#had to pantomime climbing

[homowithoutsapiens]

was talking to this girl in the changing rooms yesterday, who spoke very little english and was trying to tell me about her disastrous attempts at swimming lessons. she had apparently not been taught the word ‘drowning’. “i cannot do it,” she tells me, “i keep drinking water.”

I actually really like the thing when you're starting to get the hang of a new language, enough to understand and say simple sentences but you gotta get creative to get more complex thoughts across, like a puzzle. I remember a time in the restortation school when a classmate who wasn't natively finnish and did her best anyway dropped something and sighed, telling me "every day is monday this week. I have had four mondays this week." And I understood.

I don't think I speak much of spanish anymore, but in the nursing school training period I did there, I did manage to get by with making weird Tarzan sentences. I got a nosebleed at some point and startled another nurse. Not knowing the words "humidity" or "stress", I managed to string together: "This is ok. It is hot, it is cold, I have a bad day, I am sad, I have blood. This is normal for me." And she understood.

And sometimes you just say things weird, but it's better than not saying it. One time, I was stuck in a narrow hallway behind someone walking really slowly with a walker, and he apologised for being in the way. I was not in any hurry, but didn't know the spanish word for "hurry", but I did know enough words to try to circumvent it by borrowing the english "I have all the time in the world."

The man burst into one of those cackling old man laughters that they do when something in this world still manages to surprise them. He had to be somewhere between 70 and a 100 years old, and I guess if there was one thing he wasn't expecting to hear today, it would be a random blond vaguely baltic-looking fuck casually announce that he is the sole owner and keeper of the very concept of time.

[ayeforscotland]

Seeing that Poppy Watch stuff as an Australian is very bizarre. Poppies are an important token of remembrance for us as well, particularly for the ANZAC soldiers who were killed during the Gallipoli Campaign, which had such a deep impact on Australian and Aotearoan culture entirely because of how it wasted hundreds of thousands of people's lives to achieve absolutely nothing. Seeing people make fun lawn ornaments about it is kinda... hmm. Ghoulish? I'm getting ready for work rn so I'm having trouble getting my thoughts across but it feels bad, man.

You’re right, the poppy particular symbolises sacrifices made in the First World War. Most of the conscripts who were sent to the frontlines were young and scared shitless.

They were ordered to go over the top into a hail of machine gun fire and artillery and mustard gas, by generals who were tens of miles away from where the fighting was taking place.

I felt like when I was growing up that wearing a poppy was the normal thing, but it has become a political symbol.

Irish football players getting hounded because they refuse to wear a poppy. The idea of an Irish person maybe having some doubts of wearing a poppy completely lost on the frothing idiots berating them.

The absolute pantomime every year of people battling over who respects the troops the most is just beyond parody now. Poppy underwear, poppy designs with pepperoni on pizza, ludicrous poppy, flag-shagging garden displays.

It’s not about remembering people who were senselessly sent to their deaths when a certain group of people are climbing over each other to display their fake patriotism.

[feyhunter78]

Chapter Sixteen - The first move has been made, and the Stark boys take what is theirs. Ch 17

My darling Lord Robb,

First, I must thank you for my gifts, they are quite lovely and as you requested, I wore them on my nameday this night past. Many paid me compliments, even Tommen which I must admit was quite humorous. Oh, my love, I long for the day when we are united, I grow tired of waiting. I know it is harsh, but today I was forced to spend three hours listening to Tommen describe his blossoming sword skills. I know he is a child, but the desire within me to tell him that he is nothing compared to my true husband, the Young Wolf, was quite strong.

Y/N reminds me that I must be patient, but I think that is hypocritical considering she has been in such a foul mood since Jon has decided he must act proper as to not get them in trouble. She believes I do not know of their affections, of their dalliance, which I find both insulting and amusing. Only a blind man would be unable to see what is between them, and even a blind man would be able to hear in their voices the affections they have for one another, even now as Jon pretends he is nothing more than a guard.

I am hoping they shall resolve this little spat before you come to save me from this lion’s den. I would like there to be no conflicts within our family, so rest assured I will do all I can to assist either y/n or Jon so that our ascension to power is a peaceful one—at least within our own houses. There will be nothing to distract us upon meeting.

I anxiously await your next letter and the day when we may finally cease writing and speak face to face.

-          Yours in earnest, Margaery

Robb presses his lips to her signature before folding the letter and slipping it into his pocket, earning a snort from Theon.

“Will you be this unbearable when you finally get your hands on the girl, or can I expect a reprieve from these disgusting displays of undying affection?” Theon asks, pressing his hand to his forehead pantomiming a swooning figure.

It looks ridiculous as Theon is fully cloaked, his armor hidden by the black fabric, his voice low as they wait for the signal.

They had been lying in wait ever since word had gotten out that the royal family was soon to pass by on their return trip to King’s Landing. The snail’s pace they had taken down to Riverrun to meet with Stannis then here to Highgarden had nearly driven him mad with boredom, but they could not risk alerting the Lannisters further than they already had. Now a mere week after Margaery’s nameday they have set the trap along the Roseroad.

Robb can hardly contain his excitement, soon he will be able to see her, speak with her, take her hands in his own. She will be angry, yes, that she will no longer be queen, that he had deceived her, but she would be queen of his heart. When he thought about such a line, the back of his head still stung from where Sansa had smacked him for it. It will be no replacement for Queen of the Seven Kingdoms , she said, but Robb hoped Margaery would forgive his deception.

It was not even truly a deception born of his own mind; it had been her grandmother's. The North did not want the Iron Throne, would not fight to put one of their own upon it, and his father was far too honorable a man to go against Stannis. There was no other suitable option. Stannis himself was married, had only a daughter, Margaery could not climb any higher, and she would not be safe if she remained married. Not with the truth of Tommen’s birth spreading farther and farther each day.

“You want me to scare her a bit, make you seem more the hero? Might ease her anger.” Theon offers an easy smile spreading across his face.

“Is that what you did to win over my sister?” Robb drawls, scanning the dimly lit road, they should hear the wheelhouses any moment now.

Theon chuckles quietly. “It was I who carried her through the streets of King’s Landing, who kept her safe from the ruffians and murders among the crowd that day.”

“Funny, Sansa said you held onto her sleeve and my father’s tunic as you ran, that you swore you would never visit a brothel again if you survived to the edge of the city.”

Theon scoffs but shifts in his crouched stance. “I have not visited a brothel since then, this is true, but I did not hold onto your father.”

“Just Sansa then?”

“Fuck you Stark.” Theon snarls, but there’s no bite to his words, only the playful ribbing that Robb has grown accustomed to since they were children.

“Will you two shut up?” Dacey Mormont hisses, her eyes like will o’wisps shining in the dark.

Then he feels it, the slight tremor in the ground, Grey Wind's ears perking up. The rush of adrenaline as the carts and wheelhouses begin to appear flanked by guards, guards who are either on their side or far too tired to expect an ambush on a road as well guarded as the Roseroad.

Robb counts the wheelhouses and carts as they pass, he will know hers on sight, Lady Olenna Tyrell had sent him a letter describing it down to the spokes on its wheels. She would not have any other man kidnap her granddaughter. Finally, finally, he spots it, gold trimmed, a rose embossed on each door, the curtains, a red crushed velvet pulled closed, and a freshly repaired third spoke on the second wheel.

Glass shatters up ahead, flames leaping into the air, horses rearing up, and it is time.

Jon guides his horse away from your wheelhouse, towards Robb and Theon. This has been the plan, it has always been the plan, though he had not known it until his father appeared.

“Brother.” Robb says, leaning forward to clasp Jon in a one-arm hug. He is smiling, joyful as if the sky was not filled with smoke, and the road alight with flames, as if the sounds of battle did not rage around them.

“I thought you were told?” Jon asks, confusion adding to the heavy stone of guilt in his stomach.

“I was, nothing has changed, we were raised together, you are my brother as Theon is.” Robb shrugs, nodding towards the Ironborn who had gone to fetch you and Margaery.

Jon squeezes his brother tightly. “Thank you.”

Robb pulls back with a smile. “Do not thank me, not until the anger of our wives dies down.”

Wives. Robb has no fear, he calls Margaery his wife, caring not that she is married to another, but Jon does not share that courage. He cannot shake off the lingering aches of being labeled a bastard all his life so easily. There is still fear someone better will steal you away, that you will resent him for the stigma that followed him for so long.

“Fucking hells.” Theon curses loudly, stumbling back as you and Margaery bust out of the wheelhouse, pushing past him, a blade clutched in Margaery’s hand.

“What a woman.” Robb whistles lowly, kicking his horse into a gallop after you both.

Jon follows, tugging the hood of his cloak further down.

Robb sweeps Maragery from her feet, but your hand is still in hers, and you cry out her name, as she cries out yours. Raw fear and desperation are clear in your eyes, and you dig your heels into the ground, pulling Margaery from Robb’s grasp, the two of you tumbling to the dirt.

You quickly help her up, just in time for Robb to round his horse and ride towards you both. Jon grabs you as he passes by, his arm an iron band around your waist keeping you locked against his chest.

You struggle against him, screaming when Robb sweeps Margaery onto his horse. “The Queen, save the Queen!”

Your cries draw the attention of some Lannister guards who are fighting against men Jon remembers from Winterfell, arrows fly and take advantage of their distraction, the Lannister men crumbling to the ground.

You scream again, terrified, and it guts him to realize you are screaming his name, begging him to save you.

Why has he not spoken? Why has he let you believe he was a stranger? It is the adrenaline, the rush of battle that has paralyzed his tongue, dried out his mouth and he finally forces it to work, unsticking it from the roof of his mouth. “Y/N, y/n, it is me, my starlight, you are safe.”

You twist in his hold, terrified eyes meeting his. “Thank the gods, Jon, we must turn back, we must rescue Margaery.”

“She is well, all is well, I promise.” Jon says, kicking his horse into a gallop.

Robb cannot say if he is upset or overjoyed at Margaery’s reaction to the news. It had been a few hours now, the moonlit fading, the sun soon to rise. First, she was frightened, then apologetic when she saw the cut she had given Theon with her dagger, then she was smiling, and it is a smile he would gladly give his life for. But now, now she is angry, her words calm, her voice even, and soft, but he can see it in her eyes.

“You deceived me, My Lord, you said I would be queen.” She says, fixing him with a look that he knows he will see much more of in their shared years to come. “Now you tell me Stannis’ dour wife will sit in my place instead. That you have organized a kidnapping to lure the remaining Lannisters here, that way Stannis and your father will have no trouble taking King’s Landing.”

“My Lady, it was your grandmother’s idea, Stannis would not hesitate to lock you away or marry you off to an old, fat bannerman of his if you had attempted to keep your position as queen. He might have even ordered you killed if an agreement had not struck for your safety.” He explains, taking her hands in his and pressing them to his lips, they are as soft as he imagined.

Margaery cannot hide the smile tugging at the corners of her lips, not from him, even though her eyes still flash dangerously. “So, you thought to make that choice for me? What if I wished to marry an old, fat lord?”

He chuckles, and presses her hand to his chest, allowing her to feel not only his steady heartbeat but the hardened muscle. Y/N had written to him of Margaery’s likes and dislikes, what caught her eye, what displeased her. “If you truly want that, I am sure there is a Frey somewhere you could marry.”

He slides her hand down slowly, taking a step closer, his voice low. “But I have waited a very long time to finally set my eyes upon you, to feel your hand in mine, and if I am to send you to a Frey, at least allow me the honor of hearing my name fall from your lips.”

Her eyes flicker to his, then to his lips, then back again, a smirk curling on her own as her lashes flutter. “Like this, Robb? ”

She says his name so sweetly he nearly groans, but he stands firm, “not quite.”

Margaery pouts up at him, then tangles her fingers in the laces of his tunic and pulls him forward, going up on her toes, her lips parted so invitingly. “Do not be mean to me, Robb, I am to be your wife.”

Old gods take him, he is not Jon, he does not possess the strength his cousin does. He cups her cheek and kisses her, crushing her to him, walking her backwards until she falls onto his bed, him hovering above her, refusing to relinquish her lips.

Margaery sighs beneath him, carding her fingers through his hair. “Was that better?”

“Much better.” He laughs breathily, pressing a kiss to the corner of her lips.

“I am queen Robb; I wish to still be queen.” She says softly, looking up at him with those doe eyes, she is so beautiful, a goddess of spring.

Robb caresses her cheek, pressing a chaste kiss to the tip of her nose. “I wished to keep you as queen, but it would not be safe. I offer you myself instead, and the whole of the North, I shall remake it to your desires.”

She ponders his words, and for a moment cold fear strikes through him.

“I guess that will be enough. I shall draw up plans quickly, and present them to you for your input, you know the capabilities of your people far better than I do.” She says, giving him that radiant smile, her hair splayed out, her lips kiss swollen, her eyes lowered demurely.

“Do not look at me like that, I know you are much too spirited to play such a meek part.” He says, flipping them over and running his hand through her hair, the silky tresses falling through his fingers like water.

Margaery plants her hands on his chest, smiling coyly. “You do not wish me to play your good little wife?”

He chuckles. “You may pretend with all others, but not with me. I have seen you Margaery, the core of you, we have spent too long writing each other for me not to know who you truly are.” He sits up, brushing the hair from her neck, his fingers trailing down the pure, unblemished skin. “And I quite like you without the mask, will you allow me to see more?”

Her breath catches in her throat, and he takes that as a yes.

Jon sees you bite your lip and glance at him, the sounds from within Robb and Margaery’s tent are soft, but not soft enough to spare you both the embarrassment. “Do you think they know we are here?”

He knows his ears are bright red, he can feel them burning, and he shakes his head. “I doubt it, Robb is bold, but…not that bold.”

“Perhaps we should come back at a later time?” You suggest shuffling your feet in the dirt.

The sounds grow louder, and Jon takes your arm, walking briskly away. “I think that would be best.”

You both wait until you are far enough from the tent and dissolve into peals of laughter, doubling over.

“I cannot believe—oh I must tease her for that later.” You get out through your laughter, the moonlight giving you an ethereal glow.

Jon wipes tears of mirth from his eyes. “I knew he was eager to meet her, but I thought his honor would hold till her marriage was annulled, at the very least.”

You look at him, laughter dying down, a smile on your beautiful face. “I guess I cannot blame them, I do not know what I would do if we were separated for such a long time.”

Jon reaches for your hand, caressing the soft skin, admiring the silver ring gracing your hand. His father had brought it from Starfell, it was his mother’s, a starburst amethyst that shined when the light hit it. “I do not think I would bed you where anyone could hear, even if we had spent years apart.”

You give him a mischievous smile, taking a step closer, your free hand on his chest, your lips mere inches from his. “Even if I asked?”

He presses your hand in his to his lips instead of responding, and you giggle.

“Let us pray we shall never be parted then.” You say, rising up on your toes to press your lips to his in a quick kiss.

His cheeks burn, and he ducks his head. “Y/N, someone could see.”

“We are to be married remember, and we are among your cousin’s men, I am sure they will not begrudge us one small kiss.” You tease, ghosting your lips over his as you speak, your fingers sliding between the laces of his tunic.

“You are a temptress, a vile, vile temptress.” Jon groans softly, his eyes fluttering shut as you begin to draw circles on his chest with your nails. He bridges the gap between you two, even the scent of smoke that lingers on your clothing can smother the smell of your jasmine perfume. He nearly groans again when you part your lips for him so readily, desperate to further intertwine yourself with him.

