is adding your url, removing it or checking for accuracy) click here :) Next fic to be posted February 28th so if you want to update the tag list, be sure to do so before then :)

"Yes! Why does everyone keep asking me if I'm okay!" she growls, "first my dad, then John, now you!" She throws her hand onto her stomach to try to push away the pain. Sam is taken aback by this, and that's when he notices that her hand is held tightly on her stomach. Suddenly, it all makes sense. Sam is confident that this isn't Y/N, that Y/N is in there somewhere, fighting to be free from whatever demon is possessing her.

I hear my name in Dean's voice from a distance, but I'm surrounded by total darkness. I try so hard with all of my might to tell him I'm here, that it's okay, but the words don't come. Just as it takes all of my strength to open my eyes, but they burn. Everything burns. I don't even try to suppress the scream that bellows out of me. Taking as deep of a breath as I can, I'm scared for myself when it sounds and feels like I'm breathing a water and air mixture. "What's happening?" I manage to say, but Dean puts a finger to my lips. "No, no," he soothes, "no, just don't talk. It's okay," he says so gently, and as he maneuvers me into his lap I cry out in agonizing pain. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he says, then his voice switches into a shaky, fear filled yell for Castiel that hurts my heart almost as much as my wound hurts.

Y/N always felt like she had big shoes to fill, being third born after two boys. She never really formed a bond with John like the eldest Winchester had, despite her best efforts to impress the man. Her next role model was Dean, who became more of a father to her than John ever could be.  Up until her eleventh birthday Dean did her hair into pigtails, partly because he didn’t know how to do any other hair style, but mostly because he thought it was the cutest on her. He’d pack her and Sam’s lunch with snacks he’d bought from vending machines and even pretend to take her on hunts because he knew how eager she was to be just like him.  When she wasn’t learning about monsters and guns with Dean, she was spending her time with Sam. He’d help her with her homework, or play board and card games. They had as much in common as Y/N and Dean, neither Sam nor Y/N got along with John, and neither really knew their mothers. 

Speaking of requests, I'll leave them open for now but I can't promise all will be fulfilled as I try to get my groove. My schedule as I get back into things, I think, will be one fic every other week.

I also updated my master lists and will be posting them later today, to then put them all in one master master list lol

Thank you all for still being here and I hope you like what will be coming out soon :)

Current PermaTags @waywardblueshun @81mysteriouslyme @drakelover78 @soab1967 @shutupandfeedmethings @pollywantacracker666 @sonnierae26 @obsessed5sosfreak @tlovescoffee @hobby27 @cluz1babe @emptycanvasposts @suckmyapplejacks @sigrunsavestheday @flamencodiva

Dean @akshi8278 @squirrelnotsam @laxe-from-outer-space @ellewritesfix05 @cluz1babe @lyarr24 @mrspeacem1nusone @idksupernaturl @fandom-princess-forevermore @stoneyygirl

Sam @fangirlxwritesx67 @tlovescoffee @immafangirlmess @sizekinkshawty

[fanfoolishness]

how to disappear completely (Jedi: Fallen Order)

Cal stumbles upon a particularly powerful memory on Bracca, when all he wants to do is forget. Cal & Prauf friendship, Cal angst, whump, and PTSD. Psychometry is cruel sometimes 🥺 ~4800 words.

-

The train clattered and blared around him, but Cal just turned the volume up on his ancient audiobulb until his ears buzzed with heavy bass and weirdsynth warbles.  He closed his eyes and leaned back against his seat.  Another day in the scrapyards waited for him, and it could wait a little longer.

Especially today.  He’d checked the dates a few times when it occurred to him this morning, ran the conversion back and forth until he was pretty sure.  If his math was right, he’d forgotten his own sixteenth birthday.  It had fallen last week, and he’d completely missed it.  

It was too easy to lose track of time here.  He stared down at his hands, thumbs poised on the audiobulb for control.  They blurred when he blinked.

