#i cannot believe how blessed this era has been and it has barely started

[kindahoping4forever]

Ashton Instagram Live - 14 June 2024

Including acoustic performances of:

"Breakup" from BLOOD ON THE DRUMS

"Lose You" from BLOOD ON THE DRUMS

"I See The Angels" from BLOOD ON THE DRUMS

A teaser of "California Holds Her Breath" from BLOOD ON THE DRUMS Side 2

"Under The Milky Way" by The Church

"Straight To Your Heart" from BLOOD ON THE DRUMS

[electricbluebutterflies]

how about leto gifting jessica a trinket and wanting to see her in nothing but it 🫢🤔

This went a little more fade-to-black than I planned but... it's early-era so they're both going through it, bless their little hearts. Cross-posted on ao3.

She is supposed to be adaptable. Damn her for it.

Her counterpart has asked very little in these months, preferences more tame than she expected, she is so aware how men like that view women like her and by comparison-

A necklace wrapped in a pale purple veil and a note in what is already familiar handwriting. You would be pretty in this. Implied desire, and-

She’d expected worse, Jessica reminds herself. She’d expected so much worse. Depriving her partner the pleasure of undressing her is not the worst idea.

It is an excuse to prepare herself as she hasn’t in… nearly a year, she processes, nearly a year since she was placed here and the expectations have been low. She is convenient above all else, and she suspects that is the desirability of her, the lack of anything-

Still, she knows how she is looked at, and she will enjoy whatever comes of this.

She paces the bedroom she has spent more time in than she expected, different without a flowing skirt, just transparent fabric in a color she would never choose for herself and a silver necklace she cannot wait to have removed from her body, the length and weight of it… not quite unpleasant, but a barrier between the metal and her skin would not be-

The door opens behind her and she twirls, arms crossed over her breasts on instinct and a blush she can’t control blossoming all over her body and she’s pretty sure she’s never felt more exposed and-

He doesn’t speak immediately, just looks at her like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen and for a moment she can believe it, and –

“I wasn’t sure-“

“I’m supposed to be cooperative,” she murmurs. “This was not that much of a-“

“For a woman who barely lets anyone else see that she has a neck…”

Jessica rolls her eyes, and there is something sweet about all of this, something-

She could’ve put the little bundle in the bottom of a drawer somewhere, forgotten all about it, and her counterpart would have been slightly disappointed but he never would’ve said. Could’ve worked that necklace into an outfit much more suited to the preferences she’s starting to realize she has, and the veil will look pretty over a black day dress, and no more than a comment about how beautiful she is, and-

She didn’t have to do this. She wanted to. Already that has become her balance.

“None of this is-“

“You do look-“

She crosses the distance between them, hands to her sides and then up to his shoulders, she needs touch she needs warmth she needs-

“Is this what you wanted?” she breathes.

He kisses her, and it feels like sunlight like it’s starting to more and more, the slow burn of developing actual normal-human emotions about someone she can almost have and-

No. She knows better. She is his but he is not really hers. She is his but-

His fingers slip under the veil and remove it from her hair, and she knew this would happen, knew to only use a few pins but still-

There is something real in the way this man looks at her, something near-delicate that worries her and makes her want things she has no right to want and-

“If this did not please you-“

“How is it any different from any other time you’ve made clear that you want me?”

“I do… enjoy finding out how many layers you find comfortable, but-“

“I should make myself easier. Understood.”

“I… no, that is not at all what-“

“I am unsure how to-“

His hands slip to her waist, holding her close, something warm about him, something that makes her vulnerable and-

“You could have said no.”

“Was that what you wanted?”

“Someone else would have destroyed you by now.”

Oh, she is all too aware. Raised her whole life to expect that, and instead she gets whatever this is and she knows she ought to think it’s better, this partner who is cautious with her body and more aware than she is of her heart, but still-

“Why haven’t you?”

His fingertips trace little patterns on her skin, and she feels his breath catch, the uncertainty of a question he did not expect her to ask, of the possibility of a lifetime stuck with her lovely personality and-

“Why would I?”

“It’s what I’m good for. Do what you will and I’ll let it happen.”

She is starting to question this in the depths of her soul, but not enough to be brave just yet, not-

“Is that what you want?”

“Does it matter?”

He kisses the side of her face and oh she is convinced any other man would’ve at least gotten her into a position by now but this one…

This one, this uncertainty made flesh, responds to her and holds her closer and she can see the reactions forming, the this-was-a-bad-idea that won’t be said any more than it already has but-

“Your affection is more desirable than your resentment.”

“Are you sure I’m capable of either?”

“I would hope.”

She takes a kiss, deeper, lets her body respond to this, lets herself become warm, lets herself-

“I am yours,” she murmurs. “Do as you will.”

She feels tension, as if that is not enough, but nor is it enough to stop him from moving around her. They have developed routines within these spaces, and she is everything, she is the light in his eyes and oh what right does he have to talk about layers when his own are so existent and-

“If you are displeased-“

“You want me. What more is there?”

She slips into a pleasant haze, the safety of how they are to each other, her consciousness just slightly detached from her skin apart from a few small moments. Her partner’s hands removing the necklace and lingering on her neck and her breasts, so many kisses, so much-

At some point, she is laid on her back and covered and made warm. At some point, it almost feels good.

“You could be a little less cooperative,” he murmurs at some point in aftermath, too close not close enough. “I think I might enjoy that.”

“If you gave me reason to-“

“Are you anything more than defense mechanisms and tragedy?”

She has… never considered that.

She doesn’t know.

Maybe? Someday?

Not yet, not with her body curled up and exposed and her partner’s fingertips in her hair, but maybe…

It’s not a bad goal. She’s not there yet, but it’s not-

Maybe, she thinks, maybe she’ll be more than this someday.

[moonlights-inkwell]

“Be Good to Me.” I Whisper. (And you say, “What?” and I say, “Nothing Dear.”)

Summary: Jaskier’s different in Oxenfurt. It’s not a bad thing at all.

Jaskier x Reader

Word Count: 5,406

A/N: This fic was going to be a super short and indulgent smut fic, but then it took on a life of it’s own and got to be like 5000 words before I even got to the porn, so now it’s gonna be a two parter. Oops. Also, Jaskier’s looking kinda rugged in this fic, mostly cause I was basing his appearence on how Joey looked during the Love Run era and I’m... weak. And yes I gave him glasses. Why? Who knows.

Title taken from That Unwanted Animal

Warnings (for Parts 1 and 2): Smut. cock warming. Oral (female and male receiving). Body worship. Female pronouns used/afab genitals described for the Reader. Light Praise Kink. Dom Jaskier. Professor/Lecturer Jaskier.  

You wake, slowly and without much intent, to the sound of singing.  

It’s not uncommon, these days at least, to be woken by music and laughter. It’s a welcome change of pace from your normal life of travel, fighting and pain, all the laughter and music. Oxenfurt is always so lively and full of music and laughter, even now in the coldest and darkest months of the year. You almost resent that it isn’t a permanent fixture of your life. You've never thought yourself a deeply domestic person, but now in Oxenfurt, you feel... content in a way you've never felt before. 

Not knowing, or caring about, the time, you decide it much too early to even consider opening your eyes, and remain beneath the sheets entangled about you. Fingers curling into the soft, treated furs that cover the mattress, you tug the duvet closer to you, and feel the blankets on top of them shift, weighted and soothing all the while. A lazy grin spreads across your face; it’s so warm, a luxury you know all too well you cannot afford to take for granted. Cracking open an eye ever so slightly, you catch sight of a fire, crackling and popping deep within the arch of the fireplace. Bless Oxenfurt, you think tiredly and close your eye once more. A fireplace in the bedchambers, and the living area. You could get used to luxuries like this.

You never considered that you’d ever spend any period of time in Oxenfurt, never mind be wintering there, and while it’s wonderful you cannot help but feel out of place. You’ve never been the sort of person to be wealthy or talented enough for a University of such high esteem; daughter of a seamstress, former barmaid, barely able to hold a tune or paintbrush. But along came Jaskier, wonderful, beautiful Jaskier. With Geralt returning to Kaer Morhen for the winter, your bard had asked you, soft and sweet, to join him at his old place of education. He only needed to ask you once.  

The campus is beautiful, warm and comfortable and full of lively, excited youths, so bewitched by their art and school. You understand it, it’s difficult not to be taken in by the beauty of it all, but one thing keeps you weary; the fact that it’s a place of such overwhelming privilege, the likes of which you’ve had next to no interaction with. You’ve always known Jaskier is a man of luxury: his accent, embroidered doublets and silk chemises advertise it in a way that is out of place on the road traveling with Geralt but are common as muck on campus. Everyone here is like him, rich but seemingly playing at slumming as students, as if they too will be traveling bohemian bards rather than what will undoubtedly actually happen, being taken in by whatever court will have them. He’s different in Oxenfurt, too. Not a bad sort of different, but... unusual. Jaskier, your bard, lover and traveling partner, is wonderful, a giddy and excitable fool, who spends much of your time together teasing and goading, is strangely absent. In his place is... someone else. A professor and an adult. It’s hard to believe your bard, a man who sings often of masturbation and hand-jobs with a smug grin, is a professor. A teacher. He’s smart, you’ve always known that, but it’s easy to forget how bloody intelligent he is.

He plays the fool all too well, well enough that it’s what you think of when you consider him. It’s strange to see him acting so maturely, planning lectures and grading compositions, walking about and advising students, talking about writing and singing techniques. They adore him, it’s written across their faces when you see them together, and the adoration and admiration of him is transferred onto you too. They gape and gawk at you, talking quietly and singing lines from songs that Jaskier had written about you. When you walk together around the halls and cobblestone roads, they rush to you both, mouths full of questions about travel and monsters as well as whatever the hell a cleft or bridge are. It’s so strange. You don’t know how you’re to feel about being watched by these aristocratic students, caught somewhere between hero worship and sideshow attraction. Even in tiny taverns and villages, people look at you as just a girl, aided usually by Geralt’s intimidating frame outshining the various knives you have adorning your figure. The only person who normally stares at you is Jaskier, always in this shocked sort of adoration, as if he can never quite believe that you are real and beside him. It’s sweet and never invasive, always looking but never prying.

You purr softly at the thought of Jaskier, in this delicate daze of being half-asleep, this is perfection, a comfortable, engulfing warmth and softness, resting on top of soft fur with the love of your life in bed beside you. But something isn’t quite right. Jaskier always touches you, something you silently think must come from a lack of human contact as a child, he always has a hand on your bare skin especially while in bed, on your hip, curled about you like you could be snatched away, forehead pressed into your back, or fingers threaded through your hair. But right now? There’s not any such contact, and it makes you roll over in bed, eyes suddenly wide with realisation. Empty.  

It’s expected, but disappointing none the less. During the week he has lectures in the morning, and leaves you to rest as long as you wish before doing whatever you want until his classes end, usually resulting in your traveling about the campus town, meandering by the market and bakery often. It feels childish, but you hate it, you’re too used to waking in his arms and turning about to kiss him awake. It’s horrible to wake without the comforting weight of his arms around you and the combination of warmth and tickling hair from his chest hair against your back.  

“What in the fuck... is that a scale? In the middle of... what is that?” An oh so familiar voice says loudly, which makes you grin. He’s here, even if not in bed with you, there’s no need to wait about for him to return. He sounds scandalised, you can see him in your head, hunched over a pile of papers, brows furrowed into a look of confusion and annoyance. Adorable. You shift up and attempt to get to your feet, faltering slightly at the comfortable warmth of your sex and the dried fluid on your thighs; eyes slide down to take in your naked form. Bed clothes have never been a necessity with someone as insatiable as Jaskier, hell, even normal clothes are barely necessary.  

“What the fuck?” He mutters, the sound of his voice draws you towards the door, but you stop as quickly as you start. There seems something overly presumptuous about walking to him nude, even if you have been in a relationship for years and have seen each other naked more times than you can remember. Stepping forward once more, your eyes slide across the sight of one of Jaskier’s shirts balled up on the floor where it had been tossed to last night. It’s scooped up without much of a second thought and tugged on before turning to look at a mirror; it’s beautiful, silk and embroidered with bluebells, with a high collar, and is left open to expose the inner curves of your breast, the expanse of your stomach and almost all of your legs. It, combined with the slight swell of your lips from relentless kissing last night and sleep tousled hair, makes you feel strangely beautiful. You don’t often feel beautiful, especially having just woken up, so when you rub your face gently with the fabric and breath in the smell of your lover, you feel your nipples stiffen slightly. Lavender and musk and something so entirely Jaskier fill your senses, and you walk out of the bed chambers, smiling softly as the material grazes your thighs as you do so.

Gods above, he’s beautiful. Always is, always has been, but still no matter how long you’ve known him he manages to take your breath away. He’s always had such a boyish face, handsome but soft, fitting easily with the childishness he exudes, but winter has seen that change. With him not performing for the season, and needing to look older than his students, his need to shave and keep up appearances has dissipated somewhat. He’s sitting there in an armchair in front of a desk, all curtains drawn and leaving him illuminated by the fire roaring across from him and the candles littered about the table in front of him, shirtless and resting his now stubbled chin on his hand while his hair, longer than you’ve ever known it, frames his face. You like it longer, and he seems too as well, letting you twist and braid it during the evenings while he strums at his lute in front of the fire and tells stories you don’t believe to be entirely true. He doesn’t look older, but instead more mature, like he had responsibilities that aren’t trying to earn as many coins as possible between stolen kisses and avoiding being swatted at by Geralt. His skin is almost glowing in the candlelight and reflects from the delicate spectacles that rest on the bridge of his nose. It’s alien and familiar all at once, and you smile to yourself at it. He had told you he was full of surprises the first night he kissed you, but this was a surprise you doubt even he could have ever anticipated. You’ve taken to referring to this more grown-up Jaskier as Julian in your mind, just to try and separate the two for your own peace of mind, but it doesn’t seem right now. It’s like looking at another side of a coin or hearing a song and finally paying attention to what the lyrics mean; it’s the same but not, and you worry that maybe you’ve spent your entire relationship with the man before you underestimating him. Reducing him down to beautiful fool and verbose romantic, when he’s always been mature, but felt no need to show it. You know from first-hand experience that being serious in the presence of Geralt always makes the air cold and uncomfortable, but now, away from the Witcher and his overwhelming stoicism, Jaskier can be as serious as he wants without souring anything. It’s refreshing. You never thought you could love him more than you already do; but right now? Bathed in golden light, relaxed and without pretention or any semblance of performance? You could marry him on the spot. You’re hardly a creative like he is, but you could write epics about him; verses about his eyes, sonnets about his cupid's bow, songs about the colour of his hair. He curses in what you assume is elder before pushing his hair away from his eyes, and you have to fight back the urge to run to him and tug it back with a ribbon to keep it from annoying him, and so you stay.

Leaning back against the door, you take him in as best you can and try to dedicate this image of him to memory. Him, soft and comfortable, looking like a real professor, surrounded by the warm brown of the furniture and the golden glow of fire that crackles and pops under the quiet music of him humming whatever is written on the pages, that’s the sort of Jaskier you want to remember. Content. It's a habit you have gotten into since you began courting, trying to keep the most delicate and domestic memories for nights when the traveling gets the most of you, and you wish you could just go home. It’s normally simple things, like when he sleeps in after you, hair haloing around him, long lashes fanning out on his cheeks, or the day when he took you to a field of wild flowers to unwind, and had laughed so loudly the skin about his eyes and bridge of his nose had crinkled like silk moved too quickly, a crown of dandelions and bluebells about his head. He’s so beautiful, and when you’re both old and grey you want to be able to remember just how gorgeous he is. He never truly believes it when you tell him it, as you never believe him when he says how much he believes you to be beautiful. Perhaps it’s why the two of you fit together so well. Insecure fools, finding security in the other’s arms. It takes him a moment or two to glance up from the papers, but as soon as he does, he gapes at you, lips parted and eyes raking across your frame and back up to your face once more. It’s quiet, but you clearly hear the soft gasp that comes from him, which makes you smile sweetly to him and tilt your head to the side.  

“Good Morning, Dandelion.” Your voice is low and scratchy with sleep, pet name rolling easily from your tongue. It feels like a foolish thing to say, but every other thing that had come to mind was hardly better. “What are you doing?” The bard says nothing but grins and pushes himself back into the seat, opening his arms wide gesturing you onto his lap. It’s all the encouragement you need to walk over and clamber onto his lap, his arms wrap about you and tugs you closer still, burying his face into the crook of your neck.

“Afternoon, Dear Heart. It’s mid-afternoon.” He murmurs into your skin. “You looked so peaceful; I couldn’t be responsible for waking you when you were so blissful. Besides, I had compositions to overlook.” Squirming, you try to turn to look at the sheet music, but Jaskier holds you tighter still, face burrowing even further into the curve where your throat meets shoulder, his words make his lips brush against the sensitive skin, like kisses aborted before truly meeting their destination. “This chemise looks awfully familiar-”

“It looks better on me, Dandelion. Don’t you think?”  

“Everything looks amazing on you, Darling Dear.” He says softly and presses a teasing kiss to the corner of your mouth, and then one to the tip of your nose. “I’m quite sure you could wear rags and still be the most beautiful woman to have ever walked the earth.”  

“Flatterer.” You grin and rest your hands on the thick, downy fluff that covers his chest.

“I thought it sounded nicer than saying everything looks beautiful on you, but...”  

“But what?” You ask when his sentence dawdles to a stop without ending.  

“But I prefer you in nothing at all.” He grins, and despite all the ways his appearance has changed since the two of you arrive, you see your playful, boyish bard once more, all too proud of himself for having found a complimentary way of saying he wants you nude once more. It’s flattering, always will be flattering, that Jaskier loves your body in ways that you never have but you slap his arm playfully, more for your own sake than his; so you can pretend that you didn’t just consider stripping the shirt off to make his grin turn to the same flustered smile it always turns to when you exert any modicum of control over your bedroom activities. For all his experience, and your lack thereof, all it takes is you acting like you know what it is you’re doing to turn your Dandelion into a blushing, nervous mess of a man. The thought of his pink cheeks makes your own flush, and you try to distract yourself.

“What’s the time?”  

“Doesn’t matter in the slightest, Dear Heart. It’s a weekend, and you were so peaceful. I assumed after last night you would need all the rest you could possibly get.” The smug little grin that breaks across his face makes you blush harder. It had been a long night, and the thought of it sends a rush of heat to your sex.  

“O-oh.” You laugh weakly. Jaskier cups your cheek and pulls you into a soft, chaste kiss, the kind that makes your heart stop entirely for a second or two. His lips are softer here, not chapped and chafed by wind and travel, just plush and inviting. Just as you start to melt against him, and a hand travels up to grip his shoulder, he pulls back to glance back at the paper once more, “...Sorry. I must be distracting you-”  

“My favourite kind of distraction, My Love.” He squeezes your hips softly and tilts his head, “And I will never be too busy for you,” He pulls you closer still, chest pressed to chest, to rest his chin on your shoulder, looking to the papers once more. You’re sure it’s accidental, but he drags your bare cunt along his thigh, and you bite back a moan. “Especially seeing as you’re so bloody warm, like a little bed-warmer.”  

“A bed-warmer that you’re ignoring for music?” You tease, and one of his hands slips under the shirt to rest on the warm flesh of your waist as he shakes his head, sending chestnut hair brushing against your cheek, your own hand threading through the hair of his chest.  

“I’m not ignoring you. Gods, no one could ignore you if they tried. I just... I simply have to look over these compositions.” His voice is distant and distracted, he’s a thousand miles away, and you decide to try to be a good little bed-warmer, as he so eloquently put it, trying to stay still and keep him warm. You aren’t sure how long passes before you begin to shift, could be a second or an hour, but Jaskier’s thighs are not the most comfortable resting place you can imagine, so you shift up onto your knees for a second, using the added leverage of height to shift closer towards him, accidentally brushing your hips against his in your search for comfort, but instead only feel a familiar stiffness against your sex. The shock draws a soft gasp from you, and that makes Jaskier chuckle lowly.  

“Oh. I... You. You’re hard.” The words come out breathy and virginal, as if the idea of the man you’re sat atop of being attracted to you is some sort of strange impossibility rather than being obvious. He spends his nights with either his tongue or his cock buried inside you, but were someone to have heard that weak little statement, they would have assumed that You had never been so much as touched before in your life. Jaskier appreciates the absurdity if the chuckle he breathes out is anything to go by at all, you feel him turn his head and then the heat of open-mouthed kisses being pressed to the crook of your neck. Kisses there have always made you feel vulnerable, made worse by seeing what beasts could do if they got their teeth that close to your jugular, but Jaskier isn’t a beast. He’s barely like a man, more like a dream you’ve created for yourself, and he always kisses you there. He must like the vulnerability it makes you feel for the frequency he kisses it.  

“Have been since I saw you in my shirt.” He murmurs, quiet as though it’s a confession of sorts, head shifting slightly to brush his nose across the column of your throat. “It’s quite difficult to not be hard when you look so... Debauched.”  

“Debauched?”  

“As sin, My Love. Fucking... hair wild, neck bruised, tits barely covered... And in my clothes? Melitele, I cannot imagine anything more debauched.”  

“Your cum is dried on my thighs too.” You all but sing out. The reminder is all the encouragement he needs to reach down and trace lute-calloused fingers across the crust of spunk at the top of your legs. They don’t remain there for long, however, travelling up to trace across your slit.  

“And your soaked cunt too.” He says lightly, digits trailing across the seam and gathering as much of the wetness as he can, stopping just above the place where you need him most to bring up the fingers and slot them into his mouth, sucking on them with a purpose. The whine that escapes your mouth isn’t dignified in the slightest, but neither was the way he was dangling exactly what you want in front of you without letting you indulge.

“Don’t tease, Jask-”  

“I’d hardly call this teasing, especially compared to your coming out here in nothing but my shirt-”

“Julian~” You whine weakly. Using his birth name is so uncommon to you that you almost trip over the word, but it achieves some sort of reaction from him. He pulls back and stares at you, a hunger in his eyes as his pupils grow wider and trail down your body, lingering on your cunt for a second longer than the rest of you, then looking up to meet your gaze again. You know his usual lust filled gaze, light and flirtatious and appreciative but this is... hungry. Ravenous, as if he’s been denied you rather than staring at his own handiwork, littered across your body and encouraging his staring.

“No, Dear Heart. I have such a lot of music to review and grade. My students will be disappointed if I don’t do it quickly. So disappointed.” His voice is pointed but you know from the look on his face that he’s playing, with you and himself. A game to see who cracks first, one you have no interest in playing. You have absolutely no interest in making him beg for you, or begging for him, you just want to feel the blissful drag of his cock in and out of you. “Don’t be selfish. You get to have me all year, and these poor things only have my genius to consult for the winter.” Genius. You aren’t entirely sure about that, but watching him speak, all you can think of is him putting his clever mouth to work on you.  

He moves quickly, hands removing themselves from your skin to pick up the papers while his chin returns to your shoulder once more. It's infuriating, so you tug at his chest hair like a petulant child.  

“But you’re hard!” You whine out in utter indignation.  

“I know, Dear Heart. Your cunt is against my cock, of course I’m hard.” Jaskier says slowly, as if talking to a small child. “But, I’m also a professor who needs to overlook my student’s work.” He’s right, you know that he’s right, and it’s hardly as if Jaskier is some brute who leaves your needs ignored but, Gods, you’ve been wet since you saw him, and the thick ridge of his cock against you is hardly helping your situation. “You can feel how much I want to fuck you, Darling. Gods above and below, the things I want to do...” He sounds defeated, and you turn your head to gently peck his cheek. “But, truly, I do need to look at these.” You nod quickly and gnaw at your lip; you aren’t being fair, and you know it.

“Then look at them, Buttercup. I’ll just... keep you warm.” You smile sweetly and he nods then pecks your cheek.  

He’s busy. You know he’s busy, but he's still hard and it isn’t helping your situation. Memories of last night, specifically of how it had felt to sink down on him while his mouth worked about your nipple, comes to mind too which causes your hips to rut against his subconsciously, drawing a growl from the bard. It’s not a noise you know well, coming out when he feels slighted or is especially engrossed in a song, but it sends a rush of heat to your cunt once more and you desperately grind your hips into his again. This is not keeping him warm, your mind chides you, but the feeling of the lacing pressed upward by his tenting trousers rubbing against your clit is enough for you not to care about how you had promised to keep him warm. The only thing you care about right now is chasing the feeling of overwhelming pleasure.

“You... are toying with things beyond your control, Dear Heart.” He murmurs darkly, pulling back to stare at you once more and only serves to intensify the blush that is spread across your cheeks. Beyond your control? Jaskier? The thought makes you giggle.

“I am... I’m just trying to... warm you up.” The words come out stilted and gasped between each circling movement of your hips against his. “You. You said you... were cold. I’m trying to be a good... bed warmer.”  

A good bed warmer? Not at all. You want to be a good partner, a good woman-desperate to feel your lover's cock buried to the hilt inside of you; the blissful stretch that it causes, his hands guiding you gently in your ministrations. Even without his prick being free, you move against him as if it is, hips gyrating and tits bouncing with each movement, you try and pretend that the feeling of coarse lacing against your clitoris is all you need. In all honesty, it almost is, especially when Jaskier gives up all pretence of working and allows his hips to buck up and grips your hips tightly enough to bruise, guiding each circling motion that your hips make. You can almost feel the ridge of his cockhead through his undergarments, and sink down on it enough that the fabric covered tip almost sinks inside of you before you pull back and return to rubbing your sensitive nub against the fabric. All too soon, you feel yourself lifted onto the table and whine, trying to grab at him but stop when you see Jaskier scrabbling with the ties of his under clothes, finally pulling them loose and shoving them to just beneath the delicate curve of his bottom. It’s seldom you get to see him so desperate he can barely undress himself, but you don’t allow yourself to admire that for as long as you should like to, because of what catches your eye. His cock stands freely, the base framed by dark curls that creep up onto his stomach and into the thicket of hair across his chest, which makes your mouth water in a way you don’t understand and never want to. You just know that the thickness and slight curve of his member makes you want to sink to your knees to wrap your lips about the leaking, pink head and listen to the breathless moans that doing so always draws from him, prettier than any song that you’ve ever heard him sing. Without second thought, you try to push yourself off of the table to settle on the floor and take him in your mouth but are tugged unceremoniously back onto Jaskier's lap.  