A familiar sharp cough breaks the two of you apart, and Jon swears beneath his breath. “Theon.”

“Jon.” Theon smirks.

“Lord Greyjoy.” You say, brushing the hair back from your face in an attempt to look put together.

“Lady Lannister.” Theon nods his head towards you, still smirking. “We have been called to gather. Tyrion Lannister has sent his response.”

TL: @mostclevermiss, @solacestyles, @2valentines, @sharknutz, @idohknow, @bdudette, @pluraldoggo, @legolastheleafyelf, @faerie-film, @wifiatthetrainstation, @duskypinki, @tartine-de-pain

[bleucaesura]

STOLITZØ - FIFTY EIGHT

Blitzø sat in bed staring up at the ceiling when he heard a knock at the door. It opened a crack and Fizzarolli poked his head inside.

“Fizz!” Blitzø beamed at Fizzarolli.

“Hey,” Fizzarolli looked around the room. “Is this an ok time?”

“Of course,” Blitzø waved him over. “I sent Loony home to get a proper night’s rest. And Stolas… Actually. I don’t know where Stolas is.” He shrugged.

Fizzarolli closed the door behind him and pulled up a chair by the bed.

“Oz caught him in the hall.” Fizzarolli sat down and made himself comfortable. “Said he had something to discuss with him.”

Blitzø raised an eyebrow.

Fizz waved it off.

“Doesn’t matter. Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Mmk.”

They sat in awkward silence for a time.

Blitzø cleared his throat.

“You look good, Fizz.” He smiled warmly at him.

“You’ve definitely looked better.”

“What? You’re not digging the pharaoh mummy look?” Blitzø pantomimed tossing back voluminous tresses over his shoulders. “Not into head bandages?”

Fizzarolli averted his gaze.

“Not a fan of hospitals.”

Blitzø cringed. “F*ck… I’m sorry… I didn’t me-“

Fizzarolli waved him off. “Really not a fan of seeing people I love, hurt.” He looked down at his hands in his lap.

Blitzø reached his hand out as far as his IV would allow, trying to reach out to Fizz.

Fizzarolli noticed and looked up to meet Blitzø’s gaze.

“Thank you for being here, Fizz.”

Fizzarolli smiled sadly and took Blitzø’s out-stretched hand. “I wasn’t gonna let anyone keep us apart this time.”

Blitzø grinned and fought back tears.

They sat in comfortable silence for a time, holding hands, enjoying this moment. One that had been long overdue.

Blitzø tried to fight it, but a yawn managed to escape.

“You’re tired. I’ll let you rest.”

No…

Fizzarolli went to stand but Blitzø gripped his hand tighter.

Please don’t go…

“Would you stay?” He looked at Fizz, pleading. “Like when we were kids?”

Fizzarolli thought for a moment, then he slid his hand out from Blitzø’s.

“Oh… Right..” Blitzø’s heart clenched, tears welled up in his eyes and he looked away. “You’ve got to get home…”

A moment later the lights in the room turned off, and Blitzø looked back to see Fizz standing by his bed.

“You’re going to have to move over if we’re both going to fit.”

I f*cking hope he can’t see me crying in the dark…

Blitzø scooted as far over as he could and Fizz climbed under the covers on the other side of the bed.

They both shifted until they lay on their sides facing each other.

They chuckled awkwardly.

“Well. Haven’t done this in a hot minute.”

Fizzarolli snickered. “Nope.”

Blitzø noticed Fizz was still wearing his jester hat.

“Aren’t you going to take that off?” He asked off-handedly.

Fizzarolli froze and buried his face in his hands.

Blitzø’s heart jumped into his throat.

“Fizz?”

Fizzarolli looked at Blitzø, silent tears streaming down his face.

“Fizz?! What is it?” Blitzø could feel something was very wrong.

“Blitzø…” Fizzarolli shuddered a sigh.

“Whatever it is…” Blitzø reached out to take his hand.

Fizzarolli covered his face with one hand, shook his head and held up a finger - telling Blitzø to hold on.

“You’re f*cking scaring me, Fizz…”

Fizzarolli sat up. Blitzø propped himself up on an elbow.

“I’ve only ever let Asmodeus see me without this,” Fizzarolli touched his hat.

Blitzø raised an eyebrow.

“But it’s a part of who I am,” he swallowed hard. “And I think I need to be ok letting others get close enough to see… EVERY broken part of me.”

“You’re not broken, Fizz,” Blitzø reached out to him, but Fizzarolli shook his head.

“I know I’m not,” he took a deep breath. “But I’ve still got broken pieces…”

Fizzarolli pulled his hat off and clutched it to his chest in anguish. He couldn’t bear to look at Blitzø.

Blitzø shot upright.

This is MY fault…

“F*ck.. Fizz… I’m so f*cking sorry…”

Fizzarolli started to cry all over again. He tried to hide his face and put his hat back on, but Blitzø grabbed him and pulled him into a tight hug.

“You’re f*cking amazing, Fizz.” Blitzø clutched him tightly. “And don’t worry… Your horns will ALWAYS be bigger than mine.”

The two cried themselves to sleep that night in the same position they’d always slept in as little kids: curled up, touching foreheads and holding hands.

***

Stolas and Asmodeus stood in the doorway to Blitzø’s room and watched Fizzarolli and Blitzø sleep.

“Is this something I need to be worried about?” Stolas whispered to Asmodeus.

Asmodeus smirked and shook his head. “I ain’t.” He looked at Fizzarolli with such love and adoration, Stolas couldn’t help feeling like he was invading their privacy somehow.

Asmodeus looked at Stolas and squeezed his shoulder in encouragement. “I get your reticence. It’ll take time for you two to figure each other out. But I know my Fizzy.” He looked over at the boys and smiled.

“And the fact that Fizzy let Blitzø see him like this” Asmodeus cocked his head so Stolas would look where he was looking - at Fizzarolli’s exposed horns. “Means he’s trusting people again. Trusting Blitzø again. Opening himself up to the idea of family again��

Family…

Stolas’s heart ached. He wanted that kind of closeness with Blitzø. He wanted Blitzø to let him in like that.

“And if my Fizzy trusts him with that kind of vulnerability? I know you can too.” Asmodeus smiled warmly at Stolas. “Hell. I trust the idiot with Fizzy’s life. That’s gotta say something, don’t it?”

Stolas smiled meekly back at Asmodeus. “It does.”

“Good.” Asmodeus clapped him on the back, catching him off guard. Stolas tried not to squawk in surprise.

Asmodeus chuckled.

Stolas shot him a glare.

Asmodeus snorted, tried to cover his laugh, and turned into the hallway. “Let’s go. Give those two some more time to rest. They need it.”

“Yes.” Stolas followed, looking longingly over his shoulder at Blitzø, and how peaceful and content he looked sleeping there, next to Fizzarolli.

If only I could make him feel that safe…

“I suppose you’re right.”

*****

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Annabel Lee Whitlock: The Hypocrite, the Vampire and the Femme Fatale. A review of archetypes

Good news: I'm on vacation. Bad news: I'm on vacation.

And that means rest. A positive externality. But on the other hand, it also means that my brain, which is constantly thirsting for stimulation, has lost eight hours of activity a day that it has to fill with something. You know what happens to orange tabbies who suddenly become quiet and behave as if possessed by all the demons of Ars Goetia? Well, sort of.

So my brain in need of stimulation decided to dust off my college notes and talk about archetypes, because it's a thorough enough job to keep me away from climbing walls or checking random stuff on the Internet for 10 hours a day.

What is an archetype?

Just to make sure we're all on the same page, an archetype (a "type character") is a writing model that describes a role and has certain characteristics.

The term was coined by Honoré de Balzac, a French writer obsessed with what he called "micro-history. His life's work, "La Comédie humaine", is a massive collection of more than 80 novels, which, when read, will give you more information about that historical period than any theoretical book on the subject.

You may not know this sir or the protagonist of "Illusions perdues", but you do know the archetype that Lucien Rumempré represents: a young from the provinces, full of dreams, who moves to the city only to discover that the lights are there to dazzle and distract from the misery.

But at the same time, the characters that come to mind are likely to be very different from the good Lucien. This is because the archetype is a different construct from the cliché.

If I had to explain the difference, I would say that the cliché is a recipe, while the archetype is a mold.

If you follow a recipe, you will always get results that are very similar, even if you make small variations in the recipe. But if you have a star cookie cutter, the contents of the cookies can be quite different: no one would dare say that a chocolate chip cookie tastes the same as an oatmeal cookie or a gingerbread cookie. Even if all three are cut in the shape of a star.

So I'm going to do a little review of the archetypes that Annabel notices. The differences, the similarities, and let's see what comes out.

The Hypocrite

Not "hypocrite" in the sense of a personality, but in the sense of a way of behaving in the world: The Hypocrite is a character whose way of relating to the world is a pantomime, whose role is to build themselves up to fit into a system (which, by the way, they despise). If they don't have what you want, they will at least pretend enough to make you think they do. Usually for personal gain.

The founder of this archetype is Julien Sorel, the protagonist of "Le Rogue et Le Noir", the most famous work of Stendhal, one of the most prominent writers of the literary realism founded by Balzac.

Julien is this poor boy, but smart enough to memorize the Bible, which makes him seem educated enough to get him a job as a tutor in a rich house, and eventually a priest's cassock.

A more modern example is Nick Wilde from Zootopia. This fox has decided that if he alone can be a con man, he will be one, though he desperately wants someone to see him as an individual beyond that. He hates the system that condemns him, but he wants to be a part of it and will play by the rules he is given in order to profit.

Annabel, like Julien and Nick, has built her entire identity around being what is expected of her, in her case a perfect Victorian high society lady. Something that has given her a tremendous amount of knowledge about how people move in such circles. And from her point of view, people are the same everywhere (Miss Marple would be proud of her).

And in this oppressive context that fosters an environment where people kill each other, she knows what currency to give in return for loyalty: people will look for a leader, someone competent, someone who knows what they're doing.

Annabel has no idea what's going on, what awaits them outside the Nevermore gate, or even if there's a way to escape. But she can pretend to know. The quietest person in the room wins, and she's the one who takes the prizes to achieve her goal. The performance is justified as a means to an end.

Another thing that characterizes stories with a Hypocrite as a relevant character is the exploration of the consequences of this lifestyle: identity is consumed by the role, the line between actor and character is lost, and the Hypocrite is often faced with the reality that they have put so much of themselves into the character they are playing that once it is exposed, there is nothing underneath, or at least nothing worth saving.

In Annabel's case, this is expressed in her utter horror at not being trusted by Lenore. She puts her hypocrisy at the disposal of her lover and comforts herself with the reward of her affection, but Lenore's love for her is the only thread that binds her own identity: that Lenore does not trust her means that the role has completely consumed her, the complete confirmation that she, as an individual, is no longer a disturbed poseur.

Related to this point, we have the final transversal line in the conflicts that Hypocrites tend to have: loneliness. When all their relationships are based on a carefully rehearsed performance, the Hypocrite knows that they are alone in the world, that no one really knows them, and they are usually so deep in the role by this point that they don't want to (or can't) leave it. The longing for honest relationships overlaps with their self-destructive tendencies.

As much as Annabel insists that it's her and Lenore against the world, that her life is meaningless without Lenore, and that she is enough, these phrases indicate that Annabel is painfully aware of how she is perceived by others, and though she tells herself that Lenore's love is all she needs, it seems more like a mantra to keep her sane than a reality.

As you may have noticed, the main difference from the usual Hypocrite is that Annabel has Lenore. A bit like Nick has Judy. But Nevermore is a story that takes the psychology of its characters much more seriously, so while Nick just needs someone to reach out to in order to form honest relationships, Annabel passes because she has no fucking idea how to form an honest, healthy bond.

That Annabel is extraordinarily self-destructive, emotionally dependent, and so afraid to step outside the box she knows so well are, in this light, natural consequences of the Hypocrite lifestyle.

The Vampire

Here we must make a leap to another movement: during the Romantic period, the Gothic novel was at its best, and it was Edgar Allan Poe who squeezed out the last drops of what this genre had to offer.

Now, looking at the bibliography, Annabel does not have much in common with the gothic heroine (that is something Lenore takes care of), neither on an aesthetic level nor on a value level. To find her in the works that inspire her, one must look in a slightly different direction: the female vampires of gothic fiction.

Aurelia ("Vampirismus" by E.T.A. Hoffmann), Carmilla ("Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu), Clarimonde ("The death woman in love" by Théophile Gautier), the vampire in the poem "The Metamorphosis of the Vampire" by Baudelaire, the three vampire women, and Lucy ("Dracula" by Bram Stoker).

All these characters have something more in common than their fangs: they are beautiful women capable of making anyone who sees them fall completely into their arms, as opposed to their role of making the one they have chosen as their prey "fall".

The Gothic vampire is practically a succubus, but much less sexualized than one might think. Although many of these works, with the exception of the poem by the good Baudelaire (an author who should be fed separately on these matters), spare no pages in describing how beautiful they are, neither do they overly sexualize them, nor are they particularly flirtatious: even Clarimonde is dedicated to simply being there and letting her presence alone do the work.

This is something Annabel shares with the gothic vampire: though physically gorgeous, the framing in the comic doesn't tend to focus on her as an object of sexual desire, her beauty is highlighted, but in a way that is more akin to an ethereal or unattainable entity.

This is due to a mixture of two things: the Gothic novel is steeped in Catholic puritanism, and even if it is to present a villain who uses her attractiveness as a weapon, the erotic component is subtly exposed, and the vampire's angelic beauty offers a contrast to her status as an antagonist: beautiful on the outside, insidious on the inside.

This is another thing Annabel has in common with the gothic vampire: she is aware that her appearance gives her a haughty, elegant, and dignified air, identifiable enough to earn nicknames like "Queen" or "Queenie," and she knows how to capitalize on it. This contrasts with the darker parts of her personality.

Another thing that terrifies romantics about vampires is that these fangirl succubi possess a quality that makes us 21st-century readers raise an eyebrow because it's supposed to make us uncomfortable: a deep, honest, and sincere willingness to be affectionate.

In context, this makes sense: the vampire is a representation of sin, temptation, and lust. So their affection is something that leads the object of it away from the path of morality (this is the 19th century, this is really important).

I understand that because of the vampire's role in all of this, she is a devoted lover. Incredibly devoted, in fact: Clarimonde is Romuald's sugar mommy (no, I'm not kidding, I'm not exaggerating either), and Carmilla never stops showering Laura with affection and attention, satisfying this girl's craving for companionship after living in isolation.

Annabel does something similar: there is a genuine interest on her part to reach out and connect with Lenore, and in scenes like this, she goes out of her way to show her that she is an amazing person in her own right, rather than being her brother's shadow.

All kidding aside, I think of the archetypes I could find to analyze Annabel, this is the one that fits her best, even though she is not, well, literally a vampire. She seems to have several things in common with Carmilla in particular.

The Femme Fatale

We all have a more or less clear idea of what a femme fatale is: this extremely attractive, sexually active, badass woman who is there to make the male character's life miserable and has a 50% chance of smoking fine cigarettes with a cigarette holder. This is…partially true, but also highly inaccurate.

Although these characters can be traced back much further in mythology, this archetype gets its name and very specific form from Raymond Chandler, the founder of the noir novel. I'm not going to go into too much detail on this topic, as entire books could be written about it, so let's just focus on what's important.