Some birthday.  It’d been like every other day here, full of the smell of engine oil, the acrid sear of welding, the roar of machinery.  How was he supposed to realize it was different?  Then again, he shouldn’t have been surprised.  No one mentioned birthdays here. 

He didn’t count the ones he’d had before, back on Coruscant, or in the Clone Wars.  Didn’t like remembering time in the Temple, or the time on the Albedo Br--

He nudged the volume higher, losing himself in the jarring music.

The train shuddered to a stop all too soon, and Cal got to his feet, joining the throng of departing scrappers.  Workers queued to have their IDs scanned and start their job on the clock.  Not that it made much difference if they were on time or not, aside from having to do unpaid overtime if they missed check-in.  Cal knew he’d never earn enough to get out of here.

He shoved his tattooed arm under the scanner, the screen flashed green, and he made his way to the lift.  

Cal spotted Prauf waiting for the lift, and smiled despite himself.  He put his audiobulb away.  He waved, and Prauf waved back.  

“Come on, Cal!  We can make it on the next one.”

Cal jogged over, avoiding a gaping hole in the metal platform and a shower of sparks from a welder droid working next to the lift.  “Hey, Prauf.  You caught the early train?”

“Nah, I think I just got off from a different car.  Spotted you earlier during check-in.  You can see that hair of yours for miles, you know,” Prauf chuckled. 

“Well, you’re not exactly hard to miss either,” Cal joked, nudging Prauf with an elbow.  On a human he’d have knocked them somewhere near the ribs, but on Prauf, his arm barely reached the Abednedo’s waist.  “What’re we working on today?  Still tearing down the Providence Dreadnaught?”

“Scuttlebutt says they got a new haul,” Prauf said as the lift descended.  They packed into the lift with the others, pressing in to fill all the space; Cal, one of the smallest in the group, was crammed uncomfortably against the wall.  “Bunch of debris from orbit.  Might be some interesting stuff, but I don’t know that it’s been sorted out yet.”

Cal let his mind drift, which was easy when the alternative was pondering being wedged between Prauf, the wall, and a Trandoshan’s armpit.  He sort of liked new haul days.  The work could get so tedious when it was the same wreck day in, day out, and at least new wreckage provided a break from the monotony.  Sometimes there’d be droids mixed in -- gonk droids in need of recharges, lesser scavenger droids that could help break down the components of the ships they’d come in, even the occasional odd protocol droid.  He liked most droids, liked tinkering with them.  He might not have hands as small as an Anzellan’s for the really fine droid work, but he did pretty well, and it was rewarding to see a droid power back on, its memory and purpose coming back to it.  

The lift ground to a halt and the workers flowed out, taking their separate ways.  Cal, Prauf, and a few of the regulars from their crew - Nintak, Harj, Whistler and Mebs - made their way to their shift boss’ platform.  There wasn’t a roof in this part of the superstructure, and rain sheeted down over them in blustery squalls.  Awesome Bracca weather, as usual.  

The boss, a keen-eyed upgraded scavenger droid, noted their approach.  “We have new scrap deposits available on the two-hundred and thirty-seventh sublevel for initial processing, collected from mid-orbit.  Identity of the vessel or vessels is uncertain.  Priority is given for rare-earth metals and salvageable weaponry with applicable finders’ fees available for bonuses.  Once stripped, scrap will move on to the next level for further reclamation.”  It peered at them, calculating.  “Get to it!”

Prauf and Cal followed the crew up the ladders and across narrow, teetering walkways, through cramped halls of leaning bulkheads and creaking plates.  Cal was steady on his feet, as always, even on the narrowest bridges.  Prauf sometimes called him a natural acrobat for the skill, but privately Cal thought it was just that he wasn’t afraid of what would happen if he fell.

Not that he intended to fall.  No matter what had happened, he always kept going.  He would, because what else was there to do?