“But-" You start, only to have Jaskier cut you off before you can voice your complaint.

“Hush.” The firmness of his voice silences you immediately, his hands guide you up to his member before one slides down to the puffy lips of your sex, spreading them before tugging you down onto him. The manoeuvre is hardly ceremonious, but it’s worth it to finally have that which it feels like you’ve been wanting for hours. The sensation of him splitting you open makes you moan loudly, hips returning to their frenzied bucking to try and reach climax, but your enjoyment is short lives seeing as your desperate canting is stopped by the tight grip on your thighs holding you in place.

“Jaskier?”  

“I thought you wanted to be a good bed warmer, Dear Heart.” His voice trills and you still. The way he says good is enough to make your breath hitch and heart falter.  

“I do-" You’d go to the end of the world for the slightest praise from the Bard, and the way you admit to it makes him grin, and cup your cheeks in both hands, trusting you enough not to move simply because you want to be good for him.

“Then be a good little darling and stay still for me, if you would.” All previous dark hunger that had edged his voice is gone, replaced with his usual childishness once more. You almost wouldn’t realise he was doing anything sexual at all were it not for him having just speared you onto himself. The strangeness of the situation makes you clench around him, drawing a moaned out curse from his lips.  

“But you're inside of me-"  

“You just said you wanted to keep me warm, Pet.” He says slowly, as if speaking to an untrained dog, and the newfound pet name is hardly doing much to dissuade that thought from your mind. “But we aren't in bed, and seeing as you made this mess, I suppose being a cock warmer rather than a bed warmer will have to do.” The candidacy with which he says the term makes you blink. Sometimes, you think, Jaskier forgets that he’s the only man you've ever been intimate with, so terms like... cock warmer, that he throws about like they’re nothing brings a nervousness about you. You don’t know what that even means, but it distracts you from the fact he had just implied that him being aroused by you is a ‘mess’.  

“A... cock... warmer.” You say, leaving a good few seconds gap between each word. The uncertainty in your voice is obvious, and the man inside you chuckles slightly and mumbles something to himself that you can’t quite make out, but sounds like ‘corrupting her’.  

“Sorry Darling. Look at me, throwing about terms you don’t know and acting as if you should.” He sounds genuinely apologetic, but there’s a level of something patronising to his words that you’re not sure he even knows is there, yet intrinsically sets off a need to argue within yourself that you’re barely capable of choking back. “I want you to sit here, looking as radiant as you always do... Debauched and in my clothes, my cum dried on you, with my cock inside of you. But. You cannot move.” He says it simply, as if it's a term people should already be acquainted with; factual, like he’s trying to teach you something new, and your core tightens around him. You wonder, dazed, if that is the tone of voice he uses when teaching his pupils about music.  

If so, you might have to sit in on a lecture. Or have him teach you about music in the privacy of your shared chambers, where you can shove a finger or two inside of yourself to alleviate the want that is developing between your thighs.  

“I can't move? But why?” You wanted it to sound inquisitive, but instead your voice comes out as a whine, and Jaskier grins at that.  

“Think of it as a game, Darling. To show who has more resilience to the other. Who will... fall victim to the carnality of being so close, but still not... fully intimate.” He's so confident that it is almost infuriating, made more angering still by the way he gently brushes his lips along yours as he speaks, refusing to fill the gaps and just kiss you. It’s already almost more than you can bare, hand slipping down to rub at the swollen bud not two inches from where his dick is resting inside of you, but feel it pinned to your thigh before you can so much as brush a finger across it.  

“No, no, no, Dear Heart. If this is a game, then that is cheating, no?” You want to slap the smug smile off of his face, or force your tongue into his mouth, either would please you. “You cum from me, or not at all.” And with that, his earlier predatory smile is back in full force, making you shiver. “If you can stay still for me while I mark these compositions then I'll fuck you the way you want me to. That seems a fair deal to me, don’t you think?” He grins, toothy and wide, and you nod wordlessly.  

“Good girl.”  

[thelittleredheadedmusician]

you were shunned and burned your cradle

Newsies Gen PG 4,365 words AO3 Living in New York isn't easy for a boy on his own. It's worse for Crutchie between his leg and the air itself trying to poison him. But things really can only go up.  For @i-got-personality as part of @newsies-secret-santa! You said you like Crutchie, canon era, and any kind of magic and well I hope that you like this!

Being a changeling in New York City hurts. It makes his skin itch and his lungs burn and his eyes water. From the iron that surrounds him, fills the very air along with the smoke. If he’s not careful when he reaches out or brushes against something his skin comes away with a sharp, searing scar.

Being a changeling hurts in a different way too. Knowing that, for whatever reason, his mother gave him up. That a human baby was far preferable to him and so he was left in some other child’s crib. To make matters worse, he was given up twice. That hurt even more.

On his crueler days, the ones filled with self-loathing, he blames himself. That it was some personal failing, his bum leg perhaps, that made his mother exchange him. That the same failing is why the woman who believed herself his mother threw him out onto the street. Logically, he knows this isn’t the case. For one, he remembers what happened to his leg and it involved an iron poker that proved to his mother he wasn’t really hers as fear burned in her eyes.

Being a changeling in New York hurts and it’s hard too. Trying to grow, to thrive, in a city that was made in opposition to your very nature. It’s even harder when you’re just a kid. When you’re living on the streets. His first few nights are the worst. He’s cold and hungry and tired and he hurts. Oh does he hurt.

Being a changeling is no walk in the park, though ironically walks in the park help some. Help a lot. Until he tires. But being a changeling in a city as big as New York means you’re not alone. Well, you’re never alone but there’s others too. If you know how to spot them.

He’s been sleeping in doorways and sneaking food from market stalls – but not begging, whether an innate part of being a one of the Folk or an innate part of himself he did not want or need anyone’s pity – for a few weeks when he sees her. She’s tall, very tall and with the tatters her skirts are in he’s able to see the pale pink of her calves from knee to muddy leather boots. It’s not a normal pink, not like the glimpses of his own cold cheeks in shop windows, but the dusty pink of a rose. Her fingers are the same color as she waves and calls, catching passersby’s eye and gesturing to the basket of flowers on her arm. The violets match her thick, plated hair and the bluebells her bright, solid-colored eyes.

He stops, shocked on the other side of the street, when he sees her. A cart and then trolley pass between them and still he can’t tear his gaze away. She’s smiling at him once the street is clear, wide and kind. The light almost sparks off her pointed teeth. She winks and crooks a long, thin finger to him. He crosses without another thought, barely managing to remember how to even walk before he’s in front of her.

“Hello little one,” she coos, tilting his chin up so he can meet her gaze. Her pink fingers then trail through his hair, straightening it, before running down to brush over his shoulders and tug lightly at his vest. This close he sees that she has small white flowers woven into the braid of her purple hair. They look like stars in a twilight sky and he’s fairly certain they sparkle too.

“Hello, miss,” he manages to reply.

Her grin sharpens. “You’re a polite young man. And that smile! Sweeter than stolen cream.”

At those words he can’t help but preen. “Thank you, miss. I quite like your hair myself. I’ve-” he stumbles, tightening his grip on the crutch under his arm, “I’ve never seen hair that color.”

Eyes widening, she straightens. “My, you’ve not met one of your own before, have you?”

“No, miss,” he shakes his head, hair flopping into his eyes. He reaches up to brush it back but she’s faster. Brushing it away with her rosy fingers again.

“But you know our ways?” She says it like a question but the flash of her eyes makes it a challenge.

He straightens, feeling so proud it borders on smug. “Never give your true name, always be polite, and nothing is a gift.”

Her head tilts and he honestly can’t tell if she’s thrilled or disappointed. Though they both know it’s not all the ways of the Folk, just the important ones. The ones the humans know in order not to err on their bad side. But for a changeling like him, it’s a good start and all true. That’s another thing he knows, the Folk cannot lie.

“Very good little one. You may know, but I doubt you have much practice. Let us strike a bargain, shall we?” Again, her head tilts and more than her long limbs or resemblance to a garden or sunset, this looks the oddest to him. Sets her apart from the humans still buffeting them on the busy street.

“Only be it fair and true,” he replies on instinct. Because, there’s nowhere else it could have possibly sprung from.

Pride and amusement has her spine straightening as she nods. “My proposition is thus; you give me the two buttons from your vest and I shall weave you a crown that will never wilt. That will remind you of who you are.”

He has to think about it, faerie bargains are notoriously tricks meant to cheat the person hapless enough to make one. There are normally catches and clauses. There are twists and double meanings and you always, always lose more than you gain. Yet, this seems simple. Straightforward. And it would be rude to say no.

“A trinket for a trinket,” he says, stalling.

She inclines her head. “A mortal trinket for a faerie trinket. A piece of a life that was and will be again.”

His heart and mind catch on that last bit but to puzzle it out could take all day and he’s getting hungry. He was trying to find food when he saw her in the first place. It’s a risk, but a benign one. “My two buttons for a flower crown woven by you that will never wilt.”

Again, her smile is sharp. But her knife his sharper as she leans forward and cuts the buttons from his vest, hand moving quickly to cup them before they can do more than fall from the fabric. She slips them into the folds of her skirt, her knife disappearing too. Just as quickly she begins to pluck flowers from her basket with her too long, stick thin fingers and begins to weave them into a crown and in a blink it’s on his head.

“May you wear it in good health,” she says and it’s a blessing he didn’t bargain for. His stomach twists and he nods; remembering not to thank her at the last moment. She flashes one last grin as she turns away, her skirts flaring out, and walks down the sidewalk.

He manages to not lose his flower crown as he falls in with a group of satyrs living in Battery Park, though he leaves after a few weeks when he learns the fish they always have for dinner comes straight from the aquarium in the castle. He goes back to sleeping in doorways and on fire escapes after that. He’s hungry all the time but he can never be sure if it’s his nature or his circumstances that cause it.

Eventually, his clothes become too thin and short, showing off his wrists and legs and strips of his stomach. Sleeping on fire escapes has a new bite as the fabric begins to cover less and less and more and more of his skin is exposed to the iron. The worst is how tight his boots have become, pinching and squeezing at his toes. He refuses to go barefoot though, not because of the cold but because it reminds him too much of the others. The women who walk on the breeze and become one with the trees. The men who blink at him before disappearing into shadows and around corners. The beings and creatures who pinch and poke and trick and steal and cackle and dance, dance, dance in between the oblivious crowds.

He finally manages to trade with an immigrant family from the Lower East Side, not feeling sad to hand over the last items his mother gave him in exchange for shoes that are just a hair too big and clothes that keep his skin from the sparking itch of his fire escape beds.

It’s this sleeping arrangement that gets him in trouble. Faeries are meant to be swifter, stronger than humans. But with his crutch he’s not able to outrun the police. A shopkeeper reports him for vagrancy and even his charms aren’t able to keep the police from dragging him to the Refuge.

Another boy, a newsboy, sees this from a little ways down the street. He freezes and his face darkens. His face with its too sharp angles and too bright eyes. The boy is moving before he has the time to process this, making a messy grab for a trinket from a nearby vendor’s cart, dropping his papers in the process. The police notice – everyone on the block notices – and grab him. The boy struggles but it’s a show, he can tell it’s just for show, and soon they’re both being lifted into the wagon.

The trial is short, the other boy cocky, and the warden at the Refuge cruel. At least here he has a bed, a real bed, for the first time in years. The other boy smooth talks his way into getting the one next to him.

“You can call me Jack, Jack Kelly. Though some of the boys call me Cowboy too,” he says with a quicksilver smile.

He raises a skeptical brow, his thoughts catching on the phrasing and the sharp points the boy’s ears come to. Sharp points that match his own.

“You’re like me,” he says instead of giving his name. He knows better than to give anyone his name. He knows Jack certainly isn’t this boy’s.

“Depends on what you mean by that,” Jack says slyly, stretching out on the thin bunk.

“How do you do it?” He asks with genuine curiosity, leaning forward so he can lower his voice and study Jack’s pleasantly bored expression.

Confusion pulls at Jack’s brow. “Do what?”

“Work as a newsboy.” It wasn’t obvious? “They lie all the time to make money.”

The quicksilver is back. “I never lie. I just embellish the truth. Tell a story. The facts are there, just maybe not all the facts. If it weren’t true, I couldn’t say it.” Jack shrugs and it’s an odd motion since he’s laying on his back with his hands propped behind his head. Made odder by the fact that it seems almost graceful. “It’s not so bad. Get to go all over the city and the lodging house means you’ve got a bed if you can afford it.”

He frowns at the non-sequitur. It deepens when he realizes it’s an abrupt topic change. “We’re stuck here and you’re offering me a job?” he can’t keep all the disbelief out of his voice. Even if he hadn’t checked, he could feel that the windows and doors were barred with thick iron rods.

“I’ll be out of here by dawn, question is if you’re coming with me?”

For a solid minute he weighs his options. The Refuge with its coldness and crying children. Jack with his silver tongue and faerie arrogance.

When they manage to sneak out into the courtyard a few hours later they’re met by the boys who helped break the lock and distract the guards. The first causes him to stop, he’s so obviously a sprite that the scowl is the only thing keeping him from laughing. The other is mortal and chomping on an unlit cigar, the scent of which still makes him wrinkle his nose. The four slink out and into an alley before twisting around the block and through another back alley until they’re farther and farther away.

“We’re even now, Kelly,” the sprite finally growls once the sky begins to lighten.

“A deal’s a deal, Spot.” Jack offers his hand, spitting into it first. If he hadn’t already figured the boy was one of the Folk that would have confirmed it. The spit shake marks him as a newsie. Spot turns to him and the mortal, nodding at them both before turning off a side street and disappearing.

“Bell’s gonna ring soon,” the boy says, almost nervous as he bounces on his toes and glances down the street. His eyes dart to where Spot disappeared to, then to him, and finally back to Jack.

“And we’ll be there, right new kid?” Jack raises a brow at him. It’s a taunt.

“Course,” he replies. No bargain was struck, no deal made, but he is in Jack’s debt and they both know it.

Jack nods, smiles, and turns back to the mortal. “Go get in line, Race. Make sure Weasel don’t give us no grief for being late.”

Race, apparently, grins around the cigar and takes off running. Maybe that’s where the nickname comes from.

“You can trust Racetrack,” Jack tells him vaguely as they follow, “he’s good people.”

Or maybe that’s not where the nickname comes from.

In the next few weeks, he learns the ins and outs of selling from Jack. And of “charming folks” though truthfully, it’s just magic. Jack starts calling him “Kid” and the other newsies “Crutchie” and he doesn’t really care because neither are his name and that’s what matters. The night in the Refuge isn’t the first or last Jack spends there, but it is the only one that’s intentional. He works harder to repay Jack who seems less and less inclined to care.

Finally, he feels they’re even when he manages to discover the nook in the corner of the roof of the lodging house. The air is still filled with smoke and iron but not the smell and sounds of mortal boys. He takes careful trips up with bedding and supplies until he feels it’s suitable. Sleeping under the stars just feels right and he can tell Jack agrees by the expression on his face when he sees it.

They grow close. The other newsies learn he can predict the weather with startling accuracy and say it must be thanks to his leg, he never corrects them. They talk as the city chokes them, about going to someplace that’s nothing but stars. The money comes in fits and starts as he grows into his own sharp features. The other Folk avoid him but mortals feel almost compelled to buy his papers. Stories come in across the river of a young newsie rising through the ranks of Brooklyn and ruling with an iron fist. They don’t tell any of the others that the rumors sound an awful lot like the stories of Court drama they hear.

He keeps his own crown in the bag at his hip, as unchanging as the day he received it. Though now, years later and clothes traded and swapped and bought he misses the buttons she took. Misses having something that reminds him of the place he used to believe was home. For even his crutch is different, having long outgrown the original.

They’re teenagers too soon, a blink in their long lifetimes. With it comes something they don’t expect, an odd almost awed respect from the others. Except Race but he never counted. He’s tied up in Brooklyn as a rule and so is exempt. They never sought the power they seemingly have, power different than that which they were born with, and they discover it in the most dramatic way.

It starts with a raise in prices. A raise which isn’t fair, and they of all people would know. Jack is outraged, he is angry too but in a colder way.

The new boy, the one who either didn’t heed the stories of the old world or else his family hadn’t passed them on – and that did happen as people sought to keep the good and leave the monsters behind when they came to America and never would they imagine to find so many pretty ones in the center of the city – and offers his name as though it was on a platter. Even his little brother gives a nickname. But Jack had been kind and called him Davey and the others had too, much to Davey’s unknowing chagrin.

The new boy, Davey, matches Jack in his heat, at least momentarily, offering the spark to Jack’s powder and unknowingly unleashing that power.

When Jack says they should strike, they strike.

He finally understands the appeal of the Courts for the first time.

“Do you think she’s really going to show up tomorrow?” he asks that night on the rooftop, head still spinning from the rush of their decision. The thrill had dampened slightly after Jack told him of Spot’s reluctance to join them. Understandable, why would he want to risk losing the grip he kept on the tight leash he had over Brooklyn? And he didn’t owe Jack anymore. But this was as much for them as for the mortals. Righting a wrong against oneself was practically faerie law. Though the girl reporter was an intriguing thought and a twist even he hadn’t seen coming.

“I think so,” he can hear Jack’s smirk in the dark. “She told me her name was Katherine Plumber.”

“Really?” He’s surprised, the way she’d eyed him he thought she’d know better.

“Least it’s the name she publishes under,” Jack is almost proud.

“Clever,” he says happily.

“Too bad your charm doesn’t work in print,” Jack teases.

“I don’t need glamour to be charming. The smile’s just icing.”

Jack laughs, the sound floating up over the rooftops. “Good thing she’s bringing a camera.”

He grins up at the stars.

Like any war there are casualties. Unfortunately, he is one of them. Being back in the Refuge again is hard. The time stretches and shrinks in ways he never imagined possible and somehow he knows decades, centuries later he will look back on this and still wonder. The scent of iron is so heavy it’s dizzying and the press of bodies so close it makes everything seem small. These mortals with iron in their blood and salt on their skin surrounding him on all sides. He has the crown, somehow he has the crown. His crown. It marks him as other and for a time, some measure of time, he feels even more alone. So different from these humans serving penance without crime with him.

He takes it out one night, straining to see the pale petals in the paler light of the moon when that changes. The crown proves he is not alone. The faerie woman, the flower seller, took what was never his to begin with and gave him his true home. His first taste of community. Of finding others like himself. Of finding Jack with his silver tongue and smile. Of the newsies of Lower Manhattan with their bright spirits and easy laughs in the face of the City. Of righteous Davey and mischievous Les and clever Kath. Even of Spot and his politics and power games. He found his birthright in the world he was forsaken to and that realization rekindles something within, twisting the crown in his hands.

He feels less alone, turning his charm back on as the sun rises. Knowing that he is just one of hundreds here in the Refuge feeling like this. Uses his charm to learn that there are some who can get messages in and out. Others who can get him supplies. And in the night, despite complaints from his fellows for the candlelight, he writes to Jack urging him to not let his own fire go out.

He knows they’ll win, has never been in doubt of it. Jack said they would and Jack can’t lie. But he knows Jack, and knows that not being able to tell a lie does not mean you can’t lie to yourself. So, he writes and hopes that it gets to Jack in time.

The time slips and spins and he sleeps and waits and imagines and remembers and nearly misses a name being called. A name that was never really his but he took before he could talk and he hasn’t heard in so long he’d honestly almost forgotten it. The others part for him as he carefully makes his way to the stairs that will lead him to the ground floor and the door out of this place. He is thankful for his faerie grace as he moves with so many eyes on him, his crutch catching on the uneven floorboards but he walks with his head high. Walks right out the door. He’s not the only one to do so, but he is the first.

Relishing in the ability to breath in the wind again, he rides in the governor’s open topped carriage taking in lungfuls of it. Even when it carries the stale scent of trash and the river. His smile is so wide it almost hurts and he nearly forgets to smooth the points his teeth have grown into with the giddiness humming like magic under his skin. The people on the street stare to see such a grubby looking boy riding alone in such finery and he lets them, waving a bit and laughing to think that all this was done just for him. There’s a strange metaphor all tied up in it somewhere. A riddle he’ll spend the time puzzling out later. Right now he just breathes.

Seeing the crowd turn at the sound of hooves and whistles and the governor’s gesturing sends his heart speeding. He accepts the excitement buzzing throughout it and between his ears as some of the boys rush the carriage, holding out hands in silent offers to help him down. For once, he accepts. Jack’s grinning up on the small stage above the door to The World – another twisted metaphor for another time – but he quirks a brow too. Knowing he only allows this because so much focus has passed on to question about the police wagon that has followed behind him the whole way.

He makes a face at Jack in silent response before letting his own pride takeover. He spins and gestures to the wagon where police officers are herding out a man. Herding out the man who runs the Refuge. Who ran the Refuge. He can almost feel his excitement pricking at his fingers in the same way iron does as the governor agrees to let him do the honors. The feeling overpowers the actual feel of the iron manacles as he clamps them on the man’s wrist, letting his glamor slip and his smile turn cruel for just a blink in the process.

The celebrating ends sooner than expected, though that isn’t entirely true. Despite the newsies lining up and taking their papers, they all still chatter and cheer. Bubbling up and over at their win. Jack is talking with Spot, Davey, and Kath when he comes over after getting his own stack for the morning. Spot gives him a significant nod before spit shaking hands all around and heading off with his lieutenants. Racetrack trailing behind. It’s an odd mirror of their first meeting and he brushes the thought away as another problem for another time.

“I’m so glad you’re ok,” Kath says as she hugs him. He’s come to realize that she’s special in more ways than one. Her possession of the Sight just part of a larger enigma. Her willingness to pull him into her and easy offers of friendship another. He doesn’t argue though, squeezing her right back.

Davey offers a hand to shake once she frees him and a cautious smile. The caution has nothing to do with him though and everything to do with Davey’s own contradiction filled nature. “You were missed,” he says earnestly. Swatting at his little brother who begins babbling exactly how missed he was.

“So, how was the ride?” Jack slings an arm over his shoulders, wide smile as he pulls him in tight to his side.

“You struck a bargain,” he almost hisses through his own smile clenched teeth.

“We came to an agreement.” He feels more than sees Jack’s shrug.

“It was two deals,” Davey corrects with a stern turn to his mouth and a flash in his eyes. “Jack made two deals with Pulitzer.”

He pulls away, brushing off Jack’s hold. He stares hard at the other boy. Dares him to say something and damn himself. Say nothing and damn himself even further.

“The first was a deal only we could make,” Jack says smoothly. He doesn’t blink and his sharp features become sharper with the seriousness that overtakes him. He understands immediately. It was hard. It was cruel. And it doesn’t matter what exactly it was and who gave what because in the end Jack walked away with what mattered most.

“And the second?” he prompts.

Jack shrugs again, shares a glance with the others, and smirks. “We won.”

Truthfully, he should have expected that. He rolls his eyes. Later, under the stars and the smoke, breathing in as little iron as they can he’ll ask again. He’ll find out what he did to convince Spot. What the terms of the bargain were. Of both bargains. And whether Jack was going to tell Davey their true nature, since there was no point in telling Kath. They have all the time in the world to leave the city and see the stars. These people they’ve turned into a home have only a lifetime and he’s already decided that he’s going to make the most of it.

End notes can be found on ao3. Please leave a comment and lmk what you think there as well! :)

[loved-lefthaunted]

What are your thoughts on all the evermore songs?

oh my god. this is such a hard question for me so brace yourself. it’s taken me nearly 2 months to write this out and i still don’t think i’ve managed to encapsulate all my thoughts.

So, I have very strong feelings about evermore. I immediately loved it three times as much as folklore, for a variety of reasons. I can do a song-by-song breakdown alongside my general thoughts of the album below:

Firstly, I want to preface this by saying that I do not disregard the impact that folklore had on me prior to evermore’s release. I am not oblivious to the fact that folklore likely primed me for the sound that evermore had and that my mind was set up for a similar sounding album so was willing to receive it with more open ears.

That being said, I think that evermore is the superior album. The overall emotional range and sonic variety of the album is wider and more thought out. The different songs provide a more well-rounded listen in my opinion and give me much more emotional investment than folklore. Each individual song feels strong and there are far more songs with single potential than folklore.

So let’s get down to it:

1. Willow - iconic. The big sister that cardigan deserves. The song that I wish the Lover album had been. A song so fully devoted in such a soft and sweeet way without feeling sickly. A mature way to dedicate a song to the person that you can’t live without but in a way that doesn’t throw pink confetti at your face and tell single people to fuck off. TAKE MY HAND? OKAY TAYLOR. WRECK MY PLANS? FOR SURE BABES. THAT’S MY MAN? 100% FEEL U GAL.

2. Champagne Problems - LOOK. I AM CLAIMING THE NAME SAMPAGNE PROBLEMS FOR ALL FUTURE CONTENT. I want to be proposed to just so that I can reject them and then get wildly drunk on overpriced alcohol. It’s heartwrenching in a way that Taylor hasn’t been since the likes of Treacherous. It doesn’t throw sadness at you, overwhelm you with tears. It hides heartbreak within a soft piano riff and gorgeous imagery.

3. Gold Rush - a sapphic daydream. i cannot believe this is real. The return of a heart-thumping drumbeat and the most lovely, pure song that just describes the infatuation with someone beautiful and how you can wonder about them and be so happy about them and jealous of them all at once.

4. ‘Tis The Damn Season - this christmas song makes me wish i had a boy next door in my hometown that i could randomly sleep with. why don’t i have a fluffy hallmark holiday film based upon this premise? why isn’t there a christmas music video to show me how their interactions work during the holidays and how it differs so vastly with their normal lives? Why can i feel both the distance and the closeness that these two people feel? the cutest dedication to a very un-cute casual relationship. a bittersweet shout out to the people who make us happy for a few fleeting moments spread out over the long haul.

5. Tolerate It - i have very VERY strong feelings about this one. it feels like it both encapsulates romantic and non-romantic love so perfectly. It pairs perfectly with the likes of Closure (more on that later). We all deserve to be celebrated. In a world of people settling for less than they deserve, we should reach for those who deserve us. We are worth it. Find someone who will show us how worthy we are. It’s aching and slow and painful and just....everything. Just because someone has always been there doesn’t mean they deserve to continue to be there. Tolerating you is not the same as deserving your loyalty.