The thing to understand about the context to understand the Femme Fatale is that we are in the 30-40's and although she has many more rights than 19th century women, the decadence shown in these works emphasizes that she is in a macho context where every single rule of the game is stacked against her. This is something that Femme Fatale is acutely aware of: no matter how well she plays the game, she will always lose.

This is something that Annabel shares with this archetype: she is very aware of the rules of the game, she knows backwards and forwards how the world works, so she is also aware that they are too heavily stacked against her to ever win. All she can do is resign herself, play the role as best she can, and find small distractions to cling to like a burning nail so as not to lose her head altogether.

Therefore, the Femme Fatale's approach to life is this: if the rules are stacked against her, that means she has the right to do whatever it takes to survive. These tactics usually include manipulation, deception, exploitation, and, of course, making the most of her sexual attractiveness because, unlike the vampire, she knows how to flirt and use sex as a weapon. What needs to be kept in mind here is that for this character archetype, the use of these wiles comes not because she is factory evil, but as a coping mechanism within a system she cannot win against. If this ultimately makes her a villain, it's more about her role within the story in which it plays out than anything about the archetype itself.

Here's an interesting difference between the Annabel we see in Lenore's memories and the one we see in the present day of the comic: Annabel used to be willing to play by the rules, but the thing she learned from Lenore is that cheating is more than possible. As a result, her attitude has become much closer to that of a Femme Fatale, using her extensive knowledge of the rules to her advantage, going with the flow for personal gain. Her methods are much closer to those of the Hypocrite (especially since we haven't seen Annabel use her body or affection as currency yet), but there are definitely similarities.

Another thing about the Femme Fatale (when she is NOT a villain) is that, like the Vampire, she operates within a duality: an exterior built to be sexy in a somewhat intimidating way (which is why the aesthetics of many of these characters can be interpreted within BDSM culture), but with some goodness in her heart. A really clear example of this is Vivian Sternwood from The Big Sleep (the first novel on the subject published by Raymond Chandler): her own father describes her as "rude, demanding, clever, and quite ruthless," and Marlow, our detective, will have a long series of uncomfortable encounters with her. But by the end of the novel, when he is faced with the same choice Vivian must have made in the past, he cannot help but realize that despite everything, this woman would rather keep painful secrets than harm her family, whom she loves dearly.

So if you're wondering why the framing of scenes like this looks familiar, that's why.

Add to that the three layers of how her aesthetic works: an angelic appearance for when she needs to play dumb, her gaslighting, gatekeeping, girlboss bullshit face for when she needs to demonstrate authority, and framing where it should make you directly uncomfortable.

Looks are one of the strengths of Femmel Fatale's performance. And it's one of the strengths of Annabel's performance.

Conclusions

One interesting thing about looking at Annabel in this light is to realize two things: first, that many of the archetypes her character seems to take notes from are often in the role of antagonists or, for that matter, villains. 

The other is that these archetypes are quite well ordered and connected: the gothic vampire is the inspiration for the Femme Fatale of Noir (her beta version, if you can call it that), and the Hypocrite shares a historical writing period with many female vampires. From her conception, Annabel is constructed in a fairly orderly fashion, and believe me, that's a huge contrast to what's going to happen with Lenore (which I'll get to soon, but I need to brush up on my picaresque novel notes). 

The last thing I want to point out in this review is this: unless you're a Nick Wilde-style Hypocrite, Hypocrites and Vampires in general tend to have utter destruction in store for them. The Noir, for its part, puts us in a situation where the Femme Fatale, even if she wants to change, is generally too deep in this tangle to get out. 

So what I find interesting about Annabel in this regard is:

This is actually THE scene that shows us Annabel timidly stepping out of the scheme of things. She doesn't seem to want to change, in fact I'd bet she's terrified to change, but even though she's repeating her father's toxic pattern here, she's also breaking it without realizing it. 

It's too early to tell if we'll see Annabel have some sort of redemption towards less harmful behavior, or if we'll end up seeing her become a villain altogether. But I'm really curious to see where this story goes with all of these elements.

[freeuselandonorris]

thoughts on the recent sportbible landoscar challenge?

hello anon!! saved this until i could rewatch properly and analyse in depth (i.e. the 4pm slump when i’m meant to be working)

under a cut because it turns out that i have many MANY thoughts

- oscar very carefully and diplomatically clarifying that he thinks it’s polite to pay on a first date unless the other person wants to go halves while lando is not listening in the slightest and then, when prompted, being like NO FUCK OFF I AM RICH AND CHIVALROUS feels like THE most perfect example of their respective personalities. specifically oscar's tendency to carefully think through his answers and caveat them appropriately whereas lando just opens his mouth and says some words, clearly with good intent but with absolutely no thought as to how it's coming across 🥲

- oscar immediately backtracking when he realises lando’s genuinely miffed about the paying for a date thing!!

- the way they just stare at each other like two cats about to have a fight when oscar says “i can just see you as that kind of bloke”, lando's eyebrows about to climb off the top of his forehead and join his hair

- oscar blithely agreeing when lando says “doesn’t mean they’re not gonna have a great time” and not quite catching what lando’s insinuating 😭 i can't tell if it suddenly dawns on him a few seconds later or if he's laughing at the host guy saying "but they'll be out of pocket"

- lando sitting in increasingly unhinged formations until their toes and knees are almost touching !!

- oscar quietly sniggering away to himself about the celebrity DMs question which clearly panics lando hence the bratty little DON’TTT-UH which is my favourite kind of lando (i.e. when he forgets he's meant to be a cool racing driver and the inner five year having a temper tantrum makes an appearance - usually seen more with max, a rare treat to see him doing it to oscar!) and then oscar seems to choose a more benign anecdote to tell instead. WHAT WERE YOU GONNA SAY OSCAR

- lando’s tiny little smile to himself when oscar says “one of the first times i met you”????

- “osco?” “that’s my new nickname” 💀💀💀 the way he goes along patiently with lando’s silly little fanservice whims. hate it, awful, help

- obviously Much has been said about “why does dating have to be a woman??” so i shall not add to it too much… i do think he was largely only saying it to be contrary, but what is it about these sportbible interviews that makes him extra fruity? the other one is red flag green flag which literally had me googling is lando norris bisexual afterwards.

- “george? probably about himself” 😭 such a little cunt. also, oscar conspicuously not giggling at the makeup jibe even though he laughs at the rest of it, see point (1) above

- oscar pulling lando up on whether fernando would cry at movies but fully accepting his own presence on the list

- lando doubling down and correcting “osc-O 😔” girl stop it

- “he just cries at dogs or summink” lando PLEASE

- oscar pantomiming “nooo” in the background at the driver of the day vote while lando does his best Winning Smile to Camera even though he’s clearly bored of this whole interview.

in summary: not THE most unhinged landoscar interview but certainly somewhere in the top 10 if not top 5. also why did sportbible feel the need to post it in a fucking carousel of clips on their instagram.

[scoupsahoy]

starting from zero

for @strangerthingsreversebigbang with art from @anaccidentwaitingtohappen

When Robin suggests that she and Steve skip town, he assumes she’s joking. She’ll say stuff like that all the time, because Hawkins has bumpy roads that exacerbate Steve’s migraines, and because the kids and be annoying and cliquey and exclusive, and because she’s heard from her aunt in Chicago that some women over there dare to have queer little haircuts and girlfriends whose hands they hold in public.

So when they’re watching Dirty Harry in the middle of the night and Robin says “we should move there,” Steve laughs and takes a sip of his beer.

Harry says the line about feeling lucky, and then Robin says “did you know that punk used to be slang for, like, a gay guy, or something?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Lots of gay people in San Francisco, by the way.”

Harry finally kills the Scorpio guy. “Yeah, it seems real safe there,” Steve says.

He’s not looking but he can feel Robin shrug next to him. “Can’t be worse than Hawkins.”

The camera does a really gross zoom in on Scorpio’s stupid bloody face, so he looks right at Robin, who looks deadly serious. Her mouth is small, the way it gets when she’s trying to shut herself up. The way she looks when the gears in her brain have been spinning for too long without letting anything out.

That’s when Robin gets dangerous. She’s a planner. Steve can usually see right through her, but there’s always been enough for the both of them in this town – or, well. He always thought there was.

“Are you– what’s going on?” She looks a bit like she’s going to cry, which is so unlike her that it makes Steve’s heart shake.

She takes a deep breath. “What if we just left?”

“Hawkins?”

“Indiana,” Robin says, shrugs again, gets a wild look in her eye. “The country.”

Steve cracks a smile. “The world, even.”

Robin laughs, this great big beautiful sound that fills the room and travels down the hallways. The house doesn’t ever feel dark or empty with her inside, with her pantomiming a rocket launch to outer space, like she can imagine living on Mars with him like he can with her.

“What’s even keeping you here?”

It’s a loaded question. In theory, this is his home. In it, everyone he’s ever known, ever loved, ever heard of. Except for his parents, who might be in the Hamptons and might be in Vegas. Except for Nancy, in Boston. Except for half the town, lost in the rubble of an earthquake they all pretend happened.

He stays, really, because Robin is here.

And Steve, for a long time, hasn’t been able to shake the nagging feeling that she could have had more if it wasn’t for him, that she might go anywhere for him, and he’s the one who’s too cowardly to think of leaving. Robin’s chosen to stay, despite her little jokes about leaving. Despite a girl she fell in love with over a whirlwind summer leaving for college in Texas. Despite the little horrors of this town and the passions she could have easily followed. She has ambition and talent and drive. She has family and she knows what she wants and she knows who she wants it with.

And the worst part is that Steve is the one she wants it with.

There are days where he locks himself in his house, sulking and exhausted and alone, and she climbs in through his bedroom window, just as determined as he used to be before all of this. She plays with his hair and draws on his shoes and brings over movies he’s never seen and he would stop the spinning of the world for her.

He knows anyone would, if they had her like he does.

It’s been eating him alive, a little bit. He’s been frozen in time and space since a chasm opened up in the town and left him completely unable to move.

Steve takes a deep breath. “I don’t know. What’s keeping you here?”

“You,” Robin says, looking at him hard past her eyelashes. “Dingus.”

“You want to go to San Francisco? To live?”

“Yeah, I think we could do it.”

–

There are some things you can’t really say out loud without ruining the magic of them.

Steve and Robin go to work the next day and the day after that and the day after that. Robin had found them another job at a restaurant on basically the other end of Roane County where they get paid like shit but can work for tips. They’ve both been working full-time since Robin graduated high school, saving up for nothing in particular, skirting past a new shitty manager and getting free meals for the kids when they come in.

Steve supposes, once the idea is up in the air, that another reason he’s held back for so long was because of the kids, with all the things they’ve gone through, and all the people that have left them. He doesn’t want to be another person that leaves for better things. Steve’s a person who’s been left, in so many ways. It always feels like a betrayal on the other end of it.

So they don’t say anything about it to anyone, not even really out loud to each other, until one shift after weeks and weeks of saving and shuffling and looking at listings from newspaper clippings they get sent from Jonathan in California and Nancy in Boston and Robin’s aunt in Chicago. Jonathan and Nancy and even Robin’s relatives don’t bother asking questions, are secretive enough on their own, so there’s no pressure on that front.

Erica sits at a booth on a Sunday afternoon teaching Robin how to make friendship bracelets on her lunch break while the restaurant is dead.

“Why aren’t you with your friends?” Steve asks, stealing a french fry off Robin’s plate and eyeing their work.

Erica rolls her eyes, ever expressive. “I hate the birthday boy so much that it wouldn’t even be worth it to go and make fun of him. Plus, I’m getting too old for birthday parties.”

“Yeah Steve,” Robin says, holding up her bracelet. “She’s too mature for that.”

“Don’t condescend to me,” Erica fires back. She pulls at Robin’s sleeve to gather a bit of the string and tighten it before it falls apart on her. All things considered, Erica’s always been one of their favorite of the kids, if only because if she didn’t want to stick around, she wouldn’t. And yet she’s always there.

Robin and Erica talk lowly while they graze and gossip, right up until Erica turns around in the booth to level Steve with a look while he busses the next table over. “So when are you guys leaving?”

“Uh,” Steve checks his watch. “We have like three and a half more hours.”

“That’s obviously not what I meant and you know it. When are you leaving? Like, moving away, skipping town, getting out of here?”

Robin turns around too, now, giving Steve a look that says she hasn’t even alluded to that. Erica is startlingly perceptive, though, and cares way more about the people in this town than she’d care to admit. With all the people who have moved away in the past few years, all of the kids who she went to school with who left because of the earthquake, it’s not exactly all that surprising.

“When we can afford it, basically,” Robin says finally. Steve has a weird lump in his throat that keeps him from saying anything before that. Something about having to look Erica in the eyes makes it seem all the more real.

She still raises an eyebrow at him. He shrugs.

“Where are you going to go?”

“Not too far that we won’t visit,” Robin says, reaching up like she’d dare try to pinch Erica’s cheek. “Don’t worry.”

Erica purses her lips and glares harder, and if Steve knows her like he thinks he does, he’d guess her face was hot and embarrassed under all of that sarcasm. “Like I care. I just figured you’d start telling people at some point if it’s so obvious that I’ve figured something’s up.”

“What do you mean we’re being obvious?” Steve asks.

“You know,” Erica gestures a little wildly. “You guys have been acting weird. All quiet and secretive with your little conspiratorial looks. And you offered to help me make friendship bracelets. You’re getting in your weird older sibling fantasies and that either means you’re dying or you’re moving away. You’re not dying, are you?”

Steve smiles. “Nah, we’re fine. And we’ll let you know when we’re actually making real plans.”

“Well. Good.”

There’s a bit of earnestness that peeks through, a little bit of personality that’s only for people she really likes. She helps them make beaded friendship bracelets for each other, pastel pinks and blues, and she keeps the secret just as good as either of them.

–

People who know Robin the way that Steve does know that she has an overcompensation streak that could rival anyone. She’s stubborn and superstitious and anxious and combats all of her fears by learning everything she could possibly need to know about them. By the time Erica figures out that they’re leaving Hawkins, Robin decides she’s going to learn everything there is to know about every major city in the United States. By the time she tells her parents that she’s going to save up and move out, she’s got an entire notebook full of notes and plans and phone numbers and addresses. She is positive that she can do it on her own. She doesn’t need help.

There are no cracks in her plan, in her demeanor, in her routine. Especially facing Steve. She tells him he worries too much for his own good anyway.

There’s one moment, though, before they get too far into their search, before things are finalized, right after they decide on San Francisco after all:

Robin has her nose in three different books from the library in the next town over. She’s got her pen in her hand and she’s taking her notes. She’s got a crease in between her eyebrows and takes a shaky breath that sounds a little too familiar.

Steve, at the other end of the couch, two books of his own that he’s trying way too hard to understand, about the logistics of moving across the country, pokes at Robin with his toe. She looks up at him like she might collapse.

“What if this is a horrible idea? Like, a catastrophic idea. Like we’re going to die before we leave, kind of idea. I know you didn’t read that Stephen King book that just came out, but what if it’s like that? Those kids are haunted and what if we’re haunted?”

“Robin,” Steve starts.

She pushes a book about taxes off of her lap and onto the floor, folding some of the pages in a way that’s going to make her feel bad later. “What if I don’t find any jobs out there? And then I have to do street art for tourists who think I’m an idiot for not going to college?”

Steve reaches over and touches her on the shoulder, rubbing gently. “Robin.”