But some nights, trying to fall asleep and failing, it sounded rather nice.  

Falling, and not having to get back up.

Prauf whistled, interrupting Cal’s thoughts as the crew spread out among the new wreckage.  They were here.

“Well, this is a mess, no mistake,” Prauf said.  

“They expect us to sort this?” Cal asked.  He shook his head in amazement.  Massive, towering lumps of wreckage were strewn out before them on a vast open-air platform, where it had all apparently been dumped haphazardly from above.  

Most of the stuff they sorted was all recognizably ships, sometimes Republic, sometimes Separatist.  Usually Cal quietly found a way to avoid working on Separatist ships with battle droids, or anything of the Venator class.  Still, there was plenty of work all around for picking clean the ghosts of the Clone Wars.  

This, though, he had no idea what it was.  Metal had fused with duraplast and transparisteel in most of the objects, forming lumpen, twisted, irregular structures that held no hope of recognition, soaring high over the workers on the platform.  No wonder they were mostly just looking for metal components with this lot.  

He sighed.  There’d be no hope of an intact droid here.  Well, onto the other plan, then; collecting enough decent metals for other uses.

“Wish me luck, Prauf,” he said, reaching for his earphones and his mask.

“Luck to both of us for finding anything in this,” Prauf laughed.  “Let me know if you see anything interesting.”

“Always do,” Cal said with a smile.  He clapped his mask over his face, making sure the seal fit as snugly as it could, and cranked up his music.

-

The aches in his back and wrist nagged at him, and Cal shook his head, realizing he’d been crouched at the same door panel for a solid hour.  He’d been stripping out the metal lining the wired components of the door, hoping for enough gold to take back for a bonus.  Not that there was much to buy with Scrapper Guild scrip, but sometimes there’d be new music tracks to buy at the guild store.  He always liked to have a new album, a useful distraction.  And he’d missed his own birthday.  He deserved it.

Cal slowly stood up, stretching with a groan to his full height.  He wondered how tall he was now.  Hard to gauge without a visit to medical, which he avoided as much as he could; better to keep his head down.  Still, he thought he might’ve had a growth spurt lately.  Prauf didn’t seem to tower quite as much as he used to.

Cal lowered his hands slowly to his sides, taking a deep breath, his mind flicking to the day he and Prauf had first met.  Cal had been much shorter then, and Prauf had seemed almost as tall as Master T--

Cal squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed his audiobulb, skipping ahead to the loudest, most jarring track.  Sho-drums and screeching vocals brought him back to a rainy, misty day on Bracca, his poncho heavy on his shoulders, water dripping into his eyes from his hood.

Don’t look back.

He gathered up what he’d collected so far into a scuffed metal bin and hauled it over to the staging area, where the boss would grade whatever they’d managed for the day.  He emptied it out onto the weigh-panel and scanned his tattoo.  He wrinkled up his nose at the total weight.  Not near as much as he’d hoped for, nor as pure.

Cal sighed, glancing around the platform, looking for a piece of the wreckage that hadn’t been checked yet and didn’t have another worker at it already.  It took him a moment before he spotted something near the edge, something that looked vaguely like it had once been a modular room and now resembled a work of abstract art.  Cal jogged through the glancing rain, passing Prauf as he went.  He paused his music and slipped his earphones off.

“Anything good?” Prauf called, waist deep in wreckage.

“Nothing to write home about,” Cal said, an old joke between them. 

Prauf shrugged.  “Well, you never know.  Maybe there’ll be something good in the next one.  Good luck, Cal.”

“Same to you, Prauf.”

Cal reached the debris he’d had in sight and walked around the perimeter, trying to figure out the best place to get started.  Most of the surface was a smooth, melted mess of hull and bulkhead, making it difficult to find any kind of entry point, even with a good torch.  

The lightsaber hidden at his back felt heavy.  He flinched, twitching his poncho over it more securely, and moved on.