6. No Body, No Crime (feat. HIAM) - IT TOOK 14 YEARS BUT TAYLOR FINALLY MURDERED A MAN IN COLD BLOOD AND I AM HERE FOR IT. MEN ARE TRASH, LADIES. REMEMBER THIS. ENGRAVE IT INTO YOUR TOMBSTONES. TATTOO IT ON YOUR FOREHEADS. MEN AS AN ENTITY DO NOT DESERVE US. MURDER THEM. A YEEHAW DREAM. (I have no strong feelings about HIAM but the existence of Este’s name is a blessing in itself, their backing vocals are a lovely addition and a true testament to their friendship as we know how protective Taylor is about mixing business and friendship through collaborations)

7. Happiness - this song is HURTFUL. a song about growth, a song about finding yourself amidst the loss of a partner, a friend, a family member. a loss so deep that it will hurt you for years to come and take a piece of you away forever. but a loss that you have to be resigned to and grow from and let go of. the slow build of the backing is something i haven’t heard since Holy Ground. Both songs talk about loss and moving on in such starkly different ways but still encompass the feeling of reminiscing on something good and pure and perfect whilst battling the knowledge that it’s over and trying to be happy for the person now that they’re gone.

8. Dorothea - the sweetest girl in the neighbourhood. a childhood friend that we all miss having. a person we watched grow into something massive and successful and we’re so genuinely happy for them. the song encompasses the feeling of a distanced joy. a joy that has nothing to do with you, everything to do with this person that you’d be happy to accept again with open arms but will be equally as happy to watch succeed from a distance. a bouncy backing track and lovely vocalisations that really build a sense of a warm hug and the feeling of soft morning sun on your skin.

9. Coney Island (feat. The National) - alright. so i’m sat on a bench in the cold, wrapped up in a winter coat and a hat and gloves and a massive scarf that covers half of my face. i can see the air when i breathe out. there’s an empty ferris wheel at a deserted fairground and i can remember when it was alive and bustling and when i was surrounded by all of the people closest to me on a late summer’s day. and i miss them. i yearn for that to be back. the way we yearn for a time before covid, before masks and elbow touches and sanitising everything. a time when you could sit around a table with your friends and welcome someone with a hug and visit your family for the holidays. a time of joy that was so overlooked until it was gone. The presence of The National is also a breathtaking addition and truly deserved after Aaron’s input on both folklore and evermore. I’m glad they saved it for this song.

10. Ivy - this song just radiates GREEN. Am I in a forest? Am I just in a greenhouse, watering the plants? The guitar/banjo sounds make me so horrifically nostalgic for Speak Now era. The male backing vocals remind me that Taylor has evolved so far from the girl we used to exclusively listen in conjunction with Caitlin Bird and Liz Huett. 

11. Cowboy Like Me - one of the only songs I don’t really care about? it’s not bad, it’s just not great. it’s yeehaw without the accompanying passion. It’s the end of a sad, sad wild west movie. It’s a backing track in a scene of a TV show when someone is going on a journey alone to find themselves. But it’s nothing special.

12. Long Story Short - DO NOT FUCKING TOUCH ME. THE BEST SONG ON THIS ALBUM IN MY OPINION. THE STRONGEST BEAT, THE NOSTALGIA OF 1989, THE LYRICS OF RED, THE FUCKS GIVEN OF REPUTATION. THE PERFECT IMMERSIVE TAYLOR EXPERIENCE. TRULY A 10/10 ENTITY. I WILL HAVE THIS PLAYING AT MY GRADUATION. I SURVIVED.

13. Marjorie - the loss of a grandparent is always a lot. i’ve lost 2 due to Covid and it’s cut me deeper than I ever imagined. Marjorie is the 50′s sepia toned daydream that sends you flying back to being a child and being taught life’s most important lessons when you were far too young to understand them from someone so much wiser than you. It feels like I’m being taught to live again. Another build up backing track, but in such an uplifting way? A way that makes you think of the sun slowly coming out of the clouds. Of the end of a rainstorm and the start of a new day. Optimism and innocence. Peace and hope.

14. Closure - right, the return of sadness. The use of the clatter and discord in the background. The death of a Big Machine (subtle and perfectly done). She’s doing better. We all are. It reminds me of the friends I’ve lost and crave to have back but know I’m better off without. We have to let go of this. Close the chapter. You don’t even need the epilogue, it’s over. The production makes me so uncomfortable and it’s SO NECESSARY because lack of closure is UNSETTLING. It’s horrifying. It’s devastating. But the lyrics and the power of the song show how strong you can be and how important it is to push through the discomfort and continue to live.

15. Evermore (feat. Bon Iver) - the titular song. The return of Bon Iver’s vocals and the lone piano background are truly something to be commemorated for years to come. Although it lacks the painstaking hurt of Exile, this is one of her most simple pieces of artistry on this album and it’s BEAUTIFUL. Something that feels bare and raw. A song that cuts deep and shows us the true core of what she’s currently feeling right now: that although pain might feel forever, it’s not. all pain, much like joy, is fleeting and we have to feel it but we need to remember that it’s only a piece of our experience and place it into context. The song veers on self-pity and wallowing in hopelessness until the latter third, where suddenly hope rises out of the ashes alongside a slightly padded out production from Bon Iver’s vocals. A strong end to the album. This song sets us up for future albums on a note of optimism. It’s a new dawn. 

[aloysiavirgata]

Henry Compilation

@perplexistan is an outstanding human who compiled all my little Henry ficlets into one document for me. So here it is, for your perusal. It all began with this:

Anonymous asked: Would scully consider remarrying if she wouldn't work it out with mulder in season 11? ;)

@kateyes224

As long as Mulder is around, I don’t know that she’d be willing to start from scratch. But that makes me very sad for Scully. If she and Mulder did decide that they couldn’t be together, I would want for her to find someone who loved and appreciated her and made her feel completed, even if that person wasn’t Mulder. I just think the ways that she and Mulder have been rent apart by this life mean that their torn edges fit together in a way that makes them as whole as they can possibly be.

AV: 

She gets the younger two out the door in time for the bus, backpacks bouncing as they run down the block. Their sister had left well over an hour ago, driving herself to school for early lacrosse practice. Scully shuts the door once Alice and Simon join the cluster of children trooping along the sidewalk. Everyone knows there is safety in numbers.

The dog, a half-grown keeshond, trots over in response to the breakfast noises. “Here, Wicket,” Scully says. “It’ll make your coat shiny.” She scrapes leftover eggs into his dish before fitting the greasy plates into the dishwasher.

Footsteps on the stairs, and Scully smooths her hair back.

“Morning,” Henry says, grabbing a nectarine from the bowl. He wears only striped pajama pants. “Thanks for getting them out the door.”

“Mmm, not a problem. You almost never get to sleep in.” She smiles, tips her face up to his.

He kisses her, and Scully tastes toothpaste and Listerine. “You’re an angel,” Henry claims.

Not me, she thinks. But Joan is. Henry’s first wife, the mother of his children, the lover of keeshonds, the gardener of exotic bulbs, is dead and beyond reproach. Scully finds her harmless, though occasionally irritating. The children find her flawless.

Henry pours them each a cup of coffee, fixes hers exactly how she likes. Scully settles onto a bar stool to savor it.

“Good?” he asks.

“Perfect.”

Henry beams.

She watches her husband as he putters around the kitchen, dumping coffee grounds into the composter, putting frozen fruit into the Vitamix. His back is broad and muscular in the buttery morning light, his silver-flecked hair gleaming.

“You eat?” he asks, after his smoothie has been whirred to perfection.

“Eggs with the kids.”

“They love you,” he says happily, if not accurately. “Can you believe we’re coming up on a year, Dana?”

She cannot. The wedding had been small. Quiet. Family attended, some of their friends from work. Joan’s parents, uncomfortably.

Mulder had sent flowers for her, gifts for the children.

Scully takes another swallow of coffee. “Paper anniversary, Henry. Hot date at Barnes and Noble?”

He walks over, wraps his arms around her from behind. Scully leans into the heat of his chest, her head on his bicep. She sighs with contentment as he noses her hair.

“I was thinking plane tickets,” Henry murmurs, nuzzling her neck. “Paris. Rome. Somewhere decadent. Between work and the kids you’re running yourself absolutely ragged, Dana. Joan’s parents can take the younger two, and Vivian can stay home by herself if she wants.”

Paris. All she has seen of Paris is the airport, eating overpriced pain au chocolat while Mulder argued with the ticket agent in his lousy French. They barely made their flight.

“Paris,” Scully muses. “I could do Paris.”

“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” Henry asks, purring in her ear.

She rolls her eyes. “So predictable.”

“I’m a tax attorney, Dana. I’m supposed to be predictable.”

She laughs a little. Predictable. Solid, predictable Henry with his beautiful children and his beautiful house and his beautiful wives. She has never heard him say a truly unkind thing about anyone. He is a charter Rotarian and a sucker for the wounded animals Simon brings home. He’s been unfailingly gracious to Mulder on the few occasions they’ve met. He’s a wonderful dancer.

“Predictable is good,” she assures him. Henry would never ditch her in strange motels or mix her up in a global conspiracy. Henry calls when he’s running late.

“You have time for a run before work?” he asks.

“I wish I did. I’ve got a consult with a family in about an hour.” Scully turns the bar stool, looking up at Henry’s green eyes. She takes his face in her hands, thumbing his jaw. “Paris sounds lovely. I’ll talk to Gwen about my schedule today.”

He kisses her palm. “You deserve Paris.”

Scully holds him close and doesn’t tell him how rarely anyone gets what they deserve.

***

From @mangokiwitropicalswirl

[I could NOT stop thinking about your short brilliant painful take on Scully’s marriage to Henry, and I woke up needing to write this. If you think it fits your vision of things in that universe, feel free to share!]

***

Note from AV: There are not WORDS to describe what a compliment this is, my goodness.  <3 Thank you, @mangokiwitropicalswirl

***

On the morning Scully marries him, she takes a long look in the mirror as she smooths her hair and touches up her makeup. It goes without saying, without thinking, that she wishes her mother were here. Maggie would have cried to see her in the ivory dress, would have coddled the step-grandchildren, would have joined her elbows-deep in topsoil in his garden.

Everyone believes the day that you get married you’ll feel uniquely whole, blissfully free from uncertainties. Happy.

And she is. She catches her own gaze in the mirror and knows that she’s the only one who’d see the wistful mote of resignation in her eyes. But not a resignation of defeat, it’s one of understanding. She better understands at fifty now than she did at thirty that there are choices. Always choices.

Someone told her once that love flows through us like water, softening our edges the way water wears down sandstone, or even granite. It carves out space for itself inside of us, making us larger, widening the heart.

Mulder’s love had been a tumult, a raging river, a flood. It had opened her like a canyon, revealed a grandscape of dizzying heights and crevices inside her. It had split over into corners she herself had not explored. Together, their love had flowed and thrashed and roiled, until she was hollowed out like a deepend cavern, like a riverbank destroyed by sudden flood.

And then it had receded, slowly, like the bitter end of a geologic age.

The thin ribbon that still trickles through her even now was not enough to fill the newly-barren spaces. As years went on, the heart crumbled like loose rock, eroding like a monument to a long forgotten era.

Contrary to popular belief, love is not all you need. Sometimes you need therapy. And meds. And sometimes you need to let it go.

On the little card that came along with flowers there was just one word, “Always.– M”.

There were years she would have bristled at the word, hearing in it all the codependency and desperate possession that were the hallmarks of their bond. But she hears it now the way she knows he means it, with the openness of someone who will always be her friend. Before all of it, at the very heart of it, he had been her dearest friend.

When Henry came into her life, it crept up on her like the warm waters of a bending river. His love curled and soothed and nourished until she felt green and young.

In the mirror, she smiles the half-smile of a woman blessed to find there’s more of her to give. And more to know. She dabs perfume on each wrist and behind her ears, between the shadowed valley of her breasts. Beneath them in the hollow of her chest, she’s wider now and knowing, surprised and grateful she is able to bloom again.

***

Anonymous asked: So even though Scully and Henry have this perfect life, which I love, what kind of things do they fight about? Is Scully relieved it's not about conspiracy or monsters in the dark? How do they handle arguments and disagreements? Also, I love Mulder dearly but Henry is kind of perfect....which is a little scary but awesome at the same time.

They really don’t fight much. They disagree (Henry’s a bit more liberal than Scully)  they annoy each other on occasion (he constantly fails to put his laundry in the hamper and she moves all the papers he leaves on the kitchen island) but fights? No, no fights.

N.B. Before anyone messages me to say how boring that sounds, let me explain that I have been with my husband for upwards of 17 years. In that time, we have had 2 fights. Like, ugly unpleasant ones. Lots of arguments and disagreements, but two fights. Our relationship isn’t boring, and I refuse to even entertain the validity of the notion that relationships need drama to be exciting.

One of the things I love best about Iolokus is that Rivka and Sally show Mulder and Scully figuring that out, that conflict isn’t necessary for intellectual stimulation.

***

Anonymous asked: So I know Mulder and Henry aren't hanging out playing poker together every Thursday night, but are there any occasions where they do find themselves in the same room? What was that first size-up like from either guy's perspective?

Scully has scheduled the dinner at a restaurant so it isn’t on anyone’s turf. Besides, Mulder’s house would be torture and she finds Henry’s elaborate kitchen somewhat daunting. She agonizes over reviews and menus, trying to eliminate as many variables as possible. Henry had tried to help, but her snippiness drove him off in short order. She is nauseous for a week beforehand, asking Henry if she had lost her mind and should cancel, asking Mulder the same.

“I want to meet him,” Henry says, passing her a glass of wine. “He’s part of you, so he’s important to me.”

“If this is to get my blessing, Scully,” Mulder says over the phone, “you already have it. But yeah, I’d like to meet the guy wonderful enough for you to ignore the fact that his job title contains the words tax and attorney.”

***

She puts on a black sheath dress, then decides it looks too much like the one from their movie premiere. My god, the movie…has Henry seen it? Or Viv? She is afraid to ask, and afraid not to know. She pushes the thought from her mind for now, pushes her and Mulder and that limo away. Scully rummages through her closet with increasing anxiety, finally settling on a burgundy pencil skirt and fitted navy sweater. Her hair is being impossible, and after half an hour with the curling iron, she opts for a French twist. She keeps her makeup light and tosses back a handful of Tums to quell the acid tide in her stomach.

Henry’s in jeans and a blazer, drinking coffee with Viv and her girlfriend. There’s a heated argument about Iron Man taking place. “You look great,” Henry says. “Ready?”

“No. But let’s do it anyway.” She plucks at invisible fuzz on her skirt.

He takes her arm and they head to the garage.

“Have fun at the circus, kids!” Viv calls after them.

***

They are seated at a table for four, Henry and Mulder facing one another, herself between. She holds a multigrain roll from the breadbasket in her lap, using her nails to pull out every tiny piece of millet, extract every last pumpkin seed. She drops them to the floor like daisy petals.

“I read your book,” Henry says. “Really impressive research. I recommended it to some colleagues.”

Mulder stirs his drink. “Thanks. Spend a lot of time on the dark web between billable hours, Henry?”

Scully kicks him lightly under the table, nostrils flared.

Henry chuckles. “No, I’m just a dilettante.”

The silence is thick and heavy as they peruse their menus, and Scully curses herself for this egregious decision. The back of her neck prickles, her face is hot and itchy. Moments stretch like saltwater taffy on a summer day.

“So, uh, Henry,” Mulder says at last, rubbing the side of his face.

Henry looks up. “Yep?”

“My, uh, my finances are pretty complicated due to some trusts and inheritances, plus my pension. The accountant I’ve been using is retiring. You think you could recommend anybody trustworthy?”

“Oh, absolutely. I’ve got a great guy in Alexandria,” Henry says. “He’ll save you a fortune.”

Mulder nods thoughtfully. “”I’ll put it towards my post-apocalyptic underground bunker. To which, of course, you’re all invited when the end times come upon us.”

Henry’s eyes crinkle at the corners, Scully sees, and her chest loosens. “We’ll bring a pie,” Henry says.

Mulder smiles. “Don’t let Scully make it. Great cook, lousy baker.”

The waitress comes for their orders, and they are chatting easily by the time the food arrives.

***

Henry sits outside on the porch, staring up at the sky. He names the constellations to himself as he sips a tumbler of Macallan. Dana perches on the arm of his Adirondack chair, knees drawn up to her chest.

“I like him,” Henry says at length. “Very funny guy.”

Dana nods slowly. “He is.”

Henry crunches an ice cube. “He’s still in love with you.”

“Does it bother you?’

He looks at her, ethereal in the moonlight. He is afraid at times that he will awake to find she has disappeared, burned off like the mist. “I want everyone to love you.”

She shakes her head, smiling. “Henry.”                                                             

“You love him too,” Henry says.

She hunches her shoulders, glances down. “Does that bother you?”

It might, he’s not sure. He felt the ineffable thing between them, but he understands the weight of history. “Love doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Is there space in you for both of us?”

“It is impossible for more than one object to occupy the same space at the same time,” she says. “There are different spaces for each of you.”

Henry considers this. “Why’d you leave, Dana?”

She cants her face to the sky, eyes wide. “There’s a…a recklessness in me, Henry. A self destructiveness you haven’t seen.”

Is this where his gentle doctor ends and Mulder’s sure-shot partner begins? “Scully,” he says, trying it out.

Her eyes slide closed. “Don’t.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t…please keep going.”

“That part of me blooms with him. It thrives. And I knew, I know, I couldn’t live like that. I couldn’t survive it another year. And I…I ripped it away and left it behind. That’s the place in me for you, Henry. That wound. You and Viv and Alice and Simon; you heal me there.”

He hears the thickness in her voice, feels it rising in his own. “Dana,” he says roughly. He knows about wounds and empty spaces. A piece of him went into the dark earth with Joan.

She turns her head to look at him, a slice of her lovely profile. “If that’s too much, I understand. I do. It’s a lot to ask.”

He shakes his head. “I’d rather share you than lose you,” he breathes. “If I….if I can make you feel whole, that’s a privilege.”

She makes a small noise, a hiccup or a sob, and crawls into his lap.

“It’s okay,” he says, arms wrapping around her. He kisses her temples, her eyelids.

She curls tight against his beating heart.

***

They don’t bother with the superfluity of hellos. She calls, he answers, they talk.

“I liked him,” Mulder says, bouncing a basketball. “I didn’t particularly want to, but he seems like the kind of person people just like.” Mulder finds this a kind of character flaw of its own, but does not mention as much.

“Yes,” Scully says, her voice soft. “He is.”

“A tax attorney though, Scully. Ouch.”

“Mulder, please.” The note of actual pleading in her voice startles him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sincere. “I know this isn’t easy.”

“It’s okay.”

He shoots the ball into the hoop at the end of the driveway. “Three-pointer,” he tells Scully.

“The crowd goes wild.”

There’s a long silence, just one another’s breathing.

“Listen, I don’t know if you know this, but I have a bit of a background in psychology and behavioral science.” He makes a foul shot.

“You don’t say.” There’s a smile in her voice.

“Truth. So I want you to know that my impression of Henry is that he, um, he knows the value of what he has. With you.” It hurts to admit this to her. To himself.

“Oh,” she breathes. “Mulder, I didn’t exp-“

“No, I just, let me finish. And he, um. He’s really a good guy. His life is, you know, well. Your life, really, I guess. It’s good. It’s what I wanted for you and I’m just, you know. I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you.” His eyes sting.

Silence.

“Scully?”

“I’m here.”

He hears tears in her voice. “Okay. Okay, good. This is hard, but we, um. We’re always friends, aren’t we?”

“Of course. Always.” She sniffles.

“I feel like Henry, he understands that. He seems like he really wants you to be happy, that he’s not the jealous type.” Shit, shit why did he say that? “Not that he should be jealous, I don’t mean to imp-“

“It’s okay. And you’re right. He knows that I’m…that we…he knows how we are.”

Mulder swallows hard. “How we are,” he repeats.

They never say goodbye, either. The silence grows and drifts, then she finally disconnects the call.

***

Anonymous asked: What would you do if Henry rocked up in season 11 (other than sue)?

Wait for him to die, I guess. That’s Chris’s MO.

***

Anonymous asked: I love Henry. I know it's sad that in this fictional world she's not with Mulder, but as much as they deeply loved each other, I must admit it's lovely to read a world where Scully is appreciated in the day to day. I'm sure that perhaps Mulder did, but we didn't see too much of that. It felt like it was only when she was kidnapped or in hospital with cancer that he realised how much she meant to him. Henry is what she deserves, and it seems to make Mulder step up too. I'm on board for this.

I feel this way too. Listen, I am diehard MSR and was a shipper before fandom had even settled on the term! I am here for Mulder and Scully hobbling across that bridge like everybody else. 94% of what I write is MSR, either set within canon, or trying to give them a happier AU. Even in this story, their love is still palpable. I don’t think it works otherwise.

But the challenge of trying to create this unconventional AU in a way that is relatable to people is really enjoyable to me as a writer. MSR is inherently easy. It exists. It’s fun and satisfying as a fan, but it’s not a hard sell. This is really pushing me to approach the characters in a new way. I’m just immensely surprised it has gone over so well, and endlessly grateful to everyone who has been willing to engage in the narrative. Especially to @kateyes224 for the idea and @mangokiwitropicalswirl and my 10/13 anon for fleshing it out. 

(10/13 anon, got your message. Just developing an answer in my head.)

—

Anonymous asked: How would Henry cope if Scully's cancer returned? And how would Mulder? OR... how would Scully cope if something happened to Mulder, but she isn't free to drop everything and go to him? Would she want to, or would she have closed the door on that reaction? How would Henry deal with that? #TeamHenlly

Henry paces the hallway outside her room, one hand to his forehead, the other holding his phone. “Pick up, pick up,” he mutters.

Mulder does, finally. “Henry?”

“Yes. Yeah. Listen, this isn’t easy, but I’m at the hospital with Dana and I’ve got some, uh, some bad news.” He is proud of his steady voice, his steady hands.

“Is she hurt? Is she sick?” Mulder sounds almost accusatory, as though Henry has been derelict in a simple task.

“She’s sick. They…” he runs his hand through his hair, circles around the vending machine again. “They found a mass in her sinuses, Mulder.”

The silence on the other end goes on too long. “Mulder, are you there?”

“Do you know her medical history?” The words are clipped.

“She told me, told the doctors this isn’t new. But she said something about a chip, about that scar on her neck. What the hell is going on here, Mulder? I’ve never pushed her about her past, but I’m seriously in the dark here.”

There’s a heavy sigh on the other end. “It’s not my story to tell you.”

Henry, his frustration peaking after hours of obfuscation and obliqueness from Dana, slams a fist into the wall. “She’s my wife, goddammit! Whatever you two have, Mulder, whatever it is, I never pried. I trust her and I trust you and I accept it. But you need to tell me, right fucking now, what I don’t know.”

People are staring, but he doesn’t care, he feels righteous and productive.

“Henry, I-”

“You tell me,” he growls, “or I will drive over right now and beat the living shit out of you. I have a lot of impotent rage I’d like to direct somewhere.” He’s not entirely sure he can make good on this, but he thinks adrenaline will give him an advantage.

Nothing.

“Mulder.”

Breathing.

“It’s medicine,” Mulder says slowly. “The chip in her neck is some kind of medicine that stops her cancer.”

Henry is appalled, “That’s it? That’s the secret you couldn’t share? Am I losing my goddamned mind? Call the fucking manufacturer right now and get another one, for Christ’s sake!”

“It’s not that simple,” Mulder says, his voice soft. “It’s, ah, not on the market.”

“You’re telling me you know of a medicine that treats cancer effectively and you can’t get it? Is it foreign? Illegal?”

“It was a sort of custom design,” Mulder says.

“Give me an answer, a real answer. You two and your doublespeak, I swear to god…” He’s gripping his hair by the roots.

“Fine, Henry. Here it is.” There is anger in Mulder’s voice now, and Henry finds it satisfying. “Her cancer was specifically engineered to manifest if she ever took the chip out. The chip is a tracking device. I don’t know why it stopped working, but before you come over and kick my ass, you have a lot of fucking questions to ask your wife.”

Henry’s mind is reeling. He leans against the wall. “A tracking device?” he repeats. “Engineered cancer? How do you engineer cancer? Why do you engineer cancer?” He can’t process this, not this and Dana asleep in the hospital bed with a demon behind her eyes.

“Shit,” Mulder breathes. “Goddammit, Henry. How bad is she?”

“She’s weak, very thin. She kept saying it was the flu, you know how she is. But she had a few nosebleeds and went in. And here we are.”

“Yeah, I know how she is,” Mulder says, and Henry hears the pain in his words.

“There’s a man,” Mulder says. “Who knows about the chip. He might, uh, he might arrange a deal.”

Henry is baffled, but tries to swim with the current. “A deal? Why would an- never mind. Call him. I’ll pay whatever he wants, no questions asked.”

“Oh, I don’t think you can pay what he’ll want,” Mulder says. The words are measured, heavy. “But I can.”

The line goes dead.

***

Anonymous asked: In the Henry universe, how does Scully react when Mulder finds someone else?

She’s sorting lunch components for the twins into plastic bins in the refrigerator; bags of chips and carrot sticks and foil-wrapped triangles of pizza. Her phone rings as she picks up a webbed bag of clementines.

“Hey,” Mulder says, his voice a warm pulse.

Scully lets the oranges slump back onto the counter. “Hey.”

“I’m, uh, I’m headed up to New York to talk to my publisher this afternoon,” he tells her.

She can hear the noisy old dishwasher going in the background, imagines Mulder fidgeting at the kitchen table. There’s a chair with a wobbly leg he likes to rock in. “They still talking about the miniseries?”

“Yep.”

Scully chews her lip, considering. She tucks the phone against her shoulder. “That’s not why you called, though.”

A long pause. “No.”

“Okay.” She shuts the fridge and begins assembling sandwiches on the counter. Teasing information from Mulder can take a quiet, steady patience.

“I met someone,” he says at last.

Scully sets the knife down, knuckling the cool granite. “Did you?”

“I just, you know, I wanted to call you. You were very open about Henry so I thought I should extend you the same courtesy.” In the background, the squeak of the chair leg.