“What if girls don’t like me?” She really looks like she might cry, now. It’s rare enough that Steve’s heart lurches violently in his chest.

“They will.”

“What if they don’t?”

“Well you’ve got me,” he says. “And we can get married for tax benefits, and girls will see you with a wedding ring and probably flock to you even harder.”

And like a shot, Robin snaps out of it enough to roll her eyes. They put the books down for the night.

–

There’s a long day where Steve’s mother calls their landline just to check on him. She’ll do this sometimes, ask how he’s doing, what he’s eating, make comments on if it’s enough or if it’s too much. She makes comments about Robin, whose name she only barely remembers from the times Steve has shouted it from across the room while on the phone. She tells the same stories about how her and his father will be coming to visit soon, and he laughs and almost believes her when she tries her hardest to seem earnest.

But it’s been a long day, and Steve works for tips and makes shit money, and he and Robin don’t know what they’re doing because they don’t know anyone who’s doing it alone like they are. They’re so close to leaving that every day left feels a little like torture. And he’s alone in his house, empty while Robin’s with some band kids on break from school. And his mother says “we’re thinking of coming to visit soon, your father and I,” and Steve actually laughs. She ignores it. “He misses you, you know. You can call the car phone whenever you’d like, I’m sure he’d pick up.”

And they both know it’s a sick lie, because his father gave up on him years ago, never even bothers to come on the line when his mother makes her pity calls. The line goes silent while they both sit there and wait for some truth to come out of it, and Steve almost feels bad for this woman who clearly forgot how to be a mother back when she prioritized being a wife.

“Well,” she says, eventually. “We’ve actually got to get going, sweetheart. Your father has one of those boring old work events tonight in Santa Fe.”

“Alright,” he manages to say.

She takes a deep breath, like she’s gearing herself up for another lie. “We love you. We’ll visit soon.”

Steve hangs up.

Robin will be dropped off at his front door by morning, he knows, and he also knows that she doesn’t need to be let into the house in any kind of formal way. It’s just as much hers as it is his. And it’s more of their house than it ever was his parents’. And Steve imagines, just for a second, what would happen if he locked all of the doors and windows. If he changed the locks and ate the keys. If he filled the entire house with concrete and smoke before he left the place to die.

He wonders if his parents would ever find out. If they would bust the door down looking for him, the way Robin would. She would climb down his chimney if she was that desperate to get inside. Steve locks the front door for the first time in what feels like years and falls asleep in his parent’s bed, untouched for a year at this point, staring at the popcorn ceiling.

Most of the rest of the house, everything worth saving, is packed into boxes. His entire life. And this whole room was left untouched for his parents to return to.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he wakes up to Robin plopping cross-legged at the foot of the bed with her hands clasped together. Her hair is messy and she had a bit of eye-makeup on that’s smudged, and she looks entirely awake.

Once Steve’s awake enough, Robin starts talking. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen this room.”

“You like it?”

“It’s extremely ugly in here,” she says, turning her nose up at the tacky hotel room art on the wall, the exact thing that Robin would hate. “But we could probably rent it out in the paper. Pretend to run a bed and breakfast or something.”

“My parents would freak if they saw that.”

Robin, gracefully, doesn’t point out the obvious, which is that his parents would never notice or care. She doesn’t have to. Their wedding photo with the cracked frame says it loud enough. And there’s a ringing in Steve’s ear that hasn’t gone away for hours, taunting him.

When he was younger, he would run to his parents room and his mom would rub his temples with her fingertips, gaudy manicure scratching his hairline.

“Do you think we can sell this place before we leave for extra cash?”

Steve smiles. “I don’t think Hawkins is exactly prime real estate right now.”

“Not to mention this place is, like, really ugly.”

“Well there’s a reason I never come into this room–”

“No, I mean,” Robin squints. “The entire place. Every room, not just this one. When we get a house it’s gonna be way cooler than this one.”

“For sure.”

“With short ceilings. I hate the echo.”

“And these awful, gaudy chandeliers,” Steve says, glaring at the ugly crystal light fixture above the bed. When he was younger, he used to have nightmares about it falling and crushing his parents. He doesn’t dream much anymore, but it’s one of those dreams that stuck with him.

“I kind of want to hit it with a baseball bat.”

That shocks a laugh out of him. “Like a piñata?”

“Yeah,” Robin says, eyes glowing. “Don’t you?”

Steve stares at it for a second. “I used to play baseball.”

And then they’re standing in the center of the room with a full children’s baseball bag. “This is stupid.”

Robin’s eyes are wide and wild. “Maybe,” she says.

“They’re not even going to notice, you realize that, right? They’re in Santa Fe, probably cheating on each other and mingling with other shitty parents who don’t care about their children. They’re probably never going to even bother coming back.”

“Doesn’t that piss you off?” Robin takes Steve by the shoulders, shakes him. “They should care about you, Steve! They’re your parents! They’re supposed to care about you, it’s their job! And they’re bad at it! Doesn’t that make you mad?”

Steve flexes his jaw. “Yeah.”

“Good! Because it makes me livid!” She throws the baseball in her hand at the horrible light fixture, aimed so that it bounces off in a different direction, and an ugly hunk of glass falls and shatters on the ground. The sound reverberates around the entire house, the way Robin’s laugh does. This person that cares about him more than his parents or the town or the people that left without considering what that would do to him. The people who left without asking first. The glass shatters into thick, ugly carpet that crunches under their sneakers, and so he throws the baseball in his hand, too. It leaves a dent in the drywall above the headboard, and it feels like his heart gets cracked wide open, and he bleeds cold throughout his body, and it’s the best he’s felt in months or maybe even years.

Robin yells loud enough to rumble the house and stir the neighbors if they ever cared, and she rips clothes off their hangers while Steve hits the vanity mirror with the baseball bat. They rip the nice, expensive, hardly-used sheets and joke about burning it up. They joke about burning the entire house down and leaving tonight. They shut the door and lock it behind them, and they don’t open it ever again.

–

The town wishes them goodbye. Or, at least, the people left who care about them wish them goodbye. The Byers-Hoppers throw a little party, and Dustin has a shitty little speech, and Max pretends to cry early on, and then actually cries a little bit when they get to their cars to leave. Erica holds it over everyone’s heads that she knew first, and they leave for San Francisco the first thing the very next morning, just the two of them, holding hands, a scorched sign that says “come back soon” in front of a rising sun.

[littlescaryinternetguy]

He put down the string he was coiling and stood up. Oh no she didn't, he thought. He climbed down the chain in the grandfather clock with practiced ease and slipped out of a very small crack in the back.

Ok, YES, this was stupid, he said to himself. Well then it's stupid. Maybe he's stupid. He looked to the sides, although he knew she was in the kitchen on her phone. Then he darted across the front room, along the wall in the dining room, and into the vinyl-tiled silo of the kitchen.

She sat at the table, finishing up her conversation with whomever. Pleasantries and goodbye. She put the phone on the table. Right. Let's do this.

He hadn't thought of how exactly he was going to hail her. Well, fuck it. He walked up to her shoe. Mercifully it dipped down below her ankle. He rapped upon it, three times.

She ascended into the atmosphere with the speed and sound of a rocket full of screech owls.

He stepped back a couple of paces while she landed on the chair, her feet scrambling against the tiled floor. She looked down with primal terror etched deeply on her face.

He cleared his throat.

She began to open her mouth but he interrupted, a miniscule bellow. He wasn't used to talking to big folk.

"OK, first of all: did you say I 'scurried'?"

She looked at him and slowly shut her mouth.

"You were talking on your phone device there and you said, 'This place has mice, I saw one scurrying this morning.' You said that."

"... did I? Wait. What..."

He cut in, no small feat when you consider that he was two inches tall with a voice to match, but he had righteousness on his side.

"That was me. I am not a mouse. No ears." He pantomimed ears, waggling his hand at the sides of the top of his head. "No tail." He turned around and shook his rear end at her. "Not a mouse."

She took in this information. He was undoubtedly right. He was not a mouse.

"What... what are you?"

He hadn't considered that. He tried to keep his stern look. His neck was getting sore from craning it so far back.

"A tenant. Just like yourself. A tenant of long-standing."

"Oh," she said. Well that settled that: everything was completely insane. Now that that was clear, she relaxed a bit.

"You said 'first of all'." "Did I?" he said. He hadn't thought this far ahead. He hadn't thought at all. To be honest, it had already been a long day in a long string of long days. Getting called a rat, well, who could have stood for that? "Well! Yes I did!" He desperately tried to keep his composure. He sensed the power shifting and he wanted to be gone before it went all the way.

"I like the way you play piano."

He turned and started walking back towards the front room. He was just riffing at this point. He was just saying anything, trying to wrong-foot her. Well, really more screaming anything. Keep her confused. Could she even hear him? The truth was he did like the way she played piano. Not infrequently, he would climb into the instrument from the back so he could hear the squeak and rasp of the pedals being used, in a cloud of sound, the wires blurring as they were struck. When he did that he could feel the music more than hear it.

He could only do that every so often because he'd be deaf for hours afterwards. Usually he just sat quietly far up in the clock and listened.

"... thanks?"

"Keep it... uh, keep it up," he yelled at the top of his voice. He reached the door from the kitchen to the dining room. She remained in her chair. He turned around. He suddenly remembered something her heard her say to someone who was leaving.

"SMELL YOU LATER."

He had never run so fast as he did then, but he didn't hear her trompy footsteps coming. He made it into the clock.

What did I just do? he thought.

She remained at the table, glanced around, reached across for a half-full bottle of cabernet.

He likes the piano, she thought as she took out the cork, regarded it for a second, threw it over her shoulder and drank straight from the bottle. She looked down at the sheet music on the table. One page. Vexations, by Eric Satie.

She smiled and put down the bottle. This oughta hold him, she thought.

[the-lil-exorcist]

A Familiar Feeling; Eleanor & Lil

PARTIES:@the-lil-exorcist and @bookofbolden TIMING: Current WHERE:  Deersprings SUMMARY:  After dealing with a demon, Lil goes back to ghost nonsense. Eleanor, gets to learn about ghosts! WARNINGS: None!

Eleanor had a lot on her mind so she decided to cut her work day short and go for a walk that would hopefully clear up her thoughts so that she could focus on the tasks at hand. On her way out of the door she grabbed her bag and a journal just in case inspiration hit then set out into the evening air, taking in a deep breath and instantly relaxing as she did so. She enjoyed living in Deersprings, she figured it was the right place for her to be in town, and she’d become friendly with the older woman who lived a little ways down the street from the apartments. Sometimes she would be invited for a cup of coffee which she thankfully accepted every time.

But that day Eleanor made up her mind that if her friend were to offer she would decline - the thoughts that swirled through her mind at a hundred miles per hour demanded her full attention and more caffeine wouldn't have benefited her. Big things were coming her way and, unfortunately, big changes as well. Her book would soon be published, that was something for her to be excited about, but the thought of Lily not being there to witness it and cheer her on was heartbreaking. But still she had to push on and be happy because her friends and family would be happy for her. She couldn’t allow herself to bring down everyone's mood, she’d done that too much already.

Eleanor frowned down at the sidewalk as she walked and tried to piece together what her celebratory afternoon would look like by herself on the day the book was published. She would have to get herself a nice fancy meal since she was hopeless in the kitchen and maybe she could invite a friend or two over to share the occasion with. She was in the middle of putting together a guest list for her impromptu party when she picked up on someone’s emotions; the reading caused the empath to look up and she smiled at the person as she approached. What was she so focused on? Eleanor’s curiosity once again got the better of her and she decided to stop for a chat.

“Hello. This is… lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?” The weather? She honestly couldn't think of anything better to talk about than the weather?

_

Lil had just wanted a quiet day, her neck was still wrapped up and while no one said anything really about it she was getting a little tired of the worried glances. So when a ghost started pantomiming that she needed to follow him - she’d taken the distraction even if she couldn’t tell what he was saying. 

How she ended up in deersprings, was anyone’s guest but the young man kept gesturing for her to follow him excitedly and she was getting more and more exasperated with a wild goose chase even if she tried to temper it. Startled when she realized someone had seen her Lil looked and said, “Oh hi. Yeah, pretty good weather.” 

The ghost gestured over the other’s head to a tree he wanted Lil to - climb? Immediately annoyed she huffed,  “No pal I’m not gonna do tha-” she trailed off when she remembered there was a person very much not seeing the man whining behind them.

_

Eleanor’s confusion was pointed more at the other’s strange words than the fact that her neck was wrapped. She looked over her shoulder to see if perhaps they had been speaking to someone else behind her but she didn’t find anyone. Turning back, she tilted her head and frowned again. “What was that?” Or maybe it was better to not bring any attention to whatever had been said, she said strange things all the time and she was always happy whenever the other person ignored it and continued on with the conversation.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything too important, you seem… busy.” Eleanor bit her lip as she continued to pick up readings on the other. It felt as though she were in the middle of an unpleasant conversation but with who? “I just needed some fresh air, I’ve been working all day and I haven’t given myself a chance to catch my breath yet. I’m an author.” She added excitedly, always happy to speak about her occupation.

_

“Oh sorry there was a kid who ran quickly,” Lil said lying quickly. “Little rascal was looking at that tree -a tree that I don’t think anyone would want to climb. Must be someone’s kid in the neighborhood.” The ghost seemed to be a little off put that she’d called him a child - but she was a little annoyed that he kept gesturing up into the branches of a tree she absolutely didn’t want to climb. 

Honestly, ghosts sometimes forget that gravity hurts normal people. Mostly they forgot what the living had to deal with most of the time. It would be sad if Lil wasn’t always constantly climbing things she shouldn’t. 

She already sounded insane and she wasn’t quite sure that she was a good enough liar for it to pass the sniff test - but she was willing to try it anyway. “Oh no you’re totally fine. I was just taking a walk. Oh really? What do you write?” 

Lil’s focus went back to the other honestly impressed with someone who was a writer. The ghost seemed intrigued too, coming closer to the other as Lil’s eyes flickered to him warning. While she doubted he would do anything body jumping she really didn’t want to spook the other. 

_

Once again Eleanor looked over her shoulder but didn’t see the child; her eyes landed on the tree that was mentioned and she nodded. “I suppose you’re right, I wouldn’t want to climb it either. I was never one of those kids who enjoyed climbing trees, it always just seemed too dangerous to me.” She stopped herself before she could continue rambling about something as unimportant as climbing trees. “What did the kid look like? I’ll have to keep a lookout for them in case they get themself into some trouble.”

Something was off and Eleanor didn’t believe that she should have been the reason for the waves of annoyance that rolled off of the other. Still, she seemed interested in what she had to say so she responded. “I mainly write romance but I just finished a horror novel. I’m sure I’ll be going back to what I’m most comfortable with, I just wanted to branch out and try something new. It took a lot of time and research but I think the finished product is amazing. I’m also biased so I don’t know if you should take my word for it. Maybe you’ll find that my other works are interesting, too. Just look for anything by Eleanor Bolden in the bookstore.” After the last mishap she still wasn’t sure if she was allowed to give her name out to strangers but it was out before she could stop herself.

“You mentioned you were out on a walk as well - just clearing your mind?” She wanted to get to the bottom of the strange emotions she felt without prying too much into their business. “Deersprings is the perfect place to do that, usually no one bothers you. Except today I guess since you’ve been interrupted by both me and a child.” That I didn’t see, she wanted to add but kept to herself.