Hm.  There was a possible point a few feet up, a slender cleft that had opened up inside the metal, distorting a pattern on the twisted white walls.  The opening was dark and dreary in the rain, with loose wires dangling into the gap.  It was going to be a tight fit, but he thought he could make it.  Maybe on the inside, there’d be something to score.  

Focused on the right way to climb in, with the metal surrounding it scored and melted, Cal didn’t realize that the pattern on the outer wall looked familiar.  He hoisted himself up to the gap, head and shoulders already half in, feet braced against the outer wall of the hull.

He reached in and brushed the inner wall.

A blinding flash of light.  

No --!

-

Kicks idled in the hallway outside the training field, leaning against the wall, his blaster secure in its holster.  He wondered how dinner in the mess would be that night; they had a good group in the kitchen, but sometimes, some of their ideas got a little out of hand.  “Creative” nights were usually best spent eating ration bars with Archer and Dibs instead.

He hoped the training session between the Commander and the General was going well.  The Commander had been down on himself, they’d all noticed; had difficulty with one of the trials and couldn’t get past it.  They’d tried to reassure him, but he was a stubborn one, pushing back against the boys who told him it was all right not to make it the first time.

Kicks was sure the General would help him sort it, though.  The General was always doing what he could to make them better, and he expected a lot, but he also picked you up when you were down.  He and the Commander were an excellent match for the Iron Battalion.  Kicks was proud to serve both of them.

The radio buzzed in his helmet, and he laid a hand over it, listening closely.

EXECUTE ORDER 66.

The words leached into his head, written in blood.

Yes.

Of course he would.

He turned toward the training hall, considering.  There was a small sense in the back of his mind, faint and ringing, of something he didn’t want to do, something mistaken, something wrong. He shook his head, unable to name it.  Far clearer was the sense of focus filling his mind, his body, his hands.

The General was too dangerous for him alone.  That much was obvious.

But the Commander --

Kicks opened the door, seeking their locations.  Up above in the mezzanine he glimpsed them.  He made eyes on the towering General first.  But there, much smaller beside him, a shock of red hair --

-

“Prauf!  Prauf, come quick!  It’s Cal!”

What the -- Prauf dropped what he was doing and ran in the direction of the voice, which turned out to be Harj, a sturdy Weequay.  Prauf leaped over a pile of debris and rounded the bend between two looming former structures near the edge of the platform.  Had the kid been hurt, an accident?  He still remembered the day Cal broke his wrist -- nearly lost the whole damn hand -- when a segment of debris fell, and he did not want to see the kid hurt like that again.  But the alternative to an injury was something far worse.

Prauf skidded to a stop near the edge of the platform, a dizzying drop miles down.  He paid it no mind, focused only on the seizing kid on the ground in front of him.  Dank farrik!

Harj was crouched beside him, his poncho off and bundled underneath the boy’s head as a cushion.  “I heard something fall and came to look, and he’s doing this?  What do we do?!” Harj exclaimed.  “I, I took his respirator off in case he was choking, but I don’t know what else to do!” 

“Go call the medic,” Prauf urged.  “I’ll stay with him, look after him.  Maybe it’ll stop on its own, but if not, I know a little human first aid.  Go on.”

Harj took off loping across the field, and Prauf creaked to his knees beside the kid, kneeling between Cal and the edge of the platform.  “Cal!  Cal!  Can you hear me?”  

If Cal could hear him, Prauf couldn’t tell.  The kid’s muscles twitched and spasmed, his back arching, head jerking into the folded up poncho beneath his head.  His hands and feet pedaled; his fingers knotted.  And his eyes stared far, far past Prauf, someplace he couldn’t follow. 

“Cal!”  Prauf watched helplessly, his gut aching.  All he remembered from human first aid and seizures was to make sure they didn’t hit anything dangerous during an episode.  Ha!  This was possibly the most unsafe place to have a seizure, past underwater or making a hyperspace jump.   “I don’t know what to do, kid,” he whispered.  