“Mulder, that’s great. I’m happy to hear it.” She is, she is, she doesn’t want him alone.

He coughs. “Thanks. Um, well, I guess that’s it, really. I should go pack.”

“No!” she exclaims. “Mulder, I need some detail.” As a friend. As a concerned friend who is wary of his general taste for women who will betray him.

“Oh, Scully, you don’t have t-“

“Really, I do. Let’s have the 411.” She hopes she sounds casually interested, and begins spreading peanut butter on a slice of bread.

Mulder guffaws. “The 411? Scully, let me tell you about the internet.”

She blushes, waves her hand. “Whatever. Details, something.”

“Ummmm…”

Scully imagines him pacing now, tossing and catching an invisible baseball. “You know, it’s okay, I don’t want to pressure you.”

“No, hey, I’m sorry. Just trying to generate a quick dossier. Uh, well, her name is Elizabeth. She works for the EPA, coastal ecology.”

“Science nerd, huh?” she says, and immediately wishes she hadn’t. She swallows, stabs a spoon into the jam jar.

“Yeah,” Mulder says. “She does something with zebra mussels and ship ballast water that I need to brush up on.”

“Probably invasive species in coastal communities. I’ll give you a crash course if you like.” She picks up the sandwich to tuck into a plastic bag.

‘It’s okay. I’ll Google it; you remember that internet thing I mentioned before. It’s got lots of stuff on it.”

She is stung, and words sticks in her throat like lumpy oatmeal. “Oh,” she manages. “Okay, then.”

Mulder coughs again. “I just figured you’re pretty busy, with work and the kids and everything.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.” She toys with the jam jar, rolling it in her hands. It is cool against her palms “Well, you know, enjoy your research. Look up copepods too.”

“I will.”

Seconds tick by on the kitchen clock.

“When’s the second book out?” Scully asks. She picks up the sandwich, zipping and unzipping the plastic bag.

“Around Thanksgiving, I think. You want an advance copy? I’ll sign it for you.”

She laughs. “No, don’t give them away. I want to buy it, boost your sales.”

“In that case, stock up and send them out with the Christmas cards. Even mine.”

“I’ll pre-order on the….what did you call it? The in-ter-net?”

Mulder chuckles. “Have them shipped right to your house, or take your velocipede down to the book-seller to fetch them.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

A lengthy pause, but they don’t hang up.

Scully finds that the sandwich in her hand has been wadded into a dense ball, peanut butter and jam squeezed all over the inside of the bag. She hastily shoves it into the trash can. “Mulder, um, when you get back in town, why don’t you give me a call? We’d love to have dinner with you and Elizabeth.” She says it so smoothly she believes it.

“Oh,” he says. “That sounds nice, that sounds really good. Yeah.”

“Okay.” She squeezes her eyes closed, her stomach sour.

Mulder breathes for a long moment. Then he says, “Well, hey. I’ve got to get going, but thanks for listening. I know how busy you are.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Sure.” She holds back this time, doesn’t say she always has time for him.

An empty silence now, the call disconnected.

Scully sits on a bar stool, hands clasped beneath her chin, elbows on the breakfast bar. She sees the absurd expectation she’s held onto, the cruelty of it. Mulder like a sundial in the garden of her life, static and reliable as she moves through the seasons around him. Ticking off her hours as she spends them.

Scully goes to the sink and slaps cold water on her face. She sees Elizabeth in her mind’s eye. Lanky and brunette, of course. Long legs and khaki shorts, probably lots of trips to REI. She assigns her a sporty dog too. Maybe with a bandanna.

She says a prayer for his happiness, and leaves it to God to sort out what exactly she means by the idea.

***

Anonymous asked: 10/13 Henry anon here, dearest Mrs. Virgata and mangokiwimagicswirl, either or both of you please feel free to flesh it out. It delights me my little something could turn into a bigger something. I'm not above begging. *begs*. Look what you all did, my MSR heart really does belong to MSR, but I can carve a little spot out for Henry/Scully/Mulder. Mulder is earth, Henry is the stick, Scully is Archimede's point bc we all know she makes the choices and drives the consequences.

A Saturday in late September, and Henry and Scully sit on the back porch watching the twins lob lacrosse balls at Viv. She catches them expertly, flicking her wrist to send them flying back at her younger siblings. They dodge them, squealing and chasing one another and Wicket, who makes off with one on occasion. He exposes his preposterously fluffy belly in hope of scratches.

Scully pours herself a glass of sangria, pours Henry another two inches of Macallan. She is pleasantly buzzed, work blurring out of her mind’s eye. Henry is somewhat more than buzzed, she suspects. Joan’s parents had been over, which exhausts him.

“There’s, ah, there’s something I want to discuss with you,” Henry says. “And with a bit of liquid courage, there’s no time like the present.”

Anxiety rises in her like a barometer. “That’s quite a lead-in,” she says, keeping her tone light while her stomach churns.

“Sorry,” Henry replies. “It’s not, it’s nothing bad.”

“Let’s have it, then.”

“Mulder’s birthday dinner,” Henry begins. “I know what he…I know that you two are…dammit.“ He trails off in frustration.

The anxiety is now constricting her throat. “Henry?”

He shakes his head, still watching his children. “What I’m mangling here is that if you, um, if you ever felt a need to, you know, take a night off from all this-“ here he nods at the yard, “I’d not hold it against you.”

Comprehension begins to dawn, and Scully is aghast.  “You’re not suggesting that I….no. Henry, no.”

Henry shrugs. “It’s not a moral failing, okay? I asked you once if there was a place for both of us in you and you said there were two places. And I said I’d rather share you than lose you. I know a marriage is a compromise, and I’m, you know, I’m trying to figure out what that looks like here. You took on three kids and a guy with some heavy emotional baggage.”

Scully’s cheeks burn. “So your solution is that I offer myself up to him as a birthday gift? Is this some kind of magnanimous man-to-man gesture, sharing your woman as a show of friendship?”

Henry turns to her now, mouth open. “Oh god, oh….shit. I had no idea it sounded that way. I’m sorry.”

Scully drains half her glass in one gulp. “This is the life I committed myself to, Henry. It’s not a job I need a sick day from, and you and the kids aren’t baggage, for heaven’s sake.”

Henry stares into the yard, watches Wicket play tug of war with Viv’s lacrosse stick. “I’m terrified of losing you,” he says. “Partially because of Joan but partially because…” he shakes his head.

“Because what?”

He swallows the rest of his Scotch. “Because there are these dark places in you I can’t see, places that have been redacted. And I told you I wouldn’t pry, and I won’t, but I have this fear of them. That they’ll swallow you one day, and you’ll just disappear. I guess I hoped that if I offered you a night to visit, so to speak, you might not feel tempted to run away to them.”

Her sinuses burn. “Henry…”

“I wasn’t trying to offer you to Mulder as a birthday gift, Dana, that’s really fucking sick. But I was trying to offer you a night in the parts of yourself you haven’t let me go to yet.”

She reaches for his hand and grips it hard. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“A vacation home,” he says, smiling weakly at his own joke. He squeezes her hand back.

“I don’t need a vacation,” she assures him.  She tugs Henry closer, pulls him down so that his head is resting on her lap. His legs dangle over the armrest of the wicker settee.

“I just want you to know I meant it,” he says.

She nods. “I do. But you can’t keep me by giving me away.” She traces his face with her fingertip, his eyelashes and tragus and philtrum. She etches him deeper into her heart.

***

Anonymous asked: Original 10/13 anon here, I suppose i'm down for consummation of free pass too. Heck, you can do both versions for all I care!

aloysiavirgata:

Oh @perplexistan and @kateyes224…

A continuation of this

***

It’s sticky outside, a mid-Atlantic fall day not fully committed to the reality of October. A late season hurricane has been stirring up the ghosts of summer off the Carolinas, the air close and heavy. Scully steals hairpins from Viv’s vanity to help tame her bun, and is reasonably pleased with the results.

It’s just Mulder, she tells herself, zipping up her navy dress. It has a boatneck that shows her clavicles to good advantage, cap sleeves that feel feminine but not frilly.

It’s just Mulder, she thinks, choosing beige kitten heels that lengthen her legs, swiping Lancome’s Perfect Fig across her mouth. She skips perfume.

The sky is thick with shaggy clouds, the sun slipping away nearly undetected. Scully slides behind the wheel of her car, and leaves tire tracks on the grass when she swerves backwards down the driveway.

***

The restaurant is new and well reviewed, with nothing served in Mason jars or on slate tiles. She asked when she made the reservation, as these things leave Mulder snarky and cross.

Mulder arrives at the table a few minutes after her, wind-whipped, mud on one of his loafers. They embrace, a quick kiss on each cheek, and she breathes shallowly. It would not be good to inhale the scent of him.

“Happy birthday,” she says, settling into her chair, napkin spread across her silken lap. “I’m sorry the weather’s so ominous.”

“I blame you entirely.”

She smiles. “I should have e-mailed Holman Hart, called in a favor.”

Mulder peruses his menu. “Next time. I’m just glad you got to come out and play for an evening.”

Scully frowns. “This isn’t the fifties, Mulder, and I’m not a kept woman. Don’t make it sound like that.”

He is taken aback, but nods. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

Scully sighs. She doesn’t want to begin like this. “It’s fine. I’ve had a long week and I’m a bit snappish. I just don’t want things to be strained between us because of….well. It’s your birthday, Mulder.”

A waitress comes by with a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. She sets it on the table, handing them each a flute.

Scully looks at her in confusion. “I didn’t order this,” she says.

The waitress nods her head towards Mulder. “The gentleman called earlier, ma’am.”

The gentleman denies this, and the waitress furrows her brow. “Sir? Someone called earlier and ordered this for Dana Scully’s table. For a birthday celebration.”

Scully blushes, twists her wedding ring around her finger. “It’s fine, thank you,” she tells the waitress. “Just a misunderstanding on my part. Sorry for the confusion.”

“Shall I open it?”

“Please.”

The cork makes a wonderful popping sound, the champagne golden and sparkling as it flows into their glasses. The waitress tucks the bottle back into the ice before she leaves.

Scully stares at the silver bucket, the frost of condensation on it, the mounds of crystal ice. She runs a fingertip along the rim of her flute, making it squeak.

Mulder raises his glass in a toast. “Many thanks to Henry,” he says, without a trace of irony.

***

Mulder is clacking his empty mussel shells like castanets. The champagne is gone and so is half a bottle of Sancerre. The candle on their table has burned low.

Scully is laughing helplessly, her napkin pressed to her mouth.

“I can’t believe you never told me this,” she manages. “The Spanish ambassador, how could you?”

He drops the shells back into the bowl, grinning. “It’s was university and I was an asshole. Plus my girlfriend was semi-psychotic. Phoebe,” he clarifies.

Scully groans. “Oh, God. Phoebe. She was a mess, Mulder.”

He laughs. “Gorgeous though. My main requirement at the time.”

She wipes her eyes. “I’ll grant you that, yes. I was a little intimidated, I won’t lie.”

“You were looking pretty good too.”

Scully wrinkles her nose in reply.

A boom of thunder comes suddenly, making the chandeliers rattle. Seconds later, a jagged fork of lightning splits the sky. Gasps come from the other diners when the lights go out.

Mulder dribbles wine onto the candle,  extinguishing it. “Pouring one out for my homie Zeus.”

***

They make a mad dash to their cars in the rain, Scully nearly diving into her SUV. She slides on the wet leather, blasting the air to dry herself off.

Across the lot she spots Mulder’s car, his battered old two-tone Land Cruiser 70. It has not been started. Worried, Scully drives over, hydroplaning on the slick asphalt. She parks parallel to him, oriented nose to tail.

She sees him through the downpour, scowling at his phone. She waves to get his attention and he frowns at her, shrugs. A round of hurried texting reveals that the car won’t start and he’s got at least a 2 hour wait per the AAA app.

Scully reaches behind her seat for the huge wood-frame golf umbrella she keeps there. Opening the door, she unfurls it into the storm. The wind nearly drags it from her hands. She makes it to her trunk before Mulder sees what she’s doing and leaps from his car.

“Are you out of your fucking MIND?” he yells into the wind.

“JUMPER CABLES,” she shouts back. “YOU CAN’T STAY HERE FOR TWO HOURS!” Scully rummages around, then hoists them victoriously.

Thunder crashes, and the hail begins.

Mulder shoves her into his open driver’s door and she clambers into the passenger seat so he can get in. Hail the size of quail eggs bounces in with him.

He slams the door, panting. “You have a degree. In physics.”

She twines the cables around her hands, shamefaced. “I know.”

Mulder starts to laugh. He rests his head on the steering wheel, shaking with laughter while hail rattles around them.

Scully glares at him. “Let’s agree it wasn’t my finest moment, okay?”

He catches his breath. “No, it’s fine. It’s good. I appreciate the laugh. But we picked the wrong car for this little adventure.” He clicks the useless ignition to demonstrate.

Scully groans. “My phone’s in mine too.”

Mulder peels his jacket off, his shirt mostly dry underneath. “Scully, you’re soaked. I’d offer you my jacket, but…” He holds it up, letting it drip water onto the floor.

“I’m good,” she says. “Just turn on the - oh.”

“Yeah.”

She folds down the visor, inspecting herself in the mirror. She looks like the undead prom queen from a slasher flick, straggling hair coming loose, smudged rings of waterproof mascara.

She snaps the visor back up.

Mulder brightens. “I think there’s a blanket in the foot locker. I’ll climb back and get it.”

She waves him off. “I’ll get it, I’m smaller.”  Scully turns, her silk dress clinging like wet paper as she wriggles. She and Mulder studiously ignore her hip against his shoulder. Her shoes drop beside him to the floor.

She squelches into the back, feeling clammy and uncomfortable. There is loose grit on the floor, which hurts her knees. She tugs a quilted moving blanket from a folded-up seat onto the floor, then opens the foot locker. Inside is his old Navajo blanket. She touches it, smiling.

“You find it?” Mulder asks.

“Yeah, thanks,” she says. Scully unfolds the blanket and wraps it around herself. It smells of dry wood and motor oil, GoJo hand cleanser. “I forgot how much room there is back here with the side seats up.”

He adjusts the rearview mirror to see her, and they hold one another’s eyes for a beat. Scully looks away, watches the storm shred leaves off the trees. She twists her wedding ring.

Mulder climbs through the seats, grunting, then sits next to her on the moving blanket. “I texted Henry,” he says. “Let’s him know you’re safe, just waiting out the storm. Thanked him for the champagne.”

“I appreciate that,” she says, touched

“I’d want him to.”

Scully pulls the blanket tighter.“I’m sorry your birthday is going like this,” she says.

He looks at her, surprised. “Good dinner, great company, spooky storm. You wanna tell ghost stories and creep each other out?” He bumps her shoulder.

Scully smiles. “I’m don’t think we can surprise each other anymore,” she says softly. “We’re like two magicians trying to show each other card tricks.”

“You can always surprise me,” he says.

She holds her left hand out for his inspection. The diamonds reflect scraps of yellow streetlight. “This?” she asks.

Mulder shrugs, looks away.

Scully touches the rings. “He told me to go home with you tonight if I wanted. He said he would understand, like shore leave. That it wouldn’t change anything.”

Mulder swallows, closes his eyes. The air is becoming steamy with evaporate, the windows fogged. The smell of damp silk, damp wool hangs about them.

“I told him I couldn’t, that I didn’t need it anyway. And that I certainly wasn’t going to offer myself to you like a gift from the lord of one manor to another.” She reaches out to touch his face, to turn it towards her.

“Don’t,” he rasps.

“Mulder, look at me.”

He shoves her hand away, stares at her. “I’m getting in your car,” he says. “Before we do something really stupid.”

Scully drops the Navajo blanket to the floor. She unpins her hair, lets it fall down her sticky neck to just past her shoulders. She sits back on her heels, wet dress like seaweed. “Mulder.”

“One of us needs to get the fuck out of this car,” he whispers, his voice ragged. He doesn’t move.

She unzips her dress, but it doesn’t fall away like she’d planned. It clings to the tops of her arms, the tops of her breasts, the back gaping open. Gooseflesh rises.

“I thought I could get out of the car,” she says. “ But maybe a joyride every so often isn’t such a bad idea. Henry says it’s not a moral failing, Mulder. And I’m quoting directly.”

They stare at one another, her face tipped up, her mouth swollen. Mulder gazes down at the shadow between her breasts.

Scully runs her tongue across her top lip.

He reaches forward, slides his hands down her shoulders, scraping the ruined silk away. His breath, his heart, are louder than the thunder.

She is bare to the waist now, her chest heaving, her dress a puddle between her hips and the quilted grey blanket. Her nipples ache.

Hail smashes against the windshield, and the wind howls.

She unbuttons his shirt, her fingers trembling, and his chest is deeper, broader than she remembered it. His scars are just as she left them.

Scully moves closer, her breasts grazing his skin when she kisses his neck, bites at it. He shudders, fingers tangling in her hair.

She cups his erection through his trousers.

“I thought you said…” he gasps, hands sliding down to plane her back.

“I thought I meant it,” she mumbles, unbuckling his belt, unfastening his fly.

“I wish you had,” he groans when she pulls his boxers to his knees.

Scully lays back on the blanket, her dress still rucked around her abdomen like a painting of Venus. She reaches beneath it to pull her underwear down, kicks them away.

Mulder is on top of her then, his hands on either side of her head, his shirt tenting her torso. He moves one hand against the hot skin between her thighs, comes away slick from even so little contact.

She whimpers as the storm roars, and he presses his wet fingers to her mouth.

“Scully,” he says, his eyes searching hers. “We can’t undo this, you know that.”

She knows, she knows, she saw what happened to Daniel’s family, what she had done.

“Please,” she says, raking her manicured nails down his back, her pelvis arched against his.  “Please.”

Mulder is not her conscience, and enters her in one thrust.

He cries out to her god.

***

It’s past one when she stumbles into the kitchen, past one by the little clock above the sink.

Henry jumps up from the ladderback chair. “Dana, thank God,” he says. “Mulder called about 45 minutes ago, said you’d left, but I couldn’t reach you.”

Scully holds up her phone, the screen black. “Ruined in the rain,” she says. She slumps into a chair, drained. “And the hail cracked my windshield.”

Henry watches her, concerned, then takes his robe off. “Look at you, you’re soaked.” He tucks the thick cotton around her, smoothing her hair out of her eyes. “Dana?”

She leans up, kisses him. “I’m sorry, the roads were awful and I’m exhausted. I don’t remember a storm like that since Sandy.”

He runs his thumb over her cheekbone, smiling at her freckles. ”I’m just glad you’re safe.”

Scully nods, pressing his palm to her face, to her lips. She’d stood outside in the rain, after the storm burned itself out, to wash the yeasty scent of sex from her pores. She’s afraid, somehow, that it has lingered. That she is marked, tainted forever.

“Probably too much wine, too,” she admits ruefully. “I drank more than my fair share and my head hurts.”

“I got his text,” Henry tells her. “I’m glad he liked it.”

Scully looks back at him, her heart aching with how much she loves him, how much she despises herself. “Oh, yes,” she replies. “He loved your gift.”

 —

For everyone who asked.

***

He rattles up the driveway, the rattling a function of his automobile rather than the O'Keefes’ smooth asphalt. He parks under the basketball hoop, blocking the garage.

Fallen branches litter the yard. A shutter is down from one of the dormer windows, and the landscaping looks threadbare in places. A Japanese maple is split down the center.

Henry is gathering this debris from the storm, hauling it into a large pile in front of the house. He wears a Princeton sweatshirt and jeans, a Nationals cap pulled over his hair. He pauses in his work to greet Mulder. There are wet leaves on his hands.

“Didn’t expect to see you,” Mulder says, stepping over a rake to shake hands. “I was planning a drop-and-dash.” He holds out Scully’s wooden umbrella, her jumper cables.

“Well, you can just, um, set that stuff on the bench I suppose. Dana’s in surgery all day, but I can put it in her car when she gets home.” Henry jams his hands in his pockets, rocks back on his heels.

“Okay,” Mulder says. He lays the items on the bench, then surveys the yard with a kind of awe at the destruction. “Hell of a mess.”

Henry sighs. “I know they were calling for it, but I guess I wasn’t prepared for what we got. You know Dana has a big crack in her windshield.”

Mulder’s eyebrows go up, as this is news to him. “She okay?”

“Oh, she’s fine, but she was pretty shaken when she got home last night.” He studies Mulder carefully. “Must have been a rough drive home, huh?”

“Must have been.”

They are silent for a time.

“You need any help cleaning up?” Mulder asks. “It’s the least I could do after you were nice enough to buy me birthday champagne.”

Henry shakes his head. “No, thank you for the offer though. Glad you had a good night despite the weather. You’re hard to shop for, though Dana said you wouldn’t want a gift.”

Mulder looks away. “I don’t need much.“

Henry picks the rake up, leans on the handle as he presses the tines into the soft earth. “I love my wife,” he says. “And so do you. Some people might say that puts us at odds, Mulder.”

Mulder meets Henry’s gaze. “It would be an understandable, if incorrect assumption.”

Henry shifts. “I don’t want to be at odds with you. You….you’re her friend. You represent a part of her life I can never fully understand. When I lost Joan I thought I’d…well. I know we all have our ghosts.”

“Nothing happened last night, Henry.”

Henry stiffens. “Pardon?”

Mulder holds his hands out, open. “I feel like I need to just say it, okay? Nothing inappropriate happened. My battery was dead and we realized we both had too much to drink, so we waited the storm out in my car. Her phone got wet and ruined so she couldn’t call. She adores you and your kids and that Ewok of a dog.”

Henry closes his eyes for a long moment, then opens them. “Thanks for bringing her things back. I’ll tell her you came by.”

Mulder nods. He gets into his car and backs down the driveway, navigating fallen limbs as he does. On the radio, Tom Petty’s singing about his last dance with Mary Jane. Mulder turns the volume up and sings along.

***

Anonymous asked: We can just blame love for the Henry saga. Loved fucked all of them over. In Victorian times, after the free pass, Scully would've killed herself, Henry would remain unmarried for the rest of his life and refuse to talk about Dana, and Mulder would go on some stupid quest as penance and probably get himself killed.

I think I saw this movie and Gillian was very good in it.

***

Anonymous asked: I beginning to feel like eventually Henry is going to realize Scully's connection runs so deep emotionally that he's just not going to want to deal with it anymore. He says he's fine with how things are, how Scully doesn't tell him much about her past, that she is still very close to Mulder and gives her a free pass, but eventually he'll want more for himself in a relationship and leave her. In my mind, Scully want want that life and deserves it, but she unintentinally sabotages it.

I think you’re right. Scully has a deep self-destructive streak that rears its head on occasion. I think there’s a part of her that doesn’t feel like she deserves familial happiness after William, and that she doesn’t deserve Mulder or Henry. She’s almost created a perfect storm for herself where she can lose them both by capitalizing on their feelings for her.

***

Anonymous asked: How did Henry and Scully meet?

She wore navy peau de soie and nude stilettos, a beaded bag on her wrist. Her hair hung in sculpted waves just covering her collarbones.

She chatted, she mingled, and she ducked into the kitchen with unnecessary frequency to check the flow of the food.

“Everything’s fine, Dr. Scully,” the staff assured her each time. She pursed her lips, scanning the bison tartare and vol au vents. She sampled a grilled shrimp, nodding tersely.

Scully calmed herself with a third vodka tonic, a poor decision, she knew, but the bar was open and her nerves jangled.

“It’s perfect, Dana,” her intern said, a glass of white wine in her manicured hand. She was a child, scarcely old enough to legally consume her drink. Her father was Someone.

Scully smiled, thanked her. The crowd was too dense, the room too warm, and the talk too loud. There was drunken laughter, cloying perfume. She longed for home, for the reliability of solitude.

Next to her, a man in a grey suit ordered a 15 year Macallan, neat. Scully appraised him out of habit, saw the fine tailoring and coordinating pocket square. The haircut was good, the shoes excellent. She sensed funds for her pet project.

“Dana Scully,” she said, holding out her free hand.

He took it with his left. There was no ring. “Henry O'Keefe,” he said. “You’re on the committee, aren’t you?”

Scully blinked in surprise. “I am,” she said. “Have we met?”

He shook his head. “My firm’s the title sponsor and I recognized your name.”

She smiled in the way she knew people liked, all her teeth on display. “Impressive. Have you checked out the auction items yet?”

He nodded. “There’re a few things I’d like for my kids, I put in some bids. Quite a variety this year.”

“It’s much appreciated. I hope you win them.” She left a tip for the bartender, turning to go.

Fingers at her back, and she sucked in her breath at the ghost of a memory.

“Dr. Scully?”

She turned back to Henry O'Keefe. “Yes?”

He looked into his drink, then at her. “It’s a very good cause.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps…perhaps you could tell me more about it. About how you got involved. It would be nice to hear from someone with passion rather than just a calculation for client endearment.” He offered her a hopeful smile.

Scully set her empty glass on the bar. “I’d love to,” she said. She rested her hand on his offered forearm, and waded back into the fray.

***

Anonymous asked: Henry story: if Mulder and Scully were asked to consult the FBI on a strange case (and a once only basis), what would happen?

She’s got a stack of patient files next to her, dog-eared, the corners grubby. Scully dutifully logs their contents into her computer, wishing the hospital would spring for software upgrades. Her phone rings, startling her from the mind-numbing task.

“Mulder?”

“There’s a case.”

She pecks at the keyboard. “I’m sorry, but the person you’re trying to reach is no longer available. Please hang up and try your call again.”

“I’m not kidding. You’ve gotta make arrangements, you’ve gotta-”

“Mulder, slow down. What the hell is going on? What case, why are you freaking out like this?”

A pause. “It’s Skinner.”

***

“I realize the government is slow with the red tape, but they are aware that they no longer employ you, correct?” Henry’s fingers tap his forehead as he paces the kitchen.

She traces her nail along the grain of the kitchen table. “Strictly consulting,” she says. “All behind the scenes. Probably no longer than a week.”

“Forgive me, but why you two? Why now?”

She looks down. “It’s classified.”

“Of course. And where will you be going? Can I know that at least?”

“Classified,“ she whispers, still not meeting his eyes.

Henry throws his hands in the air. “Of course. Of. Fucking. Course. Your whole life is classified, why shouldn’t this be too?”