_

Lil felt vindicated as she saw the young man pout behind Eleanor. He seemed a little annoyed but more so interested in what the two were talking about slowly creeping behind the author. “Brown hair, and looked like he was coddled too much as a kid.” She said getting a sharp look from the ghost. She almost laughed but kept it inside. 

“That’s a genre jump but I’m sure that would be fun to do every once and awhile. A pallet cleanser right -” Lil said as she saw the ghost reach over to touch the woman and Lil glared at the hand for a second. “Oh - uh what’s the horror one about? I try to read romance but I can’t say it's what I usually read. Not really a romantic.” 

Mostly Lil never could get into the idea of being in a relationship that didn’t end up in tragedy or comedy. Although that seemed a little bit sad to tell a stranger about. Besides, most of her exes were at least an interesting story. 

“Lil - I’m Lil Ballard. I work at the Bread Cemetery,” Lil said her eyes focusing back to Eleanor trying to hope the ghost wouldn’t start something. It created a light anxiety in her - it was usually the reason that people ended up thinking that she was odd and while it didn’t bother her as much as it once did she was a little emotionally frayed as of late. 

“Something like that -and you didn’t bother me at all Eleanor. The kid also won’t bother me because if he did he’d be in a lot of trouble,” Lil said, warning the ghost who now put his hand over Eleanor’s shoulder trying to cause a shiver to go through her. 

_

“That was a very specific description, I’ll have to keep an eye out.” Eleanor laughed but not in a mean way. She found the stranger to be amusing if not a little odd, but that didn’t matter to her because lots of people in the past had called her odd and she tried her best not to let it get to her so much.

Eleanor nodded with a smile. “You’re exactly right. I wanted to get another book out but I didn’t want it to be romance, not yet. I wasn’t exactly in the headspace for that kind of writing if we’re being completely honest.” She couldn’t have written a romance novel if she’d truly tried. Her heart simply wouldn’t have been in it and it would have brought up too many emotions, too many terrible emotions, that centered around the only person she would be able to think about during the entire process. “Every few years a monster emerges to feed on the fear and hopelessness of the people in town but the locals have basically figured out ways to keep themselves from falling victim. But of course there’s a group of friends who decide to travel through the area and they get stranded there without warning. I don’t want to give too much of it away, but once it comes out I’ll go more in depth with you if you’d like.” Because she honestly did not mind talking about her books, or any books for that matter, with anyone at any time.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lil. Lovely name. I don’t think I’ve ever been inside of the Bread Cemetery but I’ll have to check it out now that I know someone who works there.” A bit of anxiety washed over her and Eleanor reached up to place her hand over her heart. Was that her or Lil? It had to have been Lil, she had no anxiety whatsoever about their conversation. Lil must have really been having a tough time. She started to ask if everything was alright but a sudden chill ran through her like nothing she’d ever felt before. She stepped to the side and looked all around herself to find what could have caused it. Looking back to Lil the empath attempted a smile but failed. “Sorry, I thought… I thought I felt something.” Was she finally losing her mind? It had been a long time coming: first she hadn’t seen the child then she felt a random chill. That couldn’t have been normal.

_

Lil hid a chuckle at the other’s amusement and for a moment she was enraptured at the idea of the book. It sounded like something that Lil would want to read. While she usually read older tests - mostly to learn languages - when she was just learning she loved epic adventures and journeys. Usually what got her interested in a language was the stories she really could understand in the original language. 

“Wow that sounds like an excellent book,” Lil said with a nod. “I’ll have to pick it up when it’s out. Kind of sounds like one of those old stories you know. Like myths where the heroes have to figure out what is happening.” She probably didn’t sound particularly educated as she spoke - she wasn’t really but she loved thinking about stuff like this. “What’s the name of it? If you’ve got one now.”

Lil nodded looking at the ghost who was now peering over her shoulder curious that she was shivering. Like he didn’t know he could do that. “You should. I work in the front and my brother -Jonas is the head baker. He loves Romances, so I’m sure he’d love to talk to you about those. Oh it gets chilly around here a lot.” Lil said lying hoping the ghost would stop. “I know it’ll stop in a second, or we’re going to have to talk about it.”

The ghost looked at her for the second bit and shrinked back a little, seemingly concerned what Lil would do. There was a twinge of guilt at his fear, but she kept steady looking back at Eleanor. “You uh - feel better now?” 

_

“Th-” Eleanor stopped herself before she could get it out. She was learning and was proud of herself for being so cautious. “That’s very kind. Have you ever seen Jeepers Creepers? It was kind of loosely based off of that with the monster reemerging every twenty or so years to feed. To be honest, that movie scared me to death when I was little, I was surprised that I was able to get through the book.” One of her earlier foster parents had allowed her to watch the movie with their older daughter and had simply laughed it off when Eleanor had become so scared that she refused to sleep with the lights off for nearly a month. “It’s called Those Who Lurk. It should be out late September, early October. Just in time for Halloween!”

Eleanor stood on her tiptoes as her own excitement flowed through her. “Really? I’ll have to make it a point to speak with him then, I’m always looking for more people I can talk to about books. Maybe I should start a book club but I always thought that maybe that was too much. Maybe people would judge me for not having a life outside of books.” She giggled at herself and shrugged.

“Does it?” Eleanor had lived in the area for nearly a year and had never experienced such a chill before. But then again she had just recently started to venture out more, perhaps it was something that happened often but she just hadn’t ever noticed it because she’d always been inside of her apartment when it happened. She nodded, “I feel… fine. How about you? You still seem a little distracted. Is that kid back?” She smiled at Lil as she spoke. “Really, if some strange occurrence is happening around me you can tell me, it probably wouldn't be the weirdest thing I’ve heard this week.” She was joking of course and hoped that the other would be able to pick up on that.

_

“Oh yeah, I think I did catch that one,” Lil said, connecting with the movie. While Jonas tended to watch lighter movies, Lil was no doubt more interested in horror - to an extent at least. There was some comfort in it, she couldn’t rightly understand. Maybe it was as simple as she could stop watching or reading it and it would go away. In anycase the exorcist didn’t really like examining it. “I’ll have to keep on the lookout for it. Maybe grab one of your other ones for my brother,” Lil said with a nod. She liked getting Jonas gifts, especially now that they were a little more financially stable and not relying on their dad to send money. 

Lil chuckled and nodded, “He’d probably love that. He loves talking to people.” She loved sending people that seemed nice along to befriend Jonas, it usually was a second habit. After all, Lil wasn’t a great friend but she was a pretty good judge of character. That and her brother deserved more kindness in his life. Her eyes found the ghost again who seemed intrigued by the fact she had a twin. 

“For me at least. I’m almost always cold around here,” Lil corrected, which was true enough. Ghosts tended to leave people a little colder and her being around them constantly made her a little more sensitive to chills then the average. At the other’s word Lil hesitated but decided that the truth was probably a lot less weird then what she would continue to do. “Ah well I guess we can test that theory if you’d like. The kid is not - well he’s probably more like a teen I think and a ghost,” Lil said honestly. “I’m guessing you probably can’t see him then. He’s trying to get my attention.”

Lil waited for the other to call her a liar or maybe get frightened. While the exorcist was pretty open about what she did - sometimes she hated this part of her existence. She didn’t like being called a liar, or the fear that came with it. It had gotten rarer these days - mostly because Wicked’s rest was filled with people that just believed things - but a lifetime being called a fraud did weigh down her shoulders at times.  

_

Eleanor excitedly clapped her hands together. “I can definitely get a copy to you for free, of whichever one you think he’d like the most.” She was always excited to get new readers and if she could get someone hooked with one of her books then they would likely pick up anything else she might have come out with in the future. “If he likes it then please let him know that I’ll be going back to romance shortly, I just wanted to venture out of my comfort zone this one time.”

Whether or not the weather truly was vastly different for Lil, Eleanor couldn’t have known, but she just nodded with a kind smile and accepted the excuse. “Last year during the fall I was surprised with how chilly it got so I always carried a light sweater with me whenever I needed to go out.”

Eleanor’s smile fell a little bit. Normally she wouldn’t have believed the ghost story for even a second but things had happened in the past few months that left her wondering what all was really out there, especially in this town. It seemed that every week she learned that some new book character was actually real and existed alongside her. Her mind swirled for a moment and she instinctively looked over her shoulder but of course didn’t see anyone. Not wanting to discredit Lil, she cleared her throat and decided to question a little further to determine whether or not the person she’d run into had lost their mind.

“A… ghost. What does he look like?” Eleanor was open to believing nearly anything but she did have a hard time with the thought that a ghost was near her and that someone else could see them. She wasn’t even sure she believed in ghosts in the first place. “And why is he hanging out around here? Why has he chosen to hang around me?”

_

“Oh sure - uh that’s really kind. I appreciate it,” Lil said with a nod. She’d have to think on what Jonas would like, but it probably wouldn’t be that hard. “Oh I’m sure you’ll find a loyal reader. He loves supporting local businesses and artists.” 

Lil felt the light tension of someone not quite knowing if they should believe her. It wasn’t anything new. Still, she appreciated that Eleanor wanted to ask questions instead of just assuming something. At the question on what he looked like she took into consideration the ghost who seemed intrigued. “Little taller than you, short hair I would guess probably brown. Can’t be more than like 19? He looks like he’s from the 1980’s if I had to guess. He’s dressed like the one guy in the Breakfast Club.” 

She blinked at the fact Eleanor thought the man was following her. “Oh no - he’s not following you. Sorry if you got that impression. He’s trying to show me something in that tree back there - and Dude I’m not climbing the tree.” Lil got distracted as the ghost came closer to grab her hand frustrated that it kept going through. 

“Ah - Ghosts like to take me on goose chases. Honestly you don’t have anything to worry about. Mostly they don’t mess with other people.” Lil tried to sound assuring and not like she was a tv ghost show presenter. 

_

Eleanor stiffened as Lil went into very specific details about the alleged ghost that had decided to crash their conversation. It was possible that everything she said was absolutely true but it was also a possibility that none of it was. The empath wasn’t sure what to believe and she hated to be in such an awkward spot. She gnawed on her lower lip for a long moment as she thought everything over. “You’re not joking, are you?” She nervously tugged on her bangs and shifted her weight from foot to foot. She was still skeptical but perhaps she wanted to believe.

“The tree… that’s why you were talking about the tree?” Eleanor hugged herself and let out a slow breath. Still questioning, she glanced up into the tree and raised a brow. “Well, now I’m officially curious. I don’t know if I can truly say that I believe in ghosts yet, but I’m curious. Are you able to… speak with them? As in, are you able to hear them and they hear you? How long have you been able to do this?” She stopped herself before she could bombard Lil with any more questions. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask that many questions.”

She nodded and sighed in relief. “That’s good. I was starting to think that it was like the movies where the ghosts intentionally target people and harm them and things like that. I have to stop thinking that everything is like the movies.” Eleanor thought for a moment before she continued, “What are some of the places the… ghosts… have led you?

_

Lil rubbed the back of her neck, “Uh no, can’t say it’s a joke.” Part of her wished it was or that this feeling of people being weary got easier. Still it was familiar, it didn’t make her nervous or scared - mostly just a little resigned that others might not like her much.

At the questions though she blinked not expecting all of them. “Oh no it’s fine, I can communicate with them. Ghosts can hear everyone as far as I know,” She didn’t add that she couldn’t hear them - a quirk that was just her own - but she figured it was enough for the author to know she could communicate with the ghosts. “Nah I get it. Most people have a lot of questions, I’ve always been able to communicate with ghosts. It’s something that people are born with, and while sometimes other people can like to see a ghost - it’s not super common. The ghost also just wants me to see something in the tree, that's why.” 

“Most ghosts aren’t interested in people unless it’s someone that they know and are trying to contact. They really are only interested in me because I can - you know - see them. You shouldn’t be scared of them. I don’t think most movies get it right. Like you and me most ghosts just wanna get where they're going and not bother anyone.” At the sillier question Lil laughed, “Sorry uh pretty much anywhere. One time it was a planet fitness because they wanted someone to get their gym bag - it's all over the place.” 

_

Eleanor couldn’t think of anything to say. Part of her truly wanted to believe Lil because she knew that some things simply could not be explained with logic whenever it came to this town, like her own abilities that she struggled with, but ghosts were something else entirely. But then again could she really be that surprised? She knew of vampires and another species of undead, were ghosts really that hard to believe in?

“You were born with it? That must have been confusing.” Eleanor wanted to open up and say that she had been born with a special ability too but she didn’t think it was the time. Would Lil even believe her or would she think that the empath was just trying to keep up with the supernatural talents? “Does it make things difficult? I can’t imagine… I think that it would make my skin crawl a little bit.” She decided that she believed Lil not because there was overpowering evidence but because she didn’t seem to be out of her mind when she spoke. “Two of my siblings swore they saw a ghost in our grandmother’s house but none of us have ever believed them. Maybe they did, who knows?”

At Lil’s comforting words Eleanor let out a sigh of relief. At least she didn’t have to worry about any ghosts deciding to come after her. “That’s good. I can’t say that I’m truly that surprised though, the movies hardly ever get anything correct. Planet Fitness, huh? I would have never guessed that.” She tucked a bit of hair behind her ear and looked around. “Is it wrong or insensitive to say that I think it’s really cool that you’re able to communicate with ghosts?” She wanted to bring out her journal and make a note about it but contained herself - she would have all the time in the world to do so after the conversation. Besides, she couldn’t add someone who could communicate with ghosts into her novel, it was too late for that kind of revision but there was always next time. “Have you ever met anyone who’s able to do what you do?”

_

“It can be but my family all can see ghosts so it wasn’t too bad,” Lil said remembering Erin who had been scared and nervous - who had thanked Lil profusely when she was able to say seeing ghosts wasn’t in her head. She remembered Winter who was determined and questioning - both of the others not really understanding what was happening. 

It was probably the only thing that Lil was grateful for, that seeing and interacting with ghost wasn’t considered weird in her family. 

 At the question of if it made life difficult Lil couldn’t help but chuckle, “Yeah makes it a little awkward when ghosts and people want your attention. The skin crawling bit I can’t really say, I mean if you suddenly were able to do it I can imagine it would freak you out. They might have, I can't really say. - Ghosts sometimes pop up in people’s lives.” 

Lil nodded lightly “Yeah - gym lockers who knew right?” At the confession Lil shrugged, “I can’t say that’s bad a lot of people think it’s cool. Still, it’s just something I can do, you know, it’s not super special to me. And yes I know some people - mostly family members if I’m honest. Still there’s a good amount of people I think. Not super common - most of the people who say they can probably can’t for the record. Be careful of scammers.” 

_

“It runs in the family? That must have been comforting to have a support system around you who knew what you were going through. I’m glad that you had that.” Too many times to count Eleanor had wished that she had had someone who understood what she was going through back when she was a child and felt utterly alone. Even if the people around her didn’t quite understand it would have been better had they tried to show her some compassion instead of writing her off as strange.

Eleanor decided that Lil was not joking and that even if she was only imagining the ghosts in her mind there was nothing wrong with a few questions. She had her own ability that most wouldn’t have believed had she opened up about it, she understood what it was like to be looked at as though she were insane. “No offense but I typically have a few reservations whenever it comes to people who say they can communicate with the dead. Now that I know there’s actually people out there who can, I'm going to have to dig a little deeper to try and weed out the posers. Should we… see why he’s so interested in the tree?” 