He took a deep breath, then realized Cal had stilled.

“Cal!”  He bent as low as he could over the kid, searching his face for signs of waking, listening for a huff of breath.  The kid’s green eyes fluttered and his face went slack, the faraway stare relaxing into something more natural.  Then he was blinking, eyes slowly focusing on Prauf’s face, approximately six inches from his own.

“Pr-- Prauf!” Cal gasped, flinching at the huge face above him.  Prauf leaned back hastily.

“Sorry!  Just worried about you.  You gave us quite a scare.”

Cal slowly, clumsily, tried to get his hands under himself to sit up, but couldn’t manage it.  He blinked, breathing hard.  “Prauf, what -- what happened?” he asked hoarsely, clearly dazed.  Prauf reached out to help him sit up.  He locked his arm around Prauf’s and managed to stay sitting upright.

“I don’t know what happened, kid,” Prauf said, blinking back tears of relief.  “You scared the crap out of me and Harj.  He came around the corner, saw you having some kind of a seizure.  Do you know what caused it?  Something in the wreck?  We called medical for you.”

Cal started to protest, and Prauf cut in.  “Don’t worry about the credits.  We’ll pitch in for you, you know that.  Scrapper’s code.”

Cal sagged against him, and Prauf realized he was shivering.  Prauf pulled Harj’s poncho over him to try to shield him from the misting rain.  Cal curled into himself.

“I don’t know what happened,” Cal whispered.  “What I… saw.  I think this is  -- no, no --”  He cast a furtive look at the wreck behind him, then gulped, looking nauseous.

“What you saw?  In the wreck?”  Prauf sniffed, checking for any of the noxious gases that sometimes leaked from wrecks like this.  But no, Harj had had to remove Cal’s respirator; he must have been wearing it, and Prauf knew that was one point where Cal didn’t skimp on safety.  His mind raced.  “Maybe there was a live power source?  Some kinda flashing light?”  Prauf had heard of that triggering shakes in some species.  “What’d you see?”

Cal’s eyes widened suddenly, and the color drained further from his face, if it was possible.  Where the heck was that medical droid?

“No, I didn’t see anything,” Cal muttered.  At least he looked a little more alert now.  “I didn’t see anything.”  He rolled away from Prauf, crawling up to a shaky standing position.  He wavered on his feet, still pale as anything, looking smaller than ever beneath the two ponchos.

“You’re not making a lotta sense.”  Prauf hauled himself back up to his feet, putting an arm around Cal.  Cal leaned hard against him.  “This ever happen before, Cal?  Is it a sickness or something?”

The kid had that glassy look in his eye, the one he got whenever Prauf got too close to asking about his life before the scrapyard.  Prauf’s gut sank.  That look haunted him sometimes.  It was the look that was liable to bug him on the train ride home, a look that set him worrying about the kid he’d found from the wastes years back.  He wondered if Cal was ever going to tell him what it meant.  

He wondered if he did, if he’d be strong enough to hear it.

“I -- uh, yeah,” Cal said.  “When I was little.”  He still had that wary look, like something hunted, but he stood up straighter and managed to keep himself upright on his own.  “Seizing, uh, sickness.  It was just so long ago.”  He tucked his face into his shoulder, not meeting Prauf’s eyes.  “I thought I grew out of it.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed, Cal,” Prauf said.  He patted Cal gently on the back.  “It’s not something you can help.  Is it going to happen again, you think?”

“No,” said Cal, and he blinked back tears.  He reached up and wiped at his face.  “No, not if I’m -- careful, Prauf.  I’ll be fine.”

“He’s over here,” Harj called, rounding the bend and leading the ancient guild medical droid back to them.  The droid clanked its way over to them, one arm whirring with medical attachments.  Prauf looked away.  That thing always made him queasy.  He gave Harj a nod instead, and the Weequay returned to work, though not without looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” Cal protested.  But the droid reached out with a scanner, spitting out Cal’s number and birthday, and started trying to take a temperature from his forehead.