Scully squeezes her eyes shut. Any other case and she would have said no. Anything else and she would have hung up on Mulder, gone back to her filing, eaten Viv’s outstanding lasagna, and gone to bed.

“Are you allowed to say no, even? I mean, you’re a civilian, right? They can’t force you to do anything.”

“I have to,” she says, heartsick. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. But I have to.” Her throat is tight.

Henry knuckles the counter, his back to her. “I have never asked you anything, Dana. Not a single goddamned thing. I agreed to leave the past behind and move forward, but it seems to keep popping up. Flying off with your ex husband to your ex job? I’m supposed to be fine with that when I know…” He shakes his head.

“When you know what?” she breathes, nauseous. She is afraid he will say it, even though she knows he knows.

Henry turns, his eyes hard. “Enough, okay? I know enough.” He considers her. “What would you do if I said no?”

She is taken aback, this possibility not having occurred to her. “I didn’t think we forbade each other things, Henry,” she says slowly.

“The requests are getting pretty one-sided. So what would you do?”

She presses her trembling hands flat to the table, palms cool against the lacquered wood. “I’d go anyway,” she says. “Not for anyone else, but for Ski-” she bites off the end of her sentence, furious with herself.

Henry sits across from her at the table. “For whom?”

 She remains silent, shaken.

“Classified,” he says, with faint contempt. “Right.”

Scully chews her lip until the inside of it bleeds. Experience has taught her that there are reckonings, crossroads past which a life can take on an entirely new direction. She does not want this to be one of them.

They look at each other for what seems like a very long time.

“Henry,” she says carefully. “What I’m about to do is completely illegal, all right? I’m putting your life and my life in danger by telling you this. But you’re right; I owe it to you. To us.” She reaches across the table for his hand.

Henry nods. “I understand.”

He doesn’t; he can’t possibly, but she plows ahead before she loses her nerve. “FBI Director Walter Skinner has been taken by a militia group called the New Spartans. We believe he’s being held inside their compound, located near Casper Mountain, Wyoming.”

Henry gapes. “The Director. Of the FBI. Has been kidnapped?”

“So it would seem.”

Henry shakes his head, appalled. He withdraws his hand from hers to run through his hair.“Why isn’t this national news, why isn’t the, uh…who? The SEALS or the Army Rangers all over this? Why are they pulling two agents out of retirement to deal with a huge fucking disaster? Were you hostage negotiators, what?”

“No. But we….um. We, along with Director Skinner, have dealt with this group before. Mulder infiltrated them undercover at one point. August Bremer, their former leader, spared Mulder’s life at one point.” She looks at him sadly, reminding herself of all that he doesn’t know.

“Shouldn’t they be making demands, on TV or something, I don’t know…. Bragging?” Sweat beads on Henry’s brow, and he wipes at it with a paper napkin.

Scully shakes her head. “Maybe in a Bond flick. These are not people who want attention. They see themselves as the last true patriots and this is symbolic for them, for their followers. They don’t want to cut a deal with the federal government. They’re anarchists, and see no difference between the FBI and the KGB, Henry. This is a power move.”

Henry, dazed, shreds the paper napkin into minuscule fragments. “How the hell did they get him, anyway?”

In for a penny, in for a pound, she figures. What’s a little more treason between husband and wife? “A member of the group had been leaking plans to the Director for about eighteen months, all of it credible. The source claimed that the New Spartans had been working with anti-federal groups overseas to plan an attack that would take down power grids in 20 major US cities. Based on our prior dealings with the group, the Director found this consistent with their MO. He agreed to meet with the source to obtain satellite footage of the other groups’ headquarters. But it turned out to be a setup, an ambush. Four agents were killed and the Director was badly injured.”

Her husband looks ill. “My god,” he mumbles. “And you’re wading back into this? And I’m supposed to just nod and wave like it’s fine?”

“Just consulting, Henry, I promise.” She speaks softly, like she does when the twins wake up from nightmares they can’t remember. “I’m past fifty, and hardly in peak form. Intel only.”

“But why, Dana? Can’t someone else do this?” His voice is pleading.

“I owe him my life, Mulder’s life,” she says. “He risked himself to save us. And when I had no one, nothing, he was there.” She shrugs. “It’s a debt I never thought I could repay.”

Henry frowns. “No one and nothing? Dana, what happened to you?”

And now, Scully knows, now is the crossroad. She gulps air, takes her husband’s hands again in her own.

“I have a son,” she says.

***

@perplexistan asked: I need something from the Henry-verse. Something happy, though. Maybe Scully finally divorcing Henry and going back to Mulder. I know that's not the point of this AU, which I truly do love, but I just want it. Sue me.

You are asking a lot of our friendship. Can’t I just send you cookies?

***

Anonymous asked: Who is being eaten up by the repercussions of free pass more Mulder or scully?

Scully for sure. I think that, particularly post IWTB, he’s stopped taking responsibility for her decisions. I have a line in there where I say that Mulder is not her conscience, and I think he really feels that way now. She’s a grown woman capable of making her own choices. I think he knows what they did was wrong, but Scully isn’t some wide-eyed innocent anymore.

***

Anonymous asked: Does Viv know about Emily and William? Has she met/seen Mulder?

Henry doesn’t know about Emily and William. Viv has met Mulder twice. She thinks he’s a compelling, charming weirdo but, given her stepmother’s tendency to organize closets by color and make spreadsheets for every conceivable topic, she’s baffled that they were together as long as she’s heard they were.

***

For all the anons who have so sweetly asked after Henry, here’s a little intersection with Ghouli.

***

Simon and Alice run squealing from the living room, slamming into Scully when she comes around the corner from the kitchen.

She staggers back under their combined weight, bumping into the dog. “What’s wrong?” she asks, steadying herself against the counter.

Viv stalks in behind them, waving her phone. “I told them it was too scary,” she says. “But they hid behind the couch to read over my shoulder, and now they’re all freaked out.” She punches Simon in the arm. “Serves you right.”

“We’re never sleeping again,” Alice asserts, cuddling against Scully.

“Ever,” Simon adds, punching Viv back.

Scully rubs Alice’s small back, running her fingers through her thick hair. The irrational squabbles of children are still hard for her to follow, but she tries. “What was too scary?”

“Ghouli,” Viv says, crunching into an apple.

***

Scully is curled up on the chaise longue in her bedroom, lost in reading, when Henry comes in. He’s shed his suit for pajama pants and a Georgetown sweatshirt. Scully smiles at his mussed hair, an untidy silver haystack from wrestling with the twins. The nails of his left hand are painted with purple glitter polish.

“You get them settled?” she asks.

He rubs his face. “Yeah, finally. Alice is good, but Simon’s still pretty sure this Ghouli thing is coming to eat our family.” He sits at the edge of the chaise, reaching out to massage Scully’s neck. His hands cover her shoulders, thumbs meeting at the base of her cervical spine.

“Mmmmmm,” she says, rolling her head forward. “You’re going to distract me.”

“That’s the plan,” he says, trailing butterfly kisses along her jaw, then stops when he notices what’s on the screen. “What the hell is that?”

“Ghouli, apparently. Viv showed me the site. it’s pretty well done, actually. I can see why they’re freaked out.” The drawing of the monster has the clean, architectural lines of a scientific sketch.

Henry stretches out on the chaise, wrapping himself around her. Scully tucks herself into the solid warmth of his body and adjusts her laptop so that they can both see. Late night cuddling over images of cryptids brings back memories that she shakes off.

As though reading her mind, Henry says, “So whatcha thinking, Agent Scully? This is your former wheelhouse, right?”

She shrugs. “Not exactly It’s fascinating from a cultural standpoint, I suppose. I was talking to Viv about it. There’s an internet phenomenon called ‘creepypasta,’ kind of like urban legends with a paranormal bent. Some of them have taken on a sort of folk-tale quality.”

Henry tucks her head beneath his chin. “Is this that Slenderman thing? Those two girls in Wyoming?”

“Wisconsin,” Scully corrects. “Yes, like Slenderman.” She switches tabs, pulling up a new post. “Ceci n'est ce pas une pipe,” she reads, in her bad French.

“This is not a pipe,” Henry translates, musing. “What the hell does that mean?”

Scully taps her lips. “It’s a reference to a painting by Rene Magritte. He did, um, a painting of a pipe with this phrase below it, as a reminder that the symbol of the thing is not the thing itself. The map is not the territory. It’s a semiotic concept addressed by Alfred Korzybski.”

Henry kisses her temple. “You didn’t even have to Google that, did you?”

She, grins, admits that she did not.

“So hot,” Henry says. “Anyway, so what? Some emo kid who’s read too much Sartre decided to make some of this, uh, creepypasta stuff.”

Scully scrolls around some more. “Probably. It’s just impressively complex. Like, here. Look at this. It’s got a Baconian cypher, it references atomic bomb tests,it’s got sketches of RNA…which. That’s odd, actually.”

“Hmmm?”

“Well, the post with the RNA base is by a user named K/OMouse. I’m guessing it refers to knockout mice. Those are mice whose DNA has been altered, so why include RNA nucleotides instead of DNA? And an RNA nucleotide shouldn’t contain a diphosphate, but there are two phosphate groups here, plus that terminal oxygen should be double bonded to this carbon, or be a hydroxyl, or at least have a negative sign.” She doesn’t notice that her voice has grown agitated.

Henry has. “Uh, Dana? I think maybe you should avoid this site with Simon and Alice. Go play Neko Atsume for a while, hmmm?”

Scully takes a deep breath. He’s right, of course he’s right.

It’s nothing.

She closes her laptop, laughing a little. “I guess I’m Rever’s target audience.”

Henry grins. “I’ll try to distract you again.”

She ignores the little itch in her amygdala, in her entorhinal cortex, and follows him to bed.

***

It’s two AM and Henry is sleeping, bare-chested and peaceful on the other side of the room. Wicket, dense and furry, is sprawled like a wolf pelt over his feet. Their breathing is even and steady, a lulling hum in the back of her head. It steadies her like a heartbeat. Like the sea.

Her eyes flit back and forth between tabs, her face bathed in the blue glow. She looks at the post by K/OMouse again. The alien head, the RNA.

Alien head, RNA

RNA, virus.

Viral replication occurs via mRNA.

Something tickles her brain again, that little itch.

A virus.

An alien virus.

Purity control.

She grabs a notepad to organize her thoughts.

Baltimore classification?

Two phosphate groups = diphosphate nucleoside? Or non-terrestrial?

It is not the pipe - it is not the territory - what does Ghouli represent?

She looks at KO/Mouse’s post again, copies down the code he’s written. She begins working on it before seeing that user Elizabeth has helpfully done this work for her.

weseeyouwilliamvandekampweknowwhoyouare

andifweknowthentheyknowwhichyoushouldknow

crossroadswasonceanatombombandnowitisyou

WilliamWilliamWilliam pounds in her head.

Her vision is black, suddenly. And just as suddenly she sees a farm, idyllic and flat beneath an Ansel Adams sky.

Back to her room in a flash, gasping for air. Back to Henry dreaming in the safe warmth of their bed.

It’s 2:37 by her watch, but time is only a human construct. She pads out to the hall and down the stairs. She dials, and he answers on the third ring.

“Mulder, it’s me.”

[violetwolfraven]

sprace 49

Uhhhh there is no 49 so I’m just gonna assume you meant 46? (In hindsight I’m now thinking you meant the other prompt list and I am a moron but I already wrote this thing so???)

(For any pairing except javid) I have to tell Jack about my relationship but he’s basically everyone’s big brother and—

Get ready for some canon-era with a couple of background ships.

...

“Okay,” Race took a deep breath, “I can do this. I can do this.”

Albert rolled his eyes, “You’re worryin’ for nothin’, Racer. He’s gonna be fine with it.”

“Yeah,” Finch agreed, “I mean, he was fine with me and Albie.”

“And me and Romeo,” Specs added.

“Damn near all of us is queer,” Finch pointed out, “Including Jack, himself. It’ll be fine, Race.”

Race shook his head, “It’s different. Both of ya and your partners are Manhattan.”

“Sorry,” Mike said, looking a little confused but smiling all the same, “Who’re we talkin’ ‘bout? Racer has a lover outside of Manhattan?”

“Race is fucking Spot Conlon,” Albert supplied.

“Daaaaaaaaaamn! Good job, Racetrack!”

Race just rolled his eyes. He and Spot had been together officially—as in, on the same page, in love and they both know it—for over a year now, after a talk they’d had right after the strike. And even if it had kind of started out as a friends with benefits kind of deal, just making out whenever they both had some time, ‘fuck-buddies’ or whatever the hell half Race’s friends seemed to think they were, did not describe what they actually were at all.

Albert knew damn well they weren’t fuck-buddies—Race told his best friend enough that he knew that they weren’t even fucking yet—which was why Race felt the need to slap him with his hat.

Like he had wondered many times, Race wondered again why he had to go and choose the one who loved to cause chaos as his best friend.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine with it,” Mike said helpfully, “Jack likes when all of us is happy.”

“Yeah, but he’s also really protective,” Race groaned, “He’s like a big brother to me—to all of us!”

“So let him give Spot a shovel talk,” Specs said simply, “That’ll be the end of it. Mike’s right. Jack can be protective, but he’s happiest when all of us is happy.”

“I’s been your friend since we was littles, Racer,” Albert put in, “And I’ve never seen you as happy as you’s been since you and Spot got official.”

Race had to admit, he hadn’t been this happy since... well, he didn’t remember being this happy even when his folks were still alive.

Spot made him happy, made him brave, and that was why he was finally plucking up the courage to tell Jack about them.

“Okay,” he said, forcing a smile, “I’m gonna do it.”

Race’s friends cheered him on as he headed out to Jack’s fire escape penthouse.

“Jack, we needs to talk.”

Race was kind of counting his blessings that neither Crutchie nor Davey was out there, so he had a one-on-one with Manhattan’s leader.

Jack looked a bit concerned as he put down the pape he was drawing on and nodded.

“Okay. ‘Bout what?”

Race took a deep breath, “What would ya say if I was... if I was kinda...”

“Spit it out, Racer. What is it?”

“I’m courtin’ Spot Conlon,” Race blurted, forcing himself to keep looking Jack in the eye.

He was scared of his brother’s reaction, but he needed to see it all the same.

Jack looked at the ground, “Shit. Shit. Oh my God. How didn’t I see that?”

“I’m sorry,” Race offered.

“Don’t be,” Jack chuckled, “I mean, I got Ike sneakin’ out to Brooklyn already, thinkin’ he’s slick. I don’t know how I didn’t see you doin’ it, too.”

“You gots a lot of guys. Ya can’t possibly keep track of all of us. Besides, I’m one of the ones ya know can take care of himself.”

Jack snorted, “No. No, ya can’t. You’re just stupidly good at talkin’ your way out of fights. So, how long has this thing with Spot been goin’ on?”

Race finally felt like he could breathe. Jack was taking this a lot better than he thought he would.

“Officially, since right after the strike. But we was makin’ out outside sellin’ hours for a few months before that.”

Jack wrinkled his nose, “Okay, I didn’t need to know that last part. But... damn. It’s been over a year. Am I that oblivious?”

He seemed fine with it, but...

“Hey, what’s up?” Race asked, “You seem sad.”

Jack sighed, “I ain’t sad, Race. Not exactly. It’s just... ya know how hard things are for me and Davey, right? We barely ever get a minute just the two of us, and that ain’t even takin’ into account havin’ to keep things secret.”

“Yeah. Of course I knows that.”

“Spot lives in fuckin’ Brooklyn. Not only that—he’s got the responsibilities of leadin’ probably the biggest borough in New York. I mean, anything’s possible, but I just don’t see how ya could make that work. I don’t wanna see you get hurt.”

Race tilted his head, “We make it work now. ‘Sides, it ain’t like I’m the leader of Manhattan.”

“Racer...”

Race’s stomach dropped as he realized what Jack was really saying.

“Oh.”

“Race... I’m 18. I’m gettin’ too old for this, and Davey and I... we’s been lookin’ at apartments. This wasn’t how I wanted to break the news to ya, but... we can’t stay much longer. And when we go, Manhattan’ll be yours and Crutchie’s.”

Race had known this was coming for... well, ever since he became one of Jack’s seconds, when he was 12. He’d known it more in how slowly, over the last few months, he’d found himself being asked for input on various issues more and more often. Jack and Davey thought they were being subtle, but Race and Crutchie had noticed weeks ago.

He’d known it was coming, but that didn’t mean it didn’t ache, just thinking about the boy who’d watched over him for most of his childhood leaving.

“When?”

Jack sighed, shrugging, “I don’t know. Soon. Davey wants to wait till after winter—hand you and Crutchie the reins when it’ll be easy to keep everyone alive so’s ya can get used to it before it gets hard.”

“That makes sense,” Race reasoned, remembering how hard it was for Jack. He’d had to take the reins during a hard winter, because the previous leader of Manhattan died.

“Look,” Jack smiled, “I’m happy for ya, Racer. Spot, too. Really. And honestly, I’m not too worried about him hurtin’ you intentionally. I know you was close friends before ya even got together—which, by the way, I cannot believe ya didn’t tell me, you asshole—so he won’t raise a hand or probably even his voice to ya. But it’s one thing with Crutchie, sneakin’ around with that girl he met at Medda’s—“

“Crutchie’s sneakin’ around with a girl?” Race asked, honestly delighted by this bit of gossip.

“Yeah... he thinks I don’t know, but we sleep on the same fuckin’ fire escape. I followed him one time when he snuck out to see her. Anyway, it’s one thing with that. For one thing, Crutchie don’t have to keep his sweetheart a secret ‘less he wants to—she’s a girl.”

“You and Davey—“

“Let me finish, Racer. For another thing, Spot is King of Brooklyn. He’s got eyes on him most of the time and even when he doesn’t, there’s no way he could sneak to Manhattan regularly without gettin’ noticed. He’s probably only gotten away with bein’ with ya this long because you sell at Sheepshead.”

Race wanted to argue, but he had to admit... Spot almost never came to Manhattan. Race was always the one going to Brooklyn for him.

“If you’s one of Manhattan’s leaders, you gotta sell in Manhattan, and even after hours, there’s no way you can constantly sneak off to another borough without some of the wrong people noticin’.”

Damn. He was probably right. Race and Spot were stealing moments now. If Race was selling in Manhattan, it would be damn near impossible to get time. He definitely wouldn’t see Spot every day anymore, possibly not even every week.

“Look—Crutchie could do this by himself, long as he’s got some muscle backin’ him up. With Mush, Blink, and Elmer, among others, bein’ young enough to stick around a while, that shouldn’t be a problem. If you don’t wanna be leader, I can start gettin’ him ready for—“

“No.”

Race had known he was going to be helping lead when Jack grew up and left since he was 12. He was 16 now—one of the older ones. He’d been instinctively protecting the others for years. He already looked at most of the younger ones as younger brothers.

Race had been ready for a long time to protect his younger brothers, no matter the cost.

Even if that cost was a closer relationship with the boy he loved.

“Spot and I can do a long-distance thing,” he said, “We’ll be fine. I’ll tell him... sometime. Tell me when you and Davey are movin’ out... I don’t know, but just tell me at least a little in advance.”

Jack nodded, “Okay. It won’t be for another couple months, at least, but...”

Race definitely wasn’t getting choked up. Those definitely weren’t tears in Jack’s eyes. It was just...

The Newsies were the only family either of them had known since they were little. Jack had been protecting Race, or trying to, at least, since they were about 5 and 7.

Race consoled himself with how it wasn’t like they’d really be saying goodbye. Jack had given up that old dream of Santa Fe. He was staying close, which meant he could visit, but...

Damn. Race was going to miss him.

“So, Spot’s good to ya?” Jack asked, “He treats ya right? Stops if ya ask?”

Race nodded, “Yeah. Yeah, of course. He’s... he’s great. I mean, he don’t seem to think he deserves me, or at least he didn’t, at first. He kept tellin’ me about all the kills he had to make as if that’d make me walk away.”

“Hmm...” Jack patted his shoulder, “Maybe we needs to have a talk about your taste in men, Racer. Do I need to tell Davey ‘bout who you’s courtin’?”

Race laughed, “Please don’t. I’ll tell him myself and you can have a worried talk ‘bout me later.”

“We ain’t your mom and dad, kid”

“Coulda fooled me, dad.”

Jack laughed, and Race had to admit, that hug made him feel a lot better about... well, everything.

“Seriously, though—you, me, and Davey—we’re goin’ over to Brooklyn tomorrow night. We’re gonna say we got business to talk, but really, me and Davey are gonna talk to your boy. Can’t have anyone hurtin’ Manhattan’s future leader, can we?”

Race laughed. Honestly, the idea of anyone giving Spot fucking Conlon a shovel talk was hilarious to him.

But, that was just Race’s family. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

[warsofasoiaf]

What is your opinion of KOTOR 2? Favorite things about it, least favorite things about it, characters, etc.

Alright, it’s time for another video game review, so an early reminder, spoilers abound for both KOTOR1 and KOTOR2. There’s a cut of course. Overall, I thought it was a phenomenally well-written game and one of the greatest pieces of media to exist in the Stars Wars universe (although I haven’t read any of the Expanded Universe books so keep that in mind), and as is the usual case for Obsidian particularly in this era, developer constraints created a beautiful mess.

Before we can talk about KOTOR we need to talk a little bit about Star Wars and what it meant as a film. The original Star Wars isn’t a very creative story, it’s largely a conventional Hero’s Journey. It’s a pastiche of early adventure stories in a science fiction setting, but with the added benefit of video and sound effects to really make it come to life in a way that was only possible in the imagination of readers. This gave the series a wide deal of appeal. Folks who grew up on the 1950′s Flash Gordon serials or WW2 dogfight films could see a film with those things they loved from their childhood with a high budget to bring those things to life. Science fiction fans could visually see elements of their favorite books brought to life on the silver screen. Fans of movies can appreciate the cutting-edge (for the time, although I love me some practical effects in film) effects and the unfamiliar elements of science fiction with the familiar trappings of an adventure tale. 

KOTOR was something similar for the video game industry, particularly for the fans of Baldur’s Gate. The ability to create a Jedi character and go on a journey like the Bhaalspawn did in Baldur’s Gate was something that appealed to a significant number of RPG fans, and the critical success of the Baldur’s Gate series brought a lot of money and prestige to Bioware. Fans of RPGs and Star Wars got to see their medium and interact with it in a whole new light. Much like A New Hope, KOTOR1 was largely a traditional story where Darth Malak is an evil guy without much in the way of redemptive qualities. The two major wrinkles were that you could play as a Sith and have some moments of true player cruelty like ordering Zaalbar to kill Mission, but this makes sense for an RPG, having no player choice in a game really makes you lose the lightside/darkside dynamic. Of course, the bigger and more interesting drift from a traditional Star Wars story was the Revan twist. This took advantage of both the slower pace of games to spend time with your PC and form a connection, and the nature of Western RPG’s where the player envisions themselves partially as their avatar onscreen to make the reveal hit home. Ultimately though, the Star Wars morality was upheld. The Jedi were the unequivocal good guys, the Sith were the unequivocal bad guys. 

KOTOR2 decided to put the Force under the microscope. It had started in 2003, so Episode II had already come out, and this idea of the prophecy of Anakin bringing balance to the Force, and what we knew of the Jedi in the original Star Wars trilogy who were reduced to hermits hiding on the fringes of society, really gave the impetus to examine this idea of the balance of the Force as not necessarily benevolent. It’s not evil, per say, it’s just indifferent to the people that die to make it happen. So the game became a self-critical examination of the core structures of the Star Wars universe. The Sith are usually thought of as the bad guys, and a lot of that holds true, domination, subjugation, power, betrayal, all that nasty stuff aren’t really conducive to most conceptions of goodness, but are the Jedi good? Does their passivity lead to injustice and terror being wrought on others because the Jedi failed to act. That was the question behind the Jedi involvement in the Mandalorian Wars, was the Exile correct in going off to fight them or were the Jedi Council who forbade them correct? As befits the folks who wrote Planescape: Torment, the game has two journeys, one through the game world and the plot that unfolds and another more deeply introspective.

I’ll put the things I don’t like about KOTOR2 first because the list is small but it is worth noting. The game is very clearly a rushed product and it shows. The cut content shows a great deal of lost potential, and the bugs could make the game at times completely unplayable. The game suffered from the accelerated development, having barely half the development time, and you can see where the seams show. The UI is clunky and gets cluttered when you have to manage items. Level design is similarly a nuisance, as they are big sprawling expanses without a lot of content in them. Part of that is a necessity to the mechanics, smaller levels would have other encounter designs being agro’d into it, but the levels are still expansive, empty, and a slog to get through. The Peragus mining facility is too large by half, and there’s a lot of backtracking in these levels. Since side quests encourage finding a doodad or killing a few key figures scattered around a map, that means a lot of trekking through these big levels to find one particular item or enemy locked in a corner somewhere. That can be very tedious, particularly on repeat playthroughs. At times, it feels like legging your way through a swamp to get to the next piece of delicious content.

Which is a good segue into talking what I like about the game, because its writing and characters are superb. The character companions are twists of classic Star Wars archetypes. Atton is the scoundrel Han Solo non-Force user type, but ends up having a disturbingly dark backstory where he was a Sith interrogator and feared his own Force-sensitive nature. Bao-Dur is a man haunted by the weapon of mass destruction he created, a tech-head who ends up hating his most momentous creation but feels the need to use it yet again. Canderous has become the new Mandalore and is desperately trying to revitalize his dying culture because he’s been so broken by Revan’s departure. The Wookie life-debt is so toxic that it breaks Hanharr and Mira in their own ways. Visas is a Sith whose will is shattered. Each of these characters are fundamentally broken (save for the droids, unless you count the physical need to reassemble HK-47 as broken), and the Exile draws them to him or her. Through discovering more about them and resolving it, the Exile awakens the characters’ connection to the Force, oddly ironic since the Exile is cut off from the Force and is only rediscovering it. Like most Bioware RPG’s, you the player through your character guide the growth of these characters and form a relationship with them, or use them for your own ends.