Maybe it was time. Lil had confessed to something big, had taken a leap of faith and trusted Eleanor with something special about herself. Maybe, hopefully, the woman who could see and communicate with ghosts wouldn’t think that being able to feel other people’s emotions was strange. Hopefully Lil would believe her.

“Actually, since we’re on the subject of not-so-normal abilities… you’re actually not alone. Well, I can’t see ghosts and I surely can’t communicate with them, but I do have this way of feeling emotions. Not just mine of course, everyone can do that, but I can feel the emotions of those around me. It gets overwhelming sometimes which is why I tend to stick to myself mostly, but it can also be helpful whenever I’m in the middle of a conversation with someone and they’re being deceitful.” Eleanor paused to allow some time for everything to sink in before adding, “And now this where you question my sanity.” She joked.

_

“Yeah it was nice,” Lil said, knowing a bit that it was a lie. It wasn’t in the way that the other had meant it. After all, being alone seeing ghosts was hard for most Medium, but with a legacy there was expectations that Lil just never quite met. Family and business were always intertwined and training was always at the edges of her memories. Still, that wasn’t here nor there. 

“I mean a lot of people are lying, generally I would be cautious of anyone who says they can speak to spirits. Especially if they're asking for a lot of money” Lil said with a shrug. While there wasn’t anything specifically wrong with asking for payment for specific rituals that weren’t necessary, most Mediums she knew wouldn’t hesitate to step in even if there wasn’t a payment. It was at least a good rule of thumb.  “I mean, unless you want to go up in the tree with me - you don’t have to go on this adventure. The ghost and I can figure that out.” 

At the confession Lil blink not expecting the other to divulge something like that. Still, it wasn’t the weirdest thing that she had heard and she didn’t think Eleanor really seemed like a person to lie to be interesting. June had taught her children to take information in and accept it - and well Lil didn’t have a reason to assume anything else. Besides, it was enough that she’d reached her hand out in that way.  “Huh. That’s not something I’ve heard of. That’s gotta be way harder than what I am. I’m guessing you’ve always had it then?”

It was curious, and if Lil was honest it made her feel a little bit of kinship with the other. “It’s not exactly the same - but Mediums like me tend to uh - well hang out alone for similar overwhelming reasons. Not emotions, but being around ghosts and trying to pretend they're not there can get really overwhelming.” Jonas found the whisperings overbearing at times, and while Lil didn’t have that she had a lot of ghost related awkwardness. It made it hard to talk to the living and well - Lil couldn’t hear the dead.  “I’m sorry that you have to deal with that. It seems like something that can make it hard to talk to others.” 

_

Eleanor was glad to hear that her suspicions had, for the most part, been true. “Stay away from the ones asking for a lot of money, got it.” She typically did that anyway but it was good to have the opinion of someone who was actually able to communicate with the dead. She looked over at the tree one last time then shook her head slowly. “You know what? I think I will leave it to the two of you. Just please make sure that you’re being careful if you do decide to figure out whatever’s up there.”

Relief washed over Eleanor when she realized that Lil wouldn’t be calling her insane. “I became conscious of it when I was in elementary school. It made everything harder, for most of my life I didn’t know how to function around people. But I’ve made a lot of friends here who are willing to help me out and they make it a lot easier on me. I used to just sit in my apartment all day and not venture out unless I absolutely had to but now I’m out and about more than ever. I still have my days of course, but it’s nothing like how it used to be.” She thought back on how far she’d come in just a year and became proud of herself. It wasn’t easy, but she’d done it.

Eleanor smiled. “Don’t apologize, we both have something that we’re dealing with that isn’t ‘normal’, if that’s the word you want to use for it. Maybe… sometime we can get together again and just have a debriefing session - you tell me everything about what you’re able to do and I’ll tell you everything about what I’m able to do. I’ve learned that it makes you feel a lot better whenever you’re able to get it all off of your chest with someone you trust.”

—

“Like most things in live, Money can be suspicious.” Lil nodded and chuckled. “I’ll be fine. Not the first tree I’ve been up in and probably won’t be the last.” The ghost seemed to perk up as she admitted to the fact she would probably move up into the tree. 

Lil nodded slightly, thinking about Mediums who seemed to be haunted by ghosts. It didn’t seem all that different in the end. “I’m glad you're going out more, I hope it gets easier - whatever is going on. If you ever want a quiet place, I work at the Bread Cemetery in town, the back room is pretty calm and quiet but still around people.” Lil chuckled again and nodded, “Hey I’ll have to take you up on that. Sounds like a good deal - you have a good afternoon Eleanor.”

[heard-nsfw-is-back]

oh my God healthy mother alert

Cw: hateful speech (homophobic, classism, cheating parents, ableist rhetoric ie learning in a classroom setting) it's not healthy but for once I wrote about a good mother son relationship. Don't worry I'll make it up next time😌

Steve and Eddie come back late from a date and unfortunately Steve's parents' car is there in the driveway. Steve feels so fucking cold and Eddie takes a deep breath and looks to him. "Wait here." Steve says, holding up a hand. He already knew Eddie was willing to come with him. At Eddie's face, Steve smiles, warm but terrified. "I'd rather deal with them alone. Don't worry sweetheart, keep the car warm." He winks and slides out the car, keeping it running just in case.

Eddie is sitting in the dark, minutes drag by and his legs are getting tired from bouncing around. Eventually Eddie sucks his teeth. "Fuck it." He climbs out of the car, careful to leave the door open in case they need to run. Or worse, walk slowly and hold themselves together. Steve was always talking about how exhausting his parents are. A nice way of saying they sucked, as far as Eddie's emotional translator was concerned.

He walked up to the house, carefully and quietly. Not that it would have done any good, he could hear Steve's father from outside. "....enough that it's a man but does it have to be that man? He's a fuck up in school Steve. He can't even graduate, it's just memorizing answers at this point he can't even do that right!" Well fuck. Ow. Eddie pantomimed pulling a dagger from his heart, trying not to giggle. Weak sauce insults were a dime a dozen. He's heard worse from 12 year old girls. Steve made a disgusted sound. "Dad you only got your first job because your father blew the old boss. We all know it." Eddie's knees almost gave out. Fuck his baby knew how to take it AND give it. "Besides, whenever I asked you for help you always told me to ask mom. Looks like you need a refresher, huh? And anyways it doesn't take a genius to make coffee you said? You broke the first two coffee makers I bought you for Christmas!"

Eddie was going to rawdog Steve the second he got his hands on him. Maybe he could convince him to do it on the driveway. Steve's dad interrupted Eddie's frankly fantastic imagination. "All we ask is for you to do well enough to get in the business and take over. Get a wife. Hell we'll find you one! But you have to go after that sick murderer! We're doing this for your own good. For the family's good." Steve scoffed. "If you have a shit about my well-being you should have been here instead of banging your secretary. Family good, my ass." Eddie grinned and made a face. Fuck Steve was so hot when he was being mean.

From this angle he could see both Steve and his dad look over at a woman that frankly, was far to gorgeous to be married to that guy. She held up a hand and Eddie swallowed another laugh, Steve looked just like her. "I've heard enough. I've just had a 12 hour flight. I've been wearing shoes that would make Madonna cry in sympathy. I'm tired and I don't want to hear anymore. Steve." And his baby looked seconds from crying. "Steve did I ever tell you I had a girlfriend in high school?" WHAT? WHAT? HUH? EXCUSE ME? Eddie's jaw broke off and bounced somewhere over where Steve's must've. "Mom. What? Like a girl space friend or a." At this Steve made a wiggle with some finger scissor. Eddie took it back, he was going to teach Steve some decorum on the driveway.

His mother just smiled. "Sweetheart I would never get mad at you for dating who you wanted. Besides I know about the secretary. Who do you think told me?" At this she made a sly wink and Eddie was going to eat out two Harringtons in his life or his name isn't Edward Munson. Joking. Mostly. Steve's father was fit to burst. "But dear, our boy is shacking up with the Munson boy! It's just not right!" His mother snapped her finger and both men stood up straight. Interesting, good to know Steve can be obedient, Eddie thought. He had to learn how to snap though.

"I've heard your complaints, dear." The word dear coming out more like a mocking thing rather than endearing. "I'm refusing to hear them. I won't have our boy, our son, trapped in some worthless, emotionless well like ours. Steve as far as I'm concerned, you're fine. All is well." She pointed at her husband. "Don't make me disgrace you with a formal divorce." She snapped when it looked like he was going to protest. "The fact that I still have your last name is vile enough, I have enough stakes in the company to keep me well fed, I will do it. And I'll take your pretty little secretary with me."

Steve looked proud, intrigued, and a little grossed out. "Mom I really. Really don't want to hear about your sex lives." At this, she looked a little considerate. "You're right. It's inappropriate. Anyway, go bring your boyfriend in, that concrete can't be good for his knees." They all looked up and Steve smiled. Eddie had hid his upper body well behind some plants but the entire lower half of his body was out to see. He waved his fingers and walked in. "Uh. Hi. Hi, Steve's mom. Steve's dad." His mother looked amused and Steve was smiling, clear adoration in his eyes. His father looked. Embarrassed. Good.

"I'll skip the small talk. If my son comes to me upset in any way, and I find out you had anything to do with it, nothing, no one, and nowhere would keep you safe from me. Understand?" Steve's mom leaned back, looking relaxed and regal all at once. "Yes ma'am." Eddie promised. "You better graduate." Steve's dad interjected. "Can it." Steve threw back. And he took Eddie's hand. "Come on." He dragged Eddie back out to the car. "You can't have a boner in front of my parents dude." Steve hissed when they sat in. "Oh shit." Eddie murmured and Steve's head hit the steering wheel.

[flyinghome-againstthewind]

seven sentence sunday

Tagged by the lovely @lara-frasers! 💕 Thank you, friend! Here's seven sentences from the next chapter of Seaside:

When they pulled up to Lallybroch, Jamie threw the car in park and twisted in his seat to face the girl. 

“Faith, remember,” he began, and his gaze was met by a pair of eyes that had sparked with unceasing joy in the days since they told her the news. “Ye cannae tell anyone yet, aye?” 

She pantomimed sealing her lips shut and throwing away the key. His lips quirked into a smile. “Alright, a nighean, now that we’ve got that covered…” He nodded his head toward the house and they each opened their door and climbed out of the car.

no-pressure tagging @walkinginland and @theawkwardterrier!

[dykesville]

bechdel test failed (aka your only friend is your enemy)

happy truce @renvy-art!! of course i’m that bitch about valerie so of course of course i had to go with prompt 3: “sam and valerie talk after valerie finds out about danny.” so here it is, and i hope you enjoy it!!

six hours in a robot fursuit would be enough to stoke the homicidal tendencies in anyone, but valerie gray ran hot to begin with.  even so, she hadn’t meant to do this to danny.  well.  not to this danny.

[cross-posted to ao3]

she’d got him fucking good, for what it was worth.  he wasn’t dead, any more than was apparently his usual, but his breathing skipped and stuttered like a scraped-up cd.  his heartbeat was uneven, and he dripped thick and blackening blood across the mercifully vacant pavement.

the trip across town gave her time to look at danny, at the gentle and boyish look his pale face held when he wasn’t at school shrinking away from bullies or in the streets punning at ghosts.  it gave her time to wish she hadn’t beamed him with a sniper blast in the open wound.  or that she’d recognized that zigzag path as his lurching escape from the aftermath of a battle that he – heroically – had resolved.  or that she’d gotten closer before she hit him – or that she’d talked to him before she targeted him – or that she’d looked into those green eyes and recognized how the curve of phantom’s lids belonged to the same boy who’d been her ill-received crush in chemistry class a year ago…

the trip across town gave her time to realize, truly and acutely in the depth of her soul, that there was no world in which this would have ended any differently.

fucking fenton.

valeries’s fists slammed against the panes of manson’s window.  she was setting up some macabre display in veneration of the dead, which seemed to valerie like overki – like a stupid thing to do in a town where literal ghosts made merry in the streets.  heavy metal blared all the way to the neighbors’, a good distance since the mansons’ property was immense.  valerie extended her metallic suit over her elbow and smacked it against the glass – wham wham wham wham wham until sam looked up.

to her credit, it took only a second of widening eyes for sam to jump up, cursing in pantomime, and throw the window open.  “pass him in.”  valerie slid her hoverboard, danny dangling across it, through the window and climbed in herself.

she was prepared for cacophony, but she realized immediately that sam’s public disturbance speakers were focused outward, not just soundproofing the room from sam’s parents but providing an alibi.  valerie could hear every syllable sam muttered under her breath as she whipped the tablecloth off her desk, her goth trinkets wrapped inside it.

it turned out sam’s desk doubled as an operating table, and beneath that desk were six first-aid kits labeled in ghost script.  while valerie manhandled danny onto the table and cut his shirt off him, sam laid the six containers out on a side table and clicked opened each in succession.  a stethoscope.  trauma shears.  a set of awkward asymmetrical needles, no two identical, and thread that looked like fishing line.  bandages whose dyed-black tint didn’t mask their glow.  a defibrilator.  each tool was so acid green they almost triggered valerie’s automatic gun mechanism.  and in the penultimate case, jar upon jar of differing viscosities of glittering ectoplasm.

sam snapped on latex gloves and valerie let herself be jostled out of the way so doctor manson could take a look.  sam prodded gently at the leaking wound, opening it wider while antiseptic light beamed from a carefully disguised desk lamp.

valerie felt like her body was grounded in place.  she could not take her eyes off this wound.  penetrative trauma on his right side, twelve centimeters deep, piercing straight through his liver.  to top it off, third-degree burns in a radius of six centimeters wide and some four centimeters deep at the same point of incision; his entire side was charred and exposed and sloughing sooty viscera.  she’d done that, that last part.  that one was from her.  sam prodded it at the injuries with her gloved fingers and a silvery tongue depressor and valerie stayed out of her light.

a moment later, sam sighed.  she tossed her head to throw her fringe out of her eyes.  “oh, danny,” she muttered to herself, tracing one press-on nail over her first-aid kits and selecting items with crisp precision.  “this was not what i meant when i said you should get a stick-and-poke.”

valerie’s eyes slid to the girl at her left, incredulous.

sam didn’t seem to notice her simmering, humming along with her music and inspecting danny’s wound.  she snorted.

“geez, valerie.  couldn’t you have shot him somewhere other than where skulker got his hooks in?”

“sam, don’t fucking start with me.”

fuck.  fuck, okay.  she hadn’t meant to go there, right, not while danny was losing his guts on manson’s worktop.  but also fuck it.  valerie’s subconscious knew her better than she did, and it knew that there was shit that needed to be aired out.  if danny was going to be okay, and sam’s demeanor communicated that he was, then why hold onto ‘till tomorrow what you could blow the lid off today.

sam seemed to be of the same mind.  she huffed an irritated breath and threw a look in valerie’s direction.  “and what is that supposed to mean?”

valerie pointed to the ashen boy on the table.  “it means that this boy let me chase him up and down the city for who remember how long.  and he never ain’t told me he was human?  and somebody i know?  someone i thought i was friends with – ”

“oh, so you’re mad at danny when you’re the one who just tried to kill him.  when he is bleeding out on my desk – ”

“how’s i supposed to know i could have killed him when he ain’t never told me he was alive?”

“how was he supposed to tell you when you’re constantly trying to kill him?”

“he’s a ghost! – ”  valerie strangled her own voice and dug her nails into her palm.  “he’s a ghost.  i’m a ghost hunter.  what else did he think he was gone get?”