Prauf paused, picking up on the date.  Wait.  Damn it, Cal.

Cal was busy trying to knock the droid’s arm away from himself with one hand, the other arm at his back beneath his layers of clothing, hovering there as if protecting something.  Maybe he’d hurt his back in the initial fall.

“You really should let him check you over, Cal.  You never know.  Not everything’s obvious like the wrist was,” Prauf cautioned.

Cal set his jaw, looking determined.  Prauf sighed in exasperation, both glad to see Cal looking more like his normal self, and very, very annoyed at Cal’s stubborn streak.  Kid could be maddening, and Prauf was afraid it was going to get him hurt sometime.  More than it already had.

“I waive my right to injury credits for this,” Cal said firmly.  Prauf crossed his arms skeptically, and the droid backed off.

“I accept.  No credits will be delivered to you regardless of the nature of this injury.  The Scrappers’ Guild assumes no responsibility for --”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.  You’re good, you can go now,” said Cal, but he looked exhausted even as he said it.  He dropped the hand from his back, visibly relaxing, but looked nervous again when he glanced back at Prauf.  “Prauf… come on, I hate it when you look at me like that.”

Prauf put his hands on his hips, shaking his head.  “You never do that, kid.  If they owe you even a single credit, you need to be taking it.  We all know they don’t pay us enough.  And look at you, you look terrible.  You’re worrying me.”

“I know,” Cal said miserably, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Look, Prauf, just leave it alone.  I’m okay, I swear.”  He realized there was a second poncho draped around his shoulders and shrugged out of it, wrapping it in his arms.  “I -- is this Harj’s?  I should go give it back.”

“You really sure you’re okay?”  The birthdate the medical droid had announced rattled round Prauf’s head.  Sixteen.  That’s so kriffing young.  But then again, the kid had been so much smaller when Prauf first found him, hiding out back of the scrappers’ quarters.  Kid must have come in over the swamps and the mines from one of the dozens of wrecks out there.  He’d been small, but the fresh wound on his face and the haunted expression had made him seem much older.

Cal looked up at him, those big eyes just as haunted as that day years ago.  Just as scared as he was back then.  “I’m fine, I swear,” Cal insisted.  But he was trying not to cry.

Prauf nodded sadly, and clapped Cal on the shoulder.  Kid always was a terrible liar.

-

Cal’s boots clanked on the stairs as he climbed up to his closet-sized room in the scrapper’s dormitories.  He normally took these stairs quickly, eager to get out of the dank, narrow stairwell to go and relax in his dank, narrow bunk.  At least he could kick his boots off, settle in, eat a protein bar, and hope to pass out.

But tonight he dragged himself slowly up the stairs, head pounding, utterly drained.

His brain spun with a sickening mix of thoughts he was too afraid to look at, memories he couldn’t bear.  There was a blank void in his head, and the hollowness flooded down from his head to his feet, gutting him and leaving him nothing but bones.

He didn’t know what he saw, but he knew he’d seen something, and he knew it was… big, whatever it was.  It wasn’t the first time he’d seen something on Bracca, but by avoiding certain types of ships, wearing gloves, and keeping to himself, he’d kept experiencing echoes down to just a few a day, and they’d stayed minor.  Sometimes he’d have the occasional headache or lightheadness, but that was easy to hide, and the rain helped mask the evidence of memories that were more emotional.  He’d thought he had this down.

Prauf said he’d had a seizure.  He hadn’t had a seizure from psychometry since he was a very small child, maybe even from before he went to the Temple; it was lost in the hazy sense of the time before his training really began.  He did remember Master Yoda sitting beside him, back when they were nearly the same height, and telling him about his ability.  

From the Force it is, youngling.  Echoes, memories of the past.  Unique, your gift is.