Kreia, of course, deserves her own paragraph. Kreia is the Star Wars Ravel Puzzlewell, an embittered woman who wants to destroy the cosmic chains of the universe and loves the player character in a deeply obsessive way, one that’s played completely straight in how it makes the player uncomfortable. She is deeply resentful of the Force and wants to destroy it, and through the Exile, who managed to cut themselves off so utterly completely in a unique way, she sees the path. Of course, the reason why the Exile cut themselves off was the mass death at Malachor V was so overwhelming that he or she would have otherwise died. Of course, her obsession and overriding mission cares little for the Exile’s own pain, and so the manipulations begin, using you to lure out and destroy the Jedi and the Sith, and in the end, you disappoint her, either because you don’t learn her lessons or she discovers that the only reason you were the way you were was because you were afraid. She still is obsessed over you, though, and so when you finally confront her, she obliges that affection to explain everything, unusually honest for a woman whose Sith name is evocative of the word betrayal. And fortunately, she allows something that most monologue villains don’t allow, a means by which to tell her she’s full of shit. Certainly, it’s a little weaker coming from her as an option to you rather than the player character saying it themselves, but I think it’s stronger, since so much of the ending had to be cut anyway it reinforces the ambiguity of it, that the ending is what you believe. Personal belief has always been important for the Exile and Kreia/Traya, and letting that transfer to the player is, while perhaps not the most ideal, completely valid given how rushed the development was. 

The other Sith Lords are fascinating concepts of evil and personal belief as well as well, and really show the Dark Side of the force in a parasitic, corrupt sense and the horrible ends of taking belief to its extreme. Darth Sion is the Lord of Pain. He cannot die but he feels pain constantly, making eternal life not a blessing but a torture, though in it he found a twisted source of enlightenment. His pain fuels his anger and hatred (key ingredients of the Dark Side) and so he persists solely through the Dark Side. Darth Nihilus, on the other hand, had his body obliterated by the Mass Shadow Generator, and so persisted as a wound in the Force, consuming Force energy to feed his relentless hunger. He is not a human anymore but a force of endless consumption that cannot be satiated, this hunger pain pushes him past his own mortal existence but which can only consume, not live. This perfectly illustrates the Dark Side concept of pursuit of power even past the point of sustainability, for Nihilus will continue consuming until all existence has been eaten.

The game is dark and moody, as you explore a shattered galaxy. In the original game, the search led to the Star Forge and the revelation that you the player was Revan. The sequel shows that there was no grand conspiracy; the act of Malachor built Nihilus and Sion and the player themselves was something that you did. It was not a conspiracy of Jedi but rather the after-effects of a particular action, much the way Lonesome Road had the Courier’s delivery of the package to Hopeville to be something that destroyed Ulysses even though you never met him. The Mass Shadow Generator was meant to save the galaxy from the Mandalorians but birthed a new, more powerful tragedy. Bao-Dur even wonders if the subjugation of the people under the Mandalorians was better than the power of the Mass Shadow Generator, a powerful moment ordered by just a mere single Jedi, built by a mere tech specialist. In true Planescape fashion, a personal apocalypse is a galactic apocalypse and vice-versa. Torment lingers over this game, in the broken characters, in a parallel journey both outward and inward. In many ways KOTOR2 was Planescape: Torment in the Star Wars universe, albeit with its own personal flair.

Alright, that’s a good review. I can do character analyses of some of the major characters if you want.

Thanks for the question, Messanger.

[wesleyhill]

Hagar the Theologian

A homily on Genesis 21:8-21, preached at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Pittsburgh, on the Third Sunday after Pentecost 2020

I would speak to you in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Our Old Testament reading for this morning is disturbingly resonant with contemporary headlines, isn’t it? An African woman is divorced by her wealthy and powerful husband and is left to try to keep her child alive by herself.

When we meet her in today’s lesson, Hagar the Egyptian is a slave to the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah. Abraham, remember, was called by God when he was a moon-worshiper in Ur of the Chaldeans, and God made Abraham a promise that he would become the ancestor of many nations. “Look towards heaven,” God said to Abraham, “and count the stars, if you are able to count them…. So shall your descendants be” (Gen. 15:5). And Abraham believed this promise, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

But then time starts to pass, and Abraham’s wife Sarah becomes impatient. At 76 or 77 years old, Sarah says to her husband, “You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children” (16:2). So Sarah concocts a plan. She arranges for Abraham to marry her Egyptian slave-girl Hagar, thinking that if Hagar becomes pregnant, the son that she bears for Abraham will be his heir. Maybe that is the way God intends the promise of offspring to be fulfilled.

Abraham agrees to this plan, and he conceives a child with Hagar, and immediately this creates bad blood between Hagar and Sarah, Abraham’s two wives. Sarah complains to Abraham, “I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt” (16:5). Abraham, in effect, throws up his hands and tries to step away from the situation. “Your slave-girl is in your power,” he tells Sarah; “do to her as you please” (16:6). And Sarah does. She “deals harshly with her” (16:6), and Hagar flees.

By the time of our reading this morning, Hagar has had her son, Ishmael, and has returned to her mistress Sarah. Sarah, too, has finally had a son, a miracle child, Isaac. At the opening of our reading, Sarah sees Ishmael “playing” with her son Isaac (21:9). It’s hard to know what exactly is in view here. Some Bible readers have wondered if there are sexual connotations in this word, so that what Ishmael is doing with Isaac perhaps amounts to some kind of sexual abuse. Other readers have pointed out that, in the original Hebrew, the word for play sounds very similar to Isaac’s name — so Ishmael may be “Isaac-ing,” which is to say, “playing as if he were Isaac,” jostling for the position of the true heir, and trying to displace his half-brother.

Whatever the case, Sarah, Abraham’s first wife, reacts with jealous fury. She turns to Abraham and says, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac” (21:10). Sarah can’t even bring herself to say their names. She reacts without pity and without mercy. It was Sarah’s plan in the first place for Hagar to have a son, but now that Isaac is on the scene, Sarah doesn’t want to share what she views as her son’s rightful inheritance. So Hagar and Ishmael have to go.

Perhaps most disturbingly of all is the way God seems to side with Sarah in ejecting Hagar and Ishmael. God says to Abraham: “whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named after you” (21:12). Not only is Hagar losing her human community; she seems also to be losing her God.

The next morning, Abraham gets up early, and he gives Hagar and Ishmael a bit of bread and a container full of water and sends them off into the desert. With minimal provisions and an unforgiving landscape ahead of them, Hagar and Ishmael are going to their death.

A story like this is so familiar to many of us that we can easily ignore how unbearably tragic it is. Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, lingers over the tragedy of it: “Surely this is a piteous account, which I can scarcely read with dry eyes, that the mother and son so patiently bear their ejection and wander into exile. And so Father Abraham either stood there weeping, following the wanderers with his blessings and prayers, or else he hid by himself off in a corner, where he cried over his own fate and that of the exiles." 

With barely enough provisions to survive for a handful of days, the African slave woman and her son are banished into the wilderness to suffer death alone.

The feminist Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible, in her classic book Texts of Terror, writes this about Hagar: “As one of the first females in scripture to experience use, abuse, and rejection, Hagar the Egyptian slave claims our attention.” Trible wrote those words in 1984. How much more are they true today! Hagar claims our attention in 2020 too because we know Hagar’s face. We who live in the era of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, we know about victimized women of color. It’s no wonder that Delores Williams says: “The African-American community has taken Hagar’s story unto itself. Hagar has “spoken” to generation after generation of black women because her story has been validated as true by suffering black people. She and Ishmael together, as family, model many black American families in which a lone woman/mother struggles to hold the family together in spite of the poverty to which the ruling class economics consign it. Hagar, like many black women, goes into the wide world to make a living for herself and her child, with only God by her side.”

And yet, for me, the worst part of this whole story is that God doesn’t seem to be by Hagar’s side. God seems to have abandoned Hagar and her son to suffer their fate. Martin Luther says that if you read the story from Hagar’s perspective, it looks for all the world like even God has forsaken Hagar. God is the friend of Abraham, so if Abraham divorces Hagar and sends her out into the desert to die, then why would she not think that God is the one breaking faith with her and sending her out to die?

And isn’t that where so many of us today live our lives too — in the fear or the dread certainty that God has indeed written us off and left us to suffer our fate alone? It’s no wonder so many people in our world today can identify with Hagar’s story. As Phyllis Trible says, “[A]ll sorts of rejected women find their stories in [Hagar]. She is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the runaway youth, the religious fleeing from affliction, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced mother with child, the shopping bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless woman, the indigent relying upon handouts from the power structures, the welfare mother, and the self-effacing female whose own identity shrinks in service to others.”

And, if all that weren’t enough, Hagar is the Godforsaken. She is the one for whom God is not there, not present, not ready and available to help and to save.

Eventually the water that Abraham had given to Hagar runs out. All her options now exhausted, Hagar leaves her son under a bush. Then she walks away from him so that she won’t have to watch him die of dehydration, and she begins to cry out and weep.

But this is not the first time Hagar has found herself in exile. When she fled from her mistress Sarah’s harsh treatment on a previous occasion, she had also ended up in the wilderness. Hagar had run out to the desert, and God had met her there. God had found her, and just like God did with Abraham, God made a promise to Hagar that her son, Ishmael, would be a great nation too, so numerous “that they cannot be counted for multitude” (16:10). And then, absolutely remarkably, Hagar had spoken to the Lord and even dared to give the Lord a name: “You are El-roi.” Then she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” (16:13). The Hebrew name that Hagar gave to God means “God of seeing,” or, we could translate it, “the God who is seen.”

This is an absolutely stunning moment in the plotline of the Bible. Hagar the African, Hagar the slave, Hagar the Egyptian foreigner in the household of Abraham, received her own vision of God, apart from her mistress and her husband. She beheld God, and she dared to give God a name. In biblical religion, no one is able to see God and live (Exod. 33:20). And yet Hagar saw God. God revealed himself to Hagar.

As I was reading the story of Hagar’s exile again this week to prepare for this sermon, I found myself thinking back to a parable of sorts from the Christian philosopher Basil Mitchell. Mitchell asks us to imagine a country under military occupation. There is a group of resistance fighters who are trying to stand up for what’s right in this occupied territory, and one night, one of the members of the resistance meets a stranger. “The Stranger tells the partisan that he himself is on the side of the resistance — indeed, that he is in command of it, and urges the partisan to have faith in him no matter what happens.” That turns out to be easier said than done, because although the resistance fighter trusts the Stranger, the Stranger does a lot of things that seem to call that trust into question. “Sometimes he is seen in the uniform of the police handing over patriots to the occupying power,” and in moments like that, it is nearly impossible to go on trusting the Stranger. But he does. He does trust, and it is precisely the disparity or mismatch between his faith and the way the Stranger behaves “which constitutes the trial of his faith.”[1] What the resistance fighter has to do is appeal to what he knows about the Stranger from their first meeting over against what he sees of the Stranger’s behavior in the present. He has to tell himself, “Even though it doesn’t always look like it, the Stranger is on my side.”

That is exactly what is happening as Hagar cries out on behalf of her dying child Ishmael. She has already seen God. God has already met with her and made a promise to her. Now it looks like that promise was a lie and God has abandoned her to die. But Hagar won’t accept that. Instead she weeps and “lift[s] up her voice” (21:16). Hagar doesn’t acquiesce to her circumstances; she protests. She laments. She asks, in spite of all appearances, for help.

One of the saints of the church, Bishop Isidore of Seville, once said that what Hagar was doing as she cried there in the desert was crying out (unbeknownst to her) to Jesus, who hung forsaken by God on a tree. Bishop Isidore says that it is no accident that as Hagar cries out, her son is lying under a tree. She left him there under a shrub or bush, but if you look closely, says St. Isidore, that bush is a tree — the tree: the tree where slaves have been lynched, the tree where criminals have been hanged, the tree that represents all the misery and evil of our violent world, the tree to which God’s feet and hands were nailed outside Jerusalem over two thousand years ago. Although everything in her present experience seems to say that God has left her to die alone, Hagar appeals to the God of the cross. If you like, Hagar appeals to God against God. (As Luther says, biblical faith is “to press toward God against God and to call out.”) Hagar runs for refuge to the God revealed in the suffering and death of the cross, even as she flees from the God who is hidden, inscrutable, and terrifying.

And then the text says: “God heard the voice of the boy,” as he lies there under the cross. “[A]nd the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, ‘What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is” (21:17). “Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink” (21:19).

I don’t know what kind of wilderness you may be wandering in this morning. I don’t know what shadow or foretaste of death you may be facing. Whatever it is, hear the word of “Hagar the theologian” (Trible): When you are rejected, when you even feel abandoned by God himself, there is hope. God is in the wilderness, and God is to be found there, on the tree, suffering with you, bringing you salvation, and redeeming your life from the grave. Trust God. Trust the God of the tree. Trust the God revealed in the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

[1] See Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham, pp. 225-32.

[jewish-privilege]

My little girl loves synagogue. She asks to go to Tot Shabbat at least three times a week. Given her tendency to run to the bimah and start dancing, we joke that she might one day become a rabbi.

Taking her to synagogue makes me overwhelmingly happy, like I am connected to every woman in my bloodline through space and time—and they are all smiling and proud of me, radiating warmth and understanding. These include my grandmothers, who never met her, and their grandmothers who never met me, all with us, with their hands on her little head.

Ever since the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, there has been one moment where the joy evaporates for me—when my little girl, 2 years old, opens the door and is greeted by the Washington, D.C., police department manning their metal detectors. She doesn’t notice. She can’t remember.

I remember. I remember life before this.  

The D.C. police have done a great job, despite my early reservations. They smile. They greet us with a hearty “Shabbat Shalom!” They act like it’s normal that they are there. I thank them for doing their job. I wonder if I am teaching her, a black Jewish girl, the right lessons about interacting with police, and worry if I model it wrong it might get her killed one day. We thank the police for a job well done. They work hard to keep us safe, and I am grateful for it.

But it hurts to see them there. It hurts so much that for a single moment every Saturday I think I won’t be able to bear it. Then I smile. I tell my daughter to say thank you. Just wait for mommy while they check my bag.

This past Saturday, she twirled through the metal detector, showing off her fancy dress. She was so proud of it, made specifically for her by an aunt in Ghana, with beautiful intricate batik pink prints and a full skirt that makes her feel like a princess. The policewoman bent down and told my daughter how beautiful she looked; she beamed back, said thank you and started running full speed for Tot Shabbat.  

I’ll never be able to explain to her what has been lost for Jews in America.

This week the Jewish community said our mourning prayers. There is a special service for mourners that we say four times a year, including on Passover. It’s called Yizkor. We didn’t know that this year, by nightfall we would all be mourning. We would be mourning Lori Gilbert Kaye of Poway, California, killed in her own synagogue. Killed six months, to the day, after 11 other Jews were killed in their house of worship—a wound from which our community had barely begun to heal and which has now ripped wide open again.

Now, the whole community is mourning. We have all lost someone. We have all lost ourselves, who we were in America, in a unique and beautiful place in the long history of Jewish suffering.  We were free. We were freer than our grandmothers could have ever dreamed. But there is no more lying to ourselves in the night. There is no more hope that Tree of Life was some terrible aberration. We are not safe. Our kids are not safe.

We lived a life that I am now sure my daughter will never know.

I remember a synagogue with unlocked doors. I remember a synagogue where there was no fear. I remember running wild through its halls. I remember being taught that a Jewish little girl could be anything she wanted if she worked hard, and knowing it was true. I remember when conversations about anti-Semitism were about remembering history—not dealing with terrifying realities. When questions about whether we were Jews first or Americans first were ethical dilemmas for a lazy Shabbat afternoon at summer camp, ignored chavruta in favor of a swim—not debated in American politics with stakes I still cannot fathom. I was there. I know there was a time before this. When we were taught how blessed beyond measure we were to be who we were: American Jews. When we listened to the old men at synagogue who had lived through hate, the Holocaust survivors, the Russian refugees, our fathers’ stories of quotas and academic denial. These were stories that we learned so we appreciated who we got to be as American Jews. We sighed sadly at the old men who told us to be ever vigilant, because they would never be as free as us, like the men who had to die in the desert before we reached the Promised Land. America was our Promised Land.

How crushing  to learn that they were right all along.  

Over drinks and in hushed tones, my brother is skeptical of my surprise. Maybe it was different for boys, he says, but you never got punched in the face and called a kike? There were always swastikas on the playground, he remembers. We had a swastika drawn on our synagogue. We wanted to believe it was better here. That we had found a safe place. It was never safe for us, he says, for any of us. We are from Boston, Carly. It was never safe for our black friends, our Irish friends, our immigrant friends. It was never  so good for anybody here—you just wanted to believe it was.

Something in me is irrevocably broken. Maybe we were never real. Maybe this era never happened.  

I know some readers never experienced freedom in America. I know there are people who grew up in an America that enslaved their ancestors, an America that brought their community smallpox and genocide, an America that put their grandmothers in internment camps, that deported their parents. An America that stole from them, hurt them, killed them. They ask me: How can you complain? Why should we care that you once knew freedom and lost it, when we have never been free. To those readers: I stand with you unequivocally. I know you never had the America I once did. I will fight beside you to build an America where all of us had the freedom I once had. None of our children should pray behind armed guards. All of us, all of our kids should be safe, prosperous, and free. I want to hear all of your stories, all the ways America hurt you and took freedom from you. But I also want you to understand how it felt to find a safe harbor after thousands of years and build lives and generations there—and then watch it begin to disintegrate before our eyes. All of our voices should be heard. All of us deserve a new era of freedom, prosperity, and safety. I hope what we build in the coming years makes us freer than all of our grandmothers’ wildest dreams. I believe we must come together and fight for the America that seemed so close we could taste it just a few years ago. We must fight for all of us, for every American to have lives so free we can’t even begin to imagine them yet. Hope still lives here, somewhere, even if it feels far away today.

The era where the Jew could consider herself safe here, safer than anywhere else in the rest of the world, has ended. My daughter will grow up with a Judaism under lock and key. Prayer behind armed guards. Jumping out of your skin if a child knocks over a folding chair. No babies out of sight. No hiding behind the synagogue curtains with their best friends, trading chocolates and whispering secrets. Stay close to Mom. Instead of the old man who preaches vigilance, she will have the mom who cries and remembers freedom. How freedom was taken away one Passover, and we don’t know when or if it will ever return. She will never understand what we had.

My little girl’s run from the metal detector to Tot Shabbat passes the Holocaust memorial. Most of the time she blows right past it, excited for Ma Tovu and plushy Torahs and dancing when she is supposed to be sitting. Once in a while she stops to touch the six candelabras. I shiver. I remember that for most of Jewish history violence was normal. We were exceptional. We were lucky. We were blessed. We learned the history so we could appreciate who we were and how far our ancestors had come.

We aren’t so extraordinary. Now we are just another generation of terrified Jews.

Some days,  I don’t want to go to synagogue at all. I don’t want to pass those metal detectors and feign normality. I want to go to brunch. Let’s run from this heritage, I think. I am too afraid and I don’t want to be. I don’t want to lose my baby. Let’s buy a Christmas tree and make pork chops and change our names! You can’t, my grandmothers whisper from the pews. From my recipe books. From my soul. This is who you are. We put on our twirling dresses and sparkle shoes. We drive to synagogue. We walk through the metal detectors. We sing our songs, drink our juice and eat challah. We are Jews. And some things never change, even in America.

[prongsmydeer]

Ayesha Liveblogs One Tree Hill S1

No matter how many times I watch the pilot I consistently forget that Nathan and Peyton used to date

“Don’t bother showering tonight” is that really your come-on Peyton I will never understand sports

Lmao @ Nathan and Peyton “OTP: Distracted Driving”

“You’re despicable, you know that,” said Dan, a literal future murderer

I’m always so thrown when ppl in shows start drinking at their workplaces like what kind of bold behaviour Whitey you work at a high school

“What are you wasting your time at now?” Nathan ur a terrible boyfriend

“I say that the people who pray here are wasting their time. God doesn’t watch sports” I know Lucas is pretentious as all hell but this is my favourite line in any sports show ever

Karen is such a good mom ahhhhh like she just wants Lucas to be happy and she knows he’ll put other people’s happiness first 

Dan calling Lucas ‘this kid’ like he’s not his wholeass son what a dick

It’s not lost on me that Keith telling Lucas stories about his father means that it’s Lucas’s grandfather Keith Scott is truly the only dad in this show who matters

“So why’d you just tell me all that” because he loves to monologue

“If I could [change the fact that Lucas exists], I would” Dan answer your door I need to send you a very rude telegram

I am in love with Moira Kelly and also I want Karen to punch Dan

The music of this show is really.... transcendent 

Djhfkjhfkjh since Lucas is implied to have like, five friends.... is that crowd of supporters hugging him just a bunch of people who think Nathan is a dick

I admire Lucas for deciding he was gonna put up with all this bullshit to do something he loves

Omg I forgot that Brooke wasn’t in the pilot she’s such a major character

“Nice hands” “Nice legs” Emo flirting in a jock setting lmaooooo

My inner 2007 angst awakens every time I hear Gavin Degraw. He is THAT bitch

“You ever think I might want to talk” Peyton and Nathan’s relationship is truly nothing but blind horniness they have nothing in common at all in this juncture of their lives

“I didn’t invite you to come in, I just asked if you wanted to” Peyton is so weird but I kind of want to marry her. Is this what Lucas feels like

Lucas’s economic status is really part of Brooke’s romance criteria at the age of 17 they teach the bourgeois early huh

Oh my god I cannot BELIEVE Jake recommended Atlas Shrugged to Lucas jhjhgjhgjh the undertones of this basketball show really are about capitalism

HAHAHAH Nathan’s word being “revenge” calm down Sasuke Uchiha

I haven’t said so yet but Haley is so very endearing she’s great

God. Lucas turning around to reveal to Dan that he’s cast away his name. HE is that bitch

Ghjkghjkgh Keith hissing at the rude Boosters mum. Love of my life

“Maybe he’s gay” “No, I think he’s just nice” who writes this dumbass show

“Do you even care that it’s slipping away” maybe it’s because I went away for university but the idea that someone is this deeply invested in their kid’s high school basketball career is. A lot

Nathan simultaneously trying to bother Lucas and pass English while about to fall in love: I can multitask!!!

Update: He also managed to trash Lucas’s favourite basketball court somehow in all his business. He really can multitask!

“If it makes you feel any better I called some woman a bitch the other day” [giggle] I love Karen and Lucas’s relationship

Haley is such a good friend to Lucas and hoo boy Nathan when do you grow a conscience

“You’re both so broody. You could brood together” that’s it, that’s Peyton and Lucas

These emails and VCR references are really dating this show

Nathan is a straight up sociopath in these early eps my god he humiliates Lucas publicly twice at this party and just pops over to Haley like “Hey cutie :) Idk why Lucas is so mad :) I’m rlly nice :)”

Nathan really taking his girlfriend’s car to hit on another woman how much of a crapbag

As soon as I said this he (drunk?) drove her car into a streetlight my god 

Deb and Karen having a nice lesbian coffee shop AU would be a pleasant turn in this show instead of literally anything that happens in either of their narratives

“Why would you even go there” “Because I loved getting dumped on” That is... accurate

“I’ll call you when you’re not so PMS” said Nathan, when his (ex) girlfriend rightfully lambasted him for crashing her car

I take it back Peyton and Nathan do have one thing in common it’s their disregard for traffic laws

HELL YEAH Keith IS your dad Lucas <3 <3 <3 <3 

Whitey talks a lot of shit for someone who advised Dan to abandon Luke 

I had been wondering why Lucas had the Scott name when Dan is such an ephemeral piece of shit and I guess there’s my answer thanks Karen 

Does Haley ever find out about the shit Nathan pulled at the party I feel like these are relevant details in her budding affection

“Dad send you to spy on me? Poison my drink?” This is the second time in two episodes Deb has been accused of being Dan’s spy I wonder if she still considers that a red flag 17 years into marriage

“One of the boys doesn’t have a father” BUUUUURN Dan

Rhkgjhgjkh the last moment of this scene:

Keith: There is enough room in my heart for each of my brother’s mistreated sons even the rude ones Nathan

Nathan, experiencing a split second of paternal love: :O

Ghkjghkjgh the Scott bonding in hatred of Dan continues with Lucas asking Nathan if he too would like to spite Dan:

Lucas: You will be receiving your “I Hate Dan Scott” Club invitation in the mail shortly Nathan, mom, Uncle Keith and I hold meetings biweekly

Nathan: Biweekly as in every two weeks or twice a week 

Lucas: Both! See you on Tuesday

“Does this mean we’re dating” yes it does the mixed CD is emo code

“Good luck with your game” “yeah, you too, Ma” hehehehe

Someone revoke this college medic’s license hoo boy

Ghjghkgh Lucas keeping his money tucked into his boxers what a doofus

I can’t believe Nathan and Lucas’s second big bonding moment is threatening dudes while in their boxers after beating on each other what a brotherly bond lmao

Okay but highkey if ur a lady and ur friends are gonna leave you alone and vulnerable at night get new friends

“I can live without my shirt” Nathan is thirteen shades of petty lmaooo

Dan is such a bad (abusive) father that Nathan literally would prefer to have none at all my god 

“Can I tell you a secret? I pretended too” just get marrrried 

“Thanks for cutting Lucas some slack” talk about accepting the bare minimum Haley kjhgkjhgkj

Brooke is really unbearable in this episode is it any wonder her, Lucas and Peyton’s relationship is as dysfunctional as it will soon become 

Hoo boy the one (1) time Nathan doesn’t do something douchey and he gets blamed for it 

LMAO @ Lucas approaching the one girl at this school with commitment issues with a bold “I wanna be here [in your heart]” hahaha

“Yeah, they can have their world,” said Lucas to Haley, about the two people they would literally go on to marry

The fact that Peyton doesn’t turn off her webcam and just covers it also really speaks to the era

This Gabe dude is really ready to assault a minor like he’s not just a r*pist he’s also a predator double KO 

It is not lost upon me that it looks like one pill has been popped out before so he is also a serial r*pist big fucking yikes

“What, you got a cellphone too, dawg? Things sure have changed” also quite dated hahahaha

They really went out of the way to redeem Brooke not only did she give Nathan and Haley a very very cute date she also saved her friend from being assaulted

“So you don’t have any brothers, do you” jhgkhgkhg Brooke please 

“Why are you only nice to me when we’re alone” a very legitimate question Haley

Nathan’s dating methodology: There’s nothing in life that can’t be solved with make-outs

Deb is really so nice but every time I look at her I think of her drinking a lot and sleeping with Nathan’s friends lmao

Haha that North Carolina sign explains the mild Southern accents 

Aieeeeeeeeeee you kiss that man and follow your dreams Karen

Even if Nathan is still A Lot this season him and Haley are so cute:

Haley, smiling: We can’t do this here right now

Nathan, giggling: We just did

Lucas says more to Dan by constantly leaving with a look of disgust than any words ever could

“My heart’s racing too. That’s what happens when I’m around you. (And on drugs. I’m very unstable Haley.)”