“oh, sure,” sam scoffed, rolling her eyes so hard her whole head rolled with them.  “it’s always ‘shoot first, ask questions later.’”

zero to one hundred on a gas-burning stove.  valerie stalked toward sam’s open closet.  “hey, what are you – ”

valerie had clocked the awkwardly-stashed pastel givenchy as a hiding place for something the moment she’d stepped in the room, and soon as she’d shoved it to the side, sure enough, a false wall revealed itself.  she yanked on the panel and out spilled a veritable trove of ectoweapons, bright and bold and garish in fentonworks green.  sam’s protests died on her lips as valerie fixed her with a pointed stare, lips pursed hard enough to bruise.

sam’s expression morphed from startled, to ever-so-briefly shamed, to sardonic.  “point taken, valerie,” she drawled.  “now could you please put my stuff back.”

valerie returned the ectoweapons to the crawl space.  hand-blasters and net-slingers and things she couldn’t quite parse that she set aside to take back home with her.  these were models from some years ago, made well out of date in a relatively sort time.  these must have been stolen from the fentons – who wouldn’t think twice about something being there one day and gone the next – one at a time over the course of years.

sam had kept at her steady work putting danny back together, even while she and valerie had thrown those few jibes.  she’d wiped his torso with a damp towel first, then several antiseptic wipes; now she cleaned it out with what was probably distilled water, if it wasn’t some sort of ghost zone ghost water or something the like.  with the last of the blood washed away, the chunk taken out of danny’s torso was charred and vivid and exposed.  valerie cringed.

sam appeared unbothered, squinting at the wound with intention, but numb to the gore of it.  how many times had she stitched him up like this?  valerie could picture it easily – the two of them phasing into sam’s room through the wall, danny easing onto her desk, making some dumb joke to cover up a wince.  now that it had been exposed to her, it was all too easy to imagine danny’s jokes in phantom’s voice, deployed as a way to distance himself from the pain he was in.  to play the hero.  how many times had it been one of her blasts that had sent him here?

sam replaced her gloves, tossing the old ones into a biohazard bucket by her feet.  she extracted a jar of ectoplasm from first aid kit number four; with the lid unscrewed, the green glow lit her face from the chin.  she applied it thickly onto danny’s injury and there was a chilling suck as the ectoplasm moved on its own, burrowing deep inside that gaping hole within him.  excess fluid leaked away from the site, turned a watery and rancid pickle color.  sam dabbed it away and valerie glimpsed the pink flesh of one of danny’s inner organs, wholly restored.  sam trickled water into danny’s mouth and waited while he reflexively swallowed it.

“y’all could have told me,” valerie said quietly.  “danny’s my friend.  and y’all made me the villain of the week.”

sam paused, for the first time.  she remarked valerie with a look that contained some measure of shame beneath its frosty surface.  “for what it’s worth,” she said in a low voice, “he doesn’t tell anybody.  if tucker and i hadn’t been there during the accident, i doubt he’d have even told us.”

“so it’s just y’all two that know?”

“and jazz,” sam said, “and one other person.”  sam’s tone was guarded, and valerie acquiesced.  she’d poke at it someday, but for now it didn’t matter.  probably.  as sam spread a lotiony ectoplasm over danny, she added, “both of them found out by accident, too.”

“so he just let me beat up on him for months.  i could have killed that idiot.”  she had the feeling she was repeating herself, and she had the feeling it wouldn’t be the last time.

“val, join the club,” sam said, unimpressed.  “every ghost and every ghost hunter in the world beats up on danny.  and you hate phantom more than any of them.  if danny was going to reveal his identity to anyone, he definitely wouldn’t start with you.”

“fuck you,” valerie said quietly.  sam’s head snapped up so quick you could hear the ice in her veins crackle.

“wh – fuck me?” sam asked, aghast.

why did valerie always lash out when she felt hurt?  and then, despite a moment’s shame – that was, a moment’s regret, why was it so easy to justify herself to herself and to settle into righteous anger like a second skin?

“fuck you,” sam was sputtering.  “what gives you the right to be self-righteous when you’re the reason he’s in this condition in the first – ”

valerie shook her head.  “no.  no, if i’m the reason, you’s the reason.  you think ‘phantom’ saves this town – ”

“danny.”  sam was rigid, and holding that wonky ghost needle in her hand.  valerie grimaced; she’d heard the reflexive derision in her own voice at the ghost boy’s name but fuck the details for now because she knew what she was about.  something had become clear to her in an instant, and as the notion dropped into her mind, fully formed as though whispered into her ear, she voiced it.  she stepped up to sam, stopping just shy of getting in her face.

“i save this town.”  sam scowled down her nose, disgust and distaste wrinkling her skin.  “i’m the reason amity park ain’t a smoking crater.  i clean this shit up by myself, but danny brings his ass around to every fight ‘cause he’s got a hero complex and he thinks he’s responsible for every ghost that come through here.  and you,” and valerie clenched her hand into a fist to keep from smacking it against the center of sam’s chest.  “you like that you’re the only one he trust with his secrets.  because it makes you special.”

“oh, fuck you, valerie,” sam intoned, rolling her eyes and shoulders and body.  but valerie didn’t need to see her cheeks color to know that sam knew that valerie knew the truth behind her words.

“you could have told me who he really was.  but you, you, sam manson, you’d rather let me hunt him down like he’s just another ghost ‘cause you like the drama.  you said it’s my fault danny got hurt today.  right?  but now that i know who he is, you think we gonna fight tomorrow?  and if you’d told me the truth last year, you think we’d still be fighting today?  of course not.  so what’s what with that?  whose fault is it we in this situation?”

sam’s expression was almost wonderingly disgusted.  she scoffed, building up some dismissal, seconds away from claiming that she didn’t even know what valerie was talking about.  but valerie’s life was making sense for the first time in a long time.  truths were uncovering more truths.  everything was slotting into place.  she could feel her rage at the world, so long unchecked, coalescing into heat like a forge.  where the fire wasn’t the weapon but the thing you used to cast the weapons.  and sam’s frost was cracking melting under it.

“you fucked up, manson,” valerie hissed.  “how the fuck does it help danny for y’all to leave me in the dark?  so i have to watch him fall a hundred feet out the sky to know that he could even die?  to know he’s a human and that he’s my friend?”

“get the fuck over yourself,” sam breathed.  “you don’t know what ‘helps danny.’  you were trying to kill him.”

“manson, i was trying to kill him,” valerie repeated and gripped sam by the hands, startling her with her ferocity.  “y’all three is playing with his luck.  i – just imagine if i’d actually – ”

valerie flinched so hard it rocked her entire body, and sam’s, too, held in her grip.  her suit, even dormant, automatically tried to check her vitals and she cursed it.  that moment when she’d hit him – it had been a triumph that felt so cruel now painted over by the snap of horror from when he’d dropped and kept dropping.  that flash of light she’d never seen before but that she knew was bad, bad, bad, and she was rocketing toward his lifeless body before she knew what she was doing.  she had just managed to catch him before he’d collided with the ground.  it had been so fucking close to being so much worse than bad.

grief hit her like a shock, and she staggered toward table and the boy laying across it.  reflexively, sam steadied her.

stretched out, pale, skinny, and barely shakily breathing, danny looked so fragile.  so fragile.  valerie loved this boy, whatever that meant, and she had caused him so.  much.  pain.  by the way that she had lived and the malice she’d held in her heart.  the circumstances had been what they had been.  and she had made the choices she had made.

“why didn’t y’all tell me?  any of y’all?”  valerie didn’t let go of sam’s hands.

“there was never a good time,” sam whispered.  she didn’t pull away.  “ghost attacks every day – i mean, you know what it’s like.  and with school on top of it, and then there’s the way his family acts about ghosts, and – it felt like telling one person meant telling everyone, and…”

rambling and unclear and yet crystalline – it was all so familiar.  to think that she and they had been walking on opposite sides of the same road for over a year, and that in that time all they’d managed to do was hurt each other from across that road.

“we didn’t know how you’d take it.”  sam extricated one hand from valerie’s to rub the back of her neck.  their expressions were complementary bitterness as sam admitted, “we didn’t know whether you could be reasoned with.”

so there it was.  danny and his friends had thought, or at least they had worried – enough to let the cat-and-mouse game go on for eighteen months – that valerie hated phantom more than she cared for danny.  that she hated ghosts more than she could honor another human being.

“sorry,” sam mumbled.  valerie, stiff, nodded once.

“yeah.  i’m sorry too.”

inadequate.  all that needed to be said.

valerie surveyed the table.  manson was a piles-on-the-floor type of girl, but she’d kept each item in its place here, a tidy, careful hospital in the center of chaos and gore.  danny in the center of it, cared for, a simple pillow behind his head.

sam came up behind her and nodded toward the modifications to the table.  “tucker designed those little caddies, and we built them in the fentons’ lab.  but tuck is useless when it comes to actual medicine, so it always falls to me and jazz.”

and danny had been relying on half-complete half-human medicine administered by teenagers ever since his – accident.  valerie knew the feeling.

valerie pulled on a pair of gloves.  she held out her hand for the needle and thread; sam handed them to her automatically, compelled by the force of valerie’s will.  though in truth, valerie hadn’t always been great around medicine herself, and to her surprise she found it harder to swallow her nerves in the face of someone else’s wounds than for her own.

“doin’ okay?” sam asked gently.  valerie’s temper flashed – of course she was doing okay, and of course she wasn’t – but she quelled it.

“i’m fine.  what’s a little blood between ghost hunters.”  she mopped up a little of said blood with the sponge, and caught the glistening of ectoplasm in the fluids.  this was real.  this was danny.

she’d done her own first aid, right, stitches and bandages and serums mr. masters had delivered her that she didn’t have the energy to be skeptical of.  but danny was different.  he had ghostly attributes, ghostly needs that valerie’s experience didn’t equip her to accommodate – she had no idea where those other jars of ectoplasm came into the medical care, for instance.

she shifted her weight.  exhaled her frustration.  inhaled the acceptance that this was not going to just be the rest of her night, but the rest of her time in amity park.  the rest of her time as a ghost hunter.  collaborating with sam, and tucker, and jazz, and danny phantom, and with all the ghosts who’d become phantom’s allies whom valerie had pushed away.  since she’d become a ghost hunter, she’d cultivated an animosity – her choices – that would take incredible work and attention to overcome.  she would have to trust the others, and everything that they knew that she didn’t.

and in exchange, she’d get to share the load.  she’d get to lay her grudges to rest, once danny woke up and the two of them hashed it out.  she and danny could work together at school, coordinate it so that one of them could relax from time to time.  they would get trust.  neither of them would be alone anymore with the fate of the city.  in exchange for her humility, valerie too might have sam manson’s careful hands to stitch her wounds.

“alright, manson.  show me what to do.”

[broken-clover]

Safe Harbor

The problem with trying to write something as you play a game is that it's really hard for things to synch up nicely. I wasn't sure if there would be a point to finishing this now that we're out of Neksdor, but I really liked the idea of having some little plot tweaks and I couldn't help myself. There's another one right after this about the start of the Fae Realm (as I mentioned I want to also redo the meeting with Bang) but it seemed wiser to do it as two separate ones

She noticed how the smile escaped his face as soon as dinner ended.

These humans were strange. Blue wasn’t even sure if all of them were humans. The only one she felt reasonably sure of was their so-called leader, yet he seemed the strangest of all. Them, all four of them, they had only known one another for a brief amount of time. Even moreso for her- in the eons-long tapestry of a Diamond’s existence, this was barely more than an absentminded blink. It felt foolish to say that she knew all of them incredibly well.

Though she had at least understood the cursory basics. I-no, the red one, was quite fond of trickery, and possessed a short temper when things bored her or went incorrectly. Taokaka was the energetic one with strange ears, so vibrant at times that Blue wondered if she and Pink would have been the best of friends. And, of course, Phoenix. Puzzling Phoenix. Of what she did know, he…’wore his heart on his sleeve,’ as humans tended to say. He made it very easy to tell when something upset him. Lies came out stilted and unconvincing. His aptitude for planning frequently interrupted by a lack of confidence. Fretful, but analytical and detail-oriented. He would have made a quality Agate. Perhaps, with a bit of work on his persuasive skills, even an Emerald?

Blue shook her head. No, no, Gems could be whatever they wanted now, the caste did not mean anything of substance now. Remembering that could be difficult still. In any case, Phoenix was human, a squishy, peculiar thing that even something as majestic as a Diamond struggled with understanding. He made it very clear that their journey of ambiguous purpose frightened him greatly, but still their little group traveled across the desert, and he poorly masked a look of terror all the way.

So when he made no attempt to hide his frown, it had to mean something unpleasant.

Would it be impolite to say so? Sometimes, being impolite was a necessity with humans. They could tiptoe around issues rather than speaking frankly and simply. Even if they made their intentions obvious. Such as with their current sleeping arrangement.

Phoenix had clustered them all close together. Even the horse was right next door, every odd snort audible through the wooden wall. It was distracting, but it was clear that was intentional. No matter. Any sleep she had was voluntary. A few hours of waiting until sunrise was an easy task, she’d done it last night, too. Just pantomime what the organics did. Climb into the bed, lie down, and close your eyes. Simple. Rather comfy. 

Just a matter of time until his attempt at a facade cracked. 

“Blue?”

Tiredness was tangible in his voice, but he was clearly still awake. Worrying about things made it difficult to sleep, or so she had heard.

“What is it?”

He squirmed under the covers until his face pointed toward her side of the room. “Can I talk to you?”

“Is that not what we’re doing right now?” She asked. “What is bothering you, Phoenix?”

The bed creaked as he flinched. “I- y-...that obvious, huh…”

“Indeed.”

“Well…” The man mulled over his words.  “Are you okay staying in Neksdor for a while?”

Blue thought for a moment. “I take no issue with it, why?”

Once more, he hesitated to speak. “What happened last time, when we left Greenhorne…that’s when I lost them.”

Ah, yes. His prior group. Phoenix spoke plenty of them. Joe the very handsome cook, Sin the very loud knight, and Ro-myo the bothersome mage. Though some of their epithets weren’t particularly flattering, he spoke of them with such warmth that it was clear how close they had been. Something had happened upon his arrival to the desert. That ‘Dark Lord’ individual had whisked them away to who-knew-where. Phoenix’s constant fretting over her, Taokaka and I-no had seemed quite clearly to her some extension of that.

“If we leave Neksdor, I’m worried…” He swallowed. “You aren’t…you’re not gonna…”

Blue looked at the man in silence. He turned away from her, staring up at the ceiling again. “We’ll stay here. It’s safer here.”

What was it that he planned to do here? Though it was true, she was fine with staying, all her time spent with these people was through the lens of battle. What was there to be done with it ended so abruptly? 

“What of the Dark Lord, then?” She wondered aloud. Maybe he had thought of that already…? 

His expressions shifted in the dark. From off the bedside table, he plucked the strange, shiny charm that she’d seen him carrying around. A scarce bit of moonlight caught the metal and illuminated it.

Phoenix unceremoniously hurled the trinket away. It narrowly missed the open window, thumping against the wall and clattering against the ground.

“Forget it. Someone else can save the world.” With a huff, he bundled the blankets up to his ears and twisted to face the wall. “Good night, Blue. See you in the morning.”

As she tried to think of some sort of response, nothing particularly helpful came. “...Goodnight, Phoenix.”

Back to feigning sleep. Of course, she could still hear him shifting uneasily in his bed, and the words he tried to mutter under his breath.

“I’m not losing you, too. I can’t lose more friends.”

------

“Mornin’, Blue.”

Phoenix sat up from his tangle of pillows, blankets and messy hair. A hand attempted to push away the hair and blurriness from his eyes.

“Blue?”

Her bed was empty, blankets pushed back. 

“Guess she got up early…” He mumbled, feeling for his glasses and slipping them on. Based on how high the sun was in the window, dawn must have been hours ago. 

Everyone was probably at breakfast already. Might have even finished. Hopefully they were polite enough to leave a bit for him. Phoenix left the bedroom behind him and headed for the stairwell down to the dining room.

“Blue? Tao isn’t giving you too much trouble, is she?”

The table was empty. An inn employee was sweeping the floor, but there was no sign anything had been put on the table and cleaned away.

If Blue wasn’t there…

“Y…you’re just in the bathroom. Yeah.”

Gems had no need to eat, and thus no real reason to use that, either. He had never seen her step foot in one.

“I- I’ll, I’m gonna go check on the others, okay?”

The inn was quiet. Even the sounds of the staff moving about felt muted. No, that was just his imagination. He was just imagining things. His mind tended to get carried away when he was nervous, everything would be fine as soon as he saw his friends and realized just how ridiculous he was being.

“You up, girls?” When the door to the next bedroom from his was within arm’s reach, Phoenix gave it a hearty knock. “Rise and shine! Breakfast is gonna get cold, Tao!”

That should have gotten her attention immediately. When he pressed an ear to the door, though, there were no scuffling claws, no eager kittyish chirps.

“Are you still asleep?” He felt for the handle. The door was unlocked. Phoenix let himself in.

No signs of life. Both beds as equally empty as Blue’s.

Phoenix approached what he assumed was the cat’s bedside, based on the numerous bananas piled on the floor close by. He pulled the blankets back as far as he could. She wasn’t hiding beneath them, ready to surprise him for her own amusement.

“...Tao’s just playing with Fluttershy.” Sweat was already gathering the curves of his palm. “I-no just went to go buy a new spear. She’ll be back soon.”

Phoenix was a poorer liar to himself than he already was to others. Dryness in the back of his throat joined the clammy palms. He tried to keep his breathing even. Tried. Failed.

“This isn’t real. This isn’t real. I’m just dreaming.”

Back to bed. Under the covers. He’d wake up soon enough, and all four of them would laugh over the ridiculousness of it over breakfast. Tearing out of the room, the door to I-no and Tao’s room slammed shut only after he’d already made it back to his own. The world went dark as he shoved his head under the pillow and clenched his eyes shut. 

Time failed to function in his cramped little cocoon. No matter how he tried to close his eyes and dredge up any tiredness, Phoenix stayed awake, but he refused to climb out again. The feeble hope of dreaming was all he could think to cling on to.

Though not an impatient man, there was still a point where he recognized that he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. It just didn’t come. No, forget it. He’d meet everyone on the road. They were waiting for him. They had to be. How rude of him for making them wait.

The blankets were pushed aside again, and he grabbed his lab coat from its place tossed over the footboard.

His lab coat felt…wrong.

When a job’s set of garments matched, there was a subtle, energizing aura it instilled in the wearer. Though he knew they were just lab coats and fabric vestments, that little hum under his skin told him that he would be protected. He knew what it felt like. And he knew what it felt like when he was wearing something that didn’t work.

He knew how it felt.

Because that’s how it had felt the last-

In a frenzy, he tore across the room to where the mirror was hanging. Every inn had one lying around. Useful for admiring new armor when he bought it. He had looked at this set not too long ago, recently enough that he immediately recognized how awkward and bulky it now looked on his shoulders.

The lab coat slumped to the floor in a sad pile, letting Phoenix get a good, long look at what was underneath it.

Plain clothing. Traveler’s robes.

[sighonaraa]

Concept: blanket forts with Jamie and Roy in the football kiddos au

anon i need you to know that when i saw this ask my jaw literally dropped like one of those cartoon characters. THIS IS SOOOOOOOO. OH MAN!!!

11:32 p.m.

“No,” Roy says, for the tenth time since permitting Ted to enter the flat. At the time, he hadn’t realized that doing so would lead to him standing here, now, made the unwitting victim to two pairs of giant pleading puppy-dog eyes. If he’d known, he never would’ve opened that door. Instead he’s stuck and left wondering how exactly Ted’s fucking genetic makeup prevented him from developing shame.

Jamie releases a wordless whine and flops to the floor, all sprawl-legged and boneless. “But Roy,” he says. “Sam says you gotsa do pillowed forts at sleepovers! S’the law.”

“Pillow forts,” Roy corrects, gently absentminded, “and what the shit do you know about the law, you muppet?”

“Moe’s gonna lay it down,” recites Jamie dutifully.

Roy rubs the bridge of his nose.

“To be fair, he ain’t wrong,” says Ted, who’s apparently taken it upon himself to be the least helpful person in the entire fucking universe. He’s behind the kitchen counter baking a late-night batch of brownies even though Roy had told him they didn’t need one, wearing his stupid I’m The Step That Dadded Up apron and waving a spatula around as he talks like it’ll prove his point beyond reproach. “Pillow forts are a tried and true sleepover ritual.”

“Don’t you fucking start,” says Roy.

Jamie spills the rest of the way to the ground, splaying his arms and legs in eagle pose. The little fuck-muppet’s learned how to be dramatic from Colin. It’s hilarious when it’s not used for nefarious purposes, such as this. “Please please please can we do pillow forts, Roy? We gotsa.”

And Roy… has no argument, really, except that he’s tired and in the mood to be stubborn. But Jamie’s so hopeful, and Ted’s got this twat smile beneath his mustache like it’s already been decided what they’re going to do, and instead of another no the next thing out of Roy’s mouth is, “Christ. Fine. We can… do fucking pillow forts.”

Jamie and Ted cheer in tandem. Trent’s probably in the flat over wondering what the fuck is wrong with them. The thought almost makes Roy laugh.

They spend the next hour dragging sheets and pillows from the beds and couches, laying them in a massive pile at the center of the living room until they’ve built a mountain that Jamie is wriggling to climb. Roy tells him to stay put, and Ted sweetens the deal by performing a pantomime of a rock climber getting impaled on a tree branch and falling to his death.

“Okay,” Roy says. “We need four chairs.” He’s not sure why he announces this; he knows only that he’d always hated it when he was a kid and the adults acted like it didn’t matter whether he understood what was happening or not. “Got that, muppet?”

Jamie nods, very solemnly. “Uh-huh!”

The chairs from the table are brought over to fulfill their intended purpose, and then Roy takes one end of a sheet and Ted the other, and they snap a sheet across the length of the backs of the chairs. It settles soft and smooth in the air, forming a roof, and Jamie grabs Blankie from the pile and toddles it right inside.

“Blankie likes it,” Jamie informs Roy. “He thinks s’got characters.”

“Blankie has darn good taste,” says Ted, kneeling at the mouth of the fort. “But y’know what I’m thinkin’?”

Jamie shakes his head.

“This pillow fort needs a couple more pillows,” Ted says, and grabs an enormous armful before knee-crawling beneath the sheet to settle cross-legged next to Jamie and Blankie. “See that? Much better.”

Jamie tucks up against Ted’s thigh. “Roy,” he says, cheeks dimpling with the strength of his beam. “S’not a real pillow fort till you’re here too.”

Roy’s throat goes tight and hot. He swallows past it; takes a moment to capture this image in his mind: Jamie, sleepy and brimming with joy, leaning into the solid, steady weight of a softly smiling Ted, Blankie held between them and the whole world outside put away for a while. His eyes are damp, and he grins through it.

“I’m coming,” he says, and he does.

[solipseismic]

ty for the tag @thesunlikehoney !! <3

a band you don’t like that many others do:

the mountain goats lmao (i like a few of their songs but i dislike the rest)

a childhood memory that you remember vividly:

i have permanent nerve damage on my right kneecap from fucking up a mazurka (very basic figure skating step/half-jump kind of thing) and falling in such a manner that i bashed my knee into the ice w like 3x my body weight behind it in force lmao

least favorite animal and why:

lord. i dont really dislike any animals so i guess one i've had personal experience w? i will never ever want an akita (relative had a poodle-akita mix and dear god). they're like the less smart and more evil cousins of huskies.

hot fandom take:

satine and obi-wan would be 200% more interesting if they were some kind of fucked up non-romantic relationship. "i would have left the order for her" we all know the tcw writers just put there bc ppl wanted a blonde woman cardboard cutout love interest for white fans to project onto (as if romance is what "humanizes" characters, huge jerk-off pantomime). "this is duchess satine whom i have an intricately crafted and decades-old rivalry with to see who can pick up the most morosexuals in our personal entourages" the crowd goes wild. satine herself is 200% more interesting when writers allow her to stand on her own and not just as a prop to obi-wan. also ppl who ship obtine are missing out on the most illustrious joy of padme/satine.

do you wear any jewelry, if so, what’s your favorite piece:

yes, i have one ear pierced (default diamond stud; some of my fav earrings are from noonmade like the suncatcher and wind chime, most others r just whatever i've picked up over the years) and i'm almost always wearing a raven skull pendant i got for my bday from a friend :)

a movie others liked but you didn’t:

13 going on 30 ... clueless ... 10 reasons i hate about you ... i just don't have the romcom/chick flick spirit in me :(

three things you love about yourself:

typing speed, great core strength, big cat

a place you hope to visit in the future and why:

i would like to climb 설악산/seorak mountain, my mom grew up in that area and i like mountain climbing :)

an actor that gets on your nerves and why:

crisp rat. he's bad.

things you’re excited for in the nearby future?

설날 / lunar new year on feb 10 :)

least favorite ship in a fandom you’re in:

dinluke and obtine lmao though it's less a ship thing and more the certain Kind of people that do a specific Flavor of shipping that are unfortunately hugely prevalent in dinluke and (more recently) codywan :(( however like 85% of the obtine shippers ive interacted with are just white assholes lmao

what’s the most toxic fandom you’ve been in?

mcu/marvel comics graphics community on instagram. i will drop my phone in lava

list three things you find beautiful about life:

big cat, mellow post-rock, krylon workable fixatif

any dreams for the future?

finish my thesis babey

how are you really feeling today?

i need to do more wrist stretches

tag games taglist (ask to be + / -): @47crayons , @sleepy-night-child , @bladeverbena , @drippingmoon , @vellichor-virgo , @writing-is-a-martial-art , @wiz-is-sorta-a-writer , @thelaughingstag , @mj-is-writing , @hellowkatey , @asbestostrain , @gayskywalkcrs​ , @lorspolairepeluche , @coarsely , and anyone else who wants to do this !!

[tristayranambrosio]

Burning Dawn (DWC day 5 Flame)

(The song the Performance is to) The deep violet colored silk runs like a living fluid around me… I am shrouded in their darkness, my light obscured by the panels of night. I am center-stage though I have no audience tonight, I never do for this… I’ve not the skill to perform these acts like those I’ve been lucky enough to call my peers… in this I am out matched, but this is not for them… for anyone. When I part the silk like veils I see her face… forever burned into my thoughts like a desert flame, she wound herself in the very same silks and seduced me with the songs she sang from their heights… I twist the panels of fabric into rope using my toes and tension builds, strength from the coiled silk that is stronger than what it’s softness implies, above my head I wind and twist the second panel of fabric as music fills my ears and muddies her features makes her chestnut skin fade into the same dark violet above me. This isn’t for her… this isn’t for anyone… this is for me. When revealed the lights that pin me scatter rhinestone catch lights like a thousand starbursts from my skin tight attire, in the pinks and magentas and oranges… reds of a sunrise, of a dawn bursting to life still barely arched off the stage between two dangling streams of midnight. I nestle into the familiar embrace of the dark, as if I am the flame of daylight… the first pink fingertips of sunlight reluctant to look towards the horizon. She whispers promises I once believed, the sweetest Symphonies of the life I might have had… She asks the question none had ever before, and I melted in her thrall… I wind the silks tight about my torso, fiercely hoisting my upper body level with the engagement of my core set into a hold the position by gripping the far silk partially wrapped about the arch of each foot, pantomiming a steady ascent away from the ground, as if I am walking step by step while parallel to where I’d laid Dormant. “And who is it who takes care of you I wonder?” The words sound like poison now, they were nectar and I was starving and even now they ring true enough to sting my heart with the memory of barbs plunged into it by the very same question from the very same lips… uttered instead in cruel irony.

I climb. My arms scream in protest but I climb. With each yard I gain another coil wraps about my arm until I use one sweep to upend myself to trade one binding of the arm to wrap my thigh… I echo the same then reach out to the darkness into which I cast a thousand prismatic stars from the gems sewn into my suit. I spread my legs and in a surge throw my weight to swing me upright, my hair threatening to escape its tie, but not yet. I catch myself on the two silk sheets and wrap them under my shoulders, closing my knees to artfully construct a hammock for me to hang seated far above the stage. Perhaps I am a fool to practice the art she perfected… that I learned once to offer a partner… a dancer in silk and symphony. Perhaps I’m torturing myself… But I feel a burning in my limbs, and in my core, and it makes me feel I am one with the music in the air. I give in to the music and the exertion becomes a flurry of flips, and reversals tangling, and untangling, whipping my weight in precise extensions to fall… just right and I climb… higher and higher… towards the light that refracts off of me as if I am a jewel, a lantern hung between the last clutches of violet night.

As I crescendo into the rising action I am suspended, legs split above me as I yank the tie from my hair and it cascades out and down with gravity as I defy it with not but silk tension and the power of my core’s ability to support me. I rake my fingers through the curls I unleashed and feel like something wild and alive, like a spill of color blooming in the waking world. I curl myself in and clutch the underside of my knees back bowed and chest arched outward to the open air, like a star is attempting it’s escape from within me… then I reverse and use the momentum to flip upright my hair fanning out in a wild after image behind me that makes me a magenta comet, like a dawn fast approaching to chase the nocturnal back into resting. I wrap my arms in the silks freeing my legs to walk mid air and build momentum… speed… and I am spinning. I tuck my knees in and clutch my silks so the coil with me, I twirl and spin so fast that I am a blur my hair and crystalline catch lights sparkling like I have set the silk ablaze with flame, with sunlight. I burn… This does not -belong- to anyone… this is just as much my art… in fact, with no witness to it, I am the only one this is for.

As the spinning slows I untangle myself… just to wind the length of the silks slowly in coil after coil around my middle, to cross the one rope with another until I reach the knots above… I am wound and cocooned parallel with the stage once more… and as the music halts I take the breath I need to extend my arm and leg out to one last desperate hold… Then I fall, my weight cut loose from its wound coil and I plummet between the silk like a whirlwind yards and yards that took me the whole performance to ascend, unravel me, and -just- as I would crash land… I catch myself mid drop held effortlessly like a timeless piece of art, limbs like brushstrokes lit by my contrast against the dark… I am a flame defiant and my own. The music fades… and I gracefully lower myself to touch down… now a flame slowly dying in the sunset of the performance. No one applauds… but I also do not feel the lingering scorn… or the shame for having come to love the way my body aches after each dance in the air with not but fabric as a partner… I let the streamers of midnight brush my cheek as they settle back as long curtains untangling themselves from my harsh movements suspended between them. It is strange and painstriken how I found this outlet… but I embrace each moment that I blaze as dawn between the silks. 

( @daily-writing-challenge )