Cal had been frightened, but curious.  He hadn’t known what the episodes were; all he’d known was that he would be someone else, and then he’d wake up sore and confused.  The way Master Yoda talked, it meant that he was special.  That the Force had chosen him for this.  He’d carried that with him with pride, before.

He reached the eighty-seventh rise and flashed his tattoo at the automatic door.  It slid open for him and he trudged to the seventh door on the left.

He nearly tripped on something in the dim hall light.  He looked down at his feet and saw a small package wrapped in thin foil.  He squinted down at it, expecting some mistake, but the note on the package in Aurebesh spelled his name.  

“Huh?”  Cal reached down and picked it up in surprise, taking it inside his small room.  As the door closed behind him, he sank onto his thin, hard bunk, and unwrapped it.

“What?” Cal said aloud.  He’d just unwrapped three new albums, including the latest from Mister Mockwell and The Agasar, and Max Reebo’s solo album.  “How?”  Had the guild somehow sent him these?  No, that didn’t make sense.  He reached for the note from the outside of the package and turned it over.  The writing was blocky but neat.

Hey, Cal - a little scrap rat told me it was your birthday last week. Sorry I missed it.  Hope you enjoy the new tunes!  And let me know if that old audiobulb gives you trouble, they can be temperamental. Feel better.  - Prauf

Below the signature, in a more hurried, scribbled hand, it said,

PS - Take care of yourself, Cal.  I hope you know you can talk to me.  Any time.

Cal laughed shakily.  “Oh, man, Prauf,” he whispered.  His eyes burned with tears, triggered by Prauf’s kindness.  Cal wished he could take him up on his offer, tell him everything.  But he knew it was impossible.  Knew there was nothing left to do but hide, today, tomorrow, for as long as he could imagine.  

He sniffed, rubbing hard at his eyes with the back of his hand, telling himself to make sure to get Prauf a caf tomorrow.  For the next week, honestly, after all his friend had done for him.  

Cal stripped off his poncho and boots and curled up on his bed.  He reached to his back and pulled out the lightsaber he kept tightly clipped to his belt, hidden beneath the poncho.  The medical droid had been so, so close to examining him fully.  Too damn close.  Anyone could have seen, while he was out --

He set his master’s lightsaber down on the fuel crate he used as a dresser.  It shone dimly in the faint single overhead light, staring back at him.  Sometimes he clung to it, the only thing he had left from his old life.  Sometimes he hated it for what it made him, for the danger it meant.  Tonight when he looked at it he only felt numb.

He nudged the lightsaber to the back of the crate’s surface, making room to carefully stack the new albums with the old ones he’d gathered over the past few years.  The little stack wasn’t much, but it was tall enough to hide the lightsaber behind it, and that was something.  

-

His sleep was broken, tumbled, haunted by shadows as it often was.  Master Tapal roamed the hallways of the Albedo Brave, and he was strong and wise.  Cal trotted along beside him, small and quick.  They talked about many things -- a little gossip, a single treasured joke, news about the war -- and they rounded the corner, coming upon two clones in the middle of sharing a story.  There was Archer with his neat tattoo, and beside him, his best friend, Kicks.

Kicks, standing at attention --

Kicks, turning his head to listen -- 

Proud to serve them both --

Proud --

No, no, Cal couldn’t remember what came next.  Wouldn’t.  He cringed, trying to hide, running in long endless corridors.  The Force taunted him, smothering him with memory he couldn’t bear to recognize, but somehow far, far out of reach.  Fear choked him.  He was pleading for help, pleading not to remember --

Please don’t, please, I don’t want to remember --

But something louder than the memory was stirring, rapid beats in the back of his head.  The melody rose and fell, and he focused on it in his sleep, the fear slowly, slowly disappearing.  His earphones held fast, staying with him despite his tossing and turning.

Cal rolled over in his bunk, pulling his thin blanket closer, and the music played on.