Lucas and Nathan’s very intentional “pressure from your dad” and “you don’t know anything about my dad” bc Lucas will not acknowledge that Senor Crabag Sr. is anything resembling a father bless 

Drunk tattoos with crush’s bff Lucas has decided to make all mistakes at once and I respect it

Poor Keith he is trying his best but Lucas just chose this week to hit his rebellious phase

YESSSSSSSSSS DEB KICK THAT ASS OUT OF THIS HOUSE

“Do you really think that Nathan would choose you over me” uh???? Are you not aware you are... the worst father in town

Brooke you were fully aware of Peyton and Lucas’s vibing and actively pursued him/interfered so you have no moral high ground to be like “:) I’d never choose a boy over my friendship”

Skillz and Mouth accurate “hoo boy don’t look” when ur friends start PDA

“Mom doesn’t want things to get back to normal, she wants them to be better” hell yeah Nathan gaining emotional intelligence

Lucas quit projecting your childhood issues onto Jake he too is a child let him decide how he wants to live Jenny’s 6 months old not like she’s gonna remember lmao

Damn Nathan LET LOOSE on Dan fuck that dude

JGFHJGFJGFJH I forgot Gavin Degraw had a cameo hahahahah

Did Luke.......... break into Jake’s house. His parents work at night how was he able to get into Jake’s coffee table

“You do not have to feel like a third wheel” The pure dumbass energy.... Peyton is literally CRYING do u really think her issue is “third wheel” you KNOW she and Lucas had a thing Brooke???????

Me watching this team form a brotherly bond over their mutual love of basketball: Mayhaps sports are... good 

Hahahaha Lucas threatening Peyton’s dad with a rake is weirdly endearing

“Hey you.” “Hey you, and you,” is a good summary of this seasons Brooke/Lucas/Peyton dynamic lmao

Why is Dan’s head... shaped that away. It is like a bar of soap

“I don’t mind you playing ‘Daddy’ to one of my offspring, but leave the good one alone, will you?” Dan. Meet me in the Denny’s parking lot at midnight and we’ll have words

“The whole Nice Guy thing is wearing kind of thin” foreshadowing for all the dick moves Lucas is about to pull lmao

“He’s got you skipping school now?” “Lucas talk to me when you get your tattoo removed”

Lucas:

Lucas is such a meddler lmao how many family dynamics is he going to alter

I don’t trust Dan being nice for a minute all he wants is the upper hand with Deb in the inevitable custody battle over Nathan

Props to Nathan and Haley for somehow, some way, being the only normal couple on this show despite their incredibly dubious origins lmao

Scott family dinners are bananas I count four (4) major revelations and they haven’t even revealed that Deb and Dan are separated

Lucas and Peyton are really hitting every fictional couple trope in this ep - road trip, bed sharing, hurt/comfort, truly the YA bases 

“The truth? In this house?” Props to Deb for drama lmao 

Brooke saying ‘I love you’ you’ve been dating for like two episodes but okay kjhgkjhg

I can’t say I understand Nathan’s logic lmao but I guess they have to bring him back to basketball sometime

Wow Lucas zero hesitation on that second kiss lmao u r a mess

This scene is the definition of “that escalated quickly” they go straight to undressing 

HAHAHAH NATHAN BEING SHIRTLESS IN HALEY’S DREAM FOR NO REASON 10/10 TEENAGE ACCURACY

“How do you explain being with me and not her?” “Because with you, I saw a future” that’s Dan code for ‘I’m a gold digger’

You’re literally macking on Peyton in the middle of the hallway while you’re dating the other most popular girl in school Lucas how are you this ridiculous and bold BREAK UP WITH BROOKE U DUMBASS

“So what are we going to do” I’ll tell you what you should do BREAK UP WITH BROOKE

Keith it is still daylight out stop bringing alcohol into this high school you have a drinking problem

“Can’t control love, you know?” THAT’S NOT ADVICE LUCAS BREAK UP WITH BROOKE

I really can’t handle watching Keith and Lucas self-destruct this episode how is Nathan the only Scott in a happy, healthy relationship

“You know that this is... wrong, so that makes it feel... deeper?” Lucas asks, as if he were not entirely in the wrong by carrying on with Peyton (who is not in a relationship) while dating Brooke

“I don’t want to hurt Brooke,” he said, about to start his third secret cheating makeout session of the week

“But then again our spouses aren’t here are they” [Deb opens door] COMEDIC TIMING

Gjjhgkjhg Nathan revealing his messed up intentions with Haley entirely by accident Scotts have no self-control whatsoever it’s their kekkei genkai

Lucas evading responsibility for his romance crimes by literally dying

Hahahah Karen’s confused vibes at Brooke are kind of the highlight of this episode 

How funny would it be if Lucas woke up to Karen scolding him about his tattoo

Hahahaha for such dysfunctional partners Nathan and Peyton are excellent exes 

AHHHHHHHHH LUCAS WAKING UP TO HIS BROTHER... MY HEART

Keith rlly was gonna propose after zero (0) days of dating I’m telling you no self-control is truly the Scott clan kekkei genkai

Ahhhh bless Karen’s compassion 

Dan is literally blackmailing his son into staying in his custody he is in Deb’s words an “abusive son of a bitch”

Fucking finally Lucas ends this sham of a relationship with Brooke

It’s wild that Nathan is the only Scott with a happy and healthy romantic relationship 

Nathan divorcing his parents is a real power move 

I’m glad Haley announced Sheryl Crow’s name because let me tell you I would not have recognized her on sight

“How’s my daughter” Lucas really chooses exclusively to hook up with people who have devastating emotional consequences for his immediate friend group huh

“Funny I didn’t know you were forgiving at all” Lmao Peyton is that really the position you’re going to take after cheating with your best friend’s boyfriend 

All the deodorant product placement lmao ‘this ep sponsored by Secret’ 

All things considered I think Lucas is handling Haley’s constant ditching p well 

Bfhkghghjg Keith buying a new shirt just to go to dinner with Karen stop

OH MY GOD THE EP REALLY WAS SPONSORED BY SECRET IT’S GOT SECRET ON THE CHEER COMPETITION BANNERS AND A LITTLE GIFT BAG RANDOMLY IN ALL THE CHEERLEADER CONFRONTATIONS JKGHKJGH

The comedic timing of “hungover idiots” panning to Karen and Larry kills me

“She used to be this totally original.... Haley” what does this mean????

I don’t think Nathan and Haley are being entirely fair to Lucas bc he was only a dick once she ditched him twice (or thrice?) in one weekend 

This boy toy auction as a concept is so inappropriate on so many levels

“I get Nathan for free” Fhjkfhkfjh Haley pls

God I was so very concerned about whether or not Nathan and Peyton were gonna kiss 

“You’re not a mess, you’re just in love” [Ole Del Paso Girl voice] Why not both?

“She’s nine months old, just in case you forgot” to be fair I assume Nikki gave birth so she would remember that you can’t hold that one over her 

It must take Lucas some mental disconnect to assume Peyton and Nathan are cheating when he also kissed Haley

Fhjfhkjfhjfh Keith fulfilling my fave trope of ‘we are not even dating but how about we get married bc we’ve been repressed in love for years’

“You know I asked your mom to get an abortion,” said Dan, to his literal son

I really can’t figure where this pregnancy storyline is going bc I know Brooke doesn’t have a baby

Nathan and Haley really need to consider oral or smth there’s a middle ground between making out and having vaginal sex

“It all hurts just the same” Brooke really out here trying to say that cheating is in any way equivalent to faking a pregnancy (even if only for a week)

Peyton and Brooke are way more invested in each other than Lucas 

“I got you a high five” Hahahhaa I love Peyton 

Gary like: Wow Nathan it’s humanizing that your father is an abusive dick

“Maybe this is the one that changed him” Lucas joining Dan as the second and only non-Dan member of the Dan Scott Apologism Club

It’s wholly unreasonable that Haley expects her boyfriend not to look at p*rn lmao

I love all this Lucas and Nathan bonding but I hate that it comes at the cost of Dan being near them at all u stay away from those boys u manipulative fuck

Ah the foreshadowing about Peyton changing in front of her webcam finally pays off

I’m no legal expert but I don’t think that taking your daughter out of state will help you in the custody battle in the long term Jake - nor will dropping out of high school

“What do I get out of it” r u 4 real Keith u dont get payment for loving your family

“I’m leaving because I can’t look at you anymore without my heart breaking” I like you Keith but that sounds like a You Problem

This is a fun way to shoot this episode One Tree Hill has such good directing tbh

Nathan discarding the Scott name from his jersey just like Lucas did in ep 2: 

Haley: Having sex will solve all of my problems Nathan what are you talking about

I remembered that at some point Deb and Keith have sex and I’m glad they fuck things up early bc I could not deal if it was later on

“I’ll miss you too, little brother” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

KJKGHKJHGJHKJHGKJHKJ I CAN’T BELIEVE NATHAN AND HALEY GOT MARRIED JUST TO HAVE SEX THIS IS WHY THEY DON’T LET PEOPLE YOUNGER THAN 18 VOTE

[ateamforumsfanworks]

Lancer 103 - The Art of Basic Breaking (Part I)

11-22-2016, 01:43 AM Originally posted by Forum User: LaconicLeaf Last updated: 10-15-2017, 05:02 PM

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(Credit: Match-i for this drawing of my character)

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__________________________________________________ Table of Contents __________________________________________________  I. Introduction II. Build Suggestion (Pre-7th Slot)  III. Build Suggestion (Post-7th Slot)  IV. Monsters, Example Monster Sets, and Comparisons  V. Lancer Skills (Pre-5th Ring)  VI. Lancer Skills (Post-5th Ring)  VII. Basic Abilities  VIII. Lancer Procs  IX. Gameplay (PvE) - aka "How to Break the Basic Attack's Potential Open"  X. Weapon Proc and Skill Build Suggestion (PvE)  XI. Weapon Proc and Skill Build Suggestion (PvP)  XII. Apollo Set Blessing - yes or no?  XIII. Event Quests Walkthrough  XIV. "This is how you DON'T play Lancers"  XVI. Credits  XVII. DPS Scaling Data for Lancer Attacks

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Previous Guide Archives

Lancer Guide 2.0 (by Vostera) Lancer 101 (by Cobalt)

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__________________________________________________ I. Introduction __________________________________________________

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Lancers were once extremely overpowered during the pre-4th Ring days.

Forget about

Forget about

!

That's right.

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Believe it or not, even as a 190 AP (200 with passives) attack, Knight's Blitz once landed swift 2HKOs against the majority of the opposition, while Archers and Mages often got OHKOed. Nearly everyone built Lancers for pure offense, getting as high of an ATK stat as possible with maxed Weapon and Monster slots. The guild crystal didn't give any multipliers to a member's HP, thus KB had barely any counterplay. You could try using Guard, but Lancers can use Savage Sting to bait it, wait it out, and then slam you with KB. With the sheer firepower Lancers had, and how easy and brainless their playstyle seemed, it’s no wonder they were given the moniker, “Cancer Lancer.” When 4th Ring was announced, it was hyped that Lancers would be overpowered, all thanks to Dragon Crush, which has 190 AP and hits 3 targets. Furthermore, KB got its AP increased from 190 to 210 (220 with passives), and people were panicking that Lancers would be God Tier again (they actually were, but everyone switched to Soldier/Mage/Archer due to FoTM status). But as time passed on, Dragon Crush was actually a bad AoE skill, as its animation speed was slow, and Mage's Meteor Rain, a similar AoE but deals multihits like Meteor Strike, was much faster, on the same speed tier as KB and Basic Attack.

As a result, Glass Lancer builds started falling out of favor with higher level caps and crystal caps, the latter finally increasing the HP of guild members in combat. Thus, KB no longer landed 2HKOs, and while this was going on, the original Lancer guide author, Cobalt, ranted about stuff like Amaterasu coming out before Apollo, and "Why Lancers are the weakest class in the game,” on what was arguably the "Lancer Hate Era" (or the "Dark Age of Lancers," kinda like the "Dark Age of Sonic"). Threads suggesting to buff Lancers, and all kinds of random crap, with Lancers being underpowered and everything, were also being thrown about all over the forums. This was the time when Lancers were surrounded with crappy publicity, being kicked out of Event Quest parties for being "useless," and even kicked out of guilds to make room for Soldiers, Mages, or even Archers. But the dark days of 4th Ring have long passed. There were a few uncharted techniques and merits about Lancers which other players, like , were discovering even in 4th Ring, like the sheer single-blow damage of Knight's Blitz being able to pulverize the raw defenses of Soldiers and Clerics, and Break Thrust's proc-bypassing capabilities doing extremely well against defensive walls in PvP. Plus, Reo also shared the "Attack Stance Basic Attack Strategy," which greatly improved the efficiency of Lancers in PvE; use Stings to Break, then Basic Attack to DPS. This was a fighting style Reo never got a chance to use since he used a Cleric/Soldier cost distribution with a few weapons; this actually started my love for the Basic Attack as a timed and true attack skill. In hindsight, Lancers were probably the best class during the pre-5th Ring meta, but not for reasons you'd expect. They can bore through Soldier Frontlines with Break Thrust and Knight's Blitz, with the former ignoring procs (can decimate Clerics), and the latter having sheer firepower that DEF scaling cannot overcome (Mage and Archer attacks were easily tankable with enough raw defenses). Against Meteor Rain Mage Frontlines, if the Lancers used Guard, and a more tanky build, they can withstand their attacks while also being able to instantly burst down each target one at a time. Their Anti-Class, Archers, were non-existent in the Frontline because Soldiers can instantly cleave them with Dual Sword, and Archers can't do much to them back. Eventually, 5th Ring is another time where Lancers are at a strong point. They gain skills which take advantage of Break and turn it into an AP boost, which drastically improves the damage they can dish out. While the AS+Basic strategy is still viable, the new 5th Ring skills yielded a new playstyle for Lancers that is more accessible. This ring also brought about buffs for Double Sting, turn it from a useless cost dump, Heart-proc reliant skill to a Swiss Army Knife with good all-around utility and DPS, while greatly improving Lancer's PvP game with stronger skills like Severe Sting and Cross Assault. Even Break Thrust got some love, with a lower cooldown and added Break bonus to make it usable with Cross Assault to some extent. The 5th Ring release also expressed a "What Could Have Been" dichotomy: Dragon Crush got not only its cooldown timer halved, but also a buffed animation speed too. If that AoE HAD its Basic Attack/KB/Meteor Rain-tier animation speed, we would've had a completely different meta entirely in 4th Ring. Lancers would've been able to decimate Mage Frontlines with coordinated Dragon Crushes, and it would've still been Lancer meta like it was during 3rd Ring. Unlike Meteor Rain, the high base AP of Dragon Crush would've been able to pulverize Soldiers and Clerics; no amount of DEF can reliably reduce the damage Dragon Crush could do. While I may not be the highest GS Lancer, only about 210k as of the time this guide was published, but now 350k and counting, or the highest ATK Lancer, sitting around 75k - 80k (again, when the guide was published); now lingering around 120-135k, at least I understand the game mechanics quite well, and can carry PvE runs with reliable Break uptime, so for those of you out there... I hope you’ll at least learn something new about Lancers after reading this guide.

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Why SHOULD You Be A Lancer? (Pros)

+ Fastest attacks in the game

+ Second highest HP in the game, and the gap between a Lancer's HP and Soldier's HP is shorter than between an Archer's HP and a Cleric's/Mage's HP

+ High damage in each and every hit of their attacks, which makes raw DEF investment less effective, and deals great damage even while proc less

+ Adding to the above point, even Soldiers and Clerics take a sizable chunk of damage from Lancer attacks like Cross Assault. Since the latter has the same Max HP as a Mage, and Lancers can flat-out ignore their procs with Break Thrust, they can be considered the "Unofficial Anti-Cleric Class"

+ Absolutely dangerous after a Unison; since everyone freezes while a Unison clash completes, Lancers have the speed advantage. They can outright choose who to kill, since their attacks come out so quickly, if the enemy Clerics use Aid on the wrong player, they may as well kiss one of their teammates goodbye.

+ Anti-Class to Mages, a (former) common frontliner with their AoEs, and the AP damage mitigation further makes Lancers the best class to use against them; any Mage trying to drop rocks on your head will have to be extremely lucky with procs to even lay as much as a scratch on you; even Star Burst, which can potentially one-shot other classes, has a hard time killing you too

+ 5th Ring and ToJ skills are a massive boost to DPS, and allows Lancers to finally take advantage of Break for higher damage

+Negative Pressure can catch people off guard when least expected, can even win Colo games too; a metagame-defining skill that can turn Unison Battles in your favor, or even deny uni by erasing 2 Cheers' worth of meter

+ Can ignore shields and defense procs with Break Thrust (with a few exceptions)

+ Best class to inflict Break with

+ Flexible combo potential with skills, even if said skills don't explicitly have a combo effect with one another (like using Break Thrust with Cross Assault)

+ Break carries teams in quests with Unison upkeep and Defense Penetration, allows for earlier buff Unis, and carries United Offense and other boss content; can even allow people who died in Colo Round 2 without full Uni to have a chance to Uni in Round 3

+ The offensive class who is least likely to die from random monster reflect skills thanks to how Basic Attack doesn’t deal enough damage for a 50% reflect to bounce off lethal damage through Wards (and their animation speeds let them hit confirm BEFORE reflects apply)

+ Best user of the Basic Attack, which scales extremely well with just about every buff in the game due to its low cost and cooldown (you could even use it to humiliate others just by showing off how powerful the default attack is)

+ Thus, Basic Ability replacements are optional, and are more suited for PvP because the Basic Attack is just THAT good by default (although Deadly Blow admittedly comes VERY close to beating Basic Attack)

+ Extremely effective against Soldier Frontlines, as Cross Assault hits harder than Mage's Blood Oath despite Anti-Class, doesn't risk getting Reflect proc-killed, and has high HP to withstand multiple Rage Slashes; Negative Pressure can be a pain to them too, especially when coupled with Dissonance

+ 4th Ring skills (Break Thrust, Double Sting) are still viable in the current meta for their unique properties, unlike the other classes

+ Strong damage floor (All Rings)

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Why Should You NOT Be A Lancer? (Cons)

- Low damage ceiling (Pre-5th Ring) when using non-Basic Attack skills

- Useful monsters by stats are generally limited to Fire, Water, and Haste elements; only two of these elements are useful for GvG unis. Farmable utility monster choices are poor (has to use Amaterasu or other off-element monsters for utilities).

- Even with high damage in single blows, Mages and Archers will still outdamage you (though 5th Ring made Lancers actually out-DPS Mages to some extent, or become rather equal to them)

- Apollo Set actually "nerfs" your Break rate due to the Proc Priority System mechanics, makes you more squishy due to sacrificing Main Slots

- Break Thrust has low base power, reliant on procs to deal real damage in PvP

- Null Damage effects (Unisons, Charisma, Null Physical Damage) and Guard still stuff Break Thrust

- Long cooldown times for certain skills; Smash moves from Soldiers out-DPS the Sting moves (until 5th Ring/ToJ)

- While I used to list "Secret XXLs being relevant today" as a "Pro," I'm gonna move them to the Cons because the new ToJ skills have high Break Bonus to the point where it's not really necessary to carry Savage Sting and Double Sting anymore. (Although Secret XXL does work out great if Double Sting is your only attack in PvP for your guild strategy, because Mastery-tier AP and proc rate is amazing)

- “Four Moveslot Syndrome” - Want Attack Stance? Take off EE or Mass Refresh/Balancing. Want Cross Assault? Take off Attack Stance. Want Negative Pressure? Cheer, Guard, or a second attack must go. (and so on)

- Basic Attack replacement weapons take off a high-DPS skill. As mentioned before, they're more suited for PvP, where burst damage is favored with Cleric heals being common. (Only Deadly Blow comes extremely close as a true upgrade)

- Due to having high raw ATK, a “Confused Attack” can potentially OHKO a Lancer or another player if they try using a buff/support skill while Confused (so please, think twice before deciding to EE out of boredom after you finish a quest while confused, or trying to Yolo Refresh)

- The buffs to Cleric's Aid skills for faster casting times actually make them the fastest skills in the game. They go so fast that they will land before a Lancer attack connects.

- Certain Event Quests (Wind Mobius, Eva Collab 1.0) have "Low HP, Low DEF, High Break Tolerance" mobs, which make Break builds less practical

- Death Pierce is useless, and a waste of a 5th Ring attack skill space.

- Anti-Class disadvantage to the current “OP Class” in the game -- Archers. Better hope you’re stacked with Magic Reflection or Magic Damage Down procs, so their Deadly Arabesque won’t OHKO...

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Miscellaneous Issues

(4th Ring Issues)

- At one point, Lancers had a history of being stigmatized by others, being the bearer of several misconceptions, such as being called the "worst class," "why be a Lancer when you can play a Mage or Archer and do tons more damage," "if you're building tanky, be a Soldier instead," and what have you. (Thankfully, the vitriol has worn off, although Soldiers are arguably currently at the position where 4th Ring Lancers used to be)

- Many people think Lancers are THE "Damage Dealer class" given the class description, and complained about it on the forums due the description given by the game, using it as a crutch to prove their points (which was true... on like the Lv. 80 cap!)

- Even then, there's still some people who insist in Lancers being intended to be built Glass Cannon as an optimal build; this ill-advised build leaves Lancers with sub-30k MDEF, making them die to even proc less Meteor Rains.

Otherwise... Some player-related cons (it's the PLAYER'S problem, not the class):

- Class Passives encourage equipping Armor and Helm type gear to maximize your GS. However, this leaves you with low MDEF, and a small amount of Anti-Magic procs. (Unless they were all Reflection/Damage Down XLs, but that’s a different story)

- Players bringing the wrong abilities, like Thrusts, Dragon Assault, Dragon Crush, Death Pierce, or CURE (4-digit heals FTL), into Event Quests or Mobius

- In addition to the above point, Lancers who don't bring Attack Stance and just spam Sting, Savage Sting, and Knight's Blitz whenever they're off cooldown (the past equivalent of Severe Sting, Cross Assault, and Death Pierce) are guaranteed to keep asking for Haste at the beginning of a quest; these Lancers also tend to Break the wrong target too, and never use the Basic Attack

- Basic Attack is extremely under appreciated, and some players asked for more replacements for it (like replacing it for Cheer or Guard) when it's already OP as is

- Some players still tend to use Cross Assault incorrectly, oblivious to the fact that it has an AP Bonus damage effect while hitting Broken targets

- Lancers who don't take advantage of Break for their 5th Ring skills, or abuse AP Modifiers with the Basic Attack, will end up being out-DPSed by Soldiers

- While Lancers are least vulnerable to Reflect attacks, there’s still some players who Cross Assault or Knight’s Blitz head-first into a 50% Reflect target, and dying like a Mage or Archer that way

- Noobs thinking it's a great idea to use DRAGON ASSAULT, the absolute WORST move in the game *death glare*

- Complaints about Lancers being useless because they can’t SELF-HEAL unlike the others (by far the absolute MOST common complaint about Lancers)

- 5th Ring Sub Quest is SOLO Only! It’s difficult to beat this quest as a Lancer alone without dying. Thus, I highly recommend building a Cleric as a secondary class to make this Sub Quest a lot easier. Trust me, it pays off in cutting the amount of gems you would spend on reviving if you tried brute forcing your way through otherwise. (Though thankfully, stacking Water defense will help tank these mobs; this Sub Quest came before Elemental Defense was a thing)

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Part II >>>

[segadores-y-soldados]

Hola, amigos!

Hit another follower milestone the other day and like holy hell, I just cannot believe there are so many of you hanging out here??  Seriously, thank you for all the love and support, especially on that “Gabriel/Reaper is mlm/gay-coded” post.  It meant so much to me to see all the people supporting it in the tags.  

Normally when I hit these follower milestones, I do a little introduction about who I am for newcomers and to help older followers remember who I am and what I’m about.  In this one, I’m gonna do something a little different.  I’m gonna do a small showcase of my writing.

Tumblr username: Segadores-y-soldados AO3 username: clickclickBANG Semi-personal info: transdude from California, please use he/him for me Semi-relevant skills: slowly improving my Spanish - feel free to correct my nonsense Content: All Overwatch stuff, lots of Reaper76 shippy stuff - be sure to look at my About page to find my other ships I’ll reblog

Works Showcase:

Old Habits (Rating: T - Action/Adventure - slow-burn Reaper76): 

“We’re gonna blow the train - ”

“Do you think that maybe - just maybe - blowing up a bridge with a fucking military-grade bomb on it is...not a great idea?” Reaper growls, and Widowmaker shoots him another bitter glare.

Hernandez, genius military strategist that he is not, frowns a little at this, before saying, “Ya know… we’re just gonna have to roll with it because we don’t got any other options.”

“...We could hijack the train?”  You know, like normal terrorist assholes.

“Nah, they got extra security on there - brought in some fancy Helix guards from Egypt itself after that shitshow in Grand Mesa two days ago.  Gonna be extra tough to stop it without heavy fire power.”

This is a recipe for disaster.

“Anyways, y’all ain’t even gonna be at the blast site,” Hernandez continues, sliding onto the crude overhead map of the gorge.  Reaper can see some of the buildings that line the winding road of Deadlock Gorge, as Hernandez points a baton of a finger at some of the buildings closest to the entrance to the Deadlock base, “Y’all are gonna be here and here - ” he points to a tunnel on the southern side of the map, cut into the cliffs, “We think that posting y’all up in the tunnel o’ mysteries here and in the guard house here - ” he moves his hand to the building on the north side of the road, the one built into the bluff, “ - will best suit our needs.  The gang and I - we’re gonna be out here, in the diner - ” he moves his finger to the far west side of the map, to the building almost directly under the blast site, “ - so that we can jump on the cargo rapido, get ‘em while they’re surprised.  If everything goes according to plan, we’ll meet up with y’all at the first gate here, and it should be smooth sailing into the base.”

“Except for the part where the military and Helix fucking rain hellfire on us, right?” Reaper asks, and he sees some of the Talon agents glance at each other, “Cause you didn’t mention that part.”

“Well, yeah, no shit they’re gonna be pissed.  But don’t you worry your ugly little head, hombre de craneo, we’re gonna take care of the worst of ‘em.  Got us some heavy duty shit, if you know what I mean.”  Hernandez flashes a toothy grin and Reaper rolls his eyes.

Blowing up a bridge, a military-grade bomb, and rocket launchers.

Fucking swell.

“Why even bring us here if you weren’t gonna let Widowmaker snipe for you?” Reaper asks sourly.

“Well, uh…” Hernandez stumbles over his genius military strategy, “She can, uh...snipe from the cliffside where you’re at.”

“Does it have a view for sniping?” he snaps at the gang leader who mumbles, “I...uh...don’t know?”

Reaper sighs, rubbing at the forehead of his mask as if that would help clear up his real headache at all before muttering, “Alright, listen, here’s a better plan -”

“No one asked you, cabrón -”

“No, no one did, but you know, Widowmaker can’t fail this mission and, frankly, right now, this mission is a failure.  How ‘bout instead, we’re gonna be posted here, on this cliff - ”  Reaper points a talon at the cliff just east across the road from the diner, but on the non-blast side, “ - Widowmaker and - which one of you assholes can snipe?  Oh, Henri, right - Widowmaker and Henri will be up here, and once the blast is cleared, you two will start sniping the wreck survivors.  If they’ve brought in Helix from Egypt, that means Raptora Mark VI units, which are fliers with rocket power, so you’re gonna want snipers on the scene ASAP.  Me and these other assholes, we’re gonna be posted up in this ground tunnel just beneath Widowmaker and Henri, so we can help out with some of the ground units that are bound to show up - they always fucking do.  If we move fast, we can get the payload past this cliff and by this building here before they even know what hit them.  AT THAT POINT, we can start fanning back out - no need to put all of our eggs in one basket, that’s just begging for us all to get blown the fuck up.  Widowmaker’s squad will back out to the positions you originally suggested, but we’ll crawl on it, moving behind that building and up to the tunnels by the first gate.  There’s gotta be a second or even third military train of support for this - there’s no way in fucking hell they’re letting this go with only one train.  That means backup will be hitting us just before the first gate if we’re unlucky, or just past it if we’re lucky - we want it to be past the first gate as soon as fucking possible, so that we can block them off if need be.  Shoring up these tunnels around the gate is gonna be a pain in the ass, why do you even have them here?  But well, I guess we’ll just have to fucking deal with them.  I don’t like the look of this curve with all these buildings here - ridiculously fucking open to airstrikes and heavy ground-level pushes, but we’ll just have to ambush them out of the buildings instead - I take it you don’t give a shit if these shitholes are still standing after this?”

Reaper pauses, but when the tractor of a man doesn’t respond, he finally looks up from the map to see that…

Oh.

They’re all staring at him.

Oh shit. --------- 76 + 127: How We Were Made (Rating: Explicit - Reaper76 (SEP-era Morreyeson)):  Even now, Jack knows Gabriel has already found a way out of his cell. 

Jack just has no idea what he did. 

Think outside the box, he can practically hear Gabriel whisper incessantly to him in his rattling, loose brain. 

I can’t, Gabe - I’m fucking trapped inside the box. 

You just gotta assess the situation critically.  You have advantages, Jack - you just gotta find them. 

Advantages. 

Sure. 

Being locked in a cell has zero advantages over a guard in light body armor and a rubber-bullet gun. 

The haze of sleepiness and exhaustion and pent-up frustration and roiling, thunderous energy in his veins is killing every idea in his head. 

Look at your situation, think of what you have that 16 or 14 doesn’t. 

“...So you are you gonna suck 16’s dick or nah?” 83 asks him vaguely from across the hall. 

Sucking dicks is thinking outside the box, right? Jack half-wonders to himself, half to whatever sliver of Gabriel exists in his exhausted mind.  He can practically see Gabriel’s shrug - Gabriel would understand if Jack sucked a dick to get out of jail.  Gabriel would probably do that himself. 

Had Gabriel sucked his guard’s dick for the key? 

The thought alone makes his head pound harder. 

Jack grunts, “Fuck off.  Get 99 to do it.” 

“Dude, I fucking will,” 99 whines but 100 snorts, “16 won’t want you, asshole.  At least 76 is attractive.” 

Reflexively, Jack makes a face as 78 chuckles. 

“Y’all know I fucking hear you, right?” Jack asks loudly and 100 calls back, “Oh, we know.  We just don’t care.” 

Think, Jack.  Think about your advantages. 

I don’t have any, Gabriel. You can think outside of the box.  I can’t.  I’m not like you.  I’m not good enough.  Not smart enough. 

I’m inside the box. 

I’ve always been inside the box.  

---------

(More content under the cut)

---------

Sharpshooter: Hit Me Like A Drum (Rating: T - McHanzo): At this point in his life, Jesse is used to the stares. Doesn’t matter where he goes, people oogle him. Well, okay, not entirely true - some parts of Central and Southern America still got some authentic vaqueros and oddly enough some banditos, but even there, Jesse’s height makes him stand easily above most heads and shoulders. 

And yes, okay, maaaaybe the hat doesn’t help. But he’ll let the Devil drag him to Hell kicking and screaming before giving up the damn thing. 

So he barely notices the glances the poor patrons of Rikimaru are shooting his way when someone behind him taps him just above his right elbow. 

Jesse jerks a little, startling out of his semi-mosing thoughts and vacant-eyed stare at the menu to twist and little and glance behind him and oh Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Arizona Diamondbacks, what a gorgeous face. 

The man behind him is a beautiful mix of high, sweeping curves and careful angles - his face is fairly chiseled but features a softness to it that is offset by the neatly trimmed beard and steady glint in his deep, dark eyes. His jet-black hair, peppered on the sides with some strands of grey, is pulled back into a small ponytail at the back of his head, and Jesse thinks he sees a long yellow...ribbon holding it back. But otherwise the man is dressed in a simple sweatshirt and some black jeans except that - 

Is that a fucking bow and quiver? Jesse wonders. The man is not much shorter than him - only a few inches - but Jesse can see something slung over his shoulder and something else that looks suspiciously like a bunch of arrow feathers poking out from behind his back. 

Jesse flicks his eyes from the apparent quiver back to the man’s amazing face and his dark eyes and immediately knows two things: 

1 - This man is absolutely the most handsome person Jesse has ever had the blessed fortune of meeting. 

2 - He does not understand a word coming out of the man’s mouth. 

“...Pardon?” Jesse asks absently, blinking awkwardly. The...archer (?) tilts his head a little and scowls a bit - oh jackrabbit turds, I pissed him right off - before saying in flawless English, “It is your turn.” 

Oh. Jesse thinks lamely. English. 

“Oh uh, thanks, partner,” Jesse says awkwardly, glancing back towards the counter where one of the chefs is waiting with an expression of stern politeness that is fading into increasing annoyance. Jesse makes eye contact with the chef and she gives him a small handwave of “hurry up, tourist, I don’t have all day.” 

“Uh…” Jesse glances back sheepishly at the man behind me, giving him an embarrassed smile, “You wouldn’t happen to know which one is the spicy pork ramen, would you?” 

The man’s scowl fades for a quick second before returning, and he says with startlingly serious focus, “Oh. You can’t read it.” 

“Uh…no, sorry ‘bout that, darlin’,” Jesse apologizes without thinking and the man raises an eyebrow, asking, “‘Darling?’” 

OH FUCK ME AND MY DUMB ASS 

Why, yes, please do, the wiseass side of Jesse cracks in his head and he fucking flounders over the barrage of shame and embarrassment and attraction. 

“Oh, damn, shit, sorry - oh cheese on a cracker, I shouldn’t be swearing, oh god you’re gonna think I was never taught manners - shoot, sugar, I’m so sorry, it’s a bad habit I got from my pa and - Shit, I just did it again - sorry, it’s been a long trip here and, oh Lord, I just swore again, this is so embarrassing -” 

A startled look of wonder blossoms on the man’s face and if Jesse wasn’t so fucking flustered, he would love to try and mentally catalogue how the man looks so open and surprised. Jesse is in the middle of tripping over his words when the unthinkable happens.  

A miracle occurs. 

The man gives a surprisingly broad and genuinely happy grin and starts to laugh.   --------- Segador: It Is Not Him (Rating - T):

Gabriel practically jogs up to her in the hallway to the main entrance, muttering, “Gabrielle…  Gabrielle… Adawe, fucking stop.”

That gets her attention, and she snaps around towards him with a fierce stare, squaring herself up to him rather impressively with her short stature as she whispers dangerously, “Do not take that tone of voice with me, Gabriel -”

“I can’t do this.”

Adawe pauses because -

There’s a cracking in his voice.

Gabriel knows he has problems conveying his emotions - Jack always jokes that Gabriel’s face could make a bed of nails look soft.  Gabriel knows he has problems expressing himself - he can never find the right words to say.  Gabriel knows he has problems opening up - his heart struggles behind the layers of steel and bravado and taunting sarcasm, barriers only a select few have managed to get past.

Gabriel knows he has problems taking pictures.

Gabriel locks onto her dark eyes and -

He wouldn’t call it begging, per se -

But he’s definitely pleading with her:

“Please… Please, Gabrielle - we need to talk about this,” he says softly and Adawe’s dark mood lightens a bit as she says to him gently, “...It is just a few pictures, Gabriel.”

“...It’s not the pictures, Gabrielle.”

Adawe’s eyes - normally so bright and lively, now turned solemn and serious - search his for an answer and Gabriel whispers, dangerously close to feeling vulnerable -

He feels uncomfortable.

He feels unlike himself.

“This isn’t me, Gabrielle,” Gabriel says, his voice breaking under the pressure of a too-tight headset and the pressure of a too-tight chestpiece and the weight of carrying an empty rifle that isn’t his, “The meetings, the Security Council, planning city reconstructions, balancing budgets - I’m a general, not a politician.”

“There are still many parts of the world under great violence, Gabriel,” she reminds him, with a gentle pressure but a pressure nonetheless, “The world still needs you as Commander.”

“Out there, on the battlefield, sure, yeah, fuck, I’ll fight, I’ll always fight, but this?” Gabriel says, gesturing to himself, to the ridiculous blue pieces of armor and the empty rifle, “This is playing fucking dress-up -”

“Funny,” Adawe smirks at him, “I thought you would have liked that, considering your fondness for that American costume holiday.”

“This isn’t fucking Halloween, Adawe,” he snaps, perhaps a touch more...violently than he should have, “This is not what I wore when I was ripping heads off Bastions or tripping up Spiders or even destroying Titans - and it won’t be what I wear when I put down terrorists or gangs or mercenaries.”

“It’s just a photoshoot, Reyes -”

“We need to talk about putting Jack or Ana in charge of Overwatch.”

Adawe stops, her mouth sealing into a tight line and Gabriel scowls at her, muttering in a low, dark, bittersweet growl, his words curling out of his lungs like black smoke, “I’ll fight whatever new battles this damn organization faces, I’ll do whatever needs to be done - whether that’s mercing a few bad guys or cleaning up the leftover Bastions or fucking balancing budgets - but you cannot keep putting this off on me. We both know that this is a fucking sham, my math skills aren’t fucking great, I can't persuade anyone anything for shit, and you need someone who will fight your political battles, who will balance your budgets, who will find great recruits, and who will actually take good photos when you pressure them into it -

“And we both know that is not me.”

[wionews]

Obsessed with 6 pack abs: The 'made in gym' generation of India

Indians have been blindly influenced by Bollywood--from the idea of love to holiday destinations--we have always taken inspiration from the big screen. For someone living in present-day India, it is difficult to have missed the bare-chested Salman Khan in the iconic song, ‘O-O-Jaane Jaana’. More than giving butterflies and lustful fantasies to the ladies, it gave goals to the masculine youth.

This was just the beginning the ‘era of voguish 6-8 abdominis muscles protruding out of a man's torso’. It was a trend--from Hrithik Roshan, John Abraham, Shah Rukh Khan to Ranveer Singh and Varun Dhawan in recent times--that turned out to be more like a compulsion among celebs. The transformation of Aamir Khan's body for his movie Dangal inspired the nation.

It is wise to work on your health, and easier to do so when you get motivation from your favourite celebrities who also happen to be so called ‘fitness icons’. On the other end, it is appreciable to be able to encourage so many youngsters to exercise. However, at the same time, one has to keep in mind that the country is not very literate when it comes to health-fitness science education. These youngsters hitting the gym at the age of 16 often do not know what the human body is capable of.   Interestingly, the intention of getting those abs rarely includes fitness. “Abs have hugely become goals. Models and actors build them so that obviously inspires young people, but the idea is to show off their body as it gives a sense of confidence. I don't know anyone doing this to improve health,” says Ishi Khosla, clinical nutritionist, author, and founder of Whole Foods, a retail and cafe chain of healthy food.

A misinformed Indian believes that the actors are able to ace that body in such a short period of time due to their strict diet, workout regimens, and dedication

  ×

  Deciphering the body of lies

The men of B-town flaunting their flawless-greek godish bodies, left the boys dreamy, trying to picture themselves into that sought-after frame. The average India does not realise that celebrities have a fleet of people working on their looks. Their bodies are a major selling point when it comes to their market value and they have to shape it the way the world would like to see it. A misinformed Indian believes that the actors are able to ace that body in such a short period of time due to their strict diet, workout regimens, and dedication. "People must understand that there are rigors of attaining such bodies. The diet and exercise demands are mostly unrealistic for a layman. Also, what the screen shows is often boosted with makeup or are photoshopped,” says Khosla.   Several health trainers also claim that every actor who has done shirtless scenes has, most likely, taken steroids. When somebody is on steroids, there is a rapid transformation in an extremely short period of time. It is possible for people with blessed genes to achieve that ripped body in 5-6 years. But in six months, it is just not possible. Otherwise, every boy who has been to the gym for half a year would look jacked up.   Protein consumption helps in the process but there is a limit to which your body can consume protein in the form of food. When somebody starts taking substances such as steroids, the biology of your body changes. Your body can absorb a much larger amount of protein and therefore the muscle protein synthesis and recovery improves. Therefore, steroids act like a cheat to fast forward the process.    Secondly, the ability for muscle-building is dependent on testosterone levels, a hormone that depletes with age. This is a major reason why athletes usually retire at 35 years of age. However, externally injected anabolic hormones stimulate protein synthesis, muscle growth, and insulin.

Aamir Khan's body transformation for the movie Dangal made headlines (Image: Facebook, UTV Motion Pictures) (Others)

×

Celebrities are very subtle about acceptance of the use of substance and most even don’t openly deny. They can afford the best quality steroids and have professional trainers to guide them. “Hormone syringes and steroids are very common in the industry. The actors use it before shoots to look bulked up. But all of them visit doctors for regular checkups and detoxification--it's a must," says a celebrity trainer who spoke on the condition on anonymity.    Celebrity trainer Vinod Channa is in favour of food-based supplements. “There is no harm in taking food-based supplements. The quantity depends on the intensity of workout, otherwise, it will get stored in the body as excess fat. The whole foods are definitely much better but if one doesn’t have time to follow a strict diet because of busy schedules, supplements can be a good source,” he says. Channa's clientele includes John Abraham, Anant Ambani, and Shilpa Shetty.   A tech-savvy yet misinformed generation?

How many of us have not come across the fat to fit in 30 days advertisement and other shortcuts for that perfect physique? A diet with no carbs and only proteins vs a diet with only carbs and no protein?

Even though ours is a self-taught generation with free access to information from around the world, the Internet faces, like what experts call it, information overload. It is not merely the dizzying increase in the volume of information--the amount of data stored doubles every 18 months.

There are a billion health bloggers with a zillion training programs and diets. They will mostly have contradicting opinions on the same query. Most of it is mere noise--If people fail to distinguish between the two, the result will be a society overwhelmed with not just useful information but also dangerous misinformation and disinformation. “It is a double-edged sword. The Internet does provide information but you cannot replace the need for a qualified professional," claims Khosla.   Aftermath of misbeliefs

The wannabe Greek Gods are not able to logically comprehend the commerce behind gym-bodies and take it up as a challenge to build one. Without a doubt, gymming has its benefits. But clearly, the obsession with a jacked up body is an unhealthy one. Most men are not up for a sprint or a run but want to gym to build muscles in the name of fitness. But when they do not see the desired results in a short span the disappointment that unfolds leads to varied reactions among different personalities.

A study indicates that the maximum number of sign-ups in a gym happen in the month of January, mainly to account health while formulating new year resolutions. However, the retention rate is only 10 per cent. Most people lose motivation in a short period of time because they do not see results.

A study indicates that the maximum number of sign-ups in a gym happen in the month of January, mainly to account health while formulating new year resolutions. However, the retention rate is only 10 per cent.

  ×

Humans tend to want immediate gratification, and it can be irritating when we don’t see it in one of those many mirrors on the wall. We begin to lose motivation, especially when the targets in our head are so unrealistically high, thanks to the glamour industry.   In rare cases, it leads to exercise addiction disorder, which is a real thing, and it may cause for the person to get obsessed with gymming and body image so much so that even if one workout is missed, the person starts feeling depressed, guilty or anxious. In such cases, motivation is derived more from a rigid sense of compulsion than a sense of anticipated enjoyment. One may mock this disorder as a far less important issue than obesity. But just because the general population isn't suffering as 'epidemically' from exercise addiction as they are from obesity, it doesn't mean the severity of suffering experienced by those who are hooked on physical activity is any less. Lastly, not achieving the abs may also result in the devastating consequence of turning to steroids. Medical experts warn of severe consequences “One can land up with liver or kidney disease, nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, metabolic syndrome, digestive disorders like reflux, IBS, constipation, infertility, autoimmune diseases to name a few,” claims Khosla.   Moreover, studies indicate that men are less like to visit a doctor than women, a major reason why they die earlier. They have problems admitting to their issues because of how history describes their cultural existence--a physically and mentally strong, authoritative figure created for the progress of humanity.   “Fitness is not only a good-looking body but is also about regaining what you have lost due to age and lifestyle such as strength, stamina, flexibility, agility, speed, power, mobility, endurance, mind & body coordination,” Channa conclude.   This Men's Health Week, vow to not gym for that perfect body, but for fitness. Chase becoming the best version of you!

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[universeinform-blog]

Apps development: Spent force or taking a pit stop for the next lap?

New Post has been published on https://universeinform.com/2017/03/25/apps-development-spent-force-or-taking-a-pit-stop-for-the-next-lap/

Apps development: Spent force or taking a pit stop for the next lap?

For some time now, cellular packages have been producing fantastic euphoria. But, there were indications that the consideration days can be in the back of us. How do app builders see the destiny of the mobile app playing out?

Again in early 2016, we had expected that the yr might see the euphoria around cellular app development die down. A year on, we requested 230 app developers for his or her critiques on where matters stand. We got here Returned with some exciting insights.

Just like the founder of an SDK organization told us, there may be no purpose to accept as true with that your app is going to be successful. At the same time as transaction-oriented apps seem to paintings well for loyal customers, the ‘allow’s build an app and they’ll come’ generation, if there ever changed into one, has ended.

Again in 2015, 30 percentage of the businesses built apps with specific sales dreams. In 2016, that number doubled. Sixty percent of companies that invest in cellular do so with ROI inside the equation. cellular is mainstream, and the expectancies are pushed via tough numbers. Most companies seem to apprehend a way to make mobile work and the way to sustain the engagement on internal cell apps (or have understood that the web still works in addition to, or higher than, cellular in a few instances).

Organizations today understand the cellular method and mobile design like in no way earlier than. In step with app improvement corporations that we interviewed, almost 75 percent of their company customers recognize cellular strategy.

Tremendously, app developers nevertheless sense that we aren’t beyond the peak of apps. Extra than 70 percent of the app builders consider that custom app improvement will nonetheless thrive inside the corporation. The inertia of their success with the cell for the remaining seven years perhaps clouds their opinion on how soon they need to examine the next big wave and journey it.

The Need and Importance of a Web Development Company

A website is the most modern and the maximum efficient shape of e-advertising via which a person or business agency receives a danger to painting themselves within the methods they want to be visible and construct a platform to efficaciously marketplace their services and products. In addition, an excellent website makes a commercial enterprise extra dependable if represented in a right way. With superior era, internet tasks and net advertising and marketing have to turn out to be extra complex as a result, it has become essential to stick to the diverse website improvement services which could layout and expand the websites in the most consumer friendly way along with taking care of the necessities and objectives.

There are numerous factors of HTML and CSS which are had to be discovered first before starting to construct an awesome internet site. This makes a full-time task. By way of outsourcing the web development services to the professional internet site builders, one may be confident of getting their websites finished within the time. This offers the ability to paintings on the opposite on-line advertising and marketing plans also saves the people from the frustrations of having the information approximately the other net languages.

One of the essential factors of website development is they need to be located the various top of the search engines like google. The internet site builders have the tools that could help the websites to be seen in the search engines like google and yahoo. In addition, they assist to make the websites well suited with all the net browsers. There exists the group of Seo analysts and content material writers who try to entice more visitors to the websites By way of writing meta descriptions and different beneficial contents the usage of the maximum searched keywords in this area. Those assist the websites to be screened With the aid of the hunt options of maximum ships,

Thereby allows showing the enterprise’s call at the preliminary seeks consequences below some of the unique key phrases. The Search engine optimization additionally maintains on updating the list of key phrases for a particular subject matter with the intention to regulate the contents at the websites and generate greater visitors. additionally, the person growing the website page have to be updated approximately how quality the optimization works and hold the tab at the top of the quest effects for updates.

It is usually difficult for companies in bearing the value of highly green and certified internet development personnel. However, with a web improvement organization possible make use of the skills of the specialists who could paintings on the net projects. additionally, These net developers preserve shaping their capabilities to remain aware of the present day industry updates. They also use various equipment that is in any other case tough to have enough money. As a result outsourced web improvement offerings carry the superior software and techniques to develop websites which might be extraordinarily motion orientated. Those corporations operate in an enormously competitive marketplace and deliver best effects of growing a unique interactive internet site for an enterprise.

Is Competition a Destructive Force in Society?

The whole lot comes with wonderful and bad facets, particularly if we talk about competition. On one hand, it brings plenty of hopes and advantages, while on the poor approach, it conveys ruinous jealously and gaucherie. The general public considers that opposition makes their life extra difficult and complex.

One in every of my classmates at schooling degree was frequently harassed that why different college students race with him in lecturers. He was an above-common scholar, who used to attain accurate marks and interest of instructors with the assist of his brilliance and information, but he never was the topper within the magnificence. I firmly believed that he changed into the maximum shrewd student of the class. Even after this, he in no way managed to get overgenerous marks, as he in no way believed in competition, in competing with other college students. This method never let him achieve what he wanted, because he never competed with anybody, as he believed that he could get anything is in his thoughts, with the help of his knowledge and experience. Even though he succeeded first of all in his profession,

However, later on, his entrants, at his place of work, have been blessed (or allow us to name it ‘cursed’) with an aggressive attitude, who had been ready to take over his profile. They competed with him, which my pal in no way appreciated. So he began shifting to new groups and that is the sole motive at the back of the instability in his existence. However, I nevertheless accept as true with that he goes to get an incredible life beforehand, but he desires to originate his competitive creature from his deep inside.

Why Human beings Suppose opposition is Adverse

Once I spoke to my friend approximately his non-aggressive method, he told me, “I hate jealousy, in which someone is ready to the reduce the throat of others just for the sake of his betterment.”

Well, jealousy is the best bad component about the opposition. In any other case, it’s miles something, which has evolved the human race, from timber to mars. Without competition, the society could not have stepped forward to this top.

Why opposition is the necessity

I strongly accept as true with that – for a higher surroundings and lifestyle, opposition is essential to the society. There are 8 billion People on the planet. Without competing with others, you cannot acquire what you want, as there are lots of different Human beings, who also a choice to obtain the same. You can capture the scene of competition at faculties, workplaces, markets, financial system, and businesses, and even on your circle of relatives. inside the following snippets of the item, I’ve defined some of the high-quality influences of competition in our society – you can not avoid these affirmative factors.

Timeless Rules for Web Apps Development

  Net apps are becoming more and more crucial for modern companies. Those apps no longer only supply businesses an aggressive aspect but additionally provide them with the proper tools to enhance their running efficiency. Modern apps which might be custom designed as in step with business necessities are in call for and developers consciousness on developing apps that upload fee to the commercial enterprise and its offerings.

These apps are but complicated and require the know-how of skilled developers to construct them. They require expertise in diverse domains which include protection, integrations, responsive layout and person interface layout.

Usually, create clear specifications

The idea is to Constantly outline what you need prematurely. Just too many groups get into improvement tasks without knowing what exactly they need. A hard concept isn’t always enough. You need to have clean requirements and specs. If your necessities are not clean, the developers are at a loss of where to start and the way to pass about the venture. only you understand your commercial enterprise methods the first-class. So, make sure that you are clear along with your requirements.

Get something out – speedy

Each Internet app is constructed to remedy a business hassle. So, to correctly put in force the app, you will want to first discover the primary capabilities required to resolve the trouble and get them evolved and ‘live’ first. You need now not build the whole lot earlier than you ‘pass live’. Constructing a minimum possible product is the important thing to the achievement of all of the apps. Bare minimum features let you get a clean concept of the value of the entire venture too. You could then factor inside the last functions to suit your budget.

Use the right tools

If developers are not ready with the right equipment, it is a misplaced reason. They can not develop contemporary, Revolutionary apps with old tools at their disposal. Reflect consideration on all the advanced gear that would assist cut the development time and release the apps soon. The usage of the right tools is the most crucial rule.what is development pdf.windows app store

Plan long time

Whilst you increase an app to your commercial enterprise, Constantly suppose long term. If it’s fixing a problem, make certain which you do not fix Just the ‘on the spot issues’. The solution ought to serve a long term cause. The era used and the strategy must be future evidence and need to no longer require to be wiped out after some